Ella tugs self-consciously at the hem of her black dress. Beside her, Molly does the same with her black skirt. Alice and Jack are just behind them, holding hands. The five of us stay close together as we walk up the path. We pause for a moment in the churchyard as black-clad figures follow behind us and into the church. I catch Alice’s eye and she smiles reassuringly at me.
‘How are you all holding up?’ asks Sarah’s mother Linda as she reaches us, giving both Molly and Ella a hug. Doug shakes Jack’s hand and pats him roughly but warmly on the shoulder. As they exchange a few words Linda pulls me into a firm embrace. Before releasing me, she says something quietly into my ear.
‘We always thought of you as ours, you know.’
I blink back tears as she lets me go and then disappears with Doug inside the church. Sarah and her family are just behind them and hug us all in turn too. As Ella and Olive embrace each other it’s like watching Sarah and me as children. She catches me watching them and smiles at me softly.
‘It’s like stepping back in time seeing them together, isn’t it?’ she says.
I’ve spent most of my life trying to escape my past. And yet for just a second, I would go back if I could, just for a moment of that friendship Sarah and I shared as girls. But perhaps it’s not too late for us after all. We can never get back exactly what we had, but we can build something new. She hugs me again and then disappears inside the church.
Next up the path comes Morag, leaning on a stick wrapped with black ribbons and accompanied by Mrs Campbell from the village shop, who gives me a gentle smile. Tess, Joy and Harry arrive alongside Kerstin and Emma, her husband Duncan and their children. Next arrives Brenda, walking beside Jean Brown and her husband. It’s the first time I’ve seen Jean since she left the island a few days ago. I want to catch her to ask her how her visit to her sister was, but am suddenly distracted by the figures approaching just behind her. Mr and Mrs Anderson walk solemnly up the path with a group of elderly couples whom I recognise as my parents’ church friends. My skin turns cold. With them is a woman a little younger than me whom I don’t recognise immediately. But she seems to know me and introduces herself warmly as Sophie Anderson. Her parents look on stiffly as she greets me.
‘I’m surprised she had the gall to come here today,’ comes a voice, just loud enough to hear. I can’t work out who said it and yet I feel my face burning with shame. Mr and Mrs Anderson and their friends turn and walk primly inside the church door, but Sophie pauses for a moment.
‘I’m so sorry about them,’ she says once her parents have gone. ‘I came here with my mother because she asked me to, but I was hoping to see you too. I wanted to apologise for her, I heard the gist of what happened at the village shop as well.’
I wish I could disappear.
‘You don’t have to apologise.’
‘But I want to. It makes me feel awful that she and her friends acted that way. They’re the old islanders and I guess they’re set in their ways and their views.’
‘So, you don’t believe it all yourself then? That I was a terrible tearaway who brought shame on my family?’ I try to say it lightly, jokingly. But I can’t let go of the feeling that she actuallymight, and so might so many others on the island even if they don’t say it to my face.
‘Of course not! You’re forgetting we went to school together. I actually knew you, unlike my mother. OK, my parents might have a certain view of things, but there are also people here who see it differently. You’ll see. Anyway, I’d better go inside. It would be nice to catch up before you head back to London.’
I can’t help but feel shaken by the conversation. I reach for Ella’s hand and squeeze it. She doesn’t let go.
‘Is it OK to still be sad?’ she asks me quietly. ‘Even after everything you told me about what they were like?’
Her cheeks and nose are pink, her eyes red. She brushes a loose strand of hair out of her face and tugs again on the bottom of her dress.
‘Of course it is, sweetie. I’m sad too.’
Because no amount of time, distance or pain changes the fact that they were my parents.
Ella turns away slightly, her gaze stretching beyond the churchyard and out to sea.
‘I just wish …’ she says quietly, her voice trailing off. The breeze picks up slightly and lifts strands of her curls, tossing them across her neck and over her shoulders. I take a long breath.
‘I know, honey. Me too.’
I hug her tightly against me, glancing over her shoulder at my brother. His face is freshly shaven but there’s a flash of red beneath his right ear where he must have caught himself with the razor. There’s a similar dot of red on the collar of his shirt, a bright speck on the white fabric. His black tie and jacket look awkward; I’ve become used to seeing him in his farming gear, out in the fields that he’s made his own.
‘I think we’d better go in too,’ Alice says, leading Jack and Molly inside. Ella and I follow closely behind.
It’s been over twenty years since I last stepped inside the church. But the familiarity is immediate and all-consuming. The smell of wood, stone and musty paper. The smooth flagstones beneath my shoes, the long, arched windows that let in pale streams of light. I remember it all as clearly as if I never left. At the front stand two coffins covered in white and yellow flowers. My parents are in there. My throat tightens. Between the coffins stands a young minister I don’t recognise and behind him, a large wooden cross. I’m glad that Ella is holding my hand tightly.
The pews are full; it looks as though the entire island is packed inside the tiny church. I walk through the centre and my eyes land on familiar faces. I spot Mallachy in a pew near the back. His beard is neat and he wears a navy suit and tie. Our eyes meet briefly and I feel a warmth in my chest.
Jack, Alice and Molly take a seat on the pew at the very front of the church. But I suddenly waver. For a moment I feel like we don’t belong in here, Ella and I. What am I doing here? But then Alice turns and beckons us over, Jack and Molly moving down to make more room. Ella slips in first, next to her aunt, and I perch on the end. I glance along the row: Molly’s hands are clasped in her lap, her face slightly dipped. Beyond her sits Jack, staring straight ahead but with eyes that seem not to see a thing.
I turn back to the front where the minister stands between the two coffins, the wooden cross silhouetted behind him. I grip the pew with one hand, the other still held in Ella’s. The minister is talking now but I can’t really take in what he is saying. He motions us to stand for the first hymn.
Nothing comes out of my mouth, even though I recognise the hymn immediately. Despite the time that’s passed I know its lilting rhythm and can mouth the words without needing to look at my hymn book. But there’s no sound. The only thing that comes now are the tears that spill silently down my cheeks. As the music swells around me I cry for the little girl who felt unlovable and who learnt how to cover bruises beneath the sleeves of a school jumper. I cry for Jack, and all the years we’ve spent apart. I cry for the young woman I was when I sat on the floor in front of my newborn baby and felt entirely alone. I cry for my parents. Today might be their funeral but I know now that I have been living my whole life carrying the grief of who they might have been, of the loss of a mother and father I desperately yearned for but who didn’t exist. Among the sadness is something else though, and as I glance across at my brother and his family, Jack silent like me, Alice and Molly singing quietly, I feel it unfurling inside me. A blossoming of hope.
As the hymn ends and we all sit again, the minister speaks.
