Trevor,
I know we had a session booked for next week, but I am afraid I have to cancel it because my sister…
Eleanor slumped back, hurting her spine against the hard, unforgiving angles of the kitchen chair. Overhead, the bunches of dried herbs which Kat, with her usual arty flair, had strung up along the kitchen’s handsome beams, stirred in the warm air rising off the Aga. The email to Trevor came in and out of focus on her laptop. Eleanor narrowed her eyes, but still the words wavered. How could one begin to describe the weight of someone’s absence anyway? It was an oxymoron. As she had tried to explain to Nick once. A million years ago. Back in the days when he thought he was writing to Kat. Back when Kat was sick, as opposed to dead.
The doctor had put it best. ‘She’s gone,’ he had announced gently, arriving minutes after Howard’s summons two nights before, shaking his round grey head as he pressed Kat’s thin wrist between his fingers in a bid to find a pulse. Eleanor had watched from the end of the bed, unable even to blink, aware only of being very still. She could still smell Evie’s skin on her from their bedtime reading.
The spare-room door had been closed against the possibility of prying children. They would need to be told, obviously, when Howard was ready. The need to be supportive to her brother-in-law had coursed through Eleanor, a hot energy. Kat had once requested that of her and she would do her best to manage it. This unhappy ending was what had been expected, what they were all supposed to have been ready for.
In fact Kat had died moments before the doctor got there. Eleanor had realised but said nothing because Howard, having laid her back on the bed, had been stroking her sister’s arms and fingers, crooning endearments and reassurances, hanging on to his hope like a man on a cliff-face. Eleanor had already been at her stance at the end of the bed, gently cradling Kat’s feet through the covers. The dying had been almost invisible – no discernible last breath to speak of, no dramatic finale. Kat’s face had simply seemed to tighten as a shadow passed across it, infusing a tinge of grey into its delicate pallor. Instants later, the doctor was ushered through the door by a puffy-eyed Hannah, who, with her usual tact, then quickly withdrew.
To Howard, the doctor’s words were terrible. As the man lowered Kat’s eyelids and stepped back, dropping his head in respect, closing his leather bag, Howard threw himself onto the body with a force that made Eleanor flinch. Alive, her sister would have squirmed with pain to be held so hard. Unbreathing, her wasted frame looked even smaller, frailer. Only the extraordinary hair, which she had been so anxious to preserve, looked cruelly alive; big bright curls burning across the pillow. Howard rolled his face in them, sobbing.
Eleanor remained where she was, keeping her distance like the doctor, biding her time, giving Howard his moment. Inside, it began to feel as if something was exploding, slowly. The bedroom floorboards were shifting under the carpet, dissolving it felt like, until she was standing on nothing.
The steady noise of the kitchen clock snagged on Eleanor’s brain. She shivered as the half-written email to Trevor came back into focus. The ticking of time was good, she told herself. It was a reminder that bad moments would pass, just like the good ones. Under her jumper, she was aware of the buckle of Kat’s belt pressing into her stomach. It was on the tightest notch now, her new slimness heightened by two days of consuming nothing but sweet tea. Hannah’s pie had never been eaten. Its blackened remains were in the kitchen bin, chiselled off by her at some unspeakable dawn hour, while Howard, at his own request, had been left alone upstairs with the children. Over the noise of her scraping knife, she had heard the occasional wail or sob, but mostly it had been very quiet.
My sister, who as you are aware, has been ill for many months… Eleanor typed from her slumped position in the kitchen chair, … passed away the day before yesterday. I know you will therefore forgive me for not being able to make our meeting on Monday. I will, however, definitely be able to manage a session before Christmas. In fact, let us say in two weeks’ time, 18 December at eleven. I’ll come to yours as usual. Life, as they say, goes on.
Eleanor signed off and sent the email on its way. She had plucked a date at random. She didn’t care when she saw Trevor. She didn’t care about anything. The emptiness of the spare bedroom was still within her, a coldness. She had ventured in that morning to strip the bed, catching her breath at the smell that had come to mean Kat: a mix of the faint odours emanating from the cluster of medicines still on the bedside cabinet and the richer aroma of Howard’s most recent flowers. She had grabbed at the bedding, the sheets and countless pillows that had done so little in the end to provide comfort, wrenching off their covers in what felt like a war, with herself, with Kat, with life’s refusal to be easy.
