Another Night, Another Day (37 page)

Leona nods. ‘But it wasn’t.’ She pauses. ‘I hope you’re glad?’ She looks at him quizzically, pompom tilted.

Michael nods. He’s still not comfortable gushing. ‘I’ve no idea why she did it – she seemed so happy when I met her, and that wasn’t long before she
died.’

‘We can never be inside someone else’s head, no matter how much we try. Often it’s hard to recall what it was like inside our own minds when we look back with hindsight. Bet
you find it tricky to remember how dire you felt a couple of months ago. Well, I hope you do.’ She grins.

Leona is someone whose smile never seems to irritate me, thinks Michael. And she’s right. The darkness of that particular night is gradually fading.

Then Leona’s face falls. ‘You know, I come across suicide more than I’d like to in my line of work. Often I find it hard to understand, same as everyone else left behind.
Frequently people preach about the selfishness of suicide, but it’s a choice we all have. And who are we to judge? Lillie may have wanted that release more than she wanted to carry on living
– no one has the right to say that was wrong of her.’ She stands up fully and stretches. ‘But I like to believe that sometimes we can make more sense of someone’s death if
we see it in the context of what that person contributed to others. Even a short life can have a huge impact.’

‘That’s a good way to look at it,’ says Michael. He recalls Lillie, the way she welcomed new arrivals at the clinic, the way she was prepared to face the responsibility of
checking-in first, the way she identified with others and made everyone laugh. Not forgetting the way she moved; her enthusiasm, her energy. He’ll never forget the evening they all danced
together. If it hadn’t been for Lillie, he’d have stayed sitting on the sofa, excluded by self-consciousness. She drew him in, encouraged him to be part of things. ‘Yeah. I reckon
she’d have liked that. And perhaps she’d given all she could.’

‘And now you’re helping others.’ Leona taps the letter. ‘I bet you’d never have done anything like this prior to your stroll into the sea, would you?’

‘Probably not.’ Michael frowns. ‘Although I’ve a lot more time on my hands these days.’

‘Oh, it’s more than that, surely? It’s as though losing everything has given you the opportunity to explore possibilities you’d never have thought yourself capable of
before.’

Michael squirms. She’s crediting me with more than I deserve, he thinks. ‘It’s only a bloody letter,’ he mutters.

‘A letter, my arse – it’s an
idea
. Fingers crossed her sister agrees. Do you want me to drop it off? I drive past those flats en route to my next patient.’

‘No, you’re all right,’ says Michael. ‘I was heading into Brighton myself.’

* * *

‘So, I guess today is the day we say goodbye,’ says Karen. It’s hard to imagine this will be the last time she’ll sit in a chair at the clinic with
Johnnie opposite her – eight more weeks have passed since she left day care; now she’s finishing one-to-one therapy too.

Johnnie nods. ‘Yes.’

Karen looks at him, with his floppy fringe and boyish face. It’s hard to believe he’s helped her so much but, along with the groups, the sessions they’ve shared have made a
real difference. She’s glad she held off on taking antidepressants, because in the end it was talking – connecting with others who were also vulnerable – that she, personally,
needed. So she no longer cries several times a day, she no longer feels bone-tired, she no longer worries quite so much, or wonders why she bothers with everything. She’s even starting to
remember the good times with her father again, regaining a sense of the man he was, just as her mother seems to be doing, too. Nonetheless, this is hard.

‘I hate goodbyes,’ she admits.

Johnnie crosses and uncrosses his legs. She senses he’s uncomfortable too.

‘Though at least I now know why.’ She doesn’t have to explain: they’re both aware of the reasons.

‘There’s a kind of shattering that happens with death – we often lose our sense of who we are and what our lives are about, and reconstruction is needed. But first we need to
accept that a part of us is broken,’ says Johnnie.

‘Yes . . .’

‘Every time we brush up against our own mortality it does remind us to take life seriously.’

‘I’ve had more than the odd brush,’ she reminds him, then laughs. ‘Feels more like I’ve been gone through with a nit comb. Golly, I remember my mother having to do
that when I was a girl. With hair like this, it was agony.’

Johnnie nods and smiles. ‘It might help to remember that every loss brings with it the opportunity for a new beginning.’

‘Still, I’d like a break from dealing with death so head-on for a bit.’ Karen leans back and looks at the ceiling. ‘Hear that, God, if you’re up there?’

