Page 96 of Things We Never Said
And then you said, as if from nowhere, ‘You know how we discussed moving to New Zealand?’
I started to tear up immediately, because I knew instantly what was coming – I could sense it.
‘Well, what about France?’ you said. ‘What about somewhere like here? What if I took a year out or something? Maybe if we used our savings we could do it in a way that would allow us to ...’ Your voice, which had sounded manic, petered out halfway through. At first, you thought that I was laughing at you, and you were hurt. ‘The idea’s not that stupid, for Christ’s sake,’ you said. But then you realised that my convulsions weren’t laughter. You realised that I was sobbing.
You held me for a while, just like you did when Mum died. You pressed your forehead to mine and cried with me. You didn’t even need to know what it was about to join with me in crying. You always had that amazing ability to empathise.
When I was all cried out, or at least I thought I was, you said, gravely, ‘It’s that bad, huh?’
I nodded. I couldn’t speak.
‘Are you leaving me?’ you asked. ‘Is that it?’
I exploded into fresh tears, because no thought could have been further from the truth. All I wanted, right then, was to stay with you forever.
Eventually, I managed to whisper the word, but you didn’t hear me properly, or didn’t want to believe that you’d heard me properly, so you made me repeat it, twice.
‘Cancer,’ I said again. And then the third time it came out in a sort of annoyed shouty voice. ‘Cancer!’
We sat and stared at each other for a bit. It seems like it was ages, but that might be my mind playing tricks. And then your face crumpled again and you threw your arms around me and pulled me tight.
I felt so safe, wrapped in your arms. It’s crazy, but momentarily I was happy – as happy as I have ever been. I felt so cosy surrounded by you and that woolly jumper. It seemed impossible to me that I could feel that safe and yet still be in so much danger.
And, as if you were reading my mind, you said, through tears, ‘We’ll beat this. Whatever it is, we’ll beat this together. You’ll see. You can’t ... you know ... You just can’t. Not when I love you this much. I won’t let you.’
Sean does not listen to a tape the following weekend. He tells himself that it’s because he’s too busy; he tells himself that it’s because he’s too tired. And these things are true. He is tired. He is busy.
Between working and food shopping and laundry, between repeated appointments at the bank and getting the flat tyre on the car fixed, and three separate surveyor’s appointments at the house, Sean finds that for the first time in ages he is quite literally overbooked.
Even the weekend, generally so empty, turns out to be something of a rush. Sean has to visit his mother on Saturday lunchtime (Perry has had to whizz off to Hong Kong for some reason), and Maggie phones repeatedly until Sean caves in and meets her for the promised celebration drink. But the real reason, he admits to himself, is that there’s only one envelope left. And as much as Sean instructs his mind to make itself ready, he doesn’t seem able to convince himself that he truly is.
He’s scared of what Catherine will say to him in her final message, he realises. And he’s afraid, above all, of reaching the end of this process – afraid of finding himself truly alone, once again. Because yes, for all the shocks and for all the misery, this has been a dialogue. Catherine has continued to make him happy and angry, and sad, almost as if she were still alive. And he has loved her and cried with her and, yes, raged against her, here in the confines of his own head. Of course he’s scared of letting her go.
On Sunday evening – his usual listening slot – the fear reaches a crescendo, leaving him nervous and shaky and unable to settle, a state that only partly abates during his working week.
Amidst the sudden and surprising emptiness of the following weekend – the phone does not ring once, there are no visits – his fear of that final envelope becomes acute, almost a terror, and he finds himself unable to eat or sleep or even think about anything else.
By Sunday evening he’s feeling trembly and shattered and, realising that he simply can’t face another week of anticipation, he steels himself, downs a dram of whisky, and carries the box to the lounge. ‘Time to get this over with,’ he says, quietly. ‘Time to be brave.’
He glances at the box and then looks nervously around the room, scanning for potential distractions before he starts.
Outside, beyond the window, a neighbour’s child is learning to ride a bicycle with her father. He remembers trying to teach April – she had fallen off and scraped her knee and had cried for hours. She had finally managed it for the first time with Catherine while Sean had been out at work. He’d felt unreasonably jealous about that, he remembers.
He crosses the room and pulls the curtains closed. He doesn’t want to see the little girl cycling past. He doesn’t want any potential visitors peering in on him, either.
And then, finally, he returns to the sofa, lifts the lid and pulls the final envelope from the box.
He senses, immediately, that this one is different from the others, both heavier and more bulky.
He swallows with difficulty. His breath is laboured – it feels as if someone is sitting on his chest. He wonders briefly if he’s having a heart attack. Wouldn’t that be ironic? To die before he even reached the end of his late wife’s messages? He rips open the flap. He tips the contents onto his lap.
A single photo, once again; but this time, not one but two of the little cassettes. They are marked ‘A’ and ‘B’.
Snapshot #29
Polaroid, colour. A woman lies in a hospital bed. Sitting either side of her, their arms linked around her shoulders, are a man and a woman. The young woman is touching a necklace with her free hand, and a screwed-up ball of discarded wrapping paper rests on the bed. All three people in the photo are smiling unconvincingly.
Tears well up in Sean’s eyes the second they focus on the photo. For it’s the last family snapshot ever taken.
