For All the Birthdays
Rebekah McDermott
Tom Howard/John H. Reid Fiction & Essay Contest 2024 (view all the winners)
Honorable Mention, Fiction
Lydia hasn't seen Paul in five years. He is behind her in the queue, holding a can of baked beans, a pint of skimmed milk and a loaf of gluten-free bread. It is a moment of recognition that suspends them both. She tries to say his name, but the man at the till is asking her if she has a co-op membership card, and she is in awe of how different Paul looks. He is wearing hipster glasses and a green duffel coat with a fur-trimmed hood. His eyes are bluer, his wrinkles deeper. 'Lydia,' Paul says. He can't hold out his hand, because he doesn't have any left, after the beans and the milk and the bread. This is probably quite a good thing, though, because shaking hands wouldn't be appropriate.
'That'll be four, sixty-four,' the till man says. He is impatient and Lydia wants to explain to him that he, too, would be struck by incompetence if he were in her position. She is embarrassed by her purchased items; two croissants which are both meant for her, a carton of orange juice and a bag of chocolate mini eggs.
'I'll be by the door,' Lydia says to Paul, so that he knows she's not running away, and he nods. Walking to the door, she looks back, so that she can see what he looks like from afar. She is reminded of how tall he is and notices that he is wearing Doc Martens and this makes her feel sad and a bit sick because she had tried to get him to wear Doc Martens for years. Twelve years to be precise.
'How are you doing?' Paul says and now they hug, briefly, closely.
'I'm good. How are you?'
'Good,' he nods.
'It's funny to see you here,' Lydia says. She hopes he knows what she is really saying—why are you here, of all places?
'I live here. I moved here a few weeks ago.' He is looking at her squarely, with no shame. There is also a smile playing upon his lips. His northern accent has softened, or perhaps she remembers it as harsh.
'You live in Brockley?'
'I do.'
'I live here too.'
'That's...that's crazy,' he shakes his head. Yes, it's more than crazy, Lydia wants to say. It's the very smallest of worlds.
'Yes. Do you want to go for a coffee, catch up?' she says it because it doesn't seem right to be swapping pleasantries outside of a co-op.
'I'm sorry, I can't. I would love to, you know I would, but I can't,' he says. Lydia thinks about how she wasn't prepared for this today and how unfair it is that she looks like shit and hasn't showered. So she jangles her keys, in what she hopes is a carefree manner.
'I understand. I'm going to go,' she says.
Paul nods, and they hug again, unnecessarily, before parting ways.
Lydia goes home and eats her croissants and mini eggs and calls her friend to tell her about seeing Paul and how it has made her feel unhinged. It bothers her that a ten-minute meeting can offset her whole day, potentially her whole week. After five years of no speaking, of no contact, he doesn't want to even catch up. She calls her mum, who tells her that it's not that Paul doesn't care, it's that Paul cares too much, and that it's the healthy, right thing to do. What could meeting really bring them, apart from layers of pain? Lydia's mum doesn't actually say layers of pain. She says that it would open too many doors. Lydia spends the rest of the day on the sofa closing her eyes and seeing herself in a black room with door upon door opening and closing.
The next morning is a Sunday and Lydia goes for a morning run. She tells herself that it is the only thing that will make her feel better, to be able to move her limbs in a regurgitated but controlled way. When she returns from the run, Paul is sitting on her doorstep. He isn't wearing the hipster glasses. He's wearing flip-flops because it's April and sunny and warm and Lydia sees his toes and remembers how well she knows the look of Paul's feet.
'I'm sorry I blew you off yesterday. If you still want to, I'd love to catch up.'
'How did you find out where I lived?'
'I called my mum. You know our mums still speak, don't you?'
Lydia nods. She knows this but it's not something she likes to think about. She supposes that their mothers are always tied, after sharing grandchildren together.
'Do you want to go for a walk now?' Paul stands up, and puts his hands in his pockets.
'I look disgusting.'
'You don't look disgusting,' Paul says, and Lydia hopes he knows she wasn't fishing.
'Okay, yes. Wait here. I'll be fifteen minutes, I suppose.' She doesn't want to invite him in and he seems to understand this. When she closes the front door she breathes deeply five times and tries not to think about all of the doors that might be opened. She showers and shaves her legs even though she plans to wear jeans and then puts enough makeup on to cover her blackheads and her crow's feet.
They walk over Hilly Fields Park. Lydia pulls her sunglasses over her eyes.
'Where have you been?' Lydia says, as if she's asking him why he's late back from the shops, when really she's asking him why he evaporated from her life. The last she'd heard he was in the Philippines. Of course, he could afford to do things like that now, without a wife or children to feed or clothe. She'd spent a lot of time hating him for running away, to a place that she imagined was an aesthetic paradise, to numb himself from the horror of what had happened to them. But five years later, she has no hate left.
