by Tanya Byrne
‘Why didn’t she tell anyone?’
‘She didn’t want to jinx it.’
I put the menu on the table between us, no longer hungry. ‘Unbelievable.’
‘I don’t want to talk about her.’ He leaned forward to pick up his glass and took a long sip, then licked his lips and sat back again. ‘Tell me about your dad.’
I felt a sudden stab in my stomach. ‘Why?’ I asked, fidgeting a little.
‘It’s called a conversation, Adamma.’
It felt more like he was trying to find a raw nerve. Mercifully, my phone buzzed and I reached for it, frowning at the screen so I wouldn’t have to look at him. It was a text message and I was sure it would be from Scarlett, but it was from Tara Salter. I realised then that Scarlett might not know about my father if she was in London and, as annoyed as I was with her for running off again, I felt myself soften. She would get in touch if she knew. Even Scarlett wasn’t that self-absorbed.
‘Shall I tell you about mine, then?’ he said when he realised that I was replying to the text and he wasn’t going to get a response from me about my father.
I didn’t look up from my screen. ‘If you want.’
‘I love him, but I wish he was a normal Asian dad sometimes. Dominic!’ he said, screwing up his face and talking like an old Korean man. ‘You so ungrateful. I come to this country with £1. Why you not a doctor?’ I pressed my lips together so I wouldn’t laugh. ‘At least then I’d have something to rebel against, but no.’ He shook his head. ‘He’s all, like, “I just want you to be happy, son.” What good is that?’
I put my phone on the table and reached for my glass. ‘It can’t be that bad.’
‘He invented a piece of code in his bedroom when he was fourteen. I don’t know what it does, but the Internet would burst into flames without it, apparently. By the time he was my age, he was a billionaire.’ He sat forward. ‘He didn’t go to college. He had a kid with a white girl, whom he wasn’t even married to, and is now married to someone who used to be in a band called The Weeping Vaginas. He’s given my grandfather two heart attacks. How am I supposed to compete with that?’
I couldn’t hold it in, and laughed. ‘Dominic!’
‘The only way I can rebel now is by becoming a doctor, but I can’t because I’m shit at maths.’
‘He sounds pretty awesome.’
‘I guess.’ He smiled loosely. ‘When I was at Eton, I got shitfaced one night, took all my clothes off and climbed onto the roof saying I wanted to make love not war. I got expelled and Dad wrote to them, threatening to sue them for obstructing my right to peaceful protest and they had to readmit me.’
I covered my mouth with my hand as I almost choked on my Diet Coke. He watched me with a smile. ‘So, yeah. He just wants me to be happy, but I don’t even know what I want.’ His gaze dipped away from mine, the corners of his mouth falling. ‘I just know it isn’t this.’ I sat forward, but before I could say anything, he caught himself, and sat back, opening his menu with a brighter smile. ‘So are we going to order something? I’m bloody starving.’
I humoured him, and reached for mine. ‘So what’s your mum like?’
‘Dead.’
I almost dropped my menu. ‘What?’
‘She died in childbirth with me.’
‘Dominic,’ I breathed. ‘I had no idea.’
He peered at me over his menu. ‘She didn’t tell you that, did she?’ I shook my head. ‘Bet she told you all about her parents’ apartment in Paris, though. All about their second-hand brass bed and her dad’s pots of basil on the balcony?’ I didn’t know what to say and just looked at him. He sighed and shook his head. ‘Of course. Why would she mention my dead mother? Such a minor detail.’
I felt an itch to defend her, tell him that perhaps she didn’t feel right telling me. After all, it wasn’t common knowledge at Crofton. But as he began flicking through the menu, I realised that he didn’t want to talk about it any more.
‘My father is very different,’ I said.
He closed his menu and looked at me again. ‘What’s he like?’
‘Tall,’ I said, closing my menu as well. ‘Solid, like a tree. He never changes. He always wears either a black or a grey suit, always has oatmeal with brown sugar for breakfast, which he has at the dining table while he’s reading the paper. If he’s in the country, he always comes home for dinner. Always. He’s just there, you know? He’s always there.’ When I looked at him, he was nodding. ‘I’ve never needed him and he’s not been there.’ My chin trembled again and I looked down.
