I feel shy going back to the yoga class the next week, but drawn to it all the same, to the feeling I had from them of acceptance and friendship.
As I push open the door to the hall, the few people in there – Sheila, Pat and Sunita – all turn and call out hello. With Pat is a man who I take to be her husband, a lean, bald, suntanned bloke not much taller than she is. They are both laughing at something with Sunita.
‘You all right?’ Kim asks as I go over to hand her the money. She ticks me off on the list. I feel ridiculously happy to be on any sort of list – to belong somewhere again, even just a little.
‘Yeah. Not too bad, thanks.’ I manage a smile. In fact, the week hasn’t been too bad. Up and down, of course, but I’ve kept busy, popping in to see Dorrie and gradually getting the house straight.
I’m just laying out my mat in the circle when Hayley comes in and takes the spot next to me.
‘Hello.’ She gives her rather dreamy smile as she settles cross-legged on her mat and I’m struck afresh by just how pretty she is, and how lovely her thick, honey-coloured hair. Hayley also has a sweet, friendly manner, hesitant, as if she has no real idea how beautiful she is.
‘How are you?’ she says as we sit side by side and I feel touched. Hayley can only be in her mid-twenties, but she has a calm, self-possessed manner that makes her seem older.
‘Not too bad, thanks,’ I say again. Not wanting to go into anything about me, I say, ‘You’re not exactly what I’d think of as a “Creak and Groan” sort of person.’
Hayley laughs. ‘Well – I love doing a yoga class and I can’t come to the one in the evening ’cause I’m at work. This one suits me, and it’s a lovely group.’
‘We’re all a bit old for you, though,’ I say. Being beside Hayley suddenly makes me feel old. I certainly could be her mother.
‘I don’t mind.’ She rummages in her bag and brings out a bottle of water. ‘To be honest, I live with my nan and help to look after her – I quite like being with older people.’
‘Oh. Right.’ I nod, wondering about this.
‘I don’t really get on with my mom – she and my dad split up when I was quite young – and I’m close to Nan. She sort of brought me up, you see.’
I say, ‘That’s nice,’ as I’m not sure what else to say and then Kim comes over to sit on her mat. ‘Right – everyone ready? Let’s make a start.’
We begin, as before. The group is much the same as last week – Hayley and Sunita, Kim and Sheila, and Pat and me; there’s also Liz, the quiet lady, and Pat’s husband Fred. He’s wearing sporty grey tracksuit trousers and a white T-shirt and cracks little jokes all the way through the class. I find myself wishing he’d shut up.
I’m quite scared to start with that something might happen, the way it did last week. I went home afterwards and managed another cry that afternoon. I felt quite a bit better – lighter, as if each tear had literally carried a heavy weight. But today I want to enjoy the feeling of stretching my body, of breathing deeply, just a quiet time to move in and out of the postures.
And I do. And I feel a bit calmer.
The next week, Kim says, is the last one before Christmas – I’m trying to ignore Christmas but of course every single tinselly, jingling place you go forces it to your attention. Afterwards Sheila comes up to me.
‘By the way, Jo, every Thursday afternoon, three-thirty, some of us meet up from this group for a cup of tea and a chat – at my house. You’re very welcome to come.’
The others make encouraging noises about it being a great chance to talk without Kim putting them through various tortures etc.
I hesitate, almost automatically. Since we’ve been here I’ve hardly been anywhere except Dorrie’s, yoga and Sainsbury’s. And, of course, the cemetery when I can get there – when Ian leaves me the car, or on the buses, which takes up a good portion of the day. It’s so much easier to be alone in some ways, but I tell myself not to be stupid.
‘That’s nice. Thanks. Yes – I’d like that.’
‘We’re a friendly lot, you know, out here in the sticks,’ Sheila says. ‘Here, I’ll write down my address for you.’ During these last two classes we haven’t chatted much – we’ve all just got on with it and as my mind adjusts to it I realize the tea idea is a really nice one.
‘You’re not working then?’ Hayley says as we pack up our things.
