Colm leaned over and kissed me. ‘Right m’darlin, see you later – assuming you don’t get a better offer and leave me for someone far more attractive.’
‘That would never happen,’ I objected. ‘However, if it was someone with more money…’ He laughed as he opened the door and jumped out, grabbed his bag from the back seat, then stuck his head through the open window.
‘You sure you’re okay?’ he said, serious this time. Concerned. What was I to say? No, I’m not. I’m dying inside. Sometimes the pain of Annie being gone hurts so badly I feel like my heart will stop and that would be a mercy. He didn’t want to hear that. This was Colm. He wanted flippancy and cheer.
‘I’m fine. Honestly. Now go.’
He blew me a kiss and headed off, throwing his bag over his shoulder as he headed into Richmond station, the first leg of a journey that would end with two days of motivational training for an IT company in Brighton. Yes, the irony was glaring. Colm, the guy who liked an easy life, who preferred to take the stress-free, effort-free path and hope that everything would work out in the end, training other people in motivational techniques
I drove off, dread and depression blending with the relief of not having to keep a smile on my face for a second longer. I’d miss him, but the truth was I welcomed space to breathe. The car journeys on my own had become treasured moments of respite, the only time I could allow myself to feel. Sometimes it would overwhelm me and I’d pull over and just sob, buckled over in my seat, head thudding off the wheel until the physical pain overtook the one in my heart.
Today, I just kept going, driving towards the inevitable. Vincent had suggested that he do this job alone, but I’d refused. It was an eightieth birthday lunch for a darling lady I’d worked for before. When I’d taken the booking a couple of months ago, I’d commented on the coincidence.
‘May 19th!’ I’d exclaimed. ‘That’s my grandmother’s birthday too. She’ll be…’ I quickly counted it up. ‘Seventy-five this year.’
‘Ah, a young thing,’ Penelope had said, laughing.
There was no laughter now. Penelope had made it to eighty. Annie hadn’t made it to seventy-five.
I felt my heart begin to race and a scalding heat work its way through me. I couldn’t do this. I just couldn’t. I should be picking my gran up today, taking her to lunch, maybe on to a show. Or throwing a party for her where she’d sing and dance and tell inappropriate jokes. Then at the end of the night, we’d drink tea and gossip until our sides hurt with laughing.
Suddenly, I couldn’t face the void of having absolutely nothing to do but think about her. I was about to call Vincent, tell him I wasn’t coming, but I stopped, Annie’s voice echoing in my head. ‘You just need to get on with it, love. No one else is going to do it for you. Just pick yourself up and keep going. You’re a strong lass, Shauna, there’s nothing you can’t do.’
All my life I’d heard her say those things to me, or variations of them, and every time I’d roll my eyes and… well, get on with it. She’d instilled it in my DNA. The Annie gene. The one that was making me put my phone back down and drive to Penelope’s house.
If Vincent was surprised to see me, he didn’t show it. I was grateful there was no time to talk – we unpacked the food set it up, served it, cleared it away, wished her a happy birthday, hugged her and left with her grateful thanks ringing in my ear. The whole time, I ignored Vincent’s quizzical glances, answered his concerns over my well-being with a breezy, ‘I’m fine.’ I smiled at the relatives, admired their love for their matriarch, and closed my eyes when they threatened to burn with tears, before opening them, shaking it off, and carrying on, Annie still with me, talking, cajoling, reassuring, repeating her encouragement over and over. ‘You just need to get on with it, love. No one else is going to do it for you. Just pick yourself up and keep going. You’re a strong lass, Shauna, there’s nothing you can’t do.’
So I did it. I carried on. And I managed to do it until I got out of the house, where Vincent had finished packing up the van.
‘You did great today,’ he said and we both knew why it mattered, but I was hanging on by a heartstring and I knew if he said one more sympathetic thing it would snap.
‘Thanks. You too.’ Bright. Breezy.
‘Are you sure you don’t want to come back to my house and hang there this afternoon? I’ve got no plans other than movie, food, very attractive snoring on the sofa while wearing nothing but my pants. Although obviously if you come I’ll remain clothed.’
‘Thanks. Tempting, but I’m fine. I’m just going to go home and chill.’
It was a lie. The truth was I didn’t want to infect him with my sadness.
‘You sure?’ Concern and care were in every crease of his gorgeous face.
‘Absolutely. I’ll see you tomorrow.’
I jumped in my car and I drove off, waiting until I got to where I was going before I stopped, choked, let the grief consume me, rip me to shreds, dismantle me like Lego, piece by piece, until I was just skin and bones, and muscle, my heart and soul eviscerated.
Annie’s grave had a simple headstone. Black. Gold writing. In the vase in front of it, the lilies I’d left there last week. They were wilted now. Next to them, the plant I’d left the day we buried her. A sunflower. It was her favourite. Nothing from anyone else. I doubted my parents even remembered where she was.
I sat on the grass. Just sat there. Closed my eyes. Formed a picture of her in my head. She was there. Laughing. ‘How’re you doing my darling?’ she was saying.
‘I don’t know how to do this without you, gran.’
In my mind, she rolled her eyes, shook her head, a sad smile.
‘Of course you do,’ she said. Not harshly. Quietly. But in a way that conveyed she absolutely knew she was right. And then her image left me. I tried to get it back but it was gone. I ached with the loss, the feeling of unwanted solitude, a pain that was compounded by the distance that had grown between Colm and I.
Our crippling workloads and the fertility struggles hurt, but they were pushed aside by the pain of losing Annie and he wasn’t the guy who could give emotional support. He just didn’t have it in him. He tried to make me laugh when I wanted to cry. Tried to ignore my pain when I wanted to talk. Behaved like nothing was wrong, when nothing was right.
And all the while, the ache was still there.
So now I sat. Unable to move. Broken. Minutes passed. Hours. Still I sat. Staring. Numb.
At some point, I’m not sure when, I went back to the car, started the engine, pulled away. I’ve no idea how it knew where to go, or who was driving. I felt nothing. Made no decisions. It just happened. It moved until I was sitting at the end of the path, then I was out of the car, walking, banging on the door. It opened.
His face.
I didn’t say a word.
Vincent opened his arms and I walked into them.