Rachel’s parents insisted on driving her to the airport, and in truth she was glad of the opportunity to spend time in their company. She sat on the back seat like a child while her mum chatted, handed out mint humbugs and tutted at the poor level of driving skill of just about every other road user. This despite being a non-driver herself, a fact that no doubt encouraged her dad to wink at Rachel surreptitiously in the rear-view mirror. Her mum also acted as impromptu navigator, reading aloud the very large motorway signs informing them how far away they were from their destination along with the junction number for good measure. She also gave a regular and uninvited update on what speed her husband was travelling at, accompanied by either a pat on the thigh or a tut for good or bad performance.
‘Ooh, before I forget, this arrived for you, lovey.’ Rachel watched her mum reach into her handbag and pull out a brown envelope. She took it and smiled at the familiar slant of Cee-Cee’s handwriting.
‘It arrived yesterday, obviously sent before she . . .’ Her mum trailed off, embarrassed and still awkward on the topic of death.
Rachel nodded and put the letter in her pocket, deciding to read it later without distraction. Her mum continued to chat.
‘Peter would have come over to say goodbye before you set off, but he’s been very busy with work and the boys, and Julie’s dad had a turn last week so she’s been up and down to Stroud. Poor love.’
Rachel gave a nod, not wanting to discuss her useless brother with her mum, knowing that not only would it fail to change anything about his behaviour, but also aware that if she spoke her mind it might cause her mum upset. Neither, she knew, had the energy or the appetite for that, especially since her mum had given in to the storm that brewed inside her all those months ago. Rachel now understood more than ever that each of them had their own way of coping, and who was to say who was right? It was, as Cee-Cee had once told her, all about getting through each day and not trying to look too much further ahead.
‘So how long are you going for, exactly?’ Her mum twisted around and spoke through the gap between the front seats.
She was now no better at fielding the question no matter who asked it. ‘I don’t know, Mum. It depends on a lot of things.’
Depends on how it feels being back, what it’s like with James, the state of my marriage and how I cope . . .
‘Well, if you want picking up from the airport when you come home, just let us know and Dad’ll come down, won’t you, Brian?’
‘Of course. She knows that.’ He spoke plainly and she recalled the words he had spoken to her on one of their seven-mile walks of an evening: If I could have a wish, it would be to see your face every single day of my life over that breakfast table or it would be to turn the clock back to when you were small. She took in her dad’s broad shoulders on which she knew she could always lean.
‘You did seem very distressed about your housekeeper. I didn’t realise you were that close.’ Her mum’s tone suggested that her level of upset over Cee-Cee’s passing might be inappropriate or misplaced.
Rachel pictured her with her arms spread wide and Oscar running into them. Can I have bacon and pancakes, Cee-Cee?
You, my darling, can have whatever you want.
‘Calling her our housekeeper doesn’t really do her justice. She looked after Oscar; she looked after all of us. And she has been there for James when I wasn’t able. She was a massive part of our life in Bermuda, and the worst part is, I don’t know if I truly thanked her properly. I hope she knows how much we all loved her.’
‘I’m sure she did,’ her dad offered.
Rachel thought about the way Cee-Cee had confided in her: I’m not sad because of you . . . I lost my baby. He died.
I wish I’d had the courage to wrap you in a hug, Cee-Cee. I wish I’d held you tight and not felt so awkward, just like you did me when I needed it most. She cast the words out into the ether.
‘And what did they say at work about you up and leaving with so little notice?’ Rachel again noted the tone of disapproval in her mother’s question and her choice of critical words.
‘They were very understanding and said they would try to keep my job open.’ She thought of Glen. ‘But at the end of the day, Mum, I gotta do what I gotta do.’
‘Hmph, I suppose so.’ Jean adjusted her hands in her lap. ‘And you’ve just left that flat?’
‘Yes, there’s only a little over a month left on the tenancy, so I told the agent I’d let him know in a week or two if I want to re-let it or if he should start showing prospective tenants around.’
‘And you’ve left all your stuff there?’
Rachel gave a small laugh. ‘Well, if by “all my stuff” you mean Peter’s old mattress, a vase, a laundry basket, two mugs, a plate, some cutlery and a kettle, then yes, I have left all my stuff.’
‘Well, I never did.’ Her mum sighed. ‘And what about James, how does he feel about you coming back after all this time? Is he excited?’
Rachel wished she would stop with the questions, but this was quickly followed by a spike of guilt at the fact that she was again waving goodbye to her parents without a firm date for when she would be returning, or indeed if she were returning at all. She knew it was hard for them. I missed you, Rachel, each and every single day! And this alone was enough of a reminder for her to remain patient. ‘I expect he is nervous like me, Mum. A lot has changed and I think he will be on edge, but I’m sure it’ll be fine once we’ve seen each other. I don’t really know. I am trying not to think about it too much.’
‘It’ll all come good, babber, one way or another.’
‘I hope so, Dad.’ She sank down on the back seat and tried to imagine walking back into that house that she hadn’t seen for all of these months. Her stomach churned at the thought of it.
Her dad pulled up at the drop-off outside the departure terminal and she hugged him warmly.
‘You know we are here, don’t you?’
‘Yes, always, Dad. And thank you.’
Her mum cried and Rachel matched her tear for tear, not only at the prospect of not seeing her parents for a while, but also at what she might find on that little fishhook-shaped island in the North Atlantic that she had once so loved.
With Mr Bob secreted in her pocket, Rachel stowed her hand luggage and sat back in the chair to undertake a journey that she had done so many times before, but always with either Oscar, James, or both sat by her side.
The plane rose higher and higher, and she knew this time the journey felt different because everything was different. She remembered very little about the flight from Bermuda back to the UK, taken at the height of her grief. On autopilot, she had tried not to think too far ahead, looking at her feet and literally concentrating on taking step after step after step, until she fell into the arms of her dad. She thought back to that time, when she existed in a fog, realising that she had come a very long way, now able to spend whole hours in the day without dissolving into tears; she even managed to keep down a job. And she had found the courage to travel back to the place that held such dark memories. This was progress.
Rachel reached into her pocket and pulled out Cee-Cee’s letter. It felt somehow appropriate to be reading these words while the plane sped through the clouds, somewhere close to Cee-Cee’s heaven.
Dear Rachel,
I find myself in deep, deep thought.
It’s a strange thing, but unlike some, I never expected happiness.
I wished for it, longed for it even, but never felt that it was something I had any right to.
My daddy was the same. I remember my mom saying he ‘planned for the worst, expected the least and anything over and above that was considered a blessing.’
He smiled and hid for a living.
And I guess I followed in his footsteps.
While my mom worked shifts inside, cleaning the communal areas, he stood outside of the grand Fairmont Hamilton Princess Hotel on Pitts Bay Road.
Rachel paused from her reading and pictured the hotel, which she and James frequented, a little link to Cee-Cee’s heritage that she had been unaware of.
Day in and day out, rain or shine, he opened the grand door made of thick glass and wood, tipping his top hat, smiling at all who wafted by him either entering or leaving the five-star hotel.
I figured his surly demeanour at home was because he had used up all the smiles he had for that day on the pale, pretty guests who shimmied in and out of his doorway. But now I think it was just because he was plain exhausted. I visited him once, secretly, and stood staring from the other side of the street, hidden behind a cast-iron lamp post. Watching as my daddy, the man before whom I cowered and whose rare complimentary words dropped into my lap like shiny diamonds for me to gather up and save for rainy days, stooped low to open cab doors, head bowed. I watched as gaggles of chattering women looked the other way, as he hefted the door to and fro, leaving nothing for him – no ‘thank you’ or smile of good grace other than the cloud of expensive scent that hovered under his nose, a scent so rich with exotic promise, luxury and wealth that the very bouquet could sometimes reduce him to tears.
