by Beth O'Leary
Arnold blinks a few times. I try not to smile. Leena is using her work voice, and she sounds wonderfully intimidating.
“OK?” Leena says.
“Just keep an eye on those cats” is Arnold’s parting shot, and then he’s striding off to the gate between our gardens again.
“You need to replace that gate with a large fence,” Leena says, rolling her eyes at Arnold’s back. “You were hilarious, Grandma—I’ve never seen you being bitchy before.”
I open my mouth to protest but find myself smiling instead.
“You’re going to do just fine in London,” Leena says, giving me a squeeze. “Now. Let’s find you the perfect outfit for your debut as a London lady, shall we?”
* * *
I stand in the hallway of my daughter’s house and hold her too tightly. I can see the living room over her shoulder; Carla’s bed is gone, but the chairs still arc around the space where it lay. The room has never really gone back to its old shape.
“I’ll be absolutely fine, don’t you worry,” Marian tells me firmly as we pull apart. “This is a lovely idea. You so deserve a break, Mum.”
But she’s tearing up again. It’s been so long since I’ve seen those brown eyes clear; there are dark blots underneath them now, like little bruises. She was always so beautiful, Marian—boys chasing her down the street, girls copying her hairstyle, parents looking at me and Wade and wondering where we got her from. She has the same golden-toned skin as Leena, and her wavy hair is streaked through with honey, the envy of hairdressers everywhere. But there are new lines on her face, tugging down at the corners of her mouth, and through the tight yoga leggings she’s wearing I can see how thin she’s become. I don’t want to leave her for two months. Why am I even considering this?
“No, don’t you even think about it,” Marian says, shaking a finger at me. “I’m fine. I’ll be fine. And Leena will be here!” She gives me a wry smile, and there’s a hint of the old Marian there, mischievous and impulsive. “I have to say, I didn’t think even you could persuade Leena to come up and stay within a one-mile radius of her awful mother for two whole months, Mum.”
“She does not think you’re an awful mother. And it was her idea!”
“Oh, was it now?”
“It was!” I protest. “But I do think it’ll be good for you both.”
Marian smiles, more faintly this time. “It’s wonderful, Mum. I’m sure by the time you’re back, she and I will have sorted ourselves out again, and everything will be better.”
Marian—ever the optimist, even in the depths of grief. I squeeze her arms and kiss her on the cheek. This is the right thing to do. We’re stuck, the Cotton family. If we’re going to get anywhere, we need to give things a shake.
* * *
To my surprise, most of the members of the Neighborhood Watch are waiting on the platform when we arrive at Daredale station—Dr. Piotr drove them down in the school minivan, bless him. It’s a long journey for them all to take from Hamleigh, so I’m touched. When a rather teary Betsy presses her home phone number into my hands—“in case you haven’t got it written down anywhere”—I find myself wondering why on earth I’m leaving Hamleigh-in-Harksdale at all. Then I look at Dr. Piotr, and at Basil with his Union Jack pin on his tweed lapel, and at Leena, standing alone, thin and drawn. My resolve returns.
This is the right thing for my family. And besides, I’m turning eighty this year. If I’m going to have an adventure, it has to be now.
Leena helps me onto the train and hefts my luggage onto the rack, extracting promises from various fellow travelers that they’ll help me get it down when we reach London. We hug goodbye, and she slips out of the train doors just in time.
I wave to my friends from the window, watching Yorkshire slide away, and as we streak through the fields toward London I feel a sudden flush of life, a quickening, a new kind of hope, like a greyhound just let out of the gate.
7
Leena
My mum’s house is on Lower Lane, semi-detached, with a dove-gray door and a brass knocker. I wait on the doorstep for a moment, then fish out the key Grandma gave me—I left mine in London. Definitely a Freudian slip.
It feels weird letting myself into Mum’s house, but it feels weirder to knock on the door. A year and a half ago I would have barged in without blinking.
I stand on the threshold, trying to keep my breathing steady. The hall is horrible in its sameness: the faint smell of cleaning products, the old wooden side table, the plush carpet that makes you feel like you’re walking across a sofa. Mum’s always liked houses—she’s an estate agent—but it occurs to me now that this place actually feels a little out of date: she never changed the previous owners’ decor, and the warm yellow-cream on the walls is nothing like the bold wallpaper of the house where I grew up. This house was bought for convenience—it was bought for Carla, not for Mum.
It’s awful, being back here. I feel that same lurch in the gut that you get when you spot an ex-boyfriend at a party, a sense of your two lives colliding horribly in the present.
And there it is at the end of the hall: the living-room door. I swallow. I can’t look at it. Instead I focus on the huge framed photograph of Carla on the table at the bottom of the stairs. Mum put it there when Carla died, and I hate it—it makes coming to Mum’s house feel like arriving at the wake. Carla looks nothing like herself: she’s dressed up to go to her prom, her hair pinned back with two straightened stripes falling forward à la Keira Knightley in Love Actually. She’d removed her nose piercing, and the photo was taken before she had the eyebrow ones done; she looks weird without them. She always said her face never looked right without a few studs here and there. It’d be like you going out without five coats of hairspray, she’d say teasingly, giving my ponytail a tug.
