‘Jane Veronica Taylor was a kind woman. A solitary woman, but a kind one, who led a very quiet existence in this wonderful forest that we all in some way or other call home.’
Jamie’s here. He doesn’t call it home. He used to call it The Land That Time Forgot. Mostly on account of the fact that everywhere, bar the pubs, winds down and closes at about 4 p.m.
I can’t blame him. He’s absolutely right.
‘Jane . . . was a happy woman.’
As happy as you can be when you’re clinically depressed.
Ah yes, you see I’ve diagnosed her, incidentally. Here I am, all these years a high-end travel agent, when clearly all along I should have been a mental health practitioner. Oh well. You win some, you lose some.
I have an overwhelming desire to eat an apple. I could quite easily do this; I have one in my coat pocket. The problem at the moment is that I have a craving for them most of the day long. It would be so easy to pull it out of my pocket and bite into its crisp green goodness, but I can’t. I can’t sit and eat an apple during my mother’s funeral. It would give the impression that I wasn’t interested.
But all I can keep thinking about is that bloody apple. It’s a Granny Smith. God, how I wish I could look at its rich green loveliness. I love the crunch, the texture, the sharp taste, the way the core seems to spit at me when I put it into my mouth. It fills so many cravings all in one.
I used to think women saying they had craved coal in pregnancy was just an old wives’ tale. But I seriously think if I lived in a world where I had coal delivered, I would have sampled at least a mouthful of it by now.
Oh well. At least apples are healthy. It could be a lot worse.
I try to imagine the smell of coal. It comforts me.
I put my hand in my pocket and rub my apple slowly. That too comforts me.
I need to focus on something else.
I distract myself with the view.
Father Tom O’Neill is looking more handsome than ever in his cassock and dog collar and freshly gelled hair as he stands at the front of the quaint chocolate-box parish church, a few villages away from Beaulieu. Tom – and I have to say that as he is prone to exclaiming, ‘Don’t call me Father, call me Tom!’ – felt this more intimate venue was better suited to my mother’s service than any of the other churches in his team ministry, probably because he could tell there wouldn’t be many people coming. I’d joked that catering-wise all I’d need would be a flask of coffee and three Penguin biscuits, which had really made him laugh. As he threw his head back and guffawed I’d spotted a gold tooth.
What sort of vicar was this?
Hardly the sackcloth and ashes type.
Anyway, I’m glad the service is here. I feel like I’m in an episode of The Vicar of Dibley, and the fact that there are only a dozen people in attendance doesn’t feel so desperate in these cosier surroundings.
My mind wanders and my eyes drift, from Father Tom to the altar where three candles burn proudly. But all I can think is, has Tom recently been to the loo and these are his holy version of air freshener?
‘. . . Close to her daughter Rachel. Of whom of course she was immensely proud.’
And what, I wonder, of her other daughter?
For I have cracked the code.
The secret that Mother was taking to her grave. The reason she seemed to spend my childhood floating around in a cloud of denial. Denial of her feelings, of happiness, everything. She was depressed. She was depressed because she had lost a child. My older sister, Diana. I had it all worked out. I didn’t even have to check the details with Pam, I was so sure. It was like everything had slipped into place.
And today at her funeral I don’t just mourn my mother, I mourn Diana too, poor little mite.
Diana. My sister. The one I never met.
‘And she loved Hetty Wainthropp Investigates, of course. And owned every single episode on DVD. In fact we will pause now to listen to the theme music from that particular show, Jane’s favourite, and take stock. And meditate on . . . our memories of Jane.’
Heaven help us. I really hope I don’t get a fit of the giggles. Every time I’ve thought about this moment in the past week I’ve done a roll of eyes heavenwards and bitten my bottom lip, as if trying to stop myself from crying. I suppose you could look at it as Mum’s little gift to me that when she was gone I wouldn’t always be wallowing and bleary-eyed.
Tom nods to the back of the church and the music starts to play. Quivering strings and then a genteel trumpet trip along the ceiling of the church and bounce off the kind of stone walls that folk in Shoreditch would pay a small fortune to emulate. It conjures up a feeling of warm familiarity and I want to cloak myself in its dulcet tones. It also conjures up an image of Mum, in front of the telly as ever, eyes misty in the semi-light, watching her favourite northern detective crack those domestic crimes in Clitheroe. Did she always look so sad because she was thinking about Diana?
Of course she did.
She must have given birth to Diana and then she had a cot death or something and so she had me as some sort of Band-Aid baby to help herself get over the pain, only I never ever did. I never made her happy. She always missed Diana.