I watched my daddy’s hand shift stealthily to his thigh and rub, once, twice as with almost imperceptible timing he flexed the foot of the same leg. He had a bad hip, an injury sustained in the war effort when he slipped on rocks up at the Dockyard and smashed his bones. I knew that no amount of fancy livery sitting on his shoulders or high sheen to his shoes could compensate for the fact that he had wanted to be a somebody. A somebody who could walk confidently into the lobby of that very building and would be gracious enough to offer thanks, as an equal, to the man who held the door. A man who might take lunch there and know the name of the maître d’.
My daddy taught me a lot. Not only in what he said, but in what he didn’t say. I have his quietness, but not his bitterness. I learned that bitterness lies in your very centre and, like a pit in a plum pudding, can taint the whole thing. Forgiveness is better, sweeter.
You see, I too had plans. Not big plans or grand plans, but if I had dared to peek into my future or tried to imagine what lay ahead, I saw me baking for a family, caring for a family. I pictured warm arms around my shoulders at night and I saw my grandchildren sitting in their finery in the pew in front of mine in St Anne’s Church, Southampton Parish, where I could keep an eye on them whilst listening to their sweet songs of praise.
Yes, my dreams were all about family, my family. And I hope I do not overstep the mark when I say that I pray that this is what lies ahead for you, Rachel. I wish for you to find again the joy you had in being Oscar’s mommy.
Rachel again paused and took a sharp breath, it was simply too painful a thing to consider.
But for me it was not to be.
Life, Clara, Willard Senior and the Lord Jesus had other plans for me.
When the grief of losing my boy settled a little and the God Almighty took away some of my upset, I didn’t want anything nasty in my core. I figured I had enough to deal with without heaping anger and resentment for the state of my world on top of it. I was mindful of that pit in the plum pudding.
I think it was Albert Romsey who broke the news to me – yes, it was him who told me what many already knew and others surely suspected. All, that was, except me, who was preoccupied with my own troubles. I do remember laughing quite heartily as Albert spoke, and that laugh was as much a surprise to me as it was to him. Not that anything about his words on that day was in the least bit funny, no. I think it must have been nerves that got the better of me.
But I do remember as clear as day leaving church and blinking as my eyes adjusted to the bright, blue day, in contrast to the dark interior of St Anne’s. I shook Pastor Raymond’s hand and loitered on the dusty path of the graveyard, waiting for Grandma Sally, who liked to talk and hang back in the aisle. She always saw our days of worship as something very social.
Albert strolled over in a fashion that did nothing to suggest urgency, and I thought he was going to enquire how I was doing or talk about the weather. On reflection, I am glad he spoke the words directly to my face. I figured two gut punching notes were more than most had to deal with, and truly I don’t know how I would have handled a third.
Instead of chatting about the topics mentioned above and with his tone as bold and plain, he said, ‘I guess you already know that Willard lives with Clara, backatown.’ It was then that I laughed before cupping my hand over my nose and mouth. ‘My Clara?’ And it was only after that I realised what I had said – not ‘my Willard?’ I knew she was the greater loss, the one whose betrayal hurt me more because she was my best friend, and what kind of best friend, indeed what kind of friend, would hold me in such low regard as to go after the only man I loved? That still mystifies me and hurts me in equal measure. As for Willard? He was just a dumb thing, led around – too stupid to know when he had it good and too stupid to know what he had lost. But Clara? I thought she was better. And the very thought of her doing that to me, it still cuts me to the core.
You know, strangely, the knowledge that Clara and Willard lived in sin together only a mile or so away from where I laid my head on my pillow each and every night was hard to bear at first, but with my head and heart full of thoughts of Willard Junior, it quickly faded to the background of my mind, where it sat for many years.
I stayed about as far away from them both as I could. I saw Momma Eula a couple of times strolling up in St George around the harbour and we were pleasant to each other. But neither of us uttered the word that had been our glue for so many years. ‘Clara.’ Both of us, I would say, were relieved when we had made comment on the weather and I had agreed to pass on my very best wishes to Grandma Sally and we were able to part and carry on with our day. Looking back, I suppose Momma Eula might have had a slight shiver to her eye, as if shamed by the goings-on on her very doorstep, and I must confess to thinking she should have a shiver in her eye, because if it was me that had chosen to live in such a way within sight of my mommy’s house then she would surely beat me with the yard broom all the way down the street until I saw sense. But I had heard it said that Momma Eula never did know much about right and wrong.
I remember like it was yesterday the day I saw Willard Senior again. It was only a glance at first, one tiny sighting of a familiar shape and colour that told me he was close. I felt him before I saw him; as those of us who have ever loved will testify, it can be the way with someone whose heart has known your own.
I was walking around the Flatts Inlet when I spied him ahead of me on the path. I watched how he raised his hand and flicked his head towards a man fixing a fishing net on the shoreline. A gesture of greeting unique to him, part nod, part tilt of the chin, equally welcoming and dismissive; it was one his tricks. No matter that it had been over two years since the breath had caught in my throat and my heart danced an unusual rhythm; it was as if that time had been erased. Things I had quite forgotten were suddenly prevalent. I was once again engulfed in the heady scent of his aroma that seemed to dance back under my nose, carried on the shifting breeze. I remembered in that moment what it had felt like to be in love and to be loved, at a time when desire was wrapped in innocence and manifested in our desperate kissing wherever and whenever possible. The Lord knows I knew such contentment under the heavy, embroidered Portuguese shawl on the bed in Grandma Sally’s back bedroom and I lived with the promise of a rosy future. So close I could almost touch it. That future shone like an orb, always slightly out of reach, for me, at least.
I stood still on that path like prey unsure whether it had been spotted, hoping that if I stayed still enough, no one would notice me. Him included. I didn’t dare breathe. I looked down at my scruffy pinafore and cursed that I had not put on better clothes or combed my hair, not that I would have done either for him, no sir, it was all about me. As if alerted by my change in rhythm, a disturbance in the air around him, he turned and I saw his big brown eyes, which held more than a glint of fear, and Lord forgive me, but I was glad.
He walked quickly towards me and I looked left and right to see where I might run to, but I was hemmed in on both sides by boats and buildings. There was nowhere for me to go. I made my hands into fists and with my arms straight I kept them by my side, trying to still their shake. He stood not a foot from me, skinnier than I remembered and with the corner of his front tooth now chipped and gone. But otherwise he looked the same.
When he spoke, his words were a shock, softly delivered, and yet they hit me like an axe to the heart. Just three words. ‘Did he suffer?’
And without having to enquire, I knew who he spoke about and I got the feeling that not only had that question been sitting on his tongue for a good while, but that this thought might be bothersome to him, and in truth, yet again, I was glad. I didn’t forgive him, not one tiny inch, but it made me feel like someone else cared about my baby boy, and it made me feel like I was not going through it all alone, and both of these things were, at the time, mightily welcome.
‘I don’t think so,’ I answered as truthfully as I knew how, trying to rid my mind of my son’s stiff little limbs and that foamy spit at the side of his perfect lips.
‘Willard Junior, named after his daddy.’ He spoke with more pride than he had any right to express. ‘Time will heal. Time will heal.’ He held my gaze and swallowed, and then it was like he couldn’t stand to look into my eyes any longer and he looked down at his feet. ‘He was a fine baby,’ he whispered with a twist of emotion on his lying mouth.
Not that he lied then.
And try as I might and as much as I wanted to be brave, I could not stop my hot tears that sprang.
He spoke only the holy truth.
My baby boy was fine!
Oh Rachel, as God is my witness.
He really was.
