Week 40: Gift of God

Footsteps echoed off the stone walls, the only sound that dared enter the solitude of the sanctuary, as the newcomer walked calmly down the aisle, bridging the distance between them with every passing second. Carla prayed that he would pretend not to see her, to pass her by and leave her in peace. She had not come to this place for conversation, nor had she come for the comfort he was so ready to give. No, she had come here because she could not let go and so she had come to the last place he had been with her.

Carla's prayers were not answered; the footsteps paused as he came level to where she was sitting, before turning and walking those few short steps and sinking down next to her on the old wooden pew.

And there they sat, two virtual strangers, side-by-side, facing the front of the otherwise empty church. He did not push her to speak, did not force a confession; he simply sat and waited on her.

It was Carla who finally broke the silence as she sought answers, even though she knew deep within her that no explanation could hope to bring any lasting consolation.

"Do you know what his name means?" Carla asked, her voice barely more than a whisper, uncharacteristically subdued by the ecclesiastical surroundings, as if she was somehow afraid to disturb the spirits and saints who stood vigilant in their eternal watch over the consecrated edifice. "Jesse?"

"No," the vicar replied, his voice soft and gentle. "Tell me."

"Gift of God," she said, her words accompanied by a snort of derision. "Not that I believe in God or owt, I'm sorry."

"It's okay," he waved away her apologies, accustomed as he was to facing unbelievers. "You don't need to believe to seek out the truth. To want answers. I think I can guess what your question is."

"Why?" Carla turned to the vicar and fixed her eyes on his, a silent plea for understanding. "If my son was a gift from God, why did God take him away from me? Hmm? He was only a week old, he had his whole life in front of him. Why would God do that?"

"I don't know."

Laughter burst forth from Carla's lips at this unexpected answer, the harsh sound bouncing grotesquely about the nave, from wall to wall, and ceiling to floor.

"I know that's not the answer you want to hear," the vicar continued. "But, the truth is, I don't have all the answers. No one does. Not in this life at least."

Carla stared at the vicar, the slow-creeping horror of his words fully sinking in. "How am I meant to move on?" she cried, aghast at the realisation that she might never again know any peace. "How can I even start to move on knowing that such arbitrary cruelty is allowed to happen? That your God allows it to happen?"

"Faith," the vicar answered simply.

"Faith?"

"Have faith that this life is not the end of life, it is merely the beginning. And have faith that one day, the questions that our earthly minds cannot hope to comprehend, will one day be answered."

"But I told you, I don't have faith, I don't believe in God."

"And yet he still exists. Your lack of faith does not change that. And it does not mean that somewhere, in a place we cannot hope to imagine, he is not looking after your son."

"You really believe that?"

"I do."


Carla stepped over the threshold of the church, gasping the fresh air into her lungs in great gulps, a blessed relief after the closeness of the sanctuary. She had come here for truth, but her visit had raised even more questions that it had provided answers. For a moment, she stood on the front steps of the church, frozen in indecision, unsure of her next move.

She glanced across at the graveyard and, in the distance, spotted the freshly dug mounds of earth covering the bodies of those recently deceased, their passing so recent that they as yet had no headstone or memorial. She knew that was where Jesse lay and, even though she desperately wanted to be near him, she could not bring herself to walk to him. Her imagination of his present state was so vivid, the suffocating thought of his tiny body buried in the earth so real, that his grave physically repelled her.

Instead, she remained rooted to the spot outside the church as the bitter late Autumn wind whipped at her hair and chilled her to the bone. It was indeed a bitter wind, the kind of wind that sought out and found all the hidden places and exposed their weaknesses to the world. It was a wind of change, Carla thought. A wind that wouldn't be denied.

And then she knew exactly what she should do. Taking her phone from her bag, she placed a long overdue call to a familiar number.

"Hi," she breathed into the phone, her voice wavering with suppressed emotion as her call was answered. "I need you."


"Carla?" Peter spoke to Carla's message service. "Where are you, love? I'm worried about you. You were gone before I got up this morning. Please call me or text me if you don't want to talk. I just need to know you're okay."

