to play with Graham and think about my next combination!’ I’d said, putting the set into its box. ‘Is it OK if I don’t clear this game? I want to remember it forever.’
I remembered the day clearly. About a month later, Graham was dead. There was no more Mastermind with Dad after that.
I put the set carefully back into its box and, lying flat on my tummy, pushed it back into its hiding place. Standing up, I brushed the dust off my sleeve and took a deep breath.
‘Hello,’ I said softly. ‘You all right?’
There was no reply, of course.
‘Don’t worry, I’ll look after Mum,’ I said. I closed my eyes for a second, then backed quietly out of the room, pulling the door gently to behind me.
The only things left in my room from when I’d lived there were the scant clothes I’d left when I moved to Dubai, a couple of old perfumes and some of my childhood books and toys. With my blessing, Mum had redecorated after I’d left, choking the room with flowery wallpaper, adding bright curtains