Thursday morning was cool and grey, the sky almost pearly in the east as the sun tried to break through the cloud cover. Ethan had left the house in a bad mood, having discovered that Zoe had forgotten to wash his rugby kit (‘What do you even do all day?’ he’d snapped at her, stuffing his still-muddy shirt into his bag with a kind of fury). Half an hour later, setting out with Gabe and Bea towards the primary school, Zoe still felt tightly wound, with Ethan’s criticism continuing to echo through her head. What do you even DO all day?, as if he felt nothing but contempt for her inadequacy. He was grieving, she reminded herself, and this was yet another sign that things had changed, that she was not the organized, capable mum she had been two months ago. She was a mess and they both knew it. This didn’t really make her feel any better, on second thoughts.
‘Mummy,’ said Bea, swinging her book bag as they walked along, ‘do you think there are unicorns in heaven?’
‘Er, no,’ Gabe answered scathingly before Zoe could find an appropriate answer. ‘Cos unicorns aren’t real, dumbo. And neither is heaven. It’s just a story for little kids and religious people.’
‘Gabe!’ scolded Zoe. ‘Don’t call her names. And don’t say that about heaven.’
‘Why not?’ he challenged. ‘Do you believe in heaven? Cos I haven’t seen any proof that it even exists, like photos or maps or anything. So how does anyone actually know?’
They were walking past a bus stop at that moment and a stout middle-aged woman waiting there caught Zoe’s eye, but not in a good way. She was wearing a badge that said ‘Jesus is Love’ and Zoe hustled the children past her fast, in case the woman was tempted to join the conversation.
‘I don’t have proof, Gabe, because I haven’t been there myself, but lots of people believe that it—’
‘I think Daddy would like to meet a unicorn,’ Bea put in serenely, chewing the end of her plait as Zoe floundered mid-sentence. ‘They could be friends. I’m going to call his unicorn Snowdrop because she’s all white and pretty.’
‘Lovely,’ said Zoe weakly, giving up on the heaven answer.
‘Not real, not real, not real,’ Gabe taunted his sister.
Bea glared at him. ‘They are real, and me and Mummy are going to see a film about them on Saturday, in the cinema, so there! REAL!’ she retorted, stabbing her brother with her finger for good measure.
Gabe gave the scathing laugh of a nine-year-old who knew absolutely everything. ‘Yeah, a cartoon,’ he scoffed. ‘It’s not like a documentary about unicorns. DERRR!’
‘That’s enough,’ Zoe said, wishing that her children – particularly this gobby middle one – wouldn’t take such enormous glee from winding each other up.
Gabe was still in goading mode, though, cackling at his own superiority. ‘Did you actually think it was going to be a wildlife film with, like, David Attenborough standing there with a bunch of . . .’ He could hardly get the words out for laughing so much. ‘With a bunch of unicorns?’
Bea’s face darkened, never a good sign. Then she stopped dead in the street with her hands on her hips. ‘Right, I’m telling Daddy about this now,’ she announced, before gazing up at the sky, her little chin sticking out. ‘Daddy, did you see that? He’s being mean. Tell him!’
In the very next second a car horn beeped, loud and indignant, as if answering her command, and Bea’s eyes grew round at the sound. ‘See!’ she exclaimed, vindicated. ‘That was him, telling you to stop.’ She went right up in her brother’s face. ‘BEEEEP,’ she yelled, then skipped off along the pavement. ‘Thanks, Daddy,’ Zoe heard her say.
Gabe glanced across at Zoe, looking chastened. ‘That wasn’t Dad,’ he said, but you could hear the uncertainty in his voice.
Zoe shrugged. ‘Who knows?’ she said lightly. Maybe Patrick was more willing to offer a sign to Bea than he was to her; to dish out a warning beep here and there to keep Gabe in check. He’d always stuck up for his daughter in the past when the boys’ teasing tipped over into unkindness, after all, and it wouldn’t hurt Gabe to think twice about his behaviour. She put a consoling hand on his shoulder. ‘Anyway, look on the bright side,’ she reminded him. ‘You’re going to play with Jack on Saturday, aren’t you, so you don’t have to see the unicorn film with us. Could be worse, right?’
Once Zoe had seen the children safely into the school playground, she walked back down the road. ‘I take it you’re still not replying to me,’ she muttered aloud, staring up at the sky like Bea had done. There was no corresponding beep from any vehicles, though, no sudden burst of sunshine, no sparrow nodding meaningfully at her from the nearest tree. No acknowledgement whatsoever. ‘In your own time,’ she added.
She was being fanciful, she told herself as she walked further along. As fanciful as her six-year-old daughter, who at least had an excuse for it. This was not really Dealing With It, this was a blatant coping mechanism, a means of kidding herself that he was still around somewhere, amidst the chilly April morning air, able to hear her. Moreover, it was a coping mechanism that didn’t even work properly, seeing as she never got anything back from him. Still, talking to Patrick was clearly helping Bea, at least. Zoe had heard her chatting away after her bedtime the night before and, when Zoe put her head round the bedroom door to remind Bea that she was supposed to be going to sleep, her daughter had replied, ‘I’m just telling Daddy a bedtime story. In case he’s missing me.’ The room was dark, save for the toadstool lamp beside the bed, which glowed softly pink, but Zoe could make out the little girl’s smile through the shadows, pleased with her own kindness. It was enough to crack a person’s heart in two. How could she deny Bea this one-sided conversation? Besides, it kept Patrick real for her; it kept him a part of her life, which could only be a good thing.
