Pause.
‘You’re myparents. You, and Mum.’
Pause.
‘Yes, of course the money’s incredibly helpful, but—’
Pause.
‘Because I think Mum would like it. Yes. Yes. Okay. Fine. Let me know.’
She hung up, let out a long sigh. And the futility of the whole situation made me sad.He has no idea what he’s got, was all I could think.
He sent flowers to Rachel last week, with a card that read,Thinking of you at this terrible time x. I found both items stuffed into the kitchen bin the following morning, sprinkled liberally with the leftovers from Emma’s Indian takeaway.
I feel her scanning my face now. ‘I bet you wish Mum took that pill too, don’t you?’
I gaze out of the window for a couple of moments. The garden is steel-skied and powdered with frost, picturesque as a Christmas card.
‘No,’ I say truthfully. ‘Because she never wanted to. Not in her heart. Anyway, if she had, and we’d stayed together, you might not exist. And you like existing, don’t you?’
Emma smiles. ‘Usually. Most days.’
I let out a short laugh. ‘I try not to think about that stuff too much. Take it from me – there’s no point wishing for things that can never come true.’
‘Well, I do.’ Her voice becomes a tremor. ‘I wish... I could have Mum back for just one more day. So I could talk to her about the babies. So Kai could see what an incredible person she truly is. So I could tell her I love her, and know she’s really heard it. So I could tell her... not to be afraid.’
Her words are a landslide. Momentarily, they crush me.
Eventually, I say, ‘You can still say all that stuff to her. I think she does understand, deep down. I really think she does.’
I don’t confess that I’ve started talking to Rachel while she’s asleep. I tell her I never stopped loving her, that I’ll join her in the next life. I always ask her to wait for me there. Because the only thing I want is to be with her again. To pick up right where we left off.
Emma wipes tears from her eyes. But they don’t seem wholly like tears of sadness. They are tears of frustration as well. ‘I’m not ready to lose her, Josh. This is all happening too soon. It’s so fucking unfair.’
Rachel’s carers have the radio on, tuned to one of those stations that’s non-stop Christmas. The music switches to ‘River’ by Joni Mitchell.
I have to turn away, so Emma can’t see my face.
89.
Josh
April 2037
One morning in spring, I am shocked to receive an email from Wilf. He sent it to my agent first, who forwarded it on with only a run of exclamation marks in the subject line, as he does whenever he’s affronted, which is often.
When I open the email, I can see why – although I do have to laugh. Wilf tells me he’s been sitting on his notes forGraveyard Heartfor almost two decades, so he thought it was about time. The notes, which he’s attached on a three-page document, are largely criticism and only partly constructive – not to mention entirely pointless, since he never even read a draft.
He informs me, too, that he’ll be back in the UK later this summer, suggests we go for a drink.
If I agree, it will be the first time I have seen him in nearly thirty years. I wonder if, at last, he is feeling the need to reconnect with the only other person in the world who knows what it’s like to be him – minus the Einstein-sized brain, obviously.
Wilf tells me he got married a few years ago, to Camila, a Spanish woman he met on the poker circuit. She’s in her thirties, which I’m not too sure how I feel about, given that, like me, Wilf is – chronologically – pushing seventy. But I’m not going to judge. There have never been any rulebooks, after all, for what we did.
He’s a dad now, to boys aged three and eighteen months. He attaches a photo of the four of them on a mountainside, the kids in toddler carrier packs, Camila and Wilf lifting hiking polesskyward. This amuses me, since Wilf always used to claim he was allergic to any form of exercise, that it brought him out in hives.
But I can’t help thinking, now what? Is Wilf just planning on watching the three people he loves most in the world getting old and infirm and dying, exactly as I am having to do with Rachel?
