Page 46 of All the Things We Never Knew

TWENTY-SIX

ANNA

There’s no pretty way of saying it: I was drunk at my husband’s funeral.

In the two weeks since Gray’s death, I’d woken up each morning with a sense of leaden dread, realising simultaneously that, one, I had a fucking shite hangover and, two, Gray was dead. Again. It was as if, each time, the knowledge that he had died and that I had a pounding headache and a mouth that tasted like the inside of the kitchen food-waste caddy descended on me as freshly, as horribly, as if I hadn’t known it before.

It had started the morning after he died. Well, strictly speaking the morning after that, because the first morning I had been stone-cold sober, thanks to some premonition that I might have had to get up in the middle of the night and drive to the hospice to see him for the last time. But the day after that, the nineteenth of June, was what I think of as the first of the death hangovers.

I was woken by Lulu coming into my room – the spare bedroom, still; I didn’t know when, if ever, I’d be able to face moving back into the room I’d shared with him.

‘Mum,’ she whispered. ‘Mum? Are you awake?’

I was now. ‘What time is it, darling?’

‘Half past six. I couldn’t sleep.’

There was no point admitting that, thanks to a couple of hefty belts of twenty-year-old Armagnac after the children had gone to bed, I’d slept like the dead. So to speak.

‘Come here, sweetie.’ I pushed the duvet aside and Lulu got in next to me, snuggling up like she hadn’t done in years. She was wearing the knickers and crop top she’d slept in; she smelled of yesterday’s deodorant, and her skin was like warm satin under my fingers.

‘Mum? Remember how Dad used to blow his nose after he showered every morning?’

Did he? Maybe he did. The sounds of Gray’s morning ablutions had become so familiar, such an invisible part of the fabric of my days, I hadn’t noticed them in a decade or more – only this year, when he’d sometimes been sick in the mornings and I’d say, Jesus, are you okay? And he’d say, Think so. Fucking acid reflux again.

Should you see a doctor?

Nah, I’m all right.

So long as you’re not pregnant.

Ha – chance would be a fine thing.

‘Every morning, like a foghorn,’ Lulu was saying. ‘When I was little, it was just a noise Dad made. Then I started thinking, Gross! If I had a friend for a sleepover I’d be like, God, how embarrassing. And I woke up this morning and I realised I’ll never hear it ever again.’

She started to cry, and I pulled her close and held her, perversely glad that my banging head and churning stomach were distracting me for the time being from the other, deeper pain I knew would descend eventually.

Somehow, we got through that day. The kids were off school. Sarah came over and made mushroom omelettes for lunch because she said we needed to eat. There were calls to the undertakers. A huge flower arrangement came from Gray’s work, with a card signed by all the staff that made me cry. Orla brought round a vegetable lasagne, and I found myself thinking that if I had to cook dinner, I’d have an excuse to have a glass of wine.

But putting Orla’s stoneware dish in the oven and making a salad counted as cooking, I told myself two hours later, cracking open a bottle of rosé.

The following Monday, the children went back to school. Cathy and Sarah were on top of the funeral arrangements. My mum, who’d stayed for the weekend, had gone back to Herefordshire because she said she couldn’t leave the dogs with Dad any longer.

The flood of sympathy cards had slowed to a trickle by then, but when I heard the familiar rattle of the letter box and the thump of paper landing on the doormat, I still assumed that the postman had brought today’s instalment – like having taken out a subscription to a particularly grim periodical, I thought, and not being able to cancel it until the introductory offer period was over.

I walked upstairs from the kitchen, where I’d been sitting staring vacantly out at the garden wondering whether eleven o’clock was too early for a drink, and picked up the stack of mail from inside the front door. There were a couple of leaflets from curry restaurants on nearby Brick Lane, an official-looking letter from Gray’s bank – which I’d wait to deal with until Cathy or Sarah was with me for moral support – and four plain white envelopes, their contents slim and rigid.

Cards, of course. I ripped open the first one, glanced at the tasteful image of a pond at sunset and read the stilted, careful words of sympathy inside, from the mother of a child Lulu had been best friends with in primary school. The second was similar, from the family of Jack Isaacs, who used to live in the flats near Damask Square. The third was hand-painted, a watercolour of the front of our house before we’d begun the renovations. Although the edges of the paper were worn and curling and the paint faded, I could see the skill that had gone into its creation.

I opened the card.

Dearest Anna

I painted this years ago and I suppose I intended to give it to you and Gray, but it slipped my mind. I was so sorry to hear of his death. He was the sweetest, funniest man and you and the children must miss him desperately. I am thinking of you and hope we can see each other when I’m back in London. Perhaps this will remind you of happier times.

Much love,

Beatrice