The First Time I Said Goodbye

1. Chapter 1
   
2. Chapter 2
   
3. Chapter 3
   
4. Chapter 4
   
5. Chapter 5
   
6. Chapter 6
   
7. Chapter 7
   
8. Chapter 8
   
9. Chapter 9
   
10. Chapter 10
    
11. Chapter 11
    
12. Chapter 12
    
13. Chapter 13
    
14. Chapter 14
    
15. Chapter 15
    
16. Chapter 16
    
17. Chapter 17
    
18. Chapter 18
    
19. Chapter 19
    
20. Chapter 20
    
21. Chapter 21
    
22. Chapter 22
    
23. Chapter 23
    
24. Chapter 24
    
25. Chapter 25
    
26. Chapter 26
    
27. Chapter 27
    
28. Chapter 28
    
29. Chapter 29
    
30. Chapter 30
    
31. Chapter 31
    
32. Chapter 32
    
33. Chapter 33
    
34. Chapter 34
    
35. Chapter 35
    
36. What Becomes of the Broken Hearted?
    

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names,

characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the

author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons,

living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

Published 2013

by Poolbeg Press Ltd

123 Grange Hill, Baldoyle

Dublin 13, Ireland

E-mail: [email protected]

www.poolbeg.com

© Claire Allan 2013

Copyright for typesetting, layout, design, ebook

© Poolbeg Press Ltd

The moral right of the author has been asserted.

1

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 9781781991350

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photography, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

www.poolbeg.com

About the author

Claire Allan is from Derry, where she has worked as reporter and columnist with the
Derry Journal
since 1999.

She shares a home with a long-suffering husband, two children who are growing up much too fast, and two cats – one of whom is officially (according to a vet) neurotic.

When not writing or working, Claire enjoys reading, baking, spending time with friends, trying to keep up at circuit classes and avoiding soft play areas.

The First Time I Said Goodbye
is Claire’s seventh novel. You can follow Claire on Facebook or on Twitter @claireallan.

Also by Claire Allan

What Becomes of the Broken Hearted?

If Only You Knew

It's Got to be Perfect

Jumping in Puddles

Feels like Maybe

Rainy Days and Tuesdays

Published by Poolbeg

For Avril and Bob, who inspired this story

And for daddy’s girls everywhere

Chapter 1

It wasn’t that I didn’t want to go. I did. I wanted to go with all my heart but I suppose in many ways I was a coward in the end. It was too much. There isn’t a day that has passed where I haven’t missed you.

* * *

Meadow Falls, Florida, USA, May 2010

It seemed only right that it was raining. It would have been wrong if it had been anything but. You can’t bury someone on a sunny day. I couldn’t have buried him on a day when the sun was splitting the stones and the sprinklers were dancing around the lawns and when the Southern Belles were out in force, fanning themselves and thinking about getting back to the wake for an iced tea on the porch. Black on a sunny day wouldn’t have been at all comfortable. Not that the shift dress I wore was comfortable anyway. It was starchy, stiff, far removed from the comfortable clothes I usually slouched around in. “It suits you,” my mother said when I walked into the church. She was already sitting in the front pew, her hands crossed, her gaze fixed firmly ahead, her eyes hidden behind her sunglasses. She glanced at me only briefly as she told me I looked nice, and I sat beside her and reached for her hand. Now was not the time to brush off her compliment – to tell her I was afraid the dress might choke me or split at the seams. She had enough worries without me adding to them. I stared ahead too, trying to fix my gaze on whatever she was looking at, and squeezed her hand. She didn’t squeeze back, but she didn’t shrug me off either.

We sat there, together, awaiting the big arrival. Waiting for my father to make his final journey into the church – neither of us being able to face walking in behind him, having people gawp at us in our grief, nudge each other at our tears, give us that pitying ‘poor them’ look. No, we had walked in separately, ahead of the congregation, and fixed our eyes forward, barely touching, and I tried not to breathe out. I heard the door of the church open, the footsteps of our fellow mourners, and I felt my mother breathe in – and as she exhaled there was a small shudder which revealed to me just how she was feeling. I squeezed her hand a little again as the music started to play – wanting to make it better for her – and wanting to make it better for myself, and I thanked God it was raining, because it would have been wrong to bury him on a sunny day.

It would have felt all out of sorts, as if the world was spinning off its axis, to have had the sun smiling on us when inside there was a small part of me screaming as if I was still six years old and the only person who could make it better was my daddy – the daddy who was never coming back.

