The Other Side of the Story (51 page)

She replied, 'Why do you hev no money? You got a big cheque last week.'

'I had to pay you back, then I bought Ema a tricycle, all the other little girls have tricycles, then I had to get her hair cut into a Dora the Explorer bob, all the other little girls have Dora the Explorer bobs…'

'And now you do not hev enough to feed her,' Irina said. Slyly, she added, 'You hate Anton for being bed vit money but you are werry bed too.'

'I never said I wasn't. I can't help it, it was the way I was brought up. And it just goes to show what a mismatch Anton and I were.'

She sighed and indicated a biscuit tin. 'Help yourself.' Then she handed me a postcard. 'Mail for you.'

I looked at it in surprise: a picture of three grizzly bears, standing in a stream, against a backdrop of pine trees and the great outdoors. It looked as if it had been sent from Canada. The biggest bear had a huge salmon between his jaws, the medium-sized bear was scooping a fish from the water and the smallest bear held a flipping fish in its paws. I turned it over and the caption read, 'Grizzly bears at a weir'. But someone — a person with Anton's handwriting — had crossed out the official caption and handwritten, 'Anton, Lily and Ema enjoy a fish supper.' To my enormous surprise I heard myself laugh.

He had also scribbled, 'Thinking of you both. All my love, A'.

It was utterly imbued with the spirit of Anton; funny and clever and mad, and I thought joyfully, this is the start of the happy memories. I am finally getting to the point where I can look back at my time with him without feeling wretched.

I felt happy all day long.

A few short days later the post yielded up a postcard of Burt Reynolds, looking very matinee idol and luxuriant of moustache. Anton had written: 'I saw this and thought of you.' Again I laughed and felt hopeful about the future.

I was starting to look forward to the postcards and soon another one arrived, this time of a vase bearing Chinese-style line-drawings of people and cups and stuff. The caption read, 'Ming vase depicting tea ceremony', but Anton had crossed it out and written, 'Anton, Lily and Ema,
circa
1544, enjoying a cup of tea after a hard day's shopping.' When I looked again, it even seemed like there were shopping bags beside the figures.

I turned to Irina and said, 'I've been thinking. When Anton comes for Ema today, I think I can deal with it.'

'Very well.'

That evening when I opened the door to him, Anton did not even seem surprised. He simply exclaimed, 'Lily!' As if he was thrilled to see me.

He looked a lot better than he had at our previous encounter, not remotely as drawn and gaunt. His aura of shine and vitality had returned; clearly he was on the mend, we both were.

'Where's Irina today? What's up with her?' he asked.

'Nothing. Just… you know… I'm ready, it's time… Anton, thank you for the postcards, they're so funny, they made me laugh.'

'Great. And I'm glad I've met you because I wanted to give you this.'

He handed me an envelope which triggered a guilty memory of the unread letter in my underwear drawer. What's this?'

'Dosh,' he said. 'Lots of it. Now that I'm back making infomercials, the money is rolling in.'

'Is it really?' This was the final sign I needed that we were better off apart.

'Buy yourself and Ema something nice. I read in the paper that Origins has a new perfume out - and don't forget to get yourself something too!'

The twinkle was back in his eyes and I felt a huge rush of affection towards him that almost translated into me lunging at him in a hug. I restrained myself this time but wouldn't have to for much longer. Soon we could embrace as friends.

Gemma

I thought I would never get over Owen, I had no interest in it, I was quite happy being totally miserable. So it came as a bit of a rude awakening when I came to one morning to find myself feeling really fine. Actually, it took a while to identify the emotion because it was so unfamiliar.

Suddenly I saw the Owen thing differently: it was time for him to return to his own planet, Planet Younger Man, where Lorna was waiting to welcome him home.

And I was prepared to acknowledge how interesting the timing was; he'd broken it off with me the very day Dad had returned home. It was like he'd been sent to me for as long as I'd needed him. I don't usually believe in a kindly God (I don't usually bother believing in any sort of God) but it made me wonder. I stopped focusing on how much I missed him, instead I felt grateful I'd gotten a go of him for as long as I had.

OK, I was still a bit watery and wobbly but I couldn't believe the change in me — it was like having one of those twenty-four-hour 'flu's. When you're in the throes, you feel like you're in it for the long haul, then you wake up the next day, unbelievably back to normal.

To discuss my perplexing condition, I asked Cody to meet me for a drink and, to his credit, he agreed.

'I promise I won't start crying.' But I'd said that the last time too.