* * *

‘Well I never! It
is
you!’ Ali comes to the door of his shop to watch as Michael chains his bicycle to a nearby lamp post. ‘When you got off that
thing, I said to myself, it looks like my friend Michael, and then I thought, no way can that be so. My friend does not ride a bicycle.’

Michael removes his helmet and runs his fingers across the crown of his head. Hat hair doesn’t look good on anyone. ‘I do now,’ he says.

‘My, you are looking very fit and trim.’

‘Thanks.’ Michael doesn’t confess it’s because he’s had to relinquish his car. ‘I’m on a bit of a health kick, trying to exercise more.’ Regular
exercise is part of the programme he’s been doing with Leona.

‘That is not a “bit” – it is a lot. It is many miles from Rottingdean to here.’

‘Only six,’ says Michael.

‘I could not bicycle six miles for all the money in Rajasthan,’ says Ali. ‘I blame Mrs A., feeding me too much.’ He pats his tummy.

Michael laughs. ‘So how is Mrs A.?’

‘Oh, she is good, good,’ Ali grins. ‘A man must not complain when he has a fine lady wife and after so many years that we are still, you know—’ he checks left and
right to ensure there is no one else in earshot, ‘ – doing the rumpy pumpy.’

Michael chuckles. Until recently he was so self-conscious about his own lack of libido that he would have changed the subject as fast as possible, but he seems to be getting his mojo back
– if last night with Chrissie was anything to go by – and he’d forgotten how much Ali’s humour tickles him.

‘So how’s business?’ he says, eyeing the store. The shelves look sadly depleted.

‘Don’t ask,’ says Ali, shaking his head. ‘I am OK here for now, but I cannot open any more hours, or lower my prices any further.’

‘Sorry to hear that,’ says Michael. He has a surge of anger. I should have put a brick through the window of the Tesco Metro, he thinks, rather than smashing up my shed. Though a fat
lot of good it would have done.

‘Oh, never mind me,’ says Ali, clapping Michael on the back. ‘Everything will turn out for the best, I am sure, in the long run. So, can I get you a cup of tea?’

Michael’s hot from his cycle ride. ‘Actually, a glass of tap water is fine.’ And as Ali disappears into the back of the shop to fetch one, Michael considers his friend. Ali
always was more optimistic than me, he acknowledges. I used to think he was naive, taking on this greengrocer a few years ago. Maybe I’ve been the one who lacked wisdom.

‘What have you been doing these last months?’ asks Ali when he returns. ‘Have you been working?’

‘Truthfully?’

Ali nods. ‘Yes, please. I do not wish you to lie. Look at me here.’ He shrugs, but his expression is cheerful. ‘Please do not feel you have to impress me.’

‘I’ve been thinking, mainly. Yeah . . .’ Michael pauses, wondering how best to sum up. ‘Initially I just kept going round and round, churning stuff over.’ That
barely touches on how bad I got, he admits to himself, but it’s not this he wants to share with Ali. ‘Anyway, I got to mulling about my . . . er . . . life, if you like. I realize
I’ve spent years being rather at sea.’

‘It sounds as if you transformed your joblessness into a sort of spiritual retreat,’ says Ali. These aren’t the words Michael would choose, but the gist is right. ‘I
believe being spiritual can be a very good use of time.’

‘I’m still not sure what I’m going to do next,’ Michael continues. ‘But Chrissie has a job now, and Ryan and Kelly are earning a bit as it’s the university
holidays, which helps take the immediate pressure off.’

‘I am glad about that,’ says Ali. ‘It was a lot of responsibility you had. Too much for one man to have on his shoulders.’

I’m glad too, thinks Michael, I’m very glad indeed.

And as he cycles back along the prom to Rottingdean, he recalls something Leona said before she waved goodbye to him that afternoon.

‘Sometimes I wonder whether what we call depression isn’t depression at all. Instead, like physical pain, it’s an alarm of sorts, alerting us that something is wrong. Maybe for
you it’s been like that, showing you that perhaps it was time to stop, to take time out, and address the unaddressed business of filling your soul.’

Very soppy way to phrase it, Michael thinks, but the sentiment rings true all the same.

‘Ahem . . . Hello?’

Michael is up a ladder putting the final touches to the display when he hears a voice behind him. He turns and sees a woman he thinks he recognizes, though she looks so different he’s not
entirely sure.

‘It’s Abby,’ she says helpfully. Little surprise he failed to place her. He’s never seen her out and about. Plus it’s been
months
. But the child in the
pushchair helps – he remembers her little boy being brought to visit her at Moreland’s.

