The Aftermath by Gail Schimmel (books to read in a lifetime txt) 📗

‘So,’ she says, ‘who wants to kick off with some ideas?’

I sit back, because it’s always me with ideas and I worry that I dictate to people, that I don’t give other people a chance. But they all turn towards me.

‘Claire,’ says Tiffany, ‘please tell me you’ve had your trademark brilliant idea.’

I sigh. ‘I’m sure other people have lovely ideas. You all have such great taste and are so clever.’

The others look around and some shake their heads. Janice is suddenly fascinated by the sugar bowl. A woman called Marion who I know from the PTA has an urgent need to look for something in her bag. Nobody volunteers anything.

‘Okay,’ I say, bowing to the inevitable, and not sure if I’m pleased we’ll be using my ideas or irritated that nobody else has bothered to have any. I haul my laptop out of my bag and open it. ‘I’ve put together a Pinterest board, but the idea I had for our theme is “Old School Charm”. Old-fashioned sweet stalls with jars, lots of bunting, blackboards as stall labels . . .’ I start showing them the ideas I’ve pinned, and they all nod approvingly. Now that I’ve set the tone, other people contribute their thoughts, and Tiffany takes careful notes. By the end of the meeting we have a plan and a series of long to-do lists.

Afterwards, Tiffany hugs me warmly. ‘I don’t know how you do it, Claire,’ she says. ‘I don’t know what we would do without you.’

‘Oh, nonsense,’ I say. ‘Such a pleasure.’

As I turn to walk out, my phone beeps. It’s a message from Daniel. Given how often he messages me, he is apparently unable to remember our child-sharing arrangements from one second to the next. I open the message.

I thought you might want to know that Julia is having a boy.

I stop in my tracks.

A boy. A little boy with Julia’s beautiful hair and Daniel’s brooding eyes. He’ll be devastating. I feel sick.

I take a deep breath and push back my shoulders. The one good thing about communicating with Daniel is that he’s the one person I don’t have to pretend with any more, the one person I literally could not care about hurting – he has hurt me so badly.

Tiffany is still watching me, so I give a little wave before I type my answer.

I don’t care if your husband-stealing mistress is giving birth to a two-headed elephant.

I push send and smile.

TUESDAY

Helen

I loved having dinner with Ewan and Okkie last night.

It was at their flat in a gentrified part of Newtown with spectacular views over the city, and furniture I didn’t realise actual people had in their homes. Okkie cooked a traditional Ugandan meal and we talked about everything – about Mike, about growing up gay, about growing up with albinism in Uganda, about studying medicine and practising medicine, about my years as an emergency nurse. Ewan couldn’t believe that I’d given it up, so I explained a bit about The Accident, but obviously not everything. Never everything.

Okkie and Ewan are one of those couples that bounce off each other – they are funny and clever and say smart things that make me laugh. And suddenly I was also funny – I also had smart comebacks and clever thoughts. At the beginning of the evening I had thought that they’d regret inviting an old bore like me. But at the end of the evening, Okkie stretched out his long body, pushing back from the table.

‘You are such fun, Helen,’ he said. ‘I’m so glad Ewan made friends with you.’

It’s been a long time since someone called me a friend. And even longer since I have been considered fun. But it’s true that once, long ago, in the time of Mike-and-Helen, I was a fun person. I was a person who had friends.

The last friend I had was after The Accident. It was a friendship born of grief.

The truck that hit us that night, that pinned us in the car for hours before help came, had a driver. A driver who, it emerged, was killed on impact. While I suffered through my private hell that night, a dead man I would never know lay near me. But he left a wife – a bright, clever, beautiful young wife who was bereft without him. And who carried, on his behalf, the guilt of what he’d done to me and my family.

The first time we met was at the hospital, when she came to my bedside and introduced herself, and then sat crying next to me.

‘It’s okay,’ I said, although it wasn’t. ‘It wasn’t your fault.’

‘It was,’ she sobbed. ‘He was rushing to get home to me.’

I closed my eyes, unable to bear the idea that if this woman had not been loved, The Accident would not have happened.

‘I’ll never get over him,’ she said. ‘And I’ll never forgive him for what happened.’

And with those words she won me over – and ensnared me. She would never be the same and I would never be the same, so we would be each other’s friends. Our destroyed lives would degenerate together.

In the beginning it was exactly how I imagined. Nerina and I would meet, and we’d talk about how awful we felt and how we cried at night and how we hid our pain from our daughters – because Nerina also had a young daughter. We assured each other that we understood each other’s grief because nobody else did. We both refused to go to support groups in the beginning, because we had each other and we felt unique in our misery and loss – both coated with guilt and horror.

Nerina came to my house and I went to hers. We met each other’s daughters. We cried ourselves dry on each other’s sofas. I didn’t need other friends, because I had Nerina.

And then, about six months after The Accident, Nerina told me she was going to a support group, and