Mum appears at the top of the stairs. She’s dressed in a loose jumper and jeans, and as she comes down the steps there’s a slightly frantic air about her, as though I’ve just caught her in the middle of preparing a meal with many courses or rushing out of the door to meet someone important.
“Leena, hi,” she says, stopping short at the bottom of the stairs. She’s so much thinner than she used to be, all elbows and knees. I swallow, glancing away.
“Hey, Mum.”
I don’t move from the doormat. She approaches me cautiously, as if I might bolt. I can see two versions of my mother at once, like layered tracing paper. There’s this one, frenetic, fragile, on the edge of breaking; the woman who helped my sister die and wouldn’t listen when I told her we had a choice, options, drug trials and private treatments. And the other, the mother who raised me, a whirlwind of honey-streaked hair and big ideas. Impulsive and bright and unstoppable, and always, always in my corner.
It alarms me how angry I feel just looking at her. I hate this feeling, how it blooms in my gut like ink in water, and it hits me now what a stupid idea this was, forcing myself to come back here for eight whole weeks. I want to stop feeling angry—I want to forgive her—but then I see her and I remember, and the emotions just come.
Fitz was right: this was the last thing I needed after last week’s panic attack.
“I don’t really know how we do this, to be honest,” Mum says. She lifts her mouth in an apologetic smile. “But I’m very glad you’re here. It’s a start.”
“Yeah. I just wanted to come and say, you know, like Grandma said, I’ll help out any way you need. With errands, or whatever.”
Mum gives me a slightly odd look at that. “Did Grandma say I needed help with errands?”
Actually, Grandma has never been especially clear on what helping Mum involves, though she always makes it sound very important.
“Just whatever you need,” I say, shifting uncomfortably. That tight, anxious knot is back between my ribs again.
Mum tilts her head. “Won’t you come in?”
I don’t know yet. I thought I’d be able to, but now I’m here I’m not sure I can. I reach for a distraction, something to
say, and my gaze settles on Mum’s favorite picture on the wall, an Indonesian temple with a supple yogi doing a tree pose in the foreground. She’s changed the frame, I think—interesting that she’s updated that and nothing else. She used to point at that picture when she’d had a bad day at work, or when Carla and me were doing her head in, and she’d say, Right, girls: for ten breaths, I’m going there. She’d close her eyes and imagine it, and when she opened them again, she’d say, Here I am. All better.
My gaze shifts to the table’s surface. It’s absolutely covered in—little rocks? Crystals?
“What’s with all the stones?” I point.
Mum’s instantly distracted. “Oh, my crystals! They’ve been wonderful. I bought them online. This one is snowflake obsidian—it helps with grief, it cleanses you—and that one there, that’s aquamarine, for courage, and…”
“Mum, you…” I swallow the sentence. I shouldn’t tell her it’s a load of crap, but God, it’s frustrating watching her go through these phases. At first she’s like this, all bubbly, sure it’ll fix everything. Then, when obsidian—surprise surprise—does not magic away the pain of having lost one’s daughter, she falls apart again. 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.
“I got you this, actually,” she says, reaching for a rock toward the back of the heap. “Moonstone. It enhances intuition and brings buried emotions to the surface. It’s for new beginnings.”
“I’m not sure anyone wants my emotions brought to the surface at the moment.” It’s meant to sound like a joke, but doesn’t come out quite right.
“It feels like it will break you, when they come,” Mum says. “But it won’t. All my episodes, they’ve helped, in their way. I truly believe that.”
I look at her, startled. “What episodes?”
Mum frowns slightly, eyes flitting to mine. “Sorry,” she says, stepping toward me. “I assumed your grandmother would’ve mentioned something to you. Never mind. Take the moonstone, Leena, will you?”
“I don’t want a moonstone. What episodes?”
“Here,” she says, stretching the moonstone out farther. “Take it.”
“I don’t want it. What do I even do with it?”
“Put it by your bed.”
“I’m not taking it.”
“Take it, would you? Stop being so closed-minded!”
She shoves it into my hands, and I pull back; it falls onto the doormat with a small, underwhelming thud. We stand there for a while, staring down at the ridiculous little stone between our feet.
Mum clears her throat, then bends to scoop it up again. “Let’s start over,” she says more gently. “Come in. Have a cuppa.”
She gestures toward the living room and I balk.
“No, I should go. Grandma’s left me this whole to-do list, and I … I should get on with stuff.”
There is a long silence.
“Well. Can I at least have a hug goodbye?” Mum asks eventually.
I hesitate for a moment, then open my arms. She feels fragile, her shoulder blades too sharp. The hug isn’t quite right—it’s not a real hug, it’s an arrangement of limbs, a formality.
Outside, I find myself breathing hard, as if I was holding my breath in there. I walk back to Grandma’s house fast, faster, then I run, past her front door and out along the A-road. At last I feel that inky anger subsiding and the misery, the pity, that eases too.
It’s only when I get back to the house that I realize my mother has slipped the moonstone in the pocket of my jacket. You’ve got to give it to her—when she’s made her mind up about something, when she’s decided that’s the right way, she doesn’t give up. I get that from her.
