You see, I was truly happy as a woman. Deeply happy.
He was to have an operation, so for days beforehand she soothed him. Just a routine procedure, it really needed doing, nothing serious, only a couple of hours, they do these all the time, your tests are wonderful, your heart is strong The same mantras, over and over, almost as if she was one of those wind-up toy soldiers. He smiled, patted her hand, and held his tongue. She had the feeling he didnt really hear her, that it was all for herself, not hima comfort for her own jangled nerves.
Which, of course, it was. He listened without hearing. He simply watched herthe way she flitted about their London flat, the way she laid the table, how she sipped the coffee he had made for her breakfast, her furrowed brow worrying at the day, the way she repacked his hospital bits and pieces for the hundredth time, her gentle reminders to ring his sister in Edinburgh.
For ages, it had been just the two of them. Half their lives spent with parents, a son, and later grandchildren. The parents were gone; theyd bought their son a flat in Manchester. Now, they were two once more, hosting dinners on weekends, inviting old friends, and summer holidays to the seaside. Fingers intertwined, always, for they never let go, even as the years crept past sixty.
People never spoke their names separately; the rhythm made no sense that way.
Their story was long and full of all sorts. Shed been a care home child, and then, after her own son was grown, her birth mother had been found. Ill, abandoned, unwanted. Without hesitation, shed taken her in. Into their snug city flat. Most thought she was madher mother had left her as a baby, never once looked back, never remembered shed had a daughter. But what should she doleave her, as her mother had left her? Each year apart had been a wound. She couldnt let pain begat pain.
She and her husband nursed her mother together for years. Even as dementia erased her mind, they fed, changed, soothed, and comforted her in silence and in care. She could do anything, as long as he was there. Nothing frightened her, as long as he was close.
She saw him into surgery and waited in the hush outside. Routine, yes, but she worried all the same. Hed always been so robustwaiting felt odd, unnatural.
Her hand drifted into her handbag and, surprisingly, she found an envelope. She didnt recall putting any in there. Out it camestranger still, a letter from him. When had he written it? When had he slipped it into her bag? They had been at each other’s side constantly; surely she would have noticed.
She read the words. They felt like goodbye. It felt as if she wasnt supposed to move, as if her stillness alone could keep things as they were. In that instant, she knew, before any surgeon appeared.
He never woke from the simple surgery. His strong, steadfast heart stopped.
Then there were the funerals, the camomile tea, the empty rooms, the pain so keen it felt borrowed from another world. One day, rifling for a cardigan, she found a note in the pocketone of his, silly and sweet. Her vision darkened. Another, in a coat, with a little doodled grin in the corner.
There were a thousand of those notes, it seemed. All written before his heart stopped, all waiting in nooks and crannies for her to discover after hed gone.
At first, she could only weep, the sight of his handwriting was a physical ache.
Then she began to read. There he was, making a joke, offering comfort, worrying over her, guessing her moods, loving her still. Alive, perfectly himself, in those scraps of paper.
And she looked right at me, and said, You know, it feels embarrassing to admit, with so much sorrow and trouble in the world, when it seems as if such happiness is unheard ofeveryone just grumbles about each other. But I wasso, so happy as a woman. Honestly. I cant tell anyone. But I truly was.
Every night for ten years now, she reads those notes. The ones she kept finding, the ones that kept her sane, the ones that still hold his warmth. And his love.