And strangely, Willard was right. Time did heal, a little, enough for me to carry on, just . . .
Rachel folded the letter and placed it back in her pocket. She cried for the sadness her friend had endured and she cried for the loss of her. She thought of Willard Senior and wondered at his pain, she then immediately thought of James, who she would be seeing very soon.
It was a little under eight hours later that Rachel found herself in the line at passport control, snaking slowly through the arrivals of L. F. Wade International Airport. She had forgotten exactly what the high level of humidity felt like and also the fact that the air conditioning here was not the most effective. Sweat pooled on her back and chest. She felt the jump of impatience in her gut, knowing her husband was on the other side of the wall. And at this thought her stomach flipped, sending a bloom of nausea through her core. She was nervous. Hemmed in by tourists fanning their faces with their passports, she listened to the excited burble of anxious holidaymakers, the noise sat over their heads in a cloud of chatter.
She remembered her first time on the island and how she and James had driven in near silence with Oscar on the back seat, taken aback, stunned and on edge until they arrived at their new home and that glorious moment they stepped out on to the terrace off their bedroom. Didn’t I promise you paradise? he whispered in her ear, as Oscar ran around. Fearless.
Having grabbed her case from the carousel, she walked through the double doors and out on to the main concourse. She saw James instantly, programmed to recognise the shape of him in any crowd. The man she was married to looked a little different in real life from the person who lived in her mind. He was smaller and looked older. His muscles had shrunk, his skin a little greyer, looser, his stature diminished, no doubt by grief, and she suspected that, like her, he no longer had any interest in anything as superfluous as his appearance. He was in his jeans and a pale-blue shirt; a belt cinched in his waist and his cheeks were drawn. He needed a haircut. Her stomach rolled at the sight of his face, so familiar – the face she had loved for so much of her life. The father of her child.
There you are . . .
They both walked forward, meeting somewhere in the middle, and instantly they assumed the position that was as natural to them as breathing. James placed his arms around her shoulders and she looped hers around his lower back, resting her head on his chest. This was how they had danced their first dance at their wedding reception, encircled by the smiling faces of all the people who loved them. This was also how they loved, hugging at the start and end of the working day, and this was how they had grieved when James held her and lied, telling her everything was going to be okay.
She inhaled the scent of him and took comfort from it, and he used a single finger to draw her fringe from her face, as he often did.
‘Here you are.’
‘Yes,’ she whispered. ‘Here I am.’
The car made steady progress on the almost-empty roads and they were at ease with each other, comfortable. She had forgotten the freedom of movement on the island where traffic was tightly controlled and you were more likely to encounter mopeds than anything else. It was very different from the congestion of Bristol, where traffic sat nose to tail to travel no more than a few miles – the busy city where cyclists ducked and weaved in and out of buses and cars whose drivers honked their tinny horns in frustration. Pretty soon they were on the Causeway, a wide sweep of road with the pale ocean reaching out on either side with sparkling white yachts moored and bobbing on the swell, and before she knew it they were skirting Flatts Village.
‘God, James, I’d forgotten how beautiful it is. How blue.’ Rachel felt confused. Flames of joy leaped in her gut at being back in this most magical of settings, but then the memory of her life here in those last months swept away the joy, leaving something closer to horror in its place.
‘How’re your mum and dad?’
‘The same. You know.’ She looked at him and he smiled.
‘And your brother?’
‘Still a knob.’ She liked the way his mouth lifted as she used his phrase to echo her own sentiments.
‘I figured as much.’
‘Poor Cee-Cee. I am sad about her; so sad.’
She realised that her friend had been right when she recalled the loss of her parents and others she loved: While those deaths were sad, they were nothing compared to losing Willard Junior. He was my life, you see . . .
I understand this, Cee-Cee. I do.
James sighed. ‘Yes. I miss her. I wasn’t expecting it and I had very much got used to her being around.’
She spoke softly. ‘And the funeral is in three days?’
‘Yes. At St Anne’s.’
‘Do they know why she died?’
‘I think just old age, no one has said anything else.’
‘That’s a nice way to go, I think. To fall asleep in your own bed.’
She swallowed, inevitably thinking of their boy who was denied that chance; the punch of grief to her chest was just as powerful now as it had always been. Again she blinked away the uninvited images that crowded her mind, preferring instead to see her boy leaping from the diving board into the pool with a smile on his face and his nose peppered with freckles.
‘She was good to us and she has been wonderful to me these last few months. She’d leave me notes and supper and if I didn’t eat it, I’d get another note the next day, but that one a little more stern about my need to eat.’
‘I am grateful to her.’ She felt awkward, as if these words were somehow an admission of her dereliction of their marriage, hinting at the regret she felt at having abandoned him. Not that she wouldn’t do the exact same again; her choice to go away had come from a place far beyond reason. ‘She loved us,’ Rachel surmised, ‘and she loved Oscar.’
There, she had done it. She had said his name, broken the glass wall of anticipation as they waited to see who would do it and how.
‘She did.’ He swallowed. ‘I used to talk to her about him and it helped.’
‘I still find it hard to talk about him most of the time.’ It was a difficult, shameful admission.
‘I don’t so much. Cee-Cee said something – she said that if we stop talking about him, stop using his name, then not only will others not learn about him and think of him, but if no one says their name, that’s when someone really dies. It made me think.’
‘I’ll try harder to do that,’ she offered sincerely, knowing that to talk about him freely would be hard, but to let him disappear, unmentioned altogether? That would be far, far worse.
‘You don’t have to try, Rach; you don’t have to force anything. You just need to keep healing, one day at a time, and I bet you will find one day that you can talk about him openly and remark on things without it cutting you so deeply. It might actually make you feel happy to remember him and not sad.’
She nodded, not sure if this would ever be the case, but recognising the cruel irony that all aspects of her beautiful boy were overshadowed by the way he was lost. Terrible, terrible minutes, but mere minutes nonetheless, that had come to define seven whole years of life.
The car pulled up at the gates of the house on North Shore Road and Rachel felt a wave of familiarity and warmth at the sight of the place she had lived with her family. The pool and gardens were magnificent when seen through eyes that had been absent for some time and were now more used to surveying the grey damp pavements of a crowded city.
James grabbed her case and pushed open the front door. She was quite taken aback, having forgotten the vast proportions of the house. She pictured the narrow hallway of her parents’ little house in Yate, and how to pass each other you had to breathe in and skim the wall. She was also struck by how quiet it was, cool despite the heat of the day, and strangely empty without Oscar’s yells in play or the hum of his favoured cartoons providing the background noise to their lives. And now there was no Cee-Cee opening and closing doors, humming a hymn or singing loudly when she thought no one could hear.
A house of ghosts.
She noted the swallow to his throat and realised that there was the awkward matter of where she would sleep. It was as sad as it was jarring that they, as a married couple, had reached this point where it could not be assumed that she would take up her space in their marital bed.
‘Thank you.’ She held his eyeline. ‘I could never have imagined feeling this way with you.’
‘What way?’ He hovered on the wide bottom stair, gripping the curve of the bannister with his free hand.
Rachel shrugged and folded her arms across her chest. ‘Like I’m meeting someone I don’t know very well, like going to stay with a distant relative and nervous about being around. Worried that we might not have anything to say to each other. Whether it’s okay to make a coffee, kick off my shoes; worried about where I might sleep.’
She saw his crestfallen expression and the way his whole body seemed to fold. He took a step back and abandoned the suitcase.
‘Please don’t feel that way.’ He reached for her and pulled her into his chest once more. ‘Please, Rachel. You are all I have left and the thought that you feel that way is just about more than I can stand. This is your home and you are my wife!’ His voice caught in his throat.
