Afterwards

‘Please!’

‘Seriously,’ I say, ‘it’s just a pump.’

‘Your pump.’

‘You have far more use for it.’

We don’t know what to say. Neither of us has talked about whether she’ll remember this. Remember me.

‘You’ll get better,’ Sarah says to Jenny, filling the silence. ‘And you’ll do a great job looking after Adam. But other people are going to look after him too.’

I glimpse you coming out of the doctor’s office.

‘So be a girl, Jen, not a woman too early,’ Sarah continues.

‘You’re bloody marvellous,’ I say to Sarah who, of course, can’t hear, but Jenny smiles.

I tell Jenny it’s time to get back into her body now.

She hugs me and I want to hug her longer, hang onto her, but I make myself pull back.

‘Ivo and Dad and Aunt Sarah and Adam are waiting for you,’ I say, and she goes back into her body.

Surely there should be a dramatic storm; the pent-up compressed heat of the last four days released into thunderous drenching rain.

Through the window of the ward the sky remains relentlessly blue, a heat haze fuzzing the edges, but I feel cool.

I see you coming towards Jenny’s bed.

I remember dragging Jenny down the stairs and thinking of love as white and quiet and cold.

You look at me. And in that moment you see me.

This is what love looks like an uncountable number of words later.

I go to you and kiss your face.

I watch you go with Jenny as she is wheeled towards the operating theatre. I think about angels. Not the fierce, strong Old Testament angels this time, but the angels of Fra Angelico, with their shining jewel-coloured robes, long wings down their backs; Giotto’s hovering above Earth like larks, their shimmering gold halos pinpricks of light; Chagal’s blue angel with her sad pale face. I think of Raphael’s angels and Michelangelo’s and the angels of Hieronymus Bosch and Klee.

I think that beneath each angel – just out of sight of the painting – are their children they were forced to leave behind.

But the heavenly afterlife isn’t where I am, not yet.

I am sitting on the bottom step of our stairs packing Adam’s bag with his uniform, which he’ll need to change into after sports. I am knotting his tie so that all he has to do is slip it on and pull the skinny part because he still hasn’t got the hang of tying his tie and I hope you know to do this for him.

And I’m in the sitting room, searching for a Lego piece down the back of the sofa, and you come up to me and hug me, ‘Beautiful wife,’ you say, and upstairs I hear Jenny on the phone to Ivo and Adam is reading on the rug and I am suffocated with need for you all.

They are taking my heart out.

All the light and colour and warmth in my body is leaving it now and coming into me – into whatever I am.

My soul is being born.

And Jenny is right, it is beautiful, but I rage against this birth of light. I want to see my grandchildren or just touch you once more and call to Jenny, ‘Nearly supper, OK?’; or to Adam, ‘I’m coming!’; to everyone waiting for me in the car, ‘Two minutes, alright?’

Just a little more life.

But then the anger leaves and I am left without fear or regrets.

I am a sliver-thin light, diamond-sharp, that can slip through gaps in the world that we know. I will come into your dreams and speak soft words when you think of me.

There is no happy ever after – but there is an afterwards.

This isn’t our ending.

Acknowledgements

My thanks go once again to the gifted Emma Beswetherick, without whom this book could not have been written. My huge thanks also to Joanne Dickinson for her conviction, enthusiasm and commitment. I’d also like to thank Ursula Mackenzie, David Shelley, Paola Ehrlich, Lucy Icke, Sara Talbot, Darren Turpin and the rest of the team at Piatkus and Little, Brown.

I want to thank Felicity Blunt at Curtis Brown for being the best agent a writer could have. My thanks also to Kate Cooper and Tally Garner, also at Curtis Brown.

Thank you Anne Calabresi who told me that her parents were the roof which had sheltered her, which I used in this story.

My friends and family made writing this book possible. So thank you again to my parents for their continuing support and to my sister Tora Orde-Powlett who is always my first and best reader. I also want to thank Sandra Leonard who read the ending before I’d written the beginning and encouraged me to carry on; to Michele Matthews for her generosity of time; to Trixie Rawlinson, Kelly Martin, Livia Firth and Lynne Gagliano who saw me often while my head was buried in the story and were so practically supportive. And to my old friends whose emails kept me going – Anne-Marie Casey, Nina Calabresi, Katy Gardner, Katie London, Anna Joynt, Alison Clements and Amanda Jobbins.

I’d like to thank Richard Betts, and all the teachers like him, whose classrooms are safe, happy and inspiring and where children can fly.

Last, but most of all, to my husband Martin, who says he doesn’t need thanking.

Reading Guide READING GROUPDISCUSSION POINTS

* The fact that Grace and Jenny exist as spirits for much of the story is fairly unusual. Did you manage to suspend your disbelief enough for their state to feel convincing?

* There are certain themes that seem to interest the author. Can you comment on these?

* Can you comment on Jenny and Grace’s relationship and explain how it evolves throughout the story?

* Can you also comment on the relationship between Michael and Adam and look at how their relationship evolves?

* Did you guess who the arsonist was? How convincing are the red herrings?

* Discuss the main themes of the book and look at how integral they are to the plot.

* The dynamic between Grace and Sarah is an interesting one and changes quite significantly over the course of the story. Can you talk about this?

* What are your thoughts on the ways in which family abuse is illustrated in the story?

* What do you think of Grace and Michael’s marriage? Perhaps talk about the connection between Grace and Michael, even though they cannot communicate with each other.

* Could the story have ended in any other way?

* What do you think of Rosamund Lupton’s use of water imagery – for example, Adam needing armbands, Jenny being alone in an ocean as she dies, and the ending?

Rosamund Lupton