Page 93 of Days You Were Mine

And then I do start crying, even though I have tried so hard not to, and Rick comes over and puts his arms around me.

‘Oh Alice,’ he says. ‘I cannot bear it for you.’

‘I just want today to be over.’

‘It’s still a special day. We’ll find a way to mark it.’

It’s beautifully warm, this August day, and we take a picnic to the beach and sit beneath the sun with all the other summer tourists. Families with foil wrappers full of sandwiches, packets of crisps and flasks of squash. Beside us a little girl is solemnly eating a Jaffa Cake while her father rubs suncream into her shoulders. A few feet in front, a man is building a sand car for his toddler; an empty Ski yoghurt pot marks the steering wheel. Jake loved Ski yoghurt; he could eat two or three pots at a time, and I turn away, scorched.

Charlie dozes in the shade of the buggy while Rick and I eat our sandwiches, and after lunch, Rick begins sketching, zoning in on a couple sitting close to the water’s edge. I watch over his shoulder as he exaggerates the woman’s roundness, her husband’s angularity, all elbows and shoulder blades cuddling his mountain of flesh.

‘You’re mean,’ I say, and he laughs.

‘This is for me, not them. Why don’t you go for a swim while the baby’s asleep?’

I miss my chance, sitting beside Rick, watching him finish his sketch. Charlie opens his eyes at the exact moment I’m looking at him. Instantly he’s smiling. There you are, his smile says.

‘Come on, then,’ I say, picking him up. ‘Let’s take your little boat out.’

The water, the warmest it has been all summer, soothes me. I wade out to my waist, pushing Charlie in front of me, and he gazes up at the cloudless sky and I try to think that somehow, somewhere his father can see him. For me, the sea is magical; the water soaks up my pain, and soon I am swimming, kicking my legs behind me, arms outstretched as if I am holding a float.When I look back, Rick is just a tiny dot on a blue and white blanket. I could do this forever, the physicality so absorbing that for a while I am able to think of nothing; it’s just me and my child and the motion of my legs through the water.

It’s only when Charlie begins to wail that I realise how far I’ve travelled. I turn the boat around and swim back to shore, kicking as hard as I can, but each cry of Charlie’s cuts through me.

Rick is waiting for us at the edge of the water, squinting through the sun.

‘For God’s sake, Alice. You were ages. How can you be so selfish? You shouldn’t take him out there for so long.’

It is the first time he has ever shouted at me, and my anger fires in response.

‘He’s my baby, not yours,’ I say, hurting him in the only way I know how. ‘And he’s fine. Here, you take him.’

I storm up the beach, intoxicated by rage, by anger. I walk all the way up to the cannons, where we have picnicked with Charlie so many times, and pace around them in tight circles, sobbing, sobbing. I want to hurt someone; maybe just myself. I feel like smashing my fist into the black iron barrels until my knuckles splinter and my flesh rips.

‘I can’t do this any more,’ I scream to the ancient guns.

I don’t notice a woman sitting on a bench close by until she calls out to me, ‘What’s wrong, my dear?’

‘My boyfriend is dead,’ I tell her. ‘He died. He’s dead. And I need him. I need him so badly.’

And I cry and cry and this old lady, whose name I will never know, tells me to sit with her on the bench, and she holds my hand and says over and over again, ‘You poor thing. You poor little thing.’ She tells me to keep on crying; she says, ‘Tears help,’ and perhaps she is right, because when I finally stop,I feel exhausted but the pain is almost gone, it’s muted and distant, and I know I can last for one more day.

Back in the cottage, Rick says, ‘Alice, I am so sorry,’ as soon as I walk through the door.

‘No,I’msorry. I didn’t mean it.’

‘There’s tea in the pot,’ he says, pointing at the table, and neither of us mentions my swollen eyes.

After supper, Rick takes a bottle of wine from the fridge. Vivid green glass, extended swanlike neck. He flashes the label at me.

‘Muscadet,’ I say, though what I really mean is: how could you? How could you remind me of that perfect weekend, you, me, Jake and Tom eating mussels and playing cards and drinking this wine as if our lives would continue to infinity?

‘Sometimes we need to remember,’ he says.

We wrap Charlie up in a sweater and coat and hat and take the wine down to the beach. It’s dark now, and we sit beneath the charcoal sky watching the stars come out, checking off our favourite constellations one by one. We don’t mention Cassiopeia, but he sees it and I see it and I think that he was right to make me come here, drinking the same wine and watching the same stars of a year ago, linked together in the universe at least.

After a while, he says, ‘Do you know why some stars are brighter than others?’

And I shake my head, although I do know, because Jake told me.

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