‘I can’t help it.’ Her voice was muffled against his chest. She felt the desperation in his grip and it threatened to overwhelm her. It was a hard thing to accept, but she realised that in the months in which she had been gone, she had got used to being without him.
‘I know.’ He kissed her scalp. ‘And we are strange. Everything is strange.’
‘I still feel like I am only just hanging on,’ she began, hoping he might understand that she was still so fragile, messed up. ‘In some ways I’m a lot better than I was, but it’s not that I am healed; it’s just that I am better at blending in with what other people expect. I’m better at hiding my hurt.’
She felt him nod his understanding.
‘Come upstairs with me,’ he whispered. Her body stiffened and he clearly felt it. ‘I . . . I just want to hold you and I just want you to hold me.’
He reached for her hand and led her up the stairs. They walked slowly, both instinctively pausing as they passed Oscar’s bedroom.
‘Can I look inside?’ She bit her lip, scared.
‘Of course you can.’ Again he looked hurt that she felt the need to ask.
He went ahead and opened the door. Rachel stepped inside and was pleased to see that everything was exactly how she had left it, how Oscar had left it. Cee-Cee had kept it clean, tidy and aired, and again she threw her thanks out into the universe. She walked to the chest of drawers and opened up the third drawer from the bottom where all his pyjamas were folded neatly and sat side by side, awaiting a warm little body that would languish in them on the sofa, with hair mussed from sleep, kicking his bare feet and eating cereal by the handful. She placed her hand inside and let her fingertips caress the soft cotton that had known the feel of his skin.
‘I miss him,’ she managed through her tears.
It was the sound of James’s gulping sob that caused her to turn. Rachel reached out without too much planning or forethought, and the couple tumbled on to their son’s bed, where they held each other fast, as if the feel of the other were the thing that might help them breathe as they cried. They stayed huddled together on the narrow space where their boy had lain. Rachel pictured Oscar pulling the duvet over his chin as she or Cee-Cee read him stories, tucked him in and soothed him after a bad dream. They lay entwined until sleep claimed them.
When she woke in Oscar’s room on Oscar’s bed, her limbs felt leaden. She had slept deeper and more soundly than she had in months and it took a while for her to fully come to. With a sense of confusion she felt the shape of her husband against her. Awkwardness fired through her as he stirred into wakefulness.
‘I still think sometimes he will come home. I still wait for someone to wake me up and tell me it was all a horrible dream.’ She spoke aloud without thinking.
James’s lack of comment left her feeling hollow. Embarrassment fuelled the anger that surged inside her; she had wanted him to agree with her, to make her feel like she wasn’t being ridiculous. His silence had quite the opposite effect.
Sliding her legs from under his, she trod the hallway and walked into their bedroom, and it was as if she had never been away. Her tissue box and tube of hand cream sat by her bedside lamp on the nightstand and her bathrobe hung on the hook on the back of the door. She ran her finger over the counterpane, laundered by Cee-Cee, and again felt the lack of her presence.
Time had stood still here, and this was a source of further confusion. She felt happy that her presence had lingered here in the house where Oscar had lived, but also a little deflated, because if time had stood still, had she really moved on at all?
Rachel unlocked the balcony door and stepped out on to the patio that had been her refuge and her prison after Oscar had gone missing. She stood by the glass wall on the far end and ran her hands along the rail, staring out over the wide expanse of blue. And it was as if time had been erased. She let her eyes dart hungrily from the white crest of waves to the dip and roll of the water with its myriad shadows, each movement in her mind offering up a hundred possibilities. It was like madness, a fixation. And it instantly and powerfully drew her in. She walked backward until her calves felt the steamer chair and sank down on to the cushions, and that was where she sat with her elbows on her knees and her eyes trained on the horizon, watching and praying for the impossible.
Where are you, my little boy? Where did you go? The questions that she had managed to bury for so many months came flying back into her mind, and this alone made her question whether it had been wise to return.
She heard James’s soft tread, as he watched her from the doorway.
‘Rachel?’
‘Yes?’ she asked without turning her head.
‘Are you . . . are you going to stay up here?’
‘Yes.’ She nodded and shifted in the seat until she felt more comfortable. ‘Just for a little bit.’
‘I’ll go and get some drinks.’
‘Sure.’
James returned and sat in the chair next to her. He handed her a Diet Coke.
‘When you were away, I used to sit here and talk to you as if you were sat right there next to me.’
‘Did I answer you?’ She took a sip.
‘No, Rach, I’m not crazy!’
They both laughed, settling back in the chairs, and in that second they broke through the crust of grief, and the hands of the people they were before reached up through the darkness. A happy reminder that they lurked, waiting.
‘I have quite liked being by myself. The little flat is empty, soulless really, but it’s quiet and sort of cocoons me and that’s what it’s been like for me, hidden away hoping to transform.’ She spoke openly and was glad of the chance to do so.
‘Transform into what?’ He took a glug of beer from his bottle.
‘I’m not sure.’ She gave it some thought. ‘I know I can’t go back to the person I was. I know too much hurt for that to be possible.’
‘Yep.’
‘I guess I want to transform into someone who knows how to navigate their life through the fog of grief. Cee-Cee told me that.’
James leaned over and clinked his bottle against her cold can of pop. ‘To Cee-Cee!’
‘To Cee-Cee,’ she echoed, and they both drank.
‘Are you transformed yet?’ he asked, sincerely.
‘Not yet.’ She kept her voice small. ‘Not yet.’
It hadn’t been so odd after all. She had simply, when night fell, showered and climbed between the sheets, as she had done thousands of times before. It had been nice to lie next to James once more as tiredness crept over her, company at this the loneliest of hours, reminding her of a time when the world had been less topsy-turvy and how she liked being part of a couple. It had always felt like the two of them against the world – that was, until the world turned on them and took away their happy.
They lay in the darkness, side by side, and listened to the tree-frog symphony, which she had quite forgotten.
‘I bumped into Alison in Lindos. I told her about Cee-Cee and that you were coming home.’
Rachel pictured the woman who had stood in her hallway with other mums from school and her face reddened at the memory of that day when her mind had surfed on the chaos of loss.
‘She sent you her love and said that she would love to see you. She’s called a couple of times, as has Daisy’s mum. I knew you probably wouldn’t want to see her or anyone, but I am passing it on anyway.’
She noted the ease with which he used the word ‘home’ and felt a flicker of concern that he might not fully understand that this might only be a visit. ‘Home’ might actually be the place where she owned nothing more than a mattress on the floor of a rented flat and a job in a coffee shop.
‘Was Hank with her?’ She almost dared not ask, only able to picture the boy, her son’s best friend, laughing with Oscar in the pool or the two of them, chuckling with milk moustaches, snaffling cookies from the plate in the kitchen.
‘Yes. He’s getting tall, I thought.’ James sounded wistful.
She reached under the cover and found his hand, knitting her fingers with his, taking comfort from the warmth of his palm as she tried not to get weighed down with thoughts of how Oscar would forever be a little over four feet tall. In every sense, Hank and the rest of his peers would outgrow him.
‘She wrote you a lovely letter too; I put it with all the others in the garage. There are lots of them, Rach.’
‘You kept them?’
Throw them away! All of them!
‘I did.’ He released her hand and leaned up on his side with his head propped up. ‘I only glanced at them briefly when they first arrived, but a couple of months ago I decided to read them properly and it was . . .’
‘It was what?’
‘It was really comforting to read all the things that people thought about Oscar, and it made me happy that he had had such an impact on so many people’s lives. It made it feel like less of a waste.’
Rachel felt the snort of laughter leave her nose. ‘Christ, they must be some bloody letters and cards, because I can’t see his loss as anything but a complete tragedy – a great big waste of all that he could have been. And it’s not fair.’
