They say goodbye and Tilly watches as Liz confidently hails a cab and steps inside, giving a final wave through the window before being carried away across the city.
If Joe hadn’t got sick, would I be in that taxi with her now?
Tilly shakes off the thought, knowing that the ‘what ifs’ lead only to a dark place. With a final glance back at the office building she continues in the direction of the hotel.
When Tilly returns home from New York three days later, after two more days of book shopping and escaping the heat of the city in museums and galleries, there is an envelope waiting for her on the mat. Her name and address are written in loopingcalligraphy. Inside is a thick navy card decorated with illustrations of brambles and berries, the words picked out in bright white letters.
Dear Tilly,
You are warmly invited
to the wedding of Harper Nightingale and Raj Johnson
on the 30th of November, 2 p.m.
at The Old Brewery, Walthamstow
Underneath the printed text is a handwritten note from Harper.
I’m so sorry for everything, Tils. I hope you’ll be there. You can bring a friend if you like. Or come on your own, just please come. Love you, H xx
She’s been trying to pretend that the wedding isn’t really happening. But here is the proof that it is – in navy, white and berry red. And it is just three months away. Tilly puts the invite in the drawer in the kitchen that contains appliance manuals, spare keys and broken jewellery she plans to get fixed one day. She closes the drawer.
At first, she feels better. She doesn’t think about the invite as she unpacks her suitcase and stacks her purchases on her shelves. She doesn’t think about it when she notices the empty spot on the shelves where the urn used to sit, or when she puts on a wash, remembering how Joe always used to tease her for entirely emptying her suitcase as soon as she got home. Whenever they got back from a holiday, his suitcase would stay in the hallway unopened for weeks.
But once she’s finished all her chores, she can’t stop staring at the drawer in the kitchen. Eventually, she takes the invite out, attaching it to the fridge with a magnet. Then she empties theentire contents of the rest of the drawer, dumping them on the table and fetching bin bags. Because this seems as good a place as any to start on the task she has put off for long enough.
Over the next few weeks, Tilly cleans.
It takes longer than she expected because every now and then she gets sidetracked by something that sparks so many memories that she has to pause and wait for the grief wave to recede. The clothes are hard and she finds herself burying her face in T-shirts and sweatshirts that still contain lingering traces of his wood and jasmine smell. But she listens to the advice inThe Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaningand takes her time, not pushing herself to do more than she feels ready for each day.
And some things surprise her in being easier than she’d expected. Clothes stuffed at the back of his wardrobe that she can’t remember Joe ever wearing get washed and folded neatly in piles for the charity shop. The reams of paperwork on his desk that had so daunted her become more manageable when she buys a shredder and realizes that most of it can be thrown away. Dead people don’t need old bank statements and travel insurance documents from holidays they went on seven years ago. And neither does Tilly.
When Joe’s desk is finally cleared, the empty space looks full of possibility. She collects her craft projects from around the flat, gathering balls of wool into boxes stacked neatly on the desk and filling the drawers that once contained office stationery with sheets of origami paper, folded fabric and spools of ribbon. She buys a peg board for the wall and lines up spools of thread in neat rows, arranged by colour. Once she’s finished, she snaps a photo for Ellen, who replies immediately to say sheloves it and to let her know she has made a start on her own craft room.
Tilly doesn’t pack all signs of Joe away completely. She clears space on a sideboard for a carefully arranged collection of framed photos of him and of the two of them together. And his favourite hoody remains hanging on the pegs next to her coats, because when she took it down it just didn’t look like home. But the place isn’t cluttered. She has room to breathe.
When she opens the front door now, she doesn’t trip over Joe’s trainers. Because they aren’t discarded by the door. Instead, they are lined up neatly on her bookshelf, finding a new life as a rather unusual but perfect pair of bookends.
Book Lane Recommends
Books to take you on an adventure (without having to leave home)
The Wild Placesby Robert Macfarlane
Wild: A Journey From Lost to Foundby Cheryl Strayed
Miss Benson’s Beetleby Rachel Joyce
The Hobbitby J. R. R. Tolkien
39
If you’d told Tilly a week ago that she would be spending her Sunday morning putting up a tent in her local London park, she would have laughed. Or perhaps just winced.
‘So, you’ve really never put a tent up before?’ says Alfie, the two of them looking down at the assortment of poles and pegs laid out on the grass. The sun is bright and high above them, summer hanging on by its fingernails. ‘Because I really don’t want to mansplain camping to you only for you to reveal you did the Duke of Edinburgh expedition as a teenager or something.’
Alfie’s shirtsleeves are rolled up to his elbows, revealing his muscular forearms, lightly tanned. Instead of his usual tortoiseshell glasses he’s wearing a pair of tortoiseshell Ray-Bans.
