“I can’t tell you how perfect the timing is,” I told Mark, the boss at Ribcraft in Yeovil, when he phoned to tell me the boat was ready. He had known Kate personally, as she’d done her advanced powerboat training course with his staff. She’d made quite an impression as the only female on the course along with a group of fishermen, senior lifeguards and advanced sailing instructors, including me.
I remember that training course well. The wind was very strong the night we went out of Weymouth Harbour, with six-foot-high waves crashing on the deck of our fishing boat. Kate lapped it up, but some of the other candidates were unhappy about the conditions, and we had to go back to shore. The next night the sea was flat, calm and crystal clear. “I love it like this too,” Kate said. “It feels like we’re on a proper adventure!” I knew exactly what she meant. There was something exciting and almost primeval about being out on the still sea after dark, a black curtain of sky pulled overhead.
All the staff at Ribcraft had been gutted to hear about Kate’s death and couldn’t do enough for me when I went looking for a new boat. The one I chose was a rib—a rigid inflatable boat. It had been made for a boat show, and the moment I saw it I knew it had to be ours. Kate would have loved it. It had matte black tubes and the hull was vibrant shiny yellow, which were the type of colors we’d always had on our boats. “It’ll look like a wasp on steroids when we get it on the water,” I joked. “The boys will be thrilled to bits. I’ve got to have it!”
I ordered all the extras, such as an A-frame and a towing point to teach Reef and Finn to water-ski, and it had a 100 hp Suzuki engine that would purr beautifully and go like the wind. As a tribute to Kate I was given a hefty discount, and I was very touched. The boys came with me to collect the rib after school.
“What’s the new boat like, Daddy?” Reef asked excitedly.
“It’s cool,” I said.
“How is it cool?” Finn asked.
“Wait and see,” I said.
I turned the music up in the car, and Reef took control of the iPod, blasting out hits by Rihanna, his favorite singer. Just as we approached Ribcraft, Reef switched the music to “The Boys Are Back in Town” by Thin Lizzy. We were all on a high, and my heart was beating fast as we pulled up outside the showroom.
“We’ve arrived!” Finn squealed.
I felt a real buzz through my veins. It was a familiar feeling, but one I hadn’t felt in ages. I realized it was the first time since Kate’s death that I’d felt anything like my old self; anything like happy and normal, let alone excited.
Finn spotted it first, pointing to the shiny black and yellow craft parked up outside the shop.
“Can we have one like that, Daddy?” he said, giggling.
“I’d love a boat like that,” Reef said. “Can we get one like that?”
I let their words hang in the wind for a moment, just to build up the drama.
“That one?” I said, stopping to examine it.
“Yes!” they both shouted. “Please, Daddy!”
“Yes, OK, we can!” I replied with glee, savoring the moment.
Both boys stared at me in amazement and let out a whoop of delight.
“Reeeeally?” Reef said in disbelief. “Can we really?”
I put my arms around both boys.
“Yes we can . . . because that is our boat, boys!” I announced triumphantly.
I watched as they climbed all over it like a couple of excited ants, cheering and laughing, their eyes shining brightly. I told them she was named 4 Saints. The boys both have St. John as their middle name, so that made three saints including me. As Kate was now kind of on a cloud, I reckoned she was a saint of sorts too. The name seemed just right, especially with my company being called Training Saints.
The boys sat themselves down in the two seats on the back of the boat, and I asked them to listen carefully for a moment.
“Mummy wanted us to have this boat,” I told them. “It is Mummy’s birthday today, and I think it would be nice if we always called this day ‘Mum’s Day.’ What do you think?”
“Yes!” Reef said eagerly.
“Yessss, Daddy,” Finn said. “I like that. Can we go zooming fast in the boat now? How fast can we go?”
One of the salesmen came out to greet us. “Everything all right, Singe?” he asked.
“You could say that,” I beamed, nodding toward Reef and Finn. “The boys are in heaven!”
I lifted my eyes to the sky, wondering if Kate was in heaven too, and wondering if she really might be on a cloud, looking down on us.
“Thanks, Kate,” I said when I had a private moment later, just in case she was.
Kate would have loved to have seen the boys’ eyes sparkling, just as they did in Lapland. She had made this happen, and I was so grateful I wanted to cry. I would make sure the boys packed in hours and hours of fun on this boat, and I would remember this fantastic gift every year on Kate’s birthday.
That weekend we took 4 Saints out around Bristol docks. The boys were so excited they wanted Coral to join us on our maiden voyage, so I dressed her in a dog-sized life jacket, and the four of us set off. I felt incredibly emotional when we hit the water, like I was setting out on a new journey, a new life without Kate.
“Can’t we go any faster?” Finn nagged.
“Faster, faster!” Reef demanded.
“Boys, don’t you remember what I said about us having to run the boat in? We have to do about twenty hours of going slow before we can go fast or we’ll damage the new engine.”
They were both cross and annoyed and started moaning: “It’s boring!” I rolled my eyes and had one of those moments when I wanted to share a knowing glance with Kate like we used to. Instead I just looked up to the sky. She’d have laughed her head off at the boys’ complaining, I just knew it.
