‘Not at all. It’s perfect.’
‘I’m just relieved the van still comes. I was starting to wonder if I had made a mistake, things change so quickly these days.’ She looked about, ‘Good, plenty of benches. My apologies again, though. I suppose I should have said it wasn’t an actual café. You’re tired. You would have preferred to sit somewhere comfortable.’
‘Would I? Stop apologising for everything. It’s an outdoor café on the perfect day for one. You grab that seat and I’ll get the drinks. Do you want food?’
‘No, but don’t let that stop you. Black tea, please. It’ll be full fat milk or UHT and both are awful in tea. No sugar. Thank you.’
Grace sat down, noticing the whole area was unaltered from the last time she had been there, so many years before. Life was like that, she thought. So much happens yet nothing really changes. She opened her bag and took out her phone. It was time. She hesitated, fearing the number of messages and missed calls would overwhelm her. Resolved to ignore all and send only a text to her husband to say she was coming home, Grace switched it on. An uncountable number of missed calls and many more unopened messages were listed. Some might be from friend’s wishing her a happy birthday, she knew, but she couldn’t bring herself to check. With a deep breath she typed, pressed send, and turned it off. Grace tried not to think about the fact that sending just one small message had sent her heartbeat into overdrive.
*
After a pleasant sunshiny morning in the company of a man she felt she could no longer describe as an absolute stranger, Grace mentioned that she needed to go home. They were quietly strolling along the path overlooking the gorge when she told him, turning from the view to face him. A glimmer of something moved across his face, she noticed. Disappointment perhaps. Never mind the fact they had managed all morning to keep off the topic of death; he now looked so sad that to leave him felt like the worst kind of abandonment. Was it becoming a habit to walk away from distress? Something about the morning had instilled in her a new determination to sort things out at home, and she wanted to leave quickly. But the mother in her wouldn’t be silenced.
‘I can give you my number, if you like?’ she offered, ‘if you need to talk. You can call anytime.’
Ric said nothing, and Grace suspected the silence they’d been sharing – the peace that was unexpectedly companionable – had actually been him slipping back into the anguish of new mourning. He had done well to walk and talk, to drink coffee and eat. A crash was inevitable.
‘I do understand what you’re going through, Ric.’
He nodded.
‘Saying a person understands can make different people feel different things. It can make certain people angry, because for them it is impossible to imagine anyone feeling exactly as they do. And for some, it helps to know that others feel the same.’
Again he nodded, but still did not speak.
‘When my sister died I hated people saying it to me. Because they couldn’t know how it felt to lose a sister. They could guess, but they couldn’t know. Then someone who did know contacted me. It made a huge difference. You can’t halve the burden, Ric, but you can share the weight of it all. I know how you feel, Ric. I understand.’
Silence.
‘How does it make you feel?’
Ric then stared at Grace with such intensity, she was taken aback. ‘Neither,’ he said, levelly. ‘It does make me angry, but only because you, Grace, ever had to feel this way.’
What did he mean, she wondered? Unable to formulate a response, Grace again offered her number. ‘If you never call I won’t be offended,’ she said. ‘I just want you to know I am here if you want me. Day or night.’
Ric looked away, across the wide ravine to the far cliff. ‘You haven’t told me why you are staying in Bristol.’
‘Oh, silly stuff, you know.’
‘You said you were shopping and sight seeing, but I don’t think you are.’ Ric turned to her, and stopped. His face remained serious. The footpath ahead and behind was empty, buzzard nowhere to be seen. ‘You’ve been a great help to me, Grace. You may not think you have done much, but you have. And I sense through it all you have been suffering for some reason.’
Grace chose not to offer an explanation, not wishing to share her own problems, though she’d been content to share in his. She waited for him to continue.
‘Can I ask you something?’ he said, after a moment.
‘Of course.’
‘Your sister. Did she die recently?’
Grace shook her head. ‘No. She died a very long time ago.’
‘How? If you don’t mind me asking.’
