It passes. The pure moments always pass – a thought enters my head or the phone rings or Rees crashes at me. Increasingly, I feel hurt by the passing of such moments. I want them back.
I am still sitting at the bottom of my stairs, the scarf now wrapped around my neck, when I sense the change of light in the hallway. I look up. A dark shape stands on the step outside, beyond the frosted glass. If I had been in another part of the house I would have ignored the light tap on the door but because I am looking at it, I recognise the shape as Toni.
She is in plainclothes, a brown leather jacket and loose black trousers. Her choppy fair hair is disarranged, as if she has been shaking her hands through it. She looks directly at me, in that straightforward way she has, which always makes me wonder if she got the job because of it or whether she has just been very well-trained. ‘Hi,’ she says, as she steps in. ‘I’ve come for a cuppa.’ If you saw Toni in a shop, you would never guess she was a police officer.
We walk down the hallway to the kitchen. Unlike most of the others – including Julie – Toni is unembarrassed by silence and does not attempt conversation for the sake of it. She sits at my table on a wooden chair and watches me while I fill the kettle, click it on, lift the teapot and two mugs down from their shelf. From the corner of my eye I can see her looking me over, taking in the scarf, my general demeanour.
‘Are you sleeping at all?’ she asks gently.
I shake my head. ‘Not at night, anyway.’
‘Eating anything?’
I pull a face.
I fill the teapot and bring it over to the table with the mugs. I sit down, and then remember milk and sugar and rise immediately to get them. I put the milk on the table in its carton – the sugar is caster sugar, for cake-making, still in its bag. It’s the first sugar that comes to hand. As I sit again, Toni rises from her chair and fetches herself a teaspoon.
She pours for both of us. As she does so, she says, ‘Laura I’ve got something I have to tell you. It’s not good. It’s awful, in fact.’
I stare at her. I had assumed this was one of her regular visits – she has come round weekly to update me on what they are doing to a degree I have found kindly but pointless – I have not, for instance, felt the need to know how long the car that killed my daughter was impounded for. For a moment, I think that perhaps Gerry reported me after my behaviour in the playground yesterday. But no, it can’t be that. I didn’t hit her, after all. I just wanted to. It comes to me that she must have some bad news about Betty – but what news could be worse than the news she brought to my door a few short and terrifyingly long weeks ago? Is she going to tell me that I have cremated the wrong child?
‘It’s Willow,’ Toni says. She looks directly at me. I have been steeling myself to call Sally and make an arrangement to go round and visit Willow at home, putting it off by telling myself that Willow might find it distressing. ‘She’d had quite a few problems since going home, the leg wasn’t healing as well as they thought and they were considering surgery. It had been broken in so many places and was very swollen, so when she said it was still hurting they didn’t realise.’ My heart constricts. I stare and stare at Toni. She has the same expression on her face that she had when she told me about Betty. I realise what she is about to say before she says it but I have the same sensation that I had before, of the conscious part of my mind baulking at the knowledge. ‘They readmitted her to the HDU two days ago because they were a bit concerned,’ Toni continues. ‘It was the temperature she was running that told them, apparently, well you know more about these things than I do. Her leg was still very swollen and the break wasn’t healing well. They took her over to the Royal Infirmary, to the paediatric intensive care unit there, but she died twelve hours after being admitted. Septicaemia, you know how quick that can be, but it should have been picked up. There’ll be an enquiry.’
I lift Betty’s scarf and bury my face in it. Dear God. The pain feels as intense as one of the pure moments, but still not pure. I can hardly bear it, yet hardly feel it. I could not begin to explain my feelings to myself.
‘God. Sally…’ I say, helplessly.
‘Sally and Stephen were with her when she died,’ said Toni. ‘They had that at least.’
‘Does David know?’
Toni nods. ‘I phoned him before I came over here, in case he wanted to tell you himself. I think he would have liked to but things are a bit difficult for him at the moment so I offered.’ Coward, I think, briefly. Toni continues, ‘The funeral will probably be Friday. They’re making arrangements today.’
