Charlie has been calling constantly. In the years they were together, and not together, and together again, he was never an advocate of phone calls. He said he preferred the romanticism of bygone eras, like in the movies they watched, where people just turned up at the designated time and place, and might not find each other, and could be missed, and plotlines could twist and turn powered by such serendipity, or lack of it. The mobile phone made for a boring life, he used to tell her. Nevertheless he always had his with him, simply screening the calls, and probably gave the same explanation to all his girlfriends.
Vera is screening her calls now. It will not be her parents, it is rarely work, and if it is Luke he will leave a message. Luke has been leaving Vera a lot of messages. As October freshness gave way to November chill, there have been more and more of them. About flower arrangements and which hymn will play first in the wedding service, and what canapés they will serve at the reception. The wedding has been moved up to January, for Lynn, to give her the best chance of being there. The day hangs like a beacon in front of Vera, still, promising her Luke, and happiness, which for so long have been the same thing. She cannot however seem to concentrate on the details. Or on him. Or on them.
It is a strange sensation, as though all that she thought was, wasn’t, and the impossible is flickering into existence right before her eyes. Just weeks ago she would have given anything for mindless details to occupy her. Particulars of the now to distract her from what came before now, and to hide the fact that she was unable to imagine anything coming next. But suddenly, she is racing ahead. The nursery rhymes have stopped, the noise in her head has quietened. And she feels stronger, clearer. Guiltier and sadder too, more culpable; but more responsible, less evil, less alone. Not alone at all actually. That is the crux of it. There is still a cynical part of her that wants to laugh when she thinks it, but she knows now, knows, that she is not alone - she has Jesus. And from Him, present, future, past, she doesn’t want distraction. With Him, she has confronted what she did. With Him, she has told Charlie. And with Him, as much as with Luke, she wants to move on.
But of course she is fooling herself. Because memories tend to drag and tie and weigh down and push backwards. And now that she has allowed them, they slip between her daydreams and hit her even more often, vivid and insistent. She may not be alone while remembering them, but they still require strength. Details she didn’t know she’d even noticed swim before her eyes: the colour of little Charlie’s hospital tag, the tiny fingers shaped like her own, the pudgy middle toe on his left foot ever so slightly raised above the rest.
And so it is clear. Whatever it is she needs to do to accept what happened, to accept what she did – tell Luke, tell her parents, tell the police? – she hasn’t done. She is going every week to Alpha but cannot find the answers fast enough. She needs help. She needs Luke. She does not need distracting details. And she does not need Charlie’s persistent phone calls, reminding her, reminding her, reminding her, ring, ring, ring…
The wedding invitations go out. Luke has selected them. He has chosen the wording and is the one to have called Vera’s parents to ask them if they would like to be mentioned. Luke is paying for the small reception himself so there is no requirement to name them as hosts, but he feels that consulting them is ‘the right thing to do’. He tells Vera this with an arched eyebrow.
Luke hasn’t said anything, but over the creeping winter weeks Vera has noticed him beginning to look at her like this. And not only from beneath an arched brow. There are other tiny, barely perceptible differences that hit Vera at her core. Like when she makes a joke and his face stiffens. Or when she reaches for his hand, and he moves it away. It has been a long time since he kissed her.
One November night, he turns up late on her doorstep, and she can almost see the turmoil inside him bursting at his sensible seams. She has forgotten to call him during the day and hasn’t checked her messages. It is possible that he has rung. But she has been trying to avoid thinking about the phone and who else might be at the end of it, or what that person might shout at her down the line. Luke tells her he has been at his mother’s. Vera doesn’t know what to say. She offers him her arms but he shrinks away from them. She offers him wine, but – with arched eyebrows – he shakes his head. He wants to talk, but not about his mother, or St George’s, or them, or work, and nothing she says seems appropriate. He doesn’t stay.
The following day he reminds her, over the phone, that she shouldn’t be drinking wine. “Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit?” he asks. “And that you have a duty not to allow it to be mastered by anything?” It isn’t a lot to ask, he says over and over. Not from his future wife. Silence follows this. She senses that she is meant to fill it, but cannot. She is not really thinking of giving up wine. It does not seem to her to be a prerequisite for loving Jesus. And besides, she is thinking of the red she drank at the tapas bar all those weeks ago, and listening to the beep on her phone line that is almost certainly Charlie calling again.
“Tell me something true,” she asks Luke softly.
Luke sighs. “It’s late Vera. I’d better call Mother before bed.”
During the night, Luke’s words stack up around her. On top of her. Heavy. They terrify her with their judgement. She dare not even imagine what he would say if he knew the whole truth of what she has done. What would her parents say? What would a judge say? What is Jesus saying? Fragments of passages she has been learning at the Alpha Course run through her head. It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. She doesn’t feel free.
Over and over Vera searches the bible. Over and over she ignores her phone. Over and over she prays, and smokes, and collects the ash into a small container that she waters with tears and intends to bury. Her lungs the only witness to the slow, gradual goodbye she has begun to say to the baby she longs for more and more, and longs to lay to rest.