HANDWRITING WAS NEARLY impossible, so she had borrowed Lydia’s laptop to touch-type. But the phrases that she had composed in her head felt wrong in her fingers. How could you tell a man that the son he had never known was dead? How could you explain the years of silence, the years of yearning?
She had been at it for hours and made no progress. Honor rose and went into the kitchen in search of a cup of tea. She was moving more easily, now; the pain was nearly gone, no more than a dull ache in the evenings, and she had dispensed with the cane, though she walked with an habitual shuffle in Jo’s house, so as to avoid tripping over any toys. She had mapped out this house nearly as well as her own – knew how many steps to the kitchen table, how many steps to the kettle, the reaching distance to the mug cupboard. But the clutter shifted day by day.
Iris pattered over to her and hugged her leg. Honor let her hand rest on her silky curls. The kitchen was warm from the oven, and smelled of vanilla and butter.
‘Ganny H, you can lick the spoon,’ said Oscar, putting something wooden in her hand.
‘That’s all right, Oscar, you can lick it,’ she said. ‘My spoon-licking days are past.’
‘I’m Ganny H’s helper,’ announced Oscar. ‘Because I have good eyes.’
‘Are you helping Mummy bake a cake?’ Honor asked quickly.
‘Two cakes!’
‘Tea, Honor?’ Jo’s voice had a studied lightness to it. Honor nodded and sat at her seat at the kitchen table, letting the family move around her. They were glimpses of colour and shape, noises and scents, vanilla and sugar and jam, the hot mug of tea placed near her hands.
Someone knocked on the front door and it opened straight away. ‘It’s me!’ called Jo’s friend, Sara. ‘Kids are in the car, can’t stop, come on Oscar and Iris, we’re on our way to the farm park to see the deer!’
A bustle at the door. Honor liked Sara, from what she had noticed so far. She had spirit and dark skin, which made her different from almost everyone else in this neighbourhood. ‘Bye, Ganny H!’ cried Oscar, running over and planting a kiss on her cheek, and then they were gone and it was quiet again.
‘I’m going out as soon as the cakes are done,’ said Jo, coming back to the kitchen and taking up her mixing bowl. ‘And Lydia’s gone to the library to revise today. So you’ll have the house to yourself.’
‘Are you going anywhere nice?’ Honor didn’t expect Jo to tell her about her lover, but she couldn’t resist a little probe.
‘It’s … a friend’s birthday.’
‘It must be a very good friend, if you’re making them two cakes.’
‘One is for us. You can’t make cake in this household without giving some to Oscar.’
Honor hesitated, knowing she had no right to ask, then said, ‘You were awake last night.’
‘Oh! You heard me? I hope I didn’t disturb you.’
‘I was awake. You are often up in the middle of the night.’
‘I’m sorry. I try to be as quiet as I can.’ Jo scraped batter into the tins. ‘I … actually I thought it was getting better. I think I must be worried about today.’
Honor said nothing. She did not, as a habit, invite confidences from her daughter-in-law. But Jo seemed agitated as she put the cakes into the oven and washed up the bowl and spoons. Honor wondered if she was going to hear the story of Jo’s affair, and she rather hoped it would not be tedious. Though it probably lacked illicit thrill, if Jo was making him a cake for his birthday.
Jo pulled out a chair and joined Honor at the table. ‘Actually,’ she said, sounding uncertain, ‘you could come with me, if you like.’
‘Come with you?’
‘I’m … you may be angry about this.’
Honor said nothing, remembering her fury, cleaning the kitchen.
‘I’m visiting Adam Akerele,’ Jo said.
‘Adam?’ asked Honor, but as soon as she said it, the name clicked into place. ‘You’re not talking about Adam …’ She had not said the name for ten years. She wasn’t sure she’d even said it then. But she could see it in print, behind her eyelids, next to Stephen’s. ‘You visit him?’
