by Freya North
Where are you taking me today, Scott?
Oh – I don’t know – where would you like to go?
Surprise me.
How about we go to Lillooet and buy some tomatoes?
I sit there and remember how Scott thought nothing of a three-hour round trip just to buy tomatoes. Seed potatoes flourish in Pemberton, but not tomatoes. Drive for 100 km and the landscape changes dramatically, becoming semi-arid, and there the tomatoes thrive.
‘Let’s go and buy tomatoes,’ I say and I hear my disembodied voice, paper thin and desperate.
The truck is so quiet, so still. Continuing to look ahead, I reach my left hand over to the steering wheel and I just hold onto it, as if I’m stopping him from driving off, preventing him making any journey. Let’s just sit here, you and me, in nothing time while tears spill out of my eyes. I look around the truck. A plastic water bottle half full. I unscrew the cap and put my lips against the neck, not that I’m thirsty, just my deluded and desperate attempt to feel as though my lips are against his. In the footwell of the driver’s seat, a little gravel from some hike or other. I open the glove compartment. CDs – Tom Petty, Beethoven, Mogwai, Bob Dylan, Aretha Franklin. The truck’s handbook. A pack of opened gum, twisted off at the top, a piece of paper, a torch. On the piece of paper, I spy Scott’s loping handwriting, even and confident, just like his walk. I pore over his words.
Milk carrots/onions COFFEE
Shwrgel
I wonder if shwrgel is a Ĺíĺwat word, then I laugh out loud. Shower gel, silly.
I think he was trying out lyrics too. There are three separate phrases.
A love like this
All that I am
Mountain & Ocean & Us
You have a way with words, Scott, you can condense so much into such powerful brevity. I wonder about the song that’s perhaps half-written as I turn the piece of paper over.
Melody & Midsomer. Fine Jewelers. Est. 1982
It’s a receipt.
It is written here:
Wedding band. 18ct rose gold. Engraved. $300.
PAID IN FULL.
I hear my breath catch on my sob and my heart stutters.
For me?
Is that why he was coming to see me on the day he died? With an 18-carat wedding band, paid for and engraved?
Are these not song lyrics? Was one of the phrases for the ring?
I think of my Scott, so ready, so sure, coming to be with me. And I don’t think of myself, left here now, I don’t think of what I’ve lost and what I’ve got to plod on ahead without. I think of him, up there in that plane ten days ago. How I hope with every fibre of my being that he knew how much he was loved, that his heart was full and that he had that ring with him, when he died.
I do, Scott, I do.
I’m not really sure about this but my form tutor made the appointment and he’s a dude, I trust him. I didn’t even know this particular office existed. They wouldn’t have had a place like this in my old school in London, I don’t think. I’m sitting on a chair with my headphones on. I’m listening to Deerhunter because Scott recommended them. I’ve pressed repeat on Desire Lines. I don’t want anyone disturbing me till the song has come to an end. I don’t even know what this person’s name is. Just that she’s the Counsellor and she’s here every Tuesday.
‘Sam?’
The song hasn’t finished. I’ll pretend I haven’t heard. The outro is awesome – that’s all I should be focusing on.
A hand on my shoulder. She’s halfway between my mum and Steph in age, I’d say. The dicks in my class would call her a MILF, I bet. I don’t actually call them dicks now, though. I call them hosers because it’s a word Scott taught me.
‘Sam?’ She’s nodding towards the room behind the door and guiding me through.
This is a room in a school? It looks like someone’s living room. I turn my music off and stand and look around.
‘Sit wherever you like,’ she’s saying. She’s not sitting, though. She’s boiling a kettle. ‘Would you like a drink? Hot chocolate? Coke?’
Coke?
‘Um – I’ll have a Coke please.’ And I sit on a massive leather beanbag, sinking in and held steady. We need one of these at home though my mum would probably say it’s not Cath Kidston enough.
This is awkward. She’s sitting in the armchair sipping thoughtfully like she’s waiting for me to say something. But I haven’t anything to say.
