The Art of Hiding

by Amanda Prowse

  She sighed, angry again. Not only was she going to have to explain or justify Finn’s absence for the umpteenth time, but it also gave Connor the opportunity to let her know where she ranked in the favourite stakes. Not that she needed the reminder.

  The referee had a word with the captains of both teams in the middle of the pitch and then, with great enthusiasm, blew his whistle.

  The game was on.

  Connor was good, fast, present, and seemed to be wherever the action was. She enjoyed the flicker of pride that stirred in her as her son held the ball tight against his chest, head bent, and handed off a tackle from an upper sixth form boy and skirted past him with a set expression of sheer determination on his face.

  Where on earth are you, Finn? You are missing all this!

  ‘You shouldn’t say you’ll be at Connor’s match tomorrow if you can’t be,’ she’d told him as they climbed into bed last night. ‘I think it’s worse for him to be expecting you and be disappointed. Far better if he knows you can’t make it and that’s just how it is.’

  ‘You make it sound like I deliberately let him down. Work is crazy at the moment.’

  Work is always crazy . . . She swallowed the thought, without the courage to say it out loud.

  ‘Hey, Nina!’

  Kathy Topps’s shout pulled her into the present. Turning towards Kathy, Nina forced a smile as her stomach flipped. The svelte, ponytail-swinging mum stood with her freshly French-manicured nails resting on her bony Lycra-covered hips. Paying no heed to the season, Kathy was always happy to show off her arms and irritatingly flat tummy.

  ‘Glad I’ve caught you,’ Kathy said in her breathy tone. ‘Can you believe it, another holiday? I always say the more you pay, the less they seem to be in school, drives me crackers,’ she trilled, batting her hand as if to dismiss the topic like a fly. ‘Anyhoo, is Declan going to be around for the half-term holiday?’

  Nina concentrated on keeping her expression neutral. Declan would probably prefer not to spend time out of school with Henry, who had a tendency to be mean if things weren’t going his way – and it seemed things didn’t go his way quite a lot.

  ‘I’m not entirely sure.’ She coughed. ‘We’re hoping to grab a last-minute break if Finn can get away.’ This would make Finn laugh later in the retelling, the way her fallback was to make him the bad guy. Well, today he deserved it for his tardiness alone.

  ‘Tell me about it. Trying to get these guys to give dates and make a plan is always harder than it should be.’ Kathy sulked, damning the whole of the male gender. ‘I was thinking that Declan might like to join Henry for his tennis lessons? I think they learn so much better when there’s an element of competition in it, don’t you?’

  Competition? No – I think it’s the worst way to teach things. Who needs that added pressure? Rather than voice this, Nina looked down at her tan suede boots and tried to think of how best to explain that unlike his big brother, Declan disliked most sports and would rather be reading in a quiet corner than leaping about on the Toppses’ floodlit tennis court with a private tutor firing balls and instructions at him while Henry sneered at his lack of prowess with a racket. ‘Can I have a think about it and let you know?’

  ‘Sure you can!’ Kathy raised her palms as if this were not an issue, but the set of her jaw suggested the opposite. ‘Is Connor playing?’ She nodded towards the field.

  ‘Yes.’ Nina beamed with maternal pride.

  ‘Wow! He’s done well to get a shot – he’s got to be the youngest on the team by at least two years.’ Kathy turned her mouth down and narrowed her eyes, as if there might be more to it, something underhand or intriguing.

  ‘Come on, Piers! Keep it tight!’ Kathy suddenly bellowed so loudly with her hands cupped around her mouth that Nina flinched. ‘Going to have to go around the other side and give him some advice. Idiot’s getting bloody mauled.’ Kathy sighed with disappointment and walked away with a slight wave of her dainty hand.

  Connor looked in Nina’s direction repeatedly, clearly distracted by his father’s absence. Her jaw tightened with tension. ‘For God’s sake, Finn, hurry up!’ she muttered into the clear sky.

  Suddenly she sensed his presence and inhaled the distinct scent of him and she felt her resolve weaken, as it always had. There was something about the way he smelled that she found intoxicating. Her breathing slowed and her shoulders slackened in warm relief as she readied to hear one of his many well-practised excuses for his lack of punctuality. But that wasn’t of concern right now; all that mattered was that he was here.

