'Do you remember telling me you'd found the sweetest thing of all? You said one day of this was worth dying for, so be thankful you knew her at all.'
It's dark in the flat, when I finally convince him to open it. It's taken a while, a long while. Days of knocking, pleading, convincing. He's dirty, like he hasn't washed in days. But I guess he probably hasn't.
He's still in his suit. It's crumpled and creased and has a lingering smell but I choose to ignore it. He hasn't taken it off since he stumbled into flat 4 days before, drunk on grief and not alcohol. I can feel in my own heart how grateful she would be. How incredibly proud.
I whisper his name, tenderly, with more affection than I have ever spoken to the man with whom I used to constantly feud. But now my heart aches desperately and I know his does too and in my heart of hearts I know we are the only ones who can offer eachother any slight comfort.
Nobody knew her. Not really, not truly. She kept herself so despairingly hidden and closed, kept a part she never showed. But if anybody could claim to know just a part of her, it would be him and me. Us. A pair pushed together by our shared loved of a woman we lost.
That's why I find myself here, with a need to help him stay together though I can barely stay together myself. I'm struggling too, I'm barely eating, hardly sleeping. I'm exhausted and I miss my best friend, I miss her so much sometimes I fear my heart will split right in two. But I know I have to be strong because I realise if I don't, everything that's being held together by a thread will all fall apart. And now she's gone, I'm that thread.
Silently I slip into the flat, past the slouching, exhausted figure and with care I place down the carseat with the sleeping, oblivious little girl resting safely inside. She's beautiful, but I'm biased. She is tiny, smaller than your average newborn, all fingers and toes intact. A tiny tuft of dark brown hair and the most piercing eyes you can imagine. Though nobody can quite bare to look into them, nobody can quite give her the love she deserves. It's too raw, too soon, too painful.
"Peter.." I whisper his name into the darkness again and I reach out to flick on the light. Finally he turns to me and I can see how little sleep he has had, though that is probably mirrored across my face too. "You shouldn't have bought her here, Michelle." His voice is quiet but contrastingly rough and his eyes look anywhere but at his sleeping daughter.
"She needs you, Peter. You need to sort yourself out. For her, if not for you." I notice how my voice is almost pleading. I hope he doesn't notice that its because I can hardly cope with looking at the reason I lost my best friend a moment longer, despite how hypocritical my begging him to take her back is.
"I don't want her Michelle, I don't want her here, why can't anybody bloody understand that. Carla didn't want her. She didn't want her, you and I, we both know that." And now he's pointing vaguely in the direction of his daughter, "And now she's here and Carla isn't and I can't even bare to think about her let alone look at her so do what you want with her, eh Michelle. Just don't expect me to have her."
I look at him as he speaks, as he blames the recent events on his tiny, unknowing daughter and I'm shocked into silence. I'm not shocked because I don't agree because no matter how hard I try to change my feelings, I cannot help myself. I'm simply shocked because this is the first time it has been spoken aloud and it hurts.
Wow, it hurts.