A to Z of You and Me by James Hannah

Author:James Hannah
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Sourcebooks, Inc
Published: 2016-02-16T16:00:00+00:00

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“Knock-knock…”

A singsongy voice. A kind voice.

Who’s…?

“Are you awake?”

Mmm?

Sheila. Her face looking down at me now. Look at her mascara. Thick. A bit much today.

“Hello, lovey,” she says gently. “You awake, are you?”

“Mmm?”

“I’m sorry to wake you, but there’s someone who wants to say hello, and I wondered if you wanted to see her.”

Amber? Is it Amber back?

“What day is it?”

“Still Saturday.”

“What’s the time?”

“Half past eleven.”

I take a moment to clear my throat, try to pull my thoughts into some sort of order. Sheila has drawn away and is talking softly out in the corridor. There’s a mutter and a shuffle.

“Say to come in,” I say. “Let her in.”

And so she appears in the doorway: Laura.

She’s heavily fortified with makeup, like a caricature of what I remember from all those years ago. It’s a mask to meet me with/ But the wrinkles and folds still encroach like bindweed, around her eyes and neck. Everything she’s been resisting over the years. Age creeps up on all of us.

“Hiya,” she says, before her mask creases and she crumples into tears.

Ah, shit.

“Aw, come now,” says Sheila, plucking up a tissue and hurrying over to her. “Come on, let’s get you a chair, eh?” She reaches for my visitors’ chair and draws it safely away to the foot of the bed, where Laura allows herself to be settled.

“I’m sorry,” says Laura, slowly pulling herself together. “I swore I wouldn’t cry.”

“There’s no shame in crying,” says Sheila. “We all cry, don’t we? Everybody cries.”

“Yeah.” Laura blinks, little girl, trying to be brave. “I’m sorry,” she says again, finally able to focus on me, and then, “Hello.”

“Hello.”

She has only fleetingly met my gaze; she’s spending a lot of time looking around on the floor, checking, checking her sitting position, checking the leg of the chair isn’t nudging the baseboard, checking behind her for…for whatever.

“Now, you’ve got your coffee,” says Sheila. “How about you?” she says, looking over at me. “Can I get you anything? How’s your water?”

I shake my head—nothing for me. No water. No visitors. I said no visitors.

“All right,” says Sheila, retreating. “Make yourself at home, and I’ll see you later.”

She exits the room and shuts the door quietly behind her.

Alone together. The shock of her being here at all has quickly given way to…to what? I don’t know. I’m casting around to feel something, but I wonder if I feel nothing.

“So, how are you?” says Laura, finally looking at me properly and frowning.

“Never better,” I say, and immediately wish I hadn’t, as she begins to cry again.

“I’m sorry, Ivo. I’m sorry. I just…I was so worried about coming here, but seeing you there like that, in your bed, I feel so stupid about all the years we’ve let slip.”

There it is, the last time Laura and I saw each other, a perfunctory good-bye in the parking lot of the Yew Tree as the tires of other mourners’ cars tugged at the gravel around us. Job done, Mum safely in the soil. All organized by me, down to the buffet.

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