Chapter 5
“Mummy liked catching crabs”
“It’s your last day on the wardrobe,” I said to Kate. “The boys are out with Nanny and Gramps, so I thought I’d tell you what I’ve got planned.” I was whispering, even though I was alone in the house. “I decided to have your interment on March 31, our wedding anniversary. I thought that way I’d always have happy memories of that date, as well as sad ones, and when I christen the boys on the same date next year, we’ll have even more good memories.”
I tried to smile up at her, but my lips felt frozen in my face. If I moved them I knew the floodgates would open, releasing a waterfall of tears. I sat down on Reef’s bed and tried to get a grip of myself. Beside me on his bedside shelf was a picture of Kate and the boys with Father Christmas in Lapland. It had been taken just three months before. Kate’s cheeks were pink, and she was smiling proudly, arms placed protectively around the boys, who were dressed in matching blue anoraks. She looked so happy, so well.
I had already placed a few special photos and souvenirs and pictures the boys had made in the basket with her. I hadn’t been sure whether she wanted them in her coffin at the funeral or in this basket with her ashes, but I guessed both. I didn’t have any experience of cremations and interments; Kate’s death had given me a crash course, and I was learning as I went along.
“I’ve designed you a headstone,” I stuttered.
I remembered her words very clearly. “Make it special, Singe. You’ll know what to do.”
“I’ve made it personal like you wanted, Kate . . .”
Saying her name out loud set me off, and I barely got the words out before the tears came tumbling down my cheeks, leaving big wet splotches on Reef’s blue-striped duvet.
My dad is a mason and had arranged the carving of Kate’s headstone. I had chosen a piece of black granite and sketched the design I wanted: a spray of flowers including four-leaf clovers, one big daisy, two little daisies in bud and one wilted daisy. I signed it from Singe and the
“Infinity Elves” and added the inscription “acres and acres.”
I explained all this to Kate through my tears and told her she would be buried in her basket next to her grandparents’ grave, as we’d discussed. After the huge funeral, I wanted the interment to be a very small, private affair with just me and the boys and Kate’s parents present. Noel, the vicar from the church attached to the boys’ school, would carry out the ceremony, as Kate had wished.
I dreaded the finality of the interment and I told Kate as much. I had got used to having her on the wardrobe, and the thought of having her buried in a hole in the ground several miles from home upset me to no end.
“We’ll come and visit you lots,” I said. “You won’t be alone.”
That night I read the boys a stack of bedtime stories, knowing it would be Kate’s last chance to hear them.
“Can we have one more?” Reef asked when we’d already got though at least half a dozen books.
“Oh, go on then!” I said, to squeals of incredulous delight from both boys. “But after this it’s lights out. We have another big day for Mummy tomorrow.”
“Do we get to miss school again?” Reef asked.
“Yes, you do.”
“Yipeeeeeeee!” Finn said.
I wished I could bottle some of that innocence and take a dose myself. I felt sick at the thought of carrying Kate to her final resting place tomorrow and I wondered how much more of this I could take. I felt tired out with grief and I wanted the pain of missing Kate to stop, yet at the same time I didn’t want to let her go. I wanted to keep showing her how much I missed her and I wanted to do her memory justice every step of the way.
I slept badly. Spraying Kate’s perfume on my pillow didn’t help. I hugged the pillow like a little boy, lost and alone. Remembering happy times made me miss her more. Thinking of her slipping away from me, being buried in the ground, completely devastated me, and willing her back was like the cruelest kind of self-torture, because I knew it was never going to happen. Trying not to think about her at all was another type of hell, one I didn’t want either.
The next morning was like a hideous Groundhog Day. Opening my eyes, I had the same thought I had every morning. I remembered Kate was dead and then I looked at her side of the bed just to double-check. Its emptiness confirmed what I felt. I’d lost her. It wasn’t a nightmare, and I was wide awake, acknowledging the loss yet again. This day I got a double dose of the Groundhog treatment, as the boys and I prepared for part two of Kate’s funeral. I was dreading it. This really was the end. I would never touch Kate again, and the last fragments of her body would leave our house for the very last time.
The boys were quiet and thoughtful over breakfast. They knew the drill after Kate’s cremation, which was upsetting in itself.
“Reef, look after your brother today,” I instructed.
“We’ll be all right,” he said.
“Are we going to school after?” Finn asked.
I think he’d just realized that missing a day off school wasn’t necessarily a treat.
“No, not today. We’re just saying good-bye to Mummy again today.”
“Oh, OK then.” He shrugged sadly.
When the moment finally came in the churchyard of St. Andrew’s Church in Clevedon, it wasn’t half as bad as I feared it would be. Kate’s grandparents are buried in cliff-top plots overlooking the Bristol Channel. Behind the church’s boundary hedge is a path running along the cliffs, forming the stunning Poet’s Walk, which is famous for inspiring great writers like Tennyson, Thackeray and Coleridge. I couldn’t have wished for a more perfect spot.
We put Kate in above her grandparents, placing her closest to the boundary. Reef pointed to a gap in the hedge, through which you could see the Channel. “Mummy can keep an eye on us when we are on the boat,” he said.
