He can’t stop crying. She’s not sure she has ever seen so many tears. He’s only a little boy, she thinks again, though the little boy’s voice has broken and the sobs that come out of him come in a round, rich tenor. Romy sits beside him, encircles him with her arms, and tears pour down her own face as she does so. Seven hours, it took her to come down from Hounslow on the bus after Sarah’s call to her mobile, the motorway closed from Slough to Newbury and the traffic on the alternative routes moving at a crawl. There’s not been a pile-up this bad since the 1980s, says the radio news, and because of the requirement for forensic investigation and accident enquiry it’s unlikely to get better for forty-eight hours.
Eden killed six people in her fall, and another three hang by a thread in the Reading ICU. How do you miss the fact that someone’s so close to the edge that they don’t even care whose life they destroy when they die? I will never forgive myself, Sarah thinks. Never.
This is a part of parenting that nobody warned her about. How could they? She wants to weep alongside him. Wants to howl at the night sky, rub ashes into her hair, scrape her skin red-raw, close the door and pull the curtains and crawl beneath the covers to wait for this to go away, but she is the adult now.
‘It’s my fault,’ he sobs. ‘I killed her,’ and it feels as though it’s the millionth time she’s heard the words. So much so that she no longer bothers to protest. If he needs to say it, he needs to say it, she tells herself. It’s part of the process, for him, clearly. Perhaps if he says it often enough, if no one denies it or tells him to shut up, he will eventually accept that the responsibility is Eden’s alone. And Marie Spence’s. Not his.
Perhaps I will, too.
The images conjured by his words will haunt her forever. All she can see when she closes her eyes is that poor child, struggling and struggling to hold her back from the blustery edge.
‘I killed her,’ he says again, and rocks in his sister’s arms.
‘You didn’t,’ she says. ‘Oh, Ilo, you’re the bravest of all of us.’
‘Yes,’ says Romy. ‘What you did ... you were braver than I ever could have been. You are a warrior. You are a hero. I know, if you could, you would save the world entire.’
People keep coming up the driveway. Each time she looks out, the bank of cellophane-wrapped flowers leaning against the front of her house has grown. At least the garage will be experiencing a profit bump, she thinks, resentfully. Why do people do that? Why? What makes them think that a family in mourning will mourn better amid the smell of rotting foliage? That our lives will be improved by having to find a way to dispose of it all?
It’s just getting in on the act, really, she thinks. And then she hates herself for the sort of person she is.
The Christmas tree is still up. She wants to tear it down, hurl it into the street. There is no place in this house for such vulgar splendour. Never was. Never will be. How did I not know that her good spirits when we hung those baubles were all a lie? That those sunny smiles hid someone so easily tipped over?
At five, full dark, she hears movement outside the window, the sound of murmuring voices, a strangled sob. Cracks the living room curtains to see the intruders and feels a rush of rage.
‘Oh, this is too much!’ she says, and heads for the front door.
Romy looks up. Ilo has curled up on his side beside her and finally fallen into an exhausted sleep. ‘What is it?’
‘Helen Brown.’ Her voice comes out high with strangled fury. ‘Helen bloody Brown. And she’s brought that girl with her. That bloody, bloody girl.’
‘Girl?’
‘Marie Spence.’
Romy looks startled. Sits bolt upright in her seat as though she plans to leap to her feet and run.
Sarah storms through the hall and throws the door open. ‘Get away from here!’ she shouts. ‘Just get away!’
Marie and Helen both start. Marie is wearing no make-up: the first time she’s seen her without, ever. She seems to have shrunk. With her red-rimmed eyes and her colourless lips, she looks diminished. The urge to march out there and start laying her fists about is almost too strong to overcome. ‘Get away!’ she shouts again. ‘What are you doing here? What are you even ...?’
‘Sarah ...’ says Helen.
‘Oh, don’t you even start,’ she snarls. ‘Don’t think I don’t blame you too.’
Helen looks gobsmacked. Well, so you should, she thinks with a jolt of satisfaction. It’s as much your fault as anybody’s, pretending to be their counsellor and betraying their confidence.
‘And you!’ She turns on Marie, all contempt. ‘I don’t even know how you have the gall to come here. How do you feel now, killer?’
