“That could just mean he wants to talk to you and make sure you’re okay,” Peggy said as the cabbie casually veered across two lanes of traffic without signaling.
A thousand thoughts were clamoring for attention in Andrew’s mind, and he didn’t even notice that Peggy had slid across the seats until he felt her head on his shoulder.
“How are you feeling?” she said.
Andrew puffed out his cheeks.
“Like someone’s just removed a splinter I’ve had in my foot for a hundred years.”
Peggy rearranged her head on his shoulder.
“Good.”
The cabbie’s radio crackled into life—the control room telling him he could go home after this job.
“God, it’s no good, I’m falling asleep,” Peggy said. “Wake me up when we’re at Croydon, eh?”
“I think you’re the first person in history ever to have said that,” Andrew said. Peggy elbowed him halfheartedly.
“So, earlier, when you came into the kitchen,” Andrew said, feeling unusually uninhibited given all that had just gone on. “I couldn’t tell if you’d heard what I’d just said. About, well, me maybe being in love with you.”
For a moment he thought Peggy was choosing how to respond, but then he heard the soft sounds of her breathing. She was asleep. He rested his head gently against hers. It felt entirely natural, in a way that made his heart soar and ache at the same time.
He’d be lucky if he got a minute’s sleep that night, his brain was so wired. He had already sent the recording to Carl, but there had been no response. He wondered if there ever would be.
He found himself thinking of Sally—the moment where she’d handed him that beautiful green model train engine, winking at him and ruffling his hair. Maybe, if they had their time again, they’d have been able to fix things. But he shook the thought from his head. He was tired of fantasizing. He’d done enough of that for one lifetime. He drank the last dregs from the wine and raised the bottle in a silent toast to his sister.
— CHAPTER 36 —
Two mornings later Andrew woke with a start. He’d been dreaming about what had happened at Rupert’s house and for a horrible few seconds he couldn’t be quite sure what was real and what his subconscious had decided to twist. But when he checked his phone the message Carl had sent him the morning after the phone call was still there: “Fuck you, Andrew. Enjoy your guilt money.”
Andrew knew at some point he’d have to think about that guilt, and how he was going to deal with it—and what he was actually going to do with the money—but for now he was just hopelessly glad that everything with Carl was over.
He went to put the kettle on, feeling the unusual sensation of stiffness in his legs. The previous evening he’d been for what he’d ambitiously billed as a “run,” which in actual fact had been closer to a “stagger” around the block. It had been agony at the time, but there was a moment when he’d gotten back—post-shower, post–meal-made-with-something-green-in-it—where he felt a rush of endorphins (previously a thing he’d imagined were mythical, like unicorns or something) so strong that he finally understood why people put themselves through this. There was life in the old dog yet, it seemed.
He fried some bacon and looked directly into the tile-camera. “So you may have noticed I have accidentally burned this rasher, but given I’m about to put a Lake Windermere’s worth of brown sauce on it, it doesn’t really matter.”
He stretched his arms up behind his head and yawned. The whole weekend lay in front of him, and unusually, he had plans that didn’t involve Ella Fitzgerald and browsing the forum.
—
It was going to be a long journey, but he was well prepared. He had a book and his iPod and had dusted off his old camera so he could take some snaps if the mood took him. When it came to his packed lunch he had gone entirely rogue, making sandwiches with white bread and experimenting with new fillings, one of which, in a move so daring he was barely able to contain himself, was crisps.
To his dismay, he got onto his train at Paddington with time to spare, only to find his reservation meant he was slap-bang in the middle of a bachelor party, who were already getting stuck into the beers. It was three hours to Swansea, and that allowed for a lot more drinking time and wee quaffing, or whatever it was people did on these things. They had personalized T-shirts commemorating “Damo’s Stag” and already seemed quite tipsy. But, against all the odds, they actually turned out to be pleasant company, offering snacks to everyone else in the carriage, helping people put their suitcases on the overhead shelves with faux competitiveness, before breaking out crosswords and quizzes to pass the time. Andrew found himself so caught up in the general air of bonhomie that he ended up scoffing his packed lunch before midday, like a naughty schoolboy on a trip. The onward journey from Swansea was a more somber affair, although a lady with purple hair knitting a purple bobble hat offered him a purple boiled sweet from a tin, like something out of an advert from a bygone era.
—
The station was so small it barely had a platform—one of those stops where you practically walk straight out onto the street as soon as you alight. Checking the route on his phone, Andrew took a turning onto a narrow lane where the houses on opposite sides seemed to lean toward each other, and for the first time he began to truly feel the nerves that had been bubbling away under the surface ever since he’d left London.
The church was unassuming, its spire small enough to be concealed from view by two modest yews. The place had a wildness about it—the gate at its entrance covered with moss, the grass in the graveyard was overgrown—but the early autumn air felt still.
He’d prepared himself for a lengthy search. A process of elimination. He half remembered holding the phone to his ear and a voice telling him this was where the funeral was to be held, then the confusion and hurt following his mute response. The only detail he could remember was that the church was near the rugby ground where Gavin had claimed to have seen the flying saucer.
In the end, he’d barely walked past half a dozen headstones when he saw the name he was looking for.
Diane Maude Bevan.
He thrust his hands into his pockets, rocking on the balls of his feet, building up the courage to approach. Eventually he did, slowly, as if moving to the edge of a cliff. He hadn’t brought anything with him—flowers, or anything like that. That just didn’t feel right, somehow. He was in touching distance now. He dropped down to his knees and gently ran his hand across Diane’s name, tracing each letter’s contour. “Well,” he said. “I’d forgotten how much you hated your middle name. It took me a whole Sunday to get it out of you, remember?”
He took a deep breath, hearing the tremor as he let it out. He leaned forward until his forehead was resting gently against the headstone.
“I know this doesn’t count for much now, but I am so sorry for never coming to see you. And for being so scared. You probably worked this out much sooner than I did, but you know I never really was able to accept that you were gone. After Dad, and Mum . . . and then Sally leaving . . . I couldn’t let you go too. And then somehow I got the chance to build this place, this world, where you were still here, and I couldn’t resist. It wasn’t supposed to be for long, but it got out of control so quickly. Before I knew it I was even inventing the arguments we’d have. Sometimes it was just silly stuff—you despairing about me and my silly model trains, mostly—but other times it was more serious: disagreements about how we were bringing up the kids, worrying that we’d not lived our lives to the full and hadn’t seen enough of the world. That’s the tip of the iceberg, really; I thought about everything. Because it wasn’t just one life with you I imagined, it was a million different ones, with every possible fork in the road. Of course every now and then I’d feel you pulling away from me, and I knew that was your way of telling me to let go, but that just made me cling on more. And, the thing is, it was only after the game was finally up that I was actually able to pull my stupid, self-absorbed head out of my arse and think about what you would have actually said if you knew for one single second what I was doing. I’m just sorry I didn’t think of that sooner. I just hope you can forgive me, even though I don’t deserve it.”