Joel had arrived with Sam – on time for once.
‘Big day today, girls,’ he said, as Izzie and Immie came to show off their school uniforms. They looked so sweet in matching grey pinafores (a size too big for them, to allow for plenty of growing room), crisp white shirts, and green cardigans. Their bright white socks were pulled high above their knees, their black Mary Jane shoes positively sparkled and their fair hair was tied up in identical ponytails, which by the end of the day Lauren was fairly sure would be coming undone.
They smiled shyly at Joel, as he popped Sam in the high chair, and watched them parade their brand new green book bags proudly in front of him.
‘You wouldn’t mind taking a photo of the three of us, would you?’ said Lauren. ‘Only, it would be nice to have a memento.’
‘No problem,’ said Joel, proceeding to snap away. ‘Are you excited, girls?’
‘Yes,’ they chorused.
‘I should say so,’ said Lauren, ‘I don’t think they slept a wink all night.’
‘Ouch,’ grimaced Joel. He looked at his watch. ‘Is that the time? I’d really better dash.’
‘Oh, of course.’ Lauren clocked his sober grey suit, and kicked herself for forgetting what day it was. ‘Good luck, today. Hope it’s not too grim.’ She touched him awkwardly on the arm, not quite sure whether the gesture would be appreciated. After Claire had died, their mutual grief had brought them very close. Too close she felt at times. Sometimes it had felt a little too intense, and now she tended to stand back more.
Joel gave her a tight, tense smile, his dark eyes brooding. His face was sombre and sad. ‘It has to be done,’ he said, before kissing Sam on the cheek. ‘Have a great day, girls.’
Poor Joel. Thirty-five was far too young to be widowed. It was tough on him being alone with Sam, she knew that. That was why, in the main, Lauren cut him some slack when he took her for granted, which he invariably did. Lauren felt she owed it to Claire to look out for Joel; he needed support, and she was going to give it, even if he didn’t always make it that easy. She felt a familiar spasm of grief for Claire too. A year on, and part of her still expected to see Claire pitch up at the cottage as she had done every day with Sam before her sudden and shocking death.
Lauren sent the twins up to brush their teeth, while she cleared up the breakfast things. She stacked the girls’ matching Belle plates in the dishwasher, next to her favourite Cath Kidston mugs and bowl set (a present from Mum, Lauren could never have afforded them). She loved her kitchen, which had been extended to make room for a dining table. It was cosy, and full of clutter. The children’s toys – a magnetic easel, a plastic car and a small table and chairs set – competed for space with her pine table, washing machine, dishwasher and fridge freezer. Though Lauren didn’t have quite as much work surface as she’d have liked, and what she had was crammed full of cookery books, this was her favourite room in the house – the real heart of her home.
Lauren lifted Sam out of the high chair, and put him into the buggy she kept here for him. She felt stupidly nervous for the girls, even though they had been going to the nursery part of the village school for nearly a year. But still. Proper school. True, being the youngest in the year, they were only part time to begin with. But before she knew it, they’d be gone all day. No longer would she have them to herself in the afternoon. If she didn’t have Sam still to look after, the days could be long and lonely. Just like her nights …
A sense of melancholy came over her as she walked down the front path, with its familiar white picket fence, and creaky iron gate. The twins were holding on to either side of the buggy, chatting away nineteen to the dozen about what was going to happen in their day. They didn’t seem nervous in the slightest. It was only Lauren who felt a vague sense of loss, with the realization that after today nothing would be quite the same again. She pushed the buggy down her road, waving hello to her neighbour Eileen, who was out walking her dog, and turned right onto the main road that led down the hill to the centre of Heartsease, where the girls were starting at the village school.
The September sun was still warm, and the day was shaping up to be one of those last blasts of summer lazy days, which you had to cherish before autumn took hold. But there were small signs of the approaching autumn. The trees were beginning to turn, the first conkers were beginning to ripen, and a gentle breeze blew a few leaves softly to the ground. It was days like these she remembered most from the period after Troy left her, and this time of year had remained bitter-sweet to her ever since. Just as she was getting used to the shock of motherhood, she’d had the bigger shock that she was going to be doing it alone. And now more then ever, sending her beautiful daughters off to school for the first time, she wished that it wasn’t so.
Joel got in the car with a heavy heart, turned left out of Lauren’s road, and drove back up the hill past his house and out of Heartsease across the Downs, towards the neighbouring town of Chiverton. He drove down a windy country road, arched with trees, their leaves beginning to shimmer with an autumn hue. He loved the countryside here and it was one of the many reasons, when his mum had inherited Lovelace Cottage and suggested he bought it from her, that he had. Even Claire, who’d at first been reluctant to leave London, and ‘live in the sticks’ as she’d put it, had agreed that when you came to the brow of the hill and looked out on the Sussex countryside, the views were stunning.
Claire. His heart contracted painfully. A year ago today. Could it only really be a year? A year and a day ago he had been so happy. So rich and fulfilled. With everything in life he needed. But he didn’t know it then, didn’t appreciate it at times, maybe didn’t even want it. It was only after he lost Claire, and his world came crashing down around him, that he belatedly realized how truly lucky he had been.
Today was going to be a painful and difficult day. Joel had promised to go with Claire’s parents to her grave, in the cemetery on the other side of Chiverton, and then for lunch. He wasn’t sure he was going to be able to get through another heartbreaking day with them. It wasn’t that Marion and Colin were unkind or unsupportive, far from it. Although they lived over an hour away, they would help out with Sam at the drop of a hat, and they had been an immense source of strength to him. They had shown him compassion even though they were grieving too. No, it wasn’t Marion and Colin who would make this day hard. It was Joel’s guilt about what he’d done, and how he’d let Claire down.
Every day for the last year he had said sorry to her. Every day. And today, at the graveside, he would lay freesias, her favourite flowers (which he’d bought at great expense) and say sorry again. But it was never ever going to be enough.
Joel blinked back tears as he arrived at the graveyard. It was a bright, warm September day, unlike the day of Claire’s funeral, which had been the bleakest, rainiest autumn day he could remember in his life. The church had been packed, and so many people had been so kind and thoughtful. But Joel had barely been able to acknowledge their kindness, responding like an automaton, feeling only a numbness that he now realized must have been deep jolt. The suddenness of Claire’s death still shocked him, even now, a year later. How could someone as beautiful and alive and vibrant as Claire be there one day, and not the next? He’d be trying to make sense of that till the day he died.
Joel was pleased to see he had arrived earlier than Claire’s parents. Selfishly, he wanted a bit of time on his own, for his own private grief. He walked up to her grave and felt again the sudden shock of seeing her name there:
Claire Harriet Lyle
1975–2010
Loving wife, mother and daughter
Taken from us too soon
