Will You Remember Me? (37 page)

Soaked and breathless, Martin stopped moving and pulled his wife into him. ‘Listen to the rain hitting the roof and the cars, it sounds like clapping! That’s applause for you, my girl; my beautiful dancing partner.’

‘It’s the dance of my life.’ Poppy smiled against his chin.

Wiping the hair from her face, he kissed her full on the mouth. ‘I bloody love you, Poppy Day! I always have and I always will.’

Poppy kissed him back, a proper kiss that each would savour for the rest of their lives.

Martin woke from his brief nap in the chair by the side of her bed. His two-day-old beard was itchy and uncomfortable, but he was not going to leave her, not for one second. She was asleep more than she was awake, but there would be plenty of time for showering and shaving, after. After. He could not bear to think of it.

‘How’s she doing?’

Martin jumped. He hadn’t heard the nurse enter the room.

He nodded. ‘Fine, same.’

She walked to the side of Poppy’s bed and flicked the drip, delivering all that was needed to keep Poppy calm and pain-free. She bent low and seemed to be examining Poppy’s face. Her breath was rattly, each exhalation a wheezing chore.

‘She seems quite peaceful. I don’t think too much longer.’ She smiled at him before she left the room, shutting the door slowly, almost reverently.

Martin hated the sense of relief he felt at hearing those words, wanting to stop time and spend eternity in her company and yet also wanting it to be over for all their sakes.

The tick of the clock seemed extraordinarily loud. He wished he could stop it.

He sat on the edge of his chair and smoothed the hair from his wife’s forehead, stroking the paper-thin skin stretched over her jutting cheekbones. Her breath was sickly sweet and the whites of her eyes were sallow.

He whispered to his wife, ‘I was just thinking, Poppy, about when we were at school. You walked past me in the dinner hall and you said, “You make me feel very safe.” Do you remember? God, I thought I might burst. It was as if you’d given me the moon in a box, something so wonderful, I felt ten feet tall.’ He paused, smiling at the memory, at the way she had shaken her fringe from her eyes and wrinkled her nose, just like Peg. ‘Those words changed things for me. I figured that if I made someone as smart and beautiful as you feel safe, then I wasn’t the useless little poof my old man told me I was. I shan’t ever forget it.’

Poppy murmured something.

He bent low towards her and placed his ear next to her mouth so he could hear her words.

‘I’m not ready… Mart…’ she whispered.

‘Ssshh… Ssshh… It’s okay. I’ve got you, Poppy Day.’ He slid his arm under her back and lay next to her on the bed, cradling her fragile form against his own, holding her fast inside his strong arms, right where she belonged. With his free hand, he smoothed her thin hair against her clammy scalp. ‘I’ve got you, darling.’

‘Don’t let me go.’ Her voice was a croaky whisper and each breath rattled against his chest. He fought the urge to cough on her behalf, not wanting to trigger a coughing fit in her, worried she might not recover from the effort.

‘I’ll never let you go. We’re joined together, aren’t we? You’re my girl. Remember what I told you when we were little?’

Poppy found talking a struggle, but she closed her eyes and remembered his childhood words. ‘I promise you, Poppy, that I will always be your best friend. It’s like we are joined together by invisible strings that join your heart to mine, and if you need me, you just have to pull them and I’ll come to you.’ She had laughed out loud, loving the idea of their unbreakable, invisible bond. ‘And if you pull yours, I will come to you, Martin. That way, I’ll always know if you need me.’ And it had worked, even in Afghanistan – especially in Afghanistan. She mentally smiled as she remembered Miles’s amused disbelief when she’d told him that Martin was still alive. ‘Poppy, you don’t know that for sure’ ‘Oh but I do. I do know it. He pulled on my heartstrings!’

She lifted her eyes and there was her nan, standing quietly and patiently, smiling and waiting. There was someone with her. A tall man, with dark, curly hair who stepped closer and pushed his glasses up onto the bridge of his nose. Miles… Poppy tried to lift her fingers in a small wave.

Martin’s voice was soft now, soothing, and it screened out the beeps of the machinery and the echoey, impersonal noises of the hospice.

‘And you know, Poppy Day…’ Martin paused, swallowing the emotion that threatened. ‘You don’t have to be afraid, because these heartstrings last forever. They stretch all the way to heaven and back.’

