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.’
Declan walked around the car and held her hand tightly.
‘Hey, Dec.’ Tiggy ruffled the top of his head.
‘Hey.’ He whispered his response, standing close to his mum’s side as Connor let his aunt briefly wrap him in a loose hug.
‘You’ve grown.’ Tiggy looked at the boys, her nephews. Her tone was reflective.
‘It’s okay, Dec, it’s going to be fine,’ Nina offered in the most assured manner that she could muster, trying to shift the fear that sat like a stopper in her throat. He gripped her hand with such ferocity that she felt he was squeezing her bones.
Connor walked ahead in his navy suit, bought last year for school speech day, and one of his dad’s ties. Speech day . . . She recalled the rare occasion when Finn had kept his word and made it to a school event. They had sat at one of many prettily dressed tables on the school field and had tea and cake, clapping as pupils traipsed up to the temporary stage to gather scrolled, beribboned awards. Parents clapped loudly and crowded their kids with congratulatory hugs and handshakes. Finn had teased Connor for not getting an award, gently punching the top of his arm. ‘All that bloody money spent on your education and not one single scroll to show for it!’ They had all laughed and then ridden home in the car with the radio turned up loud and Billy Ray Cyrus’s ‘Achy Breaky Heart’ blaring, to which they had sung along . . .
Nina stared at the entrance to the crematorium, a building she had entered a couple of times before to bid farewell to a neighbour and one of Finn’s staff, never imagining that she would be here today in this surreal situation. She tried to breathe; it felt like she had been kicked in the chest by something so powerful that it had broken her bones. She glanced over her shoulder and for a second considered bolting, running for the fields with her arms spread wide. If her sons on both sides hadn’t anchored her, she just might have.
The crematorium was full. People greeted them with pitying looks and quiet murmurs of condolence as they waited for the service to begin. Person after person filed by and reminded Connor well-meaningly that he was now the man of the house and it was his job to look after things. If time, place and her confidence had allowed, she would have screamed at them all that he was a boy of fifteen who was grieving for his dad and they, as a family, would look after each other. Connor’s school friends, Charlie and George, stood close, placing hands on his shoulder, reminding him to be strong. They looked to her so much like little boys playing grown-ups. She hated that this thing had come knocking on their door, singling out her children, making them different.
She recognised Mr Monroe, Finn’s accountant, a short, fleshy man, as he made his way over to her, cutting a swathe through the mourners with a fixed stare. She felt a flush of unease. It had been easy to ignore his calls, which she wasn’t ready to deal with yet, but here, face to face, interaction was inevitable. ‘I am so very sorry for your loss.’ His eyes looked pained, as if even talking to her were agony.
‘Thank you,’ she managed, looking down at her shoes. Her voice sounded small.
He pumped her hand up and down in a vigorous shake. ‘I am seriously so very, very sorry – about everything.’
‘Thank you,’ she mumbled again. She almost had to yank her hand free from his grip.
‘I left you a couple of messages and emailed you too,’ he pressed, before whipping a business card from his top pocket and sliding it into her hand.
Why did he think this might be appropriate on the day of Finn’s funeral? What did he want? An apology for her lack of response? An explanation as to just how grief had placed the answering of emails and the returning of calls a little low on her priorities?
She shoved the card into her narrow shoulder bag. ‘I really must . . .’
Mr Monroe reached out and held the top of her arm. ‘I don’t mean to be so pushy, today of all days, but I really do need to talk to you. You have my number now.’ He stared directly into her eyes.
Pulling her arm free, she could only nod. Whatever plans or advice he might have for their money and investments could bloody well wait.
The funeral seemed to pass in a blur. She was aware of Finn’s brother Michael crying through his eulogy, and his drinking buddy, one of the old site managers from McCarrick Construction, leaning too close to the microphone, distorting the few words he gave about how much they were all going to miss Finn. She felt the eyes of those in the pews behind her on her back and it made her feel sick. She wished they were there alone, she and the kids, without all these people.
With Declan holding on tightly to her hand, the three of them stared, stony-faced, ahead, their tears tracing familiar tracks over skin that was already wet. Declan’s noisy sobs punctured the air. She glanced at the coffin only once. She even positioned her fingers to cover the handsome face of her husband on the Order of Service, because to see these things would make it real, whereas right now she could kid herself that the coffin was just a box, the pamphlet in her hand just paper . . .
