The Letter

14 months later Daniel was joined by Kirsty, again I was godfather. I went to that christening on my own.

Things moved along; over the years I had several girlfriends. None lasted more than a couple of years and I resigned myself to passing this world as a bachelor. I was rarely lonely; my two best friends made sure of that. Daniel joined the Army, I went to his passing out parade at Sandhurst and to Kirsty's graduation from university. The two kids had hiccups along the way, but they turned out to be good people. I was getting on a bit now, at 53 you're too old to play rugby, the bones don't mend as well, and I was nowhere near as fast as I was.

I got a phone call from Brian asking me to meet them both in the pub across town on Monday. We hadn't met in that pub on a Monday since the day he told me he thought Claire was cheating on him. It sort of worried me a bit, it worried me even more when we got there, he was sat in the alcove that we sat in all those years ago and he looked rough, very rough. I saw him last week and he looked rough, but nowhere as bad as now. There was a sadness about him

I started, "you look a bit shit mate, everything alright?"

"Actually no, it is a bit shit really. Do you remember when we set fire to the dustbin having our first and last cigarette and had to do the research on the lung cancer? This is not lung cancer, but it is cancer, leukaemia."

I reach my hand out and grabbed his, my world collapsed. I opened my mouth to say something, he held his hand up, so I stopped, "sorry mate it's bad, I've only just discovered it and it's past treatable. I've got a month at the most." I'm never coming back into this fucking pub ever again.

That was when I noticed Claire stood on the other side of me, she slid in beside me the three of us cried our eyes out. "Is there nothing, anything they can do?"

Claire answered. "No, it's too far gone, we didn't know he had it, he just felt tired, so we just kept going to bed early. It was when he woke up last week looking like this that I made him go to the doctors, he's been refusing, saying it was work and he was just tired."

I'm not going to go into the next three weeks they were pretty shit. A week before Brian passed, I was in the hospital seeing him, he gave me an envelope and told to open it when he'd gone. He made me promise that I wouldn't open it until then. I promised

The funeral was busy, we went to the club. Daniel was married now with children, so was Kirsty, we tried to make it a joyous occasion, a celebration of life, but it was hard work.

As we walked in Claire asked me if I had the envelope. I did, it was in my inside jacket pocket, I just tapped it, she smiled at me. I forgot all about it until I got home, then I was in no mood, so I left it in my jacket.

I didn't know how my relationship with Claire was going to carry on. We got together for a coffee during the week, she was holding up well really, probably better than me. About a month after the funeral I got a phone call from her, could I go round to their house and give Daniel a hand. They wanted to shift some beds around.

I duly turned up as requested Saturday afternoon. Daniel wanted a hand to remove his old bed from his bedroom because he was taking it to his house. Then take the double bed out of Brian and Claire's room and put it in his old room. Claire was having a new bed. I couldn't always see the logic that Claire applied to a situation. But that's what she wanted, that's what she'd get. The new bed turned up just as we finished moving the others, so Danel and I put it together.

After the sweaty work we were sat in the kitchen drinking a couple of cold Old Speckled Hens when Daniel said to me, "Uncle David," he hadn't called me uncle since before he joined the Army. This was going to get weird. "You've not read the letter yet, have you?"

"No, knowing your dad he's just going to go on about thanking me for the stuff that I've done, and really there is no need. And once I do it'll seem like he's really gone, all the time I leave it unopened it's like part of him is still here." I thought for a bit and said to Daniel, "it's not that is it, do you know what's in there?"

"I don't know, but I have an inkling, I think mum wants you to open it."

I promised him I would read it as soon as I got home. We had a few more beers and I wandered home. As I'd had a few beers Claire asked me to let her know when I got there just in case I wandered off into the woods or something. I sent her a text.

This is going to be hard, I poured myself a large gin and tonic, heavy on the gin light on the tonic. I opened the letter and started reading. It was handwritten and there were some crossings out.

Mate, you think this is letter me saying thank you to you for being my best mate for over 50 years. And it's going to make you cry, It's going to be a trip down memory lane. Sally kissing Charlie, as well as throwing up into the dustbin we just had set alight to with our first and last cigarette. Both of us getting the cane for that, but not telling our parents because they would have given us another thrashing as well. Pooling our pocket money to pay for the greenhouse glass that we broke with the cricket ball. We really should have been throwing a tennis ball. That old banger of mine, 20 miles to the gallon because the other 20 miles to the gallon was leaking out of a fractured pipe and getting stuck at Skegness overnight. God that was bloody cold sleeping in the car.

The girlfriends, there were a few until we met Claire. And then I realised she was the one for me. Yes, that month I thought she was cheating on me was hard. She was different from all the others. I cared, I really cared, but I got it wrong. I was a bit macho thinking I knew it all how to please a woman. But I didn't, as usual you stepped up and helped me out, oh by the way I found the phrase that really slowed me down. You try remembering this let alone saying it when you're a farts end from dumping your load. Not that you need to, but it does work 'The Right Honourable Margaret Thatcher leader of the Conservative party, Prime Minister to Her Royal Highness Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and Queen, Head of the Commonwealth, Defender of the Faith.' what a bloody mouthful that was, but it worked.

I know the help you gave Claire in that couple of weeks before she accepted my proposal. Your decision was the right one. I didn't think so when she told me, but we talked about it and I'm grateful. Because that decision must have hurt you a lot. Rest easy now old mate, it was the right one. Thanks to you I've had a great life, I have lived and loved a wonderful woman, and she has given me two wonderful children and lots of grandchildren, without your clear thinking on that day, that would never have happened. Thanks mate.

