How to Say Goodbye

Henry is here! I fought my way through the dancing crowd. The band had started up again with an energetic cover of a Bob Marley song. Elbows and hips were blocking me from getting to him. I stopped still and tried to hover on my tiptoes to get a better vantage point. Where had he gone? He was right there a second ago.

‘Grace! Where are you going?’

Mum was still calling after me but I couldn’t stop. I had to get to him.

Henry is here. Henry is here.

My feet were moving without my brain thinking. What was he wearing? He didn’t own a stripy polo shirt; he must have bought it recently.

Annoyingly, he looked good in it. He had always looked good in anything. Questions roared across my mind as I forged forward.

‘Alright, love!’ said a man with cauliflower ears and a receding hairline, smiling a toothy grin at me. ‘You won’t get served standing there.’ He’d spilt some of his pint onto his tan loafers. He wasn’t wearing socks.

‘I’m not trying to get served.’

I craned my neck to see where he’d gone. He couldn’t have just disappeared. He was right there, I was certain of it. I felt funny, not sure if I wanted to vomit or cry at how overwhelming the feeling was.

‘You want us to hoist you up? You might have a better chance of catching the barmaid’s eye then?’ The man nudged me. His equally enormous friends turned round to see who he was talking to.

‘He was just here…’

‘Who? Who was here?’ I could see him pull a face to his mates out of the corner of my eye. A booming laugh and a meaty hand slapping his back. A waft of offensive BO. ‘You alright, love? You’ve gone a bit pale.’

I shook my head.

It wasn’t him.

My eyes had deceived me. Henry’s doppelgänger, who actually didn’t look very much like him after all, was laughing with an older woman at the bar. The hair colour was almost the same but his face was all wrong. That cheeky smile, the cluster of freckles and the confident way he held himself were all missing.

Waves of heat rose to my cheeks. It was much too hot in there with all those writhing bodies jostling around me. Henry wasn’t there, of course he wasn’t. How utterly ridiculous of me to think that after all these years he’d show up in this place. As if he’d be hanging out in a dive of a bar in Ryebrook on a Friday night. What planet was I on? I blinked back the tears threatening to overcome my gritty and tired eyes. I had to get out of there immediately.

‘Hey, come back darlin’, I won’t bite!’

‘Unless you want him to!’

I ignored the looks and irritated tutting from strangers as I pushed past. Jeers of laughter followed by wolf-whistles were drowned out by the terrible music. I fought my way to the doors, inhaling lungfuls of cool air as I tumbled outside.

I scurried past the huddle of smokers flocked under one lonely heater, holding my breath so as not to be permeated by their poisonous fumes. I’d call Mum later and tell her I wasn’t feeling well, apologise for not saying bye. Thanks to the drinks she was putting away, I doubted she’d even remember my dramatic disappearance by the morning. For the first time in a long time I yearned to be anaesthetised by alcohol too.

Chapter 7 (#ulink_3abd5d25-241d-5236-8941-c05783cbdc38)

When you break up with someone it’s normal to ricochet between emotions; all the books told me that. Except this wasn’t a clean cut break-up. He’d just disappeared, and there were still so many things left unsaid. I’d tried. I really had. I hated feeling like that, struggling to pick myself up and get back on track. Usually baking helped, but I couldn’t summon up the energy to give one of Ms Norris’s recipes a go. Cleaning was the next best solution, but even that didn’t seem to be working.

I decided to call Maria. She was the only person who knew about Henry, and I could trust her not to judge me. Others wouldn’t understand. Surely I should feel OK by now. But it was like my head and heart hadn’t read the rulebook which contained the exact date you should move on after a traumatic break-up. As time had passed, I’d forced myself to see less and less of Maria, as seeing her meant being reminded of him. Every time we met, his name wasn’t far from slipping into our conversation. That’s just the way it was.

I dialled her number.

‘Grace? Wow. Long time! How are you doing, hun?’

