‘I didn’t think to do it earlier, truthfully. Didn’t consider it as an option. It was him who suggested it, in the end, with that note he left. I think once I married Arthur, I convinced myself that that was that. I’d made my choice.’
Julie nods. ‘And his death freed you of that, in a way.’
It’s not a question, so I don’t answer, but if it was, I would say this. His death opened me up, loosened me, made me look at things a little differently, made me see more clearly. Arthur was sixty-two years of love and protection, and his death was a letting go.
She goes off to do some washing and make my lunch, leaves me to my thoughts. I close my eyes, not to doze off, but to remember better. Dot and me, up in my bedroom.
‘You said you had something to tell me,’ she said.
‘I do.’ And I wanted to tell her but I didn’t, at the same time.
‘Well, spit it out, then.’ She was standing behind me, plaiting my hair. She tapped me gently on the shoulder with the brush.
‘Arthur’s asked me to marry him,’ I said.
I couldn’t see her face, and she couldn’t see mine. We reacted to the telling of this privately.
‘I think we both knew that was coming,’ she said, after a pause that felt momentous. ‘What did you say?’
It was my turn to pause. I put a hand up behind me and placed it on hers, on the brush handle, and she stopped what she was doing and came round to sit on the bed, facing me.
‘I said yes,’ I said.
Did I see a flash of pain, of jealousy? There, and then gone. She raised her eyebrows and her expression was questioning.
‘Are you sure?’ she asked.
‘No,’ I said, in a small, quiet voice.
And then I started to justify it, the decision, though she hadn’t asked me to. ‘He’s been so good to me since Bill died, so patient. I like how reliable he is, how solid. I feel like he’ll look after me. And we get on, don’t we? He makes me laugh and he’s kind. And he’s always keen to have adventures. I feel like he’ll push me to do things I wouldn’t do otherwise.’
Dot was silent. She looked up at me and smiled, but her eyes were sad. ‘It sounds like you’re trying to talk me, or maybe yourself, into believing it’s the right thing to do.’
‘That isn’t fair.’
‘Isn’t it?’
I looked down at the sheets, because I knew that if I looked up at her at that moment, if our eyes met, something momentous might happen. And I wanted it to, but I was terrified, too, and the terror won out.
‘Being with him, and you, and Bill, those were the happiest times of my life. I feel like I can keep hold of that, if I marry him. If I don’t, and he goes off and marries someone else, and I wait around to meet someone who never knew my brother, I feel like I’ll be letting go of those memories.’
I dared to look up, and she was shaking her head.
‘That’s not how memories work. You’ll always have that, those memories of us all together. But that’s over, now, isn’t it? It was over the moment we lost Bill. And it feels like maybe you’re trying to cling onto him by marrying his best friend.’
Was that what I was doing?
‘I understand, I think. You don’t want to fully let go of him. I don’t, either. And you want all the conventional things. Marriage, children. Arthur is offering all of that to you.’
She was wrong, and I wanted to scream it. I didn’t want those things. I wanted her, but since that day we’d kissed she’d given me no indication that she felt the same way. I felt like I’d given her every chance. We’d been alone countless times. Like right then. She’d had every opportunity to lean across and close the distance between us and kiss me again. And so had I, and neither of us had taken it. Was it fear on her part, as it was on mine, or was it a lack of inclination? I wasn’t brave enough to ask.
If I could go back there, do that day again, differently, would I be brave enough to risk it all? I don’t know, but I do know that my life could have taken a wildly different course if I had.
‘Mabel?’
I look up and Julie is standing behind the sofa, telling me she’s about to go.
‘You were miles away,’ she says. ‘Is there anything else you need before I head off?’
I shake my head. Because the things I need aren’t material, and no one can give them to me. A second chance. A rewinding of time. The girl I was, and the girl she was, and the hidden love that may have existed between us.
38
There’s a knocking at the door that sounds like someone trying to raise the dead.
‘All right,’ I call out. ‘I’m coming.’
When I get the door open, after faffing about a bit with the chain, I see Julie on the doorstep, breathless and excited.
‘I thought you were coming at two today,’ I say.
‘I was, I am, I just… had to talk to you about something. Can I come in?’
I step back and she comes inside. She’s beaming, happier than I’ve ever seen her. What could possibly have happened between yesterday afternoon and now to provoke this kind of elation? Because that’s the word for how she looks. Elated.
‘You’d better sit down, Mabel,’ she says. ‘And I’d better, too. I’m all antsy. Can’t stay still.’
She perches on the edge of the sofa and I go to my armchair, keen to find out what this is all about.
‘I had a message this morning, on Facebook,’ she says.
I nod, encouraging her to go on.
‘It was from Charles.’
Dot’s brother. In all the excitement of looking for Joan, and then the heartbreak of her telling us Dot had passed away, I forgot all about that lead. That message. And now, Julie has been in touch with Dot’s closest living relative, and I imagine she’s here to fill in some gaps for me, let me know about corners of Dot’s life that I wasn’t privy to.
‘Go on,’ I say.
‘I just need some water,’ she says, leaping up and disappearing into the kitchen. ‘Do you want anything, Mabel?’
‘I’d love a tea,’ I say.
While she’s making it, I try to guess at what she might be here to tell me. Something about Dot’s sexuality, perhaps? I’ve wondered about that, since finding out that her marriage didn’t last long and she didn’t marry again. But if Julie is about to say that, how will I feel? Will it be better to know that she could have felt the same way as I did, or worse? I let my mind wander a bit further. What about if she left me something, like a letter? And Charles, or whoever was in charge of sorting out the will wasn’t able to get it to me, but now they’ve found this connection, via Julie? It’s a slim chance, but the idea of words written by Dot lifts me a little. I can picture her handwriting, its loops and curves. I start to think about what she might have had to say.
‘Here,’ Julie says, placing my mug of tea on the windowsill for me. ‘Mmm, lovely daffs, don’t they smell wonderful?’
They do, but now that I’ve gone so far down the track of imagining Dot left me something – some kind of explanation, perhaps, or a declaration of love, even the friendly kind – I need to know Julie’s news immediately.