He felt the tension leave her shoulders. Her head, suddenly heavy, sank against his chest. He instinctively knew she was smiling. He smiled too and grazed her scalp with a kiss.

‘Heaven and back,’ she whispered. These were the last words of Poppy Day.

Martin didn’t want to leave her. He held her tight until he felt the warmth start to slip from her body. He was vaguely aware of a nurse coming into the room and then a doctor arriving and confirming what he already knew, that he had lost his wife. As soon as the man spoke the words and filled out his form, Martin felt grief wrap itself around his shoulders like a cloak. He felt drunk, unable to think of anything clearly. His mind was jumbled with all that he had to do: collect Poppy a clean nightie, pick her up a magazine that he could read to her. Then the thoughts settled and he felt the sledgehammer to his gut as he remembered he needed to do neither of those things. ‘Oh God.’ He kept repeating it over and over. ‘Oh God.’ But it didn’t help make anything seem real. He drove home in their car, to their home, but it would never be theirs again. She was gone.

He had no recollection of the journey, navigating the lanes and their turns like a robot. He stopped the car outside the house and switched off the engine. Looking down, he saw one of her hairbands on the gear stick. Gently, he eased it off and held it to his mouth and then under his nose, registering the vaguest scent of her shampoo and perfume. He inhaled deeply as his tears gathered. He cried loudly, his tears coming so hard and so fast he thought he might drown.

Claudia saw the car and drew the curtains, wanting to leave him alone for as long as possible before the kids spotted him. Once he set foot over the threshold, their lives would never be the same.

‘Why are you shutting the curtains?’ Peg asked from the table, where she was making a half-hearted attempt at her homework.

‘I thought I’d cosy things up a bit.’

Half an hour later, Martin put his key in the front door. He was pale, with swollen eyes; a broken man.

‘Daddy!’ Max shouted from the kitchen.

Peg slid from the chair and walked towards him. Martin sank down on to the sofa and Peg stood in front of him.

She clenched her fists by her sides and lifted her chin. ‘How’s my mum?’ she asked.

Martin would never forget the next few moments. He lifted his eyes to face his daughter and placed his large hands over her tightly coiled fists.

‘She is very, very peaceful now, Peg. She just went to sleep and she has stopped hurting.’ Martin hung his head as the next wave of tears came flooding out.

‘Is she dead?’

Martin nodded, unable to say the words.

‘Will I ever see her again?’ Peg’s voice was small.

‘I think so…’ He tried his best to smile through his tears. ‘One day. Your mum will be waiting for you. She loved you so much and she would never ever have chosen to leave you.’

Peg stepped forward and into her dad’s arms as her tears finally came. ‘That’s what she told me.’

Peg sat in her dad’s embrace while Max cried into Claudia’s neck. He was too little to know what was going on, but he cried because everyone else was and it was quite frightening.

‘I’ve just remembered, Dad, I have to get you something.’ Peg wriggled from his lap and ran up the stairs.

Martin swiped at his face and took deep breaths, only able to picture the last image of his wife, still and pale, but beautiful, always beautiful.

Peg came down the stairs and handed Martin a pale cream envelope. ‘Mummy said I had to give you this today and she said you had to read it upstairs on your own.’

Martin took it between his palms and trod the stairs to the bedroom. Sinking down onto the bed, he slipped his finger inside the flap and lifted the paper from the envelope.

Mart, my love,

You once asked me, if I could have anything and everything was possible, what would I want? And the answer to that, my love, is simple. I would want the life I had, the life we made. I wouldn’t change one single thing.

My fear is and always has been that I might slip away without setting things straight with you, Mart. I try to imagine you without me, but I can’t. So I can only imagine how you must be feeling right now.

‘You don’t know! You can never know, Poppy. I am ripped in two!’ Martin cried out, pushing the heels of his hands into his eyes and sobbing.

I know I said I wasn’t going to interfere and I’m not, but… You and I have shared our whole lives together and that makes me well qualified to know what’s best for you.

You said that you were a good dad when you were half of a couple, and that doing it on your own scares you. So here’s what I think, Mart. When you are ready, in your own time, what is best for you is Jo.

You might be surprised to hear that from me. But as you know, Mart, I came to realise that what happened that night wasn’t just about me. My illness made things tough for lots of people, and especially for you. Jo of all people understands that. She loves us – all of us – and the kids love her. She made me a promise once, that she would love the kids on my behalf, for always. Tell her I want her to keep that promise.

