I try to get my breathing under control and I make some decisions.
It is time for me to go.
Julia has Daniel and she is having a baby and she will eventually be okay. I wasn’t a great mother, but I made her self-sufficient. I always knew she would have to be one day.
It is time for me to die, and take the memory of Jack with me.
Because Julia doesn’t know about Jack.
Of course, when it happened, when I fetched her from my parents eventually – me broken and grieving and raw – Julia asked about Jack. But I just said, ‘He’s gone,’ and then I wouldn’t talk about him again. To anyone. Not to my parents. Not to Julia. Not to friends. And after a while, everyone stopped trying. My parents stopped referring to him, because they knew it would just make me shut down completely, and my friends drifted away.
I never decided that I would bring Julia up not knowing that she had ever had a brother. I just didn’t talk about him, and if she asked anything, I would change the subject, because I couldn’t bear to think about him, to talk about him, to see my grief reflected in Julia. I kept thinking that I would be ready soon, one day, and that then Julia and I would talk about our shared loss. But it never came. I would open my mouth to say something about Jack, and it was like the lights went off in my head and I couldn’t speak; I was deep in a dark hole and nobody could reach me.
And we moved, of course, after Mike went into the home, and when we packed up the house, I sent most of Jack’s stuff to an orphanage. In the new house, there was no bedroom to remind Julia that there used to be a little boy that she adored. And she started to forget – she mentioned him less and less. And I never reminded her. And then my parents died too, soon after each other, and Mike’s parents died before I met him. And suddenly it was too late to remind Julia about Jack and it was easier for me not to talk about him, even though I thought about him all day, every day. And there was no one in our lives who would talk about Jack – my parents were dead, and Mike couldn’t speak, and the others were all gone. Even if we did bump into an old friend, as sometimes happened, they never said anything directly. ‘How are you?’ they would say, searching my face with their eyes. Because people don’t just blurt out your loss – they avoid it or use euphemisms, so they could have been speaking about Mike, from Julia’s point of view. And so Julia grew up thinking that she was an only child, and that the reason I mourned so deeply was because of Mike.
But Mike isn’t dead. Jack is.
And I am bereft. And I want to die. For twenty-six years, I have wanted to die.
And now it is time.
I reach under my bed to where I keep my box of photographs and the few mementos of Jack that I allowed myself. When Julia was a child, I kept them up high, at the back of a shelf. But now that there’s no danger she will stumble across them, I keep them near me again.
I need to destroy the photographs and mementos. I have kept this from Julia for too long. Jack will have to die with me. It breaks my heart that no one will remember his little life. I scattered his ashes one terrible day, in the gardens at the zoo, where he was so happy, and there isn’t even a plaque to remind people of little Jack Michael Blake, who died, aged four. After that, I can kill Mike and then myself. This is what I have always wanted, and as I sit holding the box, I am still crying. I stroke the lid. I will not look at his photos now, or his tiny shoes or his first lock of hair or his birth certificate. I will do that for the last time just before I destroy them. I would do it now, but first I have to tell Mike.
I take a deep breath. I will be okay; this will all end soon. And Julia will be okay. And Mike will be free.
The time has come.
And as I breathe in again, and wipe my tears, the doorbell rings. I’m not expecting anyone and I can’t see anyone like I am. So I ignore it, even when it rings again.
And then my phone rings and it’s Julia.
I answer.
‘Mummy,’ she says, and I can hear she’s crying. ‘Mummy, where are you? Mummy, I need you. Please open the door, Mummy – I need you.’
Claire
I look up at Daniel. He is standing over my breakfast table on the terrace in Mauritius. The sun is behind him, so I can’t see him properly, although I can make out Mackenzie just behind, looking at him with complete confusion.
‘I’m here, Claire,’ he says. ‘Just like you wanted. I’m back.’
‘Sorry, what?’ I stand up so that the sun isn’t blocking my view. Daniel has a smile on his face like he’s won the bloody lottery. ‘What are you doing here, Daniel?’
‘You told me to come, and I’m here,’ he says, the idiotic smile still in place.
‘Have you been drinking?’ I say. ‘I absolutely did not tell you to come. I’m completely, utterly appalled that you are here.’
I am shouting, and people are looking, but I don’t care.
‘I know you didn’t tell me,’ says Daniel. ‘But you told me.’ He takes a step towards me.