When it was over, she said her goodbyes as quickly as she could and climbed awkwardly into the back seat of the fancy car with the boys and Tiggy. All were silent. Tiggy’s presence did little to help – not quite a stranger in their midst, but pretty close. Nina’s thoughts were muddled; she continually reminded herself to tell Finn snippets about the day, the things she had observed that would make him laugh; his cousin Patch taking a leak in a hedge where he thought no one could see, and Kathy Topps and her husband being accosted by Finn’s great-aunt Rita who seemed to have consumed more than a couple of gins.
Her fingers flexed, wanting to take up their natural home of the last decade or so, nestling in his wide, warm palm, an act from which she always gained reassurance and confidence. And bang! There it was again, the door slam in her mind that he was gone. The reality still shocked her senses as much as it had ten days ago when he died.
‘Are you okay?’ she asked the boys for the fiftieth time that day. Like automatons, they nodded the response they knew she wanted. They were all going through the motions, but the simple truth was that they were all far, far from okay. They were bit-part players doing their utmost to uphold the illusion of normality, for whose benefit she wasn’t sure.
Back at The Tynings, stoic-faced caterers darted in between the guests like worker bees, proffering glasses of chilled white Chablis and silver platters laden with canapés, which she had chosen from a flimsy catalogue, without energy or interest. The bellowed exchanges of reunion that echoed in the rooms reverberated painfully in her ears. She rubbed the tops of her arms to try to chase away a chill, but nothing worked. Closing her eyes, she wished everyone would leave.
‘Do we have to stay down here, Mum?’ Connor’s eyes wandered among the groups of adults that stood in clusters with drinks held to their chests.
‘No, darling. Do whatever makes you comfortable. Take your friends to the TV room or your bedroom or whatever.’
‘Thanks.’ He gave a brief smile.
‘Have you eaten?’
‘I’m not hungry.’ He looked away, as if offended by a platter of cheese-laden mini-quiches that whizzed past.
‘Me neither.’ She placed her hand over his back. ‘Dad would have been really proud of you today. He was proud of you every day.’
Connor began to walk away, then paused. ‘He crashed on the A46, right?’
‘Yes.’ As if she could ever forget or stop picturing the bend on which he had swerved off at speed, into the fence, careering down into the field below . . .
‘That’s nowhere near my school. It’s on the other side of town. He was heading out of the city. He wasn’t on his way to watch me play rugby, was he?’
She hated the disappointment in his eyes. ‘I don’t . . . I don’t know.’ This was not something she had really considered. ‘He might have been coming back after a meeting, anything could have happened really, Con. We just don’t know.’
He looked her in the eyes. Both felt the blush at how she was still covering for the man she loved.
‘Jesus Christ! I’d forgotten the size of this place,’ her sister broke in. Connor headed for the stairs. Nina watched Tiggy tip her head back and look up at the high ceiling, casting her eyes over the wide sweep of staircase, the pale wood floor and the huge vase of white lilies on the round table. ‘It’s like a hotel.’ Tiggy shook her head from side to side in awe. ‘No hotel I’ve ever stayed in, though.’
‘Can I get you a drink?’ Nina spoke to mask her discomfort, wishing her sister would keep her voice down.
‘Yes, coffee, thanks.’
She made her way through the modest crowd to the kitchen, with Tiggy following, her big sister’s high heels clicking on the floor. ‘Holy-fricking-moly! You’ve redone the kitchen. This is like . . .’ She paused, seeming at a loss as to what to compare the room to.
Nina was glad the kids were out of earshot. She grabbed a mug from the cupboard and poured her sister some coffee from the pot on the counter. She wished, not for the first time, that she could slip away and crawl under the duvet.
Tiggy stared at her as if making an appraisal, and appeared to take in the depressed slope to her bones. ‘So what happened? He had a car crash?’
She felt her stomach flip at the question, asked so casually. It was a reminder of the life she had stepped away from, a life where poverty and reduced horizons meant bluntness was the most expedient way to get things done, a life where there was no time or room for shying away from the topic in hand, no matter how unpleasant. She had thought of this before; the many topics that were taboo in the world she now lived in: money, politics, religion, anything of an overly personal nature. She had learned to be contained and not break the taboos, but it was hard. In her old neighbourhood, in the world Tiggy still inhabited, people lived cheek by jowl and things were discussed at the bus stop or in the shop, and no one cared who heard. It mattered little; it wasn’t as if whoever might overhear was going to be shocked or even care. ‘You’ve got no money till Friday? How are you going to get to work?’ or ‘He was so drunk, he fell down and knocked out his two front teeth. The dog went over to lick him and I left them to it . . .’
‘Yes.’ She nodded, praying her sister wouldn’t ask for any more detail.
‘God, that’s terrible.’
She nodded. It was.
