Just when I think the end is in sight, all the rage and sorrow kick off again. Will it ever end?
The heat of his body was how I knew he was in my bedroom. He moved stealthily to the bed and I rose to meet him, taking his face in my hands, moving my palms over the roughness of his beard. My sigh was one of relief, then I put my mouth to his. He moved his lips to fit against mine and, oh, the shock of the beloved familiar. Hello. I’ve missed you.
Everything, how he tasted, how he felt, it was all so right.
This is the one, this is the right one.
It was just like it always was – his size, his certainty, the confidence with which he played my body. We moved together in perfect synchronicity. Hugh had always been very good at knowing what I liked. No clumsiness, no clunkiness, just a fluid blend of sexiness and familiarity.
After it had come to a thrillingly passionate close, I was left feeling – maybe an odd descriptor for sex – profoundly comforted.
What rule said that sex could only be great if it was wild and frantic? Well-worn sex could be just as good as stranger sex.
When I wake up, it takes several seconds for me to understand that it was only a dream. It had felt so graphic, so intense that I’m convinced I can still smell Hugh in the room.
Why had I dreamt that dream? Maybe it’s a warning that Hugh and I are getting a little too close for comfort and I need to be careful.
Or, more likely, it’s just one more part of my grieving. I’d been letting go of the sex part of our shared life. Soon every last thing will be gone and I’ll be free.
119
Thursday, 22 June
Sofie did her final on Wednesday, and as soon as it was over, she and Jackson went out on the rip. She’s still MIA when I get home from work on Thursday evening.
In fact, there’s nobody in the house – Kiara is babysitting Joe’s boys.
This is something I’ll have to get used to because, in a week’s time, Sofie and Kiara are going to Switzerland. For the first time in forever, I’ll be living alone.
I’ve known this for ages but because all my energy was in exam-mode I haven’t had time to feel it. It’ll be strange. The house will feel achingly empty. But I’ll get used to it. Painful as it was, I’ve got used to living without Hugh.
All in all, he and I are doing pretty well. Okay, my occasional bursts of bile aren’t pretty, but things could be a lot worse.
I rattle around the house, unable to settle to anything. After the gruelling route march of Sofie’s exams, this sudden nothingness feels like falling off a cliff. Hugh, having been my comrade-in-arms these last few weeks, seems the right person to ring. ‘What are you up to?’ I ask.
‘Nothing much. It’s weird. Suddenly I don’t know what to do with myself.’
‘Me too! I was thinking,’ I say, ‘we deserve an end-of-exams celebration too. We worked as hard as Sofie – well, you did anyway. Will we go for a drink?’
‘Okay.’
‘The Willows. It has a garden. How soon can you be there?’
‘Depends on the Luas.’
‘I’m leaving now. Hurry.’
I change into high sandals and a proper 1950s dress in periwinkle cotton and call a taxi, in which I have to work hard to neutralize the driver’s wrath when he discovers he’s ferrying me less than two miles. ‘You could have walked,’ he grouses.
‘Not in these shoes. I’ll give you a decent tip. Shush now, I’m in good form, I want to stay that way.’
‘Meeting a man?’ He eyes me in the mirror.
‘No. Well, yes.’
Astonishingly, when I arrive Hugh is already in the beer garden and has bagged a table.
‘How?’ I demand.
‘You told me to hurry. You look nice,’ he says. ‘One of Bronagh’s finds?’
‘Yep. Never worn before. At least, not by me. You look nice too.’
‘That dress makes your eyes look very blue.’
‘That shirt makes your eyes look very blue.’ It’s a black-and-blue check thing, one of my favourites of his.
‘Make up your own compliments,’ he says. ‘Stop stealing mine.’
A glass of white wine is being put on the table, with a bottle of beer for Hugh.
‘What’ll we drink to?’ I ask.
‘To Sofie getting As in everything?’
‘We’re not being too ambitious for her?’ I ask anxiously. ‘Maybe we should just drink to her happiness.’
‘How about “To Sofie being happy, and if that happiness includes getting As in everything, then we don’t mind”.’
‘Excellent!’ We clink drinks.
‘I feel like we’ve spent the last month living underground, never washing, eating crap … I’m wrecked,’ I say. ‘Are you wrecked?’
‘Yeah.’
He doesn’t look it. He looks great. Still too thin, but clear-eyed and groomed. His shirt is ironed, his beard is neat and his longish hair is – ‘Oh! You got your hair cut.’
‘You told me to.’
‘And you do everything I tell you to?’ At the start of the sentence my tone was light and teasing, but by the end, I’m inexplicably tearful.
‘Babe? Are you okay?’
Accusingly I say, ‘Now her exams are over, there’s no reason for you to be round all the time.’
His face is stricken.
‘I’ve got used to it,’ I say. ‘And I’ll have to start detaching all over again.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘You shouldn’t have gone away.’
‘I wish I hadn’t.’
‘Don’t ever fucking do it again.’
‘I won’t.’
‘Hey, do what you like. You’re your own man now.’
‘I’m not. I’ll always be your man.’
I stare at him in silence, then quickly gather my stuff. ‘I’d better go home,’ I say. ‘Sorry. I thought I was able for this. But –’
When I get back, Sofie has reappeared. She’s flanked by Kiara and, astonishingly, Neeve. To the best of my knowledge Sofie and Kiara have barely spoken to Neeve since her no-show at Robert’s memorial over two months ago.
‘Mum,’ Neeve says, without preamble. ‘There’s something you need to see.’
‘Oh?’ I’m instantly anxious.
‘I’m not asking for your permission. This is simply a courtesy.’
What on earth? ‘Go on.’
She hits play on her iPad and something starts running. A home-made video by the way it’s wobbling all over the shop. It’s in black-and-white and someone – a woman, from the look of her shoes – is walking through a busy space, which at first I think is a shopping centre but then, with creeping dread, recognize as Dublin airport.
Then Neeve’s voice issues from the speaker, ‘During their lifetime one in three women worldwide will have an abortion.’
My heart drops like a stone.
‘Ireland’s abortion rate is the same as the global average,’ Neeve’s iPad says. ‘But in Ireland abortion is illegal, so women have to travel outside the state to access the service.’
I whip round to her. ‘Neeve, no! You can’t do this to Sofie!’
‘There’s nothing to identify Sofie,’ Real Neeve says, at the same time as Sofie says, ‘Amy, I want Neeve to tell my story.’
iPad Neeve says, ‘My friend missed a pill, and even though she took the morning after, she got pregnant. She’s young, has no money, and emotionally wasn’t ready to be a mother. I went to the UK with her.’
The film is all movement, you don’t see any faces, but you do see Dublin airport, the departures board, the inside of the plane, the tube – Neeve must have had her phone on the entire time. But when she shows Druzie’s spare room I lose the head. ‘Does Druzie know her flat is in your –’
‘She’s cool with it.’
Making clear that ‘the pregnant friend’ is being played by an actor, a silhouetted woman describes everything that happened to Sofie, as if it had happened to her: the terror; the shame; the physical discomfort; the appalling financial cost.
‘Why does our country do this to our women and girls?’ iPad Neeve asks, as we see Sofie (pixellated out) being put on the luggage trolley, too weak to walk.
‘Our abortion rate is the same as everywhere else in the developed world. Can we please stop pretending it doesn’t happen?’