‘How’s your mum?’
I shrug. If you roll the leather of the beanbag between your fingers you can feel the little polystyrene beads, one by one. It’s really satisfying.
‘How’s your sister – Annabel?’
Like I have another one! I shrug. ‘Annoying, sometimes.’
‘And you, Sam, how’s you?’
I look out of the window. I can hear break time. Still, I’d rather be here, sipping Coke and fiddling with polystyrene balls. Everything’s seemed too fast and noisy recently.
‘How’s you?’
‘Oh, you know.’ I want her to hear that it has a full stop after it.
‘Do you think about Scott?’
‘I try not to.’
‘Why is that?’
‘Because there’s no point.’
‘Why do you feel there’s no point?’
‘I don’t feel there’s no point – I know there’s no point.’
I’ve seen people like this on TV shows – nit-picking your words and trying to coax out the deep and meaningful. You want to smack them in the mouth.
‘Can you put that into words?’
‘I just did.’
‘The feelings behind it.’
The Coke catches in my throat. ‘Scott is dead. So remembering him is useless. It’s not going to bring him back.’
‘No – but it can be helpful and it can be comforting.’
I look at the clock. I’ve been in here ten minutes. If I say the right things will she let me out? I’m not entirely sure what she’s waiting to hear.
‘I never met him,’ she said. ‘I’ve never met your mother. As you know, what you say in here is completely confidential.’ She puts down her cup. She unscrews a little jar and dabs whatever’s in there onto her lips. This is all just really weird.
‘What was he like – Scott?’
She just wants to know what he was like. And suddenly, he’s so clear in my mind’s eye. And I can see my room – not here in Norfolk but in Pemberton, his studio. I’d give anything to be there right now.
She’s smiling because I’m smiling.
‘He was a really, really nice guy. He was this amazing musician. He really liked talking to me. I mean, I know him and my mum had this thing – you know, in love – but I know that I had a friendship with him that wasn’t just because I’m her son.’
I can’t stop.
‘He stands like this,’ I say and I get up to show her. Leaning a little against a wall, arms loosely folded, head slightly to one side. ‘He’s always relaxed, never ruffled. That’s why he’s good with my mum – she can get heated and he’s just there letting stuff flow over him.’
I’m back in the beanbag.
‘I was really rude when he first appeared. My dad – Sorry, I’ve forgotten what I was going to say. When Scott first came I felt really – suspicious. And I know this will sound stupid but it was just weird him being in our cottage. Because I don’t remember there ever being a man in our space – the space my mum makes for her, me and Annabel my sister. So suddenly there’s this big actual bloke and I thought I haven’t had a say in this and I don’t think I want him here, filling the space, getting in the way. Sitting – there. Or opening the fridge. Or being in the loo. Or touching my mum’s hair. So I was just rude – I just ignored him and got on with listening to my music or instagramming or whatever. Annabel took it out on my mum but I just blanked the lot of them.’
She seems really interested.
‘And then he started playing his guitar – the song I was listening to at
precisely that moment on my headphones. And I mean precisely.’ I will remember that for the rest of my life. ‘It was so unbelievably real. I’d never heard an actual guitar so close. It was something about the way he played and the sound he made. It had nothing to do with my mum. He wasn’t trying to win me over or anything. He was playing just because he could – because that’s what he liked to do. He loved music and so do I. Anyway, we bonded after that.’
‘Bonded?’
‘Yep. He was my friend. Definitely. He liked me for me. He wanted to know – about school, music I like, stuff like that. He liked to hang out with me – not because I’m my mum’s son. If we’d met, say, somewhere totally random and he never knew my mum, he’d still like me; we’d still be mates. Some would call him a father figure.’
‘Would you?’
‘Dads are just dads in my book. You have no say in who you get. But father figures – are more. In some ways, I think they choose you and you choose them.’
Scott is dead.
‘When we went to Canada he actually wanted me to stay in his studio – not in the bedroom in the house. He really thought about me.’
