‘It’s how I felt,’ he says. ‘At the time.’
‘And you said I’d be a terrible mother.’
A long silence.
‘I didn’t mean it,’ Seb says, after a while. ‘I didn’t know.’ A pause. ‘I couldn’t have.’
‘No,’ she says. ‘Neither of us could.’
nora, 3
Who is my dad?
Nora asks questions all the time, and she asks this one more than most. It is not one she has given much thought to before now, because she was only dimly aware of the concept of dads and the fact that she doesn’t have one. But since Finn’s birthday party, she has started to notice that everyone seems to have a dad but her. The other kids at the playground have dads as often as mums. There are dads at cafés, dads on film sets, dads on TV when Nora is allowed her screen time.
‘That’s my dad,’ Finn had said at his party, pointing. ‘Who’s your dad?’
Finn has a dad. Even Finn’s dad has a dad. So where is Nora’s dad? Nora had looked around, thumbs twiddling, cheeks inflated with air, because she didn’t know the correct answer. She wanted to ask her mum, but then, she didn’t know where her mum was, either. She began to panic. Then, a man appeared, a familiar man, the man who’d been speaking to her mum moments before. He sat in a tiny chair, made a funny face.
Seb. Maybe Seb is her dad?
Nora can talk about things that happened before she evenlearned to speak. She drew in the sand on a beach once, and though the waves washed it away, a trace remained. She knows Seb. Not as a person, but as a presence, and a name that comes up often. A name always attached to her mother’s.
‘Seb and Clara’s old flat,’ grown-ups say.
Or, ‘When Clara and Seb were in France.’
Seb is big and has a beard and gave her pizza, though the episode is blurry in her mind. Clearer is this: Seb sitting next to her at Finn’s birthday.
‘Your mum is brave to come here,’ Seb had said. ‘But your mum has always known what she’s doing.’
Nora hadn’t really understood, so she’d kept her eyes in her lap.
‘How is she?’ Seb had added. ‘Your mum.’
Nora had understood this. ‘She’s sad.’
Seb was quiet for a bit. ‘How can we make her happy?’
his mum
Some things never change. Seb has never given his parents advance warning about his visits, nor told them how long he’s planning to stay. It’s half-term, hence why his mother is here in the kitchen and not at school, trying to teach a bunch of bored teenagers about the Warsaw Pact. It’s raining again, and Enzo is preparing for the Friday deluge in the shop downstairs. So it’s just Helen and her son, sitting at a kitchen table that hasn’t been replaced since he once sat at it in a high chair.
‘When are you leaving?’ she says, into the silence.
‘Thursday,’ Seb replies. ‘First thing.’
She taps a finger against the outside of her mug. ‘So why are you here?’
‘Can’t a son come and say goodbye to his mother?’
She gives him a look, and he gives her one back. Her son. It still shocks her, to see the white hairs in his beard. Nimesh’s hair is going grey. He and Maisie come round for lunch sometimes, and he complains about his knees when he crouches to pick up Finn. Seb would never have settled here. There’s always been too much pain associated with this place, too many splinters hidden in the happy memories. It’s a quarter of a centurysince it happened, and Helen still struggles to talk about it. What is there to say? I had a daughter, her name was Eleanora, and she died just before her ninth birthday. Enzo has always been better at conjuring their beautiful girl into words, his eyes shimmering as he describes the sound of her chuckle, or what it felt like to take her tiny hand during her first, tentative steps out on to a shingled beach. Helen is like Seb. She prefers to keep the big stuff inside.
It was Enzo who told their son what was going on with Ellie, taking him out for ice cream like they were characters in an American film. When your twelve-year-old son asks why his sister is dying, what are you supposed to tell him? It wasn’t an accident. It was barely an act of God. They lost Ellie because sometimes things happen and you’re powerless to stop them. Sometimes people get ill, and those people are too young to even know that’s what they are. Young, and ill. Ellie used to make Seb smile. He forgot how to, once she was gone.
‘What’s happened, Seb?’ Helen says, because there’s no point skirting around it. ‘I know you’re not just here to say goodbye.’
Seb swirls his coffee, takes a sip. ‘No small talk?’