‘Only on his birthday. He’s often lonely. I like to bring him a cake.’
The cake was not for her lover. It was for Adam Akerele. Honor clenched her teeth. ‘You don’t owe that man anything.’
‘No, I don’t, but I like to do it. I think Stephen would have liked me to. He’s quite a vulnerable young man.’
‘He killed Stephen.’
‘Stephen died because of him. But it wasn’t Adam’s fault. He didn’t mean to.’
‘Outcomes matter. Not intentions.’
‘Well, I think intentions matter as well. And it was difficult to see him at first. But then I saw how desperate he was, and how sad. And I thought: What did Stephen die for, if this young man’s life is also miserable?’
‘So you go to see him every year to cheer him up? Is that your mission?’
‘I go to see him because it’s his birthday and I think it’s good to celebrate life while you’ve still got it.’
‘You’ll forgive me if I don’t think that Adam Akerele’s life was worth the life of my son.’
‘That’s not really the way it works, Honor.’
‘Is this a role that comes easily to you? The saint?’
Jo stood. ‘It isn’t any kind of a role. My husband is dead, and it helps me feel more peaceful about it.’
‘How does Lydia feel about you visiting this man?’
‘I mentioned it to her once, and she became very angry. The same as you.’
‘With good reason, I think.’
‘Fair enough. I can’t argue with you. It’s been ten years, though. It’s a long time to hate someone who doesn’t deserve it.’
Jo left the room and Honor stayed at the table with her cold cup of tea, fuming.
Our son died, Honor typed. You never knew him, I never allowed you to know him, and he died to save a stranger. His wife was dry-eyed at his funeral and she bakes this stranger a cake every year, and I am so angry, so angry that he did this instead of choosing to live.
Honor deleted what she had written. She had pictured Stephen’s death to herself, in dreams and in waking, many times. Sometimes it was a torture and sometimes a comfort. In her mind, Adam Akerele was hazy. A distorted blank, like the centre of her waking vision. He was a cause, a reason, a mechanism, a curse.
In the kitchen, Jo was placing an iced cake into a tin.
‘All right,’ Honor said to her. ‘All right, I will come with you. But don’t expect me to say anything to him. I don’t like him. But I’m curious. I want to see what my son lost his life to save.’
Jo put on Radio 4 as they drove, which obviated the need for talking, but Honor was too preoccupied to say much anyway. She did not want to find an explanation for her son’s death, because that would mean that she had accepted it. And she could not accept, would never accept, that her beautiful, brilliant boy, so full of potential and intelligence and love, could be gone.
Ten years. He was not the sort of person whom time erased. Honor’s feelings did not tarnish and fade. She loved rarely, but she loved fully and for ever.
‘So you should know about Adam,’ said Jo, as they drove through the centre of Brickham and out the other side. ‘I only see him once a year – he doesn’t want to see me any more than that – but sometimes he’s better than others. He has some mental health issues. I’m not sure what, exactly, because he’s not comfortable talking about it, but I do know that things can get bad if he’s not taking his medication.’
This is the life that Stephen sacrificed his for?
‘Last year, he’d found a job, so I’m hoping that everything’s gone well for him. He’s not very good at keeping in touch.’
‘What do you get out of this visit?’ Honor couldn’t help asking.
‘It isn’t for sainthood. The first time I saw him, I wanted some answers. I wanted to know what had happened. And he was able to give me some details, though not quite enough.’ She was silent for a moment. ‘I keep going because I feel connected to Adam. In Stephen’s last moments, they shared something. He’s alive because my husband was a good man. And I like knowing that.’
Honor frowned. ‘I’m not sure I need reminding.’
‘And also, I like him.’ Jo signalled left, and parked the car outside a block of flats made of yellow brick. ‘And he enjoys my cake, which is always gratifying.’
They made slow progress around the tower block to the entrance. There was a wheelchair ramp, and they walked up that. Graffiti spattered the side of the building, the desperate, incoherent communication of those with too much time on their hands. Jo buzzed at the door and held it open for Honor to come through.
