A guilty look passed across Wilbur’s face. He was bad at guilt. He had tried to shut it away. Because the trouble with guilt was that it was sticky. It joined all the other guilts. And he had quite a few. ‘Doctor? Oh yes. I forgot it was today. How was it? How are you?’
‘Don’t worry. The results came back and it was benign. I’m fine.’
He smiled. ‘I bet you feel relieved.’
She smiled too, but it was a sad kind of smile. ‘It’s strange. Aye, I am, yeah. But also, for a month now I’ve thought I might have cancer. The doctor said it looked very ominous and I should prepare for the worst.’
‘You didn’t tell me that. The very ominous part.’
‘Oh, Wilbur, I did. I told you on the day but you had a lot on. And since then there’s hardly been a chance. I tried to tell you two nights ago before you rushed out to that do in the City. You know, the night we were meant to be going out for our anniversary and I had to cancel the restaurant.’
He sighed. He had a vague recollection of a medical conversation he hadn’t really had time to listen to. ‘I’m sorry about that. But I told you, we can go another time.’
Maggie sighed too. Or maybe it was just a slow exhale, a steadying of emotion. ‘The doctor had worried me. And so it made me think about things.’
‘What kind of things?’
She didn’t answer that. Not yet. She just stared at the unlit fireplace. At the bars of the empty grate like a tiny prison. ‘Dad told me they’re knocking it down to build a shopping centre on Union Street …’
‘Oh. Yes. I knew about that.’
‘It’s like capitalism is a bomb, isn’t it? One that creates cities then explodes them really slowly …’
He smiled. He wondered if she was depressed, and that thought troubled him, and he wanted to dismiss it by forcing himself and the atmosphere into an ill-fitting breeziness. ‘I like that you’ve kept that political side. Like it’s still 1968. Like we’re off to a protest at the art college with flowers in our hair.’
‘Don’t patronise me, Wilbur,’ she said quietly. ‘I can’t help it if I kept my compass.’
‘Compass? What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘I don’t know. I’m just tired. I’m just being unreasonable.’
‘Yes. I can see that.’
The observer who watched this from a dream was confused. ‘Why are we being like this?’
The Ghost sighed the kind of sad, defeated sigh that only the dead can manage. ‘Well, Dreamer, because she was right. She was right. I had lost my compass.’
Something Changed
‘I just think it’s quite exciting. The plans for the shopping centre. It’s good for the city. It’s actually where the second Sheffield shop is going to be …’
Maggie smiled a distant smile. ‘Isn’t that strange, how the cinema is being knocked down and a Budd Books is going to be in its place.’
Wilbur was beginning, slowly, to realise he was in some kind of trouble.
His mind shifted away from thoughts of the initial public offering he was preparing towards his wife.
‘I’m sorry I’ve been so busy recently.’
‘Recently? You’ve been busy since the seventies.’
‘Well, yes, I have. I underestimated how much it would take of me.’
The Dreamer noted the way Maggie was staring at her husband. Like she wanted to see more in him than was there.
‘Something changed inside you when your mam died,’ Maggie said. ‘I should have recognised it, but I didn’t. Obviously Dougie dying was the root of it all, and never knowing your dad, but I think there was still hope you could get through that. Even inside your ambition. But when your mam died the lights went out. Before that I liked you focusing on work because I believed you when you said it was about us. You were wanting to make a better future for us. We were going to retire young. And travel the world.’
‘That can still happen.’
