We Are All Made of Stars (27 page)

‘I don't have any answers,' I tell him. There are a few feet of pavement between us. Passers-by walk in and out of our conversation, oblivious to this moment that means so much, just within this few square yards of grubby street.

‘I have to talk to someone, and I can't talk to her, you see. She's a ghost. She's a dream. She's … a monster.'

‘She isn't.' I shake my head. ‘I can tell you that; she isn't. She has been broken. Life's broken her, and it's hurt you. But she isn't a monster. She just wanted to leave a clean slate.'

His laugh is bitter, cold, and I take a step back. I don't blame him, I can't blame him, for the way he feels. I can only blame myself for bringing him the news.

‘She wants to leave a clean slate.' He shakes his head. ‘No matter what pain she leaves behind. Well, yes, I suppose that is her MO.'

‘Hugh.' I hesitate. ‘May I call you Hugh? I understand how you must feel. When I wrote the letter for her, I was shocked, but … Grace is your mother.'

‘My mother.' His smile is so wretched as he says the word, pregnant with meaning. ‘The mother who left me a suicide note and vanished into thin air. The mother I've thought was dead since I was ten years old.'

Dear Son,

The last letter I wrote to you was supposed to be just that. It's important that you know that. It wasn't a trick, or a lie. It wasn't an excuse or a get-out clause. I meant to do it. I meant to die.

I wanted to love you so much, my little boy. So much. And you poured all of your love into me, no matter what a terrible mother I was. No matter how many afternoons I was passed out drunk on the sofa, or not there to collect you from school. Or the days that you didn't eat until your father got in. I'd fail you, day by day, year on year, and yet still you greeted me with shining eyes. You deserved so much more than me – than my selfish, capricious, cold-hearted self. No, it's not even that. I wasn't cold-hearted. I knew what a sweet, funny, clever, lovable little boy you were, but I couldn't
feel
it. I couldn't feel anything but the dragging down of this great sadness like a millstone around my neck, and I thought, I thought what a relief it would be to let it take me, to not have to fight to come up for air any more.

And I thought about you without me there any more, and I was certain life would be better for you, and for your father, without having to battle my black cloud that covered us all.

But I am a coward, darling boy. I'm a coward and I always have been. I didn't want to live but I was too scared to die, so I ran away. And I did have a sort of death for a long time. Day after day, drunk, lonely, I let life use me up. Sleeping rough, doing things … things I am ashamed of.

One day, years and years after I left, I found a friend, or rather she found me. A stranger, a passer-by. She lifted me up from the gutter and took me somewhere where I could wash and be warm, and eat food and feel safe. And she let me stay there. Every day I thought I would leave, but every day I stayed. And first one, then two, then three days went by without a drink, and the days turned into weeks, and months. It wasn't as easy as that: I cried, I beat my fists, I threatened her and myself, but I could have left at any time. Only I didn't. I stayed. And one day I got up, and the black cloud, it hadn't gone, but it had lifted – enough for me to see a far horizon. That's when I cried for you, my darling boy, for you and your father. That's when I cried and grieved over what I'd done to you. That's when I fell in love with you, when I wanted you, adored you, longed to hold you. At the exact moment I knew it was too late. I knew that I could not come back. That you were both better off without me.

Well now, my son, I am dying, and I am still a coward. I don't want to go. I don't want to leave this world that I feel like I have only just learned how to live in. But I have to pay the price; there is no choice.

When you read this letter, I will already be dead. You will hate me. You will be angry, and bitter and outraged; you will not understand why. I don't ask you to forgive me, or to even care that I am gone. But dear, dear boy, please know you had a mother who loved you – not for long enough, and from afar, but she loved you with every waking moment, and in every sleeping moment dreamed of you.

