‘I didn’t think I’d see you again today,’ I say.
‘No, I know. I went home and I couldn’t settle to anything. Can I take you somewhere that’s important to me?’
I open my mouth to say something like, ‘As long as it’s not too far,’ and then I shut it again. Think.
‘Yes,’ I say.
Because I’m still here, still alive, and I want to do things. Look at what I’ve already done, what I’ve changed. And I have no idea what might be next. We get in her car and the sun is shining in our eyes. She puts on sunglasses and I close my eyes, wondering where we’ll be when I open them. We don’t travel far. When I hear the click of the handbrake going on, I look, and we’re by the church. She doesn’t say anything, just leads me up into the grounds, past where my family are buried and over to a corner not far from Arthur. She stops in front of a black marble headstone, and I read it.
Samantha Willis
9 June 1970 – 11 June 2022
Daughter, mother, sister, wife and friend
Your desire to have the last word was extreme
I smile at the final line, then put a hand to my mouth. I look at Julie, and she is standing with her hands behind her back and her head bowed. I wait.
‘My big sister,’ she says, after a couple of long minutes have passed.
I do a quick calculation. This woman, Julie’s sister, died two days after her fifty-second birthday. Last year. She died last year.
‘I’m sorry,’ I say.
It’s such a tiny thing, that apology. And yet I remember people saying it after Arthur – the postman, the vicar, the dog groomer – and it being a small comfort. So I say it anyway.
‘When we met, I was grieving, and I had no idea that you were too.’
She shrugs. ‘I think we’re all grieving for something. Our childhoods or a relationship or a dream.’
It’s true, and yet it’s not the kind of thing I’d expect her to say. I wait for her to follow it up with a joke, but she doesn’t.
‘What was she like?’ I ask.
She smiles, and I’m glad I asked. Don’t people always want to talk about the people they loved? Don’t they always want those people to live on through shared stories and memories?
‘She was infuriating, and kind, and funny,’ she says.
If I had to reduce Arthur to three words like that, which would I choose? Reliable, I think. Patient. Good. I say them again, silently. Reliable, patient, good. I couldn’t really have asked for more than that.
‘Would you mind if we sat down?’ I ask, gesturing to a bench a few yards away.
‘No, of course.’
We sit, our eyes still on her sister’s headstone.
‘Some days, it’s a struggle to get out of bed,’ she admits.
I nod, knowing how she feels. ‘I got it all wrong. I could see that you carried this sadness around, but I thought it was about your marriage breakdown. It was never about that, was it?’
‘I mean, that didn’t help, certainly.’
‘But he’s not the love of your life, I think?’
Julie is quiet. When she speaks again, the words are slow to come.
‘She was. Sam. There are different kinds of love, aren’t there? Patty’s big love is her daughter, mine was my sister, yours is Dot. I’m not sure about Kirsty or Erin yet. Maybe they’re too young to know. Martin was just, I don’t know, along for the ride, I suppose. It was always me and her, ride or die.’
All the times she listened to me talk about losing my brother, when her heart was broken in the same place.
‘Thank you,’ I say, ‘for bringing me here. For telling me about her.’
She puts a hand on mine and we sit there in the bright sunshine for a while, living both in the present and in our memories.
And then she takes me home, drops me off and refuses my offer to come inside. I sit in my armchair with a pot of tea and a plate of custard creams and let myself drift backwards, to a day trip we took. Me and Dot, Bill and Arthur. A picnic blanket and a cloud-free sky. Bill’s Ford Anglia with the dodgy windscreen wiper. The two men in the front and us in the back. They talked about cricket and a film they wanted to see while Dot and I exchanged gossip about the women we worked with. I can see her laughing, bent over double, reaching her hand out and waving it around to tell me to stop, but I can’t remember what I said to cause it. We drove out into the hills and found a secluded spot, and Dot pinned the corners of the tartan blanket down with the picnic basket and three shoes (for some reason, one each of mine, hers and Bill’s). There was a lot of hopping about. Bill challenged Arthur to eat a boiled egg in under thirty seconds, and he did it. Dot ate all the cheese sandwiches. Arthur made a joke about marrying Dot because she’d made his favourite cake, and even though I knew it was silly, I felt a little hurt. When we’d finished eating, Dot said she needed to stretch her legs, and Bill stood up.
‘You stay here,’ she said. ‘Mabel, will you come with me for a bit of a stroll?’
I stood and brushed the crumbs off my skirt, and the men watched us go.
‘Do you think we’ll have many more summers like this one?’ Dot asked me.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, I’m just having such a nice time and I feel worried that something will change.’
‘Like what?’
‘Like one of them will ask one of us to marry them, and it won’t be the same.’
I wasn’t expecting that. ‘Arthur’s not thinking along those lines, I’m pretty sure. And with you and Bill, I wouldn’t be surprised at all but I don’t think it will necessarily change anything.’
‘Don’t you?’ She stopped walking, so I did, too. And we looked at one another.
‘What would it change?’ I asked.
She shook her head. Reached across the small gap between us and picked up my hand. ‘Us. This. Our friendship.’
‘It won’t,’ I said. ‘I won’t let it.’
What did I know? It was the last summer the four of us had, and everything didn’t so much change as implode entirely. But looking back at that day, at that walk, I wonder now what she was getting at. What she was trying to tell me.
When we got back to the blanket, Bill and Arthur were both lying down, side by side, and Arthur was snoring softly. Bill had his arms behind his head, and he flashed us a smile.
‘What time do you want to go back?’ he asked.
I thought about our house, the typing pool, the little things that made up my days. There was never much time for big skies and thoughts that tumbled from one thing to another, unhindered.
‘Never,’ I said.
Bill laughed, and held up a hand for Dot to take. When she did, he pulled her down so she was sitting almost in his lap.
‘I could live here,’ Dot agreed.
‘With me?’ Bill asked.
She looked at him so long I felt like I shouldn’t be watching, and then she turned to look at me, and caught the creeping blush on my cheeks but didn’t acknowledge it.
‘Yes,’ she said.