She didn’t feel like going straight home this morning; she had found that the act of walking through her own front door often sapped her energy and left her unable to do very much other than wander mournfully around the empty rooms, occasionally sinking onto one of the children’s beds and putting her head in her hands. What do you even do all day? Ethan had sneered, and the honest answer these days was: not much. His words still smarting in her head, she found herself veering towards the cemetery, which was a fitting place for a widow, she supposed.
‘Hello,’ she whispered as she walked through the gates. She and Patrick had never explicitly discussed their preferences in death, blithely assuming they would have decades left together before they needed to consider such things, but when it came to making decisions about his funeral and other arrangements, she had known, instinctively, that he would not have wanted to be buried. He was tall and outdoorsy, and had never liked being confined in small spaces. Lifts, budget-hotel bathrooms, small cars: they all gave him the heebie-jeebies. It was silly of her – he was dead, after all, and technically unable to care much either way – but she couldn’t bear the thought of him in a coffin, buried under the ground. She’d opted for cremation instead, and currently had what was left of him in a small urn on top of the wardrobe. ‘I can’t leave him on the mantelpiece or anywhere downstairs,’ she’d had to tell Liz, after her mother-in-law had hinted several times about keeping Patrick’s ashes somewhere more visible. ‘The kids will only knock him over and spill him everywhere.’
Her own mum wasn’t entirely happy that Zoe was still holding on to the urn, either. ‘You really should scatter those ashes,’ she had said, more than once. ‘It might help, love, letting him go.’
‘I will, I’m going to,’ Zoe had said. ‘Don’t rush me.’ That pot of ashes was all she had left of her husband; she wanted his final send-off to be perfect. She was planning to bring him on holiday to Pembrokeshire with them that summer anyway. Take a walk along the headland with the kids, and let him fly with the wind as she gave her eulogy and they talked about their fondest memories of him. Patrick loved holidaying there; they both did. They’d gone a couple of years ago, staying in a house right on the beach at Freshwater East, and it had been one of the happiest weeks of her life. She liked the thought of him resting there.
That was all ahead of her, though. In the meantime, she had paid for a memorial plaque with his name on in the Garden of Remembrance, here in the grounds of the cemetery, and it was a peaceful place to visit. The flowerbeds were beautifully tended, with the cherry trees just coming into bloom. There were benches to sit on too, if you felt like lingering a while, and the calm kind of hush that made the rest of the world seem far distant.
‘Patrick Christopher Sheppard was a loving father, husband and son,’ she murmured to herself as she walked along. ‘A kind, honest man who we all adored. Such a wonderful father. The best of all men. The best man in the world . . .’ It was no good. Every time she tried to sum him up for her eulogy, the words felt inadequate. How could a few bland phrases do justice to the years they had shared together, the way that all of his tiny kindnesses and acts of love had built up in tissue-thin layers to create something solid and indestructible? She still missed him so much all the time. She missed his easy company, his whistling around the house, his habit of pulling her to him in an embrace, the knack he had of making her feel better, whatever kind of a day he’d had. Even after Bea’s birth, when Zoe had been stunned by an unexpected cloud of post-natal depression that had brought her to her knees, Patrick had been able to reach her, the only person who still managed to connect with her in that fearful shadowy place. He’d taken her hand and not let go until he’d helped pull her through the darkness.
She held her hands up in front of her now, wishing he was still here to clasp one within his warm, friendly fingers. To hook an arm around her shoulders and let her lean against him. To make her laugh with a story about one of his tenants, or something one of the lads at work had said or . . .
‘Zoe? Are you all right?’
Oh, shit, there was Mari, one of the mums from school, on the path, presumably having just heard Zoe muttering her eulogy under her breath, like a weirdo. While holding up her hands and staring at them! Imagine if this got round the school playground – it would spread faster than melted butter.
She’s obviously not handling it well. Talking to herself in the cemetery like a fruitcake. It’s not a good look, is it? Poor woman. I hope the children are okay. Do you think someone should have a word?
‘Zoe?’ Mari prompted. She was wearing a gorgeous pale-blue coat that made her look like some kind of ice-queen, Zoe registered distractedly, before snapping to attention.
‘Yes! Sorry. Miles away,’ she said. ‘Yes, I’m fine, thanks. Are you?’
‘Not bad,’ said Mari, although the wind was making her eyes run and she dabbed at them suddenly. ‘Listen – maybe we should have a chat sometime. Get together. It would be good to talk.’
‘Oh,’ said Zoe, feeling uncomfortable. ‘I’m not sure.’ She already felt so talked about, that was the problem. She’d removed herself from a couple of parents’ WhatsApp groups recently because she couldn’t cope with other people’s comments and clumsy approaches, however well-meaning. What did they know about grief? How many of them had had to deal with the death of a husband? They had no idea – and clearly neither did Mari, if she thought Zoe wanted to chat about her feelings. ‘I’m not much company right now. But thanks anyway.’
She made her goodbyes and hurried away, trying to keep a lid on her emotions. One day she’d feel normal again, she comforted herself. One day she’d be able to make conversation like the other mums, drop round for coffee with them, eat cake and swap funny stories about their children. But not yet. Not today. Right now, all she could manage was putting one foot in front of another, in order to trudge along through each minute and hour.
‘You’re doing great,’ she told herself fiercely. ‘Mari’s not important. Just keep going.’