‘Are you a daddy’s girl?’
‘Absolutely,’ I said with a small chuckle. ‘My mother says that when I was a baby, he carried me everywhere, couldn’t put me down. As soon as I could sit up, he would put me in a high chair next to him at the dining table and every morning we’d have oatmeal together and he’d read to me from the paper.’
‘Is that why you want to be a journalist?’
I nodded. ‘He says I notice everything. Even when I was little, I would walk into a room and know if the housekeeper had moved something or if my mother had bought a new cushion. He says that everything was a story. A car would drive past us too quickly and I’d say the driver was being chased, or if one of my friends didn’t come to school one day, I’d come up with an elaborate reason why.’
‘Does he want you to be a journalist?’
I tilted my head at him and smiled. ‘He just wants me to be happy.’ He rolled his eyes. ‘He says that’s all he wants. So much so that he can never give me bad news, he always makes my mother do it. He even made her tell me about Santa.’
Dominic raised an eyebrow. ‘And you didn’t take advantage of that at all.’
I giggled, covering my face with the menu for a second. When I looked at him again, his eyebrow was still arched. ‘When I was younger,’ I admitted, putting the menu back on the table, ‘and I didn’t want to go to school, I went to him before my mother, because he’d always let me have the day off. It used to drive my mother crazy. But by the time I was thirteen, he cottoned on and whenever I went to him, looking pathetic, he would pretend to be hysterical and holler at the housekeeper to call the dibia.’
‘The dibia?’
‘Like a medicine man.’ He nodded. ‘He’d call for Celine roaring, “Fetch the dibia for my only child!”’ I said, mimicking my father’s warm voice. ‘Then he’d shake me and tell the evil spirits to leave me alone. “Tell them it is not yet your time, Adamma!” he’d say. “Gwa ha, kitaa!” and I’d laugh so much, I couldn’t pretend to be sick.’
I chuckled again, but when I thought of my father in hospital, strung up to all of those monitors, like a marionette, something in me finally buckled and tears suddenly spilled out of me. ‘It’s not yet his time.’
I covered my face with my hands. A moment later, I was aware of Dominic next to me, rubbing my back with his hand. When I calmed down, I turned to look at him kneeling next to me, but when he started to say something, I shook my head.
‘Don’t, Dominic. I can’t bear it.’
He frowned. ‘Don’t what?’
‘Don’t say that you know it’ll be OK.’
He tucked my hair behind my ears and when he took my face in his hands and wiped the tears from under my eyes with the pads of his thumbs, I curled my fingers around his wrists. I could feel his pulse against my fingers, as quick as mine.
‘Promise me, Dominic.’
He looked at me, then smiled. ‘What the hell do I know?’
10 DAYS AFTER
MAY
I’ve only been to two funerals, my grandfather’s and my friend Mariya’s. My grandfather’s was more a celebration, because that’s how it is in Nigeria when people have lived long, happy lives – we honour that. Funerals are big. Rowdy. There are drums and trumpets. W
e sing, dance, eat. But Mariya was thirteen when she died of leukaemia, so her funeral was a suitably dour affair, all black suits and handkerchiefs. I just remember everyone in our class sitting in stunned silence in the church trying not to look at her coffin as the realisation crept over us that death wasn’t necessarily something that would happen when we were old. It could happen any time: when we were asleep, when we were crossing the street. It might already be there – like with Mariya – in our blood, our bones.
It’s not like I ever thought I’d live forever – or wanted to – but it had never occurred to me that I might die before I’d lived. Before I’d driven a car and drank red wine and worn a ball gown and had an argument in the street. Before I had loved and been loved back. Before I’d even had my braces taken off. And that scared me more than anything, more than the tears and the lilies and the coffin. I just wanted enough time to live.
That’s all I could think about this morning, before Scarlett’s funeral; how much she’d lived. Every moment was hers, she didn’t waste it on anyone else or anything she didn’t want to do. I only know a bit of what she did, and while it will never be enough – she should have gone to Yale, she should have had an apartment in Paris with a second-hand brass bed – she had loved, and when I looked around at everyone huddled outside Burnham as we waited for Mrs Delaney to lead us to the church, I knew that, as infuriating and distracting and selfish as she was sometimes, she was loved.
