‘Is there any point doing Hallowe’en without Dad?’ She sounds mournful.
Thanks to Hugh’s skill with electronics, we always have the best house on our road at Hallowe’en, maybe even the best house in the whole estate – thunder and lightning boom and flash in the garden while screechy cackles and hollow laughs ring out. Every single year since we moved here, he’s dressed up as an executioner to give out sweets. But even with his chainmail helmet and mask, all the kids know who he is. I love watching him doling out mini-Haribos to little ghostlings and tiny skeletons, all of them saying, ‘Thanks, Hugh, thanks, Hugh.’ And sometimes ‘Deadly costume, Hugh.’
‘There’s every point in us doing it!’ I say stoutly. ‘We’re still here, we count too!’
‘Mum,’ Kiara says, ‘I feel, you know, resentful of Dad. For going away. At the start I kinda admired it but now I’m, like, angry.’
‘Kiara.’ It’s good she’s told me, but the burden of saying the right words is onerous. ‘He loves you with every bit of his being. Going away like this, it wasn’t a – a … you know, a jaunt, a jolly. It was something he had no choice about.’
‘Do you believe that, Mum? And don’t lie just to make me feel better.’
‘Hand on heart, Kiara, I truly believe he had no choice. He hated having to hurt us but if he didn’t go, his mental health was really going to suffer. He was already on anti-depressants.’
‘He was? Oh, poor Dad.’
‘Granddad Robert dying did something to him that he couldn’t manage.’
‘So weird,’ she says. ‘I thought when you were Dad’s age that things like people dying didn’t upset you.’
‘Well, there you go.’
‘Wow. So! We’ll Hallowe’en the house.’ Kiara never stays down for long. ‘I’ll wake Neeve and Sofie.’
She thunders up the stairs and I hear Neeve grousing about being woken early on a Saturday morning for ‘some Hallowe’en bullshit’. But by the time I’ve arrived on the landing, she’s out of bed. For no reason at all she hugs me. Something has shifted since Thursday night: we’re suddenly closer.
Sofie sticks her head out of her trapdoor. ‘Hallowe’en! Cool!’
‘Where’s the decorations?’ Kiara asks.
‘Up in the roof space.’ One of us will have to crawl in there to get the boxes. It’s usually Hugh. So now it’s me. I don’t even sigh.
Neeve hands me the torch and I carefully climb the foldaway ladder that Hugh had installed. In the beam of torchlight the boxes are easy to spot: Hugh has drawn a skull and crossbones on them to distinguish them from the Christmas decorations, which are marked with green trees. Shite, there’s a spider, a black, thick-legged horror, sitting on the top box. I give it a hard glare and it scurries away.
‘Go, me,’ I say – quietly, though, because it’s not good to be talking to myself even if it’s simply a device to make me brave.
The girls cluster at the foot of the ladder as I descend with the boxes. Then they start dragging stuff out. ‘Pumpkin lights! Gravestones! Cobwebs! This is sick!’
‘What’s this?’ Neeve pulls out a length of black fabric. ‘Oh! Hugh’s costume!’ She balls up the executioner outfit and lobs it in my direction.
‘Why am I getting it?’
‘You’ve to be both parents now,’ Neeve says. ‘G’wan! Put it on!’
She’s joking – apart from anything else it would be swimming on me – and we all manage to laugh.
‘Oh, well,’ Kiara says. ‘Next year we’ll be back to normal.’
But when they’ve hurried away to plant gravestones by the front door, I put the costume to my face and take a cautious sniff. It’s nearly a year since he’s worn it so it’s unlikely that any trace of him still lingers, but it does and a wave of memory makes me dizzy. The exact Hugh smell: it’s impossible to describe, warm, sweet, earthy, just him. The nostalgia, the terrible sense of loss, momentarily feels unbearable.
But it is bearable, I remind myself. I’ve survived worse.
Just after four o’clock Derry appears, with three dresses – it’s Kiara’s Hallowe’en social tonight.
‘Any word from Steevie?’ she asks quietly.
Since the disastrous brunch a week ago, I haven’t contacted Steevie and she hasn’t contacted me. Worse, neither of us has liked any of the other’s Facebook posts, the modern equivalent of pistols at dawn.
I hate being on the outs with anyone but, right now, Steevie and I can’t be what the other needs. It’s shit, but what can you do?
‘Show us the lovely dresses!’ Beautiful things might take my mind off it.
‘I thought this was seasonal-looking.’ Derry waves a black, floor-length velvet sheath, with a thigh-high slit, at Kiara.
‘Give me that.’ I go straight to the label. It’s Givenchy. ‘Aaargh! I knew it! God, Derry, you’re good to yourself. Why can’t we be the same height?’
‘Because life is shite.’
This strikes me as so funny that I hoot.
Kiara tries on the dress. She’s so tall and slender and beautiful that I have to swallow convulsively. ‘I dunno.’ She’s trying to hold the thigh slit closed. ‘I don’t think it’s me.’
‘Stand up straight,’ Derry orders. ‘Go on, you’re a stunner.’
‘Ah, no, give me another one to try.’
The second, a double-layer of navy silk jersey from Preen, also fits. But the back is cut all the way down to the waist and, as Derry points out, ‘You can’t wear a bra.’
Kiara colours and says, ‘I can’t not wear a bra.’
‘You’re not exactly Emily Ratajkowski.’
‘I’m wearing my bra.’
God, she didn’t get her strong will from me!
The third dress is a slender column of heavy creamy-white satin – long-sleeved, high-necked, very modest – very Kiara.
‘It’s like a wedding dress,’ Neeve exclaims. ‘Is there something you want to tell us, Derry?’
Derry gives her a scathing look.
‘You’re my hero, Der!’
‘I like this one best,’ Kiara says.
‘Corpse bride,’ I exclaim.
‘Totally!’
‘You’ll need a head thing.’ Neeve is googling. ‘Black flowers. A veil. Mum, look in your sewing box!’
There are definitely black fabric roses in there. I remember the day I bought them, less than two years ago, at the Taney Christmas fair. Every summer and Christmas, the fair was a family tradition but one by one the girls became too grown-up to come. Two years ago was the first time that all three of them bailed on me. I still wanted to go – there would be cakes and cheap books and the possibility of stumbling over something wonderful – so when Hugh saw my gloom, he said, ‘Feck the rest of them, you and me will go up.’
We held hands and we had fun. There was a stall strewn with sewing accessories and, encouraged by Hugh, I loaded up with ribbons and fabric appliqués, which cost half-nothing.
Hugh also hit pay-dirt when he found a red fibreglass sled. ‘Look!’ he cried. ‘It’s in perfect condition. Neevy would love this, right?’
I wasn’t so sure. Neevy was a bit grown-up for sledding. All of them were.
‘Ah, no.’ Realization hit him at the same time. ‘Why can’t they be little girls for ever?’
‘I know.’ I was mournful.
‘Let’s have another baby,’ he said.
I laughed a soft, wifely, you-total-lunatic laugh. Now I wished we’d come straight home and had sex. Not in the hope of having another child but because it was a moment of connection we should have jumped on.
Well, it’s too late now so I return to the task at hand. I’m certain there’s a length of white toile in the box that would do for Kiara’s veil. ‘I’ll need a hairband.’
‘On it!’ Sofie is all business. ‘Leave the hair stuff to me.’