'We'll go somewhere suburban just to be on the safe side,' he said, and one hour later, in an anonymous pub in Blackrock, I confessed my new-found peace of mind.

'And your problem?'

'I'm worried that I'm very shallow,' I said. 'To get over him so quickly. Last week, even two days ago, I was still devastated and now I feel OK. I miss him, but I don't feel like my heart is breaking.'

'You did a year's worth of crying. Anyway it wasn't just him you were upset about. I spoke to Eugene about you.'

'Eugene who?'

'Furlong.' One of Ireland's most famous psychiatrists, often on telly. 'He says your reaction was disproportionate because you were grieving for your dad.'

'But my dad was back.'

'Exactly. It was safe to do so.'

'That makes no sense.'

Cody shrugged. 'I agree. Load of nonsense. I prefer the theory that you're just really shallow.'

I never got to work with Anton on making a film of
Chasing Rainbows
. Something happened with the actress and the deal fell apart. I was disappointed — but only because I thought it would have helped the book to do well and would be a right laugh, especially going on set and wearing a revealing dress and fake tan to the premiere - not because I was disappointed that I wouldn't get up close and personal with Anton. Then I emerged from the little dip and discovered that actually I felt oddly relieved.

Lily

It was still dark outside when I emerged from sleep and reached for Anton; I discovered he was not there and for a moment, before I remembered all that had happened, I was
surprised
.

The next night I awoke again and this time his absence caused me to weep. Since I had left him I had slept very well, considerably better than when I had been with him. I could not understand why this was happening now, when we were so close to the end of the process that we were almost ready to be friends. Before I had even left him, I had already made my peace with our situation. Grief had not incapacitated me and it did not occur to me to question why I was coping so well. I was simply grateful to have been spared.

So why, two months after I had left him, did I feel sadder than ever?

The following morning when the post came, Irina handed me an official-looking envelope and I asked, 'Anything else for me?'

'No.'

'Nothing?'

'No.'

'Like a postcard?'

'I said no.'

A thought jumped into my head:
I need to go away for a little while
.

A visit to Mum in Warwickshire was long overdue — it had been a long time, too long, since I had given her a scare about living with her.

I was worried about the income I would lose by not working but when I opened the official-looking envelope, I found it contained a huge royalty cheque for
Mimi's Remedies. The
royalty cheque — the money that could have saved our home, had we received it last December.

Tears sprang to my eyes. How different would our lives be? But I dried my wet eyes and admitted that, knowing us, not very. In January, we had been due to start regular monthly payments and regular income had never been our strong point. It was terribly odd getting the cheque, it belonged to such a different part of my life that it was like a message from a long-dead galaxy. Nevertheless, it was the 'sign' I needed; it meant I could take a break from work, so I rang Mum and gave her the good news
.

'How long do you plan to stay?' she asked. Anxiously?

'Ages,' I said. 'Months. Before you start to hyperventilate, about a week. OK?'

'OK.'

I went to pack and, a couple of strata down in my underwear drawer, I ran into the battered letter from Anton. It lay in a bra cup, and I watched it, almost expecting it to move. I itched to open it. Instead I picked it up by a corner and chucked it in the wastepaper basket; something I should have done weeks ago. Then I loaded up the car (Irina had let me borrow her new Audi — another gift from Vassily), mostly with cuddly toys.

It was a clean spring morning and it felt good speeding along the motorway, as if I was leaving danger behind me in London. Less than two hours after we had left we were turning off the motorway. We're almost there!' Then, 'Whoops!' as my carefree twists and turns brought us up right behind a lorry laden with columns of concrete bollards, rumbling along at about fifteen miles an hour. The road was too narrow and bendy to overtake, but, 'We're in the country now, Ema. No need to rush.' Ema agreed and we launched into the four millionth verse of 'The Wheels on the Bus.'

Bellowing, 'Swish, swish, swish!' we crawled along behind the lorry when suddenly — and it was rather like watching a film — it bumped over a hump in the road and the bollards had broken free of their chains and were flying loose, like so many concrete skittles. Raining down on us, bouncing off the road, flying right at me; there was not even time to be surprised. One glanced off our windscreen and, as if by magic, the glass had morphed into an opaque shield that sagged inwards. Some hit the roof of the car and it buckled down on us, I could not see in front of me, my foot was on the brake but we were still moving. At some stage we had stopped singing and I knew, with crystal clarity, that we were about to die. I was about to perish with my child on an A-road in Warwickshire.
I'm not ready
…

In the child mirror my eyes met Ema's and she looked puzzled but not alarmed.
She's my child and I have failed to protect her
.