There had been no grand deathbed reconciliations, but there had at least been some new understanding; a sense of forgiveness, if not the thing itself. And for that she should be grateful, Eleanor had told herself, stumbling through the twisted bed linen to fall against the window. The wintry browns of the garden, tipped still with morning frost, blurred under her eyes. The completeness of her sense of loss was so vast, so overbearing, that for several moments she could not breathe. It bore no relation to what she or Kat might or might not have meant to each other. Her little sister was gone, taking what felt like the past, the present and the future with her. Forever.
‘I suppose he needs to be told. It’s only right.’ It was Howard, speaking from the kitchen doorway.
He looked like a man who had been hollowed out, fragile to the point of translucency. For all Eleanor’s efforts at support, she found that she hardly dared speak to him sometimes, for fear that even her voice might have the power, literally, to shatter him to dust.
Hannah had taken the children back into school that morning. Sticking to their routines would help, someone had said. Eleanor couldn’t quite remember who. Possibly the doctor, possibly a family friend, possibly Hannah herself. The house had steadily filled and emptied each day of helpful people – local friends, other parents, the priest, undertakers.
‘You mean Dad.’ Eleanor slipped her hand under her jumper and clasped the buckle of the belt. The metal felt comfortingly warm from the heat of her body.
‘Vincent, yes. Not that it will mean anything to him.’
‘No, but of course you are right. I feel bad not to have done it already. I’ll go today.’
‘Kat got him into that place.’
‘I know.’
‘She thought it was where he would most like to be.’
‘Yes, she did well.’
‘She hated seeing him, you know, but she went once a week.’
‘Yes, Kat was good like that. Much better than me. She said Dad didn’t care about her, but he did.’ Eleanor stood up, her chair legs shrieking against the limestone floor. ‘I’ll go now.’ She unhooked the keys to Kat’s car that hung on a board next to the fridge. She had been using it for months, for convenience on her visits.
‘It won’t mean anything to him, of course,’ Howard repeated heavily. His task that morning was to go to the undertakers with clothes. He had asked Eleanor to help him choose them and then begged her to leave. Even now, she didn’t know what he had selected. An image of gold knee-high boots fluttered across her mind.
‘I read once somewhere that grief is like fear,’ she gabbled, twirling the car key, ‘like being afraid. I think it was C. S. Lewis. I am pretty sure that is what I am feeling. Afraid. Are you?’
Howard’s eyes met hers with an expression of puzzlement and hurt. ‘I’ve no idea. All I know is Kat shouldn’t have died. She was thirty-five. It’s not right, not for me, not for the children, not for her.’
‘No.’ Eleanor glanced away, trying to think of something more helpful to say, but by the time she looked back he had gone.
Eleanor took the longer route to The Bressingham, through Broughton, which meant driving for the first time in many years past the turning to the vicarage and the dead-end lane that led to St Winifred’s, a quarter of a mile beyond. She slowed, marvelling at the smart brass-tipped wrought-iron gates marking the entrance to a residence now described, in big brass letters on a marble plaque, as ‘The Paddock’. Behind it, the winding muddy drive that had defeated family cars and left a crusty brown fringe on Vincent’s priestly robes had been transformed into a crisply gravelled lane, bordered by a formidably thick feathery hedge that served to keep the silver lake of birches from view, as well as much of the sky.
It wasn’t possible to see the vicarage itself from the road and Eleanor was glad. She didn’t need to see the place to know how it would look: extended, repointed, rewired, snugly fitted with pipes that didn’t clank and neatly overlapping roof tiles that gleamed when the sun shone. No gaps in the guttering like a gaping mouth of bad teeth. No knotted old vegetable patches. No rusting hinges. No patches of green slime.
Eleanor accelerated and then, having almost changed her mind, swung a little sharply into the church lane. These days, the sturdy wooden doors of St Winifred’s were permanently closed, the parish Vincent once served having been streamlined to offer larger, more accessible buildings for worship. It was a development that Vincent himself had taken personally, never settling into the new role of roving priest to which he had been assigned. The dementia had set in on the back of these changes, with lightning rapidity. Self-absorbed with her own life at the time, in the thick of things with Igor, Eleanor had been shamelessly happy to let Kat take charge of the situation. As Howard had grimly reminded her that morning, Kat had risen to the challenge with her customary brilliance, getting Vincent into a place he had not only served and loved but which was also a mere thirty minutes from her own doorstep.
