The Last Wife by J A Baker

Author:J A Baker [Baker, J. A.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Boldwood Books

16

‘She was beautiful. My little baby. My gorgeous girl.’

Honnie was standing in the doorway watching me, her voice catching me off guard. I twisted around and placed the photograph back on the walnut cabinet, a flush of discomfiture at being caught snooping around her living room creeping up over my neck and face. My flesh burned with shame. This was her home, her private space. I should have remained seated and didn’t. I had been caught looking at her photographs – a photograph that had been deliberately half-hidden behind a stack of envelopes – and now I was going to have to cover up my humiliation by acting as if nothing had just happened.

I cleared my throat, tried to keep my voice low, to a respectful whisper, as if raising it to a normal level would shatter the moment. ‘Where is she now?’ I hoped the toddler in the picture was an adult and living a good life somewhere but my gut told me otherwise. Something in Honnie’s face, her words, the sudden greyness of her pallor, told me that this story didn’t have a good ending.

‘Where is she now?’ she said flatly. ‘In the churchyard at St Augustine’s. Been there for decades, she has.’ Honnie shuffled forwards, the tea tray wobbling in her hands. ‘So many years of my little girl being buried in the ground. Through every wonderful warm summer and through the deepest, darkest and coldest winters, she has been there. All on her own. Nobody to look after her. Nobody by her side.’

I took the tray from her grip and placed it down on the small coffee table. My heart was a heavy rock hammering against bone. A rhythmic thud thud thud that echoed in my ears. I should have remained seated, kept my hands to myself. Look what I had done. What I had started. Making her remember. Forcing her to talk about it.

‘Sorry.’ My voice sounded faraway, an underwater gurgling sound coming from elsewhere in the room. ‘I shouldn’t have been looking. Rude of me. I’m so sorry, Honnie.’ A buzzing filled my head. I sat back down, my spine ramrod straight, guilt embedded deep within me.

‘I don’t mind.’ Her voice sounded light, unperturbed. She sat opposite and picked up her teacup, slurping and smacking her lips together as she drank. ‘Does me good to talk of her now and again. We shouldn’t ever forget the dead. They were once as we were: alive and breathing in the clean air around us. They don’t deserve to be forgotten.’

‘Indeed, they don’t.’

My breathing felt noisy and onerous. I didn’t ask how she had died, her little girl, trying instead to include her in the conversation, not nudge her aside as if she was a thing to be forgotten or ignored. Not focusing only on her demise. ‘What is she called?’

‘Theresa. Our little Terry. A blessing, she was. A joy to be around.’

Glazed eyes. A protracted stillness. I let her sit and ruminate, didn’t ask anything else or try to engage her in conversation.

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