Once in a Lifetime (19 page)

She was married to David, she was happy. Now she was a widow. David was gone for ever. How had it all happened so quickly?

‘Are you all right?’ asked Gloria, putting a hand on Ingrid’s shoulder. ‘Sorry,’ she said, self-editing. ‘Stupid question. Of course you’re not all right, how could you be?’

Ingrid managed to think about the question. All right? She’d never be all right again.

Molly hadn’t cried at all when Natalie arrived to pick her up.

She was just sitting, frozen, at her desk with an untouched cup of tea in front of her. One colleague sat with her and Natalie could see the woman’s relief when she arrived.

‘She’s not taking it well, poor love,’ the woman said. ‘It’s terrible when it’s a sudden death. No chance to say goodbye.’

Out of the corner of her eye, Natalie could see Molly’s face crumple at these words.

‘Absolutely,’ she said, and dragged Molly and her bag out the door and into the waiting taxi. By the time they’d cleared the next set of traffic lights, Molly was crying so hard she was shaking.

‘If only I’d known, Natalie,’ she sobbed, ‘I’d have phoned him and told him I loved him. But you know what? I can’t remember the last time I said it. How bad is that? He’s gone and I can’t even remember the last time I said I loved him.

What if he was thinking about that? You know he worried about me. And I’d told him I never wanted to work in the store again, Natalie. It upset him, I know it did. Ethan has no interest and Dad would have loved it if I was interested, but I couldn’t fake it, you know. And all the chances are gone now to tell him I’d have done it for him, that I loved him …’

Natalie hugged her and let the words pour out. She could say nothing that would help but her heart ached for her friend.

And in the midst of the sympathy, there was one glimmer of a thought in her head, a thought so selfish that she felt bad for even thinking it: David was a wonderful father and it was a tragedy she’d lost him, but at least Molly had known her father. Natalie had never known her mother. Was that worse than sudden death, the not-knowing? Or was it easier that way? You couldn’t miss what you hadn’t known. Could you?

Some staff felt that the store should close for the rest of the day.

‘As a tribute.’

‘David wouldn’t want Kenny’s shut!’ said someone else. ‘He lived and breathed this place. He’d want the doors open and the customers piling in.’

‘Poor Ingrid,’ said another voice.

Everyone nodded. They all liked Ingrid, although some of the younger staff didn’t know her that well. She’d been around more when the kids were younger, taking them in to see their dad.

‘God help Molly and Ethan,’ sobbed Lena, who was almost

inconsolable. ‘I can’t believe he’s gone, so what must they be feeling?’

Charlie sat on the roof with Shotsy while Shotsy smoked and cried. She’d known David far longer than Charlie. He’d hired her when she was young and, along with Lena, he had been a mentor for her.

‘It’s wrong that someone like David can die, just like that, no warning,’ Shotsy said, stubbing out one cigarette and reaching for another.

Charlie agreed. There was something strangely shocking about David Kenny dying. As if he was so vital and alive that he couldn’t be subject to the same illnesses as ordinary people.

He was a stalwart in life: the boss, the person who calmly ran everything, their father-figure. His death opened up a great black hole of doubt: if David could die, then anybody could die.

‘It makes you think about your own parents,’ said Shotsy, who had a ninety-year-old mother who lived alone and put the heart crossways in the whole family when she talked blithely about going out the garden on icy mornings to feed the birds. ‘Family is so precious. It’s only when they’re gone that you realise what you had.’

‘I know,’ said Charlie automatically.

But David’s death hadn’t made her think of her mother or father, the way it made Shotsy think of her mother. It made Charlie think of Brendan and Mikey. If anything happened to them, she’d want to die herself. There would be no point to the rest of her life.

If, on the other hand, her mother died … the thought reeled off.

She’d cope. Was it unnatural for a daughter to think that way?

Yes, it was wrong not to feel more. She was wrong, bad.

Charlie wished she adored her mother the way Iseult did, but

there was a special bond between them, as if they shared some great secret. Charlie felt that if she shared the secret, perhaps she too could share that love.

