I can tell he is struggling to breathe.
‘My mum . . . My mum’s—’
‘I’m coming. I’m coming to get you.’
At Debbie’s house, I make tea, and we take it into the conservatory, where we sit together in the cold without talking much, watching the sun begin to throw light into the sky. Condensation clings to the glass. Outside, the grass is sugared with frost.
‘Haven’t had any sleep,’ Josh says, after a while. ‘Fireworks kept popping off.’
I swallow. Last night was bonfire night. ‘Same for us.’
How strange it is that, even after thirty-five years, fireworks only ever mean one thing to me: Josh.
From somewhere in the house, I can hear a clock ticking. It feels strangely cruel this morning, the sound of time pushing ruthlessly forward.
Josh has a copy ofEnduring Loveon his lap, the page folded down about halfway through. He tells me he lent it to Debbie a couple of weeks ago. ‘It’s so weird to think she won’t find out how it ends.’
I smile softly. ‘She told me once she always has a sneak peek at the last page of whatever book she’s reading. So, she probably did know.’
At this, he laughs, despite himself. ‘Ah, did she?’ He looks across at me. ‘Thanks, Rach.’
After that, we just sit and watch the sun climb through a salmon-coloured sky, listening to each other breathe. I can still detect, I think, the faintest scent of Diorissimo, Debbie’s signature perfume, worn every day since the seventies. I don’t ask Josh if he can smell it too.
‘The police wouldn’t believe I was Mum’s son,’ Josh says. ‘They kept asking me about next of kin.’
‘I’m sorry,’ I whisper, reaching out to take his hand. Through the glass roof of the room, a tiny stripe of sunlight alights on our wrists, binding them together.
‘I know she was elderly. But when it’s someone you love, death’s never not a shock.’
‘Josh.’
He turns to look at me, seeming somehow to have aged, though I know that is impossible. It is the trauma, I think. It has reverberated through his eyes and skin, even the stark scruff of his stubble. Every cell in his body, colonised now by grief.
‘I never stopped loving her, you know,’ I say.
Outside, the sun shifts, painting his face momentarily gold. His youth, suddenly, is restored. ‘I know,’ is all he says.
72.
Josh
November 2023
Rachel comes with me to Mum’s funeral. Afterwards, she and I take a walk by the river, tracing Mum’s steps along her favourite route for a ramble. It is dark now, the air fringed with frost. But the embankment lights are on, long lines of them looping the length of the river, smearing its surface gold.
We pause at the top of the suspension bridge. Rachel leans on the wrought-iron railing and stares out over the chilly water, sighs deeply. She is wearing her cobalt-coloured scarf, the one her dad gave her when she turned fourteen. Patches of it are shiny now from age, years of repeated touch.
‘You did well earlier, by the way,’ Rachel says. ‘With that woman.’
It was hard to believe, but one of Mum’s friends showed up to the service with a copy of my book tucked under her arm. She cornered me at the wake, asked if I’d sign it.Graveyard Heart, at my mother’s funeral. She’d even brought a Sharpie. The request was so unbelievably batshit, I thought at first she was joking.
‘Well,’ I say, ‘you know what Mum was like. Always shoving Sharpies into my hand. She’d probably have been chuffed.’
Rachel smiles. ‘That’s an understatement. She wassoproud of you, Josh.’
I’ve always felt uncomfortable about things like framing certificates marking smashed sales milestones, or displaying awards, or even copies of my books. So Mum did all the bragging for us both. Half of her living room became a shrine to mycareer. I was always embarrassed by this, which I regretted, of course, as soon as she was gone.
I take in the shifting river with its wet-mineral scent, the cloak of stars around the shoulders of the sky. We are in the centre of town, but our little patch of it here is peaceful as a lake shore.
