Page 55 of Postscript

‘The package has been delivered,’ she says, mysteriously.

‘Thanks, Dee Nee, I appreciate it. I hope Ginika was OK with you. She’s not comfortable with anyone other than herself being with Jewel. She’s at the early stages with a foster family and she’s understandably struggling.’

‘God love her, it breaks my heart. She seems excited about the lessons though.’

‘Really? That’s good, but I’m not sure how we’re doing, because I don’t actually know what I’m doing. I’m following the textbooks but I’d really prefer for her sake if she went to a tutor.’

‘Why don’t you help her write the words from the letter? Why do you have to teach her from scratch?’

‘Because that’s what she wants. She doesn’t want anybody to know the contents of the letter, and she wants to achieve this herself.’

‘The learning is almost as big as the letter itself. It means she has control over something in her life for once. And if, when the time comes and she can’t write the letter entirely by herself, you can always help her. Don’t feel like this is the only goal here.’

‘True.’

Silence, apart from the indicator as she drives.

‘Denise?’

‘Yep.’

‘Do you know why Gerry sent us to Lanzarote?’

‘Wow. Your mind is travelling tonight.’

‘Ginika asked me something that got me thinking.’

‘Well, let me think …’ She clears her throat.

It was the July letter. The fifth letter. A simple Have a good Holly day! PS, I Love You … with instructions to visit a specific travel agent. He’d booked a holiday for me, Denise and Sharon, through a travel agent on 28 November, a day during a time that he should not have left his bed. He had a taxi waiting outside the travel agent. Barbara the travel agent had told me the story, under duress, more than twenty times.

‘Didn’t you tell us it was where you were both going to go on honeymoon? It was like he was giving you a second honeymoon? Am I right?’

‘It’s where I wanted to go on our honeymoon.’

‘Yeah. That’s nice.’

Silence.

‘And the dolphins. The next letter was about seeing dolphins.’

The August letter. He’d led me to a spot where you could view them from the beach.

‘I can’t quite remember the reason for that one, did you always want to see dolphins?’

‘No. See, that’s the thing. I didn’t want to see dolphins. He did.’

‘Well, you didn’t want to do karaoke again either, as far as I remember.’

‘No.’

‘I suppose the point of some of his letters was to take you out of your comfort zone.’

The phrase jolts me.

You need to leave your comfort zone, Holly. Be braver! Be exciting! Open your mind!

I muse on the concerns I’ve never shared with anyone before, concerns I’ve always brushed aside until the past few months when I’ve been forced to re-examine Gerry’s letters for the sole purpose of guiding the PS, I Love You Club. The process is making me see his letters differently, in ways that mostly make me feel uncomfortable. ‘Do you think that that particular letter, and that trip, was like a “fuck you”?’ Why dolphins?