Clara had on a red dress and a black shawl and red lipstick. Pansy thought she looked like the beautiful doll from Spain that her grandmother had sent her in the post.
Her father cleared his throat and held a wooden box, which had been sitting on a table that he had carried outside before he dug the hole.
‘Naomi Roberts Garnett. Today is the day we place you at rest. I know you wanted to be in a veggie patch but it’s not possible, so this is the next best thing. We will place you among the oaks, and let you be with the beautiful trees you loved so much.’
Pansy watched as he kissed the top of the wooden box and then he stopped for a moment and then put the box into the hole in the ground.
Her dad looked down at the ground where the box was.
‘I am grateful to have loved you, darling, and for our beautiful girl.’ Pansy saw him glance at her and she smiled at him. Poor Daddy. He cried a lot lately, she had told Tassie, but Tassie said it was good to cry because if you didn’t cry you got blockages in your heart and then you would burst and explode, or something like that.
‘And I am grateful for you bringing me to Clara’s cottage and for us finding a home here.’
Pansy swung on Clara’s hand. She was happy to have the pink house as her own also. And she was happy to have her own room, which Daddy had painted for her and she had white furniture and a desk and a whole bookshelf and a doll cradle that Daddy had made for her and her toys.
Clara had put down a rug that was red with white dots that looked like a toadstool and she had fairy stickers on the roof that only showed when the lights were out.
Daddy was still talking to the ground, as Pansy looked around the trees and she saw the owl again.
She saw a baby owl next to it and she smiled.
Mummy and baby, she thought. She used to see her mum all the time. She used to sit with her on her bed at night and sometimes she told her stories about when she was a baby. But that hadn’t happened for a while now.
Part of Pansy missed her mother’s visits but part of her also was forgetting her. Clara talked about Mummy but Clara didn’t know that Pansy thought that she was very good at being a mummy to her. She knew how she liked her toast cut – triangles, thank you. And she helped her make a fairy garden under the big oak trees where her swing was. And she practised reading the books with her that Tassie gave her.
Last night a bird had come into the cottage and Clara and Daddy had tried to catch it but it flew upstairs and sat on top of the on the stairs. They had laughed a lot but Pansy was scared of the bird. It looked at her with its dead beady eyes and she felt like something bad was going to happen. She had stayed hidden under her covers with the doors shut while Daddy opened every window and he and Clara eventually got the bird to leave.
Now Daddy was crying again and he threw some dirt onto the box in the ground.
‘Your turn,’ said Clara to Pansy who looked away from the owl and to Clara.
‘What do I do?’ she whispered.
‘Just put some dirt on the box and if you want to say something you can – or not, it’s up to you,’ Clara whispered back.
Pansy dropped Clara’s hand and walked to the hole in the ground. She picked up some dirt in her hand and placed her hidden object into the dirt. She dropped it into the hole and then went back to Clara and wiped her hand on Clara’s dress as she didn’t want to put dirt on her school dress.’
Clara put some dirt into the hole and then Daddy filled it in with the spade and they were all quiet for a moment.
‘Amen,’ said Pansy very firmly, just like she had seen on a television show about a lady who was a priest or something.
Henry and Clara laughed but she didn’t know why. It felt right to say. She looked up to see the owl and baby but they were gone.
‘Bye, Mummy,’ she whispered and she felt her eyes hurt like she was going to cry. She remembered what Tassie said about crying and so she let it out and she hugged Clara for a long time, while she let all the tears out.
Later on, Rachel and Joe and Tassie came for afternoon tea, and Rachel had made a jam and cream sponge cake, and there was lemonade and everyone hugged a lot and Pansy had fallen asleep on the sofa.
And when she woke up, it was morning and someone had put her into bed, and she was still wearing her school dress and she jumped out of bed to run down and check for eggs, because today was Pansy’s favourite day.
53
The end was close. Tassie felt it down into the marrow of her bones. She wasn’t pretending when she said to Rachel she wouldn’t have another birthday. She had decided she’d had enough of living. The last few months had been more exciting than anything she had experienced before, even when George was alive.
The tea leaves couldn’t hold the truth back any longer and Tassie knew that, even if it hurt her soul to know, it was coming to an end.
Clara
