Pastures New

Mary turned around, her eyes glittering bright, her back ramrod-straight, and for the first time Amy caught a fleeting glimpse of the emotion she was struggling to contain.

‘Apology accepted,’ she said stiffly. ‘Now, I think it’s time you were both going.’

She shooed them out of the flat into the car as if the previous exchange hadn’t happened.

‘You will visit, won’t you?’ Amy said.

‘Of course,’ Mary replied, but there was a wariness about her. Amy doubted very much if she would come anytime soon.

‘Damn.’ Amy hunted around for her handbag.

‘What’s the matter?’

‘I think I’ve left my handbag inside. Can you just keep an eye on Josh while I go and get it?’

She ran up the path, and opened the front door to the flat. She was eager to get off now. Hanging around was only prolonging the agony. She raced into the flat and found her bag on the kitchen worktop where she had left it. Then she paused and looked around her.

Memories crowded in. Of her and Jamie putting the new kitchen in together; of Jamie coming home with a huge bouquet of flowers the day she told him she was pregnant; the strangeness of leaving the flat as two and coming back with Josh as a family … So many memories. And she was leaving them all behind. She was saying goodbye to her old life. She was saying goodbye to Jamie. A stab of guilt shot through her, and a sense of loss so overwhelming she was stunned by the force of it. Jamie was gone. It was just her and Josh now. She doubted she’d ever get used to it.

Eyes full, she turned her back on the home where she had been happy for so long, and mechanically went back to the car, saying her goodbyes while hoping that Mary couldn’t detect the tears she was trying to hide. She started the car and sped off round the corner, Josh still waving and shouting goodbye till Mary was long gone. Then she allowed the silent tears to fall.

Amy closed the door behind the last removal man. It banged shut with a horrible finality. Well, she’d done it. She and Josh were on their own, properly on their own for the first time since Jamie had died – in a new town, where they knew no one.

‘Can I go in the garden?’ Josh had just twigged that there was more to his new home than just four walls.

‘Of course,’ said Amy, smiling to banish her gloomy thoughts. ‘Let’s get our coats and have an explore.’

Despite it being only early September, there was already an autumnal chill in the air, and the impression of summer being over was further enhanced by the smell of bonfires. The leaves weren’t quite turning yellow, but it wouldn’t be long. Amy shivered as she watched Josh running wild in their new garden. A pang of longing shot unexpectedly through her, and tears came to her eyes.

‘Why are you crying, Mummy?’ A little hand came and found hers.

‘I was just thinking about how much Daddy would have liked it here,’ Amy said. She had always been open with Josh about everything, despite Mary’s feeling that children should be protected from too much heartache.

Josh looked at her thoughtfully.

‘But if Daddy’s in heaven, he can see where we are, and he’ll like it too,’ he replied.

‘Out of the mouths of babes,’ said Amy, laughing through her tears.

Josh looked at her puzzled, but Amy just smiled at him.

‘It’s all right, Josh, you’ve just managed to cheer me up. Come on, let’s go and get some tea.’

The next morning, Amy wasn’t feeling quite so sanguine. She had had a lousy night’s sleep on her landlady’s rather lumpy double bed. Josh had had a nightmare, and ended up in bed with her. It was a while since he’d done that. When he had been very little, just after Jamie had died, he’d come in with her every night, but she had gradually weaned him off it. Maybe the move had unsettled him again. Oh lord, was she doing the right thing?

Amy had lain in bed worrying about that – and whether she had irrevocably offended Mary. She didn’t want to cut the ties completely – just loosen them a little. Was that so very wrong? What would Jamie have done in her shoes? She was still learning to appreciate that one of the worst aspects of her situation was making decisions alone, and realising there was no way she could truly know what Jamie would have thought.

She turned over, determined to get some sleep, but then her mind went into overdrive about money. Her demons were back and running amok. Money. Her overriding preoccupation since Jamie’s death. She had thought they were reasonably well off. She had thought they’d made adequate provision. But the idea of either of them dying had seemed so remote that they had never got round to doing the obvious stuff. It had always felt as though there would be plenty of time for that.

If only she and Jamie had got married, or written a will, as they always intended. Everything would have been so much more straightforward. But they hadn’t, so the taxman had come to claim both his share of the computer business Jamie had run with his partner, Giles, and their property. Added to which, Amy hadn’t appreciated how much debt the business itself was in – or how difficult it would be to sell Jamie’s share of it. It had taken all this time to sort it out.

Amy had survived by carrying on teaching, until Grace’s money had solved her problems. And now that she had sold the flat as well, things would be easier. She planned to settle in before buying somewhere, but at least she could think about buying a house in Suffolk. Although maybe she should have consolidated a bit, before taking the plunge to move and start a new career. She had enough to tide her over for the next few months, and supply-teaching at schools would help … but would it be enough?

