I stem my tears as we stand at the graveside while Adam is lowered into his final resting place. I just need to hold it together for a little longer but the world is spinning. I feel my knees buckle and, if it weren’t for Nell and Josh, I would fall.
‘I’ll always catch you, Anna,’ Adam had said. But he isn’t catching me now and suddenly I hate him for leaving me, and then I hate myself for feeling that way.
‘Anna,’ Nell whispers. I am offered a red rose from a bucket; I’d chosen not to have soil. Heat spreads through me as I fight the urge to tip the flowers on the grass – if we don’t pay our last respects to Adam, surely they can’t fill in his grave?
‘You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to,’ Josh says, but today I am doing everything I don’t want to.
I am letting go of the man I love.
My face is fire. Tears burning behind my eyes, pressure building in my nose. My forehead throbbing with the emotion I’m trying to contain.
Slowly, reluctantly, I unhook my arm from Josh’s and I pluck a rose from the bucket and step forward, holding it between my fingers.
‘Be free.’ I let the flower fall as I say goodbye to my husband, to Harry, to the life we almost had.
To all of it.
I stuff my hands into my pockets, rooted to the spot, unwilling to leave him. In my pocket I find a coin. I pull it out. It’s the coin. My grandad’s. I hadn’t remembered putting it in my coat and, after running my finger over it one last time, I kiss it and let it fall into the grave.
I’ll be thinking of you, Adam. Always.
It is when I turn away that the circling thought that there is something I need to remember stills and becomes as clear as the bright blue sky.
The day Adam died, before he took the fateful yacht trip for the second time, he had scrawled an address on a notepad. An address I can’t clearly remember.
It was a message for me. It must have been.
But what?
Chapter Seventy-Eight
Anna
The wake is held in The Star. I haven’t been here for years. Adam would be pleased to know they still have the same pool tables. I step inside onto the forever-sticky floor and it feels like stepping back in time. Dark wooden beams striping the ceiling. Round mahogany tables wobble on spindly legs.
I hover uncertainly by the bar, unsure of what my place is here. What I am supposed to do. Both unwilling and unable to mingle and join one of the conversations that are too loud. Too jolly. Voices dripping with relief that the ceremony is over, and laughter. People are laughing.
‘Anna?’ An elderly lady I don’t recognize stands before me, a much younger man at her side. ‘I… I just wanted to say…’ Her opaque eyes fill with tears, and then I know.
‘You were on the yacht.’ She was the one who Adam had tried to save.
‘I’m so sorry.’ She waits for me to speak. I don’t. I can’t.
‘I know it’s no consolation,’ the man speaks now, ‘but Grandma is the heart of our family. We’d all be lost without her. I’m so sorry about your husband. Adam. But we’re all very grateful to him. If he hadn’t noticed Grandma had been left behind and gone back to rescue her, no one might have noticed she was stuck. He was a brave man. A good man.’
What can I do but agree with him? Adam was a good man. The best. Hating the old woman who shakes in front of me won’t bring him back.
‘He would be happy to know you are okay.’ I touch her briefly on the arm before I walk away.
Nell thrusts a gin and tonic into my hand. I take a long drink, wanting the warm bloom of alcohol to numb me. On the bar a TV displays a slideshow of pictures of Adam. Most of the photos are Adam as an adult. I had asked his mum to email some baby ones but she said it was too painful for her to look through them.
‘You don’t know how awful it is to lose a child,’ she had said. Memories of Harry rendered me mute and I cut the call.
The smell of him.
The feel of him.
‘Are we okay to bring the food out?’ the landlady asks me and I nod, not caring either way. Knowing my knotted stomach won’t let me eat.
A plate of towering sausage rolls is placed on a trestle table, warm meat and flaky pastry. My eyes meet Josh’s. I know he has chosen the menu carefully.
‘I’d like to name our son after Harry, my grandfather,’ I had said to Adam.
‘I’d like to name him Gregg,’ Adam had replied.
‘Is he a relation?’ Adam never talked much about his family.
‘No, but he makes a bloody good pastry,’ Adam had grinned.
Bowls of Twiglets next.
I can hear Adam’s voice, ‘Sticks of marmite, I’m in actual heaven.’
Slices of pizza laden with greasy pepperoni and stringy cheese.
‘I can’t wait for Italy; the food alone will be spectacular.’
A trifle sprinkled with hundreds and thousands.
‘Proper English food that I’ll miss when I travel the world.’
Josh fiddles with his Bluetooth speaker and Simple Minds sing ‘Don’t you forget about me’. The mood lifts as, just for the next few hours, the mourners shake off their grief by tapping their feet while they queue for the buffet and just like that, this becomes a celebration of Adam’s life. He’d appreciate music and laughter more than he would tissues and tears.
‘You need to eat, Anna,’ Nell says.
‘I will. Soon.’ I can’t focus on anything except the fragments of the address Adam left on the pad, which are swirling around my mind like leaves in the wind. I can’t seem to catch them and rearrange them in the right order. The knowing that it must have been important causes my temples to throb.
I slip outside into the beer garden for some fresh air, craving silence and peace but not yet ready to go home and be alone. Clouds are gathering in the sky. The light’s fading and the day has lost its warmth. A patio heater glows red and I slide onto a wooden bench. An ashtray piled with cigarette stubs is before me and I inhale deeply, welcoming the hit of tar in my lungs. I’ve never smoked but I’m tempted to start.
What was the address?
I close my eyes, travelling back to that day, back to the apartment, but all I can see is the note telling me to go to the beach. All I can feel is my panic building. The bunting. The yacht. The barbecue. The smell of sausages and burgers will always take me back to that time. Still, I can hear the music. My own anguished voice screaming for Adam to get off the yacht.
To stay.
I rub my eyes, desperate to replace the image with something else. Harry springs to mind, as he often does. As painful as it is, I push him away too.
Think.
The apartment was empty. Before I saw the note on the fridge, I had looked at the notepad.
I know I read the address. I know the answer is nestled within my consciousness somewhere. More than anyone, I understand how powerful the mind can be.
I take a deep breath. Clench and unclench my fists, my jaw. Slide my shoulders from their tense position near my ears to where they should naturally sit.
Relax.
The first spots of rain hit but I don’t move. Instead I feel them on my skin, the wetness, the temperature.
Relax.
Upper Harringdon.
The words spring from nowhere, but now they are here, I remember wondering why Adam had written down the name of a town about thirty minutes from where we live. There was more, I know. Something about a saint. St Jude? St Agnes. St Mary! St Mary Street or Road or something. I feel a prickle of excitement. I try not to force another memory. The rain pelting harder now.