A few months after Fionn died, Emma had received a phone call from some poor intern in the Human Resources department of A1 Adverts who had been tasked with giving her a call. Emma could tell that the girl on the other end of the phone, who sounded young, and who stuttered and stammered as she spoke, was obviously embarrassed at having to make the call that no one else had wanted to make. She tried her best to delicately ascertain when, if ever, Emma might be planning on returning to work. Emma had completely forgotten about work. It just hadn’t even entered her head that they might be wondering what her plans were now that a few months had passed since the accident. No matter how much she wished it wouldn’t, everything still moved on.
At first she had been horrified at the thought of getting up and carrying on as if her life was normal when it wasn’t. She felt as though Fionn would think she was already moving on, that she had already forgotten about him. Everyone was telling her the best thing that she could do was to keep busy and get some routine back into her life but she knew in her heart and soul that it still wouldn’t stop her thinking about him every minute of the day. However, the more she thought it over, the more she realised that no matter how many times she relived what had happened, it wouldn’t change anything – it wouldn’t bring him back – so with an overwhelming feeling of guilt, she reluctantly had phoned the intern back and told her she would be back the following Monday.
When Emma had gone in the door on her first day back, she couldn’t help but notice that people didn’t make eye contact with her. When she spoke they would start shifting nervously and would lower their gaze to the floor. As she walked down the corridors she could feel eyes on her back and whispers crept around the office that she was back. She had met with Maureen in her office. She started by telling Emma that she was truly sorry for everything that had happened. Emma was used to hearing these words from people so she put on her strong face which seemed to make Maureen more relaxed. She told Emma to take her time and if there were days that she just wasn’t feeling up to it not to worry about coming in, but Emma could see she was more than a bit relieved to see her. She briefed Emma on which campaigns they were preparing pitches for, which had recently been won and were now in the production stage and those that were starting on further phases. Emma could see there was a lot on.
Although everyone had warned her to ease herself into it gradually, Emma threw herself straight in. Instead of dodging the new client enquiries like the rest of the overworked campaign managers, she was now glad to take on more than her fair share of work. Whenever Maureen tried to suggest that maybe it was a bit too much for one person and that she would divide it up amongst the rest of her colleagues, Emma would shake her head, so reluctantly Maureen left her alone. She threw herself into preparing the pitches and winning business for A1.
The funny thing was that when Fionn was born, she had lost all interest in her job, she hadn’t wanted to return to work, she had considered being a stay-at-home mum but they had a large mortgage as a result of buying their home at the height of Ireland’s property market and she’d had no choice but to return to work. Now here she was a few months later, broken emotionally and using work as a crutch to escape the sadness of her life.
She stayed later than everyone in the evenings, even Maureen, and she worked through lunch most days but although people had said that the best thing she could do was to keep busy, it didn’t help her to forget. Of course getting up in the mornings and leaving the house every day helped lift some of the blackness, but she thought about Fionn constantly.
Looking at Adam now was like looking in a mirror of the grief she was trying to hide from. She knew she needed to face him sooner or later but she couldn’t look at him without it dredging up all the hurt and upset and resentment that he was just getting on with his life. That wasn’t right. She was living day to day, not daring to think ahead about their future, but she couldn’t ignore the tell-tale signs that life was running on all around her; winter changed to spring and spring to summer.
Emotionally she had been through her very worst nightmare, everything else was secondary. Her mind had shut itself off, and made her immune to anything which would hurt her, in order to protect her, like a ship seals off compartments to stop it sinking. Her senses had shut down. She was a shell of a person going through the motions, unable to make a decision, living from day to day, drifting along in the ebb of life because if she thought too far into the future, the thought of living an entire life without her son was overwhelming. So she lived from day to day; then days turned into weeks, and weeks to months and somehow that got her through.
* * *
Adam still bore the physical scars from the accident. He had a long lumpy keloid scar running down the front of his left shin from where he had broken the bone quite badly and one on the inside of his wrist which if he didn’t wear long sleeves tended to draw people’s eyes, but he was limping less now and his daily cycle to and from work was helping the muscles regain strength. It was the mental scars that were proving the most difficult to heal.
The dream was re-occurring on a nightly basis, hunting him down during the small hours of the morning. The ordeal was played out over and over in his head, night after night. Even when he was in an alcohol-induced sleep it still managed to find him, he had no escape. He could see the silhouette of trees shining in through his car window as he drove along on a crisp sunny morning. There were the trees, the branches covered in frost, the white sunlight cutting through the sky, the farmhouse with its red windows and wrought-iron gates. There was the bend in the road. The crossroads. Adam would wake up in a panic, soaked with sweat. He felt empty, alone and fearful. Things were bad enough without nightly reminders too. He was becoming too scared to sleep and he was exhausted. He would drink endless amounts of coffee in work, just to get through the day but it gave him a nervous energy, he felt jittery and restless. His foot or fingers were always tapping. Tell-tale bags had formed under his red-puffy eyelids, his skin was ashen and he couldn’t keep the weight on him.
For some reason Adam didn’t feel entitled to grieve. Although he had lost his child too, so much focus was on Emma as the mother that people expected him to be the strong one. They assumed he should be the one helping her through her grief and supporting her. It was as if she had a monopoly on the grief. He was expected to be a man, to be stoic and strong. He wasn’t allowed go to pieces. But it wasn’t easy.
He had no doubt but that Emma attached some of the blame to him and he could understand it. Who knows, he might have done the same himself if the roles were reversed? He knew it wasn’t her fault; she needed to blame something, to lash out at someone. When she looked at him, he knew that was what she was thinking; he could see it in her eyes. What if he had been driving slower? What if he had left the house a minute later or didn’t decide to go to see his parents that day? He constantly wondered the same thing himself. And so the weight of his own guilt and Emma’s blame, while never actually voiced, stood between them, growing by the day until the wedge grew so wide that they were where they were today. He couldn’t help getting more and more frustrated by her behaviour. It wasn’t his fault, he wanted to shout.
And then one day, Emma had come into the kitchen in her work suit. He had been amazed to see her properly dressed and not in her pyjamas. Her hair was done, she still looked pale and tired but he could see pieces of the old Emma that had been missing for months now. She didn’t look at him, she had just grabbed her bag and walked out the door, but it was a start. He stood watching after her in disbelief and hoped that she might finally be starting to heal but his hopes had been short-lived. She worked all the hours possible so she was never at home. He barely saw her and when he did see her, she still wouldn’t talk to him and continued to act like he wasn’t there.
Recently things had gone from bad to worse between them; he hadn’t even seen her this week. He knew he should be helping her; he was trying to be understanding of what she was going through but instead he just felt angry. He was rapidly losing patience and he didn’t know how much more of this he could take. He was tormented too – why couldn’t she see that? She needed to stop blaming him and accept that nothing would ever bring Fionn back.
* * *
When Fionn’s first birthday came around, she didn’t know quite how she was going to get through it. It should have been a happy occasion: a party, a cake, new toys, maybe his first taste of chocolate, he might have been walking or he might not. She felt robbed and cheated and so angry for losing out on all of this. Her mother had tentatively suggested that it might be a good time for her to visit the graveyard but she had never been able to get the courage up to go there. She couldn’t bear the thought of him lying there cold and alone, her baby. Her mother felt it would do her good but she wasn’t able to face it. So on Fionn’s birthday she had tearfully written him a card, filling it with words trying to express just how much she loved him and missed him and was sorry for everything that had happened. She held onto it for him, she would take it to the grave someday, just not yet.