And then a horrible thought occurred to her - what if that lack of feeling was genetic, what if Mikey came to feel exactly the same about her when she was old?

‘Thank you,’ Ingrid said to Natalie that night. The taxi was waiting outside the house, one from the Kenny’s account. It had orders to drop Natalie home.

‘And feed those damn cats,’ Ingrid added.

They both smiled, the only levity in the whole day. Molly had stopped crying just long enough to fret about her beloved babies and how they’d be distressed because neither she nor Natalie were home.

‘You’ve been so kind to us both, I don’t know what we’d have done without you,’ Ingrid went on.

Natalie’s mind flashed back to the time she’d first met Molly’s famous mother and had felt so terribly nervous.

Mrs Kenny had been so genuinely friendly - ‘You must call me Ingrid’ - and nothing like the idea Natalie had of a TV

celebrity.

‘I wish I could do more,’ Natalie said. Ingrid looked so utterly destroyed that Natalie wanted to hug her. But if felt like too much of an intrusion.

‘You were there when it counted,’ Ingrid said. ‘That’s enough, thank you.’

Natalie walked down the path of the beautiful house and was glad she was leaving it. The pain and the grief made it too hard to be there.

Gloria was the last to go and before she left, she handed Ingrid a small plastic pharmacy bag with a tinfoil bubble of tablets inside it.

‘Xanax,’ she said. ‘My emergency stash. I had them when

Freddie was having his by-pass surgery. I know you’re not a tablet person, but they might help you to sleep, and you need to sleep.’

Ingrid, who rarely took so much as a headache tablet, reached for the plastic bag. ‘Thank you,’ she said quietly.

When Molly’s breath was even and slow, Ingrid covered her with the duvet and slid over to her own side of the bed.

It was a big bed, big enough for four people, almost. David had wanted a big bed because he liked room to sprawl without squashing her.

It was a nightmare getting sheets to fit it. Kenny’s stocked lovely brands of bed linen, but even they had to order in the giant sheets and duvet covers for David and Ingrid’s bed. And they always came in subtly luxurious muted colours: taupes and creams. Ingrid, who loved muted colours for her own clothes, adored bright flowery things for her bed. But she couldn’t have them. She and David lay on an expanse of mushroom or taupe most of the time.

Would another man’s body ever lie beside hers? How odd to think of sex at such a time, and yet Ingrid suddenly longed for the feeling of David’s naked body on hers and the touch of his hands on her skin. She would never have that again, that love and tenderness. Another loss. Who would hold her in the morning and talk about the day ahead, who would lean over her shoulder when she was brushing her teeth and kiss her neck softly? Nobody.

The void left by David was so vast she could barely contemplate it.

Gone, he was gone.

The abyss of pain roared before her. Ingrid breathed deeply and willed it away. No, not yet.

The little pharmacy bag lay on her nightstand, beside the book she’d been reading that morning - was it really only that morning? It felt like years ago. Ingrid ripped the bag open, popped a tinfoil bubble and dry-swallowed a tablet.

I She lay back against the pillows, refusing to close her eyes.

If she closed them, all the agony would emerge. Only by lying open-eyed in the soft light could she hold back the horror of the day and pretend it hadn’t happened. She wasn’t ready to deal with it, she couldn’t. If she let the tears really come, they’d never stop, because she was broken inside and, once she let go, a flood of pain, tears and hopelessness would come rushing out. Ingrid couldn’t bear that. So she held on tight, forcing her breathing to remain calm, pushing back the screams inside, waiting for the tablet to do its work.

Ingrid’s first confused thought when she woke the next morning was that this was going to be a busy day for her.

She had a big interview tonight, a tricky one. She stretched and raised herself on an elbow to look at her alarm clock, and then she remembered. She hadn’t set the clock the night before. There was no need, no need for them to wake at seven, rush to have showers, eat breakfast, greet the day. A sheet of rain slammed itself against the bedroom windows. Ingrid had loved being inside when it was raining, loved the sense of cosy warmth and security. Outside: rain.

Inside: safe. Except it wasn’t true. She’d never be safe again. David was dead. Safety and security were an illusion.

