The trip to the Hotel Athena in Corfu was the first time she’d been away since Jack had died. It was another experiment, like the coffee and having a nice glass of wine with dinner. It was an experiment in living. She’d come up with the idea to show Diana that she could live life, really she could. And it was proving lovely.
She took her coffee out on to the balcony and sat on the white cast-iron chair that faced the sea. There were four balconies on that side of the small hotel. On the furthest one, Jessica could see Claire, the quiet fair-haired woman who was married to that tall, handsome man.
Jessica had spoken to Claire and her husband, Anthony, but not much. She hadn’t wanted to appear stand-offish, but she didn’t really want to talk to people. It was too painful. Seeing Claire and her husband, always holding hands and looking at each other, hurt. It was a reminder of all Jessica had lost.
She’d heard the hotel landlady, Sarah, discussing giving them the honeymoon suite when everyone had arrived. Instantly, Jessica had thought of her own honeymoon with Jack. They’d been totally broke and she’d been pregnant with Marty. Her mother had been tight-lipped at the small wedding ceremony. She’d overheard one of her aunts talking about how awful it was that they ‘had to get married’.
Jessica had felt furious. There was no ‘had to’ about it. She and Jack had been in love. Her being pregnant was icing on the cake.
It had been a great relief to leave the reception and drive at high speed to the small hotel in Wicklow where they were to spend the weekend. Honeymoons weren’t so grand then. Not like the big holidays brides had now.
Sometimes, people who’d skimped on their honeymoon made up for it with big holidays for important anniversaries. Like a thirtieth anniversary. Jessica and Jack’s thirtieth anniversary would have been in September, two months away.
Jessica took another sip of her coffee and focused on the glittering water of the ocean. She didn’t cry much any more. Perhaps human beings were born with so many tears and, once they were all gone, there were no more. She’d finished her supply long ago. Now, she might feel a certain wetness on her lashes, but that was all. She had no crying left in her.
There were so many anniversaries, after Jack had died. The first Christmas, the first birthday, the first anniversary of their wedding…that was all supposed to be horrendous, but everyone said it would get better afterwards. Except that it hadn’t. The second Christmas had been even worse.
Liam and Marty had been there for the first Christmas after their father died. Liam had come home from Australia and had brought Kathleen, a beautiful Australian girlfriend with a sweet smile, who’d been an angel. Having a non-family member around had helped so much. Marty had come from Cork with his two deranged rescue dogs, and they’d helped too. One dog was a bit like a wolf and liked to make dens with stolen cushions under couches and tables. The other dog was a Labrador type who was hungry all the time and stole food off plates when people weren’t looking.
The dogs made people laugh a lot. And when Jessica, Liam and Marty got sad, Kathleen was wise enough to know how to cheer them up. It had been a very different type of Christmas to the ones they were used to, but somehow, they’d got over it.
But last Christmas, the second one without Jack, had been horrible. Liam couldn’t afford to fly home from Australia, and Marty, who had just qualified as a vet, had to work over the holidays. Jessica’s neat four-bedroomed house felt like a giant empty mansion. The television served up a diet of happy people, merry films and wonderful Christmas routines. So Jessica switched the TV off and tried to read a book about a serial killer in a small American town. The suffering in the novel was a relief after all the enforced Christmas happiness. But she couldn’t even concentrate on reading.
She wished there was a naughty dog to steal food from her plate. She almost wished a burglar might try to break in, just so she would have someone to talk to.
She found herself daydreaming about it. The burglar would be young and Jessica would talk him out of his life of crime. And then she realised she couldn’t talk anyone out of anything. She was nothing but a crazy widow-woman, she decided. Fifty-five-years-old and going slowly mad. Any sensible burglar would take one look at her and leave. She hadn’t been to the hairdresser’s in months. When Jack had been alive, she had a shiny brown rinse put in her hair. Now, she had nothing put in. Her hair was shoulder length and mousy grey. She never wore make-up any more and without mascara, her eyelashes were pale.
On her last birthday, the second one since Jack had died, she stayed in bed all day. Her sons had phoned and she’d lied to them.
‘Yes, I’m going out to lunch with Lizzie,’ she’d said. Lizzie was her best friend and had asked her out to lunch. But Jessica had said no, and Lizzie had given up. She’d asked Jessica out to so many things and Jessica always said no. There was only so much a friend could do, short of dragging her out.
Jessica didn’t feel guilty about lying to her sons. It was better to lie and make the boys think she was fine. Would it help if Liam and Marty knew she was wrapped in her duvet, crying? No. They’d worry. They didn’t deserve to worry. They were young men with their lives ahead of them. It would be wrong to let them know that their mother’s life was over.
On the second wedding anniversary without Jack – it would have been their twenty-ninth wedding anniversary – Jessica got out of bed and went to the shops on her own. She even had a cup of coffee in the cafe beside the supermarket. This was progress, she felt. She didn’t have any cake, though. Cake would have felt like celebrating, and Jessica had nothing to celebrate.
On Jack’s second birthday since his death – he would have been fifty-eight – Jessica went for a walk on the pier near her home.
What astonished her was that everyone else looked so normal. People laughed. Small dogs still ran madly after seagulls. The seagulls still appeared to taunt the dogs. Mothers pushed huge pushchairs and toddlers still roared to get out of the pushchairs. Once they were out, they yelled to get back in.
Life was going on. Jessica felt huge rage against the whole world for enjoying itself. Didn’t they see? Her life was over because her beloved Jack was gone. How could life continue? There simply was no life without Jack.
She had started to cry and she could barely see as she rushed back along the pier to her car. It was Jack’s old car. Soon, it would be an antique, Marty joked. They’d never had much money. Jack had been a carpenter and they’d always had food on the table, but there hadn’t been money for luxuries.
At home, she sat in front of the big family picture taken the day Marty had got his place in veterinary college. It was hard to remember such happiness. They’d been in the garden beside the old apple tree. Jack loved the garden. They’d bought the old council house he’d grown up in and his father had planted the tree when he was a kid. The family had grown vegetables. Jack’s pride and joy were his raspberries. For such a gentle man, he’d waged a fierce war against the birds to stop them stealing his precious fruit.
Sarah and Stavros grew fruit alongside flowers in the garden at the back of the hotel. Jessica had wandered there one day and had found Sarah on her knees weeding a flower bed that was set in a sunny area between the lemon trees.
‘This,’ said Sarah, pulling on a wild green stalk, ‘is like a virus. Once it gets in, you can’t control it. It destroys flowers and vegetables.’
‘The soil seems hard,’ Jessica said, for want of something else to say.
‘When I came here first, I couldn’t believe how hard it was to grow things. It’s tricky when you’re always thinking of how to water everything,’ Sarah went on. ‘So different from home.’
Jessica sat on a cracked stone bench under the nearest lemon tree. ‘How long have you lived in Corfu?’ she asked.
‘Thirty years. Can you believe it?’ Sarah wiped her hands on the apron around her comfortable waist. ‘It’s home to me now.’