Your mother,

Grace

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

Looking at him across the table is a curious experience. It's the first time I've seen him in full light. The chase must have taxed him; his face is waxy with sweat, his dark hair turned wavy with damp. He has a sort of sweet softness to him – the polar opposite of Vincent's rugged good looks. He has a face that has read a lot of books. There was nothing to do but to cross the road with him to the twenty-four-hour café next to the taxi rank and buy him a cup of milky white, strong and sweet.

I smiled at Hussein behind the counter. He knows all of us from Marie Francis; we come in a lot throughout the night, and sometimes he'll bring us over a tray of doughnuts as a treat.

‘I'm sorry,' I say to Hugh. It seems like the only sensible thing to say. He's lost so much, and even the things he's found, he's going to lose again. ‘Perhaps, though … Perhaps this might be for the best …?'

‘Because everything happens for a reason?' he says wearily. ‘Sounds like one of the posters you see with kittens on, pinned up in an office. Not everything happens for a reason. Most things happen for no reason at all.'

‘Believe me, I know that,' I say. ‘You must have had a very long time of missing her. Life must have been hard for you.'

He shakes his head once. It's a tight, tense movement, guarding so much pain. I feel it radiate from him. I recognise it: it's anger.

‘Not at all. I had a wonderful father; I never wanted for anything. She was right, what she wrote in the letter. Life was better without her.'

I don't respond; there is no response. Looking out of the window, I watch the empty street, existing beyond the reflected lights of the café, and I wait.

‘She doesn't know that you gave me the letter?' he says finally.

I shake my head. ‘I was on my way to tell her, when you stopped me. I broke my promise to her. I've betrayed her, and I don't know why, really, except that last night … I was hurt and angry, and tired of life never being the way I think it should be. So I made a gesture. I thought that you both deserved a chance to say things to each other's faces before it was too late. But that wasn't my choice to make. It was foolish and selfish. And I'm sorry.'

Once again he is silent, and I let him be.

‘I think … well, I think perhaps my marriage fell apart last night. And I'm not offering that as an excuse, or even a reason. It's just … fate has this way of throwing a bomb into our lives and standing back as everything we thought was certain is scattered to the four winds. I came here tonight because I knew I had to see Grace. But after that … I really have no idea what is happening next. I've come to this point in my life – thirty-two years old – and I believe that from today I have to start again completely. I have to start from zero. So what I'm trying to say is, it feels shit right now, but eventually, knowing everything, knowing it all, as bad as it is, means you can start from zero again. You can build your life on the truth instead of lies.'

‘You like to talk, don't you?' he says wearily, and somehow I know it's an effort for him to keep from resting his head on the tabletop. I know, because it's an effort for me too.

‘I'm sorry.' I shrug. ‘You know, I think that's partly my problem; I always want to fix everyone, everything, whether they want it or not. I think that's why I became a nurse in the first place. I trained to be a trauma nurse, and that was simple. I mean, it wasn't
simple
, it was hard, but we knew what we were trying to do; we were trying to fix bones, hearts, heads – people. After my husband got his leg blown off in Afghanistan, I couldn't face it any more, going to work to fix other people when I couldn't fix him. And I needed a job out of his way, so when I saw this job, I thought it would work well for me. No fighting against anything any more, just caring. I thought that would be good. I don't know. Maybe I'm not cut out to be a nurse after all.'

‘You could retrain to do a job in talking the hind leg off a donkey,' Hugh mutters. ‘Sorry, that was rude. And I'm sorry to hear about your husband. And actually it's not you that I'm angry with. It's just, it took Dad and me a long time to get our act together, but we did it. And now I'm at a point in my life that is settled, even optimistic – a point where I find myself thinking about a life with someone else in it. It felt nice, and now this. Now I have this to deal with.'

‘So all this time you thought she had killed herself?' I ask him.

He nods, hunching his shoulders against some cold that only he feels.

‘When I was ten years old, I came downstairs one morning, and there was Mum's letter on the table, written on a piece of lined paper ripped out from my exercise book – my homework was on the back. Her watch, a cheap gold watch Dad had given her when they were married, was weighing it down, along with her rings.'

