Page 51 of Lessons in Love at the Seaside Salon

CHAPTER FIFTY

It took her dead husband to get her live son to visit Trudy again.

Dylan said something about how he hadn’t been to Laurie’s grave in a while – Trudy thinks he hasn’t been since Laurie died, but she wasn’t going to say it, not wanting to antagonise – and she suggested they visit together.

Trudy goes to the cemetery every now and again.

She’s torn on the matter. Some people like to visit dead relatives all the time, and possibly there’s a tinge of martyrdom about it, or showing off, or maybe it’s genuinely done out of love and she’s a curmudgeon.

However, she doesn’t feel motivated to visit that often because Laurie’s not in this cemetery.

His remains are, but remains aren’t a person.

It’s even in the word: remains . What remains of the man she held and loved and made love to is now disintegrating into the earth, as it should, because ashes to ashes and dust to dust and all that, but he’s not there.

He’s gone. He’s in the air and the trees and the sun.

And he’s also nowhere. There’s nothing she can touch or feel of him, not at the cemetery, not anywhere.

All she can do at the cemetery is look at his headstone.

She supposes she could talk to him. Or talk to the headstone.

People do it – she’s seen them pull up camp chairs and sit with thermoses.

Who knows what they say. Maybe it’s a form of therapy with a relative who can’t talk back.

For all she knows they’re sitting there saying, ‘You were a wretched so-and-so and I couldn’t say it while you were alive so I’m saying it now.

’ She doubts it, though. Rage isn’t as powerful as love.

No one can make her believe it is. And it’s love that brings a person to a gravesite with a camp chair and a thermos.

The only people she understands visiting regularly are parents of children who have died.

That’s a grief you could never comprehend, and she can see how visiting the grave might help you inch toward acceptance, at least. If you see the evidence that your child is dead, maybe you start to believe it.

Maybe . She doesn’t think she ever could.

She hopes she never has to find out. Her son is strong and healthy, or so she believes.

He’s also walking with her to his father’s grave.

‘Thanks for coming,’ she says, then she regrets it, because she shouldn’t be thanking him for doing something that is the normal duty of a son: to show respect to his parents. It’s a reflex to thank him because he does so little, but she shouldn’t reward that. She should just say nothing.

‘No worries,’ he replies.

They’re walking slowly, which befits being in a cemetery – what’s the hurry when everyone around you is going nowhere?

‘Here he is,’ Dylan says, and he surprises Trudy by reaching down and tapping the headstone. ‘Hi, Dad.’

She supposes she’s now meant to greet her dead husband but she’s not going to. She talks to Laurie all the time, wherever he is.

‘It’s weird that he’s gone, isn’t it?’ Dylan crouches and scrutinises the headstone, as if he’s never seen it before. It’s possible he didn’t read it at the time it was installed.

‘It is.’

‘Two years.’

‘Yes.’

‘There will never be anyone like him.’

Does she imagine there’s a certain edge to his voice? As if he’s warning her off thinking of another man? He couldn’t have known that she wants to broach the subject of Sol with him. Ideally it wouldn’t have been in this location but she hasn’t seen him otherwise.

‘No, there won’t,’ she says.

He stands up and gives her a funny look. ‘But?’ he says.

‘I didn’t say that.’

‘You didn’t need to.’

How could he have guessed? It’s been years since they’ve known each other well enough for him to read her like this. It makes her almost lose her nerve. Except she wants to have this conversation, no matter how uncomfortable it may turn out to be.

‘I’m not looking to marry again,’ she says, and it’s true. ‘But I need companionship.’

‘You have friends.’ There’s definitely a certain tone in his voice now.

‘Yes, but they have their own lives. I miss having someone who is in my life.’

‘What – you want a boyfriend?’

He’s laughing, and she knows he’s laughing at her and she really doesn’t like it.

‘I didn’t say that, Dylan,’ she snaps. ‘But I do have a friend.’

‘You what ?’

‘I have a gentleman friend. Sol. He is very fond of me and I …’ She folds her arms and half turns away from him, thinking about how to phrase this. ‘I am becoming fond of him.’

