The Switch

by Beth O'Leary

It’s like since Carla died I’ve switched my writing hand, and suddenly I’m doing everything with my left, not my right.

I’m blinking back tears, but Bee kindly ploughs on, pretending not to notice.

I’m not sure how you can ever be grateful enough for someone leading you through the darkest time in your life.

I’m rather worn out, and it’s an awful lot easier to be independent when there’s somebody else there with you.

Grandma thinks there’s no harm in it, but I think it’s cruel, getting her hopes up over and over. There’s no elixir for this. All you can do is keep moving forward even when it hurts like hell.

Normally, when I’m feeling like this, I’d do some work. Top choice would be something data-heavy: numbers are just better for clearing your head than words. It’s the crispness of them, like fine pencil versus charcoal.

I hate that phrase, lost Carla. Like we didn’t take enough care of her and let her get away. We don’t have any good words for talking about death – they’re all too small.

That’s the trouble with dating on the Internet, I suppose. There’s no way for anybody to hear your laugh or see the way your eyes go dreamy when you talk about something you love.

‘Well, not really all right, exactly, but you’re harder on yourself than I could ever be, and it sort of takes any pleasure out of having a go at you.’

I bet you I can think up twenty worst-case scenarios before you could even think of one.’ ‘Never been one for worst-case scenarios,’ Jackson says. He crouches to dip his roller in the tray; his wrists are flecked with paint now, new, brighter freckles. ‘When they happen, you cope. And it’s usually one you’ve not thought of that gets you, so why worry?’ God, what I would give to think like that. The sheer simplicity of it.

‘Well,’ I say, rather tearfully. ‘Carla’s dead, so I can’t yell at her.’ ‘Really?’ Mum says. ‘I do, sometimes.’ That startles a wet half-laugh out of me. ‘I think she’d be a bit offended to think you were refusing to yell at her, just because she died,’ Mum goes on mildly. ‘You know how big she was on treating everyone equally.’

She shoots me a glare that I make a mental note to imitate when I next want to eviscerate a rude co-worker.

‘You … Oh, Mum, thank you,’ I say.

I thought this would be Jackson, but this so much better!

I’m so very grateful not to be angry with her, so glad to look at her and feel nothing but love, that I pull her in for a spontaneous hug. She laughs. ‘Oh, this is lovely,’ she says. I kiss her on the cheek.

Family can be so complicated, but if you just pick your own way of doing it you can end up with something pretty perfect all the same.

I remember a change-management seminar where the speaker told us that the doctors who handle real, every-second-counts emergencies move more slowly than doctors in any other department. They know the true capacity of a minute, just how much you can fit into it, and how much more fits in when you’re calm.

‘If you’re holding someone close enough, you can be the shoulder and the crier. See?’

It’s the unintentional confidence he has, as if he’s wholly himself and couldn’t possibly manage being somebody else even if he wanted to.

I don’t know how to explain the way Jackson makes me feel, how freeing it is to be around somebody so completely themselves, so utterly without guile.