  Only he wasn’t.

  The empty field stretched down towards the car park. It was the strangest thing; she was sure he was there, but Finn was nowhere to be seen.

  Her phone buzzed in her pocket. She didn’t recognise the number, but this wouldn’t be the first time he had used some hapless assistant to break the news of his absence.

  ‘Hello?’ She failed to keep a note of irritation from her voice.

  ‘Is this Mrs McCarrick?’

  ‘Yes.’

  She gave the thumbs-up to Connor who had just executed a rather nifty zigzag run down the blind side.

  ‘My name is Leslie Ranton and I am a doctor at Royal United Hospital in Bath.’

  ‘Oh, right.’ Nina thought hard. What appointment had she missed and who with? Declan’s optometrist? Her gynaecologist? Had she neglected to put something on the calendar? Her eyes rolled at the inevitable inconvenience of having to reschedule.

  ‘I am calling about your husband, Finn McCarrick?’ The woman’s voice faltered a little, even though her tone and words suggested the communication was well rehearsed.

  ‘Uh-huh.’ She nodded absently, forgetting the woman couldn’t see her.

  The woman on the end of the line took a breath. ‘I am afraid that Mr McCarrick has been involved in an accident.’

  Nina’s response came out automatic and odd: ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘He was brought in an hour ago and I think it would be best if you came to the hospital right away. Is there someone who can drive you?’ The woman spoke softly, as if Nina were a child.

  ‘Is he hurt?’ Nina held the phone with both hands, waiting for the response, her legs shaking, heart pounding.

  The slight pause spoke volumes.

  ‘I am sorry to tell you, Mrs McCarrick, that he was very badly hurt.’

  Oh my God . . . No!

  She pictured him leaving that morning, grabbing a slice of toast from the plate on the counter-top, reaching for his keys . . . An ordinary farewell on an ordinary day that was now being made so very extraordinary.

  ‘Is he . . . is he going to be okay?’ The question slipped past her lips like the sneakiest of poisons, souring her tongue and sucking out any joy that lurked within. She and Dr Ranton were playing a game, with her not wanting to ask if her husband was dying or had died, and Dr Ranton doing her level best to avoid saying anything along those lines.

  Again that pause, a silent nothingness that told her more than any words possibly could. How hard was it to say ‘No, he’s going to be fine’? But she didn’t; instead the woman’s words were calm and yet insistent. ‘I think you should come straight to the hospital, Mrs McCarrick.’

  And just like that, Nina felt like a child, scared and alone. She pictured the little room in their home in Frederiksberg on that cold day, when the snow lay deep and an icy wind stole warmth from even the cosiest corner. A fire crackled in the open grate, and she, not yet four years old, had watched her dad, Joe, crouch down, resting on his haunches. The stiff leather of his ankle boots creaked with the movement. She sat with her big sister on the red sofa, huddled under a fur throw that absorbed the smell of the fire. She remembered the tears of anguish that snaked down her father’s ruddy cheeks.

  This felt the same. Her stomach twisted with the knowledge that there was about to be a seismic shift in her world.

  She nodded into the phone and stared at her son. He held her gaze from the oth
er side of the pitch and she noted his stance, his incongruous serenity in the midst of the chaotic jumble of limbs on the pitch.

  He looked pale as he walked calmly towards her, as if he were strolling across a meadow, unaware of the grunts, shouts and scuffles of mud-covered bodies all around him. Like a ghost leaving the fray.

  She would learn later that she had been making a strange sound, part moan, part scream: a single, guttural yell. This was why her son had walked towards her, but at the time, in her altered state of mind, she was unaware.

  Four hours later she put the key into the front door and closed it behind her. The house was silent with a stillness that she had never known before. Kathy would be back with the boys any time now.

