‘She’s here,’ she called out, hearing her own voice catch.
‘I told you she was…’ Henry walked into the kitchen and saw Tassie.
‘Oh, love,’ he said and Clara wasn’t sure if she meant Tassie or her. It didn’t matter now.
Oh, love, she thought. Love was everything. It was the meaning of life, it was the way to live life, it was everything and more. Without love we are nothing, thought Clara as she sat next to Tassie at the table and held her cold hand, which had started to stiffen.
‘Can you call the ambulance?’ she said quietly. ‘And then tell Rachel.’
Henry kissed the top of her head, and then Tassie’s and then left her alone in the house with Tassie.
She held her old friend’s hand in hers and stroked the paper-thin skin.
‘I love you, Tassie – you understood me, you saw me and you saved me from my father,’ she said, feeling the deep grief welling inside her.
‘What will I do now you’re gone? Who will tell me about what ladybugs mean and magpies on fences and what to do when you see a three-legged dog?’
Clara held Tassie’s hand tight. She noticed the letter addressed to her against the upturned cup and slipped it into her pocket. That was for later, she thought. She turned over the cup and looked inside. There was something, she peered closer. A blackbird, no, too big for that, she narrowed her eyes and then she saw it. The raven.
‘One for sorrow, two for joy, three for a girl, four for a boy, five for silver, six for gold, seven for a secret, never to be told, eight for a wish, nine for a kiss, ten for a time of joyous bliss.’ She whispered in her friend’s ear and started to cry.
‘You brought me here and Henry, and you knew there was something special. I don’t know how but you saved us from ourselves and being lost in the past, and helped Pansy and Rachel – oh, Tassie, how I love you.’
And Clara kept crying. She cried like she should have cried for her father and her mother. She cried for her heartbreak and she cried for her losses. And then she cried because she was simply so grateful to Tassie for her love and friendship.
Rachel came bursting into the kitchen and fell sobbing into Henry’s arms who was behind her.
Clara sat, her thumb stroking the back of Tassie’s old hand.
‘The ambulance are on their way,’ said Henry.
‘I will sit with you until they come,’ said Clara to Tassie. Her face was peaceful; maybe she could see a hint of lipstick. She knew then that Tassie had been preparing to die. Tassie might not have been able to summon life and have children of her own but she could summon death the way she could speak to them.
She glanced around the kitchen and saw everything was spick and span and put away. There was a fresh tea towel on the rail next to the sink and the dishcloth was carefully folded and on the rack.
Tassie was house-proud, even in the afterlife, she thought, and she wished she had remembered to ask her what a bird in the house meant after Naomi’s ceremony. Tassie would have known; she knew everything.
She held Tassie’s hand until the medics came and said she was dead, because that’s what they are supposed to do, and they called the doctor, who came and declared her dead, because that’s what doctors are supposed to do, and then Henry called the undertaker in Chippenham to come and get her, because that’s what undertakers do. Clara held her hand the entire time until they put Tassie into the back of the van, and drove her away, because that’s what friends do – they stay till the very bitter, as Tassie used to say.
55
The morning of the third Thursday in August, Tassie McIver’s earthly body faced the flames and her ashes were thrown out into the oak tree clearing by Clara and Rachel, as she had expressed in the letter she had left on the kitchen table.
There was to be no funeral, she had instructed, as she didn’t have time for that and nor did anyone else. People’s lives are busy, she had written in her perfect handwriting, if a little spidery at times.
Instead, the village opened up the church hall and they had a memorial service, which the tearooms catered with mini egg and bacon pies, and butterfly cakes and eclairs and little shortbreads shaped like oak leaves. They served China tea and lemonade, and the hall was filled with former students that Tassie had taught over the years in Merryknowe.
‘We used to think she was a witch but a good witch,’ said one with a nose piercing.
‘She would bring us dinners when Mam was sick,’ said another who now wore a suit and a silk tie.
She heard stories of Tassie’s enormous impact on the students from gaining a love of reading to pushing themselves to want and expect more from their inner lives. Every time another person spoke, Clara felt humbled by her short friendship with Tassie.
After the service and all was cleaned up, Henry and Clara sat at home in silence.
‘I thought I was special you know, but seeing all those people speak today, I realised she was the one who was special,’ Clara said, her head on Henry’s shoulder.
‘We are all special; she just saw it when we or others couldn’t,’ said Henry.
Clara sighed. ‘I don’t feel well. Too much stress I think since this all happened. It’s been relentless.’
‘Do you want to have a lie-down?’ asked Henry. ‘I have to go and get Pansy – can you believe it’s been five weeks since she started school?’
She thought for a moment and then sat up. ‘Five weeks?’
Henry nodded. ‘Yep, coming up for six.’
She stood up. ‘I’ll come with you. I need to go to the shops in Chippenham.’
They drove in Clara’s car and she tried to remember when
