You’re not in competition with me. I’m dead.
‘I know, but when it comes to love, things are rarely ever rational.’ I took a deep, shaky breath and began picking at the nail varnish on my thumb, just so I wouldn’t have to look at her. ‘I don’t want to erase you from his life; you were a huge part of it. Erasing you would be like erasing part of him.’
My spectral companion looked down at the grass covering her grave, her fingers fidgeting in her lap. It’s not that I don’t want him to find someone else. I never wanted him to be alone forever after I died; it’s just harder to watch him falling in love with someone else than I anticipated.
I frowned at her words. Her independence from me, some of the things she said and the ways she said them, made me uneasy. ‘It’s also hard to love him, knowing that he’s always going to be in love with someone else, too,’ I said, looking up at her through my lashes.
Her eyes met mine and, for a moment, we just stared at each other, until I felt the corners of my mouth move into a smile and her lips copied mine. She held my gaze a little longer before turning away and pretending that our tender moment hadn’t just happened.
What a pair we make. She sighed.
I sat on the grave until my hands were numb with the cold and my cheeks reddened by the wind. I pushed myself up to standing and felt my knees ache as they straightened back into place. My mother had warned me that one day I’d try to get up and it wouldn’t be as easy as it used to be. I hadn’t thought that that day would be when I was still in my twenties, but there I was, holding on to the headstone while the feeling returned to my toes.
‘I’d better get going if I don’t want to miss my flight,’ I said, Abi still sitting beside the headstone, her eyes far away. ‘But I don’t suppose that this will be the last time I see you.’
I don’t know. I think that maybe the time’s comin’ for us to part ways, she said with a sad, one-sided smile. I think that when even I start warmin’ to yer, it’s time to back away.
‘I don’t know if I even want to know the answer to this question, but am I really seeing you? Or is this all inside my head?’
She looked up at me with her big brown eyes and sighed quietly. I think yer already know the answer to that.
I felt myself getting rather tearful as I stood in the car park of the airport, with Carrick’s arms around me. Charlie and I had done the other goodbyes, bidding farewell for now to his parents, Kenna and Siobhan and an even more emotional goodbye to Steve the motorbike, ending with Charlie whispering a promise into the handlebars that he would come back for him soon.
‘Take care of him, will yer?’ Carrick said into my ear, quiet enough that Charlie wouldn’t be able to hear from where he stood at the back of the orange death mobile, pulling our bags from the boot. ‘Don’t think that I don’t appreciate what you and Ned have done for him, for me. I don’t know what I’d do without that boy. He’s lucky to have yer lookin’ out for him.’ He took a deep gulp of air, as if he hadn’t taken a breath in minutes and his eyes took on a glazed look. ‘It’s been so good havin’ him back. That wouldn’t have happened without yer.’ Like Charlie, Carrick was very good at hiding his true feelings, but in that moment, just for a second, I saw a hollow loneliness in the azure of his irises.
I pulled him into a hug and squeezed tightly. ‘You’re always welcome. Promise that you’ll come over and see us again soon? I’m sure Ned would be up for another round of drunk Jenga.’
‘Ah, with wine in hand is the only way to play the game.’ He sniffed, pulled away and grinned, his true feelings safely masked behind a smile as he made his way to his nephew and slapped him hard on the behind. They shared a moment, their faces and words hidden behind the opened boot. I knew that Carrick felt guilty about letting Charlie slip away from him yesterday, but he’d been fooled – like everyone else – that Charlie’s grief was waning, that it was about time to move on and be happy.
Being here had been so good for him. Facing the consequences of how he’d let Siobhan and Kenna find out about Abi’s death, coming back to the set of their love story and seeing the ground that held Abi in lieu of him, had all been incredible milestones in combating his grief. But healing didn’t work like that. Grief simply lasted as long as it lasted, be that a week or a lifetime. There are no quick fixes, no telling when it will be that waking up isn’t the day’s first torture and tears the first chore. There was no way of hurrying it along with words about things getting back to normal because normal didn’t exist anymore. Normal was as dead as Abi.
I knew that watching Charlie grieve for her would be a long and painful road, for both of us, but I was willing to take it, if he was.
‘Hold on to that girl, will yer, Boyo!’ Carrick shouted as we walked towards the glass doors. ‘She’s far
