The Love of Her Life (23 page)

She almost didn’t see the note; it was on the mantelpiece, which was cluttered with invitations, photos of them all, before this happened. It was written on the back of a bill and this, somehow, made Kate angrier than any of the rest of it, that Sean would say goodbye to her like this, scribbling a few words on an electricity bill.

At nine o’clock the next day, Kate came out of the flat, blinking in the harsh light of yet another relentlessly sunny day. The funeral was at noon. Mac had said he would pick her up to take her to Zoe’s. He waved to her from the car as she stood on the doorstep checking for her keys and she waved back, as two figures appeared in front of her, their outlines almost black in the glare from the early morning sun. She was hot already, even though it was early. She was wearing long sleeves and a long skirt to hide the injuries. She didn’t want people to see them, the cuts on her legs, over her shoulders. Underneath the black cotton, her skin smarted with pain, and sweat.

‘Hello dear.’ It was Mrs Allan. ‘I’m glad we caught you.’

She took Kate’s hand.

‘Oh, hello,’ said Kate.

Mr Allan kissed her on the cheek.

‘Are you just off to Zoe’s, then?’ he asked. She nodded. ‘We spoke to Sue yesterday. It’s the funeral today, isn’t it.’

He had the
Guardian
and the
Telegraph
under his arm, and Mrs Allan was clutching a string bag, with some tomato juice and milk in it. The promise of a normal, ordinary day in
their flat, reading papers, eating toast, being with each other, as they had been for decades and decades. Mrs Allan stroked Kate’s cheek, her silver bobbed hair rippling as she did, and she said softly,

‘We’re here all day today. Just so you know. Alright? You be off now, but we’ll be here later.’

‘That’s –’ Kate began.

‘I know you might not want to see anyone when you get back, or you might. All I’m saying is,’ she said firmly, ‘Graham and I are here all day.’

Mr Allan pointed at Mac, sitting in the car behind them. ‘I suppose you’d better go. I’m glad we saw you. We haven’t seen much of you since it happened. I came round to the flat yesterday and Sean was there, clearing up.’ He looked at his wife. ‘He said you’d been at your friend’s most of the time since it happened.’

Kate nodded, not knowing what to say. She was almost glad to know he had been there, that she hadn’t dreamt the note, the only sign of him she’d had.

‘Let’s go for a walk tomorrow,’ Mr Allan told her. ‘We haven’t been for a walk for a while. I’ll come and find you. Sue said she’d signed you off work for as long as you needed.’

Work. Kate blinked, trying to see Mac, in the car across the way. Work seemed like a different universe. The idea that people went to work, that she had her office and a desk and a view over the river, that she had a job she went to, a life before all of this? It was mad, unbelievable, like everything else. There was Mac, waiting patiently to take her to the funeral. And the idea that this funeral marked a point in time after Steve’s death, that things would change again after, suddenly hit her.

‘OK,’ said Kate. ‘Thank you. Thanks a lot.’

‘We’re here, that’s all we wanted to say,’ he said again.

Mrs Allan hugged her. ‘You’d better go.’

She smelt of parma violets, of wool; comforting, secure. Kate hugged her back, not wanting to let go, but she did, waving goodbye as they opened the door to the flats. Then she walked down the steps, towards the car.

‘All OK?’ Mac asked her as she got in.

‘Thanks,’ she said. She looked at him. He looked like he hadn’t slept at all. He was so pale, the circles under his eyes so blue, he looked almost ghostly. He was suited and his short hair was neat. He was impeccably shaved, except for a longish cut on his jaw. She pointed at it.

‘You OK?’

He touched it, quickly, and shook his head. He put the car into gear and they drove away. Kate saw the Allans were still on the steps of the building. They were waving, and she couldn’t understand why.

The church in Willesden was full to bursting; the noise of subdued conversation rustling through the building, like dry leaves in the wind. As Kate walked to her seat, people she knew, had known, for years and years, people she and Zoe had grown up with, people she and Steve had been at university with, all stared at her, curiously. She heard someone say, in a whisper, ‘That’s her.’ Kate kept walking, she did not look around.

