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Chapter 4
The Present Day

Lewis is sitting on a traffic bollard, a few feet outside the hospital foyer. It’s not very comfortable, despite his bulk, and he wishes there was somewhere more pleasant to sit. Maybe he’ll donate a bench, he thinks, in memory of Andrea.

The Andrea Barnard Memorial Bench. It would welcome the arses of the cold, the lonely, the ill, the desperate. She’d absolutely hate it, he decides, and the thought of the look of contempt on her face makes him smile. If there’s a heaven, she’ll be shaking her fists and uttering dire threats. ‘Something with a bit more class, please, darling,’ she’d say. ‘A nice little tequila bar, perhaps? God knows these poor people need a drink!’

It’s late now – somewhere after 10 p.m. on what has been a very long day. By now, he’d usually be tucked up in bed with an episode of Antiques Roadshow, or reading a good Barbara Cartland.

It’s a Friday, so he’d have a nice lie-in the next morning, before taking a brisk constitutional in the valley. Maybe he’d persuade Andrea to come with him. Perhaps, if the weather was good, they’d go for a paddle in the lake with his ancient springer spaniel, Betty.

For Lewis, and for poor old Betty, there will at least be another morning. Another sunrise. Another chance to wonder at the world – not that it looks very impressive when all you can see is a neon-drenched hospital car park and frazzled paramedics on a fag break.

For Andrea, there will be nothing. No more sunrises. No more tequila. No more Antiques Roadshow, unless she’s been shown Downstairs, where she’ll be taunted by scary-looking dolls and ugly pottery for all of eternity.

She’s gone, and he’s struggling to believe it can possibly be true – that somehow the world continues on as normal. There should be a black hole in the sky; a swarm of shooting stars to mark her passing, a murder of crows lined up on the bus stop cawing her name. Not just this … mundane reality.

She made her film, and he had marvelled at her. At her strength and her resolve and her determination. He knew how ill she was, how much pain she was in – but you couldn’t tell from that video. She somehow managed to be loving and firm and even funny. Quite frankly, it had been the performance of a lifetime.

He’d been the liability, not her, with his shaking hands and constant need to blink tears from his eyes. Pathetic. He was a mess – she was a powerhouse.

Once she’d done it, though (one take, miraculously making it sound spontaneous even though he knew she’d rehearsed it), it seemed like whatever life and energy she had left drained out of her. It was her last hurrah, and within minutes of filming that one last close-up, her grey head dropped back into the lumps and bumps of the pillow as she fell into a long, staring silence.

There’d been a few sniffles after that, a few quick, breathless questions asking how she’d done, but he knew – he knew that it was all she had left to give, and she’d given it to her daughters. After that, it was silence and morphine all the way to the end.

It was a strange experience, seeing someone die. He wasn’t even sure she’d gone when it finally happened, after several false alarms.

On one occasion, she went what felt like minutes without drawing in a breath, then when he went to check on her, she suddenly opened her eyes and made him scream like a big, fat girl. At least that provoked a laugh – albeit one that ended in a coughing fit.

Almost an hour ago, though, it ended. It all ended. That glorious life, that wicked sense of humour, that vigorous bundle of vitality. Sixty-five years of love and laughter and experience – all gone. One papery hand fell away from the blanket to dangle loosely over the edge of the bed, coral nails vivid against the white sheets, and the other – clutched into his – became limp and lifeless.

He waited, and waited, and waited some more. Part of him had been desperate for this moment – for her to be put out of her torment. But part of him felt like he had simply died with her, which wouldn’t have been the world’s biggest tragedy. He’d wanted to crawl into that bed, pull the sheets over them both, and just stop breathing. Stop existing.

A world without Andrea was, right then, too terrible to even imagine.

Lewis had made a lot of friends during his long, rich life – but none of them had ever come close to Andrea. She was like a beacon of energy, a rainbow shining into a grey world, a blast of dazzling light scattering away the darkness. She was his soul mate, his true love without being his lover, his partner in crime.

He’d first encountered her when he moved to the village years ago, and their eyes met over a crowded giant vegetable stand at the annual fete. They’d both been staring at the same collection of ridiculously large marrows, and they both had the same raised eyebrows and ‘oo-er missus’ expressions, straight from a Carry On movie.

That had led to coffee. Coffee had led to a night in the pub. And a night in the pub had led to an unshakeable friendship, based on a rude sense of humour, a love of banter, and, if he was entirely honest, on mutual loneliness.

And now she was gone, and he was sitting with a concrete bollard up his bum, and it was dark and cold and rainy. The height of the inglorious English summer. He’d left his mac on the back seat of his car, his tweed jacket was soaked through, and he knew his shirt would be plastered to his skin in ways that were far from flattering. She’d be thoroughly shocked at him showing off his man boobs in such an unbecoming way, he was sure.

His fingers were shaking and his carefully combed hair was wet and flat to his skull, letting all the bald patches peek out.

Somehow, though, he just didn’t seem able to care. All his life, he’d done the right thing – been properly turned out, played his part, done what was expected of him. Now, he wouldn’t be bothered if he was naked, covered in woad and speaking in tongues. Everything felt heavy, and useless, and empty. Especially him.

None of it felt real yet. He’d done some paperwork, accepted sweet tea and sympathy from kind nurses who never really knew her, and been forced to eat some over-buttered toast. Eventually, after ‘giving him some time’, they gently suggested he needed to leave the room.

It was only decades of training and conditioning and pure English politeness that stopped him from yelling at them. From kicking them out, and barricading the door with his recliner chair, and wailing like those Middle Eastern ladies you see on the news.

He understood now, for the first time, how grief could make you wail like that. How pain could be so pure and so livid that it took on a life of its own, a small, furious animal that wanted to howl at the top of its lungs. To scream and scream and scream until the whole world shattered with the sheer force of its misery.

His own parents had died after long, full lives, and they were never especially close anyway – they were merely the people who visited him at boarding school, and insisted he became a lawyer. It had hurt when they passed on, but nothing had prepared him for this.