She’d thought that the worst thing she had to fear was something happening to one of the children, and she’d been sure that she’d never be able to deal with that. It was why she’d been so scared of Ethan going abroad.

Ingrid had known loss before. Her parents had died, although both had been ill for many years, her mother with cancer, her father with a lung disease. They’d both known they were going to die and it had been gentle, expected. They’d been prepared, and death had almost been a release after all the pain and suffering. But this? She wasn’t prepared for this.

Beside her, Molly moaned in her sleep and turned over to

burrow further under the duvet. For now, she was safe in the world of sleep. And Ethan, he was safe too in that he didn’t know anything yet. Gloria had been on to the Department of Foreign Affairs and they were trying to reach him via the consulate in Vietnam, but they hadn’t made contact yet.

Ingrid was responsible for nobody except herself. There was nobody to stare mutely at her as she let go.

She closed her eyes and let it happen. And then the tears came, flowing at such speed that tissues were soaked in an instant. She stopped using tissues, just pulled the top sheet up and held it against her swollen face, burying her head between her knees. Rocking herself as she sobbed, keening: David, oh David, my love.

Ingrid felt the flash almost before she saw it. The sharp piercing light fizzed over her retinas and then, belatedly, she realised what it was. A press photographer taking pictures of her waiting for Ethan at the airport.

Ethan’s plane had landed, he’d texted her to say he was waiting at the luggage belts, and she knew that it would be only moments until he was with her. She’d longed to hug him for so long and now that the moment was almost upon her, all she could think of was that she’d do anything to turn back the clock. A few days ago she’d simply been worrying about him being away; now she was worrying about how devastated he’d be, and living in hell herself.

And here was a paparazzo, intruding on their private grief.

For what? Some picture that nobody needed to see.

Ingrid knew there would be press at David’s funeral, partly because he was one of the country’s success stories in business, partly because he was married to her. But what paper would have the disregard for other people’s pain to want to run this picture: her, puffy-eyed with pain, meeting their son for the first time since his father had died.

This wasn’t a human interest story, this was her life.

She swivelled to the photographer and walked towards him, her face set grimly. He gave her a half-smile and began to walk away, but Ingrid called him.

‘Please,’ she said, ‘wait.’

He stopped, reluctantly.

‘This is a private moment,’ she said, using her voice the way she did when she had to be particularly authoritative on television. ‘My son is a private individual and, while I may be fair game in your eyes, he has a lawful right to expect privacy at this time.’

The man blinked at her warily, unaccustomed to subjects who had such a grasp of the legalities of invasion of privacy.

‘I’d like you to leave us to grieve in peace.’ She delivered the last sentence in the measured, hard tones that made interviewees twist uncomfortably in their chairs and suddenly feel that their top buttons were choking them. It always worked.

It worked here too.

‘OK,’ the photographer said, admitting defeat.

She watched him go, her jaw still set with anger. There were no guarantees he wouldn’t come back, but Ingrid would sue anyone who printed a photograph of this moment. When had she ceased to be one of them, one of the press, and become one of the hunted?

‘Mum?’

Wild animals knew their young by their cries, Ingrid had once read, and as she whirled round to see Ethan coming towards her amid the throng emerging from the security gates, she knew it was true. Even in the noise of the arrivals hall, she’d picked out his voice.

He seemed taller than before, but perhaps that was just the tan and the leanness: he was verging on thin, his broad shoulders looking bony under the weight of the massive rucksack.

And Ingrid felt the tears coursing down her face.

She hadn’t cried since the morning after David had died, hadn’t even cried when she’d talked on the phone to Ethan

and he’d sobbed his heart out. Tears weren’t enough to signify how bereft and empty she felt. There needed to be something else to show devastation, she thought. Like blood coming out of your eyes or something. She could see how the ancient Indian practice of suttee worked, the widow hurling herself on her husband’s funeral pyre to burn with him and accompany him to the next life, leaving behind hennaed fingerprints on the walls lining the route to the funeral. That had struck her as simply a waste of a life before. But now, feeling like half a person, it made perfect sense.