The PS, I Love You Club gather in Joy’s conservatory, the 1 April morning sun heating the glass room. Her blond Labrador snoozes on the hot tiles, in the path of the sunlight in the centre of the room. We have to step around him to get anywhere. I look at the club members seated in front of me, feeling awkward and annoyed. I’d arranged to meet with Joy to deliver my well-rehearsed, polite but firm refusal to her invitation to be involved, but I hadn’t bargained on everyone else being here. Clearly, she understood my request to meet as meaning entirely the opposite, and I wish now that I’d told her over the phone instead of opting to come here for an honourable face-to-face rebuff.
‘He’s a lazy lump, aren’t you, my old friend,’ Joy says, gazing fondly at the dog as she places a cup of tea and a heaped plate of biscuits on the table beside me. ‘We got him when we first heard my diagnosis, thinking he’d be company, a distraction for everyone, and he’s served us well. He’s nine,’ she says defiantly. ‘I have MS. Multiple Sclerosis.’
Bert, a big man in his late sixties, oxygen being fed to him through a nasal cannula, goes next. ‘Too handsome for my own good,’ he says, winking.
Paul and Joy chuckle, Ginika rolls her eyes, the teenager caught amongst the bad dad jokes. I’d been right about the girl in the shop, I’m not paranoid after all. I smile politely.
‘Lungs. Emphysema,’ Bert corrects himself, laughing at his joke.
Paul next. He’s younger than Bert and Joy, closer to my age. Handsome, deceivingly healthy-looking, and the second mystery person to have visited the shop, and turned away by Ciara. ‘A brain tumour.’
Young man, handsome man, brain tumour. Just like Gerry. It’s too close. I should leave, but when’s a good time to get up and leave when a young man is telling you about his cancer?
‘But my situation is a little different to the others,’ he adds. ‘I’m in remission.’
A slight weight lifts. ‘That’s great news.’
‘Yes,’ he says, not at all appearing like it’s great news. ‘This is my second time, in remission, it’s quite regular for brain tumours to recur. I wasn’t ready to go the first time round. If it recurs again, I want to be prepared for my family.’
I nod. My chest tightens a bit more; even in remission he is preparing for his death, in fear of the tumour recurring. ‘My husband had primary brain cancer,’ I feel the need to add, by way of conversation, but as soon as the words have left my mouth I realise it’s not a great talking point. We all know my husband died.
I came here to put an end to this before my involvement began, but as soon as I walked in the door and saw the group, I felt the hourglass had been flipped. Now that the grains of sand are falling, I wonder if perhaps my being here this once will be all I need to do. I can ease my guilt, try to be of help, then go back to my life. It will only take an hour.
I look to the teenager beside me, Ginika. Perhaps this visit will end their stalking of me. It will have to, because I will tell them in no uncertain terms to stop. Her baby, Jewel, is contently sitting on her lap, playing with the bangles around Ginika’s wrist. Feeling the attention on her, Ginika speaks without lifting her gaze from the floor.
‘Cervical cancer,’ she says, firmly, her back teeth pushed together as she forces the words out. She’s angry.
OK. OK. Tell them, get it over with. Tell them you don’t want to be here, that you can’t help them. A silence falls.
‘As you can see we’re all in various stages of our illnesses,’ Joy, the voice of the group says. ‘MS isn’t a terminal illness but a life-long condition and lately my symptoms are advancing. Angela seemed to be responding well to treatment but then declined rapidly. Paul is in a great place, physically, but … none of us really know – we’re all up and down, aren’t we,’ she says, looking around her comrades. ‘I think I can speak for us all when I say I don’t know how much quality time we have left. Still, we’re here, and that’s the main thing.’
They all nod to that, apart from Ginika, for whom being here now is not the main thing.
‘Some of us have ideas for our letters, others don’t. We would appreciate your insight.’
This is my window to extract myself. They are human, they will understand, and even if they don’t, what is it to me if they don’t care about my mental stability; I must put myself first. I sit forward. ‘I need to explain—’
‘I have my idea,’ Bert leaps in. He’s breathless as he speaks, though this doesn’t seem to limit the amount of words he uses. ‘It’s a treasure trail for my wife Rita, and I could do with your help to place clues all around the country.’
‘Around the country?’
‘It’s like a pub quiz. For example, question one: where did Brian Boru lose his life in his final battle? And so Rita goes to Clontarf and I’ll have the next clue waiting for her there.’ A fit of coughing takes over.
