Grief is survival, maintenance, keeping the wheels turning, doing the bare minimum. It is sorry for your loss, time is a great healer, stay strong, rest in peace, in sympathy, condolences, pity. It is people avoiding you lest the sadness be contagious, it is avoiding other people because you don’t want to see that life goes on, because how can they not see that sometimes, it doesn’t? It is moving on, working through it, getting past it, learning to live with it, and then having the pain come back suddenly in a searing shock that you never saw coming, and it is even worse than you could have imagined, let alone remembered. It is doing it all again, every hour just like the last, never getting easier.
It’s losing the person you loved above all others without knowing it until too late, your lifeboat, your anchor, your lighthouse. It’s learning what you had only after it’s gone. It’s the torment of being cast out onto a dark and unforgiving sea, tossed about on high waves, alone except for the searing agony of loss. The anguish of one Salt Sister who has lost her other.
We sat the kids down to explain what had happened and tried to give them some idea of what to expect. Mike had called and asked me to be there when he broke the news, saying he didn’t feel strong enough to do it alone. We could probably shield them from most of the proceedings, especially when it came to the trial, but DCI Bell was right – this was a tight-knit community and murders rarely happened. It would be the talk of the entire county.
Mike had wanted to take the lead in explaining everything to the children, and I was glad to let him. I still could not quite put together the right words to make sense of the situation. Mum and Auntie Sue had also come over, so that we could put on a united front and remind the kids just how much of a support network they had.
I had suggested that Rachel came too, but Mike wasn’t keen. It was unfair of him to cut her off because of what her husband had done, but with emotions running so high and the pain so fresh and raw, perhaps some breathing space wasn’t such a bad idea.
The police had warned Rachel to expect media interest, so she packed a bag and went to stay at her mum’s in Berwick for a few days. We’d promised to keep in touch and keep each other posted on developments. I hoped she and Mike could make up, in time.
Amy was right: Mike was a good dad. He had immediately cancelled all his work commitments so that he could be there for the children. He seemed to know exactly how to pitch this, striking just the right tone in his child-friendly assessment of what was likely to happen now. He was so reassuring that even I was convinced everything would work out.
Still, just knowing that there was now a charge sheet made the murder feel very real. It was one thing to lose someone in an accident, but quite another to have them deliberately taken from you. I could feel an anger creeping in whenever I thought about how Amy had died, and I wanted to protect my memories of her, to insulate her life from her death. Most importantly, I wanted to shield the kids from that.
Betsy was clamped to my side as usual and sucking her thumb. I kissed the top of her head, which still smelled fresh from yesterday’s bath, and admired the thick fringe of her eyelashes. She was listening intently to her dad.
Lucas was sandwiched between Mum and Auntie Sue, his eyebrows knitted together in a worried frown. He looked permanently anxious these days, only relaxing when he was cooking and could lose his thoughts in the dish in front of him. I made a mental note to get him working on some new recipes in the coming week.
I explored Hannah’s face for any sign of emotion, anything to tell me that she was listening, but she was expressionless and unflinching. Her mouth was set into a tight line and she had locked her gaze onto a point on the floor. Only the quick rise and fall of her chest gave anything away. When Mike started to explain that Phil was denying the charge, and that meant the case would go to court, Hannah fled the kitchen. We all listened to the patter of her footsteps running up the stairs, then her bedroom door slamming behind her. Auntie Sue started to rise from her seat to follow her.
‘Leave her,’ said Mike, pinching the top of his nose between his thumb and forefinger. ‘She just needs some space.’
We sat like that in silence, each of us digesting the news, giving each other time for it to sink in.
‘Will Uncle Phil go to prison?’ Lucas eventually asked.
‘Yes,’ said Mike. I went to interject, but he got there first. ‘If he did it.’
‘And it’s up to the jury to decide?’ Betsy explored the sound of this new, foreign word.
‘Yes,’ said Mike. ‘The jury is a group of normal people who listen to all of the evidence, all the facts from the police, and then they decide if someone is guilty or not.’
Betsy considered this for a moment. ‘But why did he do it? Why did he want to hurt Mummy on purpose?’
I looked away, leaving Mike to answer.
‘We don’t know, love. We might never know.’
‘What if the jury decide he didn’t do it?’ Lucas looked from me to Mike and back again. ‘What if they think it was someone else?’
‘Let’s just take this one step at a time, eh pal?’ Mike ruffled Lucas’s hair. It was getting so long that he had to
