‘Roger that,’ Richard replied, holding it slightly higher for his wife’s inspection.
She nodded, then turned and set off in the direction of dunes that rose from the far edge of the car park, undeterred by her unsuitable footwear. ‘Right,’ she said. ‘Come on. First stop is “our” picnic spot in the dunes.’
Oh, Anna thought. There was a plan. Of course there was. One, obviously, that she’d had no part in putting together and hadn’t been consulted about. Well, Anna had a plan of her own, one that was just as important. She stood taller and pulled her coat tightly around herself. ‘Actually… Gayle?’ she called out.
Gayle turned around, her expression a mixture of bafflement and irritation.
‘Before we head off, could we just backtrack to the bungalow – the little yellow one – along the road? It’s just that Spencer and I—’
‘Maybe later,’ Gayle said, turning and continuing in the direction she’d been going, and then added over her shoulder: ‘If we’ve got time… We don’t want supper this evening to be too late, do we?’
‘Supper?’ Anna echoed.
‘Back at our house. I’ve got sandwiches and vol au vents ready. Richard sent you an email about it, remember?’
Anna’s mouth fell open, but she had nothing to say. She did remember getting an email, but to be honest, she’d just skimmed it for where and when to meet. Richard had a tendency to waffle on somewhat.
Maybe she couldn’t be cross about that, but she was more than a little irritated at being dismissed and overruled. Gayle seemed to be forgetting that this day was for all of them to remember Spencer, not just her. Anna was just trying to work out how to say that without seeming too bitchy,when what her mother had said to her on the phone came back to her.Being in control was Gayle’s way of coping.This wasn’t personal, she had to remember that.
Anna stood there for a moment, irritation and compassion warring for the upper hand inside her, then her shoulders sagged. Okay, despite being royally ticked off by Gayle’s imperious attitude, she’d hold fire for now. But make no mistake, she’d be visiting that yellow bungalow later on that afternoon, come hell or high water, and Gayle would just have to deal with it.
Anna blew out a breath that did little to calm her jagged emotions, dug her fists into her pockets, and trailed behind the tight-knit group heading up the large dune that constantly threatened to swallow up the eastern boundary of the car park.
ANNA MOVED THROUGH the next hour or so as if she was outside herself, as if she were watching a film of the proceedings and the camera had pulled back for a long shot. It was the only way she could cope. Gayle had cast herself as chief mourner, even though every single person there ached just as hard as she did. Anna was relegated to loyal sidekick, having to stand next to Gayle as she gave a speech at the family’s favourite picnic spot, as they wrote messages to Spencer on scraps of paper, then rolled them up and stuck them in a bottle, which was then buried in the sand at a location Gayle had chosen.
Anna would have liked a little more than the two minutes Gayle had allotted to work out what she’d wanted to write because when she’d stared at the blank strip of faux parchment (Gayle never did anything by halves),she just couldn’t make her brain work. She’d kept staring at it up until the last ten seconds, and then she’d scribbled‘I love you’and stuffed the paper in the bottle. Heartfelt. True. But not very eloquent. Also, not the ‘goodbye’ she’d been revving up to. How could she rush that?
And then they were hurried on to the next place of significance to everyone but Anna and Teresa, now almost six months pregnant, who was waddling up and down the dunes without a squeak of protest. It would make Anna look bad if she said anything.
She tuned out her mother-in-law’s voice, let it become part of the background noise, like the squawking of the seagulls, as she tried to find that still place in her heart where she could talk to Spencer, tell him what she’d wanted to say today. She’d just about gained the right amount of focus to start when Gayle clapped her hands and announced, ‘Well, I think it’s time we got to the most important part of the afternoon, the reason we chose to come here this year… Richard, have you got the bag?’
Richard, who’d hardly said a word since they’d arrived, nodded. Anna’s attention was drawn once again to the canvas shopper he was carrying. He’d been lugging it around all over the dunes. What exactly was inside it?
He held the bag up to Gayle and she reached in and reverently pulled out a small pewter urn. The kind with a lid. The kind used for…
But, no. That couldn’t be right.
‘We’ll walk out to the shore now the tide’s out,’ Gayle said, ‘and then Richard and Scott can scatter the ashes in the sea.’
Ashes?
She can’t have just said that, Anna thought, even though the urn in Gayle’s grip was evidence to the contrary, but she hardly had time to process that before Gayle added, ‘We’re all agreed this is the right place?’ There were murmurs and nods of agreement as Gayle looked from person to person. ‘This is where he would have chosen if it had been up to him.’ And then she shifted her gaze to Anna.
‘Ashes?’ Anna echoed weakly. It was the only word going around her head at that moment.
Gayle nodded.
‘Spencer’sashes?’
Teresa shot a nervous look at her mother-in-law and then her husband. Scott was busy studying an abandoned plastic spade half-buried in the sand and didn’t seem inclined to glance up.
Gayle stood a little straighter. ‘Yes.’
‘But Spencer’s ashes are in the Garden of Remembrance at the crematorium!’
Gayle’s stare didn’t waver. ‘Your half of them are. Our half are here…’ She patted the urn in her hands gently. ‘And we’re going to scatter them in my son’s happy place, the place where he had most joy.’
Theirhalf?
