The relief is unspeakable.
“And later on tonight,” Lily continues, “we can walk down to the beach again and give my gift to the sea, and then everyone will be satisfied.”
“No! You can’t throw your shell necklace in the sea.”
“My darling, I have to.”
“But it’s so beautiful,” I falter.
“If it wasn’t beautiful then it wouldn’t be enough.”
I look again at the strange perfection of the pale sand-washed glass, the pink and white and sandy gold of the limpets, the mussel shell like a teardrop jewel. The thought of all this work, all those hours of beachcombing and then the careful delicate task of assembly, being tossed away into the water, just because I was an idiot and nearly got myself drowned, hurts my heart.
“Let’s make another one,” I say. “I’ll make it. And we’ll give that one to the sea and keep this one.” Lily shakes her head, but I keep speaking. “No, I want to, that’s how it ought to be anyway. It was me that was stupid, so it should be my shells that get used.” Lily looks doubtful. “I’ll do it properly, not all limpets. I’ll use all my best ones. Even my white scallop shell.”
“No, you don’t have to do that. The sea will be happy with this one. I don’t mind.”
“But I mind. It’s not right. Let me do it.”
“You have to work with an empty stomach.” Lily’s hands shape the words reluctantly.
“That’s all right. I didn’t eat my dinner. Please, Lily.”
While Lily busies herself in the kitchen, I sit at her desk and spread out my beachcombing collection, the careful work of years. I choose ruthlessly, selecting only the bluest and rarest glass fragments, the most elegant of the bleached driftwood twigs, the cleanest of the limpet shells. For the centrepiece I choose my single pure white scallop, the most beautiful shell I own. I take fierce pleasure in the pain it causes me to add it to the necklace for the ocean.
When the necklace is finished, I go into the kitchen and touch Lily on the shoulder to tell her I’ve finished. The silence is a rule I made up while I was working; I don’t know how to explain it to Lily, but she seems to understand anyway, and goes to put on her coat. Hand in hand, hungry and exhausted, we walk to the beach. The sand beneath my feet feels damp and chilly, and the tide has turned.
I stroke the scallop shell one last time with my fingers, then whirl the necklace around my head and fling it far out across the water, hoping it will clear the place where the waves break. I can’t bear to think that my gift will be returned unwanted. But it dives into the water like a bird, then disappears. I picture it tumbling and twirling down to the ocean floor.
“There,” I say, and beside me Lily stirs and smiles.
“There,” she repeats. “Well done, my darling. It was a beautiful necklace.”
The walk home is harder than I’ve ever known it. I’m so hungry that I wonder if I might die before we get home. Even the thought of my abandoned dinner, congealing and cold on the pretty willow-pattern china, turns me weak with longing. I wonder if Lily will let me eat it, even though it probably looks disgusting by now. I hope she hasn’t thrown it away. I’m hungry enough to go through the rubbish and retrieve it. When we finally fling open Lily’s front door with trembling hands, the scent of the tender lamb curry Lily has made from my leftovers and left simmering quietly on the stove almost makes me swoon.
Always correct in her standards, Lily insists I wash my hands and sit nicely at the table. I devour the rich meat and spicy sauce in busy ravenous silence, mopping up every smear with thick crusty bread piled in a generous golden mound. Lady-like despite her hunger, Lily eats slowly and daintily, but watches me with indulgent pride and presses me to second and third helpings.
When I go to bed, I find Lily’s necklace hung around my door frame like a dreamcatcher.
“To keep away nightmares,” she tells me. “Good night, my darling.”
Chapter Seven – Friday
Morning favourite wife xxxx
Just got an email. You won’t believe what it says
Jen? Are you there?
Jen? It’s past time. Everything all right down there?
Okay, getting worried now. Are you both okay?