Mrs Delaney told us to wear our Crofton uniform, which was good because I had hardly slept so I was too tired to contemplate what to wear. I did sleep for long enough to have another dream about her, though. It was more of a memory of the last time we hugged, on the dance floor at Edith’s wedding. She was drunk on champagne and we were watching Edith and her husband dancing – so she was probably a little drunk on the promise of being loved like that one day, too – when she pulled me into a hug. Even in the dream her skin was sticky, her cheekbone digging into mine, and it was like we’d just met, when it was just her and me against the world. Before she ran away to New York, before my father was shot. Before. She even smelt like she did that night, of that perfume she bought at Selfridges during our last exeat weekend in London. Light. Sweet. Like she might float away if I didn’t hold on tight enough.
I woke with a gasp. It was 5 a.m. and my instinct was to go for a run. I kicked the duvet away and just for that tiny second, I forgot. But by the time my feet touched the floor, it came charging back at me – the smell of trampled bluebells, the blue and white police tape fluttering like bunting – and I had to lie down again.
A moment later, I heard my door open and lifted my duvet so that Orla could slide under it. I must have fallen asleep again because Mrs Delaney found us like that a couple of hours later. She said that we could have another ten minutes, but it wasn’t enough; it still took several attempts to button my shirt and tie back my hair. I lagged behind on the walk into Ostley, my limbs stiff as I tried to keep up. Orla looped her arm through mine when we passed the road to Savernake Forest. ‘Keep going,’ she whispered. ‘Keep going.’
When we approached the village, I shivered. It was too quiet. It was almost 11 a.m., the stores should have been open – the smell of bread wafting from the bakery – but they were closed. There were no baskets of vegetables outside the grocer, no newspapers in the rack outside the newsagent.
When we passed the telephone box, there was a MISSING poster still taped to it and Mrs Delaney marched over to it. ‘The cars will go past here,’ she muttered, ripping it off. ‘Her family shouldn’t have to see this.’
Until then, she’d been so composed, as though we were on a school trip. But then everyone was. There was no weeping, no wailing, as we walked through the village. I’d heard girls crying in their rooms this morning and seen them stopping in the corridor to hug before they went to bed last night, but that was it. I wanted to scream. Cry. Break something. In Nigeria, death isn’t something we speak of in hushed voices. We don’t cry behind closed doors. But in England, grief is wrapped up. Locked away. The only display of emotion Mrs Delaney allowed herself this morning was a huff as she ripped another MISSING poster off a lamp post.
As soon as she did, I heard a camera click and my heart stopped, sure that it was Dominic, but it was a man in a black T-shirt and jeans. ‘Go away!’ Mrs Delaney shooed at him with the posters in her hand, but he ignored her and continued taking photos of her.
When he turned the camera at us, Headmaster Ballard marched over to him. ‘Please stop.’ He held up his hand. ‘This is beyond inappropriate.’
The man shrugged. ‘I’m just taking photos. There’s no law against it.’
‘Well, I’m asking you to stop.’
‘Fine.’ He sniffed. ‘I got what I need.’
Headmaster Ballard walked back to us mumbling, ‘As if today isn’t difficult enough,’ then continued ushering us towards the church.
St Matthew’s is an old stone church that sits on the far side of Ostley in the middle of a graveyard. As we approached it, I could see that there was already a mess of people dressed in black outside. They looked like beetles, squirming in the sun, but as we got closer, I realised that they were hurrying up the path and into the church to avoid the pack of photographers squatting on the other side of the road. I saw them then, the news trucks parked further up, by the village green, and the men and women in tidy suits clutching microphones, and panic kicked at me.
‘Stay together, girls,’ Mrs Delaney said, corralling us past the photographers as quickly as she could and up the gravel path towards the church doors.