I search my feelings, struggling to discover what there is inside me that is authentic. Can I honestly say that there is not some tiny part of me that is relieved I will not have to have the talk with Willow I have been dreading, about exactly what happened that day? Am I, perhaps, relieved that I am not alone any more, even though Sally is one of the last people I would wish to be not-alone with; relieved (and this is it, I think, most of all) that, for a short time at least, I will not be the focus of attention, that I can be a bit part in someone else’s tragedy. How dreadful, that I should feel any of these slivers of relief, even momentarily. I feel sick. A girl has died.
‘Things are going to be a bit difficult in town for a while,’ Toni is saying, thoughtfully. ‘We’ve had to set up something called a Gold Group. It’s what we do when there’s, well, what you might call a bit of tension in a community. I can talk you through it if you like, what we’re doing, and the investigation, where we are up to.’
I nod, then rise. I don’t want to talk through it, any of it. Betty is dead, now Willow. ‘It’s all right. You don’t have to stay.’
*
That night, I cannot sleep. Normally I manage to doze for an hour or two before waking but that night unconsciousness eludes me entirely. I lie in Betty’s bed, thinking of Sally and Stephen, the newness and rawness of their grief, how they are almost certainly awake too, wandering around their house and staring at each other from time to time, disbelievingly.
I lie like that for a long time, with my hands behind my head, waiting for the moment when I feel like turning on my side in the foetal position, closing my body up, in preparation for it to be deserted by my thoughts. The moment doesn’t come. Around 2 a. m., I rise, look in on Rees who is breathing softly, and go downstairs in my dressing gown, clutching it around me, shivering. The house is dark and strange, as it always is at this time of the night. I make myself a large mug of camomile tea and sit at the kitchen table with the photo albums – David was always very good at that. He took hundreds of pictures of the children and in the old days always got an extra set of prints and sent copies of the best one to the aunties and a far- flung cousin somewhere in the Middle East, so far-flung I had never even met him. As a result, we always ended up with two copies of the less-good photos – the blurry ones where Betty or Rees turned their head or loomed at the lens; the ones where they are cross-looking or have their eyes closed. David would never throw anything away. There were half-full albums and yellow envelopes of prints all over the house. It drove me mad. Thank God for the advent of digital. Since he and I split up, the children were hardly photographed by me – on special occasions of course, birthdays and Christmases. But somewhere, there would be all the photos that David would be taking of them with Chloe and the baby, photos that didn’t include me.
The last photo will be one of those, somewhere on David’s computer. I have lots of the early ones, the ones in the packets, that catch her as a toddler dressed in appalling cardigans given to her by the aunties; chubby arms, chubby chins. Who would have thought she would turn into such a straight, slender girl?
I sit at the kitchen table, nursing my tea. Here is my girl at six months, in a red rugby shirt, grinning at someone out of the picture. Here she is aged four, her hair in a severe pageboy style, her stomach still protruding plumply from a vest. She is waving garden shears at the lens but I can’t identify the garden behind her – certainly not ours. It ha
s flowers in it.
And here she is more recently, in a selection of prints that David took at her ninth birthday party – he gave me the CD as well as prints of the six best shots. I took her and three friends bowling and David joined us halfway through. Rees was allowed one friend. We all went for pizza afterwards. The photo I am holding is a large, glossy print of Betty with Willow and Priya and Elinor, her three best friends. The bowling alley – a hideously dark and noisy place – is in the background. They are all shouting at the lens, eyes wide, slightly mad with the noise and chaos of it. Betty and Willow are clutching each other in one of those wild, loving hugs that girls of that age indulge in, when they still believe that they will live together when they are grown-up. Willow wanted to be a vet. Betty was going to be a detective. They were going to solve mysterious animal disappearances together. Betty’s hair is untidy. Willow is grinning and holding a hand up, pointing at her own face. She is showing off her new glasses, of which she was inordinately proud. They are beautiful, and drunk on the joy of the party and their passionately mutual friendship: the past was something they had yet to acquire and the future was pizza and ice cream down the road, ten minutes away. Their lives were no more than the glorious, abundant present. They had four months to live.
