The Last Love Note(90)

I think of the stars stuck on Norway on the poster I kept on my wall for all those years.

Hugh smiles. ‘Top of your bucket list, right? You can’t work with someone for four years and not notice her screensaver. One of us had to have attention to detail.’

I laugh and wonder how many other details he’s logged – and how much I’ve missed. But everyone’s flocking around me now, hugging me, shaking Charlie’s hand in a grown-up fashion that delights him, wishing us well for our big adventure. Hugh steps to the back of the room and busies himself in a conversation with the restaurant’s chef.

‘Mummy started a blog!’ Charlie announces loudly. ‘For our holiday!’

‘Shhh, sweetie, that’s really just for us, so we’ll remember it.’

‘But we’re not like Daddy,’ he says, as if I have come down in the last shower. ‘It’s called “Charlie and Mummy’s Excellent Adventure”.’

I avoid eye contact with everyone. All of this, every part of it, is too close to the bone.

And just like that, it’s over. Hugh walks us out.

He scoops Charlie into the air and lifts him high above our heads, where he whoops and hollers delightedly and settles into Hugh’s arms for a big hug that hurts my heart. I need paracetamol again, the way I needed it the night Cam died. I wasn’t prepared for how much this goodbye was going to hurt. Hadn’t considered I was piling another type of grief onto the first.

‘Look after Mummy while you’re away,’ Hugh says to Charlie, who’s still in his arms. Just seeing a man holding him again feels bittersweet. Hugh is purposely avoiding my gaze now, which gives me an opportunity to really look at him, and that only drives home the distinction of what I’m giving up.

‘We are going away for a very long time,’ Charlie informs him. ‘Will you forget us?’

We’re obsessed with memory in our house. Goes with the territory.

‘I won’t forget you,’ he says, and Charlie throws his arms around Hugh’s neck again, almost strangling him as Hugh looks at me over Charlie’s shoulder, reaches for my hand, and squeezes it. ‘I promise.’





40





I cry from the tarmac at Sydney airport to the tarmac in LAX, and half the time I don’t even really know what I’m crying over. It’s not just about Cam. Or Hugh. It’s about everything. Even the freedom lying ahead. How the customs official will recognise puffy-eyed me from my passport photo, I don’t know. Ironically, we’re stopping in LA to start our trip with a visit to the Happiest Place on Earth, which has its work seriously cut out for it.

The princesses get to me in the first five minutes. So smiley and perfect. Peddling lies about life and love and magic and happy endings. Sometimes you get your prince, I want to shout at them. And then he is taken away!

I miss Cam at every turn. This was never meant to be just Charlie and me. Cam and our baby were meant to be here as well. I spend the whole time queuing behind complete families, trying not to look as ripped off as I feel, while Charlie, oblivious to my sadness, soaks in all the wonder.

By the time we reach New York City and fall into our seats at a Broadway matinee, I’m starting to acclimatise. We’ve only been here half a day and I have fallen under the city’s spell. The lights, the activity, the way the neon billboards in Times Square flash on the wall of our hotel room. Just the relentless ‘getting on with it’, I think. And then I take Charlie up onto the roof of the Empire State Building late at night.

‘This is in that movie you like,’ he says.

‘Sleepless in Seattle,’ I confirm.

‘People who truly loved once are far more likely to love again.’ If life was really like a romantic comedy, I’d turn around and Hugh would be standing here, surprising me. Surprising us.

But this is not fiction. And Hugh is ten thousand miles away, giving me exactly the space I insisted on.

Charlie and I look downtown towards One World Trade Center and I’m overcome at the collective grief this city has faced. So much loss on such a large scale in one morning – the families of every victim just as fractured as our own.

And yet this city’s lights still dance.

Central Park still blooms.

The shows go on. Grief is absorbed into its story. And it’s extraordinary.

If Disneyland was the low point, New York is a turning point for me. I realise selling our house and travelling was exactly the right idea. Being here is the fresh start of the rest of our lives.

When Charlie falls into bed after a long afternoon playing in the autumn leaves in Central Park, I take out my laptop, open a new document and type the words I’ve resisted for so long.

Chapter One.

I stare at the screen for a long time, trying to work out where best to begin, pretending I know what I’m doing. Then I remember the workshop at the festival: ‘Almost fiction’. Write what you know, even if the details are different.

If you wanted to, you could be with him in minutes.

I read that a widow’s only job in the first twelve months is to keep herself alive, and I understand the achievement. Because when your husband dies, he never stops not being here. He resolutely stays away. Silent.

In the dark days immediately following his death, I couldn’t imagine grief more raw than it was then, when the wound was freshly inflicted and exposed.