‘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.’