I blink. Not quite what I’d expected to hear.
‘I think you’re being a cheapskate,’ Paul teases. ‘You should send Rita to Lanzarote like Gerry did for Holly.’
‘Get away out of that,’ Bert snorts, and folds his arms high on his chest and looks to me. ‘Why did he send you there?’
‘It was their honeymoon destination,’ Paul answers on my behalf.
‘Ooh yes!’ Joy closes her eyes dreamily. ‘And that’s where you saw the dolphins, isn’t it?’
My head is spinning as they speak about my experience as though it was an episode of some TV reality show. Watercooler chat.
‘He left the tickets with the travel agent for her to collect,’ Ginika tells Bert.
‘Ah yes,’ he says, remembering.
‘What was the connection to the dolphins? I don’t think you said in the podcast,’ Paul asks, reaching for a chocolate biscuit. Their eyes are on me and I feel peculiar, hearing them speak about Gerry’s letters like this. I know I spoke about them briefly with Ciara, in a small shop in front of thirty people, but somehow I forgot about the fact it could go further, downloadable onto devices, to be listened to in people’s homes like entertainment. The way they are so casually discussing one of the biggest, deepest, darkest moments of my life, makes me feel far away, like I’m having an out-of-body experience.
I look from one to the other, trying to keep up with the speed of their conversation. Questions fly at me as if I’m a contestant on a quiz show, under a timer. I want to answer them, but I can’t think fast enough. My life can’t be summed up in rapid one-word answers, it requires context, scene-setting, explanations and emotional responses, not quick-fire rounds. To hear them speak of the process of writing and leaving these letters in such a cavalier way feels surreal and makes my blood boil. I want to shake them all and tell them to listen to themselves.
‘The letter I really want to know about is the one with the sunflower seeds. Is that really your favourite flower?’ Joy asks. ‘Did Gerry ask you to plant the seeds? I quite like that. I’d like to ask Joe to plant a tree or something, in my name, and then they’d look at it every day and they’d think of—’
‘How many years you’ve been gone,’ I interrupt, without thinking. My voice is sharper than I intend.
‘Oh,’ she says, surprised, then disappointed. ‘I wasn’t thinking of it like that. Just something for them to remember me by.’ She looks to the club for backup.
‘But they will remember you. They’ll remember you every second of every day. They won’t be able to stop remembering you. Everything they say, everything they smell, taste, hear, absolutely everything in their lives is linked to you. In a way, you will haunt them. You will be constantly in their thoughts even when they don’t want you there, because they’ll need you gone so that they can get through, and then there are days when they’ll need you there in order for them to get through. Sometimes they’d do anything to not think of you. They won’t need extra plants and trees to see you, they won’t need a quiz to remember you by. Do you understand?’
Joy nods quickly and I realise I’ve raised my voice. I’ve sounded angry when I haven’t meant to. I check myself, reign myself in. I’m surprised by my reaction, by the harshness of my tone.
‘Holly, you liked Gerry’s letters, didn’t you?’ Paul asks, breaking the stunned silence.
‘Yes, of course!’ I hear the defensiveness in my voice. Of course I did. I lived for those letters.
‘Only, it sounds a bit like—’ Paul begins, but he’s interrupted by Joy’s hand on his knee. He looks down at her hand.
‘It sounds like what?’
‘Nothing.’ He holds his hands up defensively.
‘You’re right, Holly,’ Joy says slowly, thoughtfully, studying me as she speaks. ‘Maybe they would see it as a marker of my death rather than a way of celebrating my life. Is that how the sunflowers made you feel?’
I feel sweaty. Hot.
‘No. I liked the sunflowers.’ Again I hear my words, so carefully guarded they sound armour-plated. ‘I plant them on the same day every year. Gerry didn’t tell me to do that. I just decided it was something I wanted to continue.’
Joy is impressed by that idea, makes a note of it in her diary. I don’t tell them that it was my brother Richard’s idea, that he planted them and kept them alive. But I looked at them. I looked at them all the time. Sometimes I couldn’t bear the sight of them, other times I was drawn to them; on the good days, I barely noticed they were there.
Joy continues to muse while I squirm uncomfortably. ‘Plant something on the same date every year. Maybe the date of my passing – or, no—’ She stops and looks at me, biro pointed at my face. ‘My birthday. More positive.’
I nod weakly.
‘I don’t have a good imagination for this kind of thing,’ she sighs.