You are a wonderful dad and you are my very best friend – you always were. And that, Mart, is the most precious thing of all. We had some adventures, didn’t we? And I don’t want yours to stop. Because you know, Martin Cricket, what my eccentric nan said is true. Life goes on.

Your Poppy Day xx

Martin clambered beneath the duvet and buried his head in the pillow. He stayed there for two days, until Peg knocked on his door.

‘You can’t stay in here forever!’ She pulled back the curtains. ‘Granny Claudia has made soup and she wants you to come down and have some with us. See you in ten minutes or I’m coming back again!’

Martin felt like the shell of his former self, didn’t recognise the grizzled face that stared back at him. It reminded him of his time as a prisoner in Afghanistan: he remembered looking round, startled, to see who was standing behind him in the bathroom and being shocked to realise that the battered, broken, bearded face was his. This was similar.

He went downstairs with a heavy heart and pulled out a chair at the table, sitting where Claudia had placed a bowl of soup. He could hardly stand to look around the room, at their furniture and photographs, the cushions where her hand had rested and her head had lain.

‘Where’s Mummy?’ Max called from the floor.

Martin stared at his son and his heart broke again.

‘Where’s Mummy?’ Max repeated, louder this time.

Peg bent down and spoke to her little brother. ‘I told you, Maxy, Mummy is in heaven. We’ve just got Daddy now, but he’s not going anywhere, are you, Daddy?’

Martin shook his head and let his tears splash from his beard and into his soup. ‘I’m not going anywhere.’

Peg picked up Max and plonked him on her dad’s lap. She cradled Martin’s head in her arms and the three, locked together, stood and cried.

Claudia hovered in the kitchen, all too aware of the sadness that gripped this little family unit, knowing there was very little she could do to alleviate it. She lifted the newspaper from the front door mat and sat down to read it. Popping her glasses on to the end of her nose, she opened the paper in the middle. Her eyes were immediately drawn to a small block of text:

Poppy Day, aged 32, died peacefully in her husband’s arms. Wife of Martin, daughter to Claudia, mum to Peg and Max. An ordinary girl who did extraordinary things. Poppy, you are loved, then, now and always. Wishing you a fond farewell, my best friend, my wife, my love.

Twenty years later

The cabin was spacious. He felt a little bit guilty at having so much legroom and a big cubby for his hand luggage, when people with kids and bigger bags were easing past, making their way to the economy seats. Privilege and special treatment had never sat easily with him.

‘Stop bloody fidgeting.’ He stretched his legs out in front of him and tapped her fingers, which were toying with the end of the seatbelt. ‘You need to calm down, you can’t sit there wiggling for hours, they’ll chuck you off!’

‘Ha ha! As long as they chuck me off before we’re airborne, I don’t really mind. I can’t help it, I’m really nervous. I hate flying.’ She twisted sideways and reached into her jeans pocket for a boiled sweet – anything to distract her from the take-off, always the worst bit for her.

‘Well don’t be; it’s only a plane. We’ll be up and away before you know it.’ He patted her hand, which felt clammy to the touch. ‘Gawd, look at that! Bloody champagne now!’ He nudged her in the ribs; he felt more than mildly embarrassed.

‘Drink, madam?’ The pretty flight attendant bent low with a tray on which sat tall flutes of sparkling plonk, orange juice and small bottles of water.

‘No thanks.’ She waved her hand, too nervous to contemplate holding a glass or sipping alcohol.

‘I’ll have hers.’ He beamed and selected two of the tall flutes, sipping at them alternately.

‘Thought you didn’t approve?’ She tutted at him.

‘What? It’ll only go to waste.’ He winked.

The overhead speaker pinged. ‘Ladies and gentlemen, I would like to welcome you on board this British Airways flight to St Lucia. We are just waiting for clearance and expect to be leaving on time. Weather’s looking pretty good overhead and our journey time today will be about eight hours and forty-five minutes. So sit back and enjoy your flight and I’ll update you before we make our landing at Hewanorra. On a personal note, I’d like to welcome my dad and his wife on board today. Relax, Jo, you are in very safe hands. This is Captain Peg Cricket wishing you a comfortable and enjoyable flight.’