The skid went on for ever. It seemed that years had passed: Ema had started school, gone through adolescence and had her first pregnancy scare before I became aware we were even slowing down. It was like being in a dream, where you want to run but your legs refuse to work; the brake was pressed to the floor but would not respond.

Finally, eventually, we reached a halt. I sat for a moment, barely believing the stillness, then turned to Ema. She extended her hand. There was something in it. 'Glass,' she said.

I got out of the car and my legs were so light I seemed to be floating. I retrieved Ema from her babyseat and she too seemed to be weightless. Her Dora the Explorer hair was studded with hundreds of little nuggets of glass - the back window had caved in on her head, but the strange thing was that she did not appear to be injured. Neither was I. Nothing was painful and neither of us bore any sign of blood.

The driver of the lorry was a gibbering wreck. 'Oh my God,' he kept saying. 'Oh my God. I thought I'd killed you, I thought I'd killed you.'

He whipped out a mobile and made a call - sending for help, I thought passively — and I stood, holding Ema and looking at the battered car and bollards everywhere, strewn back along the road. I felt an urgent need to sit down, so I lowered myself on my not-there legs onto the grass verge and pulled Ema to me. As we sat by the side of the road I suddenly understood that the reason I was without a scratch was not because I had been ridiculously lucky but because I was, in fact, dead. I pinched my arm. I thought I felt something but could not be sure. So I pinched Ema and she looked at me in surprise.

'Sorry.'

'Oh, Lily,' she said. 'Play nice.'

It was quite a cold day — I could see it when I breathed out - but I felt perfectly comfortable: dizzy, like the air was thin, but very serene. I gathered Ema into me and, cheeks touching, stillness descended on us as though we were posing for a photo. In the distance I heard the sound of sirens, then an ambulance had arrived and men were jumping out and coming towards us.

This is it, I thought. This is the part where I watch them strap my lifeless body onto a stretcher and find I am floating fifteen feet above the scene. What I could not figure out was whether or not Ema was dead too.

A slender torch was shone into my eyes, a blood-pressure meter was strapped to my arm and people asked me stupid questions. What day was it? What was the Prime Minister's name? Who won Pop Idol? The ambulance man, a middle-aged reassuring type, looked at the crumpled car and winced. 'You were bloody lucky.'

'Really?' This was my chance. 'Are you telling me we're not dead?'

'You're not dead,' he said matter-of-factly, 'but you're in shock. Don't do anything rash.'

'Like what?'

'I don't know. Like anything rash.'

'OK.'

We were taken to hospital, pronounced to be in health as perfect as it was remarkable, then Mum came to ferry us to her home: an idyllic little cottage in an idyllic little village on the edge of a farming community. Mum's garden bordered a field containing three stolid sheep and a baby lamb skipping about like a happy half-wit.

Ema, a city girl, was dazzled by her first real-life sheep.

'Bad dog,' she shouted at them. 'BAD dog!'

Then she began to bark - a wholly convincing rendition — and the sheep gathered at the gate to look at her, their woolly heads together, their expressions tender.

'Come inside,' Mum said to me, 'you've had a dreadful shock, you need to lie down.'

I was reluctant to leave Ema or to even take my eyes off her, after I had so nearly lost her.

But Mum said, 'She'll be quite safe here,' and somehow I believed her. Moments later she had installed me in a wooden-beamed, rose-patterned room, and I was sinking into a soft bed with smooth, cotton sheets. Everything smelt clean and nice and safe.

'I have to sort out Irina's car,' I said. 'And I have to contact Anton. And I have to ensure that nothing terrible happens to Ema ever again. But first I have to go to sleep.'

And then it was morning and I opened my eyes to find Mum and Ema in the room, Ema grinning her melon grin.

The first thing I said was, We didn't die yesterday.'

Mum gave me a 'Not in front of Ema' look and asked, 'How did you sleep?'

'Wonderfully. I went to the bathroom in the middle of the night but I didn't walk into the doorjamb and damage my optic nerve, ensuring double vision for the rest of my life.'

'Your father is on his way from London, he has to see for himself that you've been saved from the jaws of death. But we're not going to get back together,' she added quickly. She always had to say that to me whenever she and Dad met. 'And I rang Anton.'

'Don't let him visit.'

'Why not?'

'Because I don't want to do anything rash.'

She looked sad. 'It's a terrible shame about you and Anton.'