‘Bloody hell,’ he says, before he can stop himself. He can’t tell exactly what’s changed – maybe her hair is longer, she’s put on weight, or perhaps
it’s simply that she’s caught the sun. After such a cold, grey start to the year, it’s turned out to be a spectacular summer.

‘I saw on Facebook you’d initiated this,’ she says.

Michael is caught off guard. That must have been Kelly; his daughter appears to have taken it upon herself to manage the event’s social media PR. ‘It’s not entirely down to me.
My son’s sorted all the music, and Lillie’s sister has helped fund it.’

‘Still,’ says Abby. ‘It’s a brilliant idea.’

‘Thanks.’ Michael is embarrassed, but hopefully she’ll just think he’s pink from the heat. It is very warm today – and he’s been working in the sunshine for
hours. It’s a good job they’re due to start soon, or the flowers will have wilted.

‘You’re OK,’ she says, eyeing the banner he’s securing to the highest point of the wrought-iron pillars that hold up the roof of the building. ‘It looks
straight.’

He climbs down from the ladder and joins her on the tiled walkway that leads from the bandstand to the promenade. At that moment there’s a fizz of electricity, and the
BOOM! BOOM!
bass of what he now knows is Ryan’s favourite Missy Elliot track.

At once Abby’s little boy claps his hands over his ears. ‘I’m not sure he’s going to manage this,’ she says. ‘He hates loud noise.’ She reaches beneath
the seat of the pushchair, retrieves a pair of ear defenders and eases them over his head.

‘I think my son’s only testing the system,’ says Michael. ‘We’re not due to start with anything that full-on.’

As he says this, the music stops. Thank God, he thinks. I like a bit of volume occasionally, but I still can’t stomach rap. He’s looking forward to the punk section at 7 p.m.;
he’s insisted Ryan include that. Michael might not have a full-time job yet, but he’s doing one day a week teaching flower-arranging to the patients up at Sunnyvale House, and he sure
as hell feels like pogoing.

* * *

Karen is heading along the seafront with Molly and Luke and Lou. Little Frankie is asleep in his pushchair, wrapped in a handmade patchwork quilt Lou says she received as a
surprise gift in the post that very morning. As they approach the bandstand the music is getting louder – Frankie’s slumber seems unlikely to last.

‘Hurry up!’ says Molly. She yanks on Karen’s sleeve to encourage her, but Karen can feel her mobile vibrating in her handbag, and stops to answer.

‘Hold on, darling,’ she says to her daughter. She can tell from the screen that it’s Abby.

‘I’m afraid I’m having to take Callum home, so won’t be able to meet up with you.’

‘Oh, that’s a pity.’

‘I thought he’d find it too much, in all honesty. But I’m glad we came down here. I just saw Michael.’

‘Michael? You didn’t!’

‘I did. He was doing the flowers.’

‘So you were right, it
was
his idea.’

‘I told you I read that online,’ says Abby. ‘Along with some other people.’

‘That’s amazing,’ says Karen. ‘Just shows what you can do if you put your mind to it.’

‘Yes, doesn’t it? Anyway, I hope you have fun. And I’m seeing you on Saturday, aren’t I?’

‘Oh God, yes.’ Karen winces.

‘You promised!’

‘I know, I know, we will do it. I told you, my friend Anna has been on at me to for ages.’

Heaven help me, what am I letting myself in for, she thinks.

‘Is she the one who met her boyfriend that way?’

‘Yes,’ says Karen. ‘The writer.’

‘Maybe she could advise us on our profiles,’ says Abby.

‘That’s a good idea.’ Anna would love nothing more than to use her copywriting skills to help us sell ourselves, she thinks. Maybe if we crack open some wine after I’ve
put the kids to bed I’ll lose my inhibitions. Yes, Karen can picture them now, the three of them crowded round her computer screen, ogling potential suitors and giggling . . .
‘I’ll see when she’s free.’ Molly yanks Karen’s sleeve once again. ‘Sorry, I’d better go.’

‘Who’s Michael?’ says Lou, the moment she rings off.

Karen blushes.

Lou peers at her closely, eyes narrowed.

‘No, no,’ protests Karen. ‘You’ve got that all wrong.’ But given the event they’re going to, it seems more ludicrous than ever that she’s not filled Lou
in on this properly before. ‘Er . . . You know I told you I met Abby on a course?’

‘Ye–es . . . ?’

‘I met Michael at the same time. She says he’s done the flowers for the bandstand.’