As the trumpet continues to trill in its increasingly annoying happy-go-lucky, heart-warming Sunday night TV way that smacks of yesteryear, I find myself crying. Not just for the mother I have lost, but for all the life she lost along the way because her daughter was gone. For all the things she might have been, for all the things she might have done, for all the things we might have been and done together, for God’s sake. Diana’s death. The ripples were still reverberating today.
I’ve had to make my peace with Pam. Not just so I could get her to do the sandwiches afterwards, but I felt it’s what mum would’ve wanted and I don’t really feel any anger towards what she might or might not have done.
And I wanted her to make the sandwiches afterwards.
‘And of course Jane was so excited about her forthcoming grandchild, who she will now sadly never meet.’
How does he know? How does he know if she was excited or not? I never said she was.
And I wonder now, was Diana ever born? Was she a baby that Mum lost? Was it hard for her to see me pregnant, reminding her of some awful memories? A curtailed trip to a hospital. A tiny coffin. I just don’t know.
I decide that over the sandwiches later I will ask Pam what she knows. And she does know. I can tell.
I feel an arm creep round me and give my shoulder a tender squeeze. Cliona is sitting with me. She looks to die for (handily for a funeral) in a killer combo of grey pencil skirt and ruched black blouse. Heels, of course, like stilts. Little pillbox hat. She makes me feel dowdy in my sensible camel coat and plain black frock. Margaret decided she didn’t want to come. She doesn’t really do funerals, she said, as she feels her own is nigh on imminent. She may pop along later, she’ll see. But Jamie has ventured down from London, bless him, and is crying even louder than me.
‘Drama queen,’ Cliona whispers in my ear, which makes me smile.
I’ve opted for a burial. It’s funny, I would never have dreamed of this a few days ago, but since finding that baby jacket, I’ve felt it’s the right thing to do. I want solemnity today, protocol, tradition. This is no longer just for my mum; it’s for that lost little baby too. Hence the church. Hence no crematorium. It’s all that bit more expensive, but I can afford it at the moment. So why not?
Finally, to the strains of ‘Moon River’ by Audrey Hepburn, we follow the coffin out to the graveyard. It’s then that I notice the undertaker stood outside the church gates. She has indeed got her hair up in a bun, with a cutesy little top hat perched on top of the bun. Sort of thing that wouldn’t look out of place on a Christmas tree. I wonder if she’s only just put it on as I don’t remember seeing it before the service. She gives me a conspiratorial wink as I pass her and she whispers, ‘It’s going really well, hon. Think she’d love it.’
Which I just ignore. Because I am a sane, sound human being. I hope.
What will she do next? Set off some party poppers? Or blow a vuvuzela during the ‘ashes to ashes’ section?
Fortunately she does neither.
Pam breaks down at the graveside and I have to hold her in my arms. She sobs uncontrollably for a while and then it’s like she’s caught sight of herself in a mirror and she is embarrassed by how she looks, as she suddenly flips upright and says she has to get to the church hall to get the cling film off the sandwiches. I link her arm to walk her there but she attempts to shrug me off. In the end I let her.
Before anyone else can get to the church hall I hurry over and watch Pam as she busies herself in the kitchen.
‘I know,’ I say.
She looks up, furtive, like she’s been caught out doing something naughty at school.
‘Know what?’ she says, shrugging it off.
‘I know what happened.’
‘When?’
‘The secret she’s taken to the grave.’
She rolls her eyes, disinterested, and pulls a foil tray of vol-au-vents from the fridge. There’s far too much food here for our measly number.
‘I have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about.’
‘About baby Diana.’
And the blood drains from her face. She freezes. It’s like she’s a statue. But then she takes a huge sniff of air through her nose and looks me square in the face.
‘Who’s baby Diana?’
And I know she’s lying. I know she knows full well who baby Diana is.
Well, was.
‘Mum had a baby who died. Didn’t she?’
She offers no response.
‘I wasn’t her first child. She’d had another, before I was born. I’ve worked it all out.’
And now I can see she is relaxing.
‘And how on earth would you work all that out?’
So I tell her. I tell her about the baby jacket. And the name knitted into it. And how I’ve put two and two together and I sound pathetically showy-offy as I say it.
Her eyes well with tears. And finally she smiles.
‘Well done, Rachel. I always said you were a clever girl.’
I smile, but she’s not looking at me.
‘Much cleverer than working in a fuddy duddy old travel agent’s.’
‘Pam, it’s very high end.’
But that’s not really the point right now.
‘Pam . . . what can you tell me about Diana?’
‘I didn’t know Diana,’ she says gently. ‘It was before I met your mum. And she rarely talked about it. I don’t even know how she passed on. In those days . . . you didn’t really discuss things like that.’
I nod. This makes sense.
‘Now. How about getting some hundreds and thousands for the trifle?’
I feel someone poking me in my ribs. I turn to see the undertaker. She’s winking again.
