Alyson Rudd - The First Time Lauren Pailing Died

‘We should visit Vera’s mum, don’t you think, Bob?’

Bob was startled and for the first time in weeks felt something other than self-absorbed grief. Beryl would be having just as awful a time of it as he was. Maybe worse. But he could not bear to phone her so Suki took charge of their sombre trip past Stockport to Marple Bridge and Beryl’s damp stone cottage.

At least, Suki thought it was damp. Everyone else thought it a sweet and cosy sort of place, but as soon as they walked in Suki began to feel uncomfortable. Every side table and shelf was stacked with photographs. Vera and Bob on their wedding day, Vera holding baby Lauren, Beryl and Alfie holding baby Lauren, Beryl holding baby Vera, Lauren on her first day of school, her uniform slightly too big, her briefcase slightly too formal. The telephone, instead of being on the hall table or in a corner, sat incongruously in the middle of the polished round dining table at the back of the living room. More than any photograph, it told a picture of loss. No more chats about nothing much at all with her daughter or her granddaughter.

To Suki’s surprise, the visit was a success. Bob tried to cheer up Beryl and Beryl tried to cheer up Bob. Bob told her about his ‘options’ and Beryl told him she had none unless she considered leaving the country to stay with her sister and her family in Canada but as she had not been invited she could not, really, consider it much of an option at all.

‘Funny place to want to live, don’t you think?’ she said to Suki.

‘Utterly ludicrous,’ Suki said and for the first time in a long time Bob gently chuckled.

It was a turning point. It was as if one chuckle had broken the spell of pain and inertia. Bob decided he could have a future and it only took him two years to decide which one. It was not on the list made by Peter Stanning but it was in the spirit of it. Bob rented out No. 13 The Willows because he could not bear to break the ties completely, and bought an apartment in a trendy conversion overlooking the River Mersey and not too far at all from Suki. He did not retrain, but set himself up as a consultant, working on projects for Peter’s business and for smaller clients.

When Peter vanished, the December after presenting Bob with his life options, Bob helped out from a sense of duty, but gradually he expanded his private client base and cut his ties to his old firm. He liked to be busy but he also liked knowing he could cut away for brief periods and wallow and weep without letting anyone down. One Sunday each month he let Beryl cook him a roast chicken, and one Saturday each month Suki let herself take him out to a pub or the cinema.

Was it living? Suki wondered sometimes how her brother’s mind worked, whether he could forget for a while about his wife and daughter or if it might be worse if he could forget only to have to remember and suffer all over again. There was something very contained about Bob, she thought. It was like being with an acrobat, a man treading the high wire and wanting to appear confident and calm but knowing one lapse in concentration could lead to a catastrophic fall. His laughter was measured, his smiles were tempered, his eyes could twinkle but only dimly. She remained, all the same, very fond of him.

‘Do you fancy seeing Prizzi’s Honor ?’ Suki asked Bob on the phone ahead of their regular Saturday outing. His wife had been dead for two years and his daughter had been dead for over three but, still, there was a remnant of it being somehow inappropriate to spend too much time wondering which film they should see.

‘Seen it, Suki, very good, though.’

Suki paused. How had he seen it, the film had only been in cinemas for a week?

‘I went with Rachel,’ he said.

‘Who the fuck is Rachel?’ Suki said.

Bob laughed.

‘I think I somehow ended up on a date,’ he said.

‘In that case no movie for us on Saturday, we’re meeting for a drink,’ Suki said.

Rachel was deep into divorce proceedings and had employed Bob to untangle the financial mess of her marriage. There was a large house on The Wirral, a large house near Lake Windermere and a flat in Menorca to be sold off and all manner of stocks and shares and registers which Rachel had not even known her name was attached to.

Rachel had a golden tan, long legs and expensive hair and when she met Bob she realised how much she wanted a solid man who did not travel, who was straightforward and honest and serious and highly unlikely to have been secretly shagging another woman for the past seven years. The fact that Bob did not notice her tan, her legs or her hair made him desperately attractive to her. The fact that Bob was sad and damaged made him irresistible.

Suki wondered how protective she should be. Rachel could be a shallow vulture or exactly what her brother needed. She rattled off her questions.

‘How old is she?’

‘Er, forty.’

‘Children?’

‘Nope.’

‘Does she have a brain?’

‘She knows a lot about Menorca.’

Suki paused. Was Bob humouring her?

‘OK, I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘It’s just, well, you know.’

‘I know,’ he said.

Eventually, Rachel was introduced to Suki. Bob’s sister had low expectations. Yes, she was attractive and very golden for someone living on Merseyside. She was dressed immaculately in beige and cream and her eyes glazed over when Suki made a quip about Thatcherism. Just as Suki gave up any notion she would be able to stomach Rachel for the length of any meal together, Bob’s new friend let slip she had bought a dilapidated building and was refurbishing it to become a women’s shelter.

‘I was lucky,’ she said. ‘I could afford to disappear for a few days while I recovered from being let down by Gary and in any case Gary’s not the violent type. But there are plenty of women who ought to leave their husbands and can’t because they are too poor or too afraid.’

Suki was intrigued and by the end of the evening had agreed to join the executive committee of the nascent charity. By the end of the year they were firm friends. Bob would sometimes lean back in his chair as the pair animatedly discussed the charity’s progress and feel he was living someone else’s life. Vera and Lauren were sometimes so far away that he needed to reel their memory back in like a fisherman scared of losing a big catch. The remembering hurt but the notion of forgetting was terrifying.

And then, remarkably, he found himself discussing marriage. He half wanted his sister to dissuade him but if anything Suki seemed to be as fond of Rachel as he was. Bob was content with things as they were but also knew that was not allowed. No one was allowed to drift. Things had to be headed somewhere. In a muffled way he heard conversations about a new life together, starting afresh, commitment, cementing the relationship. It was true. He was in a new relationship. Sometimes he woke and wondered who he was. Sometimes he woke and he did not feel sad and he had Rachel to thank for that. If she needed them to be married, so be it.

Lauren’s student days were almost done. Her friends were plotting, planning, leaving, stagnating, worrying. The answer to almost every question was to party. She found herself at the entrance to a nightclub that was grubby to the point of extreme elitism. She groaned. Her knee hated heels and hated dancing. Just this once people said – or maybe she was the one who said it. Let’s end this thing in style.

Everyone had their arms in the air, there was jumping, swaying, gyrating to Inner city’s ‘Big Fun’. She liked it. No one but men had heels on and even the ugly were sexy. Everyone is ugly, she thought, everyone is sexy. Ski placed a tablet on her tongue. ‘I know,’ he said, ‘but just once, Loz, just one, just for me.’ He swallowed and smiled, Nina smiled, so she swallowed and smiled and soon the music was in her belly, warming her with love.