‘No. It’s not fair. I agree. But they helped me, nonetheless.’
‘Well, good for you, James.’
‘What, that makes you angry now? Listen to your tone! The fact that while you had fucked off to England and I was all alone, I took comfort from the kind words written by people who were trying to help – to reach out to us in our hour of need. That’s a reason to sound a little off with me? Jesus fucking Christ!’
‘Why does this have to be about you?’ she cried. ‘Why can’t this be about how bloody unfair it is that my son was taken from me?’
‘From us!’ he corrected. ‘From us! And that’s kind of the problem here, Rachel. Or at least one of them. You are so wrapped up in your own grief, as if you are the only one who loved him and the only one who has had her life ripped apart, but you are not! You are not.’
‘I am his mum!’ she shouted.
‘And I am his dad.’
They were quiet for a moment or two, looking at each other, both at a loss as to how to quash the flame of emotion that seemed to coat their interactions. The moonlight painted stripes of light on the bed linen and the cicadas chirped in time to the beat of their fractured hearts.
The bed felt tiny.
The room airless.
‘There is no one else in the whole wide world who has the power to make me feel this way.’ James spoke into the semi-darkness. ‘I find you infuriating and you make my blood boil and I want to fix you, help you, protect you and run from you, all at once.’
‘Which is the strongest feeling?’ she asked with genuine curiosity.
He sighed and lay back on the pillows. ‘Truthfully? I don’t know, but I do know that whilst I missed you – and I did – I find your anger, your closed-off nature and your judgment almost too hard to deal with.’
‘I can’t apologise for that.’ She knew he spoke the truth, but as she had said already, she was not yet transformed.
‘No.’ He sighed. ‘I guess you can’t. But don’t take it out on me, Rachel. Because that’s not fair.’
‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered. ‘I am. I find it so hard. My reactions are more like reflex than thought-out response.’ Her tears beat the familiar path to her pillowslip.
Suddenly, James switched on the bedside light and reached for his dressing gown.
Rachel sat up. ‘What are you doing?’
‘Wait here.’ He spoke as he left the room and she heard his footsteps on the stairs.
By the time he made his way back up, Rachel was agitated. He carried a pale-blue weekend bag with only one handle that she recognised as one she had thrown out some time ago. She wondered if he were packing to leave and felt the rise of panic in her gut at the prospect of him leaving her alone in this house of ghosts. Was this what it felt like for you when I left? She laid her hand flat on her stomach.
James placed the bulky bag on the mattress and sat behind it. He wasn’t leaving. Instead, he dipped his hand into it and pulled out a handful of white envelopes, loose cards and folded letters. ‘I want you to read some of these. They helped me and I think they will help you.’
‘I don’t want to.’ She shook her head and pulled the duvet up to her chin, in the way Oscar used to when he too was trying to keep the monsters at bay.
‘Please, Rachel!’
She shook her head again and sank down on the mattress with a bolt of unease firing through her very core. ‘I don’t want to,’ she whispered.
‘Why not?’
‘Because.’
‘Because what?’ he pushed.
‘Because it makes it real! It makes it so real and I am afraid it will drag me back to that moment, that second when you were looking up at me from the galley and you had two mugs of coffee in your hands and—’
She watched as he balled a fist and punched the leather bag, sending it flying on to the floor as the loose mail scattered where it fell. James stood and left the room, closing the door behind him.
And just like that, she was once again back to sleeping alone.
The two tiptoed around each other as they showered and dressed for the day ahead. They were courteous, but it was the civility of strangers. It cut her deeply and disturbed her psyche that they had come to this.
Where did we go, James? How did we crumble so easily without resistance?
She found the prospect of being in a church harder than she had imagined. She knew that some people – Cee-Cee included – took comfort from their faith and all that it might offer by way of the promise of reunion. But for her, anger – fanned by recent discord with James – was still crisp in her veins, and if there were a God, her question would be: What kind of God would take her little boy, smash her marriage and leave her feeling like this and why? Why?
Even the journey there made her heart race; there was something about attending a funeral that she feared – worried that witnessing the act of finality might be more than she could handle. Her legs trembled and as James drove along the South Road she considered asking him to turn left into the Reefs’ car park, where they could sit out on the deck they loved, in a place studded with memories, high above the rocks, and remember Cee-Cee in their own way. But of course she didn’t.
Today was not about her; it was about paying respects to the woman who had made their lives wonderful and whom Oscar had dearly loved and who had offered wise, wise words in her darkest hour. The woman who had taken up the reins and cared for James when he had needed it most.
Rachel looked at the bend in the road that came up from Horseshoe Bay and pictured young Cee-Cee walking along the verge in her cotton dress with her hand inside Willard’s, feeling as if the whole wide world lay in her palm. This image alone was enough to make tears spring to her eyes.
James parked on Church Road, opposite the low, white chapel of St Anne’s, which was simple and stunning. The sun glinted from the walls and it shone like a jewel against the backdrop of turquoise sky. Set on a slight hill with its graveyard snaking out towards the sea, with each plot immaculately tended, she thought it was the most perfect resting place for the woman who had spent every Sunday of her life worshipping here and who would forever rest in a piece of land within sight of the palm trees and the ocean of her island.
The inside of the building was just as she had imagined it from Cee-Cee’s letters – cool and calming, with whitewashed walls and sweet-smelling cedar-wood pews. A high stained-glass window sat behind the altar, and candles flickered at either end of the sacred table. It was simple and uncluttered and yet no less atmospheric for that. Rachel could picture Grandma Sally in her floppy linen hat and Pastor Raymond standing at the front, preaching his messages of love and forgiveness, and she saw Cee-Cee stealing glimpses at Willard Templeton across the pews.
Slow organ music was playing and when the choir, dressed in white, began to sway with a low hum of accompaniment, Rachel felt the hairs on the back of her neck rise. Their clear, sweet sound rose up and danced around the rafters, falling like heavenly dust to lie on her shoulders. She and James took seats at the back of the church and watched as family, friends and neighbours of Cee-Cee filed in, the men wearing suits and dark ties and the women in dresses and hats. The floral displays were simple, various white flowers threaded with full-headed blooms of brightly coloured purple and pink hibiscus that looked and smelled wonderful. Hibiscus blooms full of colour quite unlike the ones that had wept away their very shade for the life of a baby boy.
James leaned over and whispered, ‘Are you okay?’
She nodded her response, grateful for his attention and aware that she was crying with her eyes fixed on the altar. The priest in long white robes and with his hands pressed together in prayer walked in, and the music changed tempo to a more sombre piece. The choir sang loudly as Cee-Cee’s pale wood coffin was brought in on the shoulders of six men, followed by a small troupe of women. All were crying, but none as loudly as a big-boned woman who walked along behind; she made more noise than all the others put together. She clutched her own single hibiscus bloom and swiped it under her nose, as if it were smelling salts. Rachel watched, fascinated, drawn to the bent old man who walked by the woman’s side, patting her on the back and whispering, ‘There, there, Clara. There, there. Time will heal. Time will heal.’
Rachel stared at the two who had shaped her friend’s life, who had stolen her happiness and her chance of a family. She heard Cee-Cee’s voice in her ear.
‘My Clara?’ I knew she was the greater loss, the one whose betrayal hurt me more because she was my best friend . . .
She took comfort from James standing so close and found it hard to listen to much of what was being said; her eyes were fixed on the narrow box that sat on the trestle by the altar, decked with white oleander and more bright-toned hibiscus.
Bones. Just bones.
Her mind inevitably wandered to the matter of death, and in her head, quite clearly, she heard Cee-Cee’s voice, warm and calming as it always had been: I am sad; sadder than sad and I won’t ever stop. Not till I see him again in heaven. Because that is what I believe – that when you get to heaven, you get to gaze upon the thing you loved the most . . .