Marie shrinks even more. Finds her words, pushes them out in a little-girl voice. ‘I was going to give it back,’ she stutters. ‘It was only a joke.’
‘A joke!’
‘And the woman came along. We were waiting where you come off the bridge and I was going to give it back, and she took it. She just grabbed it, and—’
‘Oh, fuck off,’ she says, and takes a step out of the doorway. Sees them recoil, sees fear on their faces. I must look like a banshee, she thinks, and then she thinks: good. I want them to be afraid. I want them to know what they’ve done. ‘Get away from here!’ She sweeps a hand through the air. ‘Just get away!’
Their eyes drop and they turn to go. She slams the door. There will be no forgiveness. The world is spoiled.
Romy must have gone to her room while she was in the hall, and Ilo, alone in the drawing room, has woken up. ‘What was that?’
‘Never mind,’ she says. Goes and sits beside him. ‘How do you feel?’
‘I killed her,’ he says, his voice strained and empty, and she wraps him in her arms.
Romy stays in her room for half an hour. When she reappears, she has her phone in her hand. Stands over them on the sofa and says ‘Ilo, I’ve been talking to Uri.’
He straightens up. Sarah feels something change in him. ‘You found him?’
Romy blinks. Stares long and hard into his eyes. Then: ‘Yes,’ she says. There’s a hesitancy to her voice. ‘No, he found me.’
Ilo stares back. She clears her throat, and when she speaks again the assurance has returned. ‘It’s been on the news, apparently. With her name. He called when he heard.’
‘Oh,’ he says, and his eyes fill once more with tears.
‘Do you want to speak to him?’
Ilo nods, swallows.
‘Who’s Uri?’ Sarah asks.
Romy’s eyes move over to her face. ‘Eden’s brother.’
‘Half-brother,’ says Ilo, automatically.
‘He ... there were other survivors?’
‘They left before it happened,’ says Romy. ‘They got out before it was too late.’
‘Oh. “They”?’
‘Other people. They left. Before it happened. But they stayed together.’
Sarah drinks this in. ‘I’m not sure ...’ she says. She’s never heard this name before. Feels herself slip out of her depth again.
‘Please, Aunt Sarah,’ says Ilo. ‘He knew her. He knew her then. He knew me.’
The world seems to be slipping through her fingers, but she thinks she understands.
He picks up at the first ring. ‘It’s me,’ says Romy. ‘Yes, he’s here. Of course.’
She holds the phone out. Ilo, small, defenceless, takes it.
‘Hello?’ he says. Listens and seems to shrink into himself. His eyes fill once again with tears. ‘Thank you,’ he says. Then, ‘But I don’t understand why she had to die.’
His voice breaks. He presses the handset to his face and begins to rock. ‘Yes,’ he says. ‘Yes, thank you. I understand.’
He listens some more. Is he getting comfort from this? she wonders. Have I done the right thing? But then she sees his facial muscles begin to relax, and she knows that she has. People who knew them then. Of course that’s what he needs. Romy too, probably. I may have learned to love them, but I didn’t know them then.
‘Yes,’ says Ilo. ‘Yes, she was. I know. I just don’t know ... Why does it have to hurt so much?’
Should I go and make a cup of tea? She wonders. Give them some privacy? And suddenly the gloom descends. I am alone again, she thinks. Once again, I am on the outside.
Ilo looks up at Sarah. ‘He wants to speak to you,’ he says. ‘He wants to know if that would be okay?’
When she thinks of it later, the voice comes back to her as the most beautiful she’s ever heard. Deep, masculine, strong. But full of kindness, full of understanding. The sort of voice that makes you feel that it has wisdom to impart.
‘I wanted to say,’ he says, ‘that I’m so very sorry for your loss.’
And suddenly she is the one who is crying. ‘And for yours,’ she says.
He thanks her. ‘She was a beautiful creature.’
Grief will colour everything beautiful. ‘She was. Oh, she was. I loved her,’ she tells him. ‘I want you to know that she was loved here.’
‘She always was,’ he says. ‘She was easy to love. I know you’ve been good to her. I know she was lucky to find you.’
‘Thank you,’ she says. ‘It’s going to be ... I don’t want to be here any more. This town. This house. Christmas ...’
‘I understand,’ he replies. ‘I hear your pain.’