The corridor was cramped and had a definite whiff of mildew and urine. On the fourth door along, someone had Sellotaped a single green balloon. Honor’s fingers brushed it.
‘Looks like he’s having a party,’ said Jo cheerfully, and she knocked. The door was opened by a woman. Honor took in hooped earrings and part of an elaborate hairstyle. ‘Hi, I’m Jo, and this is my mother-in-law, Honor Levinson. We’ve come to wish Adam a Happy Birthday.’
‘Come in,’ said the woman, and led them through another narrow corridor into what was presumably the living room. Honor stopped short in the door, assailed by the scent of old paper. A library. She reached out and encountered a stack of paperback books lining the wall. All around her vision, she could see books. They appeared to line the walls, floor to ceiling, stacked on top of each other, three deep, tottering. If there had been any bookcases, they were long since buried. The room was dim, and there were other scents as well: cooking oil, coffee, something familiar that niggled at the back of her memory.
‘Happy Birthday, Adam!’ said Jo, going straight to someone sitting in a chair in the corner. She hugged him and gave him the cake tin.
‘My favourite again?’ he asked her.
‘Of course.’
Honor stepped further into the library room and surveyed the details that she could snatch of Adam Akerele. He wore a blue and white football top. His skin was glossy, dark, unlined. Honor stood as straight as she could, defying anyone to offer her a seat.
‘I’ll get some plates,’ said the young woman who had let them in.
‘That’s my girlfriend, Ellie,’ Adam told Jo. ‘We’ve been seeing each other since October.’
‘That’s really fantastic, Adam. I’m so pleased for you.’
‘She’s a good woman. Puts up with me. How are your little ones?’
‘They’re great. Both growing like crazy. And Lydia is about to do her GCSEs; we’re incredibly proud of her. Adam, this is my mother-in-law, Dr Honor Levinson. She’s Stephen’s mother.’
The young man jumped to his feet. ‘Oh wow, Stephen’s mum? Oh wow, please, sit down, sit down here, Ellie will be back with cake, she’ll make tea as well, or would you rather have a coffee?’
‘No, thank you.’ But Adam had grabbed Honor’s hand in both of his before she could recoil, and was shaking it as if he could pull it off. His hands were large and warm and slightly damp.
‘Mum,’ Adam said, ‘this is Stephen’s mum. Stephen’s.’
A seismic move in the corner of the room and a large woman bore down on her. She was not as tall as Honor, but at least three times as broad. Honor caught a glimpse of her hair, straightened like poker irons and sticking out from her round head.
She seized Honor and hugged her hard. Honor squeaked as the air was squeezed out of her, pressed up against the woman’s massive bosom.
‘Thank you so much,’ the woman boomed in her ear. ‘Thank you, I cannot thank you enough.’ She leaned back, still holding Honor, but looking up into her face. She was an indistinct brown, too close to see. Honor breathed, stunned, smelling wool and Anaïs Anaïs perfume. That was the scent she had smelled with the books, the scent she’d recognized. The same scent Stephen had bought her for her birthday, when he was what? Eleven? Twelve? Flowery, too sweet, too girlish for Honor. She had worn it every day until the bottle was empty.
‘Thank you for your son,’ Adam’s mother said. The woman was all softness, all-enveloping warmth and flowers. A rich full voice. ‘Thank you for giving me mine. My only son. As you are a mother, you will know how I feel.’
‘Yes,’ Honor found herself saying. ‘I think that I do.’
They sang Happy Birthday and someone put music on the CD player that nestled in a bower of paperbacks. Adam danced with everyone: Jo, his mother, the social worker who had turned up after they had, even Honor. She sat in a chair, but he took her hands in his large moist ones and swayed back and forth, smiling down at her.