‘I do,’ Bert says; it’s his turn to be the defensive one. ‘I have it all planned out. I got the idea from my local. I love a table quiz. She’ll have great fun, we haven’t travelled for so long because of this thing,’ he says, throwing a thumb at his oxygen tank.
‘What if she doesn’t know the answers?’ I ask.
They look at me.
‘Of course she’ll know. It will be a general knowledge quiz. Where was Brian Boru defeated? Which group of islands give their name to a sweater? Where was Christy Moore from? And then off she’ll go to Limerick for the next clue.’
‘Christy Moore is from Kildare,’ I say.
‘What? No, he’s not,’ he says. ‘Sure, I listen to him all the time.’
Paul gets on his phone to google it. ‘Kildare.’
‘For feck sake, Bert,’ Ginika says, rolling her eyes. ‘This isn’t going to work if you don’t know the answers to your own bleedin’ questions. And which of the Aran Islands is she supposed to go to? And which building? Is she going to find your letter on the ground when she steps off the boat? Will it be bobbing up and down in a bottle on the beach? You have to narrow it down.’
Paul and Joy laugh. I can’t. It’s too surreal. How have I ended up deep in this conversation?
‘Ah stop it, the lot of you,’ Bert says, getting agitated.
‘Thank God we have Holly here to guide us,’ Joy says, looking away from them and to me with a perplexed frown. As if to say, See? This is why we need you.
She’s right to be concerned. This is serious, they need to end these antics. I need to help them refocus. ‘Bert, what if your wife doesn’t know the answers? She will be grieving. It’s a brain scrambler, believe me. She might feel under pressure, like it’s a test. Maybe you should write the answers down and leave them with somebody for her.’
‘Then she’ll cheat!’ he exclaims. ‘The whole reason for this is to get her out there, thinking.’ He breaks into racking coughs again.
‘Give your answers to Holly,’ Joy says. ‘And if Rita gets stuck on one, she can call Holly.’
My stomach heaves. Heart flips. I’m only here for the hour. One hour, nothing more. Tell them, Holly, tell them.
‘Holly, you can be the guardian of our notes, if you will,’ Bert says, saluting me. ‘As we head off to war.’
This is not what I’d planned. I had convinced myself that I could sit with them for an hour, hear their ideas for their letters, guide them, and then extract myself from their lives. I don’t want to be invested. If Gerry had had someone helping him with his letters, I would have besieged them with questions. I would have wanted to know more and more, pressing them for every last detail of his secret moments away from me. I’d practically invited the travel guide, Barbara, to my house on Christmas Day for drinks, trying to make her a part of my life, before I realised the imposition I was putting on her. She couldn’t provide me with any more information, I was squeezing her dry of what had been a short experience, pleading with her to share it with me over and over again.
And here they are, making plans for me to be their gatekeeper after their deaths, these strangers. They’ll be gone, and the advice I give them will affect their loved ones forever more. I should leave immediately, before I get too involved, before it’s too late. I should stick to the plan. I came here to tell them ‘no’.
‘Oh, would you look at that,’ Joy says, pouring the last of the tea into her cup, and filling it so that tea spills out over the rim and pools on her saucer. ‘We’re out of tea. Holly, would you mind?’
Taking the teapot in a dazed state, I step over the dog and leave the room. As I’m standing waiting for the kettle to boil, trying to figure out how to escape this nightmare, feeling trapped and panicked, I hear a door off the kitchen opening, a man coming inside and wiping his feet on the mat. He steps into the kitchen as I ready myself for our greeting.
‘Oh,’ the man says. ‘Hello. You must be with the book club.’
I pause. ‘Yes, yes, the book club,’ I reply, putting the kettle down and wiping my wet hands on my jeans.
‘I’m Joe – Joy’s husband.’
‘I’m Holly.’
He shakes my hand, studies me. ‘You look … well … Holly.’
‘I am very well,’ I laugh, and it’s a split second later that I catch his meaning. He may not know the real reason behind the supposed book club, but he has figured out that its members are not at all well.
‘Good to hear it.’
‘I was about to leave, actually,’ I say. ‘Just topping up the tea before I go. I’m late, for an appointment. I’ve cancelled it twice before and really can’t again, or I’ll never get another one,’ I blather on.
‘Well, off you go, can’t have you missing it again. I’ll make the tea.’
‘Thank you.’ I hand him the teapot. ‘Do you mind giving them my apologies that I had to leave?’
‘Not at all,’ he says.
