Lauren lifted Sam out of the high chair, and put him into the buggy she kept here for him. She felt stupidly nervous for the girls, even though they had been going to the nursery part of the village school for nearly a year. But still. Proper school. True, being the youngest in the year, they were only part time to begin with. But before she knew it, they’d be gone all day. No longer would she have them to herself in the afternoon. If she didn’t have Sam still to look after, the days could be long and lonely. Just like her nights …
A sense of melancholy came over her as she walked down the front path, with its familiar white picket fence, and creaky iron gate. The twins were holding on to either side of the buggy, chatting away nineteen to the dozen about what was going to happen in their day. They didn’t seem nervous in the slightest. It was only Lauren who felt a vague sense of loss, with the realization that after today nothing would be quite the same again. She pushed the buggy down her road, waving hello to her neighbour Eileen, who was out walking her dog, and turned right onto the main road that led down the hill to the centre of Heartsease, where the girls were starting at the village school.
The September sun was still warm, and the day was shaping up to be one of those last blasts of summer lazy days, which you had to cherish before autumn took hold. But there were small signs of the approaching autumn. The trees were beginning to turn, the first conkers were beginning to ripen, and a gentle breeze blew a few leaves softly to the ground. It was days like these she remembered most from the period after Troy left her, and this time of year had remained bitter-sweet to her ever since. Just as she was getting used to the shock of motherhood, she’d had the bigger shock that she was going to be doing it alone. And now more then ever, sending her beautiful daughters off to school for the first time, she wished that it wasn’t so.
Joel got in the car with a heavy heart, turned left out of Lauren’s road, and drove back up the hill past his house and out of Heartsease across the Downs, towards the neighbouring town of Chiverton. He drove down a windy country road, arched with trees, their leaves beginning to shimmer with an autumn hue. He loved the countryside here and it was one of the many reasons, when his mum had inherited Lovelace Cottage and suggested he bought it from her, that he had. Even Claire, who’d at first been reluctant to leave London, and ‘live in the sticks’ as she’d put it, had agreed that when you came to the brow of the hill and looked out on the Sussex countryside, the views were stunning.
Claire. His heart contracted painfully. A year ago today. Could it only really be a year? A year and a day ago he had been so happy. So rich and fulfilled. With everything in life he needed. But he didn’t know it then, didn’t appreciate it at times, maybe didn’t even want it. It was only after he lost Claire, and his world came crashing down around him, that he belatedly realized how truly lucky he had been.
Today was going to be a painful and difficult day. Joel had promised to go with Claire’s parents to her grave, in the cemetery on the other side of Chiverton, and then for lunch. He wasn’t sure he was going to be able to get through another heartbreaking day with them. It wasn’t that Marion and Colin were unkind or unsupportive, far from it. Although they lived over an hour away, they would help out with Sam at the drop of a hat, and they had been an immense source of strength to him. They had shown him compassion even though they were grieving too. No, it wasn’t Marion and Colin who would make this day hard. It was Joel’s guilt about what he’d done, and how he’d let Claire down.
Every day for the last year he had said sorry to her. Every day. And today, at the graveside, he would lay freesias, her favourite flowers (which he’d bought at great expense) and say sorry again. But it was never ever going to be enough.
Joel blinked back tears as he arrived at the graveyard. It was a bright, warm September day, unlike the day of Claire’s funeral, which had been the bleakest, rainiest autumn day he could remember in his life. The church had been packed, and so many people had been so kind and thoughtful. But Joel had barely been able to acknowledge their kindness, responding like an automaton, feeling only a numbness that he now realized must have been deep jolt. The suddenness of Claire’s death still shocked him, even now, a year later. How could someone as beautiful and alive and vibrant as Claire be there one day, and not the next? He’d be trying to make sense of that till the day he died.
Joel was pleased to see he had arrived earlier than Claire’s parents. Selfishly, he wanted a bit of time on his own, for his own private grief. He walked up to her grave and felt again the sudden shock of seeing her name there:
Claire Harriet Lyle
1975–2010
Loving wife, mother and daughter
Taken from us too soon
He never got over the unreality of it. Nor, did he imagine, he would ever get used to it. Claire should be with him now, watching Sam learning to walk and talk, helping Joel restore the house and gardens as they had planned. She shouldn’t be here, on this Sussex hillside, buried six feet under. He felt a sudden sharp bolt of anguish, the pain of it almost taking his breath away. Claire was lost to him, and there was no saying sorry now.
Kezzie sat in the middle of half-packed boxes, in her tiny lounge crying. She felt like she’d been sitting in the middle of boxes crying forever, ever since she’d made the decision that she had to leave. Only weeks ago, at the height of summer, she’d been excitedly packing up to move out of her small flat in Finsbury Park and move in with Richard. The gardening course she’d completed finished, the redundancy from her much hated job in web design accepted. A whole new life lay before them. She would design the gardens, Richard, the architecture. Together they would take Chelsea and Hampton Court by storm. And now that would never happen. The last month of her life had been the most painful, confusing and ridiculous time she’d ever known.
Should she ring Richard again? Kezzie sat on her heels in the chaos of her lounge and thought about it. She was sorely tempted. It had been nearly a week since their last painfully awkward conversation. Somehow she clung to the hope that maybe he could find it in himself to forgive her for what she’d done. She flinched as she saw the cold contempt in his eyes at their last meeting, heard him say over and over: ‘You’ve let me down, Kezzie. I can’t trust you.’ That scene kept playing like it was on a hideous time loop, over and over in her brain. However much she tried to shut it out, there it was every time she closed her eyes. A reminder of what she had done, and what she had lost.
But all that ringing and texting Richard in vain were making her feel slightly unhinged, and even Flick, the kindest and most supportive of best friends, had gently pointed out she was losing dignity in trying to win him back.
‘You have to give him time, Kez,’ she said. ‘You’re going to lose him for sure this way.’
Kezzie knew she was right, but the temptation late at night to email him after a glass of red, or ring him, just to hear his voice, had proved too much for her time and time again. The last occasion had been so mortifiyingly cringe-making – Richard had answered saying, ‘Kezzie, I have my parents here, please don’t make a scene’ – that she’d hung up straight away. At that moment she decided she was losing the plot big time, and needed to escape, somewhere, anywhere, so she wouldn’t chance running into Richard, and where she wouldn’t be reminded of him, on every corner.
It was then that Aunt Jo had stepped in. Arriving on an unexpected flying visit to London, and seeing the state of her beloved niece, Jo had declared that Kezzie needed a bolt hole. ‘And as luck would have it, hon, I can offer you my place.’
‘What do you mean?’ Kezzie had asked.
‘I’m off round the world for a year with Mickey,’ said Jo, referring to her latest toy boy. ‘You remember him, don’t you? We’re going to find ourselves, and maybe get married in Thailand.’ She giggled excitedly. ‘You can stay at my cottage for as long as you want – stay all year if you need to, babe.’
‘Really?’ Kezzie gulped through her tears.