“Kevin,” he says, thrusting out his hand. I take his hand and shake it.
I smile. “Richard.”
I invite him to sit back down. Eyeing the faces around the table, I sense an air of sadness. I tell him I won’t be a moment, and I collect an old stool from the lean-to just outside the kitchen door and place it next to the table. Everyone already has coffee, so I pour myself a cup from the cafetière on the side and pull up the stool.
I sit down, and then jump up immediately as I feel the coldness of the stool through my pyjama bottoms. I adjust myself and place the towel on the stool, separating me from the icy chill of the wood.
“Sorry,” I say, smiling.
Kevin looks tired. I only saw him for a short while earlier, but now I have the opportunity to properly scan his face I realise that he looks like a man who hasn’t slept for a hundred years. I’m no good with ages, but I’d guess he’s in his fifties. He looks extremely uncomfortable, and his eyes dart around the room as if he’s waiting for an exact moment to speak. Lisa idly taps the outside of her coffee cup. For some reason all eyes appear to be on me. I am not sure what I am supposed to be saying.
“So, Kevin said he had something to say to you,” Lisa says, looking slightly puzzled.
“Yes,” says Kevin quietly. “I just wanted to say sorry about this morning, and –”
“It’s fine,” I interrupt.
He ignores me and continues: “Thank you for coming to Bill’s assistance. It is much appreciated.”
I wait until I am sure he has finished and then tell him that he has no need to apologise. I explain that I was already awake and that I saw Bill in front of the house. I only did what anyone else would do.
Kevin nods gratefully and allows me to finish. We have a brief moment of silence. Then he speaks again, and what he tells me changes everything. He tells me Bill and Rosie’s horrific news. He tells me that they have been waiting half their lives for their daughter to come home. He tells me that in nearly thirty years they have never left the house together. He tells me that she has now been found. Under the earth, and freezing cold, two hundred miles away. His eyes become glassy when he tells me about their other daughter, Samantha. His wife.
I have to admit, I get that feeling in my throat. The one that feels like my Adam’s apple is swelling and suddenly too big to fit in my windpipe. I have to keep swallowing to try to avert the tears myself. Kenneth has his head slightly bowed. Tears are running down both Dina’s face and Lisa’s.
We all sit and listen until Kevin finishes. I am just about to speak when he says, “So, that’s probably why he was outside in his pyjamas.”
“I understand,” I say, though I’m not sure I do. “There’s no need to apologise. Honestly.”
“Well,” says Kevin, his chair scraping on the kitchen floor, “thank you for the coffee.”
“No problem,” says Lisa, wiping her eyes with the back of her hand.
Kenneth stands and puts his hand on Kevin’s shoulder.
“Right, well, I’d better get back and check on them,” Kevin says.
I smile sympathetically. “Come on, I’ll see you out.”
When I re-enter the room, the atmosphere is unchanged. I tell them that Kevin has decided to stay at the bungalow for the next few days, ‘until things settle down’. I let Lisa know that I’ve told him he is more than welcome to come over for coffee anytime.
Lisa is still sniffling, and she reaches out an arm as I walk toward the sink. She catches my leg and pulls my thigh to her face, holding me tightly. I kiss the top of her head and try to move to fill the kettle. She keeps me near her, obviously not ready for me to move away just yet. I put my hands on her shoulders.
Dina stands. “We have some sad news as well,” she says.
Lisa’s head snaps upwards.
“What?” she says. She sounds panicked.
“Sorry to add to the sombrero mood,” Dina says, “but we have to tell you that we are leaving today.” She looks at Kenneth for support.
“Yes, we think it’s time we got back,” he says.
I feel Lisa’s shoulders instantly relax. “Aw no,” she says, forgetting to add even a hint of sincerity.
“I knew you’d be upset, especially after that.” Dina motions toward where Kevin was sitting. “But we really must.”
“Well, okay,” says Lisa.
