‘Dad, do you really want to remember this moment?’
‘Yes,’ he says, looking between us again. ‘As it happens, I do.’
65.
Rachel
August 2017
My beloved father has died, suddenly in his sleep, at the age of ninety-three.
When I get the call, I am on my way to discuss a commission with a corporate client. Forgetting entirely to cancel the meeting, I somehow manage to pull on to a soot-stained verge beneath a sky grubby with clouds, at the edge of a dual carriageway. Traffic charges past, oblivious and uncaring, shaking the car as I shake too.
I feel utterly and unassailably alone.
I will never again see my darling dad, who held our lives together when my mother left. A beacon of a man who did his utmost to save and protect me. Whose laugh lit me up. Who had time to talk, always. Who taught me, from the day I was born, that some love is unconditional. That some love never wavers.
His sweater is still on the back seat of my car. He left it in here last week, when I drove us out to the country park, and we sat and looked over the lake and ate slices of lemon drizzle cake together.
I turn to grab the sweater now and bury my face in it, the wool cushion-soft against my skin. As I inhale the fading scent of him, breathing in his kindness one last time, a scattering of cake crumbs tumbles into my lap.
I can’t stop thinking about Emma. That she will never again get a hug from her grandad, or have him ruffle her hair and call herpoppet. That they won’t ever finishJane Eyrenow, or make her favourite hot chocolate together, with marshmallows andsquirty cream. My heart cracks in half for her, at the thought of the grief that is so cruelly coming for her too.
I sit without moving as time collapses around me, before eventually, something impels me to switch on the radio. I scroll through to a golden oldies station, one at which Dad would have huffed and said, ‘Cheek of it. I’m not dead yet.’
I permit myself a small, disbelieving laugh. ‘In My Life’ by The Beatles is playing. One of Dad’s all-time favourite songs.
‘I love you, Dad,’ I say, then turn the volume high, close my eyes and let the tears stream.
The ensuing days are a wind tunnel of grief, cold and relentless. Every hour feels as though it is angled uphill. I am barely able to communicate with Oliver. I frequently stand in the shower for so long, the hot water runs out. Oliver has to take over my email account. I have spontaneous sobbing fits and lose the inclination to eat. I cling to Emma constantly, to feel her heartbeat pressed against me. We cry together. I feel her pain even more acutely than I do my own. She asks me questions I cannot answer, about death and grief and heaven.
I spend hours at a time with Polly and Lo, not saying much, just needing to be around my oldest friends. Ingrid calls from LA to say she is abandoning all work commitments and flying back to the UK for the funeral. I’m relieved. I miss her deeply; Bedford hasn’t seemed quite the same since she left. I struggle these days to walk past any of our old hangouts and not feel overcome. The Indian we all loved on Tavistock Street, and our favourite dodgy pub – now a posh coffee shop – and our preferred spot of grassy riverbank for drinking M&S tinnies in summer.
Lawrence tells me Emma’s been inconsolable around him too, which is probably compounded by the fact that, at the start of the year, he broke up with his girlfriend Bianca. He got together withher not long after we split, so she’s been in Emma’s life since she was really just a baby. Bianca promised she and Emma would stay in touch, but already she’s begun to drift away. I try not to be angry at Lawrence, for letting our daughter down, because I know that is not how it is, really. Life happens. But now, death has happened too, and I can’t help feeling worried for my sensitive, deep-thinking child.
After the funeral, once we’re back at home in the living room, Oliver hands me a brandy. I’d probably rather toast Dad with port, because that was his favourite. But Oliver’s gesture is thoughtful, and I don’t want to reject it.
I have been trying not to dwell too hard today on the fact that, over the decade they knew each other, Dad and Oliver never really became close. In later years, this wasn’t helped by the fact that Oliver kept talking too loudly at him, as if he was deaf just because he was old, which I could tell infuriated Dad. And Oliver still insisted on calling him Mr Walsh, despite years of pleas from both of us to use his first name.
I haven’t yet told Oliver that Dad left his extensive collection of vinyl records to Josh. But nor have I told Josh: those conversations are for another day.
I know Oliver was annoyed when I invited Josh to the funeral. But the truth is, I didn’t justwantJosh there – I needed him. And I knew it was what Dad would have wanted, too.
‘Josh looked well,’ Oliver says now, still on his feet across the room from me.
Is it possible to tell I am thinking about Josh, just from the expression on my face? Polly always says it is.
‘I didn’t notice.’
I did, of course. At the start of the service, I saw Josh slip into the very rear pew. Then, just before they brought in the coffin, he caught my eye, and shot me a soft, infinitesimal wink. His way ofsaying,I’ve got you. And though I was cold, and shivering, I felt a dart of warmth, as if his hand was locking into mine, to help get me through the final goodbye.
Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve been unable to stop looking at the selfie we took in Bedford Hospital, just a matter of months ago. The three of us, grinning into the camera, arms around each other. An unplanned reunion that had made Dad so happy.
‘Rachel...’ Oliver is surrounded now by shadow, darkness that leaps when he moves. ‘I think I’d feel more comfortable if you and Josh stopped seeing each other.’
Perhaps he has discovered the selfie. I’ve had the idea lately that he might check my phone from time to time. But I have no evidence, just a hunch, so it would seem risky to bring it up.
I never told him about Josh being at the hospital that day, because I didn’t much see the point. And the photo was impromptu, my father’s suggestion entirely. So I’ve persuaded myself I have nothing to feel guilty about.
