26
Clara brought Henry a plastic container from her kitchen, as he couldn’t access any of the cupboards, and a dustpan and brush. He swept up Naomi and put her into the container with an orange lid with Clara’s name written in marker underneath.
‘I’m sorry, darling,’ he said as he sealed the lid.
The beautiful box she had painted was shattered and beyond repair.
After he had cried, and Clara had held him, he realised he hadn’t cried like that since the funeral but he was unsure if he felt any better. Some people claimed that crying helped you but now he felt embarrassed and guilty for keeping Naomi’s remains in the van and not putting her to rest. And then when he was just about to kiss Clara the branch fell. She knew, he thought. Naomi knew and she’d dropped the branch on the van because she didn’t want him to be with anyone. He knew it was ridiculous but he also half believed his superstition.
He and Naomi hadn’t talked about what would happen to Henry after she died. They only talked about Pansy. About how to care for her, what she needed at that time but they weren’t to know what she needed in the future because they were so focused on the moment. Time was running out and they needed to collect as many memories as they could.
He pushed down the lid on the container and walked to the cottage.
Clara and Pansy were talking in the kitchen and he put the container in the top cupboard above the stove.
‘I’ll try and get the mattresses out,’ he said, not looking at Clara or Pansy. ‘I’ve unhooked the van from the truck, so I can still get around. The insurance company have asked for photos, which I have taken, but I will need to get the tree off and try and get the roof pushed up so I can get all our things out.’
‘Can we stay here, Daddy?’ Pansy smiled up at her father. She looked so like her mother it took his breath away and he felt the tears threatening to fall again.
He looked up at Clara who seemed to be busy with the carrots she was peeling.
‘Maybe I will try and get us a hotel.’
Pansy and Clara looked up at him.
‘No,’ cried Pansy. ‘I want to stay with Clara.’
‘Stay here, Henry, it’s fine. It would be nice.’ Clara seemed fine, maybe a little distant but she smiled at him warmly and he felt butterflies. Why was this all so confusing?
‘I’m going to get the beds,’ he said and walked outside to the van.
He managed to crawl into the space and drag out Pansy’s mattress as it was smaller than his, along with her bedding, and he pulled it upstairs into the spare room.
Clara followed him up the stairs.
‘I’ll go and buy a spare bed tomorrow. I needed one anyway, so it’s a good excuse.’
Henry sighed and turned to her. ‘I am sorry about before.’
‘Which part?’ asked Clara but it wasn’t combative. It was real and curious and he tried to work out which part he was sorry for.
‘All of it,’ he said.
Clara sighed and looked around the room. ‘It’s not perfect but it will do for now.’
‘Clara, I am sorry I cried.’
She spun around to look at him. ‘What on earth for? Why would you apologise for feeling emotion? You had a shock. Your wife’s ashes were on the floor. It was awful.’
‘It’s not that I don’t think men shouldn’t cry; it’s that only three minutes before, I was about to kiss you.’
She paused for a moment and he was worried what she would say next.
‘I wanted you to kiss me,’ she said, tucking her hair behind her ear. ‘But it’s probably best you didn’t, you know? It would complicate things with you working here and so on.’
Henry felt disappointment flood his body. God, he felt like he was being unfaithful to Naomi and was he letting Clara down.
‘Okay,’ he said. ‘You’re probably right.’
Clara left him alone in the room. He made Pansy’s bed up and went back to the van for some of her clothes and some of his. What a mess, he thought as he closed the van door after taking some more photos for the insurance company. What a huge, fucking mess.
*
Clara made them cottage pie and Pansy ate only the mashed potato and then rubbed her eyes and said she wanted to lie in bed and watch her TV show on her iPad about a talking dog.
Henry tucked her into bed and came back to Clara who was scraping the leftovers into a bowl and covering it with cling film.
‘Thank you for dinner,’ he said, feeling awkward.
‘That’s okay, cottage pie is always a good, filling option.’ She filled the sink with hot water and dishwashing liquid and dropped the plates into the sudsy water.
‘I’ll wash, you dry,’ she said, tossing him a tea towel.
They worked in silence for a while.
‘Cottage pie was what broke myself and Giles up.’
‘How?’
Clara rinsed a plate of the suds under the tap.
‘I sent him to a golfing weekend with his friends. He said he was staying at a mate’s house, and I knew it would be pizza and beers, so I make a big cottage pie and put it in a container and sent it away with him. Then months later, after he’s told me he left the container at the mate’s place in the country, I figure it’s just gone, you know?’
Henry nodded as he dried a plate and Clara continued.
‘Then I go to dinner at my best friend Judy’s house and go to get something from the cupboard in the kitchen, and lo and behold, there’s my Tupperware with the orange lid that has my name on it and was sent away with cottage pie in it, at her house. The one Naomi’s ashes is in now. Sorry but that’s all I had.’
Henry shrugged. ‘That’s okay, she would