I let out a breath I’d been holding. Her warmth radiating down the line immediately washed away any of the doubts I’d had at making this call out of the blue.

‘Hi! I know, it’s been a while…’

‘Everything OK?’

I sighed deeply.

‘Stupid question. Of course not. Why else would you be calling me?’ Her light tinkle of a laugh softened the dig.

‘Are you around for a catch-up? I could really do with seeing you… as soon as possible.’

I could hear a rustling of papers in the background. I winced. I shouldn’t have been so presumptuous that she would want to see me, especially after such a long absence.

‘Oh, hun, I’m so sorry but I’m really busy at the moment. Work is manic, you know how it is.’

Of course she was busy, what was I expecting?

‘Maybe I can move things around and give you a call back so we can organise a get-together soon? It would be good to see you again.’

I felt dejected. There was once a time when we were so close that she would have cancelled whatever was in her diary for me. Clearly too much time had passed. I tried to stay positive that she was a woman of her word; once things calmed down for her she’d be in touch. Until then I needed to keep busy and I knew exactly what to do to fill the time.

*

I curled my feet up under me, pulling my laptop closer, and logged in to Facebook. I needed to start my prep on Abbie Anderson.

As a model, she had a significant online presence, so I imagined it would be easy to discover lots of details we could incorporate into her funeral. I typed her name in the search bar and hovered my finger for a second before clicking.

I was soon looking at the life of a dead woman. Her profile picture was a flawless selfie, and luckily her account was not set to private. The last photo she had been tagged in before she died was a group shot. Four smiling faces around a dining table, each holding their wine glass up to the camera. A woman with a selfie stick in her outstretched arm to capture them all.

Shona Fitz nee Limbrick is feeling happy with –Greg Fitz, Abbie Anderson, Callum Anderson. Just found this on my phone! What a great night!! Had to share!!

Callum’s name didn’t come up in bold blue like Abbie or the others, which meant he wasn’t on Facebook. I stared at the photo, imagining their life, being a guest at one of their dinner parties. Owning a selfie stick. The men probably moaning as the women giggled at the effort of drunkenly trying to steady their hand to get everyone in the shot. It had received ninety-four likes.

There was an album from their honeymoon a few years ago. Seychelles, baby! I clicked on it. Abbie wearing a barely-there white one-piece with impractical holes cut out of it, posing effortlessly on a plump cream sun lounger, an idyllic white sandy beach and turquoise clear waters in the background. A shot of her drinking a martini with dramatic bug sunglasses on, looking away from the camera. Callum diving into an infinity pool, beads of water on his tanned torso as he froze mid-air. The two of them, noses pink from the sun, cuddled together, and grinning over a table full of seafood. They looked so utterly happy together. He looked so different from the man I’d met.

I couldn’t help myself, clicking on the photos that she was tagged in. Abbie wearing a burgundy mini dress with what looked like a cape attached to it. Her legs up to her armpits. I tried not to compare the size of my non-existent thigh gap with hers. Abbie in blood-red spike heels and leather-look leggings. Her face painted in white powder with a drop of crimson falling from her bottom lip. Plastic fangs in her mouth. A black velvet choker around her slim neck. Sharp collarbones and jutting ribs.

If looks could kill!! Ready for a hair-raising night to raise money for Princess Power!

Princess Power was a local charity for young women with terminal cancer.

Abbie’s slim, tanned arm wrapped around two attractive men wearing hot pink Hawaiian shirts. Thick gold cuffs on her wrists, her hair slicked back against her skull and a fierce pout at the camera.

Hula night, bitches! – With Owen Driscoll and @ ModelsZone

Her modelling agency, by the looks of it.

The same guy, Owen, the one with the sculptured cheekbones and glossy black hair, appeared a few more times in selfies, arty black and white modelling shoots and goofy backstage candid pics. They looked great together. Abbie had checked them into different places across Europe, probably when they were working on shoots together.