‘Not at the moment,’ I say, rolling my mat. ‘We’ve just moved in and I’m getting sorted out. I suppose I’ll have to look for a job round here soon.’
‘That must be nice.’ Hayley looks wistful. ‘Just not having to work for a bit.’
‘Why – where do you work?’
‘Oh, I’ve got a bar job in the evening at the moment. It suits me – I can help Nan out in the day, and do things like this class.’
As I walk home in the freezing wind, promising to go to Sheila’s on Thursday, I find myself thinking about work. I feel bad that Ian is having to carry all the burden of our income even though he says he doesn’t mind.
‘I’m not ready to go back into the classroom,’ I said to him, just before we moved here. We were lying in bed together, a Sunday morning and the one day Ian doesn’t rush out to work. He’s devoted to his business but he doesn’t hold with opening seven days a week.
‘One day maybe, but not yet.’
The very thought of work fills me with panic, as if all my inner resources have drained away. ‘Maybe I should just get a little job in a shop or something.’
‘We’ll be all right,’ he said. He had his hands behind his head. I missed us snuggling up, putting our arms round each other like we always would have done before, just lying there nattering for ages. But Ian stayed where he was, distant again. ‘We’ll have enough money coming in. And to be honest at the moment I’d rather you were around for Mom –’specially after what’s happened. She doesn’t want to go into a home – it’ll make all the difference you popping in.’
I really can’t face work yet and I’m grateful to him. For Ian, the opposite seems to be true. Work has been his way of coping. Since Paul, and that night, he seems to have done almost nothing but work. There always seems to be a rush job, someone off sick, setting up the new business, needing to take on more staff . . . But what it feels like is him avoiding me, avoiding feeling anything about Paul, and avoiding what I’m feeling and my way of grieving. He doesn’t want to know. He won’t even look me in the eye, as if he’s afraid of what he’ll see there.
Sheila’s house is about a mile from ours. As I turn into the street, a cul-de-sac, I see a dumpy little figure trundling along ahead of me in crimson trousers, a brown coat and a pale blue woolly hat, topped with a jaunty pom-pom. When we both arrive, almost the same time, at the door of Sheila’s neat, modern semi I realize it’s Sunita.
‘Oh, hello!’ She smiles at me, dragging her hat off so that some of her shoulder-length hair lifts with it, drawn by static. She rubs vaguely at her hair to settle it. ‘How are you?’ she asks, so cheerfully that it does not feel like a loaded question.
‘I’m fine,’ I say.
Sunita presses the doorbell. ‘Fine is all very well.’ She turns and looks very directly at me. Her face is round, dimply, good-natured. ‘Not easy for you, though. You poor girl, terrible – terrible.’
My throat aches, but I like her matter-of-fact way of speaking. I swallow and try to smile. ‘Thanks.’
Sheila opens the door, dressed once again in jeans and her big red sweater.
‘Hello. Come in.’ She does have a bossy manner and it makes me wonder if she has been a teacher. (I can be bossy too – it becomes a habit.) ‘There – hang up your coats.’ She points at a row of hooks along the hall. ‘Pat’s here already. I’ve got the kettle on.’
The living room, like ours, runs from front to back of the house. On each side of the front section, there is a chocolate-brown sofa along the wall opposite the fireplace, a gas fire encased in a stone surround. At the back end, under the window, is a round table on which there are already cups and saucers.
I say hello to Pat, who gives her big-toothed, friendly smile. Sunita pulls the table out further and squeezes herself round and on to a chair. Passing through the room to join them, I catch a glimpse of photographs on the mantel: one or two portraits and groups of young people in some sort of uniform – Guides, I think. And on the rug in front of it, head raised to look blearily up at me, is an old, white-muzzled black Labrador.
‘Oh!’ Warmed by the sight I squat down to give him a stroke. He settles his head again, making appreciative little noises. ‘It’s nice to see you. You like a bit of fuss, don’t you? What’s your name then?’
‘I think he’s called Herbert,’ Pat says. ‘But she calls him Herbie.’
