Then she left.
As the dusk light began to beam through the windows, it was only Mr and Mrs McCoy, my mum and dad and me left in the hall. We helped stack the chairs, clear rubbish, put the tables away and the bins outside and swept the floor. The caretaker said we didn’t have to help but we wanted to even though we were exhausted. We worked meticulously as if we didn’t want the day to end.
We eventually did step outside and stood on the pavement as the caretaker closed the doors behind us, locked them, put a chain around the door handles and clicked a padlock. He put the key in his jacket and walked up the road with his hands in his pockets. I watched him go, lighting a cigarette on the way, until he turned a corner and was gone.
All five of us had been watching him.
With nothing else to focus on we turned to each other.
The day was over.
It was time to go.
So we did.
51
We used to have two dogs, Rusty and Finn.
Rusty was a red setter and Finn was a border collie.
Some people say animals don’t experience grief, but when Rusty died, Finn didn’t come out of his kennel for three days.
52
‘One for luck?’
Dad’s voice and the jangle of keys broke the quiet of the garden.
I opened my eyes. They ached when the light hit them. I thought I’d sat in the shade. How much time had passed for the sun to have come round so far?
‘Insurance is up on the Honda tomorrow and you’ll not be able to drive it after today.’
Drive the Honda? I hadn’t driven it since the day I passed my test. The day I drove to the hospital. The day my birthday wish didn’t come true. How many days ago was all that?
‘One last drive for old times’ sake?’ he continued.
I didn’t want to move.
I didn’t know if I could.
‘Where to?’ I managed to say.
‘Just down to the workshop and back. I’ve to pick up some wood to finally get that fence patched up,’ he said, nodding towards the break in the garden fence that had been there forso long that I didn’t even notice it anymore. ‘No time like the present,’ he said.
‘No,’ I said, ‘there isn’t.’
‘Was that a yes?’
I looked up at him silhouetted against the sun and nodded.
‘Catch,’ he said, tossing the keys towards me. I watched them arc in the air and glint with a spark and land between my feet. My hand hadn’t even attempted to catch them. I bent forward and picked them up and stared at them in my hand. The gentle jangle. I used to be so afraid of that sound knowing it meant sitting behind a wheel I didn’t know how to steer properly, mastering skills that didn’t come naturally, navigating roads that intimidated me. But that jangle meant nothing to me anymore because I knew how to drive and now I’d be doing it all by myself.
It was one of those days where we hit red light after red light.
‘Another flippin’ red!’ Dad said as the lights changed just as we reached them. ‘What’s that, the fifth in a row? We’d nearly have been quicker walking.’
It was the first day I’d left the house since the funeral. Perhaps it was too much too soon and the universe was using the language of traffic lights to tell me so.