I wish I believed that, Cee-Cee. I wish I believed in your God who could help me make sense of this nightmare in which I live. I wish I thought that one day I might go to a place called heaven and find my boy waiting for me. Because if I believed those things, I might not mind waking up every day. I might not still dream on occasion of jumping from a great height, knowing that peace awaits me at the bottom . . .
Only when James reached over and held her hand tightly did she realise that violent, gulping sobs had left her body, drawn from a place beyond her consciousness.
The service drew to a close and the family and loved ones made their way out to the churchyard. Rachel blinked as her eyes adjusted to the bright, blue day, in contrast to the dark interior of St Anne’s. She was loitering on the dusty path of the graveyard when Clara and Willard walked out of the church, part of the wider crowd that moved slowly, and came to a standstill in front of her.
Rachel swallowed the many, many things she wanted to say to the woman whose image she had held in her mind for so long. This old lady, however, with tears streaking her skin, bore very little resemblance to the flighty, loud young thing that she had imagined.
Rachel smiled and caught her eye. ‘I was Cee-Cee’s friend,’ she began.
Clara looked at her. ‘She was my friend too,’ she managed through a mouth contorted with sadness. Rachel saw Willard reach for her hand.
‘Cee-Cee taught me so much.’ Rachel spoke softly, and Clara and Willard seemed to tune out the hubbub all around and listen to her words. ‘She taught me that bitterness lies in your very centre and, like a pit in a plum pudding, can taint the whole thing. She said forgiveness was better, sweeter.’
Clara cried noisily and searched Rachel’s face. ‘She said that?’
‘She did.’
Clara scrunched up her lace-edged handkerchief and blotted her eyes. ‘I miss her. I have always missed her. She was my very best friend.’
‘I know.’ Rachel smiled. ‘And you were hers.’
Rachel and James took their leave, having paid their respects to the woman to whom they owed so much.
‘Who was the lady you were talking to?’
‘That was Clara. She and Cee-Cee were like sisters until Clara abandoned her – jealous, I think. Terrible. There were times in Cee-Cee’s life when she really needed her friend and Clara just wasn’t there.’
‘Thank goodness for Vicky, eh?’ He smiled.
‘Oh God, I’m thankful for her every day.’ She pictured her friend and missed her, wondering if she was at rewer. She felt an unexpected jolt of longing for that life far from here.
‘And to think it used to be me you thanked God for.’ He let this trail.
‘Trust me, James, I don’t thank God for much these days. Don’t take it personally.’
‘I am your husband. Bit hard not to take it personally.’
Rachel looked out of the window, feeling his words like a weight about her shoulders.
‘I feel exhausted.’ James changed tack as he pulled off his tie and threw it on to the back seat.
‘Me too. That wasn’t easy, was it?’
‘No.’ He looked ahead at the winding South Road. ‘But I thought the service was good; there was a completeness to it, a feeling of closure that we haven’t had.’
She sensed he was emboldened, able to speak without holding her eyeline.
‘I guess that’s part of the transformation I am still waiting on. Just the idea of a service . . .’ She shuddered. ‘I couldn’t do it, James.’
They drove home in near silence and waited for the electric gates to whir open upon their return.
Once inside, the two made their way into the kitchen and James headed straight for the fridge. ‘I don’t know about you, but I feel like a drink.’ He reached for the bottle of tonic and grabbed the gin from the cupboard before filling two tall glasses with ice, a wedge of lime and generous amounts of Tanqueray. He handed her a glass and they sat at the table where they had eaten hundreds of meals prepared for their family with love by Cee-Cee.
Rachel looked at the chair in which Oscar used to sit, kicking his legs back and forth.
Don’t kick the chair, Oscar! It used to drive her crazy.
I don’t want pasta! Can I have ice cream?
No! What do you think this is, a restaurant? Just eat the pasta!
I don’t like it!
Then go to bed; how about that? I have had a very long day and I can’t be doing with you being so fussy, not tonight. Go to bed!
‘To Cee-Cee!’ James raised his glass and pulled her from the painful memory.
‘To Cee-Cee.’ She did likewise and they both sipped.
‘I liked the church. It wasn’t too stuffy, felt nice.’
‘Yes, it did,’ she agreed, taking another sip of her drink and liking the clunk of the ice cubes.
‘I didn’t know her name was Cecilly.’
‘I did.’ She sipped. ‘It’s a sweet name. She told me that in one of her letters. They really are something, James; you should look at them.’
He laughed and shook his head. ‘So what should I say to that? Refuse to read them? Hide under the duvet? Stomp my disapproval?’
She knew he referred to the blue weekend bag stuffed with words of condolence that he had no doubt secreted back in the garage.
‘It’s completely different!’ She shook her head, in no mood to bicker with him.
‘Yep,’ he agreed, tapping the table with his fingertips. ‘I guessed it might be. Just like a funeral for Oscar would be completely different.’ He took another slug of gin.
‘No, no, James!’ she cut in. ‘Please don’t start with that again.’ She felt the rise of terror in her throat at the very idea of a funeral, a service of any kind . . .
I couldn’t do it! I couldn’t let them bring an empty box into the room – or worse, a full one. I don’t want to imagine my son’s bones lying in it. I couldn’t bear to hear other people crying who didn’t love him as much as me. I can’t show my sadness in such a public way. I would crack. I would break . . .
James stared at her. ‘Rachel,’ he began, his tone one of exasperation, and she got the feeling that all that had been simmering beneath his skin for the last few months was finding its way out of his mouth, possibly lubricated by the liberal consumption of gin. ‘We can’t keep having this conversation.’
‘I agree. Neither of us wants to have this conversation. So let’s not.’ She knocked back the contents of her glass and went to the fridge to mix a refill. ‘Do you want another one?’ She lifted the bottle.
‘Yes. Yes, I do.’
She heard the tension in his tone.
Three large gins on an empty stomach were what it took for her to feel a sense of calm wash over her. It had been a while since she had felt a drunken haze coat her thoughts and actions, and it wasn’t wholly unpleasant. James sat in the chair, similarly slumped.
‘I am a bit drunk, James.’
‘Me too.’ He smiled at her.
‘I hate arguing with you.’
‘Me too, but you drive me crazy! Life is so shit right now. It’s just shit.’
‘I know.’ She hated the tears that fell, taking the edge from her drunken happy.
‘I heard what you said to that woman – Cee-Cee’s friend, Clara,’ he whispered, his words spiked with emotion. ‘And you’re right, forgiveness is better, sweeter. We need to forgive ourselves. We need to understand that it was an accident, a terrible accident, or what will have been the point of Oscar’s life? I have spent every waking moment torturing myself with all the things I might have done or could have done, and I know it needs to stop. It needs to stop now. We need to celebrate the seven short but glorious years we had with him. He was amazing, wasn’t he? He was amazing and he was our boy.’
‘He was.’ She sobbed.
‘And you know, it was his boisterousness, his inquisitive mind, his love of nature, all the things we gave him – those were the traits that took him off the boat. All those things made him special and we wouldn’t have changed one single thing about him, would we?’
She shook her head. ‘Not one.’
‘I envy you, Rachel. When you were under the water you said you saw him. What wouldn’t I give to see him one last time, just to get a glimpse of his little face.’ He looked out of the window towards the ocean.
‘It was wonderful. But I don’t think it was real,’ she whispered.
‘I know, Rach, but that doesn’t matter, does it?’
She shook her head. James was right. It mattered little whether it was real or a dream or the imaginings of a mind full of desperate longing; the result was the same: it was the start of a new dawn of healing. Oscar had said goodbye and he had looked . . . happy.