My father is a shithead.
‘When my mum was over there visiting Scott, my father reappeared out of nowhere and was meant to be looking after us – me and my sister Annabel – but he was useless. He never asked me a single personal question, he doesn’t care about who I am. He’d just ask where stuff was. Where does Mum keep the wine? Where’s the loo roll kept? He asked me if I had any money. I gave him twenty quid and Annabel gave him four.’
My father is a total cunthead.
‘And he fucked off and didn’t come back and me and my sister didn’t know what the fucking fuck to do. He’s still fucking off even though he says he lives in London now. Anyway, I didn’t think of my mum so much as Scott. I had this – thought – that Scott could punch my dad. Because I couldn’t. Not because of my size and that I’m a kid – but because he wasn’t fucking cunting there for me to twat.’
And Scott is dead.
‘And Scott is dead.’
‘It’s OK, Sam.’
‘No it isn’t. How can you say that? How can it ever be OK again? We had this little – taster of a really good life. And it was ripped away. It was ripped away. I felt it rip. Hurts so much sometimes I can’t breathe. Up in my room. Scared. When I can hear my mum sobbing or going deathly silent.’
‘Sam – it’s going to take a long while but –’
‘But I want those emails back. I didn’t know. I don’t know if he read them. I have no way of knowing. I was hard and cold. The last feelings I had towards Scott were hate. I don’t want him to have read them. Or felt that. I’m sorry. Oh God. Oh shit. Oh shit shit shit. Say he did? Say he thought I hated him? I don’t want him to – not just before he died. I really need to know if he read them. I hate it that I hated him. It wasn’t so much that he was worrying my mum by not arriving – though I told him it was. But the truth is that I was angry and confused and I decided to hate him because I feared he’d left us. That he didn’t care. How could I think that of him? How could I? I know now I was wrong – but I want to say sorry. Scott – sorry. Scott – I’m sorry. I just want you to know that. That – I love you.’
I’m crying so much I’ll never stop. I’ve spilled the Coke and it’s all over my trousers. I haven’t cried since I was a little kid, I don’t think. Why did this heap of shit happen to us? Why couldn’t we have Scott for longer and for ever? We deserved him and he had a place with us. What’s the point of making a family whole – our tight little unit, making it even tighter – if it’s then going to be shredded? Don’t tell me stuff like what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. Scott was strong and he was killed and me and Annabel and my mum are weak.
‘I don’t know what we’re going to do.’
‘I’m here every Tuesday, Sam.’
For Frankie, grief’s first flush came to be as changeable as the weather but to her, the process of mourning seemed to stretch ahead like the longest winter. So it was odd to return to Norfolk and find it so warm and sunny. In the garden, things were starting to grow: plants and flowers, cobwebs and cuckoo spittle, signs of life all around. Steph was there when she arrived back from Canada and stayed until Peta came for the weekend; Ruth visited every day. They became like pillows, her sisters and her friend; she’d push her face into them muffling tears, or she’d rest her head against them in the fog of exhaustion. Sometimes, when the fury came, she’d pummel them. But as wrapped in their love as Frankie felt, she wanted to be rid of them too, as though they were a thick, tight sweater and she was overheating. Extremes; her life had become one of extremes, from numbness to sorrow, from quiet to rage and the all-enveloping tiredness everything created.
In those early days, Frankie slept a lot, especially when Sam and Annabel were at school. She justified it as jet lag but to be in bed with the covers over her head helped her hide from the real world. The safest place was the most private place, between the sheets in an embryonic curl where the tears were free to come and she could heave out her rage at it all. Sometimes, she almost envied her children their opportunity to go to school, to leave the house and have to think about something else. Do maths. Kick a ball. Sit up straight and concentrate on what was going on. Chat about The Hunger Games and eat food slopped onto plates. Having to think about other things and not having to think at all. When the children were at home, Frankie focused on them though it was through a blear of numbing tiredness. She’d sit between them with her eyes trained on the TV, not watching Marge dart around the screen, not listening to a word that Homer said.
