goodbye. I got into my car and headed west. I would be going against the traffic in both directions.
I found Saint Anne’s Church, on the Avonmouth side of Bristol, easily, and walked through its gate and into the green quiet of the graveyard holding my bunch of spring flowers. It was easy to tell which grave was Danny’s: among all the mossy grey headstones, whose names were scarcely decipherable, his mottled pink slab was starkly new. Someone had put flowers there. I looked at the black lettering: Daniel Rees, Beloved Son and Brother. I grimaced. That shut me out effectively enough. 1956-1996: he’d not made it to the birthday party we’d talked of throwing. I’d grow old, my face would change and wrinkle, my body would develop the aches and pains and fragilities of age, would bend and suffer, and he would be always young, always strong and beautiful in my memory.
I looked down at the six feet of ugly pink marble and shuddered. Under there, his gorgeous body, which I’d held so close when it was warm and full of desire, was charred and now rotting. His face, the lips that had explored me and the mouth that had smiled at me and the eyes that had gazed, was mouldering away. I sat down beside the headstone, put one hand on the grave as if it were a warm flank, stroked it.
‘I know you can’t hear me, Danny,’ I said into the windless silence. Even speaking his name out loud made my chest ache. ‘I know you’re not there, or anywhere else either. But I needed to come here.’
I looked around. There was no one in the churchyard at all. I couldn’t even hear the sound of a bird. Only the cars on the main road a few hundred yards away disturbed the hush. So I took off my jacket, laid aside my bag, took the flowers off the slab and lay down on it myself, cheek to the cold stone. I stretched my length out on top of Danny as I sometimes still did in my dreams.
I cried messily, self-pityingly, in a flood of easy grief, as I lay upon the grave; salt tears puddled on the stone. I cried for my dear life. I allowed myself to remember our first meeting, the first time we went to bed together, outings with Elsie – just the blessed three of us, not knowing how lucky we were. I thought about his death. I knew that I was going to be all right; one day I would probably meet someone else and the whole process of falling in love would begin again, but just now I felt cold and lonely to my bones. The wind sighed through the graveyard; all those dead bones lying under their inscriptions.
So I pulled myself stiffly to my feet. When I spoke I felt absurdly self-conscious, as if I were acting the part of a grieving widow in some stilted amateur dramatic production: ‘So this is it. This is my goodbye.’ Yet I couldn’t stop saying it, melodramatic as it was. I just couldn’t bring myself to say it for the very last time. ‘Goodbye goodbye goodbye goodbye.’
And then I put on my jacket, picked up my bag, placed the two bunches of flowers back on the stone, just so, walked out of the graveyard and never once looked back through the latch gate at the place where he lay. And if I drove fast enough, I’d be back in time to put Elsie to bed, sing her a song before she slept.
Thirty-Eight
The telephone was ringing as I ran up the stairs, files under one arm and holding two bags full of supper for that evening. I tripped over Anatoly, cursed, dropped the bags and scooped up the phone just as the answering machine clicked on.
‘Hold on,’ I said breathlessly over my courteous, recorded voice, ‘this’ll switch off in a bit.’
‘Sam, it’s Miriam. I’m just checking on tonight. Are you still on?’
‘Of course. The film begins at 8.30 and I’ve told the others to meet at 8.20 outside. I’ve bought some ready-meals to eat back here afterwards. It’ll be lovely to see you again.’
I unpacked the food into the fridge. Elsie and Sophie would probably be back from the park in an hour or so. They’d be surprised to see me here before them. I went through to my bedroom (though personally I thought ‘box room’ would have been a more precise description of a space in which I had to squeeze past a small chest to get to my single bed) and picked up the pile of dirty clothes in the corner, shoved them into the washing machine.
A pile of bills lay on the kitchen table, a pile of dishes teetered in the small sink, books and CDs were standing in crooked towers along all the skirting boards. The rubbish bin was overflowing. Elsie’s bedroom door opened on to a scene of extraordinary chaos. The plants which numerous friends had given to me when I moved here were wilting in their pots. I sloshed water over them recklessly, humming one of Elsie’s absurd little ditties as I did so, making lists in my head. Ring the travel agent. Ring the bank. Remember to speak to Elsie’s teacher tomorrow. Ring estate agent in the morning. Buy present for Olivia’s fortieth birthday. Go through the report on the Harrogate train disaster. Write that promised paper for the
The key turned in the lock and Sophie staggered in, laden with Elsie’s picnic box and skipping rope.
‘Hi,’ I said, as I searched through the letters scattered over the table for the note from the ferry company. ‘You’re back early. But where’s Elsie?’
‘The most extraordinary thing happened!’ She dumped her load on the table and sat down, plump and glossy in her fake-leopard-skin leggings and her tight and shiny T-shirt. ‘We met your sister just as we were going into Clissold park. Elsie seemd really pleased to see her, rushed into her arms. She said she’d bring her back in a bit. I last saw them going hand in hand into the park. Bobbie, that’s her name, isn’t it, was going to buy her an ice- cream.’
‘I didn’t know she was going to be here,’ I said, surprised. ‘Did she say what she was doing?’
‘Yeah. She said her husband had dropped her off on the way to some meeting or other and she’d been choosing curtains in that really swanky fabric shop along Church Street. Anyway, she can tell you herself later. Do you want me to make you a cup of tea?’
‘Coming all the way to London to buy curtains. That’s my sister. And then, now that we’ve got time and no child, we could make a start on sorting the books and CDs. I want everything in alphabetical order.’
We’d got as far as G, and I was covered in dust and sweat, when the phone rang. It was my sister.
‘Bobbie, this is a lovely surprise. Where are you? When will you be here?’
‘What?’ Bobbie sounded quite bewildered.
‘Shall I come and meet you in the park?’
‘What park? What are you going on about Sam? I rang up to see if Mum had rung you, she…’
‘Hang on.’ My mouth had gone strangely dry. ‘Where are you speaking from, Bobbie?’
‘Well, from home of course.’
‘You’re not with Elsie?’
‘Of course I’m not with Elsie, I have no idea what…’
But I was gone, slamming down the phone on her bewilderment, yelling to Sophie to call the police
Through the iron gates of Clissold park, past the little-bridge and the overfed ducks, the deer who nosed at the high fencing with their velvet muzzles, along the avenue of chestnut trees. I ran and I looked, my eyes scattering from small shape to small shape. So many children and none of them mine. I tore into the playground. Boys and girls in bright anoraks were swinging, sliding, jumping, climbing. I stood between the see-saw and the sand-pit, where last month the park warden had found used syringes scattered, and stared wildly around.
‘Elsie!’ I yelled. ‘Elsie!’
She wasn’t there, although I saw her in every child and heard her in every scream. I looked over to where the paddling pond lay turquoise and deserted, then ran on, to the cafe, to the large ponds at the bottom of the park where we always fed bread to the ducks and the quarrelsome Canada geese. I peered over the fence to where