Eleanor pulled up onto the grassy verge and turned the engine off. The church’s stocky square tower and grey mottled walls looked squat and stoical beneath the two, now giant, beech trees guarding its main door. Their upper branches, entangled over the years, resembled arm-clasping old friends. Eleanor rubbed a porthole in the steam on her window, trying to picture her father as he had once been, shaking parishioners’ hands, his beard bushy, his sandals and thick socks poking out from under his skirts. Instead, marching into her mind like a parade of ghosts, came other presences from her childhood: the sharp twitchy face of Hilda de Mowbray, tracking her and Kat like a greedy hawk; old Mrs Owens, wheezing reprimands and warnings with the gruffness of one resigned to being ignored; and the Watsons, the old man’s face sun-wrinkled and half hidden under his tatty tweed cap, and dear Charlie half a step behind, in mud-caked wellies and terrible mustard cords. Eleanor blinked tears as she peered up at the sky, all the sadness about Kat merging with the weirdness of the past, how it could feel at once so unreachable and so close.
It took immense resolve to get out of the car. She wasn’t even sure why she had come. Death was death, Eleanor had no illusions on that score. She had never believed Connie to be more in a churchyard than she was anywhere else. And Kat was right, when it came down to it, she had been a crap mother.
After the fug of the car heating, the early December cold was like a slap in the face. Eleanor tunnelled her hands into her coat pockets and trudged up the path, past the church and across the lumpy grass, down to the lower strip of ground that housed Connie’s grave.
Nearly three decades on and the small headstone had weathered to bare legibility. Eleanor stared at it, making an effort to summon fresh thoughts for once – fresh sadness – but all that came to mind was the usual tired, shrunken stock of memories: a smile framed by red lipstick, a yellow coat, a pale-face, alert and erect behind a car wheel, or tired and stretched out under a blanket on a sofa. Everything else – everything that mattered, Eleanor realised suddenly – such as how Connie had sounded, or spoken, or felt to hold – was lost.
She would not let memories of her sister fade in the same way, Eleanor vowed bleakly. She patted at the soft brown earth of a molehill with the undersole of her shoe, thinking fondly of the hours she and Kat had endured as little girls on their knees in that very spot, peeking out of closed eyes to pull faces at each other as Vincent intoned prayer after prayer, keeping them there on purpose, it felt like, testing them.
Eleanor let her gaze drift to the field. There had once been talk of a housing development, but it had clearly never happened. Today the sole occupant was a brown horse, a rough blanket on its back, nosing disconsolately at the thin, half-frozen grass.
Spotting Eleanor, it pricked its ears up and trotted to the boundary fence, snorting frills of steam from its nostrils.
‘Hello horse.’ Eleanor approached warily. Horses put her on edge. They were so huge, so beautiful and with eyes that suggested a knowledge of suffering.
It tossed its head.
Eleanor forced her cold hands out of her pockets and bent down to pluck a few tufts of grass to feed it. As she did so, her attention was caught by something metallic, half buried in the earth. She dug it out with the tip of her shoe, aware of the horse waiting and watching. It was a small pewter tub. A gleam of black and yellow blazed in her mind: sweet williams on a hot summer day. Now it was packed with twigs and mud. Eleanor let it lie and offered a good pile of grass across the top of the fence for the horse. She kept her palm flat as the animal chomped, enjoying the tickle of its big, velvety mouth and the way its moist breath warmed her hand. She blew softly at it through her lips, causing it to stop chewing for a moment, looking surprised.
‘My Mum is buried here,’ she told it. ‘And now Kat has died. And I’ve got to break the news to my dad, who never liked me much and won’t understand anyway. But still.’
But the horse had lost interest. As she spoke, it ambled back into the field.
The sun chose the moment to burn through the shield of cloud. The pewter pot caught in the light, a blinding flash. Eleanor picked it up and shook it with sudden desperation, a futile hope that a clue might fall at her feet. She wanted things to add up, that was the trouble. She wanted the world to make sense. Instead, for as long as she could remember, her existence had felt as if she was lurching round in the dark, groping for doors that weren’t there, backing into corners she couldn’t see. All that fell from the pot was earth and stones. Eleanor flung it away and strode back to the car. As she was about to start the engine, her phone rang.
‘Where are you?’
‘Howard? I stopped… Never mind. I’m on my way to see Dad, remember? Are you okay?’ He didn’t sound okay.
‘Yes… no. Evie needs picking up. I’ve had a call from her school. There’s been some sort of incident. I can’t get hold of Hannah.’
‘I’ll go.’
‘I knew we shouldn’t have sent them in. I knew it was too early. Fuck it. Fuck.’