The children were gentle on her if supper was a bit crap and they had to wear the same school shirt three days in a row. Yet still they skirted around the truth about homework, and Sam still snuck time on Instagram and Annabel still fibbed about recorder practice. Frankie thought, they’d be doing that if Scott was still alive. They’re kids.
But because they’re kids, their mother’s grief was a worrying thing. So Frankie learned to hide it without denying it. Early on she could sense when it was welling up, a little like being sick – knowing when it was imminent, when she couldn’t stop it. She’d take herself to the downstairs loo, the furthest room on the ground floor. She’d shut the door, close the lid, sit down, grab the hand towel and hold it against her face, heaving out her pain silently.
Then she’d look in the mirror and give herself a gentle smile when she was done.
If Scott could see me like this, what would he say?
He’d say, kids – time to get ready for bed, I’ll come see you in a while. And he’d cuddle me against him and say shh, baby, I’m here. You’re OK. I’m here.
When Frankie went to Howell’s to pick up some milk, the lady serving, with whom she’d shared little more than a cordial smile over the months, put her head on one side and her hand on Frankie’s arm and said, terrible thing, my lovely, what a terrible thing. And Frankie found herself recounting the facts as though it was a speech in the school play that she knew by heart.
‘You let me know if there’s anything I can do.’
Frankie looked at the woman, tempted to say can you raise the dead? can you bring him back? can you turn back time and change the future?
‘If you want shopping bringing. Anything, really. Eggs or milk. Bread.’
‘Oh. Thank you,’ said Frankie. ‘I’m OK, really – just very tired.’
‘How are the children?’
And it struck Frankie then that, for all her attempts to live a little reclusively, actually she was known, she and Annabel and Sam.
‘They’re wonderful. My son – Sam – was very close to my, to my. And Annabel adored Scott.’ She paused, fixating on the rack of chewing gum by the till. She couldn’t move her eyes and waves of adrenalin made her feel as if she was swaying though her feet appeared to be stuck in clay.
‘Do you want a cup of tea? I can make you a cup of tea.’
The l
ady was stroking her arm. Frankie thought, I might want a cup of tea. A sit-down. I’d like to talk about Scott today, just tell someone else of the amazing times, show the photos on my phone. But then she thought about how tired she was, how stratospherically tired, and that all she wanted to do was go to bed and sleep.
‘It’s very kind,’ said Frankie. ‘But I ought to be getting back – things to do before the children get home.’ The lady’s hand was still on her arm and Frankie gave it a pat. ‘Thank you though – you’re very kind.’
It was only when she arrived home, put the milk in the fridge and spent ages carefully arranging the eggs in the china holder, that Frankie realized she hadn’t paid. All this time moaning that she wasn’t local enough to have a tab at the shop – and then Scott dies and she’s in the bosom of kindness and charity all around.
There was a green felt pen on top of the bread-bin. She picked it up and doodled a face onto one of the eggs. Which local farm did these eggs come from? Was the hen white or red? When had it been laid, this little egg, destined for Annabel’s supper?
How she was looking forward to a sleep. She looked at the clock. She could zone out for a good three hours. But someone was knocking at the door. And Frankie thought, they’ve come for the money for the shopping. She thought, perhaps it’s the police.
But there stood Mrs Mawby.
Mrs Mawby from next door whom Frankie really only ever saw at a distance, usually on her doorstep beating a rug or shooing out a dog or just standing there wondering when her husband would appear from over the fields with a trailer full of sugar beet. Peg. Peg Mawby. She’d last seen her at Christmas when she’d taken over the mince pies. The day she’d smacked Scott’s hand and denied him his third.
‘Mrs Mawby,’ said Frankie.
There Peg stood, not moving, not even regarding Frankie. She looked as though she was seeing a ghost over Frankie’s shoulder, in the hallway of the house.
‘Mrs Mawby?’