ABIGAIL

‘I’ll go with you,’ Mary said tearfully. They were going round in circles.

It had been a couple of hours since they’d watched Abigail’s mum being lowered into the ground. They were dressed in identical black, the woollen material sticking to them, too hot for the unseasonably warm spring day. Their abandoned pillbox hats with squares of veil were lying on the grass between them, their flattened hair as lank as the mood of the day.

‘But your work…’

Abigail was biting on her lip. Since her mum had died she’d felt eerily removed from things, as if she were floating above her own life, watching it unfold. She kept walking into rooms and expecting her mum to be there, kept answering the door to people thinking they were her. Imagined her popping in, pulling up a chair. ‘Silly you! I was here all the time.’ People came with casseroles and pitying looks and Abigail had to keep the kettle on the boil so that the permanent scream from the escaping steam sounded exactly like the noise in her head.

‘Maybe they’ll have something for me there?’

‘But where would you live?’ Abigail knew she wasn’t helping but she felt a brittleness about it all. Her mum had died. She was leaving. This life was over, a full stop, a very definite end. As if the past had a large line drawn next to it and she could never cross back.

That was the past in which she and Mary had discussed their futures in light-hearted voices, sipping cider for the first time, patching clothes, drawing lines on their legs to pretend they were wearing nylons. They were going to find work as secretaries, travel, marry American lads, or not. Mary admitted to Abigail once that she didn’t much fancy working for a man at home as well as working outside. Abigail wanted to be in love though, wanted to be kissed, head tilted backwards, by a wavy-haired man like Marlon Brando. That was before, when she’d felt something. Now she would do anything to be able to stay living with her mum, looking after her, bringing her cups of sweet tea and reading to her, remaining an old maid; anything to cross that line back into the past.

They were leaning against the Clifton Downs tower, their heads resting on the stonework, both hopelessly lost in the misery of the moment, the spring sunshine, the hopeful blossom on the trees, the clumps of waving daffodils incongruous with their mood.

‘You can’t go,’ Mary said simply.

Abigail wanted to bundle her friend into her arms and never let go but, again, she saw her as if through a thick lens, as if she had put on someone’s spectacles, so that everything was squiffy and blurry. She didn’t want to leave, she knew that much; she didn’t want to be alone. But the house was only rented – her mum had taken in mending from a lot of the grand houses in Clifton, working at it day in, day out until the light failed – and now the landlord’s patience was waning and Abigail knew she had to go.

She was headed to Devon, to a sister she hadn’t seen since long before the war, who had married in a church in Aspley Road when Abigail was wearing frocks, pulled-up socks and sandals, and pigtails in her hair. Her sister hadn’t made the funeral, had sent a vast arrangement of flowers for the coffin and her apologies that ‘family circumstances’ prevented her from attending. Abigail had been too swept up in everything else at the time to react but now it made her fists clench. How could her sister have stayed away?

She had distant memories of her sister as a child. She’d had a line of three china dolls, all dressed in velvet and with cherubic cheeks and beady eyes, sitting on a trunk at the foot of the bed. She had been sent to her room once when she had stamped her foot at their daddy. She had loved drawing, producing neat pictures with all the colour inside the lines, not like Abigail’s, a mad mess of scrawls and mismatched shades. She had pinched her: that Abigail remembered.

They were older now though and she would have changed. She wouldn’t be the girl who had locked her in the outside lavatory for the longest afternoon in winter so that Abigail had clawed at the wooden boards and got splinters in her fingers; or the girl who had shown her how to put on lipstick, creeping into their mum’s room to prance and preen in the mirror, giggling and slopping around in high-heeled shoes that were much too big.

When she made herself, Abigail could picture them both picking their way carefully across the fields of north Devon, heads bent together, laughing. Then that scene would melt away, replaced by a blank face on a body she didn’t recognize. A hard woman with thin lips, glaring at Abigail through narrowed eyes, wondering why Abigail was there. Abigail shook her head to get rid of the image. The picture postcards her sister sent promised sunny days, promenading in hats, ice-creams, open space. She felt lighter at the thought then, wanting to convince herself, needing the comfort of family, needing something on this earth of her mum. They would cling to each other and cry and Abigail would feel something again.

Abigail wanted to believe she wouldn’t miss the bustle and dirt of Bristol, wouldn’t miss picking up Mary from her shift at the pub, the thrill of walking into the cramped, low-ceilinged room hung about with pots. The sweaty, heaving mass as she pushed past men holding tankards of ale; the toothy grins of the regulars as they beckoned her over to the tables where they sat on upturned barrels and chairs drinking thick cider, the dregs creeping up the sides of their glasses. The room smelling of tobacco and the sweet tang of apples. The heat all around her, hemming her in, caressing her, leaving patches under her arms, trickles down her back. The walk back along the river to Mary’s house, the boats gently rocking, the cranes reaching over the surface of the water, the steam trains hissing in the station. Clifton overlooking it all in its glorious pomp: manicured lawns, sloping roads lined with impressive stone houses behind high walls and heavy gates. Bristol seemed greyer now, a body without its heart: no reason to stay.

But Mary, her friend, watching her now with large brown eyes, always ready to smile sweetly from one side of her mouth, a blush creeping over her milky cheeks when she laughed. She had felt more like a sister to her these last few years. During the war; they’d spent their days dipping in and out of each other’s houses, Mary quick to appear of a morning, escaping her dad’s bleak moods. Mary’s mum had walked out on it all, but Mary had had nowhere to go. Abigail and her mum had become Mary’s family and the girls had shared everything with each other. They had so many plans for the future, for the adventures they would go on, their travels taking them across the Atlantic. And now she was leaving her. For a moment Abigail could feel the guilt stealing into her veins, pumping round her body, straining to be felt.

She had dreamt about Mary last night, standing in the middle of the Downs, turning slowly in a circle. Not a soul around. And Abigail had watched her lost in this sea of grass, unable to call to her. Mary circling, the long grass tickling her ankles as she turned, her eyes scanning the edges of the Downs, moving along the lines of bushes, past the tower, searching for someone, hoping for someone. And Abigail stuck to her spot, looking on, helpless.

Abigail stood up suddenly and Mary jolted upright as Abigail brushed her thighs with the palm of her hands. She was brusque, ducking out of Mary’s proffered arm, wrapping her coat around her like a shield, tucking her hands under her armpits, still feeling cold.

‘I need to get back, I’ve got so much to pack up, to do.’

Mary stood opposite her, placing her hat on her head, smoothing the strands of hair that had broken free. ‘I can help.’

‘No, I… You have work and I need to…’ She wasn’t sure what she needed, but her tone was enough to ensure Mary didn’t argue. Her friend’s mouth closed, her expression hurt. It made Abigail turn on her heel.

She left her standing by the tower looking after her. She left her abruptly, as if she were leaving for Devon that day, as if she had already left.