I back away in the direction of the front door. I can easily make my escape. But something about his movements stops me and I watch him.
He opens a cupboard and then another. Scratches his head. ‘Tea, you say?’ he says, pulling open a drawer. He scratches his head. ‘I’m not sure …’ he mumbles as he searches.
I step back closer to him, reach to the cupboard above the kettle and open the door, revealing the box of tea. ‘Here it is.’
‘Ah,’ he says, sliding closed the bottom drawer containing pots and pans. ‘That’s where that is. Joy always makes the tea. They’ll probably want the sugar bowl too.’ He starts opening more cupboards. He looks back at me. ‘Off you go now, don’t want you missing that appointment.’
I open the cupboard again. It’s beside the tea. ‘Found it.’
He turns suddenly and knocks over a vase of flowers. I hurry to help him and mop up the water with a dishcloth. When I’ve finished, the dishcloth is unusable. ‘Where’s your washing machine?’
‘Oh, I’d say that it’s …’ he looks around again.
I open the wooden cupboard beside the dishwasher and find the washing machine.
‘There it is,’ he says. ‘You know your way around here better than I do. Truth be told, it’s Joy that does everything in here,’ he admits guiltily as if I couldn’t have guessed. ‘Always said I’d be lost without her.’ It feels like something he’s always said, and now it has real meaning. Life without Joy, as he knows her, is nearing. It’s real.
‘How is she doing?’ I ask. ‘She seems very positive.’
‘Joy is always upbeat, to others anyway, but it’s got harder for her. She went through a period where nothing changed, she didn’t worsen. We thought that was it, but then it advanced – and it’s when it advances that the body declines.’
‘I’m sorry,’ I say softly. ‘For you both.’
He purses his lips and nods. ‘But I do know where the milk is,’ he says, perking up and pulling open a door.
A broom falls out.
We both start laughing.
‘You’d best be off to your appointment,’ he says again. ‘I know how they can be. Waiting list after waiting list, life is one big waiting room.’
‘It’s OK.’ I pick the broom up from the floor, the desire to run gone. I sigh to myself. ‘It can wait.’
When I return to the group with the replenished tea, Bert has faded. Whatever burst of energy his medication gave him for the hour has worn off, leaving him exhausted. As if anticipating this, his carer has arrived to collect him.
‘Why don’t we talk about this in detail the next time we meet,’ Bert taps his nose in a secretive but terribly obvious manner, and jerks his head towards the sound of his carer speaking with Joe in the hallway. His chin wobbles as he moves. ‘And not in my house, because Rita will be suspicious.’
‘Here,’ Joy says. ‘We can all meet here again.’
‘That’s unfair on you, Joy,’ Paul says.
‘I can take over from where Angela left off. I wouldn’t have it any other way,’ she says firmly, and it’s clear, at least to me, that it suits Joy in more ways than one to remain in her home.
‘Good for me,’ Bert says. ‘How about two days from now, same time? If we meet tomorrow, Rita will be jealous of Joy.’ He chuckles and winks. ‘Will you come back to us, Holly?’
Everyone looks at me again.
I should not get involved in this club. I do not want to get involved in this club. It can’t be healthy.
But everyone is looking at me, hopeful and expectant. Ginika’s baby Jewel lets out a sound, as if she’s joining in, trying to convince me along with the group. She makes happy bubbling sounds. She is six months old, she could be a one-year-old when her mother dies.
I look around at them all, this motley crew. Bert is struggling to breathe, Joy is barely holding herself together. I’ve been here before, I know how short six months can be, how quickly everything can change, how health can deteriorate in two weeks, how twenty-four hours can change it all.
I read an article on how the clocks stand still to keep our time in sync with the universe. It’s called the leap second: a one-second adjustment applied to the coordinated universal time because the Earth’s rotation speed changes irregularly. A positive leap second is inserted between second 23:59:59 and second 00:00:00 of the following date, offering an extra second in our lives. News articles and magazine features have posed the question, what can happen in a second? What can we achieve with this extra time?
In one second, almost two and a half million emails are sent, the universe expands fifteen kilometres and thirty stars explode, a honey bee can flap its wings two hundred times, the fastest snail travels 1.3 centimetres, objects can fall sixteen feet, and ‘Will you marry me?’ can change a life.
Four babies are born. Two people die.
One second can be the difference between life and death.
Their expectant faces peer up at me, waiting, hoping.
‘Let’s give her time to think about it,’ Joy says softly, but her disappointment is obvious. They all back off.