After the One by Cass Lester (e book reader free .TXT) 📕

‘It’s not!’ Charley’s eyes blazed.

Pam pressed on, albeit more gently. ‘It is, Charley. You’re still mourning Josh, still bogged down in grieving for him. You cling to being his widow. You define yourself as a widow. You can’t go on doing that for the rest of your life.’

The unfairness, the sheer, unkind, heartlessness of Pam’s words shook Charley. This was Pam talking. Pam – who she’d always been able to turn to for support, and from whom empathy and sympathy flowed in a never-ending stream.

‘Yes, I define myself as a widow, Pam,’ snapped Charley, ‘because I am a widow. I can’t suddenly, conveniently, stop being a widow!’

‘You have to, Charley. You have to stop seeing yourself as a widow.’

Incredulous that Pam would speak to her like this, Charley tried to protest, but Pam went on, ignoring the interruption.

‘I’ll never stop missing my son, every single day for the rest of my life. But I don’t define myself as a “grieving mother”. You have to move on, Charley. You can’t keep thinking of yourself as Josh’s widow.’

There was a long, painful silence before Charley spoke. She struggled to find the words, or even the energy to reply. To explain why she could never, ever stop thinking of herself as Josh’s widow. Eventually, when she did speak, it was in quiet, tight voice that tore at her throat.

‘You’re still Josh’s mother, Pam. Nobody tells you that you can’t call yourself his mother any more now that he’s dead. You’ll always be his mother. But I’m not Josh’s wife any more. All I can be is his widow. If I’m not even that, then… that’s the end, the end of us. The end of us being anything together.’

Her shoulders hunched and she turned away. She could feel her face contorting itself with grief, and gave in to huge sobs that wracked her whole body.

Pam slipped onto the sofa beside her. ‘It’s not the end, my lovely,’ she said, wrapping her arms round Charley, pulling her close and stroking her hair. ‘There is no “end” of Josh. He was part of our lives, and he always will be.’

Pam let Charley cry for a while, before she continued. ‘After he died, Charley, one good piece of advice I was given – in fact the best piece of advice I was given – was that I had to make a choice. I could either mourn what I’d lost, or I could decide instead to celebrate what I’d had. I decided to celebrate, and I still do. I still celebrate him daily – my lovely, funny, boy.’ She broke off, her voice shuddering. Then, gently pushing Charley away so that she could look her straight in the eyes, she said, ‘Let me ask you this. Given the choice, now that you know how much it hurt to lose him, would you have preferred not to have met him at all? Not to have fallen in love with him? Not to have had the wonderful time you did have with him?’

Charley replied without hesitation. ‘No. Of course not.’

‘Then focus on that. Remember the joy of being with him, not the pain of losing him. Choose to remember being married to him, not the sadness of being his widow.’

Chapter Thirty-seven

It wasn’t until after supper, when Charley was loading the dishwasher, that Will called. Momentarily she froze, gazing at the phone screen for a second or so, too frightened to answer it. Please, please, please, make it good news, she begged. Then, crushing the panic tightening her chest and throat, she tried to make her voice as normal as possible.

‘Hi, Will.’

There was no news, he told Charley. The baby was still in the incubator, but the nurses thought it would be good for Angie to have a visitor.

‘Could you drop in for half an hour or so?’ he asked her.

‘When?’

‘This evening? I’ve given them your name at the nurses’ station. If you come now, I can go and check on the kids at Tara’s.’

Garbling a quick update at Pam, Charley belted off to the hospital. She fumed at every traffic hold-up, and begged that there’d be a parking space. Fortunately there was and, thanking God she was wearing trainers, she ran hell for leather all the way from the car park.

The tense, unnatural quiet intimidated her when she walked into the Neonatal ICU. The last time she’d visited Angie on a maternity ward was when Finn was born. They’d all turned up en masse – Tara had brought a bottle of fizz to celebrate, and the whole ward had echoed with their laughter and chatter, and a friendly fracas had broken out over whose turn it was to hold the baby.

Scanning the room looking for Angie, all Charley could take in was the alarming quantity of machinery and how terrifyingly frail and vulnerable all the babies seemed, dwarfed as they were by the medical equipment surrounding them. The unsettling quiet was underscored by a low-level mechanical hum, punctuated by urgent, insistent bleeps, and the soft rustle of the nurses’ uniforms and their soft-soled shoes as they moved around, efficiently caring for everyone.

Suddenly an image of Josh slid into Charley’s mind. The last moments of his life had been in intensive care, and he would have been wired up to machines like these, machines that would have counted out the last seconds of his life. Surrounded by people, doctors and nurses, all fighting to save him, caring for him, staying with him, until his very last moment. Up until now, because she hadn’t been able to be there for him – had arrived too late – she’d imagined him dying alone. Now she understood, with immense relief, that he hadn’t.

Looking round she noticed a couple of mums tending to their babies, inside their incubators, while another was leaning over and tenderly stroking her baby’s bare tummy. Then she saw Angie, lying on her bed. Her baby was sleeping, encased