Page 95 of Midnight in Paris

He shook his head.

Thanking him again, she climbed back into the driver’s seat and drove to the familiar row of the car park closest to Tom’s memorial. Climbing out, feeling cold and bedraggled, she grabbed the daffodils and made her way to his stone. She knelt in front of it, not worrying about the damp grass, and traced his name in the grooves of the little plaque with her finger. ‘I miss you,’ she told him, as she removed last week’s chrysanthemums and arranged the daffodils as best she could.

She didn’t always cry now when she came here. Sometimes she’d chat to him quietly, share secrets. Other times she’d just stand and look and think. But today she felt hot tears springfrom her eyes – a combination of grief and exhaustion and the aftermath of her earlier frustration.

‘Why did you have to leave?’ she asked the stone bearing Tom’s name. ‘I’m so alone. So fucking alone.’

She let her head drop, fell silent in her grief. The only noise in the garden was the whisper of grass, the sound of distant traffic.

But then there was something else. The tread of footsteps behind her.

‘Sophie?’ a voice said.

She looked up and there he was. Will. His eyes full of concern.

‘Will! What are you doing here? Not that… it’s good you’re here.’

He shrugged. ‘I come here sometimes. Tom was a mate. I talk to him. Stupid, really.’

‘It’s not.’ She straightened up, rubbing her eyes. ‘Ignore me,’ she added, trying to smile. ‘It’s just… it’s been a day.’

He looked at her, his blue eyes full of kindness. ‘I know the feeling.’

‘It’s good to see you.’

‘You too.’ He lifted the umbrella that he was holding to protect her from the rain.

‘Probably a bit too late to rescue me,’ she joked, looking down at her sodden coat, feeling her hair hang in rats’ tails around her face.

‘Coffee?’ he asked.

She nodded. ‘Thank you.’

Because it wasn’t too late at all.

Sophie smiled now. Loving, dependable Will. Always somehow there, in the periphery of her life. Now at the heart of it, where he so definitely belonged.

52

OCTOBER 2019

‘I’m sorry for your loss,’ said the man, bowing his head slightly as he shook her hand. Hers was limp and he grasped it with both of his as she looked at him, wondering who he was and whether she cared.

She could stay an hour and that would be enough. Then she’d make an excuse and get home. Sophie couldn’t stand being here; the rumble of conversation in the background already making her feel as if people were moving on, the memorial service already in their rear-view mirrors.

She stood in a huddle with Libby, her parents, Sam, Will, some friends from university who’d made an appearance, sipping wine and simply trying to get through it. Once in a while someone she didn’t know would clasp her hand and give her an emphatic ‘sorry for your loss’; otherwise, people tended to cluster with others they knew and fall into conversation – perhaps about Tom, perhaps about cancer, perhaps about something completely different.

‘Have some more wine,’ Libby told her, giving her arm a squeeze. ‘You’ve nearly made it.’

And it was true. She’d made it through the service, through the readings and the Humanist sermon that described someone who only half-sounded like Tom. She’d made the journey between there and here, dazed, in the back of a limousine. And now she’d spent almost sufficient time here to be able to call it a day, and slip away to actually start grieving.

It was odd, all the expected protocol of death. She understood it was a chance to honour Tom, to say goodbye. But all it had done so far, in reality, was make her feel very much on the periphery of things. Julie, Tom’s mum, was holding court, resplendent in a black shift dress and angled hat. His father, Doug, sipped wine and talked quietly in the corner. They’d become distant, their dealings with her brief and business-like. Somehow as if they resented her. Perhaps because she’d taken Tom from them in his final years.

‘Maybe they just can’t deal with it,’ Libby had suggested when she’d mentioned it. ‘Nobody’s their best self when coping with grief.’

She’d nodded. ‘I suppose.’

‘There’s no suppose about it! You smashed my best coffee cup the other day, remember? When I said the wrong thing?’ Libby’s tone was teasing, as light as it could be in the circumstances. She slung an arm around Sophie. ‘And it was fine. Because I’d probably do the same. But maybe this is their bad behaviour. Not about you at all.’

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