by Freya North
It was so quiet in the house without the children. Horribly quiet. Scott would disagree. He said that music is everywhere, even in silence, one only has to listen. So she sat and she waited and, while she waited, she felt her body do something it hadn’t done in a long while: it relaxed a little. She switched on the television, scanned through what was on and found a film she’d seen some years before. Since Scott had died, she hadn’t been able to focus on the television, let alone books, not even magazines. But that night, she found she could concentrate; it wasn’t just images and noise, it was a refreshing dip into a parallel world for a couple of hours.
In the morning she lay in bed with her scramble of thoughts and decided she’d go back to sleep. So she did. Until eleven o’clock, when she woke with a start not knowing whether to be proud or ashamed. It was T-shirt weather out there so she put on shorts and trainers and headed for Holkham. Maybe she’d run on the beach. Maybe she’d just stroll. Perhaps she wouldn’t even go onto the sand at all, she’d stay within the pines and find that rope swing the children were crazy about. But Frankie loved the sea. She really loved the sea.
Walking the beach, she observed the families, the groupings, the different paces at which people moved, the different reasons they came here. A couple having a row walking stroppily. A child trying to pull her grandfather faster, Grandpa, faster, race me to the sea. Someone running after an absconding dog. An elderly man and his wife, hand in hand, eating biscuits. Frankie stood still and, against the swathe of sand and the silver mass of water, she felt suddenly flimsy and acutely on her own. How easy it would be to turn and go back to the car, scurry away and hurry home.
But what a waste of her time that would be. What a criminal thing to do on such a beautiful day.
So she put one foot in front of the other and she kept walking. Someone she passed said hello but Frankie’s mumbled response came once they were out of earshot. Scott wasn’t like that. You couldn’t have described him as gregarious but he liked people. He’d’ve replied immediately with more than a mumble. He’d have said hey, how are you? and he’d’ve been happy to stop awhile and converse. When she’d been in Pemberton, she’d marvelled to him how everyone seemed to actively embrace where it was they lived. And he’d just shrugged and said to her but it’s the same where you are Frankie, they seem to me to really appreciate it too, don’t you see it? He’d gently chided her for walking in such an introverted way. Her mother had too.
One foot, then the other. Repeat. She walked on.
A woman a little younger than her was walking towards her, but just as she neared, her phone went, leaving Frankie simultaneously relieved and a little put out. She’d intended to say hello, really she had. Further on and she was approaching an elderly man, a dog lead in his hand.
‘Hello,’ said Frankie.
‘Hello.’
‘It’s – nice!’
‘It would be nicer if I could find Sam.’ He showed her the lead, limp in his hand.
‘Shall I help you?’ Frankie asked.
‘He’s a little bugger.’
‘My son’s called Sam,’ said Frankie. ‘He can be a little bugger too.’
‘Have you time, love?’
‘Yes,’ said Frankie. ‘I’m not in a rush. One can’t rush a place like this. Look at it.’
She walked with Ruth and her family the next day. Exactly the same walk.
‘Around about here,’ Frankie said, marking the sand by dragging an X with the toe of her trainer, ‘I passed the time of day with an old chap. I helped him find his dog. Before I knew it we were walking together. He told me a legend, a ghost story about Binham – there was a secret tunnel to Walsingham and a tall figure in black robes. So Jimmy Gribbs the fiddler, and his dog, went into the tunnel after him but a landslide blocked it and Jimmy and his dog were never seen again. Now it’s called Fiddler’s Hill. Did you know that Ruth? Apparently, in the 1930s, workers found the bones of a man and a dog.’
Ruth giggled. ‘Do you think your friend yesterday was the ghost of Jimmy Gribbs?’
‘No,’ said Frankie. ‘His name is Robert Something, he’s from Wiverton.’
Ruth linked arms with her. ‘How are you doing, Frankie?’
‘Who knows.’
‘Please don’t leave – don’t go. We also see your funny little family as part of the landscape.’