As far as she was aware, she hadn’t met many people with mental illness and she had no idea whether this was normal for Adam or not. But when he danced with Ellie, awkwardly, knocking books off the piles as they moved so that they pooled like petals at their feet, he seemed happy.
Jo clapped along to the music, as if it were the birthday party of one of her own children.
When they cut the cake and put it on paper plates, Adam sat beside her, close enough so that she could hear the soft sounds his mouth made when he ate. ‘I think of your son every day,’ he told her.
She was not able to eat much of the cake. It was too sweet. She was trying to reconcile this corporeal and solid young man with the indistinct person she had always imagined.
‘He was clever, wasn’t he?’ Adam asked. ‘I found out later that he was a scientist.’
‘A physicist.’
‘I could tell he was clever just from the way he spoke to me.’
‘How …’ Honor swallowed, cloying sweetness.
She had thought about Stephen’s last words, late at night, alone, and in dreams. But they were unclear; speculation only, as indistinct as her picture of Adam Akerele. More often, she had heard his voice raised in anger against her, as it had been during their last argument.
Perhaps one set of words could supplant the other.
‘What did he say to you?’ she asked.
Adam settled deeper into his chair. ‘I was on the bridge, going to jump off. I was waiting for a train, so it would hit me. I wanted to be sure, you know? I really wanted to top myself. And then there was this man in running clothes, climbing over the railing. I thought he wanted to jump, too, and I remember thinking, Isn’t it funny that there are two crazies at the same place at the same time?’
He spoke in the manner of a person who had told this story many times: his party piece, perhaps. No; he would have spoken of it in therapy. And to Jo.
‘But then he told me not to jump. He asked me my name, and he told me that I shouldn’t jump. So I knew he was trying to save me. And then he asked me if I knew what gravity was, what caused it.’
Honor had never heard Stephen in a lecture theatre, but she had heard him speak to Lydia when she was small. He was always patient, gentle, never spoke to her as if she were too young for rational thought. She thought that Stephen would have spoken to Adam like this.
‘So I said, “Well, sort of,” because at the moment I wasn’t really thinking about gravity or whatever, I was more interested in when the train was coming. And then he told me this. I’ll never forget it. He told me that gravity was the force between two objects, and that everything in the universe, no matter how big or small, had gravity. That everything was pulling on everything else.’
Honor closed her eyes. The room had gone quiet around them. Adam’s voice was soft, a bit reedy. In her mind it became Stephen’s deeper voice, the hint of North London accent he had never quite lost. He had always been so good at explaining.
‘Even people,’ said Adam.
Said Stephen, in her mind.
‘Gravity makes stars burn and worlds turn but it’s in people, too. Any two people, close to each other, exert a force on each other commensurate with their distance. The closer they are, the stronger it is.’
Honor’s mouth formed the words. They came out of her as a whisper.
The closer they are, the stronger it is.
‘And then,’ Adam continued, ‘I heard a siren behind us, and I sort of went to turn around and look, and I lost my balance for a minute. The ledge was pretty narrow. And he reached out to help me – but we weren’t that close, not actually close enough to touch. Just close enough to talk. And I didn’t even see him slip, I just saw his arm and his face. I did put my hand out to grab him but I missed. I wasn’t quick enough. I remember him looking me in the face, though. It seemed like a really long time, but it couldn’t have been a second, even. We just looked at each other. Like we … like we knew each other. Like we understood.’
Adam shifted. She could hear the chair creak beneath him.
‘And then he fell,’ Adam said.
On the drive back, Honor turned over the book that Adam had pressed upon her before they left. It was entirely familiar: A Treasury of English Verse, a paperback with a cover soft from handling.
‘I didn’t expect him to be so young,’ she said.
‘He’s twenty-six. He was sixteen when he tried to jump. The same age that Lydia is now.’ Jo shook her head. ‘I have a lot of reasons to count my blessings.’
