He shrugged, burying his face in his own mug. ‘Charlie would have done the same.’
‘Probably.’
He looked up, the faint tug of a smile on his lips. ‘And then cooked you a three-course dinner before inviting you to move in.’
‘She’d have burned the dinner, though, left the kitchen a total wreck and ordered a pizza.’
He full-on smiled then. ‘That sounds about right.’
I chewed slowly on another bite of toast, working up to my question. ‘Um… can I ask what happened?’
‘How she died?’ He sighed, putting the mug down and deftly plucking the baby out of her chair and tucking her into his chest before continuing. For the first time I clicked that this could be Charlie’s baby, but before I could ask, her dad spoke again. ‘This is Hope. Charlie’s daughter. She was born in June.’
A girl. Dressed in a green top and blue trousers, it had been impossible to be sure. I mean, she was incredibly cute, with thick hair and huge eyes, a tiny nose and round, rosy cheeks, but don’t most babies look that pretty?
‘Charlie had… struggled with being pregnant. And afterwards, she got worse. We discovered later it was post-partum psychosis. She was last seen by the old Ferrington Bridge. They found her a few days later.’ He shrugged, face blank, but his voice had cracked on the words. ‘We’ll never know what happened, but I’ve reached the conclusion it doesn’t make any difference.’
‘I’m so sorry.’ My voice hitched, but what else was there to say? I was sorry for him, desperately sorry for Charlie who had wrestled with what she called the ‘evil brain-death demons’ for most of her life, and at the time she had most needed to live, they had won. Sorry for the rest of us who had to live on without her. But sorry most of all for this beautiful little girl who would grow up without her mother.
Charlie had saved me, from myself, and now I felt awash with regret that when she’d needed someone to talk her down – when she most needed someone to believe in her, I’d been oblivious. Slurping champagne and stuffing myself with cuttlefish tortellini, swanning about in my free clothes and worrying about how many millions of people liked me. When I should have been worrying about one of the very tiny number of people who loved me.
The pain of grief, so much harder to bear than my superficial scrapes, my aching head and stiff muscles, settled over me like a thick, black blanket.
And there it stayed.
* * *
I’d met Charlie at Birmingham University. Under different circumstances I’m sure we’d never have spoken – for no other reason than she wouldn’t have noticed me. But we were both studying English, both had flats in the same accommodation block, and by the time we’d walked back from our first tutorial together, she’d basically decided we were friends.
She invited herself over to my room for a drink, stopping off at the student shop for me to buy a bottle of vodka and some Coke, when I admitted that all I had was teabags. I then had to admit I only had one mug and no glasses.
After rifling through my sparse wardrobe, inspecting the solitary photograph on my desk, she plonked herself down on the bed, poured a generous splash of vodka into the glasses she’d pilfered from the shared kitchen and made her pronouncement:
‘Eleanor Sharpley, you are in dire need of my help.’
I didn’t disagree.
‘But that’s perfect, because I think I need you, too. We’re an ideal match.’
She held up her glass to chink mine, before taking a long gulp.
‘Firstly, why don’t you have any stuff? Your capsule wardrobe says, “highly organised, overly sensible person”. But who comes to uni with one mug and no glasses? It’s like you didn’t even consider the possibility of having a friend over.’
‘I had to bring whatever I could carry on the train.’ And no, I genuinely never expected to have anyone over.
‘No parents to drive you?’ She leant back against the wall, sweeping long, silvery-platinum hair off her forehead.
‘They don’t have a car. I don’t think they know how to drive. And they work all weekend. It never crossed their mind to come with me.’ It hadn’t really crossed mine either until I’d arrived the first day of freshers’ week and seen the queue of cars, jolly parents humping crates and suitcases, boxes of food and duvets up the stairs. My mum had handed me a tenner and a tub of scones and got back to scrubbing the bannisters.
It wasn’t that they didn’t care, they just didn’t get it. Me leaving home and becoming a student was a world they couldn’t imagine, let alone understand. They were sort of proud of their only child, but they were also bemused I hadn’t been content to stay on and help run the Tufted Duck bed and breakfast they owned on the edge of Lake Windermere.
‘So, tell me one fact that sums up all I need to know about your life so far.’
I took my first tentative sip of vodka and Coke, blinking as the burn melted into a warm buzz in my belly. ‘Up until last week, I shared a bedroom with my grandma.’
‘No!’
‘I had the top bunk.’