'Tokyo, most recently,' Paul says.
'How is Tokyo?'
'It's beautiful, and strange. There are restaurants and hotels you can go to where you don't have to interact with any other humans. People walk in military straight lines across the road. There was a news story the other day because a train left twenty seconds early.'
'Sounds like they're repressed.'
Paul shrugs, and smiles, 'Maybe they just appreciate efficiency.'
'Then you must have fit straight in.'
Paul nods in agreement, 'You know me.'
Lydia wants to say, I do know you, but just to think it makes her feel sick so she stops herself.
'And you? How is everything? Still teaching?' says Paul.
'Still teaching. I've got some crazy kids this year. Good crazy, though.'
'Still got favourites?'
'Of course.'
They walk in silence for a few minutes. It is strained with the weight of all the things Lydia knows they have to say, but are too scared to. The afternoon sun is warm, and the park a smooth stretch of sycamore trees, curly-haired dogs and children's screams. They come to stand at the peak of the hill, looking out across the peppered grey London skyline.
'You can see Greenwich from here,' Lydia says, and points.
'For Eddie's birthday, I climbed Mount Hiei, near Kyoto,' Paul says. He blurts it, as if it is a confession that he has been meaning to tell her. All Lydia can do is nod. She spent Eddie's birthday trying to get her year 8's to behave and then after school drove to her mum's, before proceeding to curl up on her mum's sofa, her legs over her mum's lap, trying to laugh along with the canned laughter from the television.
'Did you stay long in Kyoto?' Lydia asks. Paul stops walking, his hands still plunged deep into his coat pockets, his shoulders hunched.
'What did you do for Eddie's birthday, Lyds?' It is almost an accusatory tone, and Lydia flinches at the use of her shortened name. She hasn't heard anyone call her that in so long. A memory unwrapped, like a Christmas cracker being popped without warning. Usually, if anyone tries to call her that, she just says don't worry about shortening, it's Lydia, as if she is doing them a favour by letting them call her by her actual name.
'I went to my Mum's. What did you do for Lacey's birthday, climb Mount Everest?'
'I went to see the cherry blossoms.'
'Of course you did,' Lydia wants to roll her eyes, but can't bring herself to because it's all so ridiculous and sad.
'Don't be like that,' says Paul. As he does so, a small Welsh spaniel, with black hair that shines, runs around Paul's legs. He bends to pat the dog. Even though the sun is warm, Lydia feels cold.
'I'm going home,' she says.
'Okay, but I'm coming with you.'
'Fine.'
She makes them cups of tea and Paul blows on his to cool it down a few too many times.
'I remember these mugs,' he says.
'They've done well,' Lydia says.
Purple pebbled light dances on the kitchen table, caught by the sun catcher in the window. Paul looks to the window sill, at the photograph of Lacey and Eddie that is propped up against the glass. Lacey is four, Eddie is two. It is early evening, a strip of sunlight laid bare across the garden lawn. Eddie is carrying a red bucket, whilst Lacey sits on the grass beside him with her arms raised. Both are freckle-faced, with gap-toothed grins. It's an August evening, seven years ago.
He stands up, leaving his mug of hot tea, and picks it up, holding it close to his face, as if the closer he brings it the closer his children will be.
'I forgot about this photo. When was this?' he says.
'August 2011.' When Paul puts the frame back on the windowsill it scrapes the glass so that there is a hard, harsh sound. He sits back down, his hands cradling his mug. She leans towards him.
He kisses her. It is a clumsy kiss, on her cheeks, her nose, in her hair, on her neck. When she tries to kiss his lips he pulls away, startled, shocked. He folds, his knees collapsing. His head is in her chest and then her lap and then he is crying and crouching and she feels his hands grip her knees, as if pulling away would mean falling backwards. She stays sitting and bows forwards, her face pressing into his hair, his head on her thighs, his knees on the floor. They stay like this. Lydia cups his ears with her fingertips.
Paul moves slightly and stands up slowly, brushing his hair from his eyes, which are red and wet. He looks around, as if he is forgetting something, but he is still wearing his coat and there is nothing else that is his. He bends down and lightly kisses her cheek, before walking out of the kitchen, along the hallway and out of the front door, letting it slam shut behind him.