*
Julie drives me over to Sally’s house on Friday. I have sent a message via David that I don’t feel able to come to the crematorium so soon after Betty’s funeral but that I would like to come to the house – a message comes back, that is fine. Julie takes the boys to nursery as usual, drives to the crematorium, then comes back to get me.
‘How did it go?’ I say, as I climb into the passenger seat and fasten my seatbelt.
She shakes her head. Her face looks drawn. For the first time, I wonder about the cost of all this tragedy to her and people like her in our lives, people who take it upon themselves to carry on as normal, who feel guilty for being too upset, but whose lives are also diminished, thrown awry by what has happened. We do not speak for the rest of the drive. We park the car in the street that neighbours Sally’s – her road is full. As she locks her car door, Julie says, ‘I’ll get the boys at the usual time and take Rees back to ours. You stay as long as you want.’
I brace myself as we mount the stone steps up to Sally’s front door but it is opened by a relative I do not know, a middle- aged man who says, as if by rote, ‘Thank you for coming.’ To my relief, there is no acknowledgement of my special status. Once we are inside, a teenage girl takes our coats over her arm. Her understanding of what is happening is unsophisticated. She gives us a bright smile before turning sharply and trotting up the stairs, to put the coats in a bedroom. Sally’s house is a mirror image of our house, the same Victorian terrace but the other way around and much smarter, coloured glass everywhere and stripped floors, endless framed photos of her children over every wall. From the hallway, I can see down into the kitchen, which they had extended the year before. It is full of light, people. Above the kitchen door, there is an A4 size photo of Willow on a hillside, her hair wind-whipped, wearing a bright smile. It has been printed out on white copy paper and sellotaped clumsily in place. Julie and I stand in the hallway for a minute, and I see that there are framed photos of Willow lined in rows on a shelf beneath the mirror. At that point, Sally herself emerges from the sitting room to our left and says, ‘Come in you two, it’s cold out here in the hall. Come and get a drink.’ The woman who dealt with my tragedy in such a heavy-handed fashion seems bizarrely determined, outwardly at least, to make light work of her own. I stare at her as she turns to the kitchen. I wonder if her doctor has given her drugs.
*
David and Chloe are at the far end of the kitchen. David sees me and pushes through the other people to get to me – Chloe, of course, stays where she is. David embraces me warmly, as if we are the only two people who understand what is really going on here, which of course we are. ‘I’m so glad you could come,’ he whispers. It occurs to me that although David and I have spoken every day since the accident, we have not seen much of each other. It hasn’t seemed odd before but now, in the comfort of his brief embrace, it does.
Somebody shoves past behind me, bumping my shoulder. David glares past me and for a minute I think he is about to speak sharply – I half-turn but he pulls me back gently with his hand on my upper arm. I lean in to him. He smells of David. ‘I feel so strange,’ I say to him.
‘I know,’ he says softly, still very close to me, speaking into my hair, ‘so do I.’
*
Julie comes to find me after half an hour and says she has to leave to collect the boys. While she and I are talking, David excuses himself and goes to speak to Chloe. I have had enough already. It is my first social event since the accident and just standing and talking has exhausted me. I want to leave with Julie but I haven’t spoken to anyone but David so far and feel I ought to stay. David returns to us and hands me a small glass of sherry. Julie slips away. I sip the sherry and regret it immediately. Even a small sip makes me dizzy. David holds a plate of sandwiches up to me. I pick one up and eat the corner, then stand holding it, not wanting to put it back on his plate. ‘God, Laura,’ he says quietly, ‘I’m worried sick about how thin you are.’
‘I’m okay,’ I say.
‘No, you’re not,’ he replies.
