Page 17 of The F*cking Fabulous Forties Club

With my head buzzing with ideas and, dare I say it, hope, I snuggle down under my duvet and smile as Daniel shifts around and makes himself comfortable. I don’t know what I’d been so afraid of. It was only a letter and sure, if it lights a fire under me to finally start doing big things then that’s not a bad outcome.

13

HOLD UP, WAIT A MINUTE

It’s been a long time since the three of us sat around a breakfast table, green to the gills and trying to figure out what we can have for breakfast, having examined the contents of my cupboards and fridge.

‘The way I see it,’ Niamh says, ‘is we have two approaches. We play it safe and go with toast and coffee. No one ever died from toast and coffee. It will get us through these first dark hours anyway.’

I wash back two paracetamol with a drink of water before passing the box of tablets on to Laura who does the same.

‘Or we could adopt the kill or cure approach. You’ve eggs, bacon and sausages there, Becca. I say we cook them up, along with the toast and the coffee. Make them into one dirty big toasted sandwich each and get it down our necks.’

Laura groans. ‘I’m not sure I’ve the constitution for that,’ she says.

‘Nonsense,’ says Niamh. ‘It’s long known that an ‘Ulster fry’ is the perfect cure for over-indulgence. What’s the worst thing that could happen?’

‘Well, erm, you did say it was a kill or cure approach, so I think the kill outcome might suck a bit,’ I tell her.

‘You make a fair point,’ she says. ‘But I’m sticking the frying pan on anyway. Just let me know if you want some.’ I love that Niamh can treat my home like her own. It’s true in reverse too. I know what belongs in what cupboard chez Niamh and I’m not above making myself a cup of tea and digging into the biscuits. It used to be like that at Laura’s too, but I suppose it’s different now. I look at my friend who is best described as a picture of misery. Her face is paler than normal. Her black dress is wrinkled and her hair is messy. She looks smaller than before, as if her grief is weighing so heavily on her it is compressing her.

‘I’m so tired,’ she says, and I remember that. It’s not just that we had a late night or that we were drinking. I remember the exhaustion that comes after the funeral when the world goes back to normal and you’re just left shellshocked by the last few days.

I could barely speak, let alone move around, in the days after my daddy’s funeral. Every single ounce of energy I had was used to remind me to keep breathing, and to play different edits of the last few days over and over and over.

My phone ringing and my mother’s voice sounding strange and strangled. How it took a moment for me to realise just how serious things were. How there was a lag in my brain as I heard what she said but didn’t understand it. These words did not make sense. Not when it came to my daddy.

‘Rebecca,’ my mother had said, her voice tight. ‘I need you to come home. Now. I need you to come home right now. Your dad… I don’t think… well, he’s not very well, Rebecca and I don’t know what to do and I need you to come home now.’

‘What’s wrong with him?’ I’d asked, the sound of my mother’s voice enough to wrap a coil of dread around me and pull it tight. ‘Can I talk to him?’

‘No. No. No, love. You can’t talk to him. He’s not… He can’t. Can you please come home.’

Her voice had cracked at the word please and I’d known then. I’d known he was gone even though we played the game for another while. I phoned an ambulance as I ran out of my house and to my car. I stabbed at the ignition with my keys but my hands were jelly, and the whole world was distorted and I knew nothing would ever make sense again. Not in the way it once had.

The ambulance hadn’t arrived by the time I got there. I don’t remember getting out of the car but I remember going in the front door which my mother had left open. I don’t remember going up the stairs or down the hall, but I do remember the look on my mother’s face. She looked scared, and small and vulnerable. My father looked at peace and I remember wanting to shout at him, ‘Do you not know you’re dead? How can you lie there so calmly when we need you?’ He looked so at ease and if it hadn’t been for the unnatural pallor on his face, or the way his mouth was drooped ever so slightly I’d have said he looked well.

I remember the thunder on the stairs, the call of the paramedics. I remember telling them he was gone as they ran into the room and started to examine him and I wanted to tell them they were wasting their time because he was not here any more. The energy in the house had shifted. The energy in the whole world had shifted. Because my daddy was dead.

I didn’t have time to process it. The machine of death and dying took over. Neighbours offering to help. A doctor. A priest. An undertaker. Mourners. Shopping for black ties for the boys in Marks and Spencer and having a mini-breakdown by the fleece jumpers near the checkout. My daddy loved his fleece jumpers but he only ever wore the ones from Marks and Spencer. I had one lifted and over my arm to treat him before it really hit me that he didn’t need it. He never would. Through sobs, I bought it anyway. It’s still in the bag in the back of my wardrobe.

I remember cups of tea, and discussions about hymns, and some laughter and singing. I remember my boys sobbing like children over his coffin just before the lid was put on for the last time. These two six-foot-tall boys who had already become men even though they were just seventeen, looking at me as if I could make it better. That was my job, after all.

I remember just getting through it and then not knowing what the hell I was supposed to do when it was all over. Every cell in my body was frozen in shock and exhaustion and I recognise that now on Laura’s face.

‘Do you want to grab a shower while we make breakfast?’ I ask her, remembering how the shower became my salvation. I could be alone, and cry and shout, and wash a little bit of the horror of the days that had been off me. No matter how dark the days that followed, I always felt just a little better after a shower.

She blinks up at me. ‘I don’t have any clean clothes. I think I’ll just go home.’

‘I have clean clothes,’ I say. ‘They’ll be big on you but they are clean enough to help you feel more human again. I’ll get you a sweater and a pair of drawstring joggers. They’ll do in a pinch. I’m afraid any spare underwear I have might swamp you, so you might have to go commando.’

‘I have spare knickers in my car,’ Niamh says. ‘We’re the same size, aren’t we? I can get them for you.’ Both Laura and I turn to look at her.

‘Spare knickers? You’re going to have to explain that one,’ I say. ‘Is that something we’re supposed to do?’

‘They’re in my go-bag. I have a full change of clothes, a multipack of new knickers, toiletries, trainers, power banks, some cash etc,’ she says, as if it’s a perfectly normal thing to have.

‘A go-bag?’ I ask. ‘What’s that? Are you on the run from the law or something?’ I can’t help but smirk.

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