Page 56 of Postscript

‘How could it be?’

‘Like a remember the time you wouldn’t do the stuff I wanted to do?’

‘Holly you went to South Africa on safari for him. You slept in a hotel with giraffes. You let him see plenty. He got exactly the honeymoon he wanted in the end.’

‘In the end.’

Silence.

‘So no, I don’t think it was a “fuck you”. That wasn’t Gerry’s style. Not the Gerry I knew, anyway. And wasn’t it the place you wanted to go to? I see it as a gift. Why are you thinking this after all this time?’

We’re both silent. I notice her car engine has stopped running, that the background is quiet. I stand and move to the window and I see Denise sitting in her car, outside in my driveway. The car’s inside light is on, revealing her.

‘I think,’ she continues after a long pause. ‘That if anything, he was compromising. Maybe he realised he made you do something you didn’t want to do and he felt guilty. Or maybe he didn’t feel guilty at all but it was like a do-over.’

I lean my forehead against the cold window. ‘Denise, why are you staking out my house?’

She looks up and sees me at the window. ‘Well, aren’t you the spooky sleuth.’

‘I’m OK, you know. You don’t have to worry about me.’

‘I know, Holly, but do we always have to remind you that everything is not all about you?’ She gets out of the car with a large bag in her hand. She walks up the drive, looking at me as she speaks into the phone. ‘I left Tom. Can I stay with you tonight?’

I rush to open the door. Her eyes are filled with tears and I embrace her.

‘On the other hand,’ she says, tearful voice muffled, ‘life is peculiar. Gerry may very well have had a dark side we didn’t know about and he was fucking with you from the grave.’

I hug her tight.

Gerry and I moved at different paces. Me, slow and inconsistent, in all directions, few steps forward and then a few steps back; him solid, fast, eager, curious, focused. Mostly I wanted him to slow down, to enjoy the moments instead of rushing through everything with such high energy. He thought I was lazy and was wasting moments. We were the couple equivalent of patting your head and rubbing your belly. A brainteaser, a bimanual interference manifested in a relationship.

I wonder if his body always knew what we didn’t: that his moments were more limited than most, that he didn’t have the time that I had. His rhythm was in sync with his time. He needed adventure because he wouldn’t live to see his thirties. My body had longer, and it took its time to gather momentum, to become curious and adventurous. By the time that happened, he was gone. Perhaps it was his leaving that made that happen.

I wonder if he was frustrated with standing still with me when there was a clock inside him ticking and pushing him to move forward. I wonder if I held him back. I wonder, if he’d met somebody else, would he have lived a more fun, exciting, fulfilled life. I wonder, I wonder all these distressing thoughts as a form of self-punishment, but my heart always responds. My heart holds the answer with confidence, firm in the knowledge that we may have had different rhythms but we were always in sync.

23

The bottle of wine is open. Denise and I are on the couch, our feet tucked underneath us as we face each other. Denise’s wine glass trembles as it travels to her lips.

‘Start from the beginning and leave nothing out. Why have you left Tom?’ The words feel alien in my mouth.

The reservoir inside Denise bursts its banks and she goes from being completely in control to losing it completely. I watch her cry but I’m too impatient to wait for answers.

‘Did he have an affair?’

‘No,’ she half-laughs, wiping her eyes.

‘Did he hit you? Hurt you?’

‘No, no, nothing like that.’

‘Did you?’

‘No!’

I search for a box of tissues but can’t find any so I return from the bathroom with a toilet roll. She has calmed a little but her voice is so shaken and broken I have to concentrate on hearing the words.

‘He really wants a baby,’ she says. ‘Five years, Holly. We’ve been trying for five years. We’ve sunk all of our savings into it, we’ve nothing left and I still can’t give him a baby.’