‘Don’t.’ He lifts his head and holds a hand up. ‘In the nicest way possible, I know you are. People always are. I know it’s meant well, but it doesn’t help anyone to say thatorto hear it.’
‘Then I don’t know what to say.’
‘And that’s what I want to hear.’ He nudges his thigh against mine. ‘I’ve come to hate that sympathy in people’s voices, andthatlook on their faces.’
He reaches a hand over until the back of his fingers run along my jaw, and I try to rearrange my face into a neutral expression, but I’m desperate to hug him, and I don’t know how to stop that showing.
Instead, I catch his hand as he goes to pull it away and clasp it between both of mine, squeezing it tightly and hoping it encourages him to keep talking.
He’s quiet for a while, and eventually, he lifts my hand to his mouth and brushes his lips across it, and then clamps his other hand over the top of mine, until I’m not sure which one of us is squeezing the other’s hand tighter.
‘His name was Zach. He was diagnosed with a brain tumour when he was six. We did every treatment imaginable, but it wasn’t enough. He died just after his eighth birthday.’
He looks at the water as he speaks, and I can see the tension in his jaw and hear the careful control he’s maintaining over his voice. ‘After the diagnosis, I spent every moment with him. We had long stays in hospital while he underwent treatment. Endless hours of him being too weak to move, and I filled that time with stories from my childhood. I told him about Yorkshire – the place where I grew up, and Thimblenouth, where I spent every holiday when I was his age. We lived in central London, a small house on a busy street, no garden, not even a balcony. He’d never seen countryside like this before. I told him stories about fairies in pub gardens, ancient woodlands and hidden waterfalls, knights and dragons that still existed here if you knew where to look. He thought it was the most magical place on earth, and it became something for him to focus on. I promised him that when he was better, we’d have an adventure here, but he was too ill to leave the hospital.’
There are tears rolling down his face, and theneedto hug him is overwhelming. I squeeze his hand so tightly, and reach over with my other hand to rub his back at an almost impossible angle.
‘He was dying. Looking back now, I see it in every moment, but at the time, I thought there was still hope. There was a break between treatments and I thought we could come here for a holiday, so he could see this place that he so desperately wanted to see. I looked online for holiday rentals, and…’
I can guess what happened next. ‘You saw the pub for sale?’
‘I saw the pub for sale,’ he repeats with a bitter laugh. ‘I bought it. Immediately. I didn’t ask any questions, I didn’t send a surveyor, I didn’t take structural integrity or renovation costs into account, I didn’t even tell my wife. I spent pretty much all of my savings on it, because I thought it was the answer. I told myself that this was the place my son would get better. I thought if I told him that we could move here, he’d have something to live for. He’d fight to get better if he had something to look forward to.’
He glances at me, and even though darkness has fallen, I can see how red his eyes are. ‘And yes, I do know that medical diagnoses don’t work like that, but I was desperate. I didn’t think it through, I just acted on a wave of emotion and grief for what we knew was going to happen. And believe me, I know it was stupid, I heard that enough from my wife, but I just… I needed to prove to him that I’d keep my promise – he was going to get better and we were all going to come here for a new adventure.’
From the absolute desolation in his voice, it’s easy to guess that never happened. He’s still got one of my hands held between his, and I use the other one to brush his hair back and then lean over and press my chin against his shoulder.
‘He died a few weeks after I signed the contract. He never left the hospital. Never came here, never got to hunt for knights and dragons, or look for fairies in the pub’s garden like I did when I was young.’
There are tears running down my face too and squeezing his hand isn’t enough. I slide off the tree trunk and my feet land in the river with a splash, soaking me to mid-calf, but nothing is more important than getting my arms around him. I paddle across the riverbed until I’m standing in front of him and lean up to pull him down and hug him tighter than I’ve ever hugged anyone before.
He lets out an ‘oof’ as I squeeze him and curls around me, almost like he deflates and lets the emotions spill out while I hold him together, stroking up and down his sides and over his shoulders, undeterred by the rucksack still on his back.
‘You’re soaking. You’re going to be squelching all the way home.’
‘Don’t care.’
He lets out a wet laugh and huddles closer, and despite the fact the water is freezing and I really didn’t think through jumping into a river in the darkness, I could quite happily stand here all night, trying to share some small part of the burden he’s been carrying around.
‘Thank you.’ Long minutes pass before he moves with a groan like he’s aching from the position and starts untangling our arms. ‘It’s been a long time since I talked about it. I didn’t realise it was going to be so hard to relive.’
‘Of course it is.’ I step back and have to grab onto his knees to steady myself in the water. ‘I’m sorry I pushed you so hard. I shouldn’t have said anything.’
‘I should have told you weeks ago. You deserved to know the truth, but it’s not an easy thing to talk about, and I hatethis. This feeling of being emotionally wrung out. The “oh God, I’m so sorry” reaction. That look of sympathy in your eyes.’
‘It’s too dark for you to see anything in my eyes,’ I mutter as I paddle back across the stones and hoist myself up onto the tree trunk again, holding Reece’s hand to stay upright while his other hand goes to my lower back to steady me.
‘How can you be so happy after that?’ I settle myself beside him, close enough that our thighs are pressed against each other’s, and river water drips forlornly from my trainers. ‘You’re so bright, and smiley, and optimistic. You sing showtunes at inhumane hours of the morning. If I’d experienced anything close to that, I don’t know how I’d ever drag myself out of bed again.’
‘What I said before is true – I don’t like to be sad. He wouldn’t want me to be sad. He’d want his mother and me both to move on and to be happy. I’ll be grieving for the rest of my life, but I don’t want that to beallI do. I don’t want people to feel sorry for me. I don’t want them to treat me differently, and honestly, in a small village like this, I don’t want it to be passed around like the juiciest gossip. The best thing I can do for Zach islive. Live the life that he never got to live. Pick out the good bits in every day. Look on the bright side. Find the joy in small things. Keep him alive in every way I can. The pyjama trousers are something he would’ve loved. I did stuff like that to make him laugh when he was ill. Wore the brightest, most outlandish things I could find, and nowadays, I think of him… well,allthe time, but especially when I see a pair of ridiculous pyjamas or multicoloured socks. I get them because I know they’d make him smile.’
My eyes are welling up again at understanding how so many little things are connected to his love for his son. I shift until I can kiss his shoulder but the jacket he’s wearing makes it unsatisfactory, but he leans closer and lets out a long, shuddery breath, and we lean against each other and do nothing but breathe into the darkness, surrounded by the sound of rushing water and the last of the evening birdsong.
It still feels like he’s open to talking, so I push further. ‘What happened with your wife?’
He sighs like it’s another painful memory he doesn’t want to relive. ‘After Zach died, we didn’t know what to do with ourselves. The grief was soul-crushing. Something like that happening is either going to bring you closer together or tear you apart, and it destroyed us. We’d both left our jobs and she was angry about the money I’d wasted on the pub. We picked at each other over every little thing. We blamed each other. We barely spoke. We grieved in silence. She slept in his room and I slept on the sofa. We floated around the house like ghosts, haunting each other. She wanted to try for another baby, but I couldn’t bear the thought. I was a fatheronce. I could never do it again. Eventually she went back to work and met someone else, and when I found out, we ended things. She asked me to meet her not long before I came up here, and she and her new husband had just had a baby. His middle name was Zach, so that broke me. But I’m glad she found what she wanted, because it wasn’t me, but she seemed happy, and she deserves that.’
‘And you?’