Frankie looked out over the sands, back to the dunes, up to the canopy of silken blue. She looked at Ruth and she looked at Ruth’s dogs. She glanced at Ruth’s children and she thought of Sam and Annabel, tucking into fish ’n’ chips in Wells. She looked up and down the beach at all the people she didn’t know. She looked for Scott, she’d always look for Scott. And she looked at who she was yesterday and she saw who she was today.
The smell of salt and pine in the air. Sand underfoot. Breeze in her hair. Sun in her eyes.
‘You know Ruth, when Scott died – those first few days, it was hard to breathe. These past weeks, I felt I couldn’t even walk without help.’ Frankie paused, tracing an arc in the sand with her foot. Being still. Nodding at the horizon. ‘But now I’ve learned to limp. Day by day I see that I can go for longer distances.’
On they walked, watching the black Labs, Bessie and Alfie, rounding up Jack and Penny as the children gambolled about in the surf.
‘My children find walks boring,’ Frankie said. ‘But they swear to me that, if we had a dog, they’d never complain. They promise me I’d never have to drag them out for a walk.’
‘Dogs stink,’ said Peter. ‘Their breath, their farts, their food. Their shit.’
‘They’re a commitment,’ said Ruth.
‘They do like structure and boundaries,’ said Peter. ‘Just like children, really. Just as messy, too.’
‘To have a dog, you have to open your home to them,’ said Ruth.
‘I know,’ said Frankie.
Back at home, she thought about the morning and yesterday, about what she’d felt and all that she’d said out loud. She thought about stinking dogs and happy children. She phoned Sam who said everything was cool and that Miles had the best takeaway pizza place right on his street. She texted Jenna and a sweet conversation pinged to and fro. She thought of Buddy. And of course Frankie thought of Scott.
He’d told her not to heap so much symbolism on her move to Norfolk, not to burden the place with so much responsibility. Why don’t you just slow down, Frankie, and see the details? Discover the reality of where you are. You’re going to have to muddle through hassle but don’t turn away from that. There’s beauty in the everyday, baby. There’s music in silence, remember.
Scott. At the centre of my world. Still doing home improvements to my life.
Drifts of time. School was out for the summer. Annabel was officially no longer at primary school and Sam’s feet had grown a whole shoe size since Easter. Frankie’s progress on the first Just My Luck story was slow but steady. Her new character, Tom, was a funny scrap of a boy who never had matching socks and whose hair always flopped over one eye. He was a pleasure to draw. But he wasn’t Alice.
Frankie thought, this time last year I feared I couldn’t write. But her current deadline wasn’t so much a guillotine, it was more of a winning post. If she made it there on time, then she’d think about a dog. She’d told the children that. They were doing everything they could to facilitate her work.
‘What do you want Sam? Stop hovering please. I told you – I need to work this morning and we’ll go to the beach this afternoon. But hovering is just going to wind me up.’
‘Mummy?’ Now Annabel was loitering at the kitchen table next to her brother.
‘What?’ Frankie was irritated now. ‘I’m working. Go in the garden or go and see if Mr Mawby needs any help. Here – here’s a fiver, you can walk to Howell’s and buy sweets. Ten. Take ten quid. Just let me work.’
But her children stood there, defiant. Sam was holding a folded piece of paper. He sat down and Annabel took a seat next to him. Frankie felt as i
f she was before a panel.
‘It’s something Scott wanted,’ Sam said. ‘It’s something he planned to do – for you.’ He unfolded the paper and read. ‘I thought we could make her office a place she wants to go to. That was when he first mentioned it, Mum. Then he wrote: are you “in” for helping me plan the room for your Mom. Sure – we can FaceTime later if you like. When I was over in February, I snuck a bunch of stuff into the small shed. I went to the stores when she didn’t know. There’s some wood and shelving and a desk that we have to put together. I was going to buy paint but I thought Annabel might want to choose colors. When I’m next over, we’ll go get some drapes (curtains). That’s the plan!’ Sam paused. Just one word left to read, which reverberated around the room and settled back in their hearts. ‘Scott’.