The thoughts swirled round in her head. Nights were always a bad time for Amy. The demons couldn’t be as easily dispatched as during the day. And the suffocating blackness of her new room, with its thick velvet curtains, didn’t help either. She was used to having a neon streetlight outside her window and found total darkness oppressive.

She turned on the light. Grabbing a book usually helped – something light and funny, like Terry Pratchett, was a must. Gradually the feelings of panic subsided, and her heart stopped racing at a rate of knots. She read, and eventually fell asleep, head propped against her pillow, the light still on.

Amy spent the morning unpacking. She felt as if she had been hit over the head with a brick. As usual after a bad night, her thoughts were muzzy and unfocused. She had managed to find Josh’s train set and set it up in the front room, along with snacks and a pile of DVDs, just to keep him occupied while she got on with trying to create some semblance of normality.

She dug out a radio, which she switched on in the kitchen. It was pre-tuned to Radio 2. Amy had grown up thinking Radio 2 was the preserve of sad middle-aged people far removed from the cutting edge of life, until Jamie had made her listen to it one Saturday lunchtime. ‘Honestly, they play really good music on Radio 2,’ he had promised her. And to Amy’s surprise, he was right. Not only were the DJs highly entertaining, the music was great, and after that she and Jamie had often tuned in together. After he had died, she had listened to the radio obsessively – as if in some strange way it still linked them. She woke up to Wogan’s gentle warblings, and dipped in and out all day. Radio 2 was an essential part of her now – a soundtrack to her life, now she no longer had one.

Sunday-morning love songs was on. Sometimes Amy found all the people ringing in with messages for their loved ones too painful for words, but of late she’d found it comforting to know that not everyone was as lonely as she was, and it was easy listening as she started shoving books onto shelves. As the room slowly got cleared up, and things began to fall into place, Amy started to feel better again, and she gradually felt that she was getting things under control.

‘And this is for Bev Peters, who’s away at uni, and missing her boyfriend Colin very much,’ Steve Wright was saying, before Amy heard the first haunting bars of a familiar tune.

She paused in the middle of her new living room. She felt as if she had been punched in the stomach. That song – how many years ago was it? In the early days of their relationship, Amy had still been at teacher-training college, and they had spent a year apart. Jamie had compiled a tape of ‘their’ songs, which she had played endlessly, missing him so much it had hurt. Her favourite track on it had been ‘Forever Autumn’ – at the time it seemed to sum up the way she felt. How could she have known that her feelings then would be a pale shadow of the real thing – of what it was like knowing that she would never see Jamie again? The song could have been written for her, and seemed cruelly apposite now. It was all gone. Everything. The only good thing left was Josh. All the rest was dust.

‘Anyone home?’ There was a knock at the side door that led to the garden, and Amy pulled herself together. Her life might be over, but she still had Josh, and she had to make a go of this, for his sake.

A tall elderly man was standing on the doorstep bearing a pot with a geranium in it and holding a plastic bag with some shopping in. She remembered him as the man she had seen pushing the wheelbarrow on the day she had come to look round.

‘Hello,’ said Amy, with something like relief. In the early days she had found any social interaction excruciatingly difficult, but now, having to put on a show of politeness was a welcome distraction from her misery. ‘Can I help you?’

‘Good morning,’ the man said. ‘I’m Harry Hartswood, your neighbour. I just popped over to see if you needed anything, and to bring you this.’ He proffered the geranium.

‘Thanks,’ said Amy, taking it. ‘I’m Amy Nicolson. Can I make you a cup of tea?’

‘That would be lovely, my dear,’ said Harry. ‘I don’t suppose you have had time to get to the shops yet. I’ve brought a few provisions.’

‘That is extremely kind of you,’ said Amy, touched at his thoughtfulness. ‘It’s on my “to do” list. Sorry about the mess, I’m still unpacking.’

‘Mummy, who is it?’ Josh flew out to see what was going on, then hid behind Amy’s legs when he realised it was a stranger.

‘This is Mr Hartswood,’ said Amy. ‘He lives next door.’

‘He’s very old,’ said Josh, peeking out from behind her.

‘Josh!’ Amy was scandalised, but Harry just laughed.

‘Yes, I am,’ he said. ‘But then, you are very young. So everyone must be old to you.’

Josh looked at him quizzically for a minute, then shrugged his shoulders. ‘I’ve got a train set,’ he announced. ‘Would you like to see it?’

‘I’m sure Mr Hartswood doesn’t want to be bothered with your train set,’ began Amy, but her neighbour would hear none of it.

‘That sounds wonderful, Josh, I’d love to,’ he said, letting himself be led by the hand into the front room, ‘and everyone calls me Harry.’

When Amy returned with the tea, she discovered the pair of them playing happily on the floor.