Peter leaned back in the chair as he ended the call, his face twisted, his brow furrowed and his mouth set in a grim line, an increasingly common sight in recent days as his worry for Carla's state of mind heightened. He wasn't kidding himself, of course she wasn't going to be her old self, not yet, not for a long time. But still he hoped and watched for any small sign that she was working through her grief. All he wanted to do was help her and yet it felt as if she was pulling away from him, away from the world, with every hour that passed.

Feeling useless sitting at his father's kitchen table, he rose to his feet and, shrugging on his thick woollen coat, stepped out onto the street where he was immediately confronted by a strong wind sweeping down the cobbles. Instinctively, he wrapped his coat that little bit tighter around his body and turned up the collar, a flimsy barrier against the biting wind.

With no clear direction in mind, he began to walk, trusting that his deep-seated need to find and rescue Carla would guide his steps.

A rhythmic banging sound as he walked past the factory drew his attention and, peering across the forecourt, he noticed that the front door of Underworld was banging against the doorframe, powered by the relentless wind.

"Carla," he muttered under his breath, knowing that the only person who would be in the factory on a weekend would be the woman he was searching for. With a slight spring in his step now, he hurried to the factory and, wrestling slightly with the banging door, opened it into the wind and entered the relative calm of the factory.

"Carla!" he called out her name, almost breaking into a jog as he made his way to the office where he knew Carla would be working industriously, using the factory as a crutch, a drug of sorts that would stop her thinking about and obsessing over Jesse. "Carla? Oh, you're not Carla."

"On the ball as ever," Michelle Connor drawled sarcastically as she looked up at Peter from where she was busy rummaging through the papers that had piled up on Carla's desk. "Good to see you, Peter."

"When did you get back?"

"Today."

"Are you here to see Carla?" Peter asked, looking about the office and beyond, through the windows and onto to the sewing floor, fully expecting Carla to appear at any second. "Where is she?"

"Carla's asked me to help her out with running the factory for a while," Michelle explained. "After everything she's been through."

"Right, well, I guess that's good," Peter shrugged. "It'll give her some time to… recover."

"She's not broken a leg or owt, Peter," Michelle snapped.

"I know."

"She's lost her baby."

"I do know that, Michelle," Peter said, the scowl on his face growing darker by the second. "I am the one that was here for her. Where were you? Gallivanting around the world, living it up on some fancy cruise liner, while your best mate was going through hell."

"I'm here now, that's all that matters."

"Where is she?" Peter demanded, his patience wearing thin.

"The thing is…"

"Michelle!?"

"She asked me to give you this."

Peter snatched from Michelle's hand the envelope that she held out for him and, ripping it open, pulled out the handwritten letter inside.

"When?" he asked tersely, looking up at Michelle, the moment he had finished reading Carla's letter.

"Peter, I don't–"

"When!?"

"Eight-thirty," she shrugged as Peter looked at his watch. "There's no point, Peter. You won't change her mind."

But Peter paid Michelle no heed; he was already at the factory door, his mind focused entirely on, what felt like to him, the life-or-death mission now laid out before him.


Peter's car screeched to a halt outside the departure hall. He leaped out of the driver's seat and abandoned the car where it was. He did not care that he would most likely get a parking ticket, or perhaps even get towed. That wasn't important. The only thing that mattered to him at that moment in time was making sure Carla did not board that plane.

Scanning the departures board for eight-thirty flights, he silently chastised himself for not getting from Michelle the destination that Carla was bound for. He would simply have to guess and hope for the best.

Following the signs towards his chosen gate, Peter jogged the wide corridors of the airport, keeping his eyes peeled for any glimpse of Carla inside one of the many shops and restaurants that flanked the thoroughfare. But it was not until he reached the gate that he saw her, sat on her own, her gaze fixed on the floor in front of her in a clear state of melancholy.

"Hey," he whispered, his quiet approach having gone unnoticed by her up until that very moment.