‘So. What did we reckon to that send-off? Here. Pretend it’s Strictly. Marks out of ten?’
She sees me hesitate. So shouts an answer herself. ‘TEN!’
And then the room falls silent.
Why did I have to hire a madwoman to be my mother’s undertaker?
She looks to Pam.
‘Pam, I was pretending to be Darcey Bussell or Bruno Tonioli.’
Pam nods, disinterested.
‘Good score, though,’ the undertaker reiterates, and then hurries out.
Jamie fusses round me, as per, as the small huddle of us tuck into Pam’s bland spread. He wants to fetch me a chair. He wants everyone to agree that my ankles look a bit puffy. Nice. He wants to make sure there’s no soft cheese in any of the sandwiches.
Pam’s face is a picture there. As if she’s ever touched a tub of soft cheese in her life.
General post-funeral chit-chat ensues for about ten minutes. Then dries up. So I tell Cliona and Jamie what I’ve learned about baby Diana, and they’re suitably intrigued. Actually, Jamie gets a tad over-emotional, and it seems to send him into a tailspin of tears and ‘what if?’s and I have to placate him with everything even remotely positive that a doctor has said recently about the health of my unborn baby. Okay, so it’s his too. But I have to say mine every now and again when he’s around or else it feels I’m being ram-raided into having it and he’s taken over and I’ve no say in anything. Fortunately, before he’s whittled an ultrasound machine out of the bamboo sticks lying oddly to one side of the hall so he can ‘just be on the safe side’, his cab is here to take him back to Brockenhurst Station because, as he explains proudly, he’s got a second date off Grindr and he needs to stop off en route and get poppers.
Everyone looks suitably horrified.
And then he does, realizing it really is a case of TMI.
‘I’m so sorry, Rachel. It must be the grief.’
I just push him towards the exit.
When I look back the vicar is blushing like a beetroot.
‘Take you back, eh Tom?’ says Margaret. And that’s when I realize Margaret has slipped in unannounced.
The vicar’s eyes nearly pop out of his head.
And I hear the undertaker emit an enormously filthy cackle, then shout, ‘TEN!’
There is so much to sort out in Mum’s house. I have scheduled a week to do everything and four days in I don’t think it’s enough. Well, I know it’s not enough. Because thus far I was meant to have got the house on the market, filled a skip full of rubbish, put a load of things on eBay, given a load of stuff to charity shops . . . oh, the list is endless. But the skip only arrived this morning as so few companies round here were prepared to drive up the dirt track. And no, that’s not a euphemism, I only wish it was! You’d think I’d asked them to crawl over razor blades, but finally I found a company in Holbury who were reasonable, both in price and in attitude. So I only started filling it up this morning. I have to get it all done soon as it’s Thursday today and I’ve promised Ben I’ll be back at work next week.
Margaret comes over to help each day and Cliona comes in the evenings after the cafe’s shut. But even between the three of us I don’t see it being sorted any time soon. There is just too much decayed old life here. Too much stuff.
‘Too much SHIT,’ adds Margaret. ‘I mean, Christ, I’m as bad a hoarder as the next person, but at least my stuff’s nice.’
Pam drops by intermittently, asking if I’ve come across Mum’s paperwork yet. When asked what she means by paperwork she flusters a bit and says she means things like policies. I tell her I found her life insurance stuff and her will just after she died, and ask if there are any more policies I should know about. Again she flusters and beats a retreat when she sees that Margaret is drinking wine before teatime.
The will was pretty dull, really. She had one life insurance policy which covered most of the funeral, and the proceeds from the sale of the house will be split between me and Pam and, ah yes, a cat sanctuary in Greece, of all places. I get the lion’s share at 50 per cent of the income but I am not holding my breath. This house is so dilapidated, it might be easier to just pay someone to knock it down rather than expecting someone to buy it in the state it’s in. But then Margaret is convinced it might be worth half a million – she does say this after the better part of a bottle of wine – which gives me fantasies beyond my reach and ideas above my station.
Cliona is filling one room with stuff that she thinks a mate of hers who runs a bric-a-brac place in Brockenhurst might like, and she’s scheduled her to come tomorrow. Personally I think it looks like a load of old seventies tat, but Cliona’s assured me she’ll take most of it off my hands. ‘She deals in kitsch,’ she explains.
Is that what Mum’s life is reduced to? Kitsch.
What was your mum’s life like?
Oh, it was really kitsch. She filled a bric-a-brac shop. Now that’s what I call an achievement!
I am ruthless in my own bedroom. If I’ve thrown one H from Steps poster away I’ve thrown twenty. Anything I’ve ever really wanted to hang onto over the years I have taken to my basement pad in London. How different from this place it is. All state of the art. And yes, I did pay a small fortune to have the lights and electrics in the flat remote controlled via an app on my iPad. Compared to Mum’s cottage, that place only exists in the future.
