Chapter 1
Sophie Lakeland sat on the closed lid of her downstairs loo and contemplated her future. As far as she could see, she didn’t have one; yet at the same time, the possibilities were endless. The day stretched out before her, empty and directionless, waiting to be filled with…? She had absolutely no idea what. Which was the reason she was cleaning the downstairs loo for the third time that week when it was only Thursday, and no one had actually used it. Not even her.
She had been giving the washbasin a quick wipe when a wave of desolation and despair had swept over her, followed by a grief so intense it stole her breath and she’d been forced to sit down.
It hadn’t mattered that she’d had years to prepare for her mother’s demise, weeks and days to face the inevitable, then hours spent holding the increasingly frail hand and waiting for the last hitched breath; the end, when it finally arrived, had still been a terrible shock. Nothing could prepare you for the finality of it, and she wasn’t sure whether she’d ever get over it, or if she even wanted to. Her grief was something to cling onto, to make her feel some kind of emotion, however negative. Because without it, all that was left was a terrifying numbness and an awful sense of emptiness.
Oh, dear God, what was she supposed to do now? How was she meant to fill her days with no one to cook for, no one to count out the numerous tablets for, no one to wash, dress, wait on, fuss over, talk to, worry about, cry over…?
The house was as silent as the grave that she wished her mother had been buried in. But, as her mum had wanted to be cremated, Sophie didn’t even have the comfort of a graveyard to visit. No headstone, no leafy tree-lined parkland, no carefully chosen flowers. Nowhere to serve as a focus for her grief. Just a scattering of ashes in the impersonal Garden of Remembrance at the crematorium.
Sophie didn’t even have an urn.
Her mum had been quite insistent on that front, declaring it morbid. ‘I want you to move on, to have a life,’ she’d told her. ‘How can you do that when you’re carting me around with you? And I know you, Sophie – that’s exactly what you’ll do with my ashes. No, I want them to be scattered as soon as you’re given them. No procrastinating, no excuses. If you don’t, I’ll come back to haunt you.’
Right now, Sophie could think of nothing better than being haunted by her mother. How she longed to hear her voice again, to see her mum’s smile despite the awful pain she had been in, and to wrap her arms around those thin shoulders and breathe in the familiar perfume she insisted on being sprayed with every day, despite the fact that the smells of disinfectant and terminal illness were also mixed in with the delicate floral scent towards the end.
Sophie had never felt so alone in her life.
‘Stop it,’ she muttered, straightening up from her slump and wiping her eyes. They had seemed to leak constantly from the moment her mum passed away, as though up until that point her grief had been contained behind a wall of necessity and chores, which had since been breached by the finality of her mum’s death.
Breaking down and giving in to the tidal wave of sorrow was almost an hourly occurrence now, and she was getting mightily fed up with herself and her misery.
Bloody hell, death was an awful business. The only comfort she could glean from it was the knowledge that her mother was finally out of pain and at peace.
The pain belonged to Sophie now – not physical, but emotional. She felt as though her heart had been torn out of her chest and thrown on the floor to shrivel and wither now that there was no one left who loved her. And, in turn, she herself was without anyone else to love or to care for. She’d been doing the latter for such a long time, she now had no idea what else she was supposed to do.
With a deep sigh she clambered to her feet, but before she’d managed to drag herself into the sitting room, the doorbell rang.
‘Aunty Anne! Come in.’ Sophie stepped back to let the older woman into the hall, giving her a brief hug and a kiss on the cheek as she did so.
Anne patted her on the arm and Sophie saw tears welling up in her eyes. ‘How are you bearing up, dear?’ she asked, and Sophie’s own eyes began to prickle.
‘Oh, you know. How about you?’ she replied.
‘Don’t worry about me – losing a sister is bad enough, but losing a mother is a hundred times worse.’ Anne should know – she’d lost her own mother, Sophie’s gran, a few years back.
Sophie put the kettle on and when the tea was poured she led her aunt into the living room, her eyes welling up again as she glanced around the room.
Memories of her mum were everywhere. For her own sanity she really should remove them, or put them out of sight if she couldn’t bear to get rid of them yet. But get rid of them she must.
‘Have you decided what you’re going to do?’ her aunt asked, taking a slurp of tea.
Sophie shrugged, not trusting herself to speak.
‘The offer still stands,’ her aunt said gently.
‘I know, and I appreciate it, I really do; but you’ve only got a tiny flat, and there’s only the one bedroom. Besides’ – and here was the major stumbling block – ‘you live in a retirement complex. I’m pretty certain that one of the rules is that they don’t have anyone under the age of sixty living there.’
Anne scowled. ‘They can bend the rules this once. And I’m sure it won’t be for long – just until you sort yourself out. I can’t believe the council is simply going to turn you out. Surely you can do something? Can you start a petition?’
Sophie let out a slow breath. ‘You know it won’t do any good.’
‘They should be ashamed of themselves. You’ve lived here nearly all your life, and you’ve spent the last few years nursing your mum. They need to think how much it would have cost them if she’d been in a nursing home. You’ve saved that bloody council a fortune, and this is how they repay you!’
It was true. Sooner or later she’d have to move out of this house which she’d lived in for most of her life. The brief foray she’d made into living in her own place hadn’t lasted long. The cancer diagnosis had seen to that. She’d sold up, made a tiny profit which was still sitting untouched in her bank account, and had moved back into the family home for the duration.
The problem she now faced was that her mother’s home was rented, and Sophie’s name wasn’t on the tenancy agreement. It belonged to the council and they wanted it back. The fact that it was a three-bedroom property meant it was regarded as being too large for one person to occupy, especially when there was a shortage of council housing. She was under no illusion that she would be asked to vacate it at some point in the not too distant future.
‘Denise has offered to have you go and live with them for a couple of weeks,’ Anne reminded her.
‘That’s not going to happen,’ Sophie replied firmly. Denise was Anne’s daughter and Sophie’s cousin. At thirty-eight she was a few years older than Sophie and she’d just been surprised by a definitely unplanned pregnancy. Her twins were due any day now, and there was no way Denise and her husband would cope with having two new babies in the house, along with the two teenagers they already had, plus Sophie. It was very generous and thoughtful of them, but it was totally unrealistic.