‘Do you think you’ll go back?’ she asked and the words brought instant anxiety with them.
‘I don’t know. I’m healin’ here – I can feel it. I’ve stopped wakin’ up and wishin’ the day was over before it’s even begun and I know that me bein’ here is good for Carrick. I don’t know, I just feel like being here is right.’ I took a breath of fresh, salty air and I felt the warmth of home fill my chest. ‘She saved my life, I can never forget that, but I was a person I’ve never been before when we were together. Nell never met the old me; she only knew this version. If I get back to normal and then go back, I think I might be a stranger to her.’
She sighed and turned to me, groaning as the waistband of her pencil skirt dug into her torso and pinched her lungs. ‘Charlie, you’re never gonna be the person you were before. People are always changin’. It doesn’t matter who you’re with, you’re always gonna be different. You pick up on the other person’s traits, the way they sit, their ways of thinkin’ and in the end you’re a mash-up of the two of yer.’ She rolled her eyes at me. ‘Before all of this, back when you were Abi’s version of Charlie, you could be a bit of a shit, not gonna lie, but I still loved yer. When yer went rogue and disappeared on us all, I still loved yer even then. And when you were Nell’s version of Charlie, I loved yer all the same.’
‘Which version am I now then?’ I asked.
‘I think that you’re just you. You and Abi were together from such a young age that I don’t think yer ever had a chance to find out who yer really were on your own. You were always tryin’ to impress her and show her that you were worthy of her, flashin’ all those fancy clothes and watches around. But she never loved yer for your watches. Honestly, I think I prefer this incarnation of yer.’
‘Really? Yer prefer this mopin’, miserable eejit?’
‘Yeah, I do. I think yer needed a wound or two to size down that big old head of yours. It’s just a shame that the wound had to be Abi.’
I felt it again, the lump in my throat, and I instinctively reached my hand inside my pocket and felt around until I found the sea glass with my fingers.
‘If only I’d not been distracted, she’d still be here now,’ I said, my voice clogging with emotion again.
‘What d’yer mean?’ Kenna asked and I looked up to see her meticulously pruned brows furrowed and her bottom lip jutting out.
I cleared my throat. I had forgotten that I had never voiced any of this to Kenna before. God knows how she’d react to them. ‘Because, if I hadn’t gone to make her some tea and then been distracted by the news, I’d have seen that she wasn’t well and called the ambulance and she could’ve been saved.’ I braced myself for a slap. I almost turned my face so that she’d have easy access to my cheek. ‘If I’d gone back to her sooner, she might have lived.’
‘Christ, Charlie, is this what you’ve been carryin’ around with yer all this time? There was no savin’ her,’ Kenna said with a subtle shake of her head. ‘Yer really did just pass it all on to Mammy didn’t yer. She died instantly – that’s what the coroner said.’
I felt something twang in my chest, like an air lock releasing. ‘Instantly?’
‘She suffered a massive pulmonary embolism. She died in a couple of seconds.’
Sometime in that hour or so between me leaving the room and returning with her tea, she’d just switched off, like central heating. And this guilt I’d been carrying for so long had never been mine to carry.
‘Charlie, breathe. You’re turnin’ blue,’ Kenna said and shook my shoulder.
I gasped air into my lungs. ‘So, it wasn’t my fault? I’m not the reason she’s dead?’
‘No, Charlie. It wasn’t anyone’s fault. It just happened.’
The dry grass was itchy against my legs as I sat facing Abi’s tombstone.
Loving daughter, sister, wife and friend, it read, in silver letters.
I rolled the sea glass around in my fingers as I read them over and over again, the faraway sound of passing cars and chirruping birds the only sounds being brought in by the wind.
‘So,’ I said my voice raspy from my talk with Kenna, ‘I found out today that it isn’t my fault that you’re down there. You’d think that’d make me feel better. And it does, a little, but you’re still dead.’
I heard the clang of the gate and looked over my shoulder to see an old man, flowers in hand, his walking stick making a gentle crunch in the gravel path as he wandered my way. He got to within a few metres before he noticed me and tipped his hat before wandering off to a grave by the wall that separated the graveyard from the road. I wondered if that might be me in forty years, still bringing flowers here, the hurt still sharp enough to sting.
‘I met a girl. Her name’s Nell. I don’t know how you’d feel about that but I just wanted to tell yer. Feels less like I’m cheatin’ on yer that way.’
I tossed the orange glass to my other hand and rolled it around between my palms. The feel of it was so familiar now, after carrying it around for so long, that it felt like a part of me. The sea-buffed edges made even smoother after being rolled around for years in anxious hands. ‘She called me about a month ago, said that she’d found out who put that sticker up on the tower. I shoulda known you’d have