I suppose that’s part of the problem.
* * *
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.
In the absence of any work to do, I have taken to Grandma’s list as a solution. I am trying gardening.
So far, I’m not a fan.
It’s so … endless. I filled two bags with ivy and then I realized it was all around the other side of Grandma’s shed too, and up the trees, and running its nasty dark green tendrils underneath the shed, and now I’ve discovered that there is actually more ivy than shed, so if I remove it, what will be left?
I rub my shoulder, looking out at the hills behind the old stone wall at the end of the garden; the clouds are a very ominous shade of gray. What an excellent excuse to stop confronting the enormity of this task.
I head back inside. It’s strange being at Clearwater Cottage without Grandma, making tea in her patterned china mugs, moving around like it’s my place. But Ethan will be coming up to stay at the weekends, so that’ll stop it ever getting too lonely. I actually think this trip is going to be the perfect thing for us after such a tough year—weekends together, cozying by the fire, talking about sweet nothings, and never mentioning Selmount …
Gah, Selmount. Banned word. All thoughts of Selmount are to be left at the door of Clearwater Cottage; they cannot pass the threshold. Like vampires. And Arnold, according to Grandma’s notes.
There’s a knock—definitely the front door this time, not the kitchen window. I glance down at myself. My favorite Buffy sweatshirt is covered in soil and bits of … whatever this is, dead leafy foliage stuff. I’m not really in a state for visitors. I consider pretending not to be in, but this is Hamleigh—whoever it is has probably had a call from Arnold confirming I’m out in the garden. I shake the worst of the debris out of my hair and head to the door.
The person on the other side is the sort of elderly lady who turns out to be an alien in a Doctor Who episode. Just way too perfectly old-lady-ish. Permed gray–white hair, neat little neck scarf, glasses on a chain, handbag clutched in front of her in both hands. I remember her being part of the gaggle of old people who’d come to see Grandma off at Daredale station, and I’m sure I saw her around at Grandma and Grandpa’s when I was little. Betsy, I think?
“Hello, dear,” she says. “How are you getting on without Eileen?”
I blink. “Well, umm,” I say, “it’s been one day, so … I’ve been fine. Thanks.”
“Managing all her projects, are you?”
“Yes, yes, I think I’m on top of everything. If Grandma can do it, I’m sure I can cope.”
Betsy looks at me very seriously. “There’s nobody quite like Eileen.”
“No, of course not. I just mean … Oh!”
Somehow, without me really moving aside, Betsy is in the hallway and heading quite determinedly for the living room. I watch her go for a moment, puzzled, before I remember my manners.
“Would you like a cup of tea?” I say, shutting the door behind us.
“Black, two sugars!” says Betsy, settling herself down in an armchair.
I shake my head as I go into the kitchen. Imagine one of my neighbors inviting herself into my flat in London like that. I might genuinely call the police.
Once Betsy and I are both sitting down with our teas, silence descends. She looks expectantly at me, but I haven’t a clue what I’m meant to talk about. It’s easy talking to Grandma, she’s Grandma, but actually I don’t really know what chitchat with elderly people entails otherwise. The only other old person I know is Grandpa Wade, and he’s an arse, so I mostly just ignored him.
I try to imagine this is a new client meeting and reach around for the small-talk skills I usually manage to conjure up in times of dire necessity, but Betsy gets there first.
“How are you then, Leena, dear?” she asks, taking a sip of her tea.
“Oh, I’m very well, thanks,” I say.
“No, really,” she asks, and she pins me there with those watery blue eyes, all earnest and intent.
&
nbsp; I shift in my seat. “I really am fine.”
“It’s been … gosh, over a year, now, hasn’t it, since you lost Carla?”
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.
“Yes. A year and two months.”
“What a dear girl she was.”
I stare down at my tea. I doubt Betsy really liked Carla much—my sister was too bold and brash to be the sort of young woman Betsy would approve of. I grit my teeth, surprised to feel the heat around my eyes that means tears are coming.
“And your mother … She’s found it very hard, hasn’t she?”
How did this conversation get so personal so quickly? I drink a few more gulps of tea—it’s too hot and scalds my tongue.
“Everyone processes grief differently.” I find this line very useful for conversations like this. It usually shuts things down.
“Yes, but she did rather … collapse in on herself, didn’t she? Is she coping, that’s what I wonder.”
I stare at Betsy. This is personal to the point of rudeness, surely?
“Can’t we do something?” Betsy offers, setting her tea down. “Won’t you let us help?”
“What would you be able to do?” It comes out too sharply, an emphasis on you that I didn’t mean to place there, and I see Betsy recoil, offended. “I mean … I don’t see…”
“I quite understand,” Betsy says stiffly. “I won’t be any use, I’m sure.”
“No, I mean…”
I trail off, and her phone rings, ear-piercing in the silence. Betsy takes forever to answer it, fumbling with the leather case.
“Hello?”
A tinny voice rattles through the phone, indistinct but definitely very loud.
“There’s ham and cheese in the fridge, if you want a sarnie,” Betsy says.
