Page 45 of The Life Experiment
Moving deeper into the room, Angus’s eyes widened.
The leaves weren’t just pretty decorations – they were dedications. Some contained inscriptions, some displayed photographs, some simply named a date, but all were unique, and all were dedicated to someone.
Someone who was loved.
Someone who was gone.
Someone who was remembered.
A lump formed in Angus’s throat. When his neck swivelled to take in the room once more, a leaf glinting in the sunlight caught his attention. Made from silver card, it was almost holographic. Tilting it to get a better view, Angus saw that a photograph of an old woman holdinga baby was glued in the centre. Beneath the image, written in childish script, was the word‘Gran’.
As the burn in Angus’s throat intensified, he moved about the room, reading as many inscriptions as he could.
‘You said our love was written in the stars. Now every night, I know where to find you’.
‘You’ll always be mummy’s special boy.’
‘A love that is lost is never gone. It lives on forever, in every beat of my heart.’
Each declaration landed heavy in Angus’s chest.Who would write a leaf for me?he wondered. His parents, he supposed, although it was hard to imagine Gilly displaying such uninhibited affection. She’d used up all her emotion when Hugo died.
Jasper and his friends, perhaps, although sentimentality wasn’t their strong point.
Layla, he hoped, although once she learned of his lies, would she even want to remember him? As the thought made Angus’s shoulders slump, the doors to the Memory Tree Room opened behind him.
‘Sorry,’ came a Scottish accent. ‘I can come back later—’
Grateful for the interruption, Angus turned to the short, stocky man in the doorway. ‘Please, come in,’ he said.
Nodding, the man entered the room and closed the doors. Moving through the space like he knew exactly where he was going, he stopped beneath a purple leaf near the far wall. Angus tried not to watch, but he couldn’t help it. There was something in the man’s shimmering eyes that he couldn’t look away from.
‘I’m Chris, by the way,’ the man said after a moment.
‘Angus.’
‘Really? I wanted to call my son Angus, but the wife said over her dead body. There was an actor she fancied with that name. Said she couldn’t name her son after someone she’d had a sex dream about.’ Chris laughed, then nodded to the leaf. ‘We lost her a year ago today.’
Angus blinked, taking in the youth of the man before him. A man who had known love and loss, yet did not look a day over forty. ‘I’m sorry,’ was all Angus could think to say.
‘Aye, me too. I don’t think I’ll ever stop being sorry about it, but I come in here and talk to Fearne whenever I visit. She never replies. Rude, don’t you think?’
‘Maybe she’s too busy telling Angus the actor about you to talk.’
Chris laughed again, but this time his laugh mingled with something that sounded a lot like tears. Angus searched his brain for something to say to make things better, but what words had the power to do that?
‘I woke up today and didn’t know what to do,’ Chris admitted. ‘A year without her… It’s flown, in some ways. In others it feels like a lifetime. Most days, I still can’t believe she’s gone. I thought seeing this today might help.’
Angus glanced up at the leaf. ‘Has it?’
‘Does anything help when you wake up to an empty bed in a house you bought with someone you thought you’d grow old with?’ As if remembering where he was, Chris glanced back at Angus. ‘Sorry, you don’t need me depressing you.’
‘It’s fine. I’m fine.’
‘Well, that makes one of us,’ Chris joked. ‘You know, before she passed, Fearne said to me, “If you don’t live every day like you’re lucky to be here, I’ll come back and haunt you so bad you’ll wish you were dead.” Sometimes I feel like wasting the day in front of the TV in my underwear just so she’ll come back and tell me off.’
The men settled into a companionable silence before Angus broke it. ‘Do you, then?’
‘Do what, watch TV in my underwear?’