She was on her own, having left Zoe and Mac outside. He was a pallbearer, and she was walking behind the coffin. They had their roles, they had to talk to the vicar about it. About when and where and how, on this summer’s day in North London, in a church that no one apart from Zoe had ever been into. Kate sank into her seat, and someone took her hand. She looked up in surprise. It was her dad; she’d forgotten he and Lisa were coming. He kissed her. Lisa reached across him and grabbed her hand.

‘Babe,’ she said.

‘Darling,’ Daniel whispered in his daughter’s ear. ‘This will be awful. Don’t try and fight it.’ He put his arm around her and squeezed her tight. ‘I’m here, Kate.’

Kate sank against him, as the big doors at the back of the church swung open and the vicar called out to them from the threshold,

‘Could you please all stand.’

She knew she would have to turn around, to see the procession coming down the aisle, Mac and Zoe and Steve’s parents. Mac stared ahead, the coffin on his shoulders. His jaw was set, firm, but his Adam’s apple was bobbing up and down with the effort of swallowing, and a film of sweat covered his forehead. Zoe seemed calm, eyes downcase, but halfway to the altar, she looked ahead for the first time, at the coffin, seeming to see what it really was. Kate watched her in alarm as her face froze. She stumbled, almost tripping, and there was a gasp, as Mary and Jim Hamilton held her up, and Zoe’s mum behind stepped forward to hold her. Her face crumpled, her composure gone, and it was unbearable to watch.

And when they had set the coffin down, Mac slid into the seat next to his sister-in-law, and he pulled her towards him, her head on his shoulder, as she sobbed quietly, and the vicar started talking about Steve. From the row behind, Kate saw how Mac’s fingers dug, hard, into Zoe’s bare arm, trying to contain her as she sobbed, her shoulders heaving.

‘It’s OK,’ he said, into her hair. ‘It’s OK.’

But it wasn’t, of course it wasn’t.

Mac gave the eulogy. They didn’t know who else to ask; his parents’ friends didn’t know him as well as they all did. Steve and Zoe had loads of friends, but it was too much to ask one of them to perform this, this horrible task. Steve had spent so much of his life, from eighteen to twenty-eight, with Zoe, just the two of them, and she couldn’t do it.

As Mac got up and walked to the front of the church, he left a gap next to Zoe, so she was on her own, on the end of the row, totally by herself. She was so small, her stomach already so big, sitting there on her own at the front of the church, her husband’s coffin ahead of her. Kate reached forward and held her hand, and Zoe clutched it, her nails digging into Kate’s palm. She was humming, quietly, as she cried, and it filled the silence of the vaulted ceiling as Mac fiddled with his notes, composing himself, his jaw set. Eventually he looked up at the congregation, with what seemed like an almighty force of will.

‘Our hearts are broken today,’ he said simply. ‘Steve died last week. He was far too young, and all I can say, on behalf of Zoe, Harry, my parents and myself is that it’s broken our hearts. I don’t really know what else to say, because I still don’t believe Steve is gone, and so to talk about him in the past tense seems completely crazy. He was my little brother, who stuck a pea up my nostril when I was five because he wanted to see how far it would go. I had to go to hospital to have it removed. He stole my bike when he was thirteen and trashed it, and then tried to pin the blame on me. He stayed up all night with me the night before I got my A-level results and I couldn’t sleep. Last year he came all the way up to Edinburgh just to have a pint with me, because we hadn’t seen each other for a while. He made me an uncle.’ He paused. ‘He was my little brother, but he was a bigger man than me, than most people. He was my big brother really, I suppose.

‘And he and Zoe – their life together, the home they built, their family – it was just a pleasure to see it, to be a part of it. They didn’t just have the best parties, they had the best life.’

Zoe bent over as far as she could, rocking in her chair and sobbing piteously. Kate looked around, looked up at
Mac, and then she got up out of her seat, pushed past Zoe’s curled-up form, and sat down next to her in her row. She put her arms round her, and Zoe put her head on her shoulder, tears literally flowing down her cheeks.

Mac nodded, looking at her, and he took a deep breath, and then went on.

‘So I don’t know what to say to you all today, now that life has gone. Now that their baby daughter will never know her dad, now that Harry will grow up without his father. And for all of us who thought that Zoe and Steve, their life together, their house, represented everything we most wanted – it represented home to all of us, even if it wasn’t our home – that’s all over now, and I honestly can’t see how we will ever smile again.’ He was about to break down. His fists clenched at his sides.

