‘She can’t control her grief; she couldn’t control Kerry’s death . . .’ I shrug my shoulders, embarrassed at the psychobabble coming out of my mouth. ‘I just think if we can give her some power back, give her something to focus on, then she can start to get better.’
‘But she is getting better,’ Judith says.
Brian, I notice, looks away from his wife and meets my eyes, understanding clear in his expression.
‘She’s much better than she was after Kerry died,’ my mother-in-law enthuses. ‘She didn’t talk or get dressed for days and there was that time when she wasn’t eating . . . she’s much better now.’
‘What answers?’ Brian pulls the conversation back, just as Jen walks into the room, but I can tell by his expression that he knows what I’m about to say.
‘Jen wants to know why she is alive when Kerry is dead . . . why Kerry saved her.’
Chapter Thirty-Four
Jennifer
It’s another Monday morning, another normal day where I am here and my sister isn’t, but it’s been a good morning. Ed brought me breakfast in bed; the sleeping tablets are working, but they make getting up harder than usual. Oscar has showed us how far he can fire a raisin from his nostril – over a metre, which is impressive – and Hailey has given us a squint-worthy rendition of ‘A Whole New World’ from Aladdin on her recorder.
Ed leans in, his lips brushing the skin just below my ear, as the click of the front door latch locks into place behind me. After I’ve dropped off the kids, I’m going over to Nessa’s to see how she is.
His long legs take the steps from the door to the pathway, his grey suit jacket is folded over his arm, his hands run through his blond hair as he unlocks the car doors with a click of the keys.
‘Ed—’
Panic fills me. It wasn’t there a minute ago. A minute ago, I was putting on my sandals; I was ushering the kids out of the door and into my open car. I hadn’t given a thought to Ed’s journey to work: I hadn’t pictured the other drivers in their metal coffins, half-asleep, half-alive, not paying attention to the way they are driving. What if something happens to him on the way there? What if this is the last time I see him? My feet run down the steps. He turns towards my voice, surprise in his eyes as I throw my arms around his neck, pull him close to me, grip the tops of his shoulder blades as he bends his body down to my height.
‘Don’t go. Don’t go to work.’ I pull myself away and meet his eyes. ‘Please, Ed, stay here, stay with me, we can keep the kids home, I won’t go to Nessa’s, we can—’ As I speak these words, the laughter and normality I had seen just a short time ago is gone, and the worry, the fear of shattering me is back.
‘I can’t, Jen. You know I can’t, and we can’t keep the kids from school.’ His voice is level, kind: guarded.
I swallow down the panic; I try to nod, to confirm that of course he should be going to work, of course the kids should be going to school. I want to tell him that I don’t want to be alone.
He glances at his watch. ‘Look, why don’t I drop you off at Nessa’s? I can take the kids to school.’ He doesn’t wait for my reply; instead he beckons the kids over from my car, sitting redundantly on the drive. Hailey is the first to open her door, followed by an excited-looking Oscar.
‘Are we going to Muddy Creek again?’ his excited voice asks as he arrives by Ed’s side, looking up at his dad expectantly.
‘No, matey, jump in the back. Mummy is visiting Nessa, so we’re going to give her a lift on the way.’
My feet walk around to the passenger side; I open the door and buckle the seat belt around me. It’s as though I’m watching these hands complete their actions from the outside. Is it really my brain telling them to do these things?
Oscar’s chatter fills the journey with facts about Riley Davies and how every dinner time he eats with his mouth open and it makes him feel sick. I pull down the visor and catch Hailey’s reflection: I notice she has put clips in her hair; two small navy bows sit neatly either side of her parting.
‘Your hair looks pretty, Hailey,’ I say to the freckled face framed in the small rectangle. Her long dark eyelashes flick behind her lenses as she meets my gaze, a hesitant smile lifting her cheeks.
‘Thank you. It’s the school photographs today.’
‘Oh yes, right. Of course it is.’
She pushes her lips together.
‘Well, make sure you give your one-hundred-watt smile.’
She nods and turns her attention to the view passing outside the car window.
I turn my head over my shoulder to surreptitiously look at Oscar’s appearance and my heart sinks. He has chocolate spread at the corners of his mouth and along the corner of his white polo-shirt collar. His hair is in need of a cut; why hasn’t his hair been cut? I take him every six weeks. I close my eyes and try to remember when I last took him. The car stops, my eyes opening, taking in Nessa’s house.
‘Have a good day, and remember your one-hundred-watt smile, Hailey.’ I don’t look at her as I say it; I don’t want to see the one-hundred-watt roll of her eyes.
Ed’s hand grabs mine as I reach for the handle; I turn to look at him.
‘I love you,’ he says.
‘You too,’ I reply and walk away from my family towards Nessa’s.
‘Hi. Jesus, you look like shite,’ I greet Nessa.
‘I haven’t slept . . . you?’
‘Like a log . . . it’s the tablets. Maybe you should try—’
‘I can’t. What if Erica needed me and I didn’t wake up?’
I follow Nessa into the kitchen. She is wearing a loose white shirt tied in the middle above denim shorts. I look down at my own jeans: there is a brown stain of something nondescript and the material of my black top is too thick for a day where the sun is shouting so loudly from the sky.
The kitchen is clean. The sun reflects in the silver tap as it spews water into the kettle, the room soon filling with the rattle and groan of the kettle while Nessa spoons coffee into a cafetière. The table is strewn with paper; a laptop perches on top of a notebook surrounded by several half-filled coffee cups. I nod towards the laptop as she passes me the sugar bowl. ‘How’s it going?’
‘Good. At least that’s how it felt at three this morning, it might be a different story when I look at it in the harsh light of day, but that’s sleep deprivation for you, isn’t it?’ She adds water, the grains of coffee rising to the top as Nessa adds the lid and plunger.
‘Talk to her, Jen. You need to talk to her about how you’re feeling.’
Kerry is plunging the coffee down. Her hair is being held in place by a red-and-white-spotted head scarf, like the day she dressed up as a land girl for Hailey’s VE Day school fair: a pair of dungarees hang from her frame over a pale blue T-shirt.
I blink.
She is gone: the coffee is still percolating; Nessa is pouring milk into a jug and is arranging cups onto a tray. ‘Shall we go into the garden? You like your coffee strong, right? Kerry always plunged the plunger too early, didn’t she?’
Kerry sticks her tongue out behind Nessa’s back but the image fades, shudders, like the image of another train passing yours.