It was after 7 p.m. when Tess heard Dave’s car pulling up in the driveway. She was on the sofa, her eyes swollen with crying, her nose swollen with crying, her head pounding with both crying and the half bottle of wine she’d drunk alongside her cheese toastie supper.
‘Helloooo!’ he called cheerily from the front door. ‘Daddy’s home! Where are my lovely girls?’
He meant her and Bella, which just made Tess burst into a fresh round of tears.
‘In here,’ she croaked.
Dave came into the room. He was stocky and broad-shouldered, his hair a bit overgrown, wearing his trademark denims with a colourful shirt and the black woollen coat she’d bought him for Christmas. He’d trimmed back his short salt-and-pepper beard while he’d been away.
Dave took one look at her, dropped the bags he was carrying and rushed over.
‘Oh, Tess, what’s the matter? What’s happened? Is it…?’
‘It’s Bella,’ she said, before he got into a panic about the children or anyone else, ‘I’m so sorry… but she’s… she’s…’
Her shoulders heaved and it took some effort to say the dreaded words: ‘She’s died.’
Dave dropped down onto his haunches in front of her. His expression was astonished, full of concern and always so kind. Whatever else Dave could do to wind her up into the kind of fury that long-term married parents may feel for one another now and then, he could always be relied on to be kind. And she felt very glad to see him.
‘Oh, Tess… that’s awful. Why didn’t you call? Why didn’t you tell me? What happened?’
She made room for him on the sofa, felt the weight of his arm around her shoulder, leaned into him and, a little consoled now, told him all about Bella’s last day on earth.
When she was finished, he held her tightly and told her that she should have phoned, should have let him help her through it all. ‘You shouldn’t have had to do this all on your own,’ he said, almost annoyed.
She put her hand into his and squeezed. ‘I know,’ she said, ‘but you were busy, responsible for other people’s children. I didn’t want you to worry, or be distracted, or tired.’
He squeezed back and sighed.
‘The poor old doggie,’ he said quietly, ‘dear me, so many happy years with Bella. So… that just leaves us, then… dear, oh dear.’
She saw the tearing in his eyes and with a broken, ‘I know,’ Tess burst into yet another round of tears.
‘Oh, God,’ she said, ‘when am I going to stop crying?’
‘Probably not for a few days,’ he said, blinking away his own tears, ‘remember when my mum…’
She nodded, not wanting him to go on. When Dave’s lovely mum had died suddenly three years ago, she had not been able to stop crying for two weeks solid. It became almost comical… cooking while crying, cleaning the bath while crying, taking a work conference call while crying, bringing water bottles on every car trip because the risk of dehydration was real.
She knew already that she was going to miss the everyday, constant presence of Bella for a long time.
‘Maybe we’ll get another dog,’ Dave said, ‘when we’re ready…’
But she shook her head. Just now, the idea of being so fond and so distraught all over again was terrible. The abrupt ring of the home landline was an intrusion into their mournful quiet.
‘I’ll get it,’ Dave said, already up on his feet.
‘Hello, Alex, how are you doing?’
Tess sat up and instantly felt a little better. This was Alex, their twenty-two-year-old, who rarely called, so it was always a treat to talk to him.
‘Good… good… good to hear it… that’s great…’ Dave was saying.
Tess let Dave talk, of course, but she was impatient to get hold of the receiver herself and listen to Alex’s voice, to hear how things were really going for him. He prided himself on being independent and strong, but she worried about him. She remembered from her own experience that the first years out of uni could be really hard. The world of work was not usually all that you thought it would be.
‘Hello, my darling,’ she said, when it was finally her turn to talk, ‘how are you doing?’
‘I’m good… it’s all good,’ he said, but she listened hard to hear what he really sounded like. And she thought his voice was definitely bright, but maybe tired too.
‘Long days?’ she asked. ‘I hope you’re not working too hard.’
‘No, it’s really fine. It’s going well.’
She asked about London. Where had he been? What had he done? And enjoyed his replies, full of detail and description.
‘I’m really looking forward to seeing you,’ she told him, ‘and really catching up with you and Natalie on the holiday.’
‘Mum…’ just the word was enough. She read the tone and in her mind she could already see roadblock ahead.
‘What is it?’
‘Mum… I don’t want this to be hard… I really don’t want to let you down.’
‘But… Alex… you can’t…’ she warned him.
‘Mum… it’s just not going to work for me… I can’t get that amount of time off. All the senior staff take time off in the summer. The juniors have to cover.’
‘But I told you to ask for it weeks ago, months ago… I told you to tell them it was exceptional circumstances… Alex! You can’t let me down on this. The holiday is only three weeks away now…’
‘Please don’t cry, Mum,’ he said. ‘Please don’t do that.’
She hadn’t even realised she was, because since this morning she’d cried more than she hadn’t.
‘Look… I can probably take a week, maybe even ten days. Why don’t I come for the last part of it?’
‘But you’ll miss out on so much… I mean, travelling across Vietnam and into Cambodia. You’ll miss all of that. Do you really want to miss that? It’s all booked, all paid for… I know it sounds like such a cliché, but it really will be the holiday of a lifetime!’