‘I also did not expect …’ Honor couldn’t work out exactly which word to choose. She did not like Adam, precisely. Her sympathy for him was limited. But she felt something for him, an emotion that had perhaps not yet been named.
‘I did not know what to expect,’ she finished.
‘You were angry,’ said Jo. ‘Maybe you’re not so angry any more?’
‘No. Not angry. It is difficult to be angry with someone so …’ Again, the term eluded her. She meant something like real, but that was not precise enough. ‘It is difficult to be angry with someone who remembers Stephen’s words so well.’
‘The gravity,’ agreed Jo. ‘I haven’t heard that in a while. Yes. It’s such a Stephen thing to say, isn’t it?’
‘He used to drop stones and feathers and leaves from the bridge in the park, into the pond. He was always doing experiments, even as a child.’
‘I’m glad you came today,’ said Jo.
Honor nodded. She was not glad. But she was …
Thankful?
‘When I first met Adam – he wasn’t in such good shape then; he was actually in hospital because they sectioned him after his suicide attempt – I realized that if Stephen hadn’t been there, then Adam would be dead. And I couldn’t wish that on anyone.’
Honor thought about this. It was very probable that Jo was a better person than she was. As sincere as this young man had been, as grateful as his mother was, whatever connection she had felt in that strange stuffy room lined obsessively with words, Honor knew that if she were given a choice, she would not choose Adam Akerele’s life over Stephen Levinson’s.
But she hadn’t been given that choice. She was given this reality.
Was it time to learn to accept it?
‘When the hospital rang,’ Jo said, in a very quiet voice, so quiet it could barely be heard over the motor of the car, ‘and I found out that Stephen had fallen from a bridge, I thought at first that he had jumped.’
‘You thought that he—’
‘He used to get these depressions. Not often, and not always, but sometimes. He called them black holes. They were times when he felt that all the joy had been sucked out of his life. And there wasn’t anything I could do to help him, then; I just had to be there and ride it out with him, let him know that Lydia and I would be there when he emerged again. He said that running helped. And he was out running, that day.’
Honor did not know what to say. Her Stephen, the person she knew better than any other. She thought back to those long dark days when he had been a baby. What he might have imbibed with the milk he sucked from her body.
‘He didn’t want to tell you,’ Jo added. ‘He didn’t want you to worry. And they weren’t frequent, Honor. He was all right most of the time. He was better than all right. We were happy together.’
Honor thought of Stephen and Jo’s wedding day, at the register office in Cambridge. She thought of how she had sat in the front row and wilfully ignored the way they looked at each other. Smiled at each other. That moment when her son had slipped the ring onto his bride’s finger. She had abandoned Judaism a long time before, but she was seething at the civil ceremony.
She thought of invitations she had refused, the burning jealousy in her gut, masked as contempt. The height she had assumed to look down on her daughter-in-law.
She had thought sometimes that Jo reminded her of Paul’s wife, Wendy: pretty and domesticated. She had used that sometimes to justify her jealous dislike. But the truth was simpler, and worse: in her eyes, no one would have been good enough for Stephen.
Ironically, she was seeing more clearly now.
‘I have not been very kind to you, Jo,’ she said.
‘Oh. Well.’ Jo was clearly embarrassed. ‘It’s all in the past, anyway.’
Honor laid her head against the car window. The vibrations of the engine buzzed against her skull, down her spine, into her hips.
For ten years, Honor had thought that since Stephen, her centre of gravity, was gone, everything and everyone was gone. She had wanted the world to collapse around her, to burn away like the letter with its Californian postmark and its airmail stickers, into ashes and dust. She had thought the tragedy was that it had not collapsed, not burned away. That she had gone on living when everything that she had to live for was being erased, removed from the centre of her life, leaving her with nothing but the periphery.
Incredibly, it seemed that she was moving on. She was discovering other forces of gravity. However late.
When they returned to Jo’s house, she switched on the laptop and typed for a long time, without thinking. It helped, not being able to see the words.