Violet had spent five years in that urn for a reason. I’d started off wondering why she picked me to help her, what she wanted. I’d thought about her funeral, her will, about finding her the right resting place. I’d thought she wanted to me to solve something for her. I didn’t know she was doing something for me. I hadn’t expected for a minute that she was going to lead me to my dad.
I was sorry that she’d decided to have enough of living.
I hugged her in her exquisite, cold, wooden container and I wished that I’d been able to know her when she was still alive.
We flung her ashes in the Thames. I remembered what she said on the tape, that when she was homesick she imagined the water flowing all the way back home, and I thought she could go home that way if she wanted, or really anywhere if she didn’t. The wind threw most of her back in our faces, me and Martha and Bob. We got a cab to Westminster Bridge, behind a car full of builders. All their hard hats were on the back shelf and they looked like eggs nestled there, jostling together over the speed bumps.
On the way home I felt sad and tired and empty, like she’d only just died. The urn was so different without her in it.
I hope she ended up where she wanted. I hope she found what she came back for.
I hope I was some help, walking into that cab office out of my mind.
And I suppose that’s why I had to tell somebody, why I had to write things down.
I wanted to add to what she’d left behind – a handful of movies, a portrait, a contact sheet and a tape.
Violet changed my life and I wanted to stop hers from turning to nothing.
Bob said something to me the other day.
He said that if Dad did it for the money, I could take comfort in the fact that she didn’t leave him everything after all.
I said, “What do you mean?” or “How do you know?” or something, and I was thinking about the portrait she left the dentist, because that was in her will.
And Bob said that he read an obituary about a month after she died, a long and fawning one written by a music librarian at York University. The obituary said that Violet was survived by her only son who inherited her entire estate, including houses in Australia, New Zealand, London and the US.
“She didn’t have a son,” I said.
“Yes she did,” Bob said. “And I remember his name because it was unusual. It was Orlando.”
I felt sick with rage and excitement, because Violet invented Orlando Park. I knew that from the tape, and so did my dad.
Suddenly, after loving him and looking after the hole he’d left and trying to grow up without him, I knew where Dad was.
And I knew he wasn’t dead, the bastard.
He was rich as sin, however rich that is, living off Violet’s money in the sun.
I went to my room and I punched a hole in the wall, but I didn’t cry.
I felt weirdly happy. Angry happy.
And I did something that I didn’t tell anyone about; not Bob, not Martha, definitely not my mum. I can’t work out if it’s the start of something or the end of it and I’m trying to stop my brain from going there. I did it and I’ll wait and see what happens before I tell anybody.
I sent a parcel to Orlando Park at Violet Farm, Turungakuma, South Island, New Zealand. I found him on the Internet. He’d been there the first time, the time I’d checked for Violet. I’d looked straight through him.
I sent him Violet’s empty urn, the one he’d collected from the crematorium and left in the back of a cab.
And I stuck a little note on it, round the other side from Violet’s name.
It said
PETE SWAIN1958-2002RIP
Who knows if I’ll hear anything back? It seems unlikely.
Thanks to Violet, that matters a hell of a lot less than it used to.
Thank you thank you thank you to
Veronique Baxter
Stella Paskins
Gillie Russell
Jane Griffiths
Belinda Hollyer
Pat and Chris Cutforth
and the marvellous Lauren P.
For
Molly and Ella,
Jess and Emma,
and Kate.
All great sisters.
Table of Contents
Dedication
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
It wasn’t mine.
I didn’t drop it, but the boy in the queue said I did.
It was a negative of a photograph, one on its own, all scratched and beaten up. I couldn’t even see what it was a negative of because his finger and thumb were blotting out most of it. He was holding it out to me like nothing else was going to happen until I took it, like he had nothing else to do but wait.
I didn’t want to take it. I said that. I said I didn’t own a camera even, but the boy just stood there with this I-know-I’m-right look on his