Carmel Harrington - The Things I Should Have Told You

‘That makes all the difference,’ Mae teases.

With our food piled high on red trays, we sit down. Evie and Mae with their McChicken Sandwich meals, me with my Big Mac and Jamie with his Happy Meal.

Jamie pulls open his cardboard box of happiness and rummages for the plastic bag, eager to find out what the toy is this time. Mid-slurp of my strawberry shake, I pause. I feel a hand on my knee and look down to see that Mae has clasped it.

Time freezes again when I look up and see that Jamie is holding up in his hand a figurine of Obi-Wan Kenobi.

‘That’s freaky,’ Evie says, her eyes wide with surprise. ‘We were just talking about him.’

‘It’s cool,’ Jamie replies. ‘Look what he can do.’ He demonstrates his nodding head.

‘Just a weird coincidence, that’s all,’ Mae says, but her voice is trembling.

Not ten minutes ago I likened Pops to Obi-Wan Kenobi, wishing he could come back and talk to me. And now Jamie is sitting here with his figurine held in front of my face.

I look around and, I swear to God, I expect Pops to be standing there wearing a long brown hooded robe. ‘Fooled you,’ he’d say and laugh. Oh, how we’d laugh.

I look at the Wi-Fi symbol flashing on my iPhone. That invisible thing that connects us all, no matter where we are. Was this Pops’ way of reminding me to have faith? He said he’d find a way to find me.

‘It’s just a coincidence,’ I tell my family, feeling stupid for even contemplating such nonsense. ‘Eat up, it’s getting late.’

I don’t feel hungry any more. I play with my food a bit and wait for the others to finish up, then we continue our journey home. The mood has changed in the car again and we are all back in our own grief-stricken worlds. The welcome reprieve from our desolation, forgotten with the appearance of a small plastic toy from McDonald’s.

As the distance to our home gets shorter, the greater my anxiety grows. So I slow down. I’m aware of the irony that an hour ago I thought I’d never get home so I could take my God-awful suit off. Now I am doing everything possible to delay that first entrance through our front door. I look down at my suit and make an impromptu decision about its fate.

‘I’m going to burn this tomorrow.’

Mae nods. ‘That’s one option. Or you could give it to charity.’

‘Maybe,’ I say, but really, I want to be extreme. I feel justified planning a dramatic end to it, a symbolic burning of the pain I’ve endured today. Or something like that.

‘I burned a suit once before,’ I say.

‘When?’ Mae asks.

‘When I was a kid. My communion suit.’

All at once I’m seven years old again and I see Mam’s face and remember watching her discuss at length with Pops about what my communion suit should look like. Pops would nod and tell her that she knew best. He’d then chance a conspiratorial wink with me and I’d wink back, delighted with myself.

‘Was it awful?’ Mae asks me.

‘A three-piece ensemble, kind of a biscuity pale brown in colour. But it had a contrasting chocolate-brown trim on the lapel and the pockets. Pops joked I looked like a chocolate hobnob. Mam didn’t like that one bit. She wanted me to look perfect and no slagging of the suit was allowed.’

‘Sounds lovely,’ Mae laughs.

‘I know it sounds brutal and, in truth, it was, but at the time I thought I was the dog’s bollocks in it.’ I glance in the rear-view mirror, checking the kids aren’t listening to my cursing. Unsurprisingly, both have their earphones on.

‘I can remember begging Mam to let me try it on at least once a day. But she would shake her head no and it remained in a plastic cover in her wardrobe,’ I say.

‘She wanted it to be in pristine condition for your special day. I get that. I was the same for Evie,’ Mae says.

A pain so acute it makes me start hits me under my ribs. ‘In the end, I got my wish and wore it before the communion.’

‘When?’ Mae asks, smiling.

‘Her funeral.’

‘Oh, Olly,’ Mae says, and her smile freezes. I look away. If I see sympathy or pity, I’ll start to cry again. I chance a joke.

‘I don’t mind telling you, I didn’t feel in the slightest bit like the dog’s bollocks then. Took the shine off wearing it on my communion, too.’

Neither of us laugh at my lame attempt to lighten the mood. She reaches over and places a hand lightly over mine for a moment. ‘I’ll help you burn it.’ Then we drive in silence once more.

‘If you go any slower we’ll be in reverse,’ Mae remarks after a while, but she’s smiling as she speaks, so I know she’s not having a go at me.

I look at her and wonder if she has guessed why I am so reluctant to go home. These past couple of days, we’ve been kinder to each other than we have been for the past six months. It’s disconcerting and welcome all at once.

‘I watched Mam and Pops both die from that house. There’s a lot of ghosts at home for me,’ I tell her.

‘There’s a lot of great memories there too. It will be okay, you wait and see,’ she murmurs. ‘And remember, alongside the ghosts, you have us too. We’re right beside you.’

I look at her again and smile, but wonder if she means that. I’m not so sure.

Finally, we turn the bend and our house is in view before me. The house of my childhood that is both the same and also unrecognisable now, with the addition of our modern extension and conservatory at the gable end.

‘Holy cow!’

‘What the …?’

‘Wow!’

The exclamations from my family come in fast unison as we all see it at the same time.

‘Olly?’ Mae says. ‘What on earth is that camper van doing parked outside our house?’

OLLY

I pull into our driveway with caution. For the life of me, I can’t work out why a thirty-foot camper van is sitting right in the spot where I usually park. That irks me, it feels like an affront, especially today of all days.

I pull over to the side of the house and sit for a moment, taking in the spectacle.

‘That’s so cool,’ Jamie enthuses and already he has his seat belt off, eager to go explore. ‘It looks like a spaceship, Dad!’

It’s funny how one word can send your memories shooting back in time. At once, I’m sitting beside Pops eating popcorn and slurping Coke, as we watch Close Encounters of the Third Kind . I try to remember what age I was then. Mam was dead, so I reckon it was around 1983 or 1984. I had to sleep with Pops for two nights afterwards, such was my fear that little green men were going to pay me a visit.

I look up into the sky and half expect to see a spaceship hovering, ready to beam us all up. My imagination is on fire today. Between Obi-Wan and now this, I reckon I’m losing it. I start to hum the iconic five-note melody from that movie and Mae smiles as she recognises it and joins in.

It’s only a small thing but that small act of camaraderie gives me further hope that Mae and I might be okay, when all of this is over. We are still on the same wavelength, at least some of the time. That has to be a good sign. I turn to the kids and tell them, ‘Stay where you are, till I see who this is.’

The camper van looks quite modern, as they go. Not that I know much about the world of Winnebagos and motor homes. I once again rack my brains trying to work out who the hell I know owns one of these or would be most likely to drive one. But I come up blank.

It’s quite big and has a curved canopy over the driver’s cab, which I know is quite common in a lot of the models. I can remember years ago when I was a kid, before Mam died, a cousin of hers and his wife called in to see us driving a huge camper van. They slept in a kind of bunk bed over the driver’s cab. I can’t even remember this cousin’s name now and I’m pretty sure they must be dead, because they seemed ancient back then. God, the smell in that thing! Toiletry odours covered up by headache-inducing air fresheners, that made me want to gag. Surely it can’t be those two again?