Frankie just stared at Sam. He handed her the pages he’d printed off and she read them, a part of her wishing they were handwritten. Like the words on the back of the receipt. But these were Scott’s words too, unmistakably.
Out by the shed, Annabel squealed on account of a very large spider. It made Sam jump too, but he brushed it away with his bare hand and Frankie stole a glance at him, the man in their house. They creaked the door open and had a good look at all the stuff that Scott had secretly bought, trying to figure out what the planks and fixings were for. The desk was flat-packed and the illustration showed drawers to one side and a cupboard to the other.
‘Useful,’ said Annabel. ‘For bits and bobs.’
‘You sound like Grandma,’ Frankie said.
‘So?’
Frankie thought, she’s right and she gave her daughter’s pony-tail a little tug.
‘What are we going to do with it all?’ Sam asked.
‘I have no idea.’
‘I’m choosing the paint colours,’ said Annabel. ‘Scott said so.’
‘We’re a long way off painting,’ Frankie said.
‘What about those guys who came and did the work when we first moved in?’
‘Don’t you remember?’ said Frankie. ‘They’re only coming back here over my dead body.’
‘Peter’s always doing DIY for Ruth,’ Annabel said. ‘He’s good at all sorts of stuff. Why don’t you ask him?’
‘Peter does enough for us,’ Frankie said. ‘But I bet Ruth knows someone else.’
‘Let’s ask her.’
So they did.
Frankie watched the van trundle up their drive.
If I bring Scott’s plans to life, it has to be because I want to stay, that I want to live here, that I want to work out there.
She told herself, you cannot build it as a shrine.
‘And the dog,’ she said under her breath, as she watched the man get out of his van and take a long look at her house. ‘A dog means we’re staying.’
And so John Sprackett came into their lives and started to fix quite a lot. Not hearts – he was at least 102 and Annabel was convinced things lived in his beard. But he was a brilliant chippie and he had a coterie of aged but excellent plumbers, sparks and roofers. He wasn’t cheap – but as he’d often say to Frankie as he sucked his tea through the gaps where once there were teeth, ‘You get what you pay for.’
Annabel chose paint in gentle colours like those found on a vintage print. Dusky rose and a soft silver-grey. Frankie took the children to London, leaving them with Miles for a night while she stayed with Peta. Stan and Josh were away at cricket camp and Philip was working late, so her sister relished the company. Peta took charge, off to John Lewis they went with the colour-card Annabel had given them and together, the sisters chose a rug for the office. And drapes.
They went to IKEA too, though they swore almost as soon as they got there, never again. But Frankie bought a table lamp and a rocking chair, a throw and some storage modules. On the way out, passing through the cavernous area of items stacked in bay after bay, a scent enveloped her and she was back in the forest at the other side of One Mile Lake. From the mundane to the poetic, from indoors to outdoors, from England to Canada, from being on her own to being with Scott.
It’s just the smell of pine. That’s all.
She could have cried, dissolved, but instead Frankie just stood in IKEA, inhaling, having her moment with a memory so sweet she could smell it too.
John could see where Scott was going with the planks and the fixings and soon there were deep shelves running all the way around three walls. The colours worked brilliantly. He’d sanded the floor and sealed it and he’d put the desk together. He’d also fixed two of the worst windows in the house and his plumber had found a way to make the water pipes less argumentative. John told her it would be a crying shame to think of changing the clay pamment floor in the hallway.
‘What do you want to do that for, duzzy? Those floors are masterous. Those floors are part of your house, like your feet are part of you.’
With the children over at Ruth’s one afternoon, Frankie started to unpack. Boxes of books – her own, in the various languages she’d been translated into, but also the books which had inspired her for so many years. Children’s books, photographic books, art books. An old thesaurus. An ancient Blue Peter Look Make and Cook Book. Poetry. And the Collins dictionary that she won at prize-giving in the fifth form.
It didn’t matter that the curtains had yet to arrive and that the room was flooded with such extraordinary light that, at one point, she had to put her sunglasses on. The smell of floor wax and fresh paint didn’t bother her. She could have done with buying the rug in the next size up, but it wasn’t a problem. The IKEA rocking chair was comfortable and all those storage racks, pots, trays and files had a purpose already.