Jen, please text me, I need to know you’re all right
Sorry, we’re both fine. We slept in a bit, that’s all
I know this is late, I’m so sorry
Daniel, please, what do you want me to say? I’m sorry, I really am. I won’t do it again
You’re both all right, yay :)
Oh come on. I said I’m sorry. Don’t sulk
I’m not sulking. I was really worried
Look I know I was late texting you but is it such a big deal?
YES IT IS A BIG DEAL. You’re both in a strange place and Marianne sleepwalks. I only went there once but I remember that bloody stone staircase. If she got out and fell she could break her neck. You can’t blame me for worrying when you don’t text.
And did it not occur to you we might still be asleep?
You promised you’d keep your phone with you
Well I was asleep and I didn’t see it flash, okay?
Are you serious? Because if you can sleep through your phone you might sleep through the monitor
Oh, shut up and leave me alone.
Jesus. What was that for?
For going on at me.
??? I’m not going on at you. I’m expressing a worry about our daughter and trying to get you to take it seriously, so we can agree how you’re going to keep her safe without me there to help.
Yes you are going on. I’ve said sorry and you’re not accepting it. You’re nagging me about nothing and it’s annoying.
Jen, what’s the matter with you? I love you. Why are you trying to start a row?
I’m not trying to start a fucking row, I just want you to not pick at me for one little thing. Look I’m going to get some breakfast, I’ll talk you to later.
“Dad’s gone mad,” Marianne announces around a slice of toast. “I had seven missed calls from him when I woke up.”
“Oh God, really? Don’t worry, he’s fine, I promise he’s fine, I’ve texted him.”
“I know, I rang him too.”
“How was he?” I try to make the question casual.
“He wanted to know if I was all right, then he asked about every single detail of what we’re doing today and said he misses us about a million times.”
Thank God he didn’t mention that we’re arguing. Marianne hates it when we argue. So do I, actually; so does he. What was wrong with me this morning? I shouldn’t have spoken to him that way.
“And he wanted me to be careful on the stairs,” she adds. “Why is he so worried about the stairs? I think he’s getting a bit strange being all by himself.”
Should I be glad or worried that she doesn’t understand? Most of the time she doesn’t remember what she does in her sleep. She never complains, but she must know by now that it’s not normal to have a baby monitor at twelve years old, that there’s a reason why we obsess over her bedtime routine and never let her go to sleepovers. I look at her carefully to see if she’s thinking about any of this but she seems quite happy, crunching her way through her toast and blackberry jelly with a sticky unconscious relish and scooping up a fat red-black glob from her pyjama top with her finger.
“It’s quite nice that he misses us that much,” Marianne continues after a minute.
“I suppose it is really.”
“I had a dream about him. We were on a train and he wanted to get on too, but you said he had the wrong ticket and then you shut the door and wouldn’t speak to him and he was really sad.”
My heart stutters. I breathe deeply and slowly to steady it. “But you know it was only a dream, don’t you? I’d never do that to your dad.”
“Mum.” Marianne pats my hand tolerantly. “I’m twelve. Of course I know.”
There’s a knot in my stomach. We’ve been together for seventeen yea
rs but Daniel’s never lost that honeymoon wildness. I love you so much, he tells me twenty times a day. I miss you. I can’t get on without you. And I told him to fuck off and leave me alone.
“Mum.” Marianne waves to get my attention. “Mum, about the funeral. What’s it going to be like?”
“What? Oh. Nothing special. Just like any other funeral.”
“Yes, but I’ve never been to one. Will everyone stand around the grave and cry and hold umbrellas?”
I wonder if Marianne has somehow managed to watch The Sopranos.
“No, pet. This is a cremation, not a burial.”
Marianne blinks. “Are they going to cremate her in the church?”
“The service happens in the church, then they take the body to the crematorium afterwards.”
“And do we go with her? Do we have to watch her getting burned?”
(Not unless we want to. And I don’t want to. I only want it to be over.)
