Instead, Mitchell took the pad of Basildon Bond notepaper out from under his bed. It had been over a week since he last wrote to Anita, and he had the urge to do it now.
Dearest Anita,
So much has happened over the last nine days, I feel guilty for not writing to you sooner. A woman fell into a river and I jumped in to help her. (You know I don’t usually do anything without a plan.) Her name is Yvette and she’s been missing from her family for a year. I understand how they must feel, because you’re gone from my life, too. I’m helping Yvette’s sister Liza to find her.
Poppy has taken a shine to Liza and the two of them have formed quite a bond. They went out shopping for clothes, which Poppy will wear to Graham’s wedding (yes, he’s really getting married).
It’s good to see her smiling, but I worry about her getting too attached. I’m ashamed to admit it but I’ve had certain feelings for Liza. She’s nothing like you, though. She talks too much, and wears garish clothes, and I sometimes feel like I’ve stumbled out of a nightclub, woozy in the early hours of the morning, after I spend time with her. She’s not calm and together, like you. I’m not sure I can ever move on. Being with anyone other than you would just be a compromise too far.
Love always,
Mitchell x
He stared at his words, noticing how, this time, they had slipped out. When he read over them, they stated exactly what he wanted to say. He had managed to share moments in his life with Anita, without his usual feeling of remorse and regret.
After folding his letter once, he searched inside his nightstand drawer for a spare envelope, but they were all used up. So, he placed it on top of the stand with the others Susan had given him, and he settled down to sleep.
19
GHOSTS
Mitchell sat stiffly in Liza’s car as she played a series of classical tunes. The atmosphere between them was uncomfortable after their awkward goodbye at the ice rink the day before. Both their moods only lifted when Liza inserted a Crowded House CD instead.
“You thought you saw Anita yesterday, didn’t you?” she said as she drove onto the motorway. “I saw you go pale, like you’d seen a ghost.”
“I don’t believe in ghosts,” he replied quickly.
“That’s not what I asked. You’ve evaded my question.”
He thought about denying it, but felt he owed her better than that. “Yes,” he admitted. “I see her sometimes, in crowds or walking down the street. She’s usually out of reach, so I can’t call to her. But I thought I saw her at the café yesterday, right in front of me. I know it’s not her, but it’s like my brain doesn’t accept that.”
“Because you want her to be real?”
“What I want doesn’t really matter, because it can’t actually be.” He felt prickly at this conversation.
Liza thought for a while. “A lot of people think ghosts are these see-through things, or covered in a white sheet with eyeholes cut out, but I think they’re sometimes glimpses of the past to reassure us in the future.”
He didn’t reply, not sure if his sightings of Anita particularly comforted him. Contradictory feelings of anticipation and sadness overwhelmed him, that she wasn’t really there.
“When my dad died, I used to pretend it hadn’t happened,” Liza explained. “He loved his shed, used to sit inside it and practice his clarinet for hours. I sometimes find his favorite pieces on my iPad and let them play in a different room, so I think he’s still here. Even after five years, it’s hard to accept he’s gone. Do you think that sounds stupid?”
“No. I can understand it, and I’m sorry about yesterday,” Mitchell said eventually, during the track “Don’t Dream It’s Over.” “I wasn’t thinking straight.”
Liza fixed her eyes on the road. “Things must have been difficult after, you know...for Poppy especially.”
Mitchell felt something shutting down inside him, a portcullis of privacy that often appeared to cut himself from other people’s words. He could leave it there as a barrier against Liza, but there was something telling him to try to let her through. He just wasn’t sure how.
“Did Poppy have any counseling?” Liza asked when he didn’t respond. “It’s good to talk things through so they’re not going around in your head like a hamster wheel all the time.”
Mitchell couldn’t stop himself from thinking back to those days.
After Anita died, Poppy had weekly sessions at school. He’d attended a couple of them with her. Katerina the therapist wore lizard earrings and had a pierced nose. She had advised him to “just keep talking” to Poppy.
He had hooked on this, too vigorously, for months. Whenever the apartment was quiet, he punctured it with a stream of chatter about school, the weather, packed lunches, whatever he could think of, to break the silence. Until one day, Poppy had clapped her hands to her ears.
“Just shut up, Dad. I can’t think straight.”
And then he hadn’t known how much to say, and how much not to.
He focused on answering Liza’s question. “She saw someone for a while, but said it wouldn’t bring her mum back. She’s pragmatic like that, and I told her she can always pick it back up. I left my architect job to be there for her more, though nothing can replace her mother. I concentrated on keeping busy, making lots of plans for the two of us.” He thought of the papers fluttering on corkboards in his hallway. “I may have taken it too far.”
“Hmm, they did look rather regimented,” she said softly. “Most people use a diary or their phone these days. Just a thought.”
He considered the simplicity of this and decided it might be less restrictive. “Maybe I’ll start,” he said.
“There’s hope for you yet.”
When they arrived at Yvette’s place, Liza led the way. An old warehouse at the side of a canal had been converted into luxury apartments and the sun glinted off their glass balconies. The building was double the height of Angel House, ten stories tall.
Liza took out a key. “Here we are, where the beautiful people live. All together in one place.” She smiled wryly.
He heard the hint of something sad in her words and wanted to tell her she was a beautiful person, too, but he didn’t say anything. When she put her shoulder against the door and held it open for him, he swallowed his thoughts and walked through.
The lobby looked like a posh waiting room, all brilliant white walls and marble flooring.
Liza headed to a row of mailboxes and took out a key for number thirty-six. “Yvette bought this place a couple of years ago. I pay the management company to collect and send Yvette’s post to me,” she said. “Sometimes they miss stuff.” She picked out a few pieces of mail from the metal box, a couple of pizza menus among them. “See?”