Her voice sounded high and shrill. And she sounded angry, which wasn’t right, because she wasn’t angry, she was distraught and a little desperate. She so wanted him to be there with them. Why didn’t he get that? Yes, maybe three weeks was too much to ask from a fiercely independent twenty-two-year-old. But he’d agreed, he’d said yes and he’d sounded really enthusiastic when she’d first started planning all of this.
‘Can I think about it?’ he asked and she could feel herself balling her hand in frustration. It was his pet phrase, his get-out clause, his decision-ducking tactic.
‘Yes… please think about it. I’ll call you tomorrow. And I love you, Alex.’
Only when she replaced the receiver did she realise she hadn’t even told him about Bella.
She turned to Dave and began with, ‘Alex…’
‘I think I gathered. Look, give him a bit of time and I’ll try to talk to him as well. Why don’t you give Natalie a call?’ he suggested, knowing this might be a soothing move. When Natalie’s exams had finished in May, she’d gone out to the south of Spain to teach English and seemed to be having an amazing time.
‘I think I’ll round up Bella’s things and put them into the attic,’ Dave added.
Was it worth putting them in the attic, Tess wondered? Shouldn’t they give them to a dog shelter or something like that? Right now, the thought of having another dog was impossible. And it wouldn’t be any less tragic to come across Bella’s things years later in the attic. But as she couldn’t bear to part with them today, she found herself agreeing with Dave.
Then she couldn’t help reminding him. ‘Use the proper metal ladder, not that rickety old wooden one, and when you’re ready I’ll come and hold it steady for you. There’s that floorboard gap, and I don’t want you to…’
‘Okay, okay,’ Dave said, almost out of the room. ‘I’ll call for you.’
It was a long conversation between mother and daughter. It was emotional and then quite fraught. Natalie wanted to know all about Bella’s death and cried down the line, which made Tess cry too.
‘Oh, I just can’t stop myself at the moment…’ Tess declared. ‘I’m a permanent bloody water feature… and another really upsetting thing is that Alex doesn’t seem to want to come on the full holiday. He’s talking about only coming for the last ten days at most.’
Tess had certainly expected Natalie to be upset about Bella. But she had not expected the long, guilty pause she heard now. Followed by: ‘Mum… I’ve been meaning to talk to you about the holiday. I think three weeks is going to be too long for me.’
For a few moments, Tess was too taken aback to speak, then came a rush of angry thoughts. Meaning to talk to me? Just when was she planning to mention it? Too long? Three weeks was too long? Was she planning to just pop over to Thailand for the weekend of a lifetime maybe? And all this time and money I’ve spent already!
‘You know that this trip starts in three weeks’ time and I’ve been planning it for months? You do know that, don’t you?’ Tess asked, trying not to lose her cool. ‘You know that it’s all booked and every last detail is sorted and paid for and you could have just mentioned ages and ages ago that you weren’t happy with the three-week plan.’
Natalie was having such a good time and so determined to stay for the whole summer that Tess was beginning to suspect there was a romantic reason for wanting to ditch the family holiday.
‘I mean I can’t just go cancelling and rearranging and spoiling everything because you’ve got a passing whim to go and do something else,’ Tess added, realising that staying cool and calm was going to be just about impossible.
‘Well… I just think a week or two-week commitment for a family holiday would be a bit more normal…’ Natalie went on. ‘Mum, three weeks, plus all the days of jetlag… that’s a lot of time to give up for…’
‘Give up?’ Tess was really trying to rein in her anger now.
‘You and Dad should go,’ Natalie added. ‘You both deserve a break. Treat it like a second honeymoon…’
‘I thought we’d all agreed to go on this holiday,’ Tess said, not sure if she was more upset than angry, ‘I thought we were all really excited about it… I thought we’d all have an amazing time…’ she heard the dry sob in her voice and felt that she had run out of tears.
Now she could hear Dave calling for her and she really had to finish this call and go to give him a hand. Good grief, this day was turning almost as bad as yesterday.
‘Natalie, I have to go now. Please think hard about this and I’ll speak to you tomorrow, okay?’ With a final, ‘Loads of love,’ Tess ended the call.
She got up from the sofa, thinking general ‘ungrateful bloody wretches’ thoughts about her children and stomped into the hallway. She turned to head up the narrow staircase to the upper floor, and just as she rounded the corner to the attic landing, she saw that Dave had, despite her instructions, taken the wonky old wooden ladder, and not the weighty metal one. He was already at the top of it with Bella’s large dog bed in both of his hands and, to Tess, that bloody ladder looked a little unbalanced.
‘Dave, for God’s sake,’ she complained.
Unbelievably irritated with him, she hurried forward to take a steadying hold of the rungs, just as the cardboard patch smoothing out the floorboard underneath the rug finally squashed under the weight of the ladder, and sank just a sudden half a centimetre.
Tess saw the movement and quickly grabbed hold of the ladder, but this only added to Dave’s sense of unbalance. The dog’s basket flew out of his hands and then his arms flailed as he tried to rebalance and she attempted to grab him, but with an alarmed, ‘Whoooaaaaaaahh!’ which she thought was pretty restrained, considering, he span backwards off the ladder, crashed straight into the wobbly bannister, which promptly collapsed and sent him over the edge of the landing and onto the stairs below.
‘Dave!’ she screamed.