Kate’s little basket was sealed in the ground with her gravestone, which was laid flat over the top of her. It took a little while to complete the job, as the hole in the ground wasn’t quit big enough for the basket to fit, and more earth had to be dug out. Trust Kate, I thought, creating a little drama right up until the end, showing the world she wasn’t going willingly. The poets who’d walked this path would have had a field day with that idea, I reckoned.
I surrounded Kate’s gravestone with a pretty white border of shells we’d gathered on our travels, and a robin sang cheerfully as Noel performed a simple ceremony. I felt very thankful Kate had been buried in such a beautiful spot. It was a great comfort to know that, whenever we were out in the boat, she could watch over us and we could look up to her, through the gap in the hedge. I scattered wildflower seeds around Kate’s grave too, which I knew she would love.
When the ceremony was over I felt unexpectedly happy. I can’t think of a better word to describe the feeling. I felt Kate was at peace and I was so relieved and reassured by that. I think the boys felt it too, as they each gave Kate’s gravestone a poignant little smile and a wave before we left. It was more than two months since her death, and it suddenly felt right she had finally left the wardrobe, and right that we had to walk away now, without her.
“Can we come and see Mummy ever again?” Finn asked thoughtfully.
“Of course we can! We can come up here whenever we want, and we can wave up to her when we’re out on the boat too.”
“Good,” he smiled, looking at his feet shyly. “Mummy was kind and nice.”
“Yes, she was. She loved you boys very much indeed.”
As we slowly walked away Finn suddenly spun round to look at the grave again.
“Bye bye, Mummy,” he said, giving another little wave before turning to me and saying breezily: “I love you, Daddy.”
It was usually Reef who hit a nerve, but Finn did it in spectacular style that day.
“I love you too,” I said, my voice wobbling.
“Are you crying, Daddy?” Finn asked.
“Yes, you little monkey. You set me off a treat!” I spluttered, trying to lighten the mood.
“Sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry. Sometimes it’s good to cry.”
I realized Reef was really quiet. He’s always been the more thoughtful of the two boys, and I figured perhaps he was finding things a little tougher as he was that bit older. Kate’s grave is very close to that of a young boy we knew who had died of cancer, but I wasn’t sure if Reef remembered him or had even seen the grave. I didn’t mention it because I didn’t want to make Reef any glummer, and we all drove away in silence.
* * *
“Daddy, what will happen if my cancer comes back?” Reef asked.
It was a couple of weeks after Kate’s interment when he landed that question on me, and I was immediately transported back to the graveyard, remembering how quiet and thoughtful he was that day. It should have been obvious really, I thought. I ought to have worked out what was playing on his little mind that day, on top of everything else.
Now we were in the car on the way to the hospital for his routine MRI scan. Doctors were pleased with Reef’s progress, and his cancer was showing no signs of returning, but he still needed regular scans and checkups and would be tested throughout his childhood, just to be on the safe side. I was not looking forward to the appointment. It was the first big one without Kate, and I wondered how Reef would cope without his mum’s hand to hold.
Kate was phenomenal when Reef was ill. Even when she was heavily pregnant with Finn she was with Reef every step of the way, always ready with a soothing word, a cuddle or a packet of crayons produced at just the right moment to make him feel better. She put her own feelings to one side time and time again, even when it meant pinching Reef’s arm to make him cry before an MRI scan, so he’d inhale the anesthetic to knock him out and make him lie still in the machine. It broke her heart time and time again, but she did it for him because he was too af
raid to go in the body scanner when he was awake.
What would Kate say to Reef now? How would she answer that awful question that was hanging in the air between us: “What if my cancer comes back?”
“Please teach them to say what they mean.”
I turned the music off in the car.
“We’ll cross that bridge if we ever come to it,” I said to Reef.
“What do you mean?” he asked earnestly.
“I mean, I don’t know, Reef. I can’t see into the future.”
“Will I die like Mummy? Mummy’s lump made her die. Will my lump make me die?”
“Reef, nobody knows what’s in the future. What we do know is that the doctors took away your lump and made you better, and you’re doing really, really well.”
Reef said nothing, and I hoped I’d been as truthful and tactful as Kate would have wanted me to be.
“Another thing we know is that when Mummy died, she left us a list of special things she wanted us to do,” I said slightly clumsily. I had a sing-song tone to my voice that sounded fake to my ears, but I carried on regardless, hoping Reef didn’t spot it. “One of those things is to go camping—so that’s what we’re doing later this week! First we have to see the doctor and have your scan, just to check you over, make sure you’re fit and well.”
“Can we fly kites on holiday?”
“Yes, we can,” I said, letting out a sigh of relief.
I wished I could turn the car around, go down to the beach and fly a kite right now, but instead I drove on to the Bristol Royal Infirmary. How many times had I driven this route with Kate, both for Reef’s treatment and for hers? How much longer would cancer go on interfering with our lives? I suddenly felt ashamed of the thought. I had so much to be grateful for, compared to Kate. She would have given anything to hold Reef’s hand today.
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