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Bruce
Love. That word again. Was there anything it didn’t try and excuse?
Chapter 23
‘What sort of despicable tool leaves his wife the day after her mother’s funeral?’
Shay conjured up Tanya, standing by her sink, face a mask of incredulity, hands thrown up in the air. What sort indeed. She didn’t know this Bruce who would do this to her when her heart was in pieces. She rang his mobile repeatedly, hoping he’d hear her pain, her confusion, her anger in the insistent ringtone, but he didn’t pick up. That note was the door closed on the matter and said everything he wanted to say with no desire or need for a response. She read it over and over, looking for variations of meaning, words between the lines. She’d questioned the lack of a kiss after his name, how long ‘a little while’ was supposed to mean, how he could say he loved her and yet walk out of her life now when she was so evidently floundering. Had this been a sudden decision? Had he gone out to work and then shot back for his belongings? If she hadn’t been to Dagmara’s would she have caught himin flagrantepacking his Calvin Kleins and shaving kit?
She went upstairs to check what he had taken. The twolarge cases they kept under the bed had gone, his underwear, at least three suits, the more expensive shirts, shoes and trainers. She imagined him throwing the best of his clothes into them quickly, carelessly until they were full. His passport had gone from his bedside drawer; why? And why would he pack his suits if he were only having a couple of thinking nights in a Premier Inn? Did he imagine she was going to do a Lady Graham-Moon and hack at them with a pair of scissors? And if so, what reason would she have to do that? It was, as her daughter would have put it, a fucking head-fuck.
‘I wish you were here, Tan,’ said Shay, hoping against hope that her dear friend would suddenly materialise, summoned through her angst. It wasn’t beyond the realms of possibility after all that had happened recently. She hadn’t just lost one parent this past fortnight, she’d lost two. Her lovely dad wasn’t her dad after all, and they’d never be able to talk about it. Her father was a man from Egypt she would never know and all she would ever have of him was a faded name on a pencil drawing.
She dragged her phone over and rang Les. As expected, it clicked onto voicemail and she poured herself into the message she left. It was unashamedly needy and desperate and tears rained down her face and snot from her nose as she recorded it:please ring me, Les, I don’t know what to do.She had no one else she could talk to; she didn’t know what was happening to her, she didn’t even know who she was any more. Her life felt as if it had broken like an old biscuit and the crumbs were falling through her fingers too fast to stop them.
A full week passed. Shay hadn’t heard from Bruce at all, neither had she heard from Les but she didn’t have brain space for her on top of everything else. She’d had too much time on her hands to think, to cry, to torture herself. She hadn’t slept, she’d barely eaten. Her concentration levels were zilch, she hadn’t done anything in the house other than wash a couple of plates, cups and spoons. Colin had sent her a lovely email saying that he hoped she was okay and when she felt able to come back to work, could she ‘attack this list with vigour’. She didn’t blame him for wanting her back on the work horse and she did what he’d asked and ended up being grateful for the push. Paperwork was a saving grace, giving her head something practical to do. The accounts part of her work was especially well received because figures didn’t mess her about, they didn’t lie – like the diamonds in Shirley Bassey’s Bond theme; she was in total control of them and she felt in very little control of anything else.
Courtney rang to see if she was all right and did she want her to pop over. Shay plastered on her ‘I’m perfectly fine’ voice, an Oscar-winning performance of such conviction that Meryl Streep might have envied it. Then Courtney hit her for another two hundred pound loan, saying she felt really bad about having to ask. Shay paid up without a lecture, tears flooding as she was talking to her daughter but she attributed them to a cold, said she was just a bit run-down. It wasn’t her job to elicit sympathy from her children, it was hers to administer it to them when it was needed. Neither of them knew that their father had walked out of the family home to an undisclosed location for as long as he saw fit. Neither of them knew that their grandfather wasn’t related to them by blood but was a cuckold that their grandmother had lied to for forty-six years.
She picked up her mother’s ashes from the funeral parlour. She fastened the urn into the front seat with a safety belt, leaning over to secure the clip as she so often had done with her mother whenever she drove her anywhere. She had to sit in the parking space for five minutes putting herself back together before she set off home.
‘I wish you were still here, Mum,’ she said aloud as she drove. ‘I’ve got so many questions for you. I wish you’d told me about Dad. I wish you’d told me about the letter that came for me years ago. Was it Jonah who wrote? What did it say? I don’t blame you, Mum. It’s so hard being a parent, wanting to do the right thing for your children and doubting yourself all the way but you should have talked to me.’
She imagined her mum sitting there instead of the urn, looking out of the window, pointing at the housing estate that wasn’t there the last time she’d been here, recounting her memory of the large Co-op’s previous life as a wonderful Italian bistro. Shay didn’t want to be disappointed in her, but she couldn’t help it. Maybe she shouldn’t have asked Dagmara to open up her notebook, put Paula’s disclosure down to bitchery and left Pandora’s box intact.
Her mum hadn’t stipulated where she wanted her ashes to go, only that Shay put her somewhere ‘appropriate’, whatever that meant. Shay needed time to think where was best; for now, Roberta could sit on the shelf in the lounge. She’d always thought it was a cosy room, with the living flame gas fire and the big sofa, even though the springs had gone on one side thanks to Courtney’s bouncing. Shay was just arranging a few family photos in frames around the urn, an attempt to give her mother some company, when her phone rang and Sunny’s number flashed up on the screen.
‘Hello, love.’
‘Hi Mum, just ringing to see if you’re okay.’ Sunny’s voice was croaky and hoarse.
‘Good lord, you sound awful.’ She cut off the mother stream of ‘have you’s queued up in her mouth.Have you got some medicine for that? Have you taken some time off work? Have you been to the doctor?
‘It sounds worse than it is. I just wondered if you were free any time?’
‘I’m coming into Leeds tomorrow actually, to see your gran’s solicitor.’
‘Can we meet for a quick drink maybe?’
‘Yes, that would be lovely,’ said Shay. Something to look forward to instead of trying to conjure up dead people to have conversations with and second-guessing what was going on in Bruce’s head. ‘Is… everything all right?’
‘Yes, absolutely,’ came the answer, a little too chirpily to be wholly convincing.
The White Swan pub was equidistant from Sunny’s place of work and David Charles’s office. It was a large new build meant to look old and quaint with beams, rough plasterwork and a myriad of cosy nooks and crannies. The hefty prices were reflective of the business quarter in which it was situated but didn’t off put any of the young executives who filled the place after they had left their various offices for the evening.
‘I got you a pint of diet cola in,’ Shay said, standing to greet him. ‘I wasn’t sure if you wanted to drink alcohol in your lunch hour.’
‘Thanks, that’s perfect,’ replied Sunny. He bent to kiss her cheek and she felt the scratch of stubble against her skin. Sheknew he would have shaved that morning, but it grew so fast and she wondered if that was because of Bruce’s genes or Ammon Habib’s.
‘How are you, Mum? You look tired.’
‘Thanks.’ She smiled.
‘Sorry,’ said Sunny, wincing. ‘I’m glad you’re here. I wanted to make sure you were okay. I didn’t see Gran as much as I should have this year and I don’t ever want to let something like that happen again.’
Shay noticed that his shirt looked too big for his neck. He would have bought it to fit.
‘Don’t beat yourself up about that, Sunny. Who knows what’s around the corner?’
