A couple of days later I overheard one of Finn’s classmates asking why he had been on telly. “’Cos my mummy was very special,” Finn said before skipping off.
When we got home that night there were two packets of seeds pushed through the letterbox, with an anonymous note explaining they were for the boys to grow clovers and sunflowers in memory of Kate. More arrived the next day, and the day after that, and I told the boys we would plant the clovers around Mummy’s grave and grow the sunflowers at home when the weather was warmer. They nodded and didn’t question the unusual gifts; I guess nothing was quite as surprising, or exciting, as being besieged by film crews and reporters.
The following week Reef’s teacher told me he had stood up in the class and talked very eloquently about losing his mummy. I was very moved to hear how he told the other children he missed her a lot but is happy because he has a nice daddy and brother, and they all stick together when they feel sad. Reef volunteered to do it because another little boy in the class lost his mum to cancer too, which was an unbelievably sad coincidence.
“I was very impressed by Reef’s maturity,” the teacher said. “But I must admit I had to blink back tears as he spoke.”
I was thrilled Reef had the confidence to stand up in front of the class, let alone talk about his loss. His confidence was growing daily, and that was a great achievement.
There was another piece of good news from the school. I had been elected Chair of Governors, which would allow me to have an even greater input into the boys’ education. It would mean quite a commitment in terms of my time, but what could be more worthwhile? I’d be asked to help shape school policy and would sit in on interview panels for new appointments as well as being involved in all the fun things like fund-raisers, “wow” activities and parties.
The fact I was only working part-time made this possible. I know there was not one dad in the playground who would swap places with me, but this was something undeniably positive to come out of the tragedy of losing Kate. Not only that, I’d exceeded her expectations. When she wrote, “Help All Saints School and try to get Reef extra help,” I think she had something less ambitious in mind.
“You made a great Father Christmas,” Kate smiled at me as she scribbled that entry on her list. “You should do more things like that at school. You’re so good with the kids.”
It had been just weeks before Kate’s death, in the last few weeks of term before we flew to Lapland for Christmas, when I’d dressed up as Santa. Hilariously, the costume was so good neither Reef nor Finn recognized me when they visited the school’s grotto. I delighted in all the “ho-ho-ho-ing” and wound Kate up by encouraging a couple of the yummy mummies to be Santa’s helpers and sit on my lap. Kate got the last laugh, though, as usual, when we got to see the real Santa in Lapland.
“Oooh, he’s much better than the one at school!” Finn said.
“That’s ’cos he’s real, silly,” Reef said.
Kate pulled her scarf up over her mouth so they couldn’t see her giggling.
“You’re just a second-rate fake,” she whispered in my ear. “But I still love you.”
I remembered that day so well, and was reminded of it every day when I saw the Lapland souvenir photograph on the shelf in the boys’ room. It was difficult to believe it was not far off a year since that picture was taken.
* * *
It was November now, and the temperature outside was dropping. One afternoon I had a meeting to attend at the school, to discuss performance management with the head teacher. It was a bright day but bitingly cold, and I shivered as I walked across the churchyard, thinking how glad I was that we had Egypt to look forward to. It would be lovely to escape to the sun, I thought.
The meeting was in a room with no windows in a converted loft space at the back of the church attached to the school. I heard someone say that it had just started snowing, but I imagined a few flakes and didn’t give it a second thought. The meeting went on for a good couple of hours, and when I finally stepped outside I couldn’t believe my eyes. Everything had turned white. It must have snowed solidly from the moment I’d gone inside, because the snow was really thick on the ground.
I was completely taken aback. I had a similar feeling to the one I’d had when I stepped through the clouds of smoke and into the War Horse film set at Castle Combe. Going out into the whiteness was like stepping back in time, except now I felt unnerved rather than excited. I wasn’t entering a recreation of a past I never knew; I was going back into my own past, my past with Kate.
