Two mornings later Andrew woke with a start. He’d been dreaming about what had happened at Rupert’s house and for a horrible few seconds he couldn’t be quite sure what was real and what his subconscious had decided to twist. But when he checked his phone the message Carl had sent him the morning after the phone call was still there: “Fuck you, Andrew. Enjoy your guilt money.”
Andrew knew at some point he’d have to think about that guilt, and how he was going to deal with it—and what he was actually going to do with the money—but for now he was just hopelessly glad that everything with Carl was over.
He went to put the kettle on, feeling the unusual sensation of stiffness in his legs. The previous evening he’d been for what he’d ambitiously billed as a “run,” which in actual fact had been closer to a “stagger” around the block. It had been agony at the time, but there was a moment when he’d gotten back—post-shower, post–meal-made-with-something-green-in-it—where he felt a rush of endorphins (previously a thing he’d imagined were mythical, like unicorns or something) so strong that he finally understood why people put themselves through this. There was life in the old dog yet, it seemed.
He fried some bacon and looked directly into the tile-camera. “So you may have noticed I have accidentally burned this rasher, but given I’m about to put a Lake Windermere’s worth of brown sauce on it, it doesn’t really matter.”
He stretched his arms up behind his head and yawned. The whole weekend lay in front of him, and unusually, he had plans that didn’t involve Ella Fitzgerald and browsing the forum.
It was going to be a long journey, but he was well prepared. He had a book and his iPod and had dusted off his old camera so he could take some snaps if the mood took him. When it came to his packed lunch he had gone entirely rogue, making sandwiches with white bread and experimenting with new fillings, one of which, in a move so daring he was barely able to contain himself, was crisps.
To his dismay, he got onto his train at Paddington with time to spare, only to find his reservation meant he was slap-bang in the middle of a bachelor party, who were already getting stuck into the beers. It was three hours to Swansea, and that allowed for a lot more drinking time and wee quaffing, or whatever it was people did on these things. They had personalized T-shirts commemorating “Damo’s Stag” and already seemed quite tipsy. But, against all the odds, they actually turned out to be pleasant company, offering snacks to everyone else in the carriage, helping people put their suitcases on the overhead shelves with faux competitiveness, before breaking out crosswords and quizzes to pass the time. Andrew found himself so caught up in the general air of bonhomie that he ended up scoffing his packed lunch before midday, like a naughty schoolboy on a trip. The onward journey from Swansea was a more somber affair, although a lady with purple hair knitting a purple bobble hat offered him a purple boiled sweet from a tin, like something out of an advert from a bygone era.
The station was so small it barely had a platform—one of those stops where you practically walk straight out onto the street as soon as you alight. Checking the route on his phone, Andrew took a turning onto a narrow lane where the houses on opposite sides seemed to lean toward each other, and for the first time he began to truly feel the nerves that had been bubbling away under the surface ever since he’d left London.
The church was unassuming, its spire small enough to be concealed from view by two modest yews. The place had a wildness about it—the gate at its entrance covered with moss, the grass in the graveyard was overgrown—but the early autumn air felt still.
He’d prepared himself for a lengthy search. A process of elimination. He half remembered holding the phone to his ear and a voice telling him this was where the funeral was to be held, then the confusion and hurt following his mute response. The only detail he could remember was that the church was near the rugby ground where Gavin had claimed to have seen the flying saucer.
In the end, he’d barely walked past half a dozen headstones when he saw the name he was looking for.
Diane Maude Bevan.
He thrust his hands into his pockets, rocking on the balls of his feet, building up the courage to approach. Eventually he did, slowly, as if moving to the edge of a cliff. He hadn’t brought anything with him—flowers, or anything like that. That just didn’t feel right, somehow. He was in touching distance now. He dropped down to his knees and gently ran his hand across Diane’s name, tracing each letter’s contour. “Well,” he said. “I’d forgotten how much you hated your middle name. It took me a whole Sunday to get it out of you, remember?”
He took a deep breath, hearing the tremor as he let it out. He leaned forward until his forehead was resting gently against the headstone.
“I know this doesn’t count for much now, but I am so sorry for never coming to see you. And for being so scared. You probably worked this out much sooner than I did, but you know I never really was able to accept that you were gone. After Dad, and Mum . . . and then Sally leaving . . . I couldn’t let you go too. And then somehow I got the chance to build this place, this world, where you were still here, and I couldn’t resist. It wasn’t supposed to be for long, but it got out of control so quickly. Before I knew it I was even inventing the arguments we’d have. Sometimes it was just silly stuff—you despairing about me and my silly model trains, mostly—but other times it was more serious: disagreements about how we were bringing up the kids, worrying that we’d not lived our lives to the full and hadn’t seen enough of the world. That’s the tip of the iceberg, really; I thought about everything. Because it wasn’t just one life with you I imagined, it was a million different ones, with every possible fork in the road. Of course every now and then I’d feel you pulling away from me, and I knew that was your way of telling me to let go, but that just made me cling on more. And, the thing is, it was only after the game was finally up that I was actually able to pull my stupid, self-absorbed head out of my arse and think about what you would have actually said if you knew for one single second what I was doing. I’m just sorry I didn’t think of that sooner. I just hope you can forgive me, even though I don’t deserve it.”
Andrew was aware that someone else had appeared to tend to a grave a few feet away. He lowered his voice to a whisper.
“I wrote you a letter, once, very soon after we got together, but I was too scared to give it to you because I thought you might run a mile. It started life as a poem, too, so you were really let off the hook. It was full of hopelessly romantic sentiment that you would have quite rightly laughed your head off at, but I think one bit remains true. I wrote that I knew the moment we first held each other that something in me had changed forever. Up to that point I’d never realized that life, just sometimes, can be wonderfully, beautifully simple. I only wish I’d remembered that after you’d gone.”
He had to stop to wipe his eyes with his coat sleeve, smoothing his hand along the stone again. He stayed there, quiet now, feeling a pure and strangely joyful pain wash over him, knowing that as much as it hurt, it was something he had to accept, a winter before the spring, letting its ice freeze and fracture his heart before it could heal.
The next train to Swansea was pulling into the station as Andrew got there, but he felt reluctant to leave so soon. He decided to stop in a pub nearby instead. As he approached the door old habits kicked in and he hesitated just outside. But he thought of Diane watching on, no doubt mouthing swear words in his direction, and he pressed on. And though the regulars looked at him somewhat curiously, and the barman poured him a pint and threw a packet of salt and vinegar on the bar without much enthusiasm, their reaction to him was benign rather than unwelcoming.
He sat in the corner with his beer and his book, and felt, for the first time in a very long while, content.