Grace began walking again, slowly, hands in pockets. The view of the gorge disappeared as the path wound away from the open edge and into dense greenery. ‘I don’t mind you asking at all. She killed herself. When she was twenty.’
Grace could tell Ric was crying, a tight-mouthed, bitter, sob. She chose not to comment, instead finishing her short story. ‘She was at Bristol University, reading medicine. She was the clever one. Pretty too, like my daughter, Primrose; my other daughter is like me. Something happened, although we never discovered exactly what. Boyfriend, exams, drugs, maybe. I don’t know. Whatever it was, it was the catalyst and not the cause. She’d suffered with depression from when we were teenagers.’ Grace smiled a little, ‘She’d been such a happy child. She knew how to make people laugh.’
‘Clever, pretty, funny. She sounds amazing,’ Ric commented.
‘She was. Anyway, one day she’d simply had enough. She came up to the bridge and …’
‘Here?’
The entrance to the bridge was coming into view as the path returned to the edge of the gorge.
‘Yes. It’s why I am here, I suppose. I wanted to see what she saw when she decided there was no way forward. But I couldn’t look. At least, not through her eyes.’
‘You weren’t intending to jump …’
‘No. I just wanted to find a way to be near her. Yesterday, well, let’s just say I needed my sister. It might seem morbid to choose the place where she ended her life, but standing over her grave … well … I can’t talk to her there. She’s not there, if you see what I mean. And there is nowhere else. Not anymore.’
‘It must have been very hard for you.’
‘It was. But harder for her. We are who we are, Ric. And that is half the problem.’
Silently, Ric raised his eyes to the sky, ‘It’s back. Our buzzard.’
Grace looked at him watching the bird, and was struck by a sudden thought. ‘Was it suicide?’
His gaze shifted, swiftly.
‘Your sister.’
‘No. No it wasn’t. She had an accident.’
At that moment a small red car pulled in at the end of the path. Grace frowned as the window unwound.
‘Mum?’
Chapter 12
RIC’S SUNDAY BREAKFAST
Moira’s death rested heavily upon Ric, but he found he could manage providing he accepted its burden. For him, there was no time to waste in wooing his future wife, and so long as he accepted the weight of his loss, and did not treat it as misfortune thrust upon him, Ric discovered he could function. He could take those steps required towards achieving his destiny.
Inside the hotel, Ric walked purposefully amongst the corridors. He used the bathroom of the cocktail bar on the third floor, before returning to reception to ask if the book he didn’t actually leave had been handed in. When the receptionist requested a name and room number, he’d said it didn’t matter, and left. So it was, that after ten minutes or so had passed, Ric returned to the waiting Grace, empty-handed and shrugging.
‘They can’t find it,’ he’d said.
‘If they find it before I check out, I can take it for you. Post it on.’
‘Thanks, but no need. I can easily grab another copy.’ But what passed through Ric’s mind was: missed opportunity. He had no book to plant, therefore no means to help set up this unexpected chance of forging the next
link in the chain. In happier times, he would have been sharper; he would have brought a prop with him, just in case.
Aside from this, Ric was satisfied with how smoothly everything was going with Grace. He was pleased to have successfully made the formal introduction lacking on their two previous encounters, allowing her to tell him her name before he accidently said it himself, a mistake made once before with a lesser Angel. She had proved unworthy. She had laughed behind Moira’s back, as if Ric might see the joke.
And he was touched that Grace asked about the dreaded evening with his parents, which had been everything he knew it would be. Weeping and wailing, tearful mumblings, most of it from hypocritical aging relatives whom he suspected Death had been grooming for some time and who had everything to fear. The one good thing had been the kittens. A mere three in total, born to his parents’ rather ordinary looking cat. They were like a gift from God, for they gave everyone something to look at, other than each other’s miserable faces. There was a grey one he liked, very different from its mother and siblings. Ric took it onto his lap, and while one hand clutched a strong drink, the other stroked soft fur.