"Hey," she gasped with a mixture of shock and a strange kind of happiness as she raised her eyes to meet his.

For a moment, an awkward silence fell over them as they stared into each other's eyes. It was Peter who broke the impasse with a bitter and accusatory, "This is really how you're going to leave, is it? A few scribbled words on a scrap of paper and you're gone?"

"I'm sorry," Carla said, her eyes still fixed beseechingly on his. "I'm a complete coward, I know that. I just… I couldn't face another goodbye. I couldn't handle it."

"Then don't say goodbye," Peter implored her, his voice softening at the sight of her eyes suddenly glazed over with unshed tears. "Stay here, with me."

"I can't," Carla shook her head, a small sob escaping her lips.

"Where are you going?" Peter tried a different tack.

"L.A." Carla revealed. "Suzy said I can stay with her for a while."

"I don't understand, Carla. Why?"

"You know why, Peter. I can't be here right now. Everything reminds me of him. In the flat, at the factory, when I see Nick, you… It's all too much, I can't escape the memory of him. I need to be somewhere those memories aren't so raw, so painful."

"Alright, then," Peter tentatively agreed with her. "If you have to go, let me come with you."

"No, Peter," Carla shook her head adamantly. "Your place is here, with Simon. He needs you."

"What about you?" Peter asked, his desperation growing by the second. "Don't you need me?"

"It's not that I don't need you, or that I don't want you, because I do. I do so much, Peter. But, umm… I dunno how to explain it, but… right now I need myself more."

"Yourself?"

"I need to get me back," Carla struggled to explain. "I need to find me again, the me that can somehow live without Jesse. If that person still exists. And I need to do that on my own. I'm sorry."

"Don't be sorry," Peter sniffed, his head shaking sadly from side-to-side. "I understand."

"Do you?"

"No, not really. But I'm trying. I know you wouldn't be doing this if you didn't feel you had to."

"I wouldn't, I'm not," Carla reassured him. "I don't mean to hurt you."

"It's fine. You go, do what you need and, when you get back, we can–"

"Peter," she cut him off abruptly. "I can't make any promises about the future."

"Oh," Peter murmured as the reality of Carla's words sunk in. "I see."

"I won't ask you to wait for me," she said. "That's not fair on you."

"I will wait," he insisted. "If you want me to, I'll wait forever."

"All I want, Peter, is for you to be happy. So, if you find happiness without me… you should grab onto it and don't ever let it go. Okay?"

"I…" Peter shook his head, unable, unwilling to agree.

"Promise me, Peter," Carla implored him. "Peter!"

"Okay, okay, I promise."

"Thank you," Carla sighed with relief, or resignation, she wasn't sure. "I'm gonna miss you, you know that?"

"Then don't go."

"Come here," she said, ignoring his final plea and instead reaching out and placing her hands one on either side of his face, her palms pressed gently against his cheeks, and kissed him softly on the lips. "I love you," she whispered in his ear.

"I love you too," he said, wrapping his arms around her and holding her close. "Never forget that because that will never change. That's one promise I can keep."

Carla forced herself to break free from Peter's embrace and calmly join her fellow passengers as they queued to board the plane. She refused to look back at him, fearful that her resolve would crumble and she would run back into his arms. Because, no matter how much this parting hurt, she knew she had to go.

She didn't know if this was the end or if this signalled a new beginning for her. All she did know was that she couldn't stay. No matter how much she loved Peter – and she did love him, with all of her heart – but love wasn't enough for her. Not right now, maybe not ever.

As she stepped through the automatic sliding doors and onto the jet bridge, she paused and turned back to face Peter, wanting one last look before she went. He was standing where she had left him, watching her, every move she made. Even from this distance, she could see the look in his eyes, those soft deep brown eyes that she adored; there was no mistaking the sadness that was emanating from them. It's for the best, she reminded herself, and hardened her heart for both of their sakes.

With the smallest flicker of a smile on her face, she briefly raised her hand in a final goodbye. And then she was gone.


Don't worry, that's not really the end. Stay tuned for the Epilogue…out soon!