First I bought the children second-hand bikes. Then, gradually, I replaced the pieces of furniture I’d sold and started kitting out my sewing room. Soon, what was once the dining room became a space crammed with clothes rails, stacks of magazines, rolls of fabric, two mannequin torsos and multiple boxes containing bobbins of coloured cotton.
I thought back to a few months earlier, when I’d used that room to come up with ridiculous theories as to what could’ve happened to Simon. Now I was using it to leaf through borrowed library books on the modern history of clothing, from classics like Christian Dior and Guccio Gucci to newer stars.
As my ideas and inspirations flowed thick and fast, I began to realise that when Simon found his way home, I wouldn’t be the Kitty he used to know. I was moving in a new direction and becoming stronger, off my own back. While I was getting to know – and like – the new me, I felt guilty for thinking not all change was a bad thing.
2 April
In my dreams, Simon was only ever an outline of a man – a quiet blur hiding in the corners of rooms, watching me.
But that night, I saw his face. I stood by my bedroom window as the sun rose, watching his motionless body in the fields peering back at me. Eventually, he smiled, and I felt myself blush like I had the first time he looked at me, in English Lit class.
When he turned his back and walked away, I panicked and shouted for him, but he ignored me. I hammered on the glass with my fists, but he slipped into a speck of dust on the horizon. I screamed louder and louder until I woke myself up, then lay there, angry with him.
Suddenly Dougie’s face burst into my head with such uninvited speed, it made me jump.
For four years, I’d kept him at arm’s length, but I’d be a fool to think it was that easy. I’d always believed I could read people quite well, because the only way to stop myself from being burned by my mum’s acid tongue was to judge her flavour before approaching her.
Simon’s friends Steven and Roger were easy to pigeonhole and they hadn’t changed much as they’d grown from boys to men. But Dougie was different. When it was just the two of them, they’d been a lot more serious; with the others, Simon was one of the lads. I’d nicknamed him the Chameleon and quite liked that he’d change his colours to suit his environment without ever losing sight of who he was. Dougie, Steven, Roger and I were all just pieces of him.
But Simon had been more to Dougie than just his best friend, and he hadn’t exactly welcomed me with open arms once Simon invited me into his little gang. He wasn’t just a boy whose head hadn’t been turned by yucky girls. He genuinely couldn’t understand why his best friend had fallen for one.
And when once he caught me watching him watching Simon, while Simon remained oblivious to the both of us, his red face revealed what his words didn’t say. I was a little jealous of how close they were, and Dougie and I began playing childish games of one-upmanship. If I told him something Simon had said to me, he’d antagonise me with a ‘yeah, I already know’. And other times, in petty retaliation, I’d do the same. We’d compete for Simon’s attention.
I’d always regretted Simon and I’s first kiss. Not that it happened, but how and where. I instigated it in Dougie’s bedroom on purpose, aware that he was about to walk in and catch us. I kissed him because I wanted to, but I also knew that putting Dougie in his place, on his own territory, would end our rivalry.
As soon as he saw us, I wished I hadn’t been such a bitch. He looked so pitiful standing there with a tray of snacks and glasses of milk. The corners of his mouth unravelled and the light in his eyes paled. I’d won Simon’s heart, but trampled across Dougie’s.
That marked a turning point in Dougie and I’s relationship. We reached an unspoken understanding that while we could share Simon, I would always have the upper hand. And eventually we became unlikely friends in our own right.
Then, one night, many years later, everything changed.
7 April
I was exhausted defending an invisible man for so many months.
I’d abandoned chanting ‘Simon is not dead’ in the bathroom mirror, because in my heart of hearts, I’d begun to accept it might not be true. It came down to one single fact – he couldn’t have been gone for ten months without something having happened to him. And with no evidence telling me he was still alive, I reluctantly came to terms with Roger’s theory he’d most likely died in an accident the day he disappeared.
In the meantime, my children had come up with their own ideas.
‘Did Daddy commit soo-side?’ Robbie asked out of the blue on our way home from the park.
‘Who told you that?’ I replied.
He looked anxious. In truth, he’d been looking more and more anxious of late and it was starting to worry me. He’d often take himself into his dad’s garage-office and I’d hear him whispering to him about his day. I’d thought I was the only one who did that. I wasn’t sure if leaving him to chat to a memory was the best thing or not, but if it gave him the comfort his mummy obviously couldn’t, then maybe it wasn’t doing any harm.
‘What’s soo-side?’ asked Emily.
‘My friend Melanie says that when people are sad and they want to go to heaven, they commit soo-side,’ Robbie explained.
‘It’s called suicide,’ James chipped in before I could explain, ‘and it’s when people hurt themselves on purpose because they don’t want to be with their families anymore.’
‘No, Daddy didn’t commit suicide,’ I replied, unsure of how to end the conversation.
‘But how can you know that?’ asked James. It was clear this wasn’t the first time he’d given it thought.
‘Because Daddy had no reason to. People only do that when they don’t think they have any other choice. Daddy loved us too much.’
I hadn’t told another living soul, but it had crossed my mind that maybe he had. I mulled over everything that had happened with Billy and wondered if I’d been too wrapped up in myself to notice how badly it had affected him too. If I’d been a better wife, maybe I’d have noticed his sadness instead of wallowing in mine.
‘Well, this is what I think happened,’ I began softly. ‘The day that Daddy disappeared, I think he went out for one of his runs somewhere new. And I think he got lost, and then he had an accident. But because nobody knows where he went, we can’t find him.’
‘Shall we go and look for him again?’ asked Robbie.
‘I don’t think that will help. I don’t think he’s able to come back.’
I still couldn’t bring myself to say out loud that maybe he was dead.
We had arrived home, and Emily skipped over towards the swing in the garden.
‘Is he in heaven?’ Robbie continued.
I paused, hating myself for what I was about to say. ‘Yes,’ I said at last. ‘I think he might be.’
‘When will Daddy come back?’ yelled Emily from the swing.
‘I don’t think he will, sweetie.’
‘Oh,’ she replied, and frowned. ‘Push me really hard, Mummy.’
I began pushing her more gently than she’d expected, so she wriggled her legs backwards and forwards to gain more height. ‘Harder, Mummy. You’re not pushing hard enough!’
‘Why do you want to go so high?’
‘So I can kick God in the bum until he sends Daddy home.’
Good idea, I thought.
SIMON