‘So perhaps we – Zoe, Mum, Dad, Harry – perhaps we have to take refuge in remembering him with pleasure, and being grateful that we had him in our lives, grateful that he met Zoe, that they had Harry, who’s the spitting image of his dad. Grateful that he was here at all.

‘But to be honest, I can’t see a way to do that yet. Because, like I say, our hearts have been broken.’

It was Betty who planted the idea in her head. She had come back from New York for the funeral. They stood by the french windows watching Zoe talking with Mr and Mrs Hamilton in the garden, her hand on her back, as if it were aching, Harry sitting at her feet. Mac stood next to them, tall, rigid, watching Zoe all the time. Kate could just make out Mary’s soft voice rising gently above the hubbub that rippled through the house.

‘They seem so lovely,’ said Betty quietly. ‘I can’t believe I’d never met them before.’

‘I know,’ Kate said. She watched the group, unwilling to tear her eyes away from them. ‘Oh, Bets,’ she said.

Betty’s hand slid into hers. ‘Babe,’ she said.

‘How’s she going to cope?’ Kate said bleakly. ‘I just don’t know what you do with something like that –’

‘I don’t know either,’ said Betty. ‘She’s Zoe, though. She will cope. I suppose if you have the children, you have to.’

‘Yes,’ said Kate, realizing there was truth in this. She held onto the wooden frame of the door.

‘Hey, Katy.’ Betty’s voice was still soft. ‘How about you? How’re you doing?’

‘I’m fine,’ said Kate. ‘I’m not, but I’ll be fine.’ She pushed some cakes towards Betty. ‘Here, have one of these.’

‘I don’t mean like that,’ Betty said. ‘I just think this must be much harder for you than most people realize, darling.’

‘I don’t know,’ Kate said, through her tightened throat. ‘I don’t think about it like that. It’s not about me.’

Betty looked at her with surprise. ‘Right.’ There was a pause. ‘Only, sorry, I meant, because he saved your life. Because he pushed you out of the way.’ She closed her eyes, shaking her head. ‘Sorry, that’s so crass of me.’

Francesca was standing next to them, talking to an old family friend of Steve’s parents. Now she turned towards them. ‘Betty, don’t,’ she said, under her breath. She nudged Betty. ‘Hey Kate, those cakes look nice.’

Kate looked from one to the other of them, then down at the plate of fondant fancies, which she had bought that morning. They looked gaudy, celebratory almost, stripes of yellow and pink, chocolatey and delicious. Her skin crawled, nausea and heat swept over her. The wounds on her body stung; she prickled, ached in the heat. She wished she could tear her top off, scratch the scabs away.

‘You OK?’ Francesca asked.

Kate looked around the room, filled with people, all making desultory conversation, all watching other people over their shoulder. She whispered, almost to herself, ‘I feel like – like I’m disgusting.’

‘Look –’ Francesca began.

‘You mustn’t feel guilty,’ said Betty.

Mrs Allan had said that to her the day after Steve had died. She’d brought her down a cake, made her yet another cup of tea, held her hand. Her father had said that to her the previous night on the phone, when he’d rung to tell her that he and Lisa were coming to the funeral. Even Zoe had
said it to her, the day after it had happened. Kate still shuddered to think that Zoe had felt she had to say it.

‘I don’t feel guilty,’ said Kate. She clutched her left arm, where the cuts were worst. But it wasn’t true. Things were starting to come together in her tired, battered head.

Watching her, Betty said, ‘Perhaps you should get away for a bit. You should come to New York, visit your mother, maybe. Have you thought about that?’

‘I don’t want to leave Zoe,’ said Kate.

Francesca stroked her hair. ‘You can’t be there for her the whole time,’ she said. ‘She’ll have to get on with it. Mac’s here, isn’t he? And her mum, and his parents.’ Kate’s eyes rested on the group in the garden again, and her throat rasped with the pain of not crying.

‘I kind of think maybe you need to leave her alone for a while,’ Betty said, after a pause. ‘You know.’

‘Oh.’ Kate nodded. ‘Perhaps you’re right,’ she said.

