I heard the sadness in her voice. I heard it in my own as I said, ‘It’s been six weeks, Tilly.’ As though that was long enough to make everything right.
It wasn’t.
She wasn’t coping well. Neither was I but, for her, I pretended we’d get through it. We’d be okay. Even if I didn’t know how.
‘We talked about this,’ I said, but not unkindly. ‘It was your idea to come back on a Friday. Ease yourself into it. It’s one day, Tilly.’
She tucked her unruly dark hair behind her ears as she looked anxiously out of the window. Her face looked smaller, skin ashen, black bags nestled beneath bloodshot eyes. She’d refused the offer of counselling, spending so much of her time shut away in her room that now, being outside was overwhelming.
‘You’ve already so much to catch up on but if you really can’t face it I won’t make you. You can come and help me in the shop instead. It’s time to try to re-join the world.’ I spoke slowly, deliberately, although each word was rough, grazing my tongue. Our Family Liaison Officer had said it was best to forge a routine, a semblance of normality, but was it? Sometimes being a parent was torturous. Spinning in circles like a bird with a broken wing. But Tilly was studying for A Levels. It was such an important year. Besides, at school she’d be with Rhianon and, although I knew the cousins were no longer inseparable, I hoped that away from the family drama they could begin to heal.
God knows, we all needed to heal.
‘Fine.’
It was dizzying how quickly she pinballed between sadness and anger, but I knew it was all part of the hard ball of grief that ricocheted inside her.
She flung open the car door. A lengthy sigh escaping the mouth that no longer smiled.
‘Wait,’ I called, snatching her lunch from the backseat. ‘If it becomes too much you can always ring me.’ She snatched the Tupperware from my hands, her expression as hardened as the plastic.
‘Try to have a good—’ The slam of the car door sliced my sentence in two. ‘Day.’ A constriction in my throat prevented me calling her back. What could I have said to make things right? She stalked away without a backwards glance, swamped by her black winter coat, which snapped at her ankles as she walked. Weight had fallen off her. Again, I had found her half-eaten breakfast dumped in the bin. On top of the browning banana skin, a smattering of Rice Krispies ground to dust where she had crushed them with her spoon. She never could stand milk.
She stooped as she crossed the road without waiting for the green man, the weight of both her rucksack and the world on her shoulders. I contemplated calling her back but I knew she couldn’t hide away forever. If she rang me I could be back there within fifteen minutes, no time at all, but I knew sometimes even sixty seconds could feel like an eternity. The desire to protect her, in the way I hadn’t been protected at her age, to whisk her away for a fresh start, was fierce and stabbing, but after that morning’s post, it seemed more out of reach than ever.
Tilly merged with the throng of children crunching over the autumn orange leaves that carpeted the pavement. I was reminded of the times Gavan and I would tramp though the forest searching for gleaming conkers, a wellington-booted Tilly nestled between us, her small gloved hands in ours. The smell of moss and earth. It was still so clear to me, the joy of it.
One, two, three, lift! We’d swing her back and forth as she clung on like a baby monkey, her infectious giggles making Gavan and me laugh. Even when she grew too tall, too heavy, she’d raise her knees to her chest to prevent her feet dragging on the floor, as if she couldn’t quite accept how big she’d grown. I watched her as she stamped up the drab grey steps, finding it hard to equate the carefree, smiling child of seemingly five minutes ago with this solemn seventeen-year-old. She was a young woman now, lost to me, almost. The days of being able to make everything in her world right again with a mug of hot chocolate and a cuddle were long gone, and I longed to have them back.
The Special Constable with the patchy beard and straggly ponytail, who patrolled the secondary school at 8.45 and 3.15 every day with a ferocity that would put a lioness guarding cubs to shame, half-ran towards me. My rational self knew that he was going to tell me off for parking in the wrong place, but still, my hands were shaking as I released the handbrake. Each time I saw a police uniform it evoked such a physical response, sickness rising like a serpent. I zoomed off the yellow lines before he reached the car, and it wasn’t until he disappeared from sight in my rear-view mirror that my breathing began to slow.
I would always associate the police with bad news.
With endless, endless questions.
Sometimes it all blended into a swirling, solid mass. The past. The present. Impossible to separate.
The fear has never really left me. Recurrently concealing itself in the layer between skin and flesh, waiting patiently for another trigger. The chance to attack.
I can’t remember.
And sometimes, consciously, I couldn’t remember. The lie became my truth. The pressure in my head insufferable.
Then, shadowed by night, the bony fingers of the past would drag me back and I would kick and scream before I’d wake. Duvet crumpled on the floor. Pyjamas drenched in sweat. And alone.
Always alone.
The scar on my forehead throbbed a reminder of my helplessness.
Thoughts of the letter filled my mind once more as I drove towards work.
What was I going to do?
LAURA
The realisation that I was unlocking the door for one of the last times stung like disinfectant being poured onto an open wound.
I drank it all in. The light bouncing off the windows as the day gathered strength. The breeze kissing the ‘Laura’s Flowers’ sign as it creaked its delight. The way the key moulded into my fingers as though it should always be mine. Soon, it would be someone else’s key. Someone else’s dream.
The door was streaked with dried egg yolk. I told myself it must be from the trick-or-treaters that had roamed the streets the previous night cloaked in black; plastic fangs protruding from bloodstained lips. I really should stop reading too much into things.
But my edginess stayed with me, despite the comforting floral smell that wrapped around me like a hug as I stepped inside.
I couldn’t believe it was over.
When I’d opened the shop ten years before I had thought I’d eventually pass the business down to Tilly, or even to my niece Rhianon, who spent as much time at our house as Tilly did at hers. They loved gardening, kneeling side by side, fingernails caked with mud, trowels in hands, digging over the small flower bed that was theirs in the corner of our garden. Nurturing dandelions and buttercups because they were sunshine-yellow bright; pulling anemones and asters which hadn’t yet flowered; flashing me gappy smiles as I handed out cherry ice pops. As they transitioned into teenagers, their corner of the garden grew tangled and wild, their interest in flowers lost. For the first time I was grateful they weren’t wanting to step into my shoes and walk the endlessly worrisome path of the sole trader; declining business and too many bills.
Crouching, I scooped a clutch of brown envelopes from the doormat and saw ‘Final Demand’ stamped in red. I dropped them all onto the once-polished counter that was now coated with a thin film of dust. Over the past six weeks I’d been home more than I’d been at the shop; I wanted to be there for Tilly, of course. But it was difficult to know how to be around her when she said she needed space. I’d wandered around the house like a ghost. Touching Gavan’s possessions as I’d once have touched his face, wondering who I was if I was no longer someone’s wife. I had long since ceased to be anyone’s