‘So how are you doing?’ Tiggy asked in a more deferential tone.
Nina shrugged. ‘Numb is the best way to describe it. One minute I’m fine, the next I’m a mess. It still feels like he might walk through the door any minute.’ She looked towards the hallway expectantly. ‘I think when I realise that it’s not going to happen, that’s when it will get very scary for me.’
Tiggy nodded. ‘It always seemed like he made you happy.’
‘He really did.’
She watched her sister reach into the top pocket of her denim jacket and pull out a packet of cigarettes.
‘You’ll have to smoke on the terrace.’ Nina tried to hide her distaste as she nodded towards the French doors at the back of the kitchen. The idea of having cigarette smoke inside her home was repulsive.
Tiggy did a double take and then smiled. ‘Sure.’
As Tiggy moved towards the doors, Declan ambled into the room. ‘Your mum died too, didn’t she?’ he asked Tiggy, his mouth drooping with sadness. The words cut with a sharp reminder not only of her other loss, but of the fact that her baby boy was trying to normalise this terrible occurrence; to be reassured that he wasn’t the only one to have suffered like this . . .
‘Yes.’ Tiggy nodded. ‘When I was very small. I was only seven and Nina here was even younger. And that’s when our dad moved us back to the UK, where he was from, and we lived with his parents while he went off to find work.’
‘Do you think your mum will see Daddy?’ he turned to ask Nina.
‘I think she might.’ She smiled.
‘Do you think they are in heaven now?’
Nina swallowed the rage that sat on her tongue, wanting to shout that she didn’t know how any just God could take away the man she loved. He had already taken her mother, when she was just a child. Instead, she drew breath and kept calm. ‘I do, my love. Do you?’
Declan nodded and played with a rubber band he had wrapped around his fingers. ‘Do you think that in heaven, your life is the same as it was when you were on earth?’
‘Mmm, that’s a good question. I’m not sure. What do you think?’
‘I’m not sure either, but I hope that people get to have a rest, either because they are very old and tired or because they were very busy, like Dad.’
‘Yes, he was very busy.’ She nodded, cursing the next wave of tears that hovered just below the surface.
‘I wish I could see him. I miss him so much.’ Declan suddenly cried, his little chest heaving.
‘Me too.’ She held him fast.
Every time Finn was mentioned it was like hearing the news for the first time. It made her heart stall and the pain was only intensified when she saw how her child suffered too.
Tiggy slowly pulled out a chair at the breakfast bar, as if wary of doing the wrong thing, and perched on it.
‘I think he’s in heaven with your mummy,’ Declan said, ‘and my other gran, Eunice, who was married to Hampy, my dad’s dad and our gun dog, Piper. And Mrs Nicholson’s husband Dick, who used to paint the lines on the cricket pitch. He had a heart attack at a barn dance.’
Tiggy stared at him, offering a slight nod of understanding. ‘Is that right?’ She toyed with the cigarette packet in her hand.
‘You shouldn’t smoke, you know,’ he sniffed. ‘It can make you get cancer and it gives you asthma.’ And with that, he walked off.
‘He’s so like you when you were a child. Confident, questioning. I remember Mamma saying you were only allowed five “whys” for everything she said, otherwise you would go on for infinity.’
Nina smiled, feeling the familiar flash of envy that Tiggy had been old enough to remember their mother, whereas her recollections were reduced to a scent, a shadow, an idea of the woman, leaving her to fill in the gaps.
‘But the main difference is that your kid is posh and you weren’t.’
Tiggy’s words snapped her to the present. Nina placed the hot mug of coffee in front of her sister and walked to the fridge to fetch the milk, bristling at her crass remark. She still felt that the poverty in which she had been raised marked her in some way, formed a grime that still sat on her skin, clung to her clothes and hung around her in a way that gave off noxious fumes perceptible to the more fortunate.
‘God, your fridge is enormous, it would fill the bathroom in my flat! How much does it cost to even fill a space that big? What would Gran say if she could see this place? Apart from finding fault, of course. She wouldn’t believe it, would she?’
‘Tig, are you going to comment on every aspect of my life? My hallway, my kid, my fridge? Because I don’t know if I can handle that right now.’ She hid her face inside the door and let her head hang forward.
Tiggy jumped down from the stool and again took her sister in her arms. Nina laid one arm half-heartedly across her sister’s back. It was at the same time awkward and familiar.
‘I’m sorry. I guess I just don’t know what to say. And I’m nervous being in this massive house on this day. And a bit nervous about being around you, if I’m being honest.’
This was a rare admission. Another time, on a different day, and her comment would have invited a response, but Nina didn’t have the energy. Not today.