They were on holiday in France. The children were so excited because they'd never been to another country before, apart from Wales, but that didn't count because they spoke English in Wales. They'd saved all year. Budget spreadsheets and no extravagances. Birthday presents had been necessary items and any new toys for Eddie and Lacey had been from charity shops, if they'd been new at all. They stayed near the Normandy beaches and on the first night the man who owned the chalet knocked on their door and told them that he had some rosé spare and would they like some? It was Lydia's idea of perfection. She watched Paul and Lacey play ping-pong. Even when Lacey started crying, because she wasn't really tall enough to play, Lydia found it funny because nothing could ruin sitting out on an absurdly golden evening and feeling the warmth on her skin. In the mornings, they swam in the pool and Eddie called Lydia a peanut head because her head looked so small when her hair was wet and pasted against her scalp. A photograph was taken, one of Lydia's favourite photographs. It was of Paul carrying both Lacey and Eddie with his back to the camera, facing out towards the silver sea. Lacey's tiny blonde ponytail sits on Paul's shoulder as her head tilts towards him, and Eddie's left hand rests on the back of Paul's neck. Lydia doesn't know where that photograph is now. She thinks that perhaps Paul took it when he moved out.
Lydia was driving when they made their journey back to the ferry port. Eddie and Lacey were asleep in the back, their faces pressed up against the edges of their car seats. Lydia asked Paul if he could drive, just for a couple of hours. She was so tired. Eddie had been up all night because it had been so hot. She shouldn't have been driving, really. But Paul had been up all night looking after Eddie too. They'd taken shifts. He was just as tired. Could she not just wait half an hour for him to have a quick nap, just so he could then take the wheel? He'd driven all the way there after all, and had done the majority of the driving throughout the holiday. Lydia understood, she did, but she really was so exhausted.
They were coming up to a roundabout. All the cars were going the wrong way. She just needed him to wake up, just for a few minutes. Paul, she said, Paul, wake up. Please wake up.
It was a momentary blip. She'd been shaking his leg, so he could keep her calm, and she hadn't been looking. She thinks now that she must have been going quite fast when she thought she was going slow. Lydia remembers the feeling of force and the spraying of glass. She was looking at Paul as the airbag exploded. Lacey stood no chance against Paul's reclined chair.
When she woke up in the hospital the next day, the French doctors told her in broken English that if Eddie had been sitting in Lacey's seat, he might have survived. But Lacey was just that little bit too big, and the chair just that little bit far back. They didn't explain to her why Eddie didn't make it. There wasn't any point.
Lydia's mum and dad flew out that night and, two days later when they were told it was safe for them to fly, took her and Paul home. Lydia had fractured her arm and Paul had broken both his legs. Paul had to be wheeled onto the plane by Lydia's dad. Lydia's mum carried small suitcases of hand luggage filled with Eddie and Lacey's clothes; dresses, shorts, miniature flip-flops. Lydia had wanted to leave them in France, abandon them in the hospital, but Lydia's mum said it was wasteful. Eddie and Lacey's broken bodies were flown back in tiny body bags.
Paul was wheeled to be next to Lydia on the plane, even though they hadn't asked to be seated next to each other. They hadn't said much to each other since the crash. They'd been in separate rooms in the hospital. Lydia had considered going to his room at night but found that she couldn't. Now, Paul reached over and touched Lydia's fingers, on the hand that wasn't attached to the broken arm. His hand was cold. They said nothing to each other. That was the worst.
It is just over a month until Lydia sees Paul again. He is standing on the platform at Brockley station, holding a fold-up bike, and smoking an e-cigarette. The e-cigarette is more of a surprise than the fold-up bike.
'Hello,' Lydia says, as she comes to stand next to him. She doesn't think about not saying hello, but as soon as she says it she realises that perhaps she should have avoided him. It is barely 8 a.m. and neither of them are probably prepared to speak to each other today.
'Lyds,' he says. She thinks that perhaps he looks happy to see her. He is wearing a suit and the image of him in it makes Lydia think of how often she would see him in a suit in the mornings, whilst she wrestled with toast and juice and small, sticky fingers. How jealous she had been that he was going to speak to adults all day.
'Yes, me again.'
'How've you been?' he says. She wants to say that she has spent the last month avoiding everything that has anything to do with children and that the other day she moved carriages on the tube because there was a little girl who looked so much like Lacey. She declined a christening invitation because she couldn't stand to think about going, let alone actually go.
'Fine. Are you going to London Bridge?'
'Yeah, are you?'
'Yes.'
He nods whilst taking another drag on his e-cigarette. The train arrives. Paul and Lydia are expertly standing at the entrance to the train doors. He presses the open button and gestures so Lydia can step on first, turning his back sideways to block the rest of the commuters from pushing. It is an eight-minute journey to London Bridge. They stand, in silence. Someone coughs over the tinny crackle of someone's music. Paul is close to her, his chest in front, his left hand gripping the bar. Lydia does the same. He looks out the left window and she follows his gaze before looking to the right. There is a fog of houses and trees and roads blurred with smudges of colour.
Paul takes Lydia's hand.
"For All the Birthdays" was previously published by Swoop Books.
