‘There are some things I’ll need to do before leaving but I want to go soon. A few days, no more.’
‘Suits me. I’ll need some time on the ground out there anyway.’ It was decided, and she could see no other possibility than that it would happen. The details would take some working out but the fundamentals were fixed, written in stone, as if it had always been so, as if she’d been born to fulfill this role.
Two days later she rented a car and drove home. She was tempted to drive by the house but didn’t. She couldn’t bear to look at it, to see the signs of another family living there, occupying the rooms her family had lived in.
Instead she drove to the village church. It was a small place but it still took her a while to get her bearings and find their graves. Two new ones had already been added since and she glanced at their flower-decked plots before standing at the foot of her own.
Two simple wooden crosses, one for her parents, one on the neighboring grave for Ben. The gravestones would be on within the month but she almost preferred it like this, the bare facts of their names on the little metal plates pinned into the wood, no sentiments declared.
The turned soil was half lost in fallen leaves, the boundaries merging with the surrounding grass, an integral part of the churchyard with its trees and hedgerows, its crows’ chorus in the hollow autumn air. She’d never imagined it being important, where a person was buried, but she was glad they were here.
Someone had put a bunch of red carnations at the foot of Ben’s cross. They were beginning to die off now but she guessed they’d only been there a short time. It saddened her to think of someone else grieving in isolation, unknown to her; it made her realize again how little she’d known him at the end.
But it was too late for regrets, too late for wishing she’d known them better. Nothing she could say or do now would make any difference. These gentle mounds of earth would sink a little more, the past would grow a little more distant, its precise details blurring.
The day would come when she wouldn’t be able to remember her mother’s infectious laugh, or the way Ben told a joke, all self-conscious and constantly correcting himself, or the skeptical smile he’d throw at people when he thought they were teasing him. For now, those things still seemed in the present, but she knew she wouldn’t be able to hold onto them.
She wasn’t sure how long she’d been standing there, fifteen minutes perhaps, when she realized there was someone else in the churchyard. She turned, expecting to see someone visiting another grave. It was a girl, standing some twenty yards off, staring at her.
She was wearing jeans and a short duffel coat, a bunch of red carnations in her hand. She looked about Ben’s age; she was pretty. When she realized Ella had seen her, she looked around nervously, like she wanted to run.
‘Hello,’ said Ella.
The girl moved closer. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to disturb you.’
‘Not at all. Please.’ The girl came the rest of the way. ‘I’m Ella Hatto, Ben’s sister.’ She pointed at the flowers and said, ‘I’m guessing that’s who you came to see.’
‘I hope you don’t mind. I was at school with him. We were friends.’
‘I don’t mind at all. I’m glad someone else remembers him, thinks of him.’
‘Oh, a lot of us do. I don’t think anyone else comes here but . . .’ She appeared to have second thoughts about finishing the sentence and said, ‘I’m sorry. I’m Alice Shaw.’
‘Were you and Ben . . .?’
‘No.’ She was insistent, embarrassed, but went on, ‘I liked him, a lot. A few people thought he liked me, but we never, I mean . . . There’s no point in speculating. We were friends.’ Her face choked up with emotion.
‘I’m sure he would have liked you. I know it.’
Alice smiled but her eyes filled quickly with tears. One ran a rapid course down her cheek and she wiped it away. ‘Sorry.’
‘Don’t be.’ Ella took a step forward and held her, surprised by how tightly Alice held her back, and by the tears that flowed from the girl, as if this were the first time anyone had given her permission to express her loss.
And for all she knew, her loss was even greater than Ella’s. She thought of Joyce’s The Dead, of Gretta Conroy still mourning the long-lost love of her youth, and then she thought of Lucas, wanting to ask him if he’d read it, feeling a loss herself that she would never be able to do so.