‘Trevor,’ they both said and laughed together.
Sue looked round the room. ‘Gosh! It’s like a florist’s shop in here.’
Becky sunk back into her pillows with a smile. ‘Who knew it would take a quadruple heart bypass to feel like an Interflora van driver, eh?’
‘We’re all ever so happy you made it,’ Sue gave her hand a light squeeze, mindful of the drip taped into the back of her hand, the snaking of tubes and monitors attached to her chest. ‘Did they find your daughter? Ginny?’
Becky blinked at her and then, as if as a strong wind had been holding her features in place, the wind dropped away and her expression crumpled.
‘Oh! Becky, I’m so sorry. Did I say the wrong thing?’
‘No, no,’ said Becky. ‘I’m ever so grateful for everything you did. So very grateful, but …’
‘But, what? Were they not able to get in touch with her? I am more than happy to make some calls.’ Sue stopped talking when fat tears began to form then trickle down Becky’s lovely, kind, if not incredibly pale, face.
‘Ginny died, Sue.’
Sue gasped. ‘Oh, my god! Becky! Yesterday?’ She floundered and stuttered until Becky eventually took her hand in both of hers and gave it soft strokes as if soothing a puppy.
‘Ginny died about fifteen years ago. Fifteen years, two months and five days to be exact.’
‘I’m sorry, I don’t understand. You always spoke about her as if—’
‘—as if she were alive, I know.’ Tears slid silently down Becky’s face as she explained. ‘She died in a car accident. A ridiculous one, really. Can you believe it? She was hit by lightning. It went straight through the windscreen and poof! My little girl was gone.’ She pinched her hands together then opened them up so that all that was between them was air. ‘I thought maybe yesterday it had finally come.’
‘What had come?’
‘My chance to be with her.’
A wave of nausea swept through Sue. Never, even when that dreadful red velvet curtain had closed as Gary’s casket slid back towards the bowels of the crematorium had she ever wished herself dead. ‘No. Becky. You don’t mean that. You are so kind and full of life and such a wonderful person. You couldn’t possibly want to be—’
‘—with my daughter?’ Becky finished for her. ‘Yes. Yes I could. Not that I was willing myself to have a heart attack and nearly take you lot with me, but … it’s all I’ve been doing these last fifteen years. Wishing I was with her. Trying to experience everything my Ginny couldn’t. Stupid, wasn’t it?’
Sue made a vague noise. She was beyond judgement when it came to grief.
‘Fifteen years,’ Becky sighed, grating her lips against her teeth, the blood returning ever so slowly as they plumped back out again. ‘Fifteen years of ruining my marriage, my friendships, everything really, all to try and live a life that was never mine to live.’
‘I wish I had something incredibly wise to say. Something that could help.’
‘You could tell me what I’m going to do now,’ Becky said, laughing the most forlorn, watery laugh Sue had ever heard.
Sue forced herself not to answer straight away. She, of all people, knew trotting out the standard there, there’s and it’ll be alrights and time heals all wounds placations were really ways of getting a grief-stricken person to stop talking because, the plain truth of the matter was, being around someone who was so very sad was unbelievably uncomfortable. People just wanted it to stop. People like her mother. Her sister-in-law. And, maybe, her Gary – who must’ve kept everything that had been troubling him from her because he had never been able to bear it when she cried. Even if it was at a Christmas advert. He used to flee the room, squealing – squealing! – no, Suey, no! Please. Don’t cry. Please don’t cry. Then he’d return and pour chocolates and tissues and takeaway menus – whatever he could gather into his arms to make her tears disappear because, Sue finally saw, bearing someone else’s pain on top of your own, could sometimes be too much to handle. So much so, that for some people, the only solution was to end it all.
She pulled a chair up to the side of Becky’s bed. ‘Why don’t you tell me about all of the things you’re interested in?’
Becky pulled a face. ‘Go on, Sue. You’ll be missing the rest of the ride.’ She glanced at the wall clock. ‘You don’t have time.’
‘Yes, I do,’ said Sue. ‘I have all the time in the world.’
Because some things simply had to be staged, the crew had stopped all of the cyclists, including Kath, at the newly redeveloped North Shield docks – a lovely area that had been completely transformed since Kath had left the area some forty years back. Whoever had waved their magic wand over the rundown fishing port had struck a perfect note between yesteryear charm and modern comforts. Like food. There were so many delicious restaurants to choose from serving oysters to fish and chips to sushi and back again. The air smelt of chips and spices and burnt sugar. Everything she’d been avoiding eating since she’d been about twelve years old.
‘Who wants an ice cream,’ she asked the small group of men who had regularly led the charge throughout the week. ‘I’m paying.’ Much to her delight – they all did. As each cyclist pulled up, their faces lit at the sight of all of the double and triple scooped cones being handed out to everyone in a bright yellow t-shirt.
About an hour later, the last of the riders pulled up to the group. First Flo, then Raven and finally, Sue. Kath didn’t know why, but the three women’s arrival seemed to bring with it a lovely sensation of quiet, but utterly beautiful achievement to the group.