  Standing in the middle of the kitchen, Nina looked around the room; she couldn’t decide what to do. Even making a cup of tea felt like a Herculean task, as well as utterly pointless. Ordinarily at this time of night, her fingers would be darting in and out of the wide self-closing drawers, reaching into familiar spaces for glass bowls, her hand whisk, or a deep enamel frying pan in the same pale blue colour as her custom-made five-oven range. She would be humming as she made her way across the smooth oak flooring to the double-fronted, stainless steel, larder-door fridge, pulling out all manner of goodies – a quart of double cream; wax-wrapped slabs of bacon; and fat, fresh organic eggs delivered by the farm shop, as she prepared supper for her boys and her man, due home.

  But not tonight.

  Placing her hand on the cool granite she let the cold surface suck away the heat of her palm. Her breathing was loud in her ears, as if she were underwater. She swallowed, hoping this might help; it didn’t. She pictured bursting through the surface of the swimming pool last summer, having swum the entire length underwater. Finn sat on the diving board with his Tom Collins over ice in a tall glass, as he whooped and cheered, ‘You did it! The whole length! Go, Nina!’ If the weather perked up over Easter, they would get the pool cleaned and re-create those lovely evenings of messing about in the water. It was her favourite thing to do. Fire up the grill and sit with their legs dangling in the water, admiring the view—

  Oh no. The thought stopped the breath in her throat. That can’t happen now. That won’t happen again. There it was: the realisation like a door slamming in her mind. Nina braced her shaking arms on the counter-top, fearing that if she let go, she might tumble to the floor, and if she did, she wasn’t sure she would find the energy to stand up. God, that felt scary, I want to speak to Finn . . . and bang! There it was again.

  And again.

  And again.

  And again . . .

  ‘Oh my God, Finn!’ She spoke aloud. ‘I can’t imagine a me without you. I can’t picture the kids without their dad. I can’t imagine a world without you in it.’

  She wasn’t sure how long she stood leaning on the island in the semi-darkness. Time seemed to be playing tricks on her. She heard the front gate buzz and walked slowly to the entry system and pressed the button, picturing the high metal gate swinging open.

  Shuffling into the grand hallway, she stood by the round table, inhaling the scent of flowers from the stunning display, a mixed bouquet ordered weekly, but even this offered no comfort. She expected the boys to run at her, imagined them hurtling through the door, dropping their bags and dashing in, frenzied and loud. She tensed her limbs for just this. It was therefore a shock when instead the door handle slowly twisted and the wide door opened gently, revealing her sons, who seemed to have shrunk in the intervening hours. At the match she had told Connor that Finn had been hurt, nothing more, and given him the instruction to look after his little brother, explaining that Kathy would bring them home. Nina had been too numb to be grateful, too distracted by the task of getting to the hospital and being with Finn.

  The boys, in front of her now, were bowed and quiet. Gone was the confident colossus of the rugby pitch and in its place stood a fifteen-year-old boy, his skin pale, his eyes vacant and his mouth tight. Declan whimpered quietly. He was nervous and twitchy, his eyes huge behind his glasses. She could see that the uncertainty, the lack of information, was gnawing at them. Bile rose in her throat at the prospect of what she had to do. She swallowed again and tried to stand tall.

  ‘They didn’t want any supper. I did offer.’ Kathy spoke over their heads as she loitered in the doorway, her voice quiet, apologetic, as if aware that she shouldn’t be breaking the silence, shouldn’t be there at all.

  ‘Thank you for . . .’ And just like that, Nina couldn’t remember what she was thanking her for.

  ‘No worries.’

  Nina couldn’t recall if she said goodbye or spoke further, but she was aware that Kathy had gone, and she was grateful.

  Connor stared at her. ‘Is he . . . ?’ Nina noticed how he clenched his hands so tightly that his fingers were white. His voice trembled, as if the words were too terrible to voice, the whole idea too horrible to contemplate.

  She stared at him, and prepared to engage in the same verbal dance that she and Dr Ranton had perfected earlier. The expression on her boys’ faces told her they too were smart enough to realise that, were they available, words of comfort and reassurance would be the first thing she would utter to make everything feel better.

  Nina reached out her arms towards Declan, who stepped forward carefully, then stopped within touching distance. She pulled him to her chest, stroking his thick, dark hair. It felt easier to address Connor without having to look into her baby’s eyes.