‘I will carry that image in my heart for eternity.’ Rachel turned to her husband. ‘I know I could have been a better mum and that will haunt me, always. And I am truly sorry for what I nearly put you through that day, when I jumped.’ She shook her head; even the memory of that day was painful.
‘No, no, Rachel, you don’t have to apologise to me and never doubt that as a mum, you were wonderful! The things I said before were rooted in anger, spite, wanting to hurt you because I was hurting and I was fucked up. I didn’t mean it.’
‘It felt like you meant it.’
‘I am sorry. Please, I am sorry.’
‘I’m sorry too,’ she apologised. ‘I’m sorry, James, that I was dismissive of your pain, unfeeling about your hurt.’ She shook her head. ‘I couldn’t help it!’
‘I know. I know.’ He smiled briefly, as if glad of the acknowledgement, his mouth contorted with tears.
‘It was like I had been stuffed into this small, dark box and all I could think about was how much I hurt and how scared I was and there was no room for anyone or anything else. And no one could hear me and no one could help me.’
‘I could hear you. I could hear you, Rach, but you’re right, I couldn’t help you. I wanted to . . .’
‘I know.’ She stood and slipped into the chair next to his at the table. Leaning across, she rested her head on his chest, feeling his chin on her head. It felt nice. They both let their tears fall, unabashed. ‘We are different shapes now, aren’t we? I don’t even know if we fit together any more, not like we used to. I have a piece missing. An Oscar-shaped piece; a reminder that I will never be whole but also that he was a part of me, a part of you!’
‘Yes.’
She felt him nod his agreement.
‘He was the best part of me, James, and you’re right about forgiving ourselves. I feel guilty about the smallest of things. They keep me awake.’
‘Like what?’
She sniffed. ‘It sounds ridiculous . . .’
‘Please tell me.’
She sat forward and tucked her hair behind her ears. ‘I can’t stop thinking about this one night when he wanted dessert but hadn’t eaten his pasta. He wanted ice cream and I said no. I worry over and over about the fact that he might have gone to sleep hungry and I ask myself, what would have been the harm in letting him have a bowl of bloody ice cream? I wish I hadn’t shouted at him and I wish I had taken him up a bowl of ice cream.’
She looked up at the sound of James laughing. It started as a wheeze and developed into a full-blown chuckle. ‘Rach!’
‘What? It’s not funny!’
‘No, Rachel, you don’t understand.’ He leaned forward and held her arm, until his laughter subsided. ‘That night, I . . . I waited until you were in the bath and I took him up a big bowl of ice cream!’
‘You did?’ She felt the creep of a smile across her face.
‘Yes!’ He nodded. ‘A bloody great big bowl of ice cream with marshmallows and chocolate sauce and all the trimmings, and I sat on the bed with him while he wolfed it down! He didn’t go to sleep hungry. He went to bed chuckling, with a tummy full of ice cream and a face smeared with chocolate sauce.’
‘I can’t believe it! You have no idea.’ Rachel shook her head, feeling the worry lift from her shoulders.
‘I think that’s how we parented, how we did it – together, filling in the gaps, giving him what he needed when he needed it. He was so loved.’
‘By us and by Cee-Cee,’ she reminded him.
‘Yes. He had all three of us – a tag team.’
She smiled at the image. ‘I feel . . .’
‘What?’ he coaxed.
‘I feel lighter.’ It was the only word she could think of to describe this new state.
‘Yep. Lighter. I know what you mean.’
‘Not better, not brilliant, not even happy, but lighter.’
James nodded. ‘And that will do for now.’
‘Yep.’ She took a deep breath. ‘That’ll do for now. I love you, James.’ The phrase flew automatically from her mouth. It was instinctive but no less true for that.
His instant tears were quite overwhelming. He swiped at his eyes with his fingertips. ‘It’s been a long time since you told me that, and I supposed you had stopped feeling that way and I understood. I did. Even though it was hard for me because I love you so much. I do.’
Rachel looked at him and saw the outline of a man who reminded her so much of someone she used to know. He looked like the man married to the girl who loved life, the girl who flung her arms around his neck in the shimmering water of Jobson’s Cove and kissed his face, joy bursting from her with all that her wonderful life promised.
She is still there somewhere, cocooned . . . she thought, as her eyelids fell and she knew it was time to tread the stairs for bed.
The house seemed warmer when she woke. Rachel had stirred in the night and noticed she slept with her leg cast over her husband’s and it made her happy, this unexpected and comforting contact. It was still early and the sun streamed through the windows. The scent of coffee wafted from the kitchen. She slipped her arms into her robe and walked down the wide staircase.
The pale-blue leather weekend bag that she had last seen punched to the bedroom floor now sat on the tabletop. James had brought it in from the garage – she had to admire his tenacity. Rachel pulled up a seat and dipped her hand in, withdrawing a clutch of envelopes, cards and letters. She took a deep breath and opened a card with a picture of a tree on the front.
‘Everyone in class three will miss Oscar’s smiling face. We have made a memory tree and every pupil wrote a special memory and hung it on the branches. Keeping you in our thoughts and prayers. Mrs Anderson.’ She read aloud.
The next card was plain, white with a small gold cross, the message short and sweet: ‘Thinking of you, Mary and Ken Braithwaite.’ She didn’t know who Mary and Ken Braithwaite were, but was grateful they had taken the time and trouble to write. Rachel kept going through her tears and her smiles, reading and absorbing all the wonderful messages of love and support for her and James and Oscar.
Her husband had been right; it did help. To know that her little boy had touched so many lives in his short time was a comfort. She fingered a note from Hank’s mum that said simply, ‘Hank wanted me to tell you that he cries when he thinks of Oscar, but then he laughs because he remembers something funny that Oscar did. I thought I should let you know.’ Rachel smiled. ‘That’s perfect, Hank. Thank you.’
Next she pulled out a letter, folded into three, but without an envelope. As she opened it James appeared and took in the pile of cards and notes. ‘How are you doing?’
‘I’m doing okay.’ She looked at her newly showered husband and thought he looked younger than he had of late, as if well rested. He smiled at her and she knew him so well that this smile told her that this was going to be a good day. It felt as if some of the mist that had surrounded them had lifted and it was a welcome feeling.
‘Coffee?’
‘Yes, please.’
‘You are reading them. I’m glad, Rach.’
She nodded, opening the letter; she laid it flat on the table. Reading quietly to herself, she let her eyes follow each word written in blue ink with a flourish, displaying beautiful penmanship that she instantly recognised.
Dear Mr and Mrs Croft, Rachel, James,
I write because sometimes I find the words that get knotted in your throat are smooth and ordered when you put pen to paper. I see your loss. I feel your loss and it takes me back to a time when I did not feel life was worth living. A time when my pain was such that I prayed for the angels to take me under their wing and relieve me from my burden. Of course they did nothing of the sort, their message loud and clear: Who are you, Miss Symmons, to think you can command the angels? So I lived a half-life. A quiet life. Until I met Oscar. He didn’t care for my sadness. He didn’t have time for my reflection, no sir. He ran at me and took my hand and pulled me from the gloom. He made me chase around that house playing games. He brought me joy, that little boy who loved me. He made me love life again! All by loving him. You see, I thought I had been denied the chance to raise a child, but I had not. That chance was given to me at a time in my life when I had no right to expect it. Not that the joy was any less for that. So I thank you both, and I thank you for Oscar, and as God is my witness, if I can hold his hand and ease his path to heaven then that will give my life a meaning greater than I could ever have dreamed. With love to you, amen.
Cee-Cee
‘Oh my! Oh, James!’ she cried.
