Joan Bakewell

“…….and Joan Bakewell of course”

“Joan Bakewell?”

I have let many things go, but this seems extremely unlikely and I feel I have to say something.

Marnie pours another glass of wine with her shaky hands, takes a sip and nods her head vigorously

“Oh yes absolutely. We all did then.”

It’s been four days, and I am halfway down a bottle of vodka so I don’t take it any further – there’s no point. She’s probably telling the truth, and even if she isn’t, who’s it going to hurt, really?

Quite a lot of the time she has me in stitches. I have heard all about the fat rich man with three wives and the house in Marbella which is unfortunately sliding down the mountain, although it doesn’t matter that much because it’s hideously decorated - “far too much marble and gold – you know the kind – so a blessing really”. I know every detail of her three-month journey through India, alone, in the eighties, staying with all the prominent families. “it was touching really – the polo pony. I thought my riding days were over.” And I’ve heard all about Eric Clapton.

On the second day, a gritting lorry makes it all the way to the end of my drive and I’m able to slide into town – to the gym first, then to pick up more wine, and finally to buy her some proper Uggs.

She looks relieved when I put the bottles in a little line along the dresser, and she bursts into tears when I give her the boots, then she apologises and says it’s been such a long time since someone was nice to her. I want to say to her that it shouldn’t be like this, that it’s so unfair that Joel isn’t here to do these things, but I don’t think it would help; instead I go and put the bags away, and when I come back into the room we change the subject.

The escalation my son told me to watch out for seems to consist of them putting on their gowns, covering their mouths with black gaffer tape, and getting up at six thirty in the morning to block the big ornate wooden doors in driving snow. We can watch it all on YouTube, and various other websites and it lightens things up a bit – makes us both laugh. They hold big banners and stand there silently, and vanloads of police arrive with batons, but then the academics turn up – also in their black gowns – it’s all very Harry Potter – and this makes the police retreat for some reason, so then the students all go back inside and do a yoga session. The people from the market send them four boxes of vegetable samosas as a gift, and later that day a harpist comes along and plays to them.

It snows again here too, and this time the gritting lorry doesn’t come, so we are a little bit cut off. She doesn’t go outside once. I think she’s frightened of slipping. It’s okay though – I have plenty of food for her, and she’s good about not mentioning the fact that I’m hardly eating. I can’t right now. I have this big knot in my throat. Each day that I don’t hear, it feels as if the knot gets bigger.

The thing we talk about most is Joel – it’s only natural. Quite soon after she arrives, I ask her, I say:

“Do you want me to not talk about him?” and she says, “no, no! I want him to be remembered. I want to write a book about it all ”

After that, sitting either end of the big kitchen table – as far away from each other as we can get, his name comes up often. Sometimes she laughs – because there are quite a few things we got up to that she never heard about, all the stupid things we did – the petty burglaries, the scams. I give her the heavily edited version obviously. Mainly she cries though, and once she says “ I often wonder how it would have been…..” and she can’t finish the sentence, but it doesn’t really matter.

When she starts crying, sometimes it starts me off too and we sit there, tears pouring down our faces, with the snow swirling down outside, hitting the big windows as it comes at us horizontally from across the bleak white fields – but it’s only partly because I still miss Joe so much that I’m crying . I can’t tell her the other reason because I promised him I wouldn’t. Each day it gets worse. All this talk of Joe and him and me – all the things we did. I don’t want to be the only one who remembers. It’s been two weeks now, and I’ve heard nothing.