She sat at the desk and smoothed her hands over its surface. She thought, I’m ready to work in here. And she thought, if it doesn’t work for me in here – for this book at least – then there’s always the kitchen table.
Though Sam might have something to say about that. And Annabel. Ruth too. And even John.
They were back in Canada. Of course they were. They were hardly likely to ship out to France again for their holidays, that summer. The flights alone cost Frankie the same as a holiday in Europe but of course once there, they had the house. They were going for almost three weeks, with a trip to Vancouver in the middle. Jenna would join them for some of the time but at the moment, she was in Calgary staying with Kyle’s family. So it would just be Frankie and the children in Pemberton at first. Only of course it wouldn’t be just the three of them. Plenty of people had kept in touch and there were open invites for barbeques and kayaking, hikes and just saying hi; whatever the family felt like doing. Frankie didn’t know what that might be. She wasn’t sure how hard it might be either. She was last here in April. But, as she drove the Sea to Sky, she reminded herself that this time last year they were out here too.
Annabel and Sam were a little quiet in the hire car, Sam especially. Frankie asked him if he was OK, what he was thinking. He just shrugged and said nothing, Mum.
‘Do you remember what that is? On the right?’
‘The Chief,’ said Sam, looking at the granite monolith growling up into the sky. ‘I’m so going to climb that one day and have a beer at the top.’
Frankie wanted to giggle that the apotheosis for him, a fourteen-year-old boy, was not to reach the top but the age at which he could drink beer. She glanced at him in the rear-view mirror. He was still gazing at the rock. She found herself hoping so much that one day he’d do it – climb the Stawamus Chief and have his beer at the summit.
When they finally reached Pemberton, Frankie stopped in the village. It might have been because they were hungry, or it might have been that they weren’t quite ready to go straight to Scott’s. The children wanted to eat at the Pony; pizza, burger, ice cream from the cart in the entrance. They wanted to see if the model train track suspended from the ceiling was working. Frankie had a craving for the hand-cut wedges and garbanzo wrap at Mile One Eating House. But the children were tired so the Pony it was, where they were greeted
like old friends.
Before they got back in the car for the final twenty minutes of a very long journey, they all stood awhile and just gazed at Mount Currie, at Tśzil. As the evening light started to flow down its flanks in ribbons of pink and gold, its mass appeared to soften. It seemed as if the mountain was broadening, as if it was saying to them that they’re safely here now and will be looked after by the land and its people. What was it that the Ĺíĺwat say? Frankie tried to remember. Pelpala7wít i ucwalmícwa múta7 ti tmícwa – the land and the people are one.
It was time. Time to go home. Time for the children to confront how they might feel. Time for Frankie to gauge how she was doing. They drove quietly out and along. Past the road that led to the airfield. Past the Sturdys’ farm and the invitation for the children to help out at their stall at the farmers’ market in Whistler that Sunday. Through the Ĺíĺwat reserve at Mount Currie and on to the D’Arcy road. Turning left. And then left again.
‘Slow down, Mummy.’
Frankie slowed right down and, from the bottom of the drive, the three of them just gazed and gazed at Scott’s house.
Rose told Frankie the house would be open and the key would be on the kitchen table. There were also fresh flowers in a jug and a note to say there was food in the fridge. It was all the same; nothing had changed since she was last here. Well, everything had, but it surprised Frankie how steady she felt about being back. The horror that first came with the concept of Scott not being here, had slowly slid into an understanding of the reality, he just isn’t. She felt as close to him as ever, but a little easier with the knowledge that he’s really not here. The children, though, seemed reluctant to move, as though they were waiting for something.
‘You OK?’ Frankie asked.
Sam didn’t answer.
Annabel’s face crumpled and she ran into her mother’s embrace, sobbing. It’s OK, poppet, it’s OK. But Annabel needed to be able to miss him all over again and think that none of this was OK. And still Sam stood there, not moving, not talking, not looking at either of them.