* * *

Craig’s arm slipped around my waist. I instinctively breathed in, away from him, and I tensed as I felt his hand take mine. He cuddled up closer to me, asking softly if I was awake. Yes. I was awake. I didn’t answer. I didn’t want to talk. I don’t think I had actually slept. Maybe I had. I vaguely recalled Liam Neeson walking into our room at three in the morning, so probably it was fair to say I had drifted off. The rest of the time, however, I had just lain there, looking at the red light on the clock, watching the numbers slowly changing. My father had been gone four days. I wondered when I would stop thinking of it in terms of days, in terms of weeks, in terms of time passing, and just think of him as gone. Maybe I never would. Maybe now I just had another day to mark – another day to count from. It was one day since his funeral. One day since I had stood at his graveside and willed my heart not to shatter as they lowered him into the ground. I was a grown woman. I was thirty-seven. Now
was not the time to scream for “Daddy”. My mother had stood stoically. I’m not sure if she cried – she didn’t sniff. I didn’t notice a dabbing of eyes but I noticed her squeeze my hand a little tighter as we were invited forward to toss some soil into the grave on top of his casket. I hated that part. Even though I could feel the almost overpowering, claustrophobic warmth of Craig behind me, I had shuddered there in the clammy warmth of the graveyard. My mother had been led away by her friend Louisa, while I stood there and stared, entranced by the hole in the ground.

“We should go,” Craig had said and I’d glanced up to see we were all but alone in the cemetery, the majority of mourners having clambered into their cars and the waiting limos to be ferried back to the golf club for lunch.

I was shivering in the rain – my neck cold as the drops slid down my back. They weren’t cold. I knew they could not be and yet they felt like ice. I felt like ice.

“I don’t want to leave him,” I muttered.

“Then stay here as long as you need,” he said softly and he let me stand there until I was shivering so hard that my teeth were chattering. I felt . . . I felt confused. Broken. Torn.

“We’ll get you warm, we’ll get you changed and then we’ll go on to Green Acres,” he said softly, leading me away, and in a haze of pain and grief I’m almost ashamed to admit that my only thought was that I didn’t own a single other thing in black and I would look like an insensitive heel at my own father’s wake.

I found the next most suitable thing I owned – a soft grey cashmere dress – and I quickly showered, put on some fresh make-up and tousled my short blonde hair, grateful I didn’t have a look that required more work, before breathing deeply and telling Craig we were good to go again.

“You’re doing well,” he said. “You’re getting through this.”

I smiled – a weak, watery smile – gratefully clinging on to whatever hint of reassurance I could find, regardless of where it came from.

“No choice but to keep on going,” I said. “Time to go and mingle with the mourners, I suppose. To listen to them all tell me how he has gone to a better place, and isn’t in pain any more and how he was a good man.”

“He
was
a good man.”

“I know. And I know folks mean well . . . but . . . you know . . .” I said, drifting off. Platitudes wouldn’t make it better – no matter how well intentioned.

* * *

My mother had taken off her sunglasses by the time I arrived at Green Acres. She was sitting in a circle of friends, smiling and nodding. I was sure she was listening to the platitudes and being my mother – ever polite and afraid to offend – she was smiling at them. Part of me wanted to run over and tell her she didn’t have to do that – but she would have killed me stone dead if I had made a scene. She would have glared at me, her lilting Irish
accent which remained despite her many years away from home ringing in my ears: ‘Don’t you make a holy show of me or yourself, Annabel.’ So I nodded in her general direction and set about fixing my own weak smile on and promising myself that I would not make a show of myself – not one bit. And I didn’t. I behaved myself right until the very moment when the last guest went home and then I drank three glasses of wine straight, cried all over my mother who ended up soothing me as if she herself wasn’t hurting, and had to have Craig tuck me into bed where I spent the following ten hours watching the clock flicker and change.

“We could go for a drive today,” he said, in the half light. “Get out of here – clear our heads.”

“I need to go and help my mom,” I said. “I was pathetic yesterday. I need to be there for her.”

“You’ve been at her side for weeks, Annabel. You need a break. You will burn out – if you haven’t already.” His tone had veered from concerned to snippy.

My own mood changed just as quickly. “I’ve been at her side for weeks, so I can’t just leave her now,” I said, turning to face him. “He’s gone. I can’t just leave her in limbo now and clear off because the nasty business of the funeral is done with. She’s spent her last few months caring for him. What in hell is she supposed to do now that she doesn’t have that any more?”

Of course, I knew as I spoke that it was me that I was worried about – that without having to run to the hospital, pace the wards, feed my father softened food gently, hold his hand and read to him that I might be the one to fall apart. That I would have to finally accept this loss – and deal with everything else I had put on the back burner while I devoted my life to caring for the wonderful man who had always made me feel important.

My mother? Of course I worried about her too. She seemed calm – too calm – and that unnerved me. Then again everything unnerved me at the moment.

“She might want some space?” Craig offered and I shrugged his arm, which suddenly felt too heavy, away from me. “
We
might need some space from all this?”

“Not now, Craig,” I said, sitting up and grabbing my robe from where I had thrown it on the floor.

He rolled back away from me. I knew without looking at him that he would be crestfallen – just as I knew I was pushing him away. But grief does funny things and I kind of wished it was socially acceptable to walk around wearing a T-shirt that said “
I’m grieving. Allow me to be a bit mad
” on it, because then I wouldn’t have to try and make people understand. Surely they should know just
how raw and horrible this felt? Surely they had all been there?