Now to the kids, the times you spent talking to Daniel whilst he was at Sandhurst and struggling, the times you ran with him for miles and miles saying nothing. When he got back from Iraq he told me how you hugged him, and he poured his heart out to you when he lost that chap in his platoon. He wanted to show me he could handle it so I would be proud of him. I was glad you told him to come to me, crying together with your son after what he had been through can be humbling.

You were there for Kirsty when she got into that bad crowd. She was doing things her Mother and I would not have approved of. She told me how you screamed and shouted at her, made her feel so small, you told her she was better than that. We never did talk about that little trip we had to her university with the baseball bats. I remember staring at the flames of the bonfire we made of the clothes and baseball bats and you hugging me. And thank you for being there for me and for stopping that twat from blindsiding me. This is the first Claire has herd of that little escapade.

I hope we helped you especially when Harriet dumped you, we saw how much that hurt. But when she did that, and how she did it and with what you she told you made us think, and we looked at things differently. Claire and I also think it's the reason you're alone.

Now this is the hard part for you, not for me because (a) I'm not here any longer. (b) Claire and I have recognised it for some time. In fact, you are probably the only one that doesn't see it.

You love Claire. Because you love me as a mate you pushed it away, you buried it. Harriett saw it, and so did many of the other girls. That's why they didn't stay, they loved you, but they couldn't share.

It may come as a surprise to you, she always liked you a lot, but after your decision not to tell me what happed whilst I was away, that 'like' turned into a 'love' it started as a brotherly love but after all the things you did for us it grew. It didn't bother me because I knew she loved me more me than you, and anyway I love you as well.

So now I would like to ask you another couple of favours 1. Look after my wife any way you can, she is very, very dear to me and I know you will do a brilliant job. 2. Don't get married to her for a year and a day after my funeral. It's not for me, I'm not here, I'm only in your heart. But the parents may not take it well. Oh, I think Danny and Kirsty will be over the moon if you do ask her.

One more thing she's warm, wonderful woman, so please don't wait a year and a day to consummate your love, you have my full blessing.

Okay mate that's it, I'm tired now, and by the way Claire is sitting beside me as I write this. She is helping me when I struggle with the writing.

So over to you mate, I'm going to ask you to keep on looking after my family like you have done for the last 30 odd years.

Goodbye and thank you from the bottom of my heart

Your best mate ever, Brian.

The letter was soaked with my tears, I couldn't think, I finished the gin and tonic and nearly choked.

All of a sudden I felt a hand on my shoulder and nearly jumped out of my skin, I spun round and there was Claire, she was crying. I really should have locked that bloody back door, suppose it didn't matter, she had a key to my house anyway.

"Was Brian and I right, do you love me?"

"I, I don't know." Have I been hiding it all this time to protect Brian? "I really don't know?" I pushed her back at arm's length she tilted head slightly to one side and smiled, her face lit up.

"I think you're still trying to hide it," she said, "let me make this easier for you, since that day in Waitrose I've grown fonder and fonder of you and that turned to love, don't get me wrong I love Brian a whole lot more, but who could not love a man for all the things you've done for us."

I didn't mind being second best.

She took my hand and led me to the stairs, looking at me and said. "I think it's time."

It was a strange party between Christmas and New Year and almost everybody was there, my parents, Brians and Claire's parents, Daniel and Kirsty with their tribes. It's almost as if people were walking on edge. The three dads caught me in the corner, they kind of boxed me in. Brians dad, Jonathan looked me straight in the eye and said. "When are you going to ask her?"

"Ask who what?"

"Claire to marry you of course."

"Whoa who said anything about that?"

Claire's Dad then had his say. "Well, it's plainly obvious to everybody else except you. Daniel and Kirsty can't wait, you've been part of their family for so long this would round it off. You're not taking the place of their dad you're an added bonus, it's almost like they've got two dads."

I gave in, "Jonathan, Brian wrote me a letter before he passed, he told me stuff I didn't know about myself, and yes I will ask her, but he asked me to wait for a year and a day because he didn't want to upset you, he wasn't sure how you would take it."

It was my Dad's turn. "We watched you two scallywags grow up and saw the mess you both got into, and if some of the rumours are true there is some stuff you've done more recently."

Jonathan carried on. "Look son you have our full blessing, don't wait, don't waste any more time. And we're not getting any younger."

They let me go, I walked back into living room and there was silence, I looked around the room everybody was looking at me. This was a bloody set up. Brian's mother was fiddling with her fingers. She walked up to me and placed something in my hand, I looked down, it was an engagement ring. "I'm only lending this to you until you can get a proper one." That one action settled my mind, I was about to walk towards Claire when she came across to me. I got down on one knee and said the words. She held out our hand and as I slipped the ring on the finger the room erupted in a cheer. Not very romantic. I kissed her and whispering into ear, "this is a set up, how much of it did you know?"

"All of it, who do you think set it up? love you."

We were married six weeks later, I instructed Daniel and Kirsty never to call me dad, never to call me uncle. They never did call me dad, but just to annoy me occasionally with a smile on their faces they called me uncle.

Then it came pouring out after all these years yes, I did love her, strangely enough I think from that day she was brutally honest with me in the hotel lobby. Her willingness to look at stuff dispassionately, and still take absolutely all the blame and to try and protect me and Brian and our relationship as mates.