‘Then say nothing. Okay?’ Nina said.
‘Okay.’ Her sister sighed.
Nina only felt semi-present during the rest of the wake, smiling and nodding in all the right places, reluctantly accepting hugs, and doing her best to graciously acknowledge the offers of help and support. It felt like an age until the last guests left. Nina did her best to hide her slight irritation at Finn’s sisters-in-law, Marjorie and Netta, who stumbled towards their waiting minibus, arms linked, whilst wailing their distress for all to hear. His brothers Michael and Anthony were already sitting with heads lolling, sprawled on the back seats. The relationship between Finn and his brothers was somewhat fractious. Things had deteriorated when their father, Hampy, was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. It had riled Finn that both his big brothers had quickly and readily agreed that the old man move in with him and Nina; after all, they had the space and the cash . . . She understood this, but Finn was angered on his dad’s behalf that they didn’t put up at least the show of wanting to help more. He thought his dad deserved better, and in this she felt he was right.
She thought about the first time she had been introduced to Hampy, as a shy eighteen-year-old. He had been running the office for Finn at the time and had raised his palms the moment she walked in the door. ‘Keep your distance, it’s always difficult for Finn when he has to introduce a young lady to his better-looking, funnier dad.’
‘I see. And have you been introduced to many?’ she’d asked quietly, with her hands folded together and her eyes fixed on the man who would become her father-in-law.
‘None like you,’ Hampy had replied without any prompting, his expression one of kindness. Finn had simply stared at her with a look that told her this was the truth.
The memory comforted her, and today she expected better than the wine- and whisky-quaffing antics that had led to this display from Finn’s family. It bothered her that the kids might overhear the caterwauling of their aunts.
‘What needs doing next? Give me a job,’ her sister instructed as she made her way in from the hallway, wiping her hands on her trousers.
Nina looked up, having quite forgotten that Tiggy was still around.
‘Thought I might hang around for a bit, help out, look after the kids, cook or something . . . I don’t know.’ Tiggy coughed, letting her arms rise and fall to her sides, her kindness tinged with shyness as they peered through the invisible walls that sat between them.
‘That’s so kind.’ Nina meant it. ‘Have you got time off work? Are you at the same place?’ The last time she knew, Tiggy worked in a local pub, The Bear, pulling pints and serving food, living above it in a small flat.
‘Yes, Dean, the owner, is good like that.’
Nina knew so little about her sister’s life, she didn’t know what to ask. Their estrangement had been gradual, a subtle slowing of contact over the years, until it had become sporadic and was now almost non-existent. It was hard for her to recall exactly how it had started, but certainly the cracks in their kinship were cleaved open when Nina left Southampton and moved in with Finn; they seemed to lose all they had in common when no longer bound by a common environment.
‘The dishwasher is on, I’ve collected stray glasses from the tables in the lounge and swept the terrace,’ Tiggy continued.
‘Thank you for that. And thank you for all your help today.’
‘No worries, I’ve cling-wrapped all the leftover food and put it in the fridge.’
Nina shook her head. ‘Oh, you shouldn’t have bothered, Tig. I’ll probably just throw it all away.’
‘That’s such a waste. So much of it hasn’t been touched.’
Nina stared at her. So long as everyone had had enough to eat, what did it really matter?
‘Do you want me to stay here tonight? I’m happy to.’ Tiggy folded a dishcloth and hovered.
‘No, Tig, but thank you for offering. I don’t want to keep you.’
Tiggy sniffed and reached for her cigarettes that nestled in the pocket of her jacket. ‘Good God, Nina, yes! Whatever happens, please don’t keep me from my life!’ She chuckled, and shook her head. She made her way out to the terrace.
Nina was tipping the dregs of wine bottles down the sink and rinsing them under the tap, ready for the recycling collection, when Tiggy came back inside.
‘I’ll get my bag and shoot off then.’
‘Okay.’
Tiggy leaned on the island and stared.
‘Why are you looking at me like that?’ She didn’t like the way she was being scrutinised.
‘Because you’ve changed, Nina.’
‘What do you mean, I’ve changed? Of course I have, my husband has just died!’
Tiggy shook her head. ‘No, before that . . .’
‘What are you talking about, Tiggy?’ She shook her head in exasperation.
‘Today is not the day to talk about it. Next time, maybe.’ She gave a tight smile. ‘I should get going. You know where I am if you need anything. I am here for you. I want to be the first person you call, always.’
Nina nodded at her sister, too sad and tired to properly consider her comment.
Tiggy left as she had arrived: abruptly and without any great fanfare.