Go
I am with Hope by the pond at the Common, close to the café. It’s May now, and the air is sparkling with the brightness of early summer. The sky is an aquatic blue, the trees newly weighted with blossom and greenery. I have shed my jacket, and Hope is content in her little dungarees and striped T-shirt. On the opposite side of the pond, model boats are sailing serenely in circles, steered by children watched over by eager fathers.
I suppress the familiar lurch in my stomach, and focus on my daughter.
Hope, as ever, is delighted by the ducks. She is smiling and gabbling, mashing pieces of the bread we’ve brought for feeding into paste with her squidgy fists. God, I love her so much.
It’s a year since I discovered I was pregnant. During the seven months that followed, I barely dared to move, for fear of doing anything that might sever my last—miraculous—connection to Max. I assumed I’d feel less nervous once Hope was born, once she was actually living and breathing in front of me—but of course, the living and breathing just sent my protective instincts into overdrive. It’s onlythanks to the support of my therapist Pippa, and of course my family and friends like Jools, that I’ve developed enough confidence to ever leave the flat with her.
Our baby daughter is now five months old, and I miss her father every day. Each morning I search her tiny face for more clues to him, my little treasure map of Max. And I’m convinced I find them daily, though perhaps I’m only imagining it. The mildness in her gray eyes. The lightness in her laugh. Her apparent enthusiasm for life.
Jools comes striding back toward us with two coffees, sunglasses on. “God bless this sunshine.” She passes me a cup. “How are the ducks today?”
Hope and I are, it has to be said, prolific duck-feeders. She absolutely adores them, and I like to think that’s because she’s inherited her father’s good heart, his compassion.
Jools and I sit down together on a nearby bench. Above our heads, pigeons tack back and forth across a spotless blue sky. The air is rich with the music of chiff-chaffs, blackbirds, song thrushes.
I jiggle Hope on my lap with one hand, sip my coffee with the other. “It’s days like this that I miss him the most,” I say, after a few moments.
She nods. “I know. He’d love this, wouldn’t he?”
That’s my overriding feeling about Max being gone, these days. That it’s just not fair. He’s missing out on so much. I never let myself dwell onjusthow much he’ll miss out on—the rest of my life, the whole of Hope’s, and most of the lives ofherchildren, too—because that thought is too gut-wrenching to comprehend. But he’s in my thoughts constantly—on the tube and at the café, the streets around our home, in every room at the flat. And even in Shoreley, whenever we’re back there seeing Mum and Dad, because every time we are, I deliberately take a detour to walk past The Smugglers.
I’d give anything for just one more day. Or even a few precioushours, so Max could hold his baby daughter, and I could lay my head on his shoulder and tell him one last time just how much I love him.
I started back at Supernova last week, which felt very strange, like I’d wandered into an alternate reality. Because some things were the same—most things, in fact: my colleagues, my clients, my desk, my lunch routine. But other things—the big things—were astonishingly and irreversibly altered. Max being gone. And Hope having become the new center of my world. It’s been tough, readjusting to the noise and pace, the buzzing industry of the office, after spending so long in my Hope-shaped bubble. But I wanted it. Ineededit—I knew I had to come back before I got too comfortable and our lives became defined by my grief. I kept imagining Hope as a teenager, shrugging her shoulders and saying, “My dad died before I was born, so that’s why my mum’s a bit... you know.”
I don’t want to be a-bit-you-know. I want to make my daughter—and Max—proud.
Along the pavement in front of us, a young couple are walking with their son. He’s small—a year old, maybe—and looks adorably wobbly on his chubby legs. Jools smiles and says hello to them as they pass, but I have to look away.
I do get jealous. I can’t help it. I got jealous while I was pregnant—at NCT classes when the other dads showed up, in the waiting room at my antenatal appointments, at the hospital when I gave birth. And I get jealous here, and in coffee shops, and at my mother-and-baby group when everyone’s griping about their husbands or partners. Sometimes when they start, I just walk off, grabbing Hope and abandoning my coffee or whatever it is I’m doing. My new friends know why, and they don’t give me a hard time about it, but that doesn’t stop them complaining about their other halves, either.
I had to watch the gray-faced driver in court last week admit to causing death by careless driving. Sentencing is next month, but itwon’t bring me any kind of satisfaction. It was an accident, Max is gone, and nothing can change that. I’ve been surprised to realize I don’t harbor any bitterness toward the driver: haven’t we all changed lanes without looking properly before, had a split-second near-miss, sworn to pay more attention in future? It could have been me as much as it was him.
“Oh, I nearly forgot,” Jools says, probably sensing I’m getting stuck in a thought bog. “They had these on the counter in the café.” She pulls a piece of paper from her pocket, unfolds it, and hands it to me.
I look down at it. It’s a flyer advertising a local creative writing group.
“What’s this?” I say, bemused.
She shrugs. “Just thought you might be interested. Didn’t Pippa say writing might help?”
“Yeah, but... I write for a living.”
“For work, yes. This would be for you, though.”
I look down at the flyer again, nibble my lip. It would be easy to say I don’t have the time, or the inclination right now... but I definitely don’t hate the idea of it. In fact, I’d go as far as to say it appeals. And I can’t exactly explain why. Maybe it just taps into a version of me I’d thought was long gone, and that feels surprisingly comforting.
“Hey, you said you knew a good photographer in Shoreley, didn’t you?” Jools is asking, as she sips from her coffee.
I bend over to kiss the top of Hope’s head. She wriggles a bit, but otherwise she’s still captivated by the panorama of the pond and the mallards. “Er, yeah. He did my headshots at Supernova. Caleb. He was nice.” I let out a half laugh. “The guy who wrote his number on a beer mat.”
“Reckon he does weddings?”
Jools and Nigel have been together for two years now. And six months ago, Nigel got down on one knee, having hidden the ringinside a muffin that Jools very nearly choked on. Before Max died, Jools had never really been that big on marriage. But I think she and Nigel have decided now that life is too short. That if you find the right person, you’d be crazy to procrastinate, even for a second.
“Not sure. But I could e-mail him, if you like.”
