Page 27 of Postscript

One morning I walk into the bathroom to find the sunflower pot sitting on the toilet seat lid, with an open dirty magazine.

After ten days of this carry on, I call it.

‘OK, admit it: I’ve won.’ My beans have sprouted and grown shoots, and there is a large network of shoots off the main root, with a sturdy stem growing straight upwards and out of the cotton wool.

But of course he won’t give in.

The following morning, he gets out of bed and goes downstairs to make our morning coffee before I do, which is a rare and precious thing, and I know something is up. He starts yelling, frantically, and I think we’ve been burgled. I fall out of bed, stumble downstairs and find him dancing around in his boxers, holding his potted plant with a single two-foot-tall sunflower climbing high.

‘It’s a miracle!’ he says, wide-eyed.

‘You’re a cheat.’

‘I did it!’ he dances around with the sunflower, following me to the kitchen, and points a finger at me accusingly. ‘You thought you could bury me, you didn’t know I was a seed.’

‘Cute,’ I nod. Game over. ‘So now we can have a baby?’

‘Definitely,’ he says, serious. ‘It’s what I’ve always wanted.’

On a high from our decision, we drink our morning coffee, him from his Star Wars mug; we’re grinning at each other like lunatics, as though we’ve made the baby already. The post lands on the hallway floor.

Gerry gathers the envelopes and brings them to the kitchen, flicks through them and one takes his interest. He tears it open and I watch him, grinning at my gorgeous husband who wants to make a baby with me in my new house with a staircase that brings you upstairs from downstairs and downstairs from upstairs, feeling like life couldn’t be any more perfect.

I study his face. ‘What is it?’

He hands me the letter. ‘I got the appointment for the MRI.’

I read the letter and when I look up, I can see he’s nervous.

‘These things are standard procedure. It just rules things out.’

‘Yeah, I know,’ he says, kissing me quickly, distracted. ‘Still hate it. I’m going for a shower.’

‘Where? Upstairs? To our shower upstairs?’

He stops at the bottom of the stairs and smiles, but the light has gone out in him. ‘The very one. You take care of Esmerelda. She likes porn and video games.’

‘Esmerelda?’ I look at the sunflower, and laugh. ‘Nice to meet you, Esmerelda.’

Esmerelda doesn’t live much longer; our collective sense of humour stalled somewhat after the results of the MRI. But we don’t know that yet on that morning. That morning we’re busy planning life.

Gerry runs up our new staircase and then I hear the shower water running.

He’s twenty-seven years old.

I finish my walk through my rooms at the door to my bedroom. I scan the room. It’s not the same at all. New bed, new headboard, new curtains, new paint. New large strong protective lump beneath the duvet. Gabriel stirs, and a hand reaches out for me in the bed. It feels around. He lifts his head from the pillow, scans the room and finds me at the door.

‘Everything OK?’

‘Yes,’ I whisper. ‘I was getting some water.’

He looks at my hands, which are glass-of-water free; he can’t be fooled. I climb into bed and kiss him. He lifts his arm and I turn my back to him and reverse into his warm body. He closes his arm around me and I’m instantly cocooned. He can protect me from the past that’s chasing me, build a bubble around me where memories and emotional backtracking can’t penetrate me. But what happens when he lets go, when the streaming light of morning stirs him, and the safety of slumber slithers away revealing truth? Much as I want to, I can’t hide in him forever.

12

Gabriel and I rise early to get ready for work. It’s dark, the house is cold and damp, impossible to heat as it needs a new central heating system, and we’re both tired. We don’t speak very much, we shuffle around the tiny kitchen, bumping into each other while we try to make our coffees ourselves, just the way we like it, and our own porridge. I make mine with milk, Gabriel prefers his with water. Blueberries on mine. Honey on his. Gabriel is too drained by recent family events in his life and frankly I’m too exhausted to listen to the new drama created by Ava, his sixteen-year-old daughter, the source of his pleasure and pain. A self-confessed bad husband and bad dad, he has spent the last few years trying to reconnect with his daughter. He has been doing all the chasing. His daughter is his world, he is her self-appointed moon, and she knows it: the faster she spins the greater her gravitational pull. My brain is slowly whirring as it warms up for the day. Neither of us are morning people, we keep to ourselves, together.

I lean against the countertop, waiting for the first sip of coffee to help fuel my brain and I collect my thoughts to tell him about the PS, I Love You Club. It’s a good time because it’s a bad time. We both have to leave the house in a few minutes or we’ll be late for work, and so it will leave little room for discussion or argument. It will give me a sense of his mood so I can prepare myself for a longer discussion later. I try to practise an intro line that doesn’t sound rehearsed.