I would like to spend the whole occasion with David but am determined to be brave. I must not be selfish about what has happened to Willow. I must acknowledge who we are mourning here. I go back out into the hall and into the sitting room where groups of older relatives are seated. A woman who is standing by the mantelpiece comes over to me and says, ‘Laura?’
I nod.
‘I’m Willow’s godmother, Vivie,’ the woman says. ‘We met last Easter. It was good of you to come when you’ve got so much on your plate.’ We both grimace at the euphemism, and it comes to me where I have met her before. She was at an Easter-egg hunt one of the other mothers had arranged in the park, a year or two ago. She brought a giant thermos flask of coffee and half a dozen plastic mugs. She told me about why she had never had any children of her own, something to do with being adopted.
We stand in the middle of the sitting room, talking politely, for a while. I think to myself, how well I am doing. I allow myself the tiniest blush of pride at my own ability to talk normally, to transcend the part of me that still wants to scream at the inanity of anything but my own loss. Perhaps this is what the loss of Willow is doing for me, offering me a perspective. How appalling that I should be benefiting, even a tiny amount, from someone else’s misery. Vivie the godmother talks on, quietly, unobtrusively. I nod.
Towards the end of our conversation, something odd happens. I am standing talking to Vivie. We have not moved from our positions. I feel a scrape and a sharp pain against my shin. I turn and see a small woman with brown curly hair standing close behind me, scowling. Behind her is an armchair. I guess that she was sitting in her armchair and, in standing, has somehow scraped her pointed heel along my shin, although I can’t quite work out how, or why. I look at her with a surprised, half-smile, waiting for her to say, ‘I’m sorry,’ but she simply glares at me, then turns away.
I watch the small woman leave the room, then say to Vivie, ‘Who was that?’ She shrugs.
*
Not long after that, I realise that I am desperate to go back home – I should have got a lift with Julie. I say goodbye to Vivie and leave the sitting room, wondering if I could sneak out, without saying goodbye to anyone. I would be forgiven, after all. I have done my bit. I hesitate, glancing down into the kitchen, which is still full of people. I can’t face going back in there.
Upstairs, in the master bedroom, I am unable to find my coat. There is a heap of them on the main bed but, pushing through them, I do not see mine. I go into the small bedroom next door, where there is a group of teenage girls lounging around, on the bed, on huge cushions on the floor. It looks as though they have all been crying. Willow was the youngest of four
children. I see her older sister, Beeny, by the window. She stares at me, eye make-up smudgy, then says dully, ‘Hello.’
‘Hello Beeny,’ I say. ‘Do you know where the rest of the coats are? I’ve got to go.’ She turns her face back to the window.
*
As I come down the stairs, Ranmali and her husband are at the front door, in their coats, about to leave. It is the first time I have seen them close enough to speak to since the accident – they came to the crematorium for Betty’s funeral but not back to the house. Although I have been dreading seeing Ranmali for weeks, I suddenly feel relieved that we have encountered each other and wish I knew her well enough to embrace her. There is a conversation she and I must have, some time, and although I am not yet ready for it, I am pleased to see her.
She is buttoning her woollen coat. She turns and looks up at me as I descend. She stares for a moment, then her eyes fill with tears. I am not alarmed by this because I know her polite, precise English will not stretch to platitudes. Her husband is standing next to her, already buttoned tight, ready to go. He has pulled a hat over his neatly oiled hair, but is staring up at me from beneath its brim. His expression is not warm or sympathetic, like his wife’s. It is like the expression he adopts when too many schoolchildren are crowding into his shop.
As I reach the bottom of the stairs, he steps forward. His wife puts out a hand and rests it on his arm. He glances at her briefly, then looks back at me.
I stop where I am. I think, he wants to say something but can’t. I realise that in all these years I have never heard him speak.
He bows his head briefly and then says, so quietly I can hardly hear. ‘I am sorry, Mrs Needham.’
I nod in return, a curt acknowledgement of his condolence, and half-turn to go towards the sitting room to continue the hunt for my coat, but he takes another step towards me and I realise there is more he wants to say.
Whatever You Love Page 8