Cameras clickclickclicked as we passed and when I glanced at Molly, who was at the front near Headmaster Ballard, I saw that her head was up. But as soon as we got inside, she feigned nonchalance. ‘Why do they care?’ she asked, loud enough for me to hear at the back. I guess Mrs Delaney heard too, because she took her by the sleeve of her blazer and dragged her over to the candles, telling her to light one. I didn’t hear what she said to her after that, but when they came back to us, Molly was crying so much she was hiccupping.
The church was too small to hold everyone at Crofton plus everyone in the village so only the Lower Sixth went to the funeral. Headmaster Ballard told us to leave the pews for the other mourners and made us stand at the back. We were separated on either side of the church, so as not to get in anyone’s way. I looked for my parents in the crowd and found them quickly, sitting in the middle of one of the pews, looking around for me as well. My mother saw me first, and even in black she shone, her glossy curls the colour of paw paw seeds under the church lights, her familiar smile making my twitching nerves suddenly settle.
There’s a chapel at Crofton, so I haven’t been to St Matthew’s since Edith’s wedding. Today, it was just as packed and the faces were the same, but it was so quiet. There was no fidgeting on the crammed pews, no chatter like when we had waited to hear the Bridal March. One woman even tiptoed down the aisle when her heels starting clacking, as though we were in a library. But like Edith’s wedding, it was very elegant. There were candles everywhere and all the flowers were white. For one awful moment last night, I thought the flowers might be red, that someone would tell the florist it was her favourite colour and I’d walk in to find arrangements spilling over with blood-coloured roses. She would have hated that (‘So predictable,’ she would have said, rolling her eyes), but then she would have hated the white flowers, too.
We talked about her funeral once, when she asked me what they were like in Nigeria. When I told her, she said that that was what she wanted her funeral to be like: colour and sound and food. For everyone to get drunk afterwards and dance like no one was watching. But what she got was a church full of white flowers and people slumped in black suits reading a pink programme with her photo on it. As I saw her grandmother striding up and down the aisle, directing the ushers and fussing over the flowers, I realised that funerals are
n’t always for the ones who are being buried.
I looked at the arrangement nearest me and when I noticed the white tulips poking out from between the roses and hydrangea heads, I wondered if they were from the farm. I pictured the gardeners cutting them, hands shaking as they remembered Scarlett in her yellow wellington boots, chasing Olivia down the neat rows of lettuces with a snail in her hand. Then I pictured her mother going from room to room in the house, her thin gold bangles clanging as she snatched the vases of tulips from each table and windowsill, leaving behind circles in the dust, and it made my heart ache.
Just as I leaned back against the door – the faint breeze a relief as I asked myself if my legs would survive the service – Mrs Delaney found me. ‘Follow me, Miss Okomma,’ she said, taking me by the hand and leading me through the knot of girls to the top of the aisle. I was sure my legs were going to betray me as we walked towards the altar and when we stopped by the first pew and I saw her family assembled in a row, each of them pale and creased with grief, I was glad Mrs Delaney was still holding my hand.
‘Adamma,’ Scarlett’s mother said, struggling to her feet then hugging me tightly. The last time I saw her, she didn’t see me. It was a couple of months ago and she was crossing the courtyard at school. Her dark hair was down and she was wearing a blue and white-striped Breton shirt and ballet pumps, her jeans rolled up to expose her ankles. If I’d just glanced at her, I might have assumed she was another pupil, but today she looked old – exhausted – in a dull black suit that she’d probably never wear again.
Her father hugged me, too, as did Edith, who thanked me for coming. But Olivia didn’t stand up and I wasn’t surprised – she hadn’t replied to any of my messages and wouldn’t let me near her when I helped her parents search Savernake Forest the afternoon I found The Old Dear – but it still stung when I sat next to her and she turned her face away.
‘I’m sorry,’ I breathed, but she didn’t flinch. It made the guilt dig in a little deeper, but before I could say anything else, the organ started, grim and throbbing, and everyone shuffled to their feet. I knew it was the coffin and I couldn’t look at it, so I squeezed my eyes shut, although that just seemed to amplify everything – the smell of the flowers, the soft scuff of the pallbearers’ shoes as the coffin approached – so I forced myself to open them again as the priest, a tall man with hair as dark as shoe polish, asked everyone to be seated.