'Yes,' I acknowledged. 'But at least I never caught him wearing a red basque and black stockings, masturbating in front of my dressing-table mirror.'

'What on earth,' she frowned, 'are you talking about?'

I frowned back. 'Nothing. I'm simply saying how good it is that that never happened. It would make things considerably more difficult between us because each time I saw him I might want to laugh.'

'And what was that about not walking into the doorjamb?'

'Just that I am happy that it didn't happen.'

A shadow crossed her face and she pulled Ema to her protectively and said, 'Let's make pancakes, shall we?'

They disappeared into the kitchen and I dressed slowly and sat in the sunny window seat humming to myself until the wheels of a twenty-year-old Jag crunched on the gravel outside announcing Dad's and Poppy's arrival from London.

Mum watched Dad getting out of the car and rolled her eyes. 'Just as I expected, he's in tears. He has such an obnoxious streak of sentimentality. It's terribly unattractive.'

She opened the front door and Ema was so excited to see Poppy that she began to choke. Hand-in-hand they ran off together to break things and Dad gathered me in his arms, so tightly that I also began to choke.

'My litde girl,' he said, his voice thick with tears. 'I haven't been right since I heard. You were so lucky.'

'I know.' I managed to break free and take a breath. 'When you think about it, all my life I've been lucky.'

He looked slightly puzzled but because of my brush with death he was obliged to humour me.

'Think about it,' I said. 'Of all the times I drank from a can of Coke on a summer's day, and not once was I stung by a wasp which had crawled in. Never did I go into anaphylactic shock so that my tongue swelled up like a rugby ball. Isn't it wonderful?'

Mum looked at Dad. 'She keeps saying things like that. Why, Lily?'

'Simply making conversation.'

We lapsed into awkward silence, all the better to hear the happy shouts of Ema and Poppy tormenting the sheep. ('Bad dog. NASTY dog.') Mum looked in the direction of the racket, then snapped her head back and pounced. 'What are you thinking now?'

'Nothing! Just how happy I am that all my toenails grow in the right direction. Having ingrown toenails must be bloody. And the operation to remove them sounds dreadful'

Mum and Dad gave each other a look. ('Dirty dog. HAIRY dog.')

'You ought to see a doctor,' Mum said.

I ought not. I was simply in the grip of one of those bouts of gratitude which sometimes assail me post-disaster. I tried to explain. 'Yesterday, there were so many ways Ema and I could have died. We could have been hit by a bollard, I could have driven the car into a ditch because I couldn't see where we were going or we could have ploughed into the back of the lorry. Being saved in so many different ways has made me think about all the terrible things that could happen but actually don't. Even though not everything is going well for me at the moment, I feel lucky.'

Their faces were blank and I ploughed on. 'Last night I dreamt that I was carrying Ema through a wasteland, and huge rocks were falling from the sky, landing just behind us, and cracks in the earth were opening up just after we'd stepped over them. But Ema and I were untouched, and a path to safety generated itself and came up to meet my foot, precisely when I needed it.'

I finished. Their faces had remained set in blankness.

Finally Dad spoke. 'Perhaps you have concussion, love.' He turned on Mum, 'Look at what we've done to her. This is our fault.'

He was full of grandiose talk of taking me to Harley Street, nothing but the best, but Mum slapped him down. 'Please don't talk such nonsense.'

'Thanks, Mum.' At least one of them understood.

Then Mum added, 'The local chap will do fine.'

I tried to hide it but could not. It was like when I had been mugged, except the entire opposite, if you know what I mean. Back then all I saw were the terrible things that could happen to human beings. This time all I saw were the bad things that
did not
happen.

The world is a safe place, I thought. And life is a low-risk activity.

The following day Dad returned reluctantly to London — Debs needed him urgently, to open a jar of jam or something - and it was just Ema, Mum and me. The weather was glorious and so was my mood. I thought I might burst with the joy of not having tinnitus. Or leprosy.

With shining eyes I said to Mum, 'Isn't it wonderful to not have gout?'

She snapped, 'Right, that's it!' lifted the phone and requested a home visit.

Dr Lott, a young, curly haired man, appeared in my rose-covered bedroom, less than an hour later. 'What appears to be the problem?'

Mum answered for me. 'Her relationship has failed, so has her career, yet she feels very happy. Don't you?'

I assented. Yes, that was all true.

Dr Lott frowned. 'That is worrying.'

'Worrying,' he went on, 'but not actually a sign of illness.'

'I was almost killed,' I said.

He looked at Mum. Raised his eyebrows questioningly.