Page 7 of The Two Lives of Lydia Bird

She sighs, wavering. I can see she knows it’s true. I don’t think she really wants to lose it either. ‘Maybe.’

‘Omelettes are lovely,’ Elle offers.

A thought occurs to me. ‘Did Kathrin Magyar sell you a new dining table?’

Mum reaches for her coffee and pats the tabletop like an old friend. ‘I’ll cancel the order.’

Kathrin Magyar might be good, but she never stood a chance against the Bird family collective.

I look down at Freddie’s grave, at a bunch of cellophane-wrapped roses laid along the base of the headstone, garish beside the bedraggled arrangement of daisies and wildflowers I placed there myself last week. Someone else must have been. A colleague, or perhaps Maggie, Freddie’s mum, although she doesn’t come that often – she finds it too distressing. He was her beloved only child, so much so that she found it a struggle to include me in her circle of love. She wasn’t unkind, it was more that she took underlying pleasure in having Freddie to herself. We’ve met up a couple of times since Freddie’s death, but I’m not sure it does either of us any service. Hers is a different sort of loss, one I can’t relate to.

The fact that I don’t find it maudlin myself has surprised me; I appreciate having a place to come and talk to him. My eyes flicker back to the roses as I open the fresh flowers I picked out at the florist on the way here. Sweet Williams, freesias and some interesting silvery green foliage. Never anything as obvious as roses. Roses are for Valentine’s Day, the romance-by-numbers choice of the unimaginative lover. Throw in a teddy and the job’s a good one. Mine and Freddie’s love was a world away from card-shop clichés and helium hearts. It was big and real, and now I feel like half a person, as if an artist turned their pencil upside down and erased half of me from the page too.

‘Who’s been to visit you, Freddie?’ I say, settling my bum down on the grass, my bag at my feet. There’s something terribly depressing about keeping a bag in the boot of the car with cemetery essentials, isn’t there? An empty water bottle I fill up at the tap, scissors to cut the flowers to size, cleaning wipes, those kinds of things.

When I first started to come here, I used to try to prepare in my head what I was going to say. It didn’t work. So now I just sit in the silence, close my eyes and imagine that I’m somewhere else entirely. I’ve conjured all kinds of places for us. I’ve been at home on the sofa, my feet on Freddie’s lap. I’ve been beside him on a sun lounger in Turkey, an ill-advised package holiday to a godawful hotel survived mainly thanks to endless free shots of raki. And we’ve been opposite each other in Sheila’s small, steamy cafe around the corner from our house, the one we used to go to for a hangover-busting full English after a heavy night out, beetroot on mine, specially bought in for my regular order by Sheila. It doesn’t take me more than a couple of seconds to decide where we’re going today. We’re in the safety of our big warm Savoy bed, facing each other on the pillows, the quilt pulled over our shoulders.

‘Hey, you,’ I say as my eyes drift closed, a half-smile already on my mouth. ‘It’s me again.’

Thanks to what happened last night, I don’t struggle to bring Freddie’s face into focus as I sometimes do. His fingers tangle with mine between our bodies, warm and strong, and in my head he grins and says, ‘Back already? You’re eager.’

I huff gently. ‘I can’t tell you how good it was to see you again,’ I say, barely more than a whisper. ‘I’ve missed you so very much.’

He reaches out and strokes the back of his fingers down my cheek. ‘I’ve missed you too,’ he tells me, and we don’t say anything at all for a few minutes. I just look at him and he looks back at me in a slow, meditative way we would never have taken the time to do when he was here. ‘So what’s new with you then?’ he says after a while, wrapping a strand of my hair around his finger.

‘Not much, really,’ I say, which isn’t an understatement seeing as I rarely leave the house these days. ‘I’ve been for breakfast with Mum and Elle this morning. Cheese and onion omelettes because Mum wanted to test a new pan she bought off the TV.’ I pause, then get going again. ‘Auntie June and Uncle Bob have taken up archery,’ I say. Freddie always found their ever-changing roster of hobbies amusing; they seem to work their way through the adult classes prospectus regardless of any innate ability. All in good humour though, they’re salt-of-the-earth people and Auntie June has been a rock for Mum since Freddie died. I suspect she’s been the one propping Mum up so she can prop me up. I adore Auntie June, she’s uncannily like Mum. They share the same infectious laugh, a sound guaranteed to make everyone around them laugh too.

