PROLOGUE
She stands in the middle of the kitchen, her hands on her hips as she surveys the devastation. Around her, what was once a clean, orderly family home has become a grubby mess – a zone of utter chaos. There are muddy footprints across the lino. Bits of paper and random items lie on every surface.
In many ways the mess strikes her as more appropriate. It seems to fit the circumstances of her life rather better than the superficial neatness of just a few days ago.
She continues to pull things, any things, all things, from the places they belong, the places they have occupied, often untouched for years, adding them to the contents of an open box on the kitchen table.
She’d tried to be logical at first, indeed had even managed to maintain order for a while. Thus, those early boxes, now at the bottom of a veritable wall of boxes in the hallway, truly do contain what it says on the packet, whether it be ‘Recipe books’ or ‘Kitchen implements’ or ‘DVD’s’. (Yes, she has erroneously added an apostrophe at the end of ‘DVD’, and it irritates her every time she sees it.) But she’s beyond being logical now, beyond being able to decide into what kind of category a half-empty pack of AA batteries should go, and beyond caring, too. As a result, the last seven boxes have all been labelled ‘Misc.’.
She takes the wooden bowl from the kitchen table and tips the contents into the current box (she sees a lightbulb flash by, then a key, an unrecognised USB cable and a box of Tic Tacs). She folds over the flaps and tapes the lid shut. With a chunky marker she writes ‘Misc. #8’ on the side. This one might actually be Misc. #9, she thinks; not that it matters.
She carries it to the hallway and deposits it on top of Misc. #7, then, taking a deep breath, she turns, walks the length of the short hallway and steels herself before yanking open the door to the cupboard under the stairs.
She drags Henry the Hoover towards the front door but then changes her mind and moves him into the lounge instead. The vacuum cleaner is going to have to be one of the last things to go, after all. Returning to the stair cupboard, she reaches into the semi-darkness and retrieves an orange extension lead, the mop and bucket, the ironing board and the iron. The iron should probably have gone in ‘Electrical things’ or ‘Laundry stuff’ but it’s too late now.
She unhooks, from a nail, three school bags (an image of Jude at the school gates flashes in her mind’s eye, and her heart twinges with love and loss), along with two old handbags that she should have thrown away years ago. These she dumps next to the sealed bin bags at the back door before hesitating, kneeling and checking the insides, one by one. They are all entirely empty except for the green canvas handbag, in which she finds an ancient restaurant receipt. Someone, somewhere, once ate spaghetti vongole in a restaurant called Paradisio but the date is faded and unreadable. While gently pushing one fingernail through a hole in the corner of the handbag, she tries to remember, but she can’t even recall to which era the bag belongs.
Back at the cupboard, she drags some old coats from the depths, revealing two wooden shelves, one of which is packed with pots of home-made jam. They’re so old that they’re almost certainly inedible. From the lower shelf she pulls a dusty cardboard box.
She bites her lip as she carries it to the kitchen table. She sits and stares past it, out through the rain-speckled windows at the waterlogged green lawn beyond. She should probably tape the box up and look at it later, or not at all. That would almost certainly be the best thing to do.
But then the idiot DJ on Groove FM finally stops talking and plays a song instead, and it’s one of Zoe’s favourites. Mandy never much liked it herself, but Zoe had played it constantly, in . . . when was that? 2008? 2009? And how can 2009 be ten years ago? she wonders. Two thousand and nine sounds like last week. Lily Allen, she thinks now, as she listens to the song. When it reaches the chorus, she even remembers the title: ‘The Fear’. An image of her daughter telling her that the lyrics are amazing pops into her head as clearly as if it happened yesterday.
For a moment, she stares out at the greenness of the wet garden again, and then, after glancing almost guiltily around the room, she runs her finger diagonally through the dust on the lid of the box and then removes it.
And here they all are, the actors of her life, smiling up at her. All gone now, she thinks, as she lifts a picture of Ian, suited, drunk and grinning, from the pile. Thirteen years they were married. Thirteen years! And here’s Jude. Not entirely gone, that one, she thinks, but mostly absent all the same. She runs a finger gently across his cheek and lets out a deep bitter-sweet sigh. So much love, she thinks. Kids, they absorb so much time and effort and money. But the main thing is the love. And no one teaches you what to do with all that love once they leave. No one explains how you’re supposed to cope when their fifteen-hour-a-day presence dwindles to a ten-minute call on Sundays (if you’re lucky) and a two-day visit at Christmas.
She caresses the photo again and slides it to the edge of the box, revealing Scott’s business card. Chunky, sexy Scott, who, despite everything else that was going on, gave her the best two years of her life. She’d bought her first digital camera just before they met and she’s pretty sure she’s never had a proper physical photo of him. Maybe even the digital photos have been lost by now and perhaps that would be just as well. Damn, Scott was sexy.
She delves further into the box and finds her official, mounted wedding photo. It’s hard to decide which of the two of them looks the most uncomfortable in it. Ian, probably, she decides. Ian always looked a bit uncomfortable – a bit as if he wanted to be somewhere else. As it turned out, of course, there was a reason for that.
And then here she is, her first-born, and it’s only when she finds the photo that she realises that it’s what she’s been looking for – that it’s what she’s been dreading. The photo, the Lily Allen song . . . Her heart lurches.
The idea that any of the main players might just step out of your life is hard to get your head around. Our brains are wired for permanence, really. Our parents will (we believe) always be on the end of that phone line. The husband will always be there for breakfast. But at least the concepts associated with losing these people are all around us. Our friends’ parents die, and so we are forewarned. Other friends go from coupled to single. Shit happens. Separation, divorce: we have proper, useful words to describe these events. But a child? Well, you just don’t get over that one, do you? There’s not even a word for it.
‘Oh, Zoe,’ she murmurs. Lovely lost Zoe. Her vision is blurring, so she swipes at the corner of her eye and takes a deep, jagged breath. It’s just too upsetting, and she can’t do with being upset right now. She needs to be cool and efficient, like some suited female lawyer in a Netflix series. And so she slides Zoe beneath a photo of Jude’s first car, and then reseals the box, taping across the top.
She has just added the box of photos to the teetering pile in the hall when her mobile buzzes in her pocket. Talk of the devil, she thinks, but with a warm feeling and a hint of a smile.
‘Mum?’ It’s Jude’s voice.
‘If that’s who you called,’ she says, ‘then that’s probably who it is. How was your holiday? Are you back yet?’
‘Um, great,’ Jude says. ‘Yes, we just got back. Look, I need to see you. Can I come up?’