“You don’t have to be strong, Sue. Let yourself grieve, just like Ted and Brandon. Let me be strong for you all. I’m here”
“I’m so grateful you came, Grace. We all are.”
I squeeze her hand. “Of course I’m here, I had to be here. I keep expecting him to walk through the door,” I say, grabbing a tea towel from the side and dropping it on the floor, moving it over the water with my foot.
“I found his memory box,” Sue says, refilling the kettle and placing it back in its resting place. “It’s in Brandon’s room. I think there are some old notes and things from you in there. Please take what you want. I know that’s what he would have wanted.”
“It may help with the eulogy.”
“I’m so pleased you decided to do it. We all agreed that it should be you. Danny and you, you were soul mates. What did he used to call you?”
“A sister from another mister.” A small laugh escapes my lips.
“You were inseparable for years, Grace, you were closer to him than Brandon, even if Brandon doesn’t necessarily like to admit it. No one knew Danny like you did.”
That’s most likely true. I was his confidant during the years when he was confused. I was the first person he told that he thought he was gay. He even asked to snog me to make sure. I didn’t let him. In fact, I’m relatively sure I punched him…hard.
But to talk at his funeral. It’s both an honour and a burden. What can I say to his closest friends and family? Part of me feels like a fraud. I haven’t seen Danny for years. Where was I in his time of need?
“Why don’t you go and look now? You have some time before the cars arrive. Go and read some of the things, it may help… And, Grace, I mean it—it feels right, you being here.”
I’m not entirely sure what that means, but I don’t linger on it; instead, I take my mug of tea up to Brandon’s room.
At the top of the stairs, to my right, the door to Danny’s room is closed. It’s not his room now, hasn’t been his room for a while. But I want to be close to him so I grab the box from Brandon’s room.
I see it immediately. It’s a bright red shoe box, the branding of the shoes that all kids our age wore at the time. I carefully pick the box up from the bed like it is a cherished belonging and walk into the box room, which used to house Danny’s bed and desk, but now only the desk remains. His parents turned the space into a study.
On the wall is a picture of Brandon and me. I’m dressed in a lilac fitted floor-length dress, Brandon in a suit. It was our end-of-year ball to celebrate the completion of A Levels for the year above us.
Danny was supposed to be my date, but a mean case of the shits meant he couldn’t go. I had offered to stick a cork up his butt, but he reckoned that with the speed and force he was expelling his insides it would potentially be a lethal weapon.
I giggle at the memory.
Brandon came with me and that was the night…. Our relationship turned from friendship to something that much more in the space of one evening.
I pull the chair out and place the box on the desk, opening the lid slowly.
Pieces of paper fall out onto the desk and I recognise my handwriting immediately. These are the notes and letters that we wrote to each other over the years.
It was the thing we did. Danny and I wrote letters, Brandon and I listened to songs that communicated how we felt, because talking was never my strong point. I start to pick through the messages, complete and utter bollocks. Waffling about boys, talking about my parents.
God, the things that I used to think were problems when I was a kid. If only I knew what real life could truly hit me with.
By the time someone knocks at the door, I have read them all and finished scribbling notes for the eulogy.
“Mum wanted me to tell you that the cars are about thirty minutes out.” Brandon’s frame fills the doorway, and his eyes look straight at the picture and he smiles a beautiful smile. “I swear they keep that up in the hopes that one day I’ll come to my senses.”
“Huh?” I frown, looking between Brandon and the photo that had also caught my attention when I first came in.
“Nothing,” he replies. I watch from the desk as Brandon continues to stare at the picture. “You’ve hardly changed.”
“Yeah, just add the massive bags and the wrinkles. But we can’t say the same for you, though, right? Look how much you’ve achieved in three years. I should look into eBay now.”
For the first time I acknowledge. God there’s that sodding word again.
Maybe he had made the right call all those years ago with leaving me behind when he went to America, but would I have held him back somehow, I guess we will never truly know.
“I’m still me, Grace. Don’t believe all the Hollywood bullshit.” He leans against the desk and looks down at the notes, picking up a random one from the pile. His eyes take in the scrawl of my writing. “Wow, you really did talk some drivel.”