‘Cee-Cee’s letter.’ He nodded his understanding as he placed the coffee mug on the table. ‘I wanted to talk to her about it, thank her, but it never felt like the right moment.’
‘I’m sure she knew how you felt, James.’
‘Hope so. Drink up,’ he urged. ‘It’s a beautiful day and we should go and get some fresh air.’
‘I’ll go shower.’ She finished her coffee and made her way upstairs.
If they weren’t out on Liberté it had always been their Sunday tradition to walk the shoreline before the heat of the day took hold, usually with Oscar running ahead, digging sand, flinging shells and pebbles out to sea or paddling in and out of the shallows.
Rachel lifted the hem of her cotton skirt and strolled along the water’s edge of Horseshoe Bay, her feet sinking into the soft, darker sand, as the sun rose higher, turning the sky a pretty shade of turquoise.
‘Paradise,’ James commented as he looked towards the horizon.
‘It was.’ She stopped walking and stared out over the blue, blue sea. Loving the sound of birdsong, as if these winged creatures today shared her awakening sense of joy.
‘But not any more?’ James asked, as he sank down on to the sand with his elbows resting on his knees and his sunglasses now pulled down.
She sat next to him and wrapped her long skirt around her legs. ‘We have lost what we had, James,’ she whispered. ‘We have lost everything, and when I was away it was easy to forget that we were wonderful! We were so wonderful together.’
‘We were.’ He nudged her playfully with his elbow.
‘I have done a lot of thinking. I’m glad I came back—’
‘Me too,’ he interrupted.
‘And I know that I’m still healing, still grieving. I suspect I always will be, and there’s lots I don’t know about what lies ahead. But the one thing I do know, James, is that I don’t want this life. I don’t want this life here without him in it. It feels hollow. It feels like a sentence. I see him everywhere and I can’t cope with the reminders in every direction I look. In some ways it’s comforting, but they hold me fast. I can’t move on.’
She let her gaze sweep the beach and saw Oscar in his sun suit and hat, holding up a piece of seaweed. ‘Look at this, Mummy!’ She closed her eyes briefly and he had gone.
James ran his hand over his chin and took his time in asking the question they both knew loomed.
‘Do you want to go back to Bristol?’
She nodded. ‘I think I do.’
James reached across and took her hand in his, holding it tight.
‘Do you want me to come with you?’
She took her time in answering. ‘I think . . . I think I don’t want to uproot you from your job, the house, everything that you have worked for.’
‘None of it means anything without you,’ he whispered, all playfulness now gone.
Rachel swallowed and held her nerve. ‘I am still so confused, James, but I do know that when I was in Bristol I had the luxury of submitting to how I was feeling without having to think about you or anyone else, and I know that makes me selfish—’
‘I understand. I do,’ he interjected. ‘And as much as it breaks my heart, I know that we are not the people we were; I know that we don’t fit together like we used to.’
‘I think I need to go back and try to find some clarity. I’m still trying to find my place in this new world. And that’s all I know right now.’ She wiped the tear that slipped down her cheek.
He brought their joined fingers to his mouth and kissed their hands.
‘I wish you nothing but love, James, nothing but love,’ she managed, emotion turning her voice into little more than a squeak.
‘And I you, my beautiful girl.’ He ran his fingers through her hair. ‘Oscar’s brilliant, brilliant mum. I love you, but I don’t think it’s enough right now.’ He swallowed.
‘I love you too, but I don’t think it’s enough right now either.’
Just as he had promised, her dad was standing in the arrivals hall waiting for her.
‘Well, aren’t you a sight for sore eyes.’ He smiled. She stepped into his warm embrace and inhaled the familiar scent of his coat: petrol and glue. ‘You look well, babber. A lot better. How’s James?’ he asked, and she was glad that her dad was kind-hearted enough to think of him.
‘He’s figuring everything out, Dad. Taking it one day at a time; like all of us, I guess. But getting there. It was good to spend time with him – a measure of closure, if you like.’
‘And what was it like being in Bermuda again?’
‘It was lovely in some ways. Cee-Cee’s funeral was very moving and hard.’ She pictured Clara and Willard making their way down the aisle of the church in which he had married Cee-Cee and spoken vows in front of her God. ‘I feel like I’ve turned a corner, Dad. I know I can’t let Oscar’s death stop my life.’
She saw the look of shock on his face – yes, she had said it: Oscar’s death. Oscar died. It didn’t get any easier, but she knew it was necessary to make it commonplace; this was how she stopped the fear, moved past the hurt. ‘I know I can’t let it stop my life even though it has changed my life – changed us, changed all of us. James said we need to forgive ourselves and he is right.’
‘He is.’ Her dad nodded as they walked towards the car wheeling her suitcase. ‘Hope you’re hungry; your mum has made you a packed lunch.’
‘Of course she has.’ She smiled.
They drove along the motorway in amiable silence, just the way they liked it.
At her insistence, he stopped the car on the Gloucester Road, Bishopston. She had already emailed the agent and secured her flat for another six months – a breathing space, at least, where she could take this newfound energy, this cautious optimism and make a plan for the future. She decided to think six months ahead and to keep repeating this, see how far it took her. She even thought about buying a sofa and maybe even a bookshelf. This was progress in itself.
The pavement was busy and she took a moment to adjust to the crowds, the noise and the beep of tinny horns as traffic sat nose to tail going nowhere fast.
She pushed open the door of rewer and smiled. Glen was busy at the coffee bar, Sandra took an order from a table near the back and Keith rang his bell from the kitchen. Glen turned and his face split into a warm smile.
‘You came back.’
‘It would appear so.’ She kicked the floor.
‘Do you still want your job?’
‘I do.’ She shoved her hands in her pockets. ‘For six months at least, and then I might try to revive my old career.’ If I am strong enough . . . If I have forgiven myself . . .
‘Okay then. Six months? I’ll take it.’ He nodded. ‘See you Monday.’
‘Thanks, Glen.’ She beamed at him.
‘No worries. You look well.’
‘I feel it.’ She shrugged; it was still a novelty to admit to this.
‘Oh, I’ve got something for you.’
She watched as he ducked down behind the long counter and resurfaced seconds later, walking towards her with his hand outstretched. ‘I did my best. I didn’t get all of it, but some.’
Rachel pulled her hand from her pocket, into which he dropped a small glass bottle with a dropper top that had once been home to vanilla extract. She shook the glass up towards the light and saw that it was a third full, packed with sand and one or two tiny crushed shells. The feel of it in her palm caused her stomach to fold. That day . . . that moment, Oscar, when I realised you had gone . . . She felt a little of her earlier optimism and energy evaporate.
‘Oh, Glen!’
‘I sifted it from the rubbish on the floor. Took me an age.’
Rachel stared at him, marvelling at how he had known instinctively what to do and how it would make her happy. She crept forward and kissed him on the cheek. ‘Thank you. This means more to me than you can ever know. And, Glen?’
‘What?’
‘When you find the right person, you will feel overjoyed at the prospect of spending your life with them, not cornered. Love is about freedom, even if that means being apart.’ She thought of her wonderful James and her heart flexed. ‘It won’t be about limping from one big event to the next; no one should choose drama. The mundane will be enough and you will feel happy in the everyday, happy now in the moment. And she will be very lucky to have you.’
‘Thank you, Rach.’ He took a deep breath and made a clicking noise with the side of his mouth. He had got the message, kindly and sincerely delivered: the girl who would be lucky to have him was not going to be her. She belonged to James, she belonged to Oscar, and a missing piece of her belonged to Bermuda.
‘No, thank you.’ She held up the little vial of sand and wrapped it tightly in her fingers.
‘Don’t mention it. It’s just sand, right?’
‘Yes.’ She nodded. ‘It’s just sand.’