  ‘He died.’ She spoke the words that sounded unreal: how could they be true? ‘Daddy died.’ Declan went limp in her arms, and she held him up until the strength returned to his legs.

  She had imagined this exchange on her way home, playing out various reactions from her boys, many violent, some loud and all accompanied by a deafening howl of distress. The silence that enveloped the reduced family was something she could not have predicted. Connor pinched his nose, bowed his head and covered his eyes as his tears ran over his fingers and fell in splats on the wooden floor. The three stood, unified, as their distress seeped from them. She reached out her hand and beckoned her eldest son closer, and with desolation and sadness as their glue, they were all joined, arms around backs, heads touching: a three-headed thing, mourning the equally monstrous event that had befallen them.

  TWO

  Nina sipped her coffee and stared out of the tall kitchen windows at the crisp blue Wiltshire sky. It was a morning like any other, except that it wasn’t. Sunshine streamed through the winter clouds and touched the distant fields and the grounds of The Tynings with its golden fingers.

  ‘They’re here, Mum,’ Connor called softly from the doorway.

  Ignoring the tremor of her hand, Nina emptied the coffee down the sink and walked to the foyer to find her black fitted jacket. She buttoned it up, looping the single string of pearls over the collar. Her fingers rested on the delicate silvery orbs, a gift from Finn. Connor and Declan stared at her from the hallway.

  The shiny black car wound its way along the lanes taking a route that was familiar. Sitting between the boys, eaten up by her own grief, she found it hard to offer words of solace or distraction on this peculiar day; instead, she held their hands, grateful for the contact. The car dropped them at the Haycombe Crematorium. As Nina stepped from the quiet cocoon of the car, the first face she saw among the small crowd that had gathered outside was her sister’s. Nina broke into a smile, quickly followed by the next wave of tears.

  ‘Tiggy.’ Saying the name out loud, she felt a rush of relief.

  ‘Nina.’ Her sister said it with the Danish inflection as her mother had intended it to be spoken: ‘Neeya-naah.’ Tiggy stepped forward confidently, as had always been her way, and placed her arms around her younger sibling, squashing her face into the cool, rough fabric of her denim bomber jacket.

  Nina closed her eyes and inhaled the familiar scent, a mixture of cigarettes, chewing gum and cheap floral body spray, and for a second she was a child in their
grandparents’ home in Portswood, Southampton, with the TV blaring, the clutter of life all around them and her gran screaming instructions from the cramped, narrow kitchen. Her heart seemed to squeeze with longing at the memory of that old life; not for the hardship or the discomfort, but for a time when her mamma’s spirit still lingered, when her dad came home from work with a whistle on his lips, before she knew what it felt like to wake with her heart and spirit so broken.

  Nina took in the inevitable changes that had occurred in the intervening two years since they had last seen each other, at another funeral. Tiggy, at thirty-eight, was four years older, and Nina noted how she now had faint creases of age at the edge of her mouth and eyes and a sallow tinge to her skin, which the cigarettes surely couldn’t help. Nina coughed, a little embarrassed, and wondered how she too had aged in the time since they saw each other. Tiggy had always been tall and slender, but she now looked a little gaunt. Nina, the shorter of the two, was also more rounded, with the curve of a bust and generous bottom that she had always disliked and which her sister used to envy. The closeness they had shared during their childhood had diminished to the point where to make a telephone call felt too difficult, where she couldn’t confidently predict her sister’s reaction; this woman with whom she used to sleep top to toe on a mattress, sharing thoughts and secrets and dreams.

  ‘Thank you for coming.’ Nina nodded with a formality she regretted.

  ‘Of course.’ Tiggy shrugged. As if this were a given.

  The last time they had been together was to stare at each other across a church aisle, when their diminishing clan had gathered for the funeral of their great-uncle, the last survivor of their gran and her siblings. It was sad, but after losing their mum so young and then their dad in their early twenties, these deaths – of uncles, aunts, grandparents – were never going to have the same impact.

  Until now.

  ‘How are you doing?’ Tiggy asked.

  Nina looked beyond her sister to the memorial garden. ‘I don’t know really.’