*
‘You look happier,’ Ric remarked, two hot drinks balanced on top of a polystyrene box. The terrible loss that had been sickening every bone in his body, and only an hour before brought more tears, was for the moment relegated to a remote part of his mind. Not neatly boxed, but raggedly strapped for temporary respite. He had to win Grace and the time for winning was now. Moira, lonely Moira, would surely have understood.
Ric had been watching Grace sitting on the bench from the corner of his eye, and had noticed her using her phone. He’d also observed the strained expression travelling her face as she did so.
‘Do I? I hadn’t realised I looked sad.’ Grace took her drink.
‘Not sad. Distracted. You okay?’
‘Of course.’
Together they watched a group of children race by.
‘So much energy,’ Ric remarked.
‘Do you have children?’
Ric could tell it wasn’t a genuine enquiry, just conversation. ‘No. I’m single.’
‘Not sure that means you don’t have children. Not these days.’
Ric opened the box. Inside was a hot bacon roll. He took it out and pushed it into his mouth.
Grace sipped her drink and looked about at the people enjoying the morning.
‘Excuse me being a pig,’ Ric said, words muffled as bacon hung from his mouth and fell from the over-stuffed roll back into the box on his lap. ‘I haven’t eaten since yesterday morning.’
‘Goodness! Then eat up, please.’
Eventually, Ric swallowed, but talked through the next bite. ‘Shall we do a circuit of the Downs when we’re finished?’ He was keen to hold onto Grace, to devise some means to see her again.
‘The Downs is quite big, Ric.’
‘This side, I mean. Not over there.’ He nodded across the acres of flat land to the water tower, and the grass beyond.
‘Sure.’
The bacon roll seemed to vanish as if breathed in. Ric had been hungry beyond belief, for it was true when he said he had not eaten since the previous morning. Not only that, it had been a long night. The meeting with Grace on the bridge had been tightly strung, closely woven with grief and love, an overwhelming experience in the circumstances. The terrible low immediately after took what little energy was left. Exhausted, Ric had taken his time leaving the vicinity of the hotel, sitting for sometime out of sight in a daze of reflection, causing the visit to his parents to become quite late. Once there, the effect of his sister’s death upon everyone had all but finished him. Eventually, he’d drifted into fitful dreams, on the old couch because it was the only thing of theirs that felt familiar, waking a few hours later to nothing more than a blanket and emptiness. The dark silence of a sleeping house was not a place Ric could remain for long, since in such places something sinister often stirred within him, an unpleasant whispering shadow that separated Ric from everyone else in the world. To avoid this ominous creep of obsessive thought, he’d got up, stroked his favourite kitten while she slept, and returned to the sounds and lights of the city of Bristol, enduring then three uncomfortable hours from just before dawn, waiting outside the hotel for Grace.
‘Shall we walk then?’ he said, after taking the cups and empty box to the litterbin.
Grace smiled. ‘If you’d like.’
*
Ric’s heart sank when Grace announced she needed to go home. He knew where she lived, from following her when she left the café in Bath, but he wanted something arranged; to organise a way to be with her that was not simply watching. They’d been quietly strolling along the path overlooking the gorge when she’d said it, and in his weakened state he knew his reluctance to lose her showed. Normally he disguised his feelings well, since he’d learned to master his expressive face as a boy, a defence against relative’s thoughtless remarks. To a degree, this was the foundation for the blank canvas. Moira had been less skilful; her hard shell never as adaptable as Ric’s pliable mask. Today, though, he found his talents undermined.
‘I can give you my number, if you like? If you need to talk. You can call anytime.’
Ric felt something rise inside him. They were connecting.
‘I do understand what you’re going through, Ric.’
Ric chose not to speak. He couldn’t trust himself.
‘Saying a person understands can make different people feel different things. It can make certain people angry, because for them it is impossible to imagine anyone feeling exactly as they do. And for some, it helps to know that others feel the same.’
He nodded, but still did not speak. Grace began sharing something of herself, of her own experience of death, and he longed to reach out and hold her hand. He listened, considering her words, the words of an Angel.