“I need to get on with clearing the drive,” Kenneth says. “Richard’ll help,” Lisa says almost too quickly. She looks up at me. “Won’t you?”
“Sure,” I say.
“I was hoping you’d say that,” smiles Kenneth. “There’s something I want to talk to you about before we leave, son.”
“Oh?” I say.
“Privately,” says Kenneth. I feel a prick of fear in my chest. “Right,” says Dina, “I’ll go and get started with the packing.
And you need to get changed for digging.”
She takes Kenneth by the hand, and they leave the kitchen. I watch them as they head down the hall. It may be my imagination, but I am sure they both perform a little skip as they walk. As they round the corner at the bottom of the stairs, I can see they both have wide smiles and their heads are pushed close together. They look like children on Christmas Eve, their faces painted with excitement.
I stand by the kitchen window, watching the thaw take hold. I have never known weather so strange. For a while, it felt that we would be trapped forever in an endless and ever- deepening blanket of snow. An infinite barrier that we could never overcome, unless the sun shone on us and released us from our imprisonment. And then it did. Within two days, the needle swung the other way and we were given a reprieve. As if to prove its commitment to our freedom, the weather took an unexpected and extreme turn the other way. I have never seen snow melt so quickly. The roof of the shed is now visible and the conifers have shaken off the snow, leaving a blueish-green summit reaching into the clear sky. Water drips in every direction that I look. Even the snowman seems to be succumbing. His head is slumping to the side, like a passenger asleep on a plane. The initial excitement he experienced when the carrot was positioned has now flaccidly drooped toward the ground.
“So, they’re off,” I say, facing the window.
“Yeah,” says Lisa from behind me. She sounds resigned. Despondent even. Certainly there is no hint of the excitement that I would have expected. I don’t feel it either.
“I think I’ll have a bath,” she says. Then she stands and puts her arms around my chest, hugging my back. “I love you,” she adds. I feel her kiss my back through my t-shirt.
“I love you too,” I say, without thinking.
She releases me and leaves the room. I am alone.
I stare at the world outside, taking in each detail. The melting snow that paints the path running the length of the garden. The blue metal frame of a trampoline reaching above the fence in the garden behind. The Welsh flag hanging inside the window a few doors further down. The pebble-coloured smoke leaving a chimney in the distance.
I stand for a moment and contemplate the quietness that surrounds me. The silence that I have longed for.
I pop my head around the lounge door to check on the children. They’re lying at opposite ends of the sofa, their feet meeting in the middle. Although they are both facing the television, neither of them is watching. Instead, their eyes are closed, their mouths open. I move the atlas to one side and perch on the edge of my chair. I wonder what is happening in their dreams. Are they dreaming of space travel or dolls or Christmas? I swallow hard again. At this moment in time, they couldn’t look more perfect.
CHAPTER_FORTY-EIGHT
Digging the family stuff.
I watch Kenneth through the glass of the front door whilst I pull on my boots. His face is red and his coat is already unzipped. I can’t work out whether he is sweating, or whether the sheen on his face has come from the snow he has tossed to one side. What I do know is that he is digging at a spectacular rate. Like his life depends on it.
I suppose it’s like someone trying to tunnel out of a prison or into a bank. For a moment, I feel guilty that I’ve left him outside whilst I lay on my bed for nearly an hour enjoying the silence.
I zip up my coat and pull on my gloves, and as I reach for the door handle he looks up. He treats my appearance as an excuse to put down his shovel. I walk to him and ask if he needs to rest on me. He doesn’t answer, but places his forearm on my shoulder and pants into the crook of his arm for a few moments. He has cleared almost all of the drive. Huge mountains of snow cover the fence between our drive and our neighbours’. Beneath the tree in the corner, the snow reaches right up the trunk to where the branches begin. The thought flashes through my mind that I should cut the snow into steps so Hannah can walk up them and climb straight into the tree. I resolve to do that later, should the thaw slow.