“Okay, so what happens is, we all go to the church, and the minister stands at the front and talks about… and talks for a bit, and there are some hymns and some things we all have to say. That’s the service. Then the coffin goes by itself to the crematorium. That’s the bit we won’t be there for. And we stay behind and talk to everyone and eat. That’s the wake.” A room full of strangers, all of them silently hating me for not looking after Lily. Or, perhaps worse, just Marianne and I, and a room full only of ghosts and memories.
“So there’s still a coffin, then? Even though it’s going to be burned?” I imagine a funeral without a coffin and shudder. Marianne is still talking. “That’s quite cool, actually. Like the Vikings. Building a longship and then setting fire to it. That’s the sort of funeral I’d like. A massive boat all for me, and then you and Dad could stand around and fire arrows into it and I’d sail away into the sunset.”
“By the time you die. me and your dad will be long gone, and you’ll be a clucky old lady with a million great-grandchildren.”
“Oh yes. Well, maybe that’s what I’ll do for your funeral, then. If you’d like that, I mean. It would be quite hard to organise probably. But I’d find a way.”
Actually, a Viking funeral sounds rather splendid. Much better than the anaemic, by-the-numbers service I’ve arranged with minimum thought and effort. How wonderful it would have looked, the boat blazing on the smooth glassy water, Lily’s last remains burned away into scraps and sparks and ash. I wish I’d thought of it. If things had been different, Marianne could have asked Lily herself. They could have planned her exit together, the sort of morbidly subversive conversation Lily would have enjoyed. I can picture them huddled conspiratorially on the sofa, plotting her grand finale.
Or perhaps rather than a blaze of light on a flat ocean, she would prefer the wildness of being tossed adrift in a storm. We could have built a birch-bark canoe and tucked her into it, waded through the breakers and pushed her out into churning waves. We would have stood hand in hand, Marianne and I, the salt of our tears mingling with the spray. I can see it so clearly, it’s as if Lily has conjured the vision. Except that for any of this to have happened, we would all have had to be entirely different people.
“But we’re not going home straight after, are we? We’ve still got things to get done?”
“I’m afraid so. Sorry.”
“Oh, I don’t mind,” says Marianne. “It’s just Dad was asking.”
“Well, he shouldn’t be. He knows how long we’ll be here, I’ve told him enough times.”
“I think he was hoping the answer might be different,” says Marianne with a shrug, and takes her plate to the kitchen.
Her sweetness makes me ashamed. What was I thinking, getting so angry with Daniel? I can’t leave things like this, not another minute. I take out my phone.
I’m so sorry I was horrible. I don’t know what got into me. Do you forgive me? X
Please forgive me. I was awful. I know I was. You’re so lovely and I was so vile. I love you.
I was really worried
I know you were. And I bit your head off. I’m really really sorry. Please say you forgive me
Of course I do. I can’t stay mad with you, you know that xx
You know just for the record, Marianne’s actually slept really well the last few nights. I thought she’d wander for sure by now, but not a thing
Or maybe she woke up and you didn’t realise
Maybe it’s the lingering remnants of the magic Lily used to work for me, the sea air and swimming combining with the rings she lent me and the shells she hung around my doorway. Or maybe Marianne has unplugged the monitor. Should I mention that she’s started doing this? And if I don’t mention it, who am I being most unfair to?
I’ve never slept through it yet have I? But I really am sorry
Let’s not talk about it any more. I miss you so much. I can’t work properly without you in the house. You have to come home soon or I’ll be a shambling mess by the time we get into the studio for the demo
I have to smile. How many times has Daniel wandered out of the tiny space we refer to as ‘the music room’ to put his arms around my waist and his face in my neck, his hands fumbling over my body like a small child seeking comfort, telling me he can’t work because I’m distracting him?
So now we’re speaking again, isn’t there something you want to ask me? :)
I scroll hastily back through our conversation.
God yes of COURSE, I can’t wait to hear! What did the email say?
You know that guy who did those amazing t-shirts we saw at TribFest?
