Pa said, ‘It doesn’t mean we’ve given up.’
‘We’re just acknowledging our loss,’ said Mo. ‘So far, what we’ve lost.’
The grey-black sky leaned heavy on our heads. Black oil, the river looked like, sucked us down. Those coal-black trains thundering behind might pitch us over. Seemed like magic we three stayed standing on the bridge.
Pa held Dan’s book bag. Inside, the special stuff we had to throw into the river, and a brick.
We’d had all kinds of things laid out on Daniel’s bed.
‘Please, Dom. Not those.’
Mo held his Superman jimjams to her face and breathed him in.
Pa touched the birthday scarf Dan knitted. Not a scarf, an egg cosy in fact, on account of how he ran out of time.
‘It’s only symbolic,’ Pa said. ‘We don’t have to part with anything we don’t want to.’
I took back his Jurassic Park pencil case.
* * *
Mo swallowed. ‘Let me.’
Pa said, ‘We don’t want it falling short, hun.’
Below us, on a rusty barge, a man in a donkey jacket hauled rope.
Pa passed her the bag, but held on.
I thought of Otis and Joan and To Have And To Hold.
‘You sure, Mo?’
‘Do you doubt me, Dom?’ she said in that half-laughing voice I hadn’t heard since, before.
Pa let go of the bag, gripped her with his eyes, said like he really meant it,
‘I don’t doubt you, Mo.’
It wasn’t her throwing arm he was talking about.
I squeezed between them, closed my eyes to keep the tears in, felt Pa on one side, clench, Mo, breathe in, stretch back, let loose a cry and a throw.
We had to wait for the
plop.
Into the deep, with the brick, went the photo Pa showed people the night we lost him, some hair Mo saved from his David Beckham buzz-cut. And one potato, Lurpak mashed in, wrapped in tin-foil, still warm – I baked it myself.