I looked down at my feet as I took a step forward. The crunch of my shoe in the snow sent a shockwave shooting through my body. I was back in Lapland. The noise reminded me of walking hand in hand through the snow with Kate. Everything reminded me of Lapland, of Kate, of our last holiday together. I saw her surrounded by white, just as I was now. I felt the same bone-chilling cold I felt back then. I’d forgotten how cold it was in the snow, how the sound of snow underfoot can squeak and crunch like fine gravel. I normally love that sound. I loved it in Lapland, because it was accompanied by the sound of laughter. I loved it in Austria too, on my and Kate’s first ever holiday together.
“I can’t believe we’re here!” the teenage Kate shrieked as she bounded through the snow like an excited kitten. “I love skiing!” she declared. “And I love you, Singe, with all my heart!”
I could picture her spinning round to me and saying those words, blonde ponytail dancing in her wake. The snow was romantic. It made the roses in Kate’s cheeks blossom even more. She had taken her first flight with me, the first of many more, and she was the most gorgeous girl in the world.
A few years later, when I proposed in Wengen, Switzerland, the snow made everything seem magical. I had spent half a year’s wages on a stunning aquamarine engagement ring, because it was Kate’s March birthstone as well as mine, and it matched the blue of her eyes. Kate’s eyes changed color from very light blue to an even paler, icy blue when she was angry and emotional, and I loved the way the stone changed color in different lights too. The ring was perfect, and it was burning a hole in my rucksack from the second we stepped foot in the ski resort. I couldn’t wait to put it on Kate’s finger, but the moment also had to be absolutely perfect.
I designed the ring myself, asking a jeweler friend of mine to keep a lookout for exactly the right stone. As luck would have it he sourced a beautiful teardrop-shaped gem in Switzerland, and I got him to set it in a pretty wishbone-shaped white gold band with little diamonds on either side. Next, I spoke to Kate’s boss and arranged for her to have time off work, without her knowing. When she came home on the Friday night and saw her ski boots and skis in the hall, she screamed and cried.
“Singe! I can’t believe we’re going skiing,” she said, hugging me. “This is just amazing! I thought my boss was trying to lay me off, winding down my hours! This is just brilliant!”
I had to bite my tongue. I wanted to tell her she wasn’t just getting a holiday, but a proposal too, but I had to wait for that magic moment. I’d chosen Wengen because it is chocolate-box stunning with views of the north face of the Eiger. I wanted to propose in one of the most beautiful places on the planet, and this was it.
Kate was enthralled. I’d booked first-class rail tickets that took us from the airport to Wengen station.
“There are no cars in Wengen,” I explained to Kate. “It’s too pretty for cars.”
“Singe, I love you!” she said a million times.
She hugged me and kissed me the whole way there.
“Thank you so much, Singe. I keep thinking this is a dream and I’m going to wake up. It’s like a fairy tale.”
I wanted to get down on my knees and propose to her right there and then in the railway carriage, but I didn’t. It had to happen in the snow. Kate’s excitement grew when we arrived at the Hotel Edelweiss. It was like stepping into
a painting of an idyllic Alpine scene, and the views of the Eiger knocked her out.
“We’re not far from where they filmed that James Bond stunt with the revolving restaurant at the top of the mountain,” I told her. “Tomorrow we’ll go on the clockwork railway, which hooks up to the highest railway in Europe. We’ll also see the horse-drawn sleighs that carry the ski equipment around the valley.”
Kate started giggling and couldn’t stop. “I don’t think I could be any happier,” she told me.
The next day we found our ski legs on part of the famous Lauterbrunnen downhill slope, and I left Kate catching her breath and enjoying a hot chocolate while I darted off to the supermarket. Heart pounding, I bought a basket of strawberries, a bottle of champagne, some salami and some freshly baked crusty rolls, hiding the lot in my rucksack.
The ring was in my pocket now, and I suggested we should go right to the top of the mountain on the railway, ski halfway down and find a good spot for lunch.
“Singe, whatever you say!” Kate laughed. “I’m in your hands, which is exactly where I want to be.”
The views were incredibly spectacular as we rode up the mountain. I was nervously excited about the proposal, but Kate was too busy drinking in the stunning scenery to suspect a thing.
“This is just breathtaking,” she said over and over again. The view of her face, aglow with happiness, was breathtaking too. How would she react to the proposal, when she was already on a massive high?
“Here we go!” Kate yelled excitedly as we set off downhill.
I was tingling with anticipation now. My heart was aching to tell her how much I loved her, how much I wanted to marry her. I just couldn’t wait to see her face when I pulled out the ring. I spent every second of the ski run scouring the landscape for the perfect spot to stop, and suddenly I saw it.
We turned a corner and a vast expanse of empty snow opened up in front of us. There was a bench in the distance with a snowdrift banked up to the side, and there wasn’t another person in sight. I let Kate go in front of me, and as she skied close to the drifted snow I zipped in behind her and took out one of her bindings. She plowed headlong into a deep pile of powdery snow, shrieking as she performed the perfect wipe-out. Before she could come up for breath I piled in behind her and pulled the ring out of my pocket.
“Will you marry me?” I said.
“What? Yes! Yes, of course I will!” she gasped ecstatically, wiping snow from her face to reveal tear-loaded eyes.
I kissed her passionately as I pulled off her ski glove and placed the ring on her finger. It fit perfectly. Everything was perfect in the world, absolutely everything. We walked to the bench to crack open the champagne, crunching in the snow. I remember the crunch. It was crisp and clean, and it made me feel so alive. I can still taste the champagne on Kate’s lips, and I can smell the ripe strawberries and the fresh crusty bread. The combination was delicious and dizzying, but most of all I remember the sound of crunching snow, connecting me to our beautiful planet. I was marrying the girl of my dreams and I was so alive.
* * *
The crunch grated on me now. I was alive, but Kate was dead, like so many others buried around me in this churchyard. The white brightness made me blink, and my eyes stung. It was very quiet all around me, as if the normal sounds of the street and the traffic had been frozen into the snow. I was all alone.
I quickened my pace. I could feel the warmth of my blood in my cheeks, and they were burning and stinging in the cold. My breath was short and shallow. I wanted to get inside my car, where I could breathe normally and escape from the snow. I almost threw myself into the driver’s seat, slamming the door sharply behind me. It made an eerie echo sound and a curtain of snow dropped heavily from the driver’s window beside me, landing with a muted thud on the ground outside. I gulped in the stale air of the car, and tears started falling from my eyes.
I had a very deep feeling of loss; but it took me a few moments to realize it wasn’t my own loss I was lamenting, it was Kate’s.
“She’s missed it,” I thought. “Kate won’t see snow again, not ever. She won’t see anything, ever again.”
I felt so sorry for her, missing out on so much. I turned on the engine, but the noise only gave me a cover to cry harder and louder, uninhibited by the quiet whiteness around me. I was bawling my eyes out now, and I had no control over my tears. I didn’t like feeling so powerless, so beholden to my emotions, and I tried to tell myself off.
“Just have a big cry, you bloody idiot,” I said in my head. “And then pull yourself together and drive the car, for goodness’ sake.”
My body wouldn’t listen to my brain. I felt physically wounded, like I’d been cut or beaten. My stomach was tied in tight knots that pinched and twisted deep inside me, trapping my breath uncomfortably in my throat and guts. The pain felt so raw I had a job trying to convince myself I wasn’t actually injured.
I don’t know how long it took for the hurt and pain to subside. When my eyes finally dried, I looked across the car park and saw footprints in the snow. There were lots of them, running in every direction. The perfect whiteness was just a moment in time, and the sounds of the street had thawed and dripped back into the atmosphere. Life goes on, I thought, for everybody except Kate.
I drove to the supermarket, wondering what to make for tea. The only meal I could think of was our favorite steak in pepper sauce. The boys love it now too, and I had started to teach them how to make it. Kate had wanted me to make it for the boys, because she loved it so much, and she had even put it on Mum’s List: “Singe’s pepper sauce.” I smiled when she wrote that, telling her my grandfather would be thrilled his old family recipe was being preserved in such a way. “It deserves to be,” she said. “It’s delicious.” I felt gutted she would never eat it again, but I vowed to make sure the boys did.
I pushed the cart down the aisles in a bit of daze, picking up fillet steak, peppercorns and sea salt, double cream and brown sugar. I knew the recipe so well and it seemed a good idea to cook it tonight. I know I eat when I’m depressed, and I thought it would be something to cheer me up. When Kate needed cheering up I often bought her favorite Tesco Finest chocolate and caramel éclairs. I was surprised she hadn’t put those on her list of “likes,” alongside orange Club biscuits and lemon curd, or Walnut Whips and strawberry cheesecake. Then again, there were so many things she liked, too many to list.
I could easily tell the boys what else Mummy liked, I thought, because I knew Kate’s favorites so well. I didn’t need a list for everything, and to prove it I ran through a mental shopping list of Kate’s likes. Crème brûlée, strawberries, chicken korma, Chinese duck pancakes, crispy shredded beef (no chilis), chicken tikka, ham and pineapple pizza, Turkish delight, my dad’s Sunday roasts, spaghetti Bolognese, Cadbury’s Flake (straight from the fridge), salad with celery, nuts and apple, fresh profiteroles and Double Decker chocolate bars. Kate ate Double Deckers in a funny way, always saving the nougat layer until last. I could see her eating one, nibbling the nugget like a little squirrel. The image was so clear it was like a video flickering away in my head.
I can’t remember paying at the checkout and I can barely remember driving home. When I unpacked the groceries I wasn’t entirely sure what I’d find.
“What’s for tea?” Reef asked.
“Daddy’s world famous pepper steaks,” I announced, pulling the ingredients from the shopping bags.
“Yummy!” Reef said. “Can I help you smash up the salt?”
“Of course!” I said. “Remember what I told you?”
“You have to beat the living daylights out of it!” Reef said.
“Correct!”
“Have we got pudding?” Finn asked.
“Let me see,” I replied, rummaging through the bags. “We’ve got some fruit yogurts,” I said.
Thankfully I hadn’t indul
ged in éclairs or strawberry cheesecake or Double Deckers. I liked them too, but not as much as Kate did.
I looked out of the front window and thought back to the footprints in the snow I’d seen earlier in the afternoon at the churchyard. Now I could see that the boys and I had left three sets of deep footprints in our driveway. It was still snowing heavily, and it wouldn’t be long before our footprints were covered over, I thought.
“Can we play in the snow after tea?” Finn asked.
“Of course you can,” I said. “Only if I can play too.”
I didn’t really want to go back out in the snow, but we were a family of three now, moving forward together, and it was the right thing to do. We would go outside and make plenty more footprints, because we could.
Chapter 10
“Go to Egypt and snorkel in the Red Sea”
“We’ll have to cancel, again,” Kate said flatly. “I’m sorry, Singe.”
It was our third attempt at taking the boys snorkeling in Egypt, and the third time we’d had to cancel the holiday because of Kate’s illness.
It was the spring of 2009, and she still had six months of treatment to get through.
“Don’t you dare apologize; we’ll get there in the end,” I said, holding her gently in my arms.
Kate felt smaller than ever, like a little bird, and I was afraid to hug her too tightly for fear of hurting her slight frame. She rarely complained and seemed to be soaring through her treatment plan, but the surgery, the trial drug, the chemo and now the radiation had stolen so much from Kate.
It wasn’t just the obvious things that had been taken from her. While we were absorbed by the sudden loss of Kate’s breast and then the gradual disappearance of her hair and eyebrows, cancer had been slowly siphoning the color from her lips and skimming the soft curves from her hips and thighs. It was a sneak thief, still prowling in the shadows long after its initial smash and grab on Kate’s body. It took canceling the holiday again to trigger the burglar alarm in my head, and I realized that I’d only just started taking stock of cancer’s huge and merciless haul.
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