‘Your mum was good to me last night,’ I tell Daniel the next morning. He is eating a bowl of cereal before work. There is a spot of milk on the corner of his lip and it reminds me of the scene I have lived, and watched, where we sat in the Lake District on my birthday, and he had a fleck of ice cream on his mouth. I lean forward and kiss him. It is unexpected for him, strange for both of us. Daniel wipes his mouth, brushing away the milk and my kiss. He stands up and stalks over to the sink and the dish crashes into it.
‘What happened to trying? To taking a second at a time?’ He still has his back to me, facing the back garden. The bare branches of the tree tap against the glass of the window, punctuating the pause before I speak.
‘It was all just too much, with that woman in the coffee shop and the baby … I wanted to escape. Surely you can understand that?’ I started with so much hope, but already I can feel the day unspooling as they all do, tangling beneath my feet and threatening to trip me up.
‘No. Not really. Because I can’t escape like you can, Erica. I have to live this. Every second.’
‘I know. But you even said yourself that you wanted to take a break from the grief.’
‘No. I said I wanted us to take a break from it. Together.’
‘I saw that other woman, with her baby, and I …’ My words fade. Was a random woman in a coffee shop being prettier, cleaner, and calmer, really a reason for me to desert him? It was so clear at the time, but now it seems so trivial, too childish to even say.
We hear the clearing of a throat and both turn. My face burns as I see Diane.
‘We’ve had a think, and we’re going to leave you to it,’ she says. ‘Being here with you both when you have so much to work through … well, we just think you need a bit of time on your own. Some space.’
Daniel puts his jacket on and winds a blue scarf around his neck. ‘Thanks for coming, Mum.’
I should feel relieved. Daniel’s parents being here wouldn’t help us to get back to the way we were, to return to what I now know I’ve been missing almost as much as Joshua. I know logically that I want to keep to my promise not only to Nicholas and Phoebe, but to myself and to Daniel. I know I have a concrete plan to try to touch something of Daniel’s or Joshua’s if I feel myself fade. But still, fear is settled deep in my bones and it stirs at the thought of Diane and Paul leaving us, at the silence of the house when Daniel is at work every day.
‘We’re all packed up,’ she rattles on. ‘I’m sure we’ll be back again at some point. It goes without saying that if you want us to come again, then you just need to let us know.’ She leans forward, to brush an airy kiss against my cheek. ‘We’re just trying to do the right thing,’ she says.
‘Of course,’ I tell her, trying to make my voice stronger, more certain than it is. ‘We’ll get there, won’t we, Daniel?’
We all stand around awkwardly, as though we are talking about the renovation of a room, or a pile of paperwork.
We will get where?
Paul appears with their case, his jacket zipped up so high that we can only just see his face. The case is huge and I realize they were planning on staying for much longer than they have. At least they tried. I still haven’t told my dad what has happened to Joshua. If I did, would he be here with a too-big suitcase, plans bigger than he could manage? I think of the other Erica talking about him as though he was part of her and then shake my head. No. Don’t go there.
‘Ready to go, love?’ Paul asks Diane. He nods at Daniel, at me. We help them into the car, the freezing wind snaking around us, whipping into our house.
***
‘I’m late for work,’ Daniel says when they’ve gone. ‘Will you be …?’ he doesn’t finish but I know what he means.
‘I won’t go,’ I tell him.
‘But you’ll be on your own all day. Maybe you could call the museum, talk to Carl about some hours or something?’
I push down the irritation that springs inside me. I don’t want to be annoyed with Daniel. It is not part of my plan. But Carl is the last person I want to talk to. My maternity leave was meant to last until next spring and now, without a baby, this seems implausible. But what is more implausible is sharing this awful time with the loud, brash Carl who wouldn’t understand my grief if it slapped him in the face.
‘Okay,’ Daniel says, seeing my expression. ‘I know it’s probably too soon to think about the museum again. You need a focus, or an escape that isn’t your other life. Just think about it, okay? The book, if not the museum. Or call Zoe or your mum and get them to spend a bit more time with you. They keep asking me about you. You’re shutting them out. You’re shutting everything out. I know you’re grieving, but we have to try and grieve and live at the same time. It will get easier. It has to.’
I nod as brightly as I can. ‘Okay. I’ll dig out my book stuff.’
He brushes my grazed cheek lightly. ‘What happened?’ he asks, concern in his face.
‘It was when I came back. I landed too close to the wall. Terrible navigation skills,’ I say. He smiles and I laugh, and there is a moment between us, a fleck of light in the darkness.
‘Can you fight it?’ he asks me.
I nod. ‘I can try. I’ve been thinking about how. Remember that article that Nicholas gave me? About the girl in the eighties that it used to happen to?’ I speak carefully, as though Daniel might suddenly recall the part where Helen became her other self. ‘She said she just touched something belonging to her cat, because her cat was the thing she loved the most. It was always enough to keep her here. We decided around the time of my accident that if I touch something of yours, it might be enough. I haven’t ever needed to try it since then because it stopped happening. And maybe yesterday I didn’t really try to stay. I couldn’t. But I will try to be quicker, and try to do something about it. I do want this life with you. It’s just that sometimes …’
Daniel nods. ‘I know.’ He takes his wallet and keys from the table. I kiss him again and this time he doesn’t brush it away.
***
After Daniel has left the house, I wander around the rooms, collecting things for my book. It’s so long since I worked on it that it takes a while to remember its intricacies, its directions and shape. I sit at the kitchen table for a while staring at my notes, reading about the people who told me their stories, smiles in their voices. If it weren’t for Blackpool, the book was going to sing to its readers, these people and buildings wouldn’t exist. The world would be different.
When Daniel suggested that I find something to distract me, I thought throwing myself into the project of the book might be a good solution. But all the book makes me see is the fine web that connects people, the everyday moments that changed their lives, paths appearing and disappearing with every second, every decision. All the what ifs make me think of the very thing I’m trying so hard to forget.
I rub my temples, trying to dull the fierce headache burning through my mind. I stumble up and grip the table, ignoring the dizziness that threatens to take hold of me any second. The sink is three steps away, and I only just make it before falling. I reach out, my eyesight fading, and feel around until I touch the cool metal of Daniel’s spoon that he touched a few hours ago. I squeeze the handle and think of his fingers on it, and slowly, I can see the sink beneath me. The dizziness eases and I take a breath. I am here, I tell myself. I am staying here because I love Daniel and I can love this life again. I am taking it a second at a time.
The house is still and silent, the air cool as the central heating that I flick on clanks its way round the pipes.
I wander to the fridge, take the Blackpool tram magnet and turn it over in my hands before placing it back on the fridge door and treading lightly back through to the hall, up the creaking staircase, to the third room on the right.
If I am going to stay, to commit to working through our pain, then I should face this. It might help, I tell myself.
I push the door open. Everything is exactly the same as it was that night.
At first, we moved nothing because of the investigation. All a formality, people said, as Joshua’s things and our hearts were handled roughly then put back in all the wrong places.
When all that was over, we shut the door.
***
I start to take things from his wardrobe next to the window: tiny, soft clothes and bibs, nappies, muslin squares. I place them in his cot. Grief tears at my insides, and I stop for a moment.
I am even more aware of the crippling pain now that I have experienced a few moments without it.
If I stay, if every time I feel this world fading, I always touch something of Daniel’s to keep me here – a sock, fuzzy with wear; a cup of half-drunk coffee, the rim of a mug that has touched his lips; his still-damp toothbrush or whatever book his fingers have turned the pages of – then this pain will stay too.
I could clear this room, paint it smooth white or deep red. I could bolt shut the door and never enter it again. But the primal agony, the need to touch Joshua and kiss him and press him to me will never ever be stilled no matter what I do. It’s this animal need that suffocates any choice, any control I might have.
I grab the things from the cot and stuff them back into the wardrobe. There is no order to my attempts, and they tumble back out one after another from the shelves, tiny arms and legs flailing through the air.
I remember the day we moved this wardrobe into our house. It’s a small, antique mahogany chest that’s missing a door. We bought it from an antique fair in Manchester. I was pregnant, and Daniel wouldn’t let me help him lift it. We laughed as he tipped it into the room and it almost toppled over. We said over and over again about getting another door for it, adding it to our eternal list of repairs, but it was never done. Nothing was ever done. The house and its needs suffocated us, an ocean of expensive, impossible jobs.
‘He’ll need a new door by the time he makes friends and they come round to sit in his bedroom,’ I said.
‘He’ll need a new wardrobe by then,’ Daniel said.
I squeeze shut my eyes but the image burns on.