‘How does it make you feel?’ Grace asked.
The urge to take her hand was becoming unbearable. He didn’t need to kiss her, not yet. But he wanted to touch her. And knowing she had suffered made the feeling all the more intense. ‘It does make me angry,’ he said, ‘but only because you, Grace, ever had to feel this way.’
‘Let me give you my number. If you never call I won’t be offended. I just want you to know I am here if you want me. Day or night.’
Ric looked away, across the wide ravine to the far cliff. He had been sure she was the one, but had there been even the slightest doubt, it was gone. This was affirmation that she felt something too. It was meant to be. Destiny had brought her to him, a True Angel.
‘You haven’t told me why you are staying in Bristol,’ he said, regaining control.
‘Oh, silly stuff, you know.’
‘You said you were shopping and sight seeing, but I don’t think you are.’ Ric turned to her, and stopped. She was so beautiful and they were entirely alone. He reconsidered whether he should reach out for her hand, after all, but dismissed the idea. It was too soon. His judgment was off. So instead he made conversation. But talk led back to Moira and to Grace’s own loss. He wanted to learn as much as he could about Grace, but in the circumstances it was hard. After sometime, he heard mewing and raised his eyes to the sky. ‘It’s back. Our buzzard.’
‘Was it suicide?’ Grace said, questioningly.
Not immediately grasping her meaning, he looked at her, puzzled.
‘Your sister.’
‘No. No it wasn’t. She had an accident.’
Ahead of them a small red car pulled in. ‘Mum?’
‘Primrose? What on earth are you doing here?’
‘I’ve been looking for you. I thought you might be on the bridge.’
‘I’ve been walking, with …’ Grace turned, ‘Primrose meet Ric; Ric meet Primrose.’
Ric could not fail to see change in Primrose’s expression at the sight of him. She visibly brightened.
‘But why are you here? I sent a message to Dad saying I was coming home. I’m
on my way there now, actually. I just need to check-out.’
‘I didn’t know that.’ Primrose looked back at the few cars waiting behind. ‘Dammit. I’ll have to move. I’ll turn around and meet you over there.’
Without waiting for confirmation, Primrose manoeuvred the little car to the sound of honking horns, and came to halt on the grassy edge of the road leading back up to the Downs.
*
Ric had seen Primrose before, in the café, but he was surprised now to see how little she looked like her mother. When Grace had suggested there was a physical difference between herself and her sister – and therefore Primrose – he hadn’t understood quite how different they must have been. Seeing Primrose up close, he thought that while there was a certain resemblance, they wouldn’t be picked as mother and daughter by someone who didn’t know the family. He thought also of Grace’s remark regarding her sister’s greater beauty. This he did not believe. Whilst Primrose bore even features and attractive qualities, in Ric’s opinion she was not as strikingly beautiful as her mother. Her figure was good, though, he noted.
The other woman at the table in the café, he recalled, had been much more like Grace, sharing her thick dark hair and talking with a similar manner. This must have been the other daughter. He wondered when he would meet her.
Ric put out a hand, ‘Hi. My name is Ric. Your mother has been very kind to me.’
‘Hi. Primrose. Nice to meet you.’
‘Primrose. A pretty name.’
‘Hmm.’ came the uncertain reply.
‘It’s a lovely name,’ protested Grace, ‘call her Rosie if you prefer, Ric,’ she laughed. It was the first time Ric had heard Grace laugh, and he thought it exquisite.
‘Don’t you dare!’
‘I think they are both lovely names,’ said Ric, ‘besides, you look like a Primrose.’
‘You mean I am yellow?’ admonished Primrose, with a small smile.
‘I mean you suit your name … a pretty flower …’
Grace stepped in, ‘Ignore her. She’s always been the same, from the moment she could speak.’
Ric smiled, and catching Primrose’s blue eyes, allowed his gaze to linger for a moment. She reacted by returning a similar look. Instantly, he read that she was a woman keen for a partner. In fact, she was hunting for one.