‘I think that’s a good idea,’ Francesca said, nodding, like they’d already discussed it and thought it was a good idea.

‘Come and stay with me,’ Betty said. ‘Or with your mother.’

‘What about my job, and the flat,’ said Kate, slowly. ‘I can’t just leave them and go away.’

She watched Betty closely, wondering if she realized just how much she wanted her to have the answer to all of this.

Betty said, ‘Oh babe. They’ve signed you off work for two months. Don’t you remember?’

‘Oh yes,’ said Kate, wondering how she could have forgotten. She smiled at Betty, as if trying to let her know she wasn’t mad.

‘I spoke to your mother last night,’ Kate’s father said, his voice gentle in her ear as he came up to stand close to her. Kate started.

‘Really?’ she said. Her parents never spoke, normally. But this was not normal.

‘Yes,’ Daniel said. He stared down, into his drink. She thought how much older he looked, suddenly. When had he grown older and when had she not noticed? ‘She phoned first thing. You know, she was thinking of coming over for the funeral, to be here for you. She loves Zoe, you know that. And she was so fond of Steve.’ He nodded.

‘She didn’t need to come over,’ said Kate. ‘It would have –’ She trailed off, thinking of her mother suddenly, how lovely it would be to have her near, to see her. She remembered her very clearly now, stroking her hair, reading her stories, laughing delightedly at her when she was little, how comforting she was, how Kate knew everything would always be fine when she was around, until suddenly she wasn’t.

She had never really felt that way again with her mother, after she left – the wound she left was too deep. But there in the hot, sunny sitting room, with everyone dressed in black, Kate missed her mother with a force she hadn’t known before, hadn’t known it was possible to feel. To see her there, her long red hair, her warmth, her smile. She looked at her dad, and clutched his hand, not able to speak all of a sudden.

‘So he moved his stuff out, then?’ Daniel asked, grimly.

‘Yep,’ said Kate. ‘It was all gone when I got back yesterday.’

‘And what have you agreed about the mortgage?’

‘Dad! – I don’t know,’ said Kate. ‘I don’t want to talk about it.’

‘How long will you be off work for, do you know?’ Daniel asked, gruffly.

Kate watched him, wanting only to stay calm. ‘Look, Dad – it’s too soon to think about all that stuff. It’s not about me, about Sean and everything, at the moment. It’s about Zoe.’

‘I know, darling,’ Daniel said. ‘But –’

‘Please Dad, let’s not talk about it.’

‘I only want you to start thinking about yourself now,’ Daniel said. He sounded stern. ‘I’m your father. Your father, Kate. So I worry about you. You have a flat you have a mortgage on and you’re signed off work for however long, and you have a fiancé who’s done the dirty on you and buggered off. And the funeral’s over now, it’s a week since – since Steve died. I’m just saying, you need to think about these things. Not now –’ he said, holding up a hand as Kate’s eyes flashed and she started to speak, ‘– but you need to think about them at some point.’

‘No,’ said Kate. ‘I’m only thinking about Zoe at the moment. Her and Harry, and the baby.’

Daniel looked at her. He put his hand on her shoulder, and turned her slowly so she was looking out into the garden, where Zoe and Mac were talking together, and Mary was holding Harry. He looked so like his father, Kate took a deep breath.

‘Kate, listen to me,’ Daniel said quietly. ‘You can’t stay here with Zoe and make everything magically better. It’s not like that. It won’t mean Steve didn’t die. It won’t mean it wasn’t your fault.’ He corrected himself. ‘It wasn’t your fault, in any case. But you have to let them get on with it. You can be the best friend in the world – but you’ll only ever be a friend. You’re not Mac. You’re not her baby. You can’t bring him back, either. And you have to consider –’ He came to a stop.

‘What?’ Kate said.

‘Nothing, nothing,’ Daniel said, and he kissed his daughter, patted her shoulder. She winced, as his hand settled on her bruised skin. ‘Here’s Lisa. Darling, we’re going now, got to pick little Dani up. I’ll phone you tonight. Do call your mother.’

‘Yes,’ said Lisa, unexpectedly. ‘Call her.’ She turned to Daniel. ‘We’d better go and say bye to Zoe.’

