‘I’ll do my best.’
Once the front door quietly closes behind him, and I hear our car pull off the drive, I pick up my mobile and head into the kitchen for a glass of water. Sitting down at the table, I begin to sip it slowly, looking at the single white rose in the vase in front of me; it has shed two petals since this morning. I pick one of them up carefully. Seventeen years and four days since I last held Beth.
What would my 22-year-old girl be doing, this Saturday night? Teasing me for staying in with a takeaway and thinking that was the main part of the evening, when hers was just getting started? Would she be going out around here with her friends, or heading into London and getting the last train home? Would she even still be at home – maybe she’d be working in another country, having not been out of university long and keen to explore the world; I would have encouraged that. But then, would I have been allowed to be her friend on Facebook, or might I have had to rely on texts and phone calls to make sure she was OK? I wouldn’t have liked that. Probably though, she wouldn’t even be on Facebook: would Snapchat and Instagram be more her style? I think of her beautiful smiling 5-year-old face – so open, happy and innocent – and try to picture how that face would look now. She would be beautiful, and I would be so proud of the woman she had become.
Sometimes I find myself staring at young women in the street, wondering if that is what Beth would be wearing, or how she’d do her hair. They probably think I’m jealous of them – wishing I was young again. I suppose, in a way, I am. But ultimately, Beth remains permanently frozen in my mind as a 5-year-old – and the more time that passes, the harder and harder that becomes. I won’t ever know what she’d be wearing now, or how her voice would sound, what she’d like or dislike. She is imprisoned in my head, and I will wish forever that I could set her free so she could come back to me.
I place the petal back down, and get up to walk over to the sideboard.
Pulling open the drawer, I take out the small, worn brown photo album that Dad sent me just after I left Ben and went to Australia. I close my eyes briefly at the memory of my own unoriginality. What a poor, messed-up 24-year-old thing to do; thinking that going halfway around the world was going to make anything better.
Sitting back down at the table, I flick through the first pages that are full of Mum and me – in one or two I’m a little girl Beth’s age – images carefully selected by Dad because Mum is genuinely smiling, even with her eyes. I stare at the pictures and trace her hair with my finger. She had such wonderful long hair. I remember playing with it while I sat on her lap and she read me stories. At least, I think I do; Dad has told me so often I used to do it, it feels like a memory.
There is another one of me looking incredibly similar to Beth – and then it’s on to Beth herself. She was so blonde. Just like James is now; although, unlike her, he’s darkening up as he gets older. There’s a particularly lovely one of Beth on my lap, with all of our friends from home around us. It was my 21st birthday. Beth is grinning hugely, not fazed at all by being the only child among so many 20-year-olds. I’m laughing and Ben is stood behind me, hands resting on my shoulders, looking proud as punch. Laurel is there too, pulling a party popper. Most of the others, I’m no longer in touch with. Even if I hadn’t left, we would have all found it too hard. They wouldn’t have known what to say to me, and I wouldn’t have been able go back to being one of them; as if having Beth had never happened. I look closely at myself. If Beth had lived, she would now be older than I am in that picture.
Breathing out slowly, I try to steady my thoughts. Seeing Louise today has smashed the two halves of my life into contact, instead of them oscillating alongside each other as they do normally; and this slipstream is not a comfortable place to be. I continue to look through the album; Beth pushing her baby in a pushchair, on her first trike, playing with Play-Doh, at the beach, in the bath, blowing out candles, dressed as Snow White, opening Christmas presents excitedly, as her brother will do in a month’s time, and then I reach one of the final pictures: her first day of school, blonde hair in bunches, standing outside the front door clutching her book bag, on a warm, sunny September day.
Feeling the usual familiar tightening of guilt in my gut, I quickly get up to put the album back in the drawer, but instead, on impulse, get out my ancient laptop. I know I shouldn’t do this, but…
I start it up, and then once I’ve signed in, I go straight to iTunes and select the file that Ed put on there for me. I hit play, and after the moment of static, there it is: the distant sound of Ben’s voice: ‘Go on! Say – “Mummy! Answer your phone!”’ Then Beth: the faint giggle and then ‘Mummy! Answer your phone!’
But as always, after the brief exquisite hit, is the immediate comedown. Angry with myself when I know how it was going to make me feel, I scrabble for my mobile and call Laurel.
‘Hey! Hello you!’ She sounds breathless.
‘Are you able to chat for a moment? I won’t be long; I’m really sorry but I’m having a wobble. Can you just anchor me back?’
‘Of course.’ She understands immediately. ‘I was thinking about you this morning. How has your day been? Houses any good?’
‘Um, not so much. We’re back at home now.’
‘Us too. The boys are watching Star Wars for the umpteenth time, Chris has gone to get us a Thai takeout, and I’m on countdown until half eight when I can legitimately pack them off to their rooms and have a glass of wine. This bit when they start going to bed later and you lose your evening is hard. I take it the lovely James is in bed?’
‘Yes, he is. Ben has gone to get us a takeaway too.’
‘Sorry?’ she says, astonished. ‘Did you just say Ben?’
‘Oh Jesus, what’s wrong with me?’ I put my hand to my forehead. ‘I did something similar in the car this afternoon, only to Ed’s face. Today can’t end soon enough.’
‘Oh, sweetheart,’ she says, and I hear her start to settle in as if she’s sitting down in preparation for a longer five minutes than previously advertised. ‘Talk to me. Has something happened in particular?’
I take a deep breath. ‘Do you remember after I started my counselling, I told you about the affair I’d been having with Beth’s teacher, Simon, and how Simon’s wife, Louise, came to the house and confronted me the day before I left Ben?’ I tread carefully around the version of events Laurel knows.
‘Yes, I do. That was also the day I sensitively came round to ask you if you wanted to come out with all of us for Christmas drinks, less than a month after you’d lost Beth.’
‘You were just doing your best, Lau. Don’t be hard on yourself. You were there, that’s the important thing.’
‘Hmmm. You’re generous to say so.’ She hesitates. ‘I actually saw Ben in town today.’
I glance back at his rose on the table. ‘How was he?’
‘He was good. Christmas shopping.’
I smile. ‘That’s very organised.’
‘I said exactly the same thing. He had a neat little list and everything. Both of his stepsons were with him too; they were going home for lunch then he was taking them to watch Chichester City play. They all looked happy. It was nice.’
‘I’m really glad to hear that,’ I say sincerely.