Um. Might need a little bit more
The ones with the human-object hybrids. The vacuum cleaner people and the lampshade child. You remember them.
The ones that were £68 each?
That’s the ones. Well I found his website and got in touch with him AND HE’S AGREED TO DO AN ARTWORK FOR STORM INTERFERENCE
Blimey
I know!!! He likes the idea of merging us all with our instruments. Apparently I’m going to be a mic stand. Only thing is he won’t work for free
Well that’s fair enough I suppose. How much does he want?
He’s getting really well known so it’s not cheap
No I get that. How much?
It’s for the rights to the artwork in all media for ever
Yes but how much?
T-shirts, album artwork, social media, everything
Come on. Let’s have it
It’s my idea so I said I’d put in the cash. I mean they’ve all bought instruments and stuff and Sol’s cousin’s giving us the demo recording for free so it’s fair enough
And the final answer is…
Two grand
My heart judders. Daniel can spend money like water, like a man raised in lush rainy countryside who finds himself transplanted to an arid plain, with no true understanding of the horrors of drought. Jen looks after all of that, he tells people with pride, she’s brilliant with money, I don’t dare spend anything without checking. What frightens me most is I think he truly believes this, that the money he pours carelessly away was spent with my permission and even approval.
I swallow my panic. It’s all right. It’s all right. When Lily’s estate is settled, we’ll have all the money we need.
That’s all right, I make myself type. We can afford it.
OH YES YES YES THANK YOU
AND THANK YOU TO YOUR DEAD GRANDMOTHER AS WELL
Sol said it was a lot of money but I knew you’d be okay with it
You’re so amazing, do you know that? You’re a financial wizard. Or a witch. A financial witch. I love you so much.
So do I stick it on the credit card or what?
I add up figures in my head. Groceries, which Daniel will still buy while I’m away despite the meals I left in the freezer. The train tickets, booked at short notice and therefore expensive. Funeral expenses will come out of the estate, but I haven’t got around to seeing the bank yet, and in the meantime I’ve had to pay
a deposit to the undertaker. Another two thousand on top of that. Will that take us to our credit limit? Where are we in the month? I’ll have to check our account later.
If he takes credit cards then that’s fine. If he doesn’t then DON’T JUST CLEAR OUT OUR BANK ACCOUNT or everything will bounce. Ask him what payment methods he takes and then ask me for advice
And don’t pay the whole lot upfront, hold back half for when he delivers okay?
God, you’re so clever. You think of everything. It’s a good job I’ve got you to look after me
Thank you again. As always.
What are you doing now?
We’re finishing breakfast. Then I’ve got paperwork to do
I thought you were seeing the undertaker today?
Yes, in about half an hour. So right now, I’m getting on with the list of twenty-seven million people I have to inform that Lily’s dead. Then when it’s time to meet the undertaker, I’ll stop and go and do that instead. Okay?
In the pause that follows, I reread my message and feel instantly ashamed.
Sorry, I didn’t mean to be snippy.
I was only asking
Please don’t be mad. I’m really sorry. Again. I’m just stressed. But I shouldn’t take it out on you, it’s not fair.
I hate having to talk like this. I wish I could see your face and hear your voice. I miss you so much.
I know, I miss you too.
Really?
Of course really. I can’t wait to get back to you.
:) x
Okay, I’ll text you later once I’ve seen the undertaker, okay? Xxxxxxx
Love you xxxxxxxx
Occasionally, I wonder if one day Daniel will realise he’s lost the career he could have had because he, not I, became the full-time parent; or worse, become belatedly successful and leave me for a starry-eyed groupie who’ll follow him wherever he leads. But even after seventeen years together, Daniel still panics when we disagree. Even after seventeen years, he still misses me enough to text me before I wake. I’m so lucky to have him. He was right. I was trying to start a row. It’s being in this place, surrounded by a million memories that don’t include him. Maybe Lily is haunting me after all, trying to break up my marriage.
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