I sit on my sad single bed and pull out the baby jacket I’ve hidden under the eiderdown. I lift it to my face and try to imagine little baby Diana. I try to conjure up and feel her in my arms to tell her that someone is thinking of her, that she did make a mark on the world, that her existence was significant. But just then I hear Margaret calling through from another room.
‘Rachel?’
‘Aha?’
‘I think I might’ve found some paperwork stuff?’
‘Okay, just leave it on the side.’
‘No, come and have a look. I don’t know what to make of it.’
I squeeze the jacket back under the eiderdown and follow Margaret’s voice to Mum’s bedroom.
‘Actually, Margaret, I’m just going to get some air.’
Margaret is shoving some papers back into a faded pink cardboard folder. She plonks it on the bed and looks at me.
Margaret has a very odd look on her face. But she just says, ‘Okay.’
The sun’s fading as I step out into the back garden, and a route I’ve taken a thousand times before. I head to the bottom of the garden and the narrow gate in the picket fence that leads out into the woods. I know these woods like the back of my hand, and I know where I am going. I trudge deeper through the trees, not caring that my footwear isn’t suitable for the increasingly muddy ground I tread on. These woods were my playground as a child, these trees my friends. I’ve neglected them in my adult years and they’ve changed somewhat, as friends do. But they’re basically the same and they lead me on to the tiny stream that trickles into the river further down the slope. I want to feel water at my feet. It will make me closer to my mother. That was what she wanted as she was dying. She wanted to feel the sea on her toes. And I took her. I took her to the seaside and although she was happy then to sit back and watch, the desire had been there and now that desire is mine. She would understand. It is something that bonds us.
When I reach the stream I bend down and splash my hand through it like a kid soaking their chums in the swimming pool. I then stand back up again and hurry down to the river. I kick off my court shoes and clamber down into the petulant waters. I’m six again. I’m eight again. I’m any age I want to be again. But I am definitely me, touching the earth that raised me, the riverbed that nourished me.
God, I sound pretentious.
And of course I have to be careful. Although I have no proof, rumour has it that there are quicksands that will drag you in, just as the river turns the corner. And if the sands don’t get you, the current will, as it crashes from river to ocean. Mum and Pam always warned me not to go far into the water for fear of getting sucked under. I never knew if this was a reality, or if it was just them putting me off venturing too far from home.
I can hear Pam calling me when I was a little girl. The voice so vivid in my head.
‘Don’t go too far, Rachel, it’s not safe! You’ll get sucked under! River to ocean, Rachel! River to ocean!’
Why was it so often Pam’s voice I would hear and not Mum’s? At times, it was like they co-parented me. Well, I suppose that’s what friends do, help each other out. Single mum, best friend. Of course they do.
In the distance I hear a scream. When I first heard that scream as a child I was petrified. It’s the sound of a baby crying. Well, not just crying, but crying for its life. And then my mother explained it wasn’t a baby. It was a fox calling out to its mates. The scream reassures me.
I hear crunching twigs, footsteps, and they startle me. I go to cry out when I see Margaret appearing at the riverside. She is clutching the fading folder.
‘There’s something you should see,’ she says.
She sounds serious. And it must be serious if she’s followed me all the way down here.
‘Has she got some other policies?’ I suggest.
Margaret opens the folder and pulls out some papers.
I clamber out of the water and stand barefoot in the mud as she passes them to me.
The top one is the front page of a newspaper. Which is as faded as the folder it’s been in.
The headline says ‘SHE’S ALIVE’. Underneath is a smiling woman holding a baby.
I look more closely. The light might be fading but I can still see what it is. Who it is.
That smiling woman is Mum. There, in black and white, that’s my mum when she was younger. The bigger hair. Wow, that smile. I’ve never seen her smile like that. She looks so happy, so full of life, so excitable. I’ve never seen her look so positive.
Margaret has brought a torch. She flicks the switch on it and the page is illuminated.
It is. It’s definitely my mum.
And yet . . . and yet . . . underneath it says, ‘Linda Wilson is all smiles as she leaves hospital with baby Diana, who had been snatched from her back garden about a month earlier.’
It says Mum’s name is Linda Wilson.
That has to be Mum.
Wait. Wait.
I check the date of the paper.
1981.
Diana can’t have been born in ’81; I was born in ’81.
That doesn’t make sense.
I look again at the baby in the picture. Mum’s really showing her off to the camera.
Oh my God.
That baby must be me.
Baby Diana.
Linda Wilson?!
‘I remember that story, darling,’ Margaret says. ‘Is that your mum?’