Pat and Sunita chat a bit though I sense they are shy of each other. After a minute I get up to join them at the table.
‘No husband?’ I ask Pat, though I’m quite glad that endlessly chirpy Fred is not here.
‘Oh, no,’ Sheila says, before Pat can reply, as she carries a large teapot to the table, swaddled in a padded cosy with country cottages on it. ‘We’re golf widows on a Thursday – Roy and Fred play together.’
Hayley arrives then and everyone makes a fuss of her, the baby of the group. I can see why. She’s so gorgeous-looking of course, but as well as that there’s something about her that makes you want to protect her. She looks very tired, with dark circles under eyes, despite her loveliness.
‘Oh, dear – look at that,’ Sunita says, as Sheila brings in a big sponge cake, oozing jam. She runs her hands up and down over her hips. ‘Looks lovely – but I’m getting fat, isn’t it?’
‘You’re all right,’ Sheila says, pouring tea. ‘Anyway, you get enough exercise running around after those grandchildren.’
We sit round the table, the five of us, and it’s nice – more than nice. I feel so grateful to be invited because I realize how much I have isolated myself. We stay mostly on the surface of things, but it’s cosy, with the flames of Sheila’s gas fire flickering away when the day outside is so cold and raw.
‘This is really our core yoga group,’ Sheila says, as we all start on the cake. ‘With Kim, obviously. There are a few others who come and go but they don’t often come round on a Thursday. Kim makes it sometimes, but she has kids to pick up from school. We’ve become quite a little huddle, haven’t we?’
‘A coven,’ Hayley says, and we laugh.
‘You don’t look much like a witch to me,’ Pat says.
‘As for the rest of us . . .’ Sheila adds, in her wry way. She stands again to top up everyone’s cup.
We drink several cups of tea and eat Sheila’s cake – Sunita accepting a slice with a shrug and a chuckle, despite her protests, and then another one. They ask me harmless questions and I say we have come to live near my mother-in-law, who is not well. They do not ask about Paul and I know they will one day and that they care but that this is not the time.
And they tell me things about the neighbourhood, the best doctor, a reliable plumber, the good shops, that it’s a lovely neighbourhood, very caring. That I should come to them if I need to know anything.
I learn a sprinkling of other things that afternoon: that Sunita’s husband is a solicitor and they have two daughters, each with a daughter of her own, and that one of the families is living in Canada. That Pat works as a receptionist in a busy medical practice. She and Fred married as teenagers and seem to have been joined like Siamese twins ever since. They have two sons. Pat’s conversation is sprinkled with the words ‘Fred says . . .’ at which I occasionally see Sheila roll her eyes. Sheila makes us laugh with stories about ‘my Roy’, who seems to be a bit accident prone – even getting a lawnmower out of the garage is an activity fraught with danger and don’t get her started on his DIY . . . Hayley giggles and everyone talks about day-to-day things – plans for Christmas, a broken-down washing machine, the disappearing window-cleaner. And I am warmed and grateful that they do not starting interrogating me. I am glad just to be included.
The person who surprises me is Pat. I had pigeonholed her, I suppose, as someone a bit dull, a housewife who always has her husband’s tea on the table at six. But whenever she says anything, although she is quiet, she has a gentle sort of authority. And there’s that lovely fresh-faced smile. I realize I am starting to warm to her.
Hayley is the first to look at her watch and get to her feet.
‘That was lovely, Sheila – thank you. I’d better go. Got to get to work.’
We all start to make a move.
‘Where do you live, Jo?’ Pat asks me. ‘Do you need a lift?’
‘It’s OK,’ I say. ‘Thanks – but it’s not far. And I need to go and see my mother-in-law on the way.’
There is nothing dramatic about the afternoon, nothing much happens, but afterwards I walk home in the dying light, the red tail-lights of the crawling rush-hour cars glowing in the winter gloom. The wind is icy against my cheeks, but inside I feel just a little defrosted. I feel included, and I have received kindness. It makes all the difference.