We are pulling up in front of a large grey house with a black porch and peeling green window frames. Alice swings the car into a drive at the side of a garden that is empty except for a bench and a scattering of dull rocks. Behind the house is a view I know so well I can feel it in my eyelids, in my skin, in my bones. The dark black of the pine forest and erupting above it the grey hulk of the mountain, today blurred by rain, its edges distorted.
We sit in silence for a moment.
‘Well, here we are,’ says Alice.
Ella presses her face up against the car window, staring at the house outside, the forest and the mountain beyond. Her eyes are open wide, one palm spread and placed on the glass. When the girls heard we’d be coming here, they wanted to come too.
‘I can show you around!’ Molly said to Ella. Then her face had dropped. ‘I haven’t been back since though.’
‘I’ll come too,’ Alice said. ‘The more hands the better.’
Her voice had been cheery but she took a step towards Jack and silently wrapped an arm around his waist, kissing him on the cheek.
Now, no one seems to want to be the first to step outside and across to the house in its uninhabited state. Perhaps it’s just the rain, but the building looks even darker than I remember, its walls the same shade as the mountain, its porch the colour of the black pine trees. I shiver.
The sound of a car door shutting comes from behind us and I turn to see Jack stepping out of the car into the rain, Molly following behind with a bundle of bin bags in her arms. Alice is opening her door now too, followed by Ella. I take a deep breath, smooth my hair and lift the hood of my raincoat over my head. Then I follow the others into the house, shutting the Land Rover door behind me with a decisive slam.
It’s the smell that hits me first. It’s amazing how quickly a house can smell forgotten. I breathe in the scent of dust and emptiness. There’s something medicinal cutting through too, sharp and artificial in contrast to the mustier smells of an unaired building. And then it hits me, faint yet unmistakable. The smell of my mother’s perfume.
The others disperse into the house as I pause in the hallway. I can hear the footsteps of Ella and Molly upstairs and from the kitchen the sound of the kettle being filled. How is it that this place is entirely the same and entirely different all at once? The tiles are slightly more chipped than I remember and yet I can imagine the feel of them against my bare feet, cold and smooth. Coats and hats hang on hooks by the door and I recognise none of them but they are still unmistakably my parents’.
Stepping along the corridor I’m shocked by the sight I see through the open door of the living room. Two empty twin beds, lying where the sofa used to be. Around the beds are signs of a life lived in one room: folded piles of clothes, empty mugs, bottles of pills lined up on a side table. The sheets on the beds are neatly made. Where are they? Where are my parents’ bodies? And how were these beds carried down the narrow staircase and by whom? I know the answer, of course. Jack. Jack carried the beds, Jack made the cups of tea and administered the medication. Jack took them to the mainland for hospital appointments and dealt with the reality of what needed to happen following their deaths. I steady myself against the doorframe, trying not to breathe too deeply the sweet, sickly smell that lingers in this room, and yet tasting that other bitter taste in my mouth – guilt. Will Jack ever forgive me for all the things I left him with when I left the island?
I find him in the kitchen sitting at the table next to Alice, both drinking from steaming mugs. A third is waiting for me on the sideboard.
Despite our brief moment of connection last night, here Jack won’t look at me. I reach for the tea in silence, quickly taking in the changes in this room: a calendar of bird photographs left open on February, a new washing machine and a tea-towel hanging from the oven displaying a picture of the Algarve. Did my parents visit or was it a gift from a friend? Either option seems somehow out of the question.
‘So, how do you want to do this, darling?’
Alice looks carefully at Jack, her hand resting on top of his.
‘I want to get rid of it all,’ he replies, his voice dry.
Neither of them asks me what I think. I’m not surprised, of course. I drink my tea silently.
‘Get rid of it all,’ Jack repeats. ‘Unless there’s anything Molly wants to keep. Otherwise chuck it.’
‘OK,’ Alice says, placing her hands on either side of her husband’s face and kissing his forehead. ‘We can use the boxes for the charity shop and the bin bags for rubbish. I’ll take the boxes over to the mainland next week. Does that sound all right?’
Jack nods, very slightly.
‘Why don’t you and I start down here,’ Alice says. She is still holding his face in her hands. He looks down at the table but she looks at him. If you asked me on a typical day whether I was happy being single I would say yes. It’s what I chose for myself. But today is not a typical day. Today is a day when I would give anything to have someone hold my head in their hands.
‘I’ll start upstairs,’ I say quickly. I grab a pile of boxes and a few bin bags and leave Jack and Alice in the kitchen together. I hear Alice’s voice trying to sound cheerful, ‘Right, a broken tin opener. Chuck?’
My legs feel soft beneath me as I climb the stairs, running my hands along the familiar smooth wood of the banister. I picture Sarah’s house growing up, where the walls either side of the stairs were lined with photos of Sarah on her own and Sarah with her parents and grandparents at various ages. The walls beside the stairs at my brother’s house are similar, Molly frozen, smiling, in dozens of frames. Here, the walls are bare except for a few framed prints of boats.
The first room I reach is the room that belonged to my parents. Growing up, I rarely saw inside this room, the door remaining firmly shut most of the time. Today it is slightly ajar and I push on it and step in. The room is almost empty, most of the furniture having been moved downstairs. There are indentations in the carpet where the legs of the two twin beds once stood. A small wooden cross hangs on the far wall but otherwise the walls are bare. Faded blue curtains hang in the windows and I spot the dressing table where I would sometimes spy my mother brushing her hair through a crack in the door. There are a few bottles on the table and a jewellery box, and I run my hand over each object, picking up a thick trail of dust.
On the other side of the room, my father’s side, lie a pair of brown lace-up shoes and a pair of glasses, abandoned on the floor. I look closely at the shoes, remembering standing before my father, my body tense, my eyes fixed on his shoes. Back then, his shoes were more than just shoes. They were my father. The sound they made on the stairs or the landing told me what kind of mood he was in, my heart quickening in response. The sight of them in the corridor when I arrived home from school made me step inside and pull the door behind me extra quietly. But now, they are just shoes. It seems inconceivable that my mother and father, once two forces as strong in my life as gravity and the weather, could be reduced to this: a dressing table, a few discarded bottles, a pair of brown lace-up shoes.
Enough. I leave the room and continue along the corridor. Hearing soft voices, I follow them to what used to be the spare room. Instead of the magnolia room I remember, filled with boxes and a rarely used double bed, is a blue room painted with a series of white waves. On the floor in the middle of the room sit Molly and Ella. Molly lifts toys and books out of a wooden chest at the foot of the single bed. The chest is decorated with shells.
‘Oh, I remember this one!’ Molly exclaims. ‘Grandma bought this for me for my tenth birthday. I guess I was too old for teddies by then but still …’
Molly gives the bear, fluffy with a green bow around its neck, a quick squeeze and places it on the floor among a growing pile of toys. Ella sits next to her cousin, her knees pulled up to her chest, her arms wrapped tightly around herself.
‘So, they painted this room specially for you?’ she asks quietly. As Molly reaches for a book in the pile of belongings Ella pulls the teddy bear with the green bow against her chest.
