‘Good grief!’ Dad replies.
‘Dad, could you take Oscar downstairs, please?’ I ask, addressing the ceiling as Ed lets out a yelp under his breath which coincides with the sound of his zip closing.
I tear a piece of my hair away from the clasp and my chin lowers just enough for me to witness Dad shielding his eyes.
‘Oscar? Come downstairs with Grandpa—’
‘What’s this?’ Oscar reaches for a ‘toy’ that has revealed itself from between the sheets.
‘Noo!’ I screech as Ed limps over and takes the offending item out of Oscar’s reach.
Dad marches over to him, picks him up and takes a perplexed five-year-old down the stairs, the door closing behind him. Ed and I look at each other and burst out laughing.
‘Help me get this untangled, will you?’ I ask. He stands behind me, his fingers working intricately as he pulls the rest of my hair free. We stand opposite the mirror, his arms folding around my waist, my head leaning back against his chest.
‘I meant it, you know . . .’ he says to our reflection as he kisses my shoulder. ‘You are beautiful.’
‘You’re not bad yourself,’ I smile back, the mirror framing this moment in time.
Chapter Four
Jennifer
I select the photo icon on my phone, taking time to make sure I can get the letters engraved on her black granite headstone to fit into the shot along with the daffodils that are just starting to bloom. They are arranged alongside the plastic sunflowers – Kerry’s favourite – which remain in the glass urn. I hope using fake flowers is OK; Kerry always had fake flowers around her house, she could never keep anything alive . . . including herself.
I get myself back into position and tap the screen. The fake shutter sound sends a flock of pigeons scattering on their way.
‘You did not just do that?!’ Kerry exclaims as she drains the last of her coffee from the Starbucks travel cup that I bought her for her birthday. This memory is from when I had taken the time to arrange a bunch of flowers for Mum and Dad’s anniversary picnic and been so proud that I had posted a photo of them on Facebook. Kerry had been appalled by my actions. She had grabbed her phone from her ripped-jeaned pocket and insisted we pull funny faces: me cross-eyed and cheeks puffed out, her gurning with her tongue sticking out to post immediately in case people thought I had actually turned into our mother.
What? I reply defensively. When I say reply, I mean in my head. I’m not talking out loud to a memory of my sister . . . that would just be weird. I think the flowers look nice. Just because it’s a grave, doesn’t mean it can’t look nice.
‘I detest the word “nice”.’
Colourful.
‘Hmmm, better . . . how about resplended?’
Resplended isn’t even a word, it’s resplendent.
My phone alarm begins to chime a tune that verges on an Argentine tango. ‘Pants!’ I gather my trowel and plastic bag filled with weeds. This is the third time this week that I’ve not noticed the time and almost been late for picking up the kids.
I make it to the playground just as Oscar’s class is being released. His face lights up as he spots me, navy-blue book bag swinging in his hand as he storms across the tarmac and into my open arms. Within moments, my arms are full of him, his smell erupting from beneath the faint trace of the inside of the classroom. Before I have untangled the PE bag from Oscar’s shoulder, his mouth is releasing a flurry of information about the new class pet – a stick insect imaginatively called ‘Sticky’ – and how he got nine out of ten in his spelling test, which is OK because the only word he got wrong was ‘spaghetti’ and Daddy says that it isn’t even an English word and Daddy says my teacher is stupid. Time will soon steal these runaway sentences; it will replace them with grunts and shrugging shoulders.
Oscar continues talking, and I make the appropriate noises of congratulatory praise, while extracting the half-folded newsletter from the handles of his bookbag, the residual smell of cheap soap clinging to the material, but I’m distracted. As Oscar continues with his stream of information about the school day, I’m looking at the woman standing towards the back of the playground.
She’s thinner, her hair is longer, but it’s her. Nessa: Kerry’s Nessa.
They were such an unusual couple.
Kerry’s looks turned heads no matter where she went, but you could pass Nessa in the street without a second glance; you could sit opposite her on a train every day and not notice that she was the woman who’d been sitting in the same place the day before. She is opposite to Kerry in every way: dark hair, dark eyes, olive skin, quiet voice, unassuming stature . . . alive. But when they were together, Nessa became someone different. You would notice the couple sitting opposite you on the train; you would notice the chemistry between them; it fizzed and flowed and ignited the light behind her eyes.
Her daughter, Erica, is slipping her hand inside hers. Erica is a tiny little thing, her long, brown hair is plaited neatly and rests on the back of the army-green coat that is a size too big for her, and they are walking away.
‘Nessa!’ I shout. She reacts by slowing her pace just a fraction, but then continues walking. My heart is pounding and my breath catches. Hailey is skipping towards me. Her shoes are on the wrong feet and her hair has escaped the clutches of one of her pigtail bobbles.
‘Mummy?’ She sticks her finger up her nose – a trait she has inherited from her father.
‘Hello, lovely,’ I reply, landing a hasty kiss on the top of her head. I crane my neck to avoid the heads and umbrellas that are blooming up into the drizzle.
‘She doesn’t want to talk to you,’ Kerry whispers, unwrapping a fruit salad sweet from its wrapper, just as she had when we actually had this conversation last year. I had arrived unannounced at their flat and Nessa had been working late. ‘Ness is in one of her moods, look, she’s scratching the back of her head. She always scratches the back of her head when she is in a grump.’ I can smell the artificially sweetened candy, even though I haven’t had any for months.
‘Mummy?’ Hailey asks as I try to hurry them along. Erica has let go of Nessa’s hand and is running ahead of her.
‘Hmmm?’
‘Why are we walking so fast?’
‘I thought I saw your Aunty Kerry’s friend, Nessa. Oscar, has Erica come back to school?’
‘Yes, and she lost golden time because she didn’t finish her work. Mummy?’ Oscar asks, his feet skipping along to keep up with my strides.
‘Yes, poppet?’ I ask as Nessa disappears through the gates.
‘Did you know your skirt is stuck in your knickers? They are blue and spotty.’
I release the hem of my skirt, walk through the gates, and scan the street, looking over my shoulder. Kerry is in between the school gates, dancing and ‘Singing in the Rain’, twirling her ladybug-style umbrella while exclaiming how wonderful a feeling it is to be happy again. She jumps up and kicks her heels together. ‘She’ll talk to you when she’s ready!’
My memory replaces ‘he’s ready’ with ‘she’s ready’ because in reality the day Kerry was dancing in the rain was after Ed and I had our first fight. ‘He’ll talk to you when he’s ready,’ she’d said . . . and he did.