‘That’s not right.’ Dylan’s face is thunderous. ‘No, that’s not right. You can’t replace Dad.’

‘I’m not trying to.’

‘You are! Why can’t you just stay faithful to him? Why isn’t that enough?’

She has, of course, asked herself this question several times. Why isn’t she satisfied being on her own, with Laurie’s memory? Isn’t it greedy of her to want to squeeze more from this life?

Her answer to herself has been: no. It’s not greedy.

She’s alive. She may be alive for many more years.

Wanting to fill that life with more than emptiness is not greed.

It’s human. Humans aren’t designed to be alone.

It’s too hard. We need companionship. We need support.

We need succour. Sol is offering that to her.

Indeed, he is already giving it to her. Why shouldn’t she take it?

Why is she not as deserving of it as anyone else, just because her husband died younger than they expected?

She turns back to her son. ‘If I were the one who’d died,’ she says, ‘would you think that your father should stay alone for the rest of his life?’

Dylan frowns. ‘No. Why would he?’

Such simple words and yet so much meaning tangled in them. The double standard embedded in that ‘no’. Dylan’s evident confusion that she would even ask him such a thing.

‘So why would I?’ she says.

‘It’s different.’

‘How?’

‘Men need a woman in their lives.’ He shrugs. ‘We just do.’

‘I agree. Your lives are greatly improved by having women in them. But I also think this woman needs a man in her life.’

‘That’s ridiculous.’

‘So if you die before Annemarie, she needs to keep being alone?’

‘Of course!’

‘And if she dies, obviously you won’t stay on your own. Does she know this?’

‘She doesn’t need to.’

Trudy thinks a woman should know that. Anyone in a relationship should know how the other thinks on these matters.

She and Laurie didn’t have a conversation about it because they were both pretending he wasn’t going to die, but she knew her husband well enough to say that he would want her to make the most of her life, and if that meant bringing another man into it, he wouldn’t disapprove.

And he’s not here to disapprove. He’s gone.

She’s been faithful to a ghost for long enough.

‘I don’t want you seeing this man, Mum. It’s not right.’

Dylan grew taller than her when he was fourteen but he was still her little boy for a long time.

Perhaps even after he married, she still thought he needed her help.

Then she had to learn to let him go so he could have his own family.

So Annemarie wouldn’t think she was interfering.

No woman wants an interfering mother-in-law.

He’s not her little boy any more, though, and she doesn’t need to look after him.

She needs to look after herself. And that’s the only demand she’s prepared to meet.

‘I don’t care,’ she says.

He looks startled. ‘What?’

‘I don’t care. Dylan, I love you more than anything but I can’t live my life on your terms. You don’t get to dictate my life to me. And I don’t know where you learnt to behave like that – your father never did.’

It’s true Laurie never spoke to her like this but Dylan has some rather blustery friends who probably fancy themselves kings of various castles, so he might have learnt it from them.

Dylan opens his mouth then closes it, probably because he can’t disagree with her.

‘I’m not going to fight about this,’ Trudy says. ‘You either accept that I can make decisions for myself or you don’t. I wasn’t telling you about Sol to ask for permission. I was simply telling you so you knew.’

He looks down and away. She fancies he feels chastised but he’ll never admit it.

‘Now, why don’t we spend a little longer here then you can drive me home,’ she says.

He nods, then crouches over Laurie’s grave once more. ‘Do you mind if I have a bit of time alone with Dad?’ It’s said so quietly Trudy almost doesn’t catch it.

‘Of course.’

She wanders off down the row, looking at the headstones that contain scant details of lives.

Whole existences reduced to dates and names, with the occasional accompanying phrase.

But no more is needed. The occupants of these graves aren’t here any more than Laurie is, so the headstones don’t need to tell their stories.

Those stories are carried in the hearts of those who love them, just as she carries Laurie’s, and she always will, come what may, until she’s laid here too.

Today, though – tomorrow too, and many days after, she hopes – she has a life to live. And no more time to waste.