‘Don’t worry. I can be there in ten. Twenty at the most.’ Eleanor pictured him at the undertakers, gripping the bag containing her sister’s burial clothes. She hoped suddenly that he had remembered shoes. Not the gold boots, but perhaps a pair of the soft leather flats or, better still, the red Converse trainers. Kat had always loved those.
Her youngest niece had locked herself in the end cubicle of a row of toilets housed in the oldest part of her school, a once private stately home set among several acres of garden. Crouching down to peer under the door, Eleanor could just make out the scuffed pink ballet pumps – chosen in spite of Hannah’s gentle admonitions that morning – dangling well above the chessboard tiled floor.
‘Evie, it’s Eleanor, can you unlock the door? I’ve come to take you home. Daddy and Hannah couldn’t come right this minute, but they’ll be home soon too. And Luke and Sophie.’
‘She said she wouldn’t come out and now she won’t talk,’ the headmistress had explained, wringing her hands. ‘The Year Threes only come into this block for Friday Assembly. She must have slipped in during morning break. When her class teacher reported her missing, it took a while to find her. Such a relief, mind you.’ The head threw a pained glance at Eleanor. She wore a plain black polo-neck jumper that heightened the severe pallor of her skin and the plain strong features of her face. It was a face that looked proud of its hard work, Eleanor had decided, where kindness seemed to fight with determination. ‘Removing the door is the only other obvious answer,’ the Head went on, ‘because the gaps top and bottom are so small. As I say, this block is not supposed to be for our young ones. It’s long overdue for refurbishment,’ she had added bitterly. ‘Our handyman took some while to contact but is on his way. Perhaps now you are here he won’t be necessary.’
‘Evie, did you hear me?’ Eleanor tried again, her first effort having met with no reply. When the silence continued, she lay flat on her stomach so as to be able to press her mouth right up against the narrow gap under the door. ‘Evie, dearest, please undo the lock if you can. If you can’t, don’t worry. Just tell us, so we can take the door off instead. The main thing is that we all want the best for you. I bet you just want to go home, don’t you? I certainly do.’
The ballet shoes swung slightly. Eleanor could feel her heart leaping against the cold floor.
‘Or we needn’t go home, not straightaway. Not if you didn’t want to. We could go somewhere in the car instead. Are you hungry? We could buy something extra nice to eat… like chocolate biscuits, or ice cream, or sweets… any sweets.’
Behind her Eleanor was aware of someone arriving alongside the head, the clanking of a ladders and tools.
‘Just tell me what you want, Evie…’
‘Mummy,’ came the sudden screech, echoing round the stone floor and walls. ‘I want MUMMY.’
Eleanor remained very still, half her face squeezed tight into the crack between the door and floor. ‘I know,’ she said softly. ‘I want her too.’
There was a long pause. Then Evie’s voice echoed out again, much more quietly, ‘Is she in heaven?’
‘Yes, she is.’
‘And so when I go to heaven I will see her again?’
‘Yes, you will.’ Eleanor was acutely aware of her own childhood loss flickering in her mind: Kat seeking comfort and reassurances that their father, for all his godliness, had never been able to give. ‘But Mummy wants you to do a million things with your life first,’ she pressed on hoarsely, pushing the images away. ‘She is watching you right now and if she sees you are unhappy that will make her unhappy too. All she wants is for you to unlock the door so I can take you home.’
Eleanor watched, holding her breath as the scuffed suede soles of the small shoes were slowly lowered to the ground, just a couple of feet from her face. A moment later, when she was still clambering to her knees, there was the grinding of a metal lock and the toilet door flew open, giving her niece little option but to step into her arms in a way that felt almost natural. Eleanor had never embraced the child so thoroughly before. She felt sinewy and fragile, like a sapling. ‘That was very brave indeed,’ she whispered. ‘To come out when you didn’t want to.’
‘Oh yes, well done,’ trilled the head, dancing round them, dots of colour in her pale face, gesturing at the man and his ladder to be gone. ‘Clever girl. And lovely Aunty Eleanor for coming to get you.’
Eleanor got them away as quickly as she could. In the car park, she tried to take Evie’s hand but was shaken off. Instead, her niece maintained a distance of several feet as they crossed the forecourt. When they reached the car, Evie set about delivering several kicks to each wheel with her soft pink shoes, saying in a small angry voice, ‘This is Mummy’s car, not yours.’
‘Yes it is,’ Eleanor admitted sadly, holding the passenger door open till she had finished, glad of the chance to wipe away her own tears.