‘Dawn and Julia from work came round a few nights ago, brought a card and some grapes. Grapes! As if I’m ill or something.’ I hear the scorn in my voice and feel bad for it. ‘It was kind of them to come though. I’m not the best company at the moment.’ I pause and then laugh softly. ‘I don’t even like bloody grapes.’

I keep my eyes closed as I cast around for more news to share with him. ‘Elle got herself a new job,’ I say, remembering my sister’s big news. ‘She’s going to be the events manager at that fancy new hotel in town. Lots of free cake, or so she reckons.’

What else can I tell him? Very little changes in my day-to-day life. He’d probably appreciate some sports news, football or rugby, but I’m at a loss there.

‘The doctor gave me some new pills a couple of days ago,’ I say, almost sheepish because Freddie had a thing about never taking tablets. ‘Just something to help me sleep. Mum insisted, you know how she gets.’ I know there is no shame in needing some help, but I want him to be proud of how I’m coping. In my head he asks me if the tablets have helped, and I smile, hesitant. ‘I didn’t think they would. I haven’t been sleeping in our bed at all, until the other night.’

‘And how was it?’ he asks.

‘I didn’t realize you were still here,’ I breathe, my heart quickening. ‘I’ve been so afraid to go to sleep, not realizing that you were waiting for me.’ I half laugh, giddy.

‘I feel different today, Freddie,’ I say, quiet even though there’s no one around to hear me. ‘Every day since the accident has felt like I’m moving through a grey fog or something, but today there’s a chink of light. It’s like, I don’t know …’ I shrug and cast around for a way to explain. ‘As if you’re flashing a torch at me in a complicated sequence from somewhere a long way away and I’m concentrating really hard to follow the pattern. To find you. What are we doing right now where you are?’ I glance at my watch. ‘Midday on Saturday. No doubt you’re going to the football with Jonah.’

God, I can even be pass-agg to a dead man. It’s just that sometimes when I think of Jonah and that fast-fading scar across his eyebrow I boil with the injustice of it all. Freddie should have come straight home on my birthday, not detoured to Jonah’s. My logical brain kicks in most of the time and tells me that it’s hideous to lay even a speck of blame at Jonah’s door, but sometimes, late at night, I can’t stop the thoughts. I’ve pretty much avoided him since the funeral; texts have gone unanswered, missed calls not returned. I know he doesn’t deserve such treatment, but I can’t help it.

‘Don’t be so hard on him,’ Freddie tells me.

I sigh because it’s easy for him to say. ‘I know, I know. It’s just …’ I open the pack of wipes as I pause, because even speaking the words out loud feels too much. ‘It’s just that I sometimes wonder if you’d only let him drive himself for once …’ I huff, wiping the headstone a little too vigorously as I finish the sentence inside my head.

‘He was my best friend,’ Freddie reminds me. ‘And your oldest friend too, remember?’

I push the dead flowers into the rubbish bag, breaking the brittle stems as I shake my head. ‘Of course I remember,’ I say. I’ve known Jonah even longer than I’ve known Freddie. ‘But things change. People change.’

‘Jonah doesn’t,’ Freddie says, and I don’t tell him he’s wrong, even though he is. A light went out in Jonah the day of the accident, one I’m not sure he’ll ever find a way to reignite. I sigh and look to the skies, aware that I’m adding to Jonah’s burden by distancing myself, and feeling shoddy for it.

‘I’ll try, okay?’ I say. ‘Next time I see him, I’ll make the effort.’ It’s a deal I make with the knowledge that Jonah isn’t someone I run into very often.

‘I guess I should get going,’ I say, gathering my things back into the bag. I subconsciously trace my eyes around the golden letters of Freddie’s name. Freddie Hunter. His mum wanted to put Frederick – we came as close to rowing as we ever have about it. I stood my ground. He hated being called Frederick, no way was I having it etched on his gravestone for all eternity.

I linger beside the stone, ready and not ready to go. This is the worst bit about coming here: leaving. I try not to think about it too much, about the reality of what is left of him beneath the ground. There were times in the darkest nights just after his funeral when I seriously contemplated vaulting the cemetery gates and scrabbling in the dirt until my fingers closed around the unassuming black pot that holds my life as well as his inside it. It’s a bloody good job we didn’t have Freddie buried; I cannot be certain I’d have been able to stop myself from turning up with a torch and a spade and burying myself beneath the dark earth with him.

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