‘Thank you,’ I say, accepting the dainty china.

She lifts the napkin off the plate and reveals thinly sliced rectangles of marble cake. She picks up the plate and holds it out to me. ‘Your favorite,’ she says.

Something heavy lodges in my heart. I’ve been so selfish. I take a slice and hold it awkwardly in my fingers

‘How have you been?’ she asks, pouring herself a cup of tea.

‘I’ve been all right.’

She looks up. ‘I’m so glad to hear that. I’ve been waiting for you to come for ten years.’

My eyes widen with shock. ‘Why?’

‘I knew you’d come when the pain was gone.’

I draw a sharp breath. ‘The pain is not gone.’

She half smiles. ‘I’m sorry. Of course. The pain never goes. But it lessens. That’s what I meant to say. When the pain lessened.’ She drops a couple of cubes of sugar into her tea and stirs it with a teaspoon. I watch her lift it to her lips and sip at it delicately. She puts the cup and saucer back on the coffee table.

‘Eat, eat,’ she encourages.

I bite into the slice of cake. The smell and taste of it roll the years back. It is as if I am eighteen again. It is an old ritual, the two of us having tea and cake while I wait for Vivien to come out of her bedroom, all dolled up, and ready to paint the town red. I gaze into her eyes and wonder if she has traveled back with me, but she hasn’t. She doesn’t need to. She is still trapped there. She has not moved on. Everything in this house is exactly like it was when I was last here a decade ago. In this world of lace and plastic flowers, I could maybe turn my head toward the corridor and maybe, just maybe Vivien will walk through.

The knowledge is like a flash of lightning that lights up a black sky with white light. Vivien is not Ella. They are as different as oranges and oysters. Only in appearance are they alike. In temperament and personality no two women could be more unlike than Vivien and Ella. And that streak of lightning makes something else crystal clear.

I’m in love with Ella.

I loved Vivien, and a sad part of me will always love her, but it is Ella now and not Vivien that I think of every day. That I take to bed. That I crave. That I miss when we are not together. That I want to call and tell when something happens to me. That I want to share my life with.

Vivien’s mother looks at me sadly. ‘When I lost my daughter, I lost a son, too. You were the best thing that ever happened to my Viv. It was my greatest dream to see you both married. I’ve missed you greatly, Dom.’

‘I’m sorry I didn’t come round before today, Mirela. I always enjoyed our little chats.’

She smiles happily. ‘Me too. You’re like a son to me, Dom. You must come and see me again.’

‘I will.’

‘I’ve thought of you a lot. I know you’ve made a great success of your life. The ladies at the church.’ She smiles shyly. ‘I listen to their gossip.’

‘Mirela,’ I begin and then I pause.

‘What is it, Dom?’ she prompts.

‘When Vivien was dying in the water, I made her a promise. I told her I would never love anyone else.’

‘Oh, Dom. Have you let that promise keep you from finding happiness all these years?’

I link my fingers together and say nothing.

She leans forward. ‘Listen to me. She was afraid, and she was clinging on to you. I love my daughter, but she was a minx to make you promise such a thing. She’s gone, and you are here. You’ve wasted ten years. Don’t waste another moment. If there is one thing I learned from losing Vivien, it is to appreciate every moment you have with the people you love.’ Her lips curl up in a bitter smile. ‘You don’t know how long you have with them.’

‘I still feel guilty. I could have saved her.’ I exhale my breath slowly. ‘If we hadn’t argued. If I hadn’t told her Jake was coming.’

She starts shaking her head in distress. ‘Don’t do that, dear boy. There was nothing you could have done to stop it. God knows, you tried. It was simply her time.’

‘She was too young to die.’

‘About four months after Viv passed, I dreamed of her. In my dream she was eleven or twelve years old, before she started dyeing her hair in all those atrocious colors. She was running in a field and she was laughing. Her mouth was stained with the juice of berries. She ran up to me and said, “Look what I found, Mum.” And then I woke up and I cried for hours.’

She pulls a handkerchief that she has tucked into her bra out from the neckline of her blouse and wipes her eyes.

‘But as the weeks and months went by, I took comfort from that dream. I think she wanted me to know she wasn’t blue and lying in a satin-lined box as she was in my waking hours. She wasn’t still. She wasn’t dead. She was alive. Somewhere in another dimension that I can’t access, she still exists. She has never appeared again in my dreams, but she doesn’t need to. I understood what she was saying to me.’

‘She’s never come to me,’ I say.

‘Perhaps you are only allowed to go to the people you can no longer damage,’ she says softly.

‘I found someone,’ I blurt out suddenly, but even as the words exit my mouth I want to un-utter them. I am shocked at myself. What madness possessed me to tell Viv’s grieving mother that?

She swallows hard. ‘I’m so glad,’ she croaks.

Angry with myself, I apologize. ‘I’m so sorry. That was unforgivably insensitive of me. I don’t know what came over me.’

She shakes her head and, reaching out a work-worn hand, grips my knee. ‘No, I’m glad for you. You’re a good man. You deserve to be happy.’

I cover her hand with mine.

‘You know that song by Pitball?’ she asks.

I smile slightly. ‘Pitbull?’

‘Yes, yes, the man with the bald head.’

‘You listen to Pitbull?’ I ask, surprised.

‘My granddaughter does.’

‘Marko has a daughter now?’

‘He has three children. Two boys and a girl. They’re my life. Anyway, Pitbull sings a song called “Give Me Everything Tonight”. He says, “What I promise tonight, I cannot promise tomorrow.” That’s truly life. You might not get tomorrow. So whatever you want to do, go do it tonight.’

And from her flow precious memories. If not for the intervention of the cruel hand of fate, she would have been my mother-in-law. I squeeze her hand and feel a great love for this kind and generous woman. We are connected forever by having loved the same person, and by the grief of having lost her.

‘When you remember Vivien, remember that she was always laughing, always wanting to have fun. She wouldn’t want to be the barbed wire wrapped around your heart.’

I nodded. ‘I know.’

I press a thick wad of money into her reluctant hand and kiss her powdered cheek goodbye. She stands at the door and gazes wistfully at me. I walk up to her wooden gate. I even open it. Then something pulls at me. I turn around and walk back to her. She looks at me enquiringly.

‘I want to show you something, but I don’t want to upset you,’ I say.

‘Yes, show me,’ she says immediately.

I take my phone out and scroll to the picture of Ella. I hold the phone out to her. ‘This is Ella, my girlfriend.’

She gazes at the phone for a long time. When she looks up, her eyes are swimming with tears. ‘She’s beautiful, Dom. Will you bring her to dinner one day soon?’

I nod, and it’s impossible for me to talk because I’m so choked up.

‘God knew he shouldn’t have taken her away from you,’ she says, giving me back the phone.

I take the phone from her and walk away, my heart finally free.

Where, O death, is your victory:

where, O death, is your sting?

        —1 Corinthians 15: 55

TWENTY-SIX