Can you grieve for someone all your life?

“New book recalls death of journalist murdered by terrorist in Cyprus” A couple of weeks ago I approached a journalist on the Lancashire Evening Post  with a proposal. No, not marriage (hope he wasn’t disappointed), but rather, to write a feature about the true facts behind my recently published novel, Infinite Stranger. Much to my delight, the interested man emailed me back to say YES, and subsequently lapped up all the material I sent him, including newspaper articles and photos from the 1950s, as well as the original telegram that informed a certain twenty-six year-old Molly about the shocking murder of her fiancé, Peter. However, Peter and Molly’s ill-fated love affair isn’t actually the main narrative of Infinite Stranger; it’s more like a springboard that prepares the reader for the main storyline, one generation later, with occasional time travel back to the 1950s. Nonetheless, their story is a powerful thread, given even more resonance by its one-hundred percent veracity. Namely, that of a tall, handsome journalist from Preston who was murdered by a Greek-Cypriot terrorist in Nicosia, Cyprus, leaving behind a young, grieving fiancée in England. The murdered journalist was Peter Donald Fox, and the young woman was Mary Williams, better known to all her friends as Molly, and nicknamed by Peter as Chubs. She hated that nickname, until after his death, when she loved it. That’s why she wrote in her murdered fiance’s obituary, Forever remembered, from his beloved Chubs. Mary Williams, or Molly, or Chubs, was my mother, also dead and buried now. Maybe reunited with Peter? Can I be just a bit sentimental here, and admit that I hope they’re together now? Torn apart in life, but united in death. Which brings me, at last, to the title of this post. (Forgive my meandering, but I’m afraid not all novelists have a sense of direction.) Forever remembered … My mother really did remember Peter forever. On her death bed, eleven years ago, I mentioned various names to her in order to pass away the fading hours – names of previous boyfriends from her youth (I knew them all, thanks to her wonderful story-telling skills that I’d enjoyed throughout my upbringing), her rebound husband, her Lebanese lover, her stalwart admirer who we giggled over for many years … but her eyes were blank at the mention of each name. Until I said one, final name. Peter Fox. A soft smile spread across her dying face, like the sun emerging from an eclipse. “Ah, Peter,” she whispered, her voice faint, fading, together with her remaining hours. And then her smile withered as she added, in an even fainter whisper, “But he died …” and she closed her eyes again, and I squeezed her hand. So is it possible to grieve a lost love your whole life? I honestly don’t know. But my mother did. She never forgot Peter, and neither was I allowed to forget him. I’m sure I would have recognised him on the street, had I walked past his ghost. I would have recognised his voice, his laughter; I would have blushed under the intense gaze of his eyes, as my mother had done so many times in her youth. He was a kind of  surrogate dead father to me. So now, sixty-six years after his death, I resurrect Peter’s memory through the pages of Infinite Stranger. While writing the book, I often wondered if he was listening to my thoughts, watching my concentrated face, following my pianist’s fingers as they deftly raced across the keyboard, bringing words to his dead mouth, laughter to his dead throat, passion to his dead gaze as he beheld my mother or fondly called her Chubs, and she rolled her eyes at him. You don’t need to believe in God to believe in miracles. Through the power of literature, people who once lived and breathed and walked upon the solid ground of this planet can live forever. Their bones can remain buried deep beneath the earth, their ashes scattered out to sea, but as long as the written word lives, their memory need never die. Through the pages of my book, Molly and Peter are promoted to immortality. So,  dear blogger, reader, whoever you are – maybe someone who has also known loss and grief, or maybe someone who simply loves to plunge themselves into the immortal world of a book – if you happen to read my book, then please do say hello to Peter, who died aged thirty, and Molly, who died aged eighty-two, but never ever forget her one true love. If you’d like to read the full article in the Lancashire Evening Post, click here https://www.lep.co.uk/news/people/new-book-recalls-death-of-lancashire-post-journalist-murdered-by-terrorist-in-cyprus-4211815