People watched in vague curiosity as they made their way across the room – Daniel was recognizable to a lot of people now. Kate gazed unseeingly at them too, as they smiled consolingly at Zoe, and kissed her, and kissed Mac and Jenny, Zoe’s mother, as Lisa and Daniel kissed them all, holding hands as they did. She was alone on the other side of the room and even in the heat of the day suddenly felt extremely cold.

There is a sense, at a wake, that some people are clinging onto it, as the last stage in a recognizable process. Because after that, the period of unreality is to some extent over, and you have to get on with your life in some way. People lingered at Steve’s wake for ages, until the evening, until it was getting dark. The group of them who had spent their twenties in this house, first the ground floor flat, now the whole house, stayed the longest. Betty was staying at Francesca’s that night, Jem and Bobbie and the others were just down the road, and as the packed throng thinned out, Kate found herself in the kitchen again, unloading the dishwasher, with Zoe.

Zoe’s mother had put Harry to bed and he was fast asleep, having been alternately bewildered and excited by the events of the day. Zoe had been for a nap upstairs, but she hadn’t slept and had come back down.

‘There’s some soup in the fridge,’ Kate said. ‘Do you think people will want –’

Zoe looked out from behind a cupboard at the group of people left. ‘Give it a while, if you’re all still here in a bit I’ll heat it up.’

‘I can do it, don’t worry.’

‘Let’s see,’ said Zoe. ‘I’m pretty tired now anyway, so hopefully everyone will have gone soon.’

Kate shut the dishwasher. ‘Do you want me to get people
moving?’ She wiped her hands on a tea towel, and hung it carefully on the hook by the sink. Zoe was watching her as she did it.

‘It’d be great if you were all off soon, to be honest.’ She wiped her hand over her forehead and gave a great, ragged sigh. ‘I’m not going to go hysterical again. I’m just really, really tired. I’m sick of all these people being here.’

‘Of course,’ said Kate. ‘You must be. It’s just we don’t want to leave you on your own, you know?’

And Zoe looked at her directly. ‘Yeah. But actually, Kate, I’d quite like to be on my own at some point.’

Kate took the hint. ‘Look, I’ll have a quick word with everyone. Are Mac and his parents – are they staying on?’

‘Yes,’ said Zoe. ‘Just everyone else.’ She flung her hands up in the air and gave a little, defeated moan of despair. ‘Is that OK.’ It was a statement, not a question.

Seeing as how she knew the contents of Zoe’s fridge better than anyone at the moment, Kate said, ticking off things with her fingers, ‘Zo, you’re low on milk, and cheddar, and veg, and those little pots that Harry likes. Shall I pick some up tomorrow and come over first thing? We can –’

‘No, thanks,’ said Zoe, quite loudly. She corrected herself instantly. ‘I mean – sorry, Kate. I don’t need you to come round tomorrow. Steve’s parents are leaving and we’ll have stuff to sort out.’

‘Oh, right,’ said Kate. ‘I’ll call you in the afternoon then. Perhaps I can –’

As if it was in slow motion, Zoe shook her head. She didn’t say anything, she just looked at Kate, and a tear ran down her cheek, as she rubbed her stomach again. Her eyes were shining with tears, her hand was on her back, and she stood there, silently, shaking her head, as Kate watched her, understanding dawning.

Eventually, Zoe just whispered, ‘No, OK? Please, Kate. You need to leave me alone for a while.’

Kate stepped back, and nodded. She knew, she kissed her best friend’s cheek, her heart cracking as she turned away. ‘Of course. I love you. OK. But soon. I’ll see you soon.’

Zoe nodded too, not meeting her gaze.

Five minutes later, they were all outside, on the pavement. The others went to the pub, to carry on the wake, talking about Steve, remembering the good times, like Mac had said. But Kate went home. She tore off the black cotton dress, the long cardigan. There were spots of blood on her skin, where the scabs had shifted, opened up again. She ran her fingers over the knobbly, rash-like bumps they formed, over her tired, bruised skin, as she sat on the sofa in her sitting room, staring at nothing in the darkness, for hours. She had seen the look on Zoe’s face, heard the tone in her father’s voice. She knew now that what she had said to Betty and Francesca earlier – well, it was probably true. She was to blame, she was disgusting, she should not be here, she should not be here at all.