He stares at the tabletop as he talks, reliving that moment, watching it play out on the Formica.

‘Dad was still asleep. It was Saturday, and my dad always had a lie in on a Saturday. I always got up and came down and had toast with Mum. She'd be wearing her nightie, we'd sit and eat and talk, and she'd tell me jokes and make me laugh, she'd ruffle my hair. Sometimes I helped her sort socks or iron pillowcases. It was this small amount of time we used to spend together, before my mates came to knock and I was gone for the day. It was a certain thing. My mum, for all of my childhood, was a certain thing, until the day I found the letter.' He pushes his cup of coffee away, as if tracing the outline of a long-lost letter on the surface of the table with his forefinger.

‘I read her letter. It said, “Frank, I'm so sorry. I can't go on. I thought when I met you I could change for the better, and I've tried, I have. But nothing changes. I love you, and the boy. Don't blame yourself. Take care of him, Frank. He'll be so upset. Grace.”'

There was a pause, and I thought of the letter I had pushed into Hugh's hands just hours earlier.

‘She couldn't even bring herself to say my name,' he said, unable to meet my gaze. ‘I didn't really know what the letter meant, and it was Dad's lie in, so I waited until it was eleven and I made him a tea, like she always did on a Saturday. And when he asked where she was, I said, “There's a letter downstairs on the table. Mum says she's sorry, but I don't know what for.”

‘I've never seen him move so fast. He tore down the stairs, picked up the rings and the letter and ran out into the street. I went after him, and I told him it had been there when I'd got up, that it had been there a long time.

‘And he grabbed me, and shook me, and asked me why I didn't wake him. And he kept shaking me and crying, and shaking and crying. When he let me go, he went into the house and called the police. She hadn't taken anything. No clothes, no money. Her purse was on the sideboard. No door key. Later that day they found a pair of shoes on the beach in Clacton. They were Mum's shoes. That was all we knew about what happened next: a pair of shoes on a beach.

‘There was an inquest, more than a year after she disappeared. It was an open verdict, but we got a death certificate. We had a funeral. There was an empty coffin, even. Dad was a fisherman; this is his jacket. He taught me to love fishing too. He'd take me on weekends, after she'd gone, deep into the countryside, to fish. It was wonderful
and
awful, because … after she'd gone, there was this kind of peace, this tranquillity that wasn't there before. It was after she was gone that I realised I was like my dad; that we liked the same things: reading and fishing, history and ghost stories. Life with just the two of us, it was gentle and kind. On Sundays he'd drive us out of the city, to posh parts of the Thames, and we'd fish. And sometimes I couldn't help being glad that she wasn't there, and I couldn't help but wonder if, somewhere under the surface of the water, she was watching us – angry that we didn't miss her more.'

He pauses and shudders, closing his eyes for a moment. I reach for the sugar bowl, picking up a sachet of sugar, just for something to do, something to look at, because looking at him now feels too intrusive.

‘When I was about sixteen, I went to look for something in the shed – I was building something. I wanted to make a table, that was it, for Dad's birthday, so I went to look for some tools. Right at the back of the garage there was something covered up with ground sheets. I pulled them back and there were stacks and stacks of boxes. Forty-four boxes. Each one filled with six empty vodka bottles. Dad kept her empties, for years. He went around the house and collected them, poured what he could down the sink and put the bottles in the garage. I guess it was before the days of recycling. He never wanted me to know that she drank, and I didn't know until that moment. I had no idea. I was this happy little kid, with this happy mum who'd take me out in the middle of the night to look at stars that we couldn't really see, or get me up at five a.m. to come with her and watch the sunrise, and I loved it. I loved that I had a mum that took me on adventures, and a Dad that slept in on Saturdays. And then … it all changed and she was gone. She was gone and she couldn't even write my name in her suicide note. And for the last twenty-five years, I've woken up every morning knowing that my mum didn't love me enough to stay alive. Until this morning. Now I know she didn't love me enough to die.'