said Denise from the kitchen. ‘You could have fooled me.’
I apologized for waking people up; it’s much easier that way. Apparently, I’d come in at after 3 a.m., then set the smoke alarm off by making a bacon sandwich. Denise said my dress was left in a heap by the toilet, still in the shape that I’d stepped out of it (and I could go and pick it up when I was ready, too).
‘Did you get back to sleep, Denny, love?’ Dad said.
‘No, but it’s fine,’ she said. (Fine, fine, fine.) ‘I’ll have a nap later, if I get the chance.’
Denise was huffing and puffing and clattering in the kitchen. I was taking slow, tentative slurps of tea, looking through the French doors at the dull grey sky and the grey concrete. When Mum was alive, that garden was a mass of wild flowers and colour; six months after Denise moved in (which was only two after Mum died, Christmas ’96, just to add insult to injury), she had it paved over – apparently because she had a ‘bad back and found it hard to garden’. Maybe it was this which angered me – this feeling I can’t seem to shake, that Dad has let Denise pave over him, us. Maybe it was the thought that if Mum could see those grey slabs, she’d be so disappointed, or that last night had ignited something in me, set some kind of change in motion. Whatever it was, I felt daring. I was not leaving this house without the ashes.
‘Right, so,’ I announced suddenly, pressing my palms on the table for extra emphasis. From behind his newspaper, I saw Dad’s eyelids flicker with alarm. ‘Where are Mum’s ashes? ’Cause I’m not going home without them.’
Dad coughed and put his paper down. Denise came out, carrying my eggs, a miasma of Elnett and frying fat, the tops of her jeans swish-swishing. She stopped when she got to the table, holding the plate in her hands.
‘Well, Bruce, have you told her?’ She’d overdrawn one of her brows with eye pencil, so it went too far towards her temple. It made her look even more mad than usual.
‘Told me what?’
‘He can’t find them, Robyn,’ she said, putting my plate down.
I felt my throat constrict with panic.
‘What do you mean, you can’t find them?’ I said, my voice wobbling. ‘Dad, are you saying that you have actually lost Mum?’
‘Don’t be bloody ridiculous,’ he said.
‘Well, where are they, then? Denise, any ideas?’
I didn’t hate Denise but I didn’t trust her either. Mum was a hard act to follow and she knew it. I always got the sense with her that she’d never got over one vital fact: Dad had never wanted to end it with Mum; it ended because she died. It would have been easier for Denise if it had been divorce.
‘Because I don’t mean to be rude, and please don’t take this the wrong way, but I know you’ve sometimes found it difficult, looking at …’ Dad was boring holes into me with his eyes. I stopped just in time. ‘Just, maybe you moved them, that’s all?’
The realization that, yes, I was accusing her of hiding my mother’s ashes, made Denise’s throat flush red – was that anger, or guilt? ‘Don’t look at me,’ she said. ‘I have polished that urn every single day. I do it at the same time as I do my cats and trophies.’
That was nice, I thought, ranking all that remained of my mother with her badminton trophies and ceramic cats. And, anyway, I didn’t believe her.
‘Also, if you three girls can’t look after your mother’s ashes yourselves, well …’ She flounced off in the direction of the kitchen again. ‘I’ve done my bit.’
‘Denise, excuse me!’
Dad slammed his newspaper shut. It made me jump. ‘That is enough, Robyn, thank you. Stop talking about the ashes in front of Denise. It’s bad manners.’
Bad manners? My mum’s memory was now a bad manner?
‘And in front of your dad,’ added Denise. ‘It only upsets him.’
This was unbelievable.
‘Look, I’m not saying anyone’s put them anywhere,’ I said, finally, even though this was exactly what I was saying. ‘I just … I need them.’ And, as soon as I started talking, I became more resolute that this was absolutely what had to happen. ‘By August, by the time you move out.’ Dad was still glaring at me, petrified about what I might say next. ‘Mum wouldn’t want to be in any other house but this one; so, if she can’t be here, I want her with me.’
Dear Lily
I’ve so many emotions flying around, I don’t know what to do with myself. I’m telling myself, I’m always like this when I’ve been back to Kilterdale, and this time was so much more poignant – for obvious reasons – but I’m sitting here, writing this on the train, crying my eyes out. God knows what the other passengers think of me.
It was so good to see your dad! It was wonderful. I felt like how I used to feel, before I lost Mum, and we lost you and I somehow lost myself. I felt like I was THAT girl I used to be, who I never thought I’d find again, and this horrible emptiness, which I realized is always with me, wasn’t there any more.
And yet, I was so reckless, Lily. I can’t believe how reckless I was. What was I thinking of?! What if I am pregnant? My God. I would never ever forgive myself.
*
As soon as I reached civilization at Euston Station the next day, I went to Boots and got the morning-after pill. I couldn’t believe what I’d done. It was like I’d been under a spell, lawless for a moment. I decided to put down what happened to anxiety at being back in Kilterdale and total excitement at seeing Joe again, and resolved to get on with normal life as best I could.
I was still anxious about the ashes, however. Despite Dad searching high and low, he hadn’t been able to find them, and I could tell he’d begun to panic himself. Denise was making a good show of acting concerned but I wasn’t buying it. She was acting shifty, if you ask me, staring out of the kitchen window as Dad and I ransacked the place, as if she knew something we didn’t.
It made me feel a bittersweet camaraderie with Leah, who would definitely hold Denise up as prime suspect. Sweet because I treasured any chance to feel bonded with my eldest sister these days, I suppose, and bitter because it took losing our mother’s ashes and suspecting our stepmother had taken them, to do it.
Growing up, Leah and I had the classic big sister/little sister relationship: we hated and loved one another with equal fury. We knew one another better than anyone else. Then Mum got diagnosed with cancer in January 1995 and died in October 1996 and it felt like I lost not just Mum, but my big sister too. Not only did Leah behave outrageously at the funeral (turning up, just as they’d closed the curtain on the coffin, with her boyfriend at the time, who’d never even met our mother, and was wearing a back-to-front baseball cap – small detail, but I’ve never forgotten it), but she then proceeded to get off her head at the wake, shout at Denise and then leave to go back to university two days later, leaving me and Niamh to pick up