Kenneth takes a step back from me.
“You’re gonna give yourself a heart attack,” I say.
“I know,” he pants, still unable to fully catch his breath.
“You ought to slow down; there’s no rush.”
“Well…” he says, looking around as if he’s hoping his next sentence will just appear in the sky. “Lisa’s mother wants to get going before dark.”
“It’s only half ten.”
“Well…” he says again, “I know. But you never can be too careful.”
I’m not at all sure what this means, but I decide to leave it. “How’s the road?” I say, walking past him to the end of the drive.
I look up and down the street, silently answering my own question. The snow drips as water from the cars, their colours at last returning. At the top of our road, I can see the main road must be fairly clear. Cars pass backwards and forwards across the horizon as the world wakes to the realisation that we are not trapped forever after all.
Two parallel tracks lead from the main road toward our property. The snow is deeply compacted in the tracks where perhaps half a dozen cars have dared to leave our road. A thick surface of ice covers the snow. On either side of the tracks the snow is still maybe a foot or so deep. I push my boot down into a track and create a perfect imprint of my sole.
Kenneth comes and stands by my side. “Looks okay to me,” he says, the inflection making the statement sound like a question for which he needs some reassurance.
“Hmm,” I say, kicking the edge of the track.
The kick is enough for my heel to slide across the compacted snow, and before I know it, my standing foot has moved and I am falling forwards. Kenneth makes a last-ditch effort to keep me on my feet, but it is inconsequential and I continue my fall forwards into the soft, untouched snow beneath. A moment later, I am winded by Kenneth, who lands directly on top of me.
He rolls over to my right and I breathe out heavily.
I hear a loud knock at the window and look up to see Lisa. My first thought is that she looks almost childlike; her eyes bright and full of wonder, her face red with laughter. She is holding her stomach, a visible sign that she is trying to stop laughing. I raise my hand from the snow and stick up my thumb. She blows me a kiss. I catch it within my mitten and hold it tight.
Kenneth turns to me. “We need to talk, son,” he says.
And at that moment I feel like the brightness of the world around me has snapped to black.
“What about?” I say.
There is a pause. Kenneth’s face is no more than a few inches from mine. At first, I think he is considering how to begin his speech. I am frozen by panic as I await him telling me that he knows of my plans. That he is giving me an opportunity to reconsider, before he tells Lisa. I close my eyes for a second, as I try to formulate my response. Deny everything. Tell the truth. I open my eyes again, and wait for him to begin. And then I realise that he isn’t about to. Not yet anyway.
It takes me a few moments to realise that life has turned from video to a photograph. I stare at his eyes and realise that they aren’t moving. He isn’t blinking. Or focusing. At that moment, we are no longer live: something has happened.
I pull myself up quickly. Kenneth is still staring upwards toward the blue sky. Toward the clouds.
I kneel over him and try to get him to move.
I tap his cheek lightly with my mitten, looking for some, any, kind of reaction.
I lean in and put my ear to his mouth.
CHAPTER_FORTY-NINE
Nee-naw-nee-naw-nee-naw.
Nothing happened how any of us had expected for the remainder of the day. Kenneth and Dina never got off home. The drive never got fully cleared (although the sun had a damn good go at it). And I never got my final day with my family.
Lisa had seen what was happening from the bedroom window and in seconds she had joined me on the drive. Between us we managed to get Kenneth inside the house. We helped him to sit on the stairs, and the luminous-yellow ambulance arrived outside the house within minutes. The thaw was a blessing.
They made Kenneth comfortable and did various tests before attaching an oxygen mask and moving him onto a stretcher. The last I saw was Lisa following Dina into the back of the ambulance, her hand reaching out, before the rear doors slammed shut.
It was around nine o’clock, after the children were asleep, that the taxi pulled up silently outside the house. I went out into the snow to help Lisa help Kenneth into the house. He had been discharged after the best part of a day of observation. The medical staff had told Lisa to keep an eye on her father, but couldn’t find anything specifically wrong with him. It hadn’t been a stroke. It hadn’t been his heart. In truth, Lisa said, they didn’t seem to have a clue. They concluded that it was probably a mixture of cold (the snow) and overexertion (the digging).
Plus, they needed his bed.
Like most nights recently, Kenneth is now sitting in the chair beneath the twinkle of Christmas tree lights. Dina has laid a blanket over his knees for, as she put it, “the cold”.
Lisa has just gone upstairs to run herself a bath. After the addition of the blanket, Dina is now in the kitchen, making hot drinks. “You need to be warm on the inside as well, darling,” she said. I’ve turned the fire up as instructed, and now I’m sitting back in my chair, facing Kenneth. Candles flicker on the mantelpiece. The room is homely and warm. Almost like a Christmas card.
“You gave us a scare,” seems like the right thing to say.
Kenneth nods. His hands are trembling. It seems clear that the scare wasn’t limited to those observing.
“Close the door, would you?” he says.
I lean over the arm of my chair and push the door to. The door clicks back open a few inches as I slump back into my chair. Kenneth looks at the door, as if deciding whether it should be closed fully. In the end he satisfies himself by asking me to sit at the end of the sofa nearest to him. He leans in close. “You know how much I think of you, son.” On the word ‘son’ he slaps his hand down onto my knee and then leaves it there.
It is my turn to nod.
“I’ve been wanting a few moments to speak to you for the last few days.”
I take a deep breath. Here it comes.
The plan.
The Dartmouth Green notebook. Lyon.
The end.
“We need to talk” – he squeezes me – “man to man.”
“Okay,” I say.
“I’ve always believed I can rely on you…” Pause.
“…and, well, believed I can trust you.”
“You can,” I say, looking him in the eye. He can. Can’t he?
Yes, he can. I’m sure of it.
“Well,” he says, gripping my knee more tightly, “I have to confess something to you.” “Go on…”
A feeling of a fear that seems to begin deep within my chest sets off a tremor throughout my entire body. His grip is keeping my left leg from jumping off the floor. I have to physically push my soles into the floor, which only has the effect of pushing the vibration up toward my knees.
“I don’t know how to say this,” he says. “I’m dying�
��”
I want to interrupt and tell him that today was just a scare. It was the cold and the digging, and he’ll be fine. A blanket. A warm fire. A cup of tea inside him. He’ll be fine. But there’s something about the way he’s left the sentence hanging. Something about his eyes. His grip. I know instantly that he is dying.
I think I must have frowned, because then he says, “You know the tests I’ve been having? Well, it’s cancer. And it’s not curable. I haven’t told Dina. Or Lisa. I wanted to get through Christmas first.”
“Jesus,” I sigh. He doesn’t know about my plan. He’s dying. I get a slight feeling of relief, followed by an avalanche of guilt. “They don’t know how long. Or if they do, they’re not telling me. Anyway, you’re the only one who knows. I need you to promise me something.”
“Anything,” I whisper, and I mean it.
“You need to look after the girls. Dina and Lisa.” His eyes become damp. “Because they’ll need someone strong. To hold them up. They’re not as tough as they make out.”
I nod.
“And please don’t tell them. They’ll only worry.” He looks into my eyes. “You can assure me you’ll take care of them, can’t you?”
“Of course,” I say, resting my hand on his.
“Thank you,” he says. “I know that I needn’t ask. You’ve always been there. So reliable, such a good son.”
At that moment, the door creaks open and Dina enters. She is carrying a tray. Kenneth removes his hand from my knee.
“Everything okay in here?” she asks.
I smile a smile that feels transparent on my face.
“Fine,” we both say at the same time.
“Good,” she says, placing the tray on the coffee table. “Now, let’s pour the tea and get you warmed up.”
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