I am in the back garden.
Nothing is remarkable, except the fact I am here.
The September sun is tempered by stretched fluffs of cloud and a cool breeze that ruffles the napkins that I have just put onto our outdoor table, making them soar for a moment before falling down to the uneven grass beneath.
‘Do you think we should eat inside?’ I ask Daniel.
He smiles. ‘Nah. We’re going to get the most out of summer, even if it kills us. The garden’s the nicest bit of the house now. We have to make people enjoy it with us.
He’s right. We’ve spent hours in the garden this summer and it finally feels like our hard work and dedication is paying off. The shed has been pulled down, there is a decked area at the back, and everything apart from the tree that stands above us has been pruned, trimmed and chopped away.
‘Zoe and Ben will be used to Australia temperatures though,’ I remind him. ‘They might be freezing.’
‘They will drink their way through it. They might have spent six months there, but they’re still British,’ Daniel says.
‘Did I hear my name?’ Zoe asks as she totters through the back gate, early as always.
***
I help Zoe unload her carrier bag of wine and beer into the fridge, eying her subtly as I do. ‘Did you not bring non-alcohol beers today?’
‘No!’ she gasps, her eyes wide.
‘Yes,’ I tell her.
‘When?’ she bursts out. ‘When is …?’
‘February. I was going to tell you earlier, but I wanted to wait until we were face to face.’
She looks at my stomach. ‘Wow. I didn’t notice, but now you’ve told me it’s pretty obvious.’ She looks up and I see her eyes are glassy with tears. Zoe never cries. She prides herself on it. ‘So. Boy? Girl?’
‘Girl,’ I say, as tears fill my eyes too.
‘Girl,’ Daniel says, coming into the kitchen with Ben. I look at him, giving him a secret smile that says I can tell he’s close to tears too, but that Zoe and Ben probably haven’t noticed.
‘Boy,’ Zoe says.
We all wait for Ben, who grins and claps Daniel on the back and says, ‘Boy or girl.’
And so it goes.
***
The others arrive shortly after in a flurry of hugs and gifts and tissue paper. After I’ve opened the presents – a beautiful cashmere blanket, a basket of bath bombs, and a new horror book – Nicholas and Daniel go outside to light the barbeque. Mum and Diane take over the slicing of buns, and the chopping of lettuce and tomatoes. They work shoulder to shoulder, taking conspiratorial turns to glance back at me as I sit at the table.
‘I’m fine,’ I smile at them. ‘And I can help, you know.’
But they wave away my offers.
‘You can colour with me,’ says Phoebe, plonking down a fluffy turquoise pencil case on the table and pushing a picture of a unicorn towards me. ‘I’m doing the Rapunzel one. But you can do that one if you like.’
I pick up a pencil and start to shade the unicorn purple. Phoebe looks across to assess my work. ‘Oh,’ she says approvingly. ‘You’re good.’
I gaze at her for too long so she smiles hesitantly, lowers her eyes again and busily scribbles Rapunzel’s hair bright yellow. Then she looks up at me. ‘Daddy told me you’re writing a book. Can I see it?’
‘It doesn’t look like a book yet. But it will do soon.’
‘So will you make it into a book?’
‘I’ve written all the words and chosen the pictures. But someone else will make it into a real book. Really soon, actually. And when it’s done, we are all going to have a party and you will see it.’
Phoebe’s face lights up. ‘I’m coming to the book party?’
‘Of course you are,’ I tell her. The launch is organized for October at the museum. Excitement darts through me at the thought of my book, which I’ve worked on solidly for the last year and finally has a publisher and release date. The exhibition that sparked the idea so long ago has been reinstated at the museum and the guest list for the launch is longer than I’d ever hoped. Katie is planning to come back for it. We went to stay with her in Brighton in the spring. Even my dad, who eventually replied to my email last year and has visited me a few times since, has tentatively suggested he might come. The relationship is strange, new and old at the same time.
Planning for the launch night and putting the exhibition back up, photograph by photograph, has reminded me so much of that other time, when I was so frightened I might disappear and miss a chunk of my life. I never disappear now. I’m more firmly anchored to my life than I have ever been. Sometimes I have fleeting moments where I remember something from the other Erica’s life: the scent of the Italian summer, the feel of the fabric of a top she used to wear, the peculiar feeling of looking in the mirror at a reflection that didn’t fully feel like my own. But the moments are gone in an instant, lost in a million other more important ones.
***
After we’ve eaten, and the garden is strewn with plates and cups, the clouds clear and the sun glows down, warming us and making us forget the chill of the shady breeze from a few hours ago. I sit with Amelia and Zoe, and we watch Phoebe fling herself over the grass in a string of leggy cartwheels, and see Daniel laugh as he talks to Ben. He still isn’t the version of himself he used to be. But he is here, and he is laughing again and he is Daniel.
‘Hey,’ Zoe says as she sees me place a hand on my rounded belly. ‘Do you remember the time we had a barbeque here, and you were pregnant with Joshua …?’ Her sentence dies out. ‘Sorry. I didn’t think what I was saying. I shouldn’t have brought him up.’
‘That’s okay. I remember,’ I tell her. I close my eyes and feel the hazy glare of sunshine on my face, the ripple of tiny limbs inside me, the distant pulse of pain that is as much a part of me as my heartbeat and is matched by a throb of hope. I hear the scratch of the record as it stumbles from one track to another in the house, the wail of the seagulls and the crashing of the waves. ‘I remember it all.’
***
‘There’s another present for you here,’ Daniel says when everyone has gone and we sit amongst the discarded tissue paper in the lounge. ‘I was going to give it to you when you had the baby. But it feels like something I should give you today instead.’ It’s a box: a duplicate of an empty one that sits on my dressing table. Inside is a bracelet charm to match the J charm I already have.
‘Obviously, I didn’t know which letter to choose because we don’t know who we’ll get, or what will happen,’ he says, his words edged with caution. ‘So I chose this one instead.’
It’s a tiny silver heart. I smile and clasp it next to the J on the bracelet I’ve worn every day for a year: days when I have cried endless tears and not been able to get out of bed; and days when I have laughed and kissed and been somewhere close to a strange new kind of happiness. ‘I love it. And I love you, so much.’
‘We made it through another year,’ Daniel says. ‘Happy birthday.’
‘And happy first-date anniversary.’ I lean forward and kiss him as the last golden beams of sunlight stream into the room.
THE END
Be sure to follow Hannah Emery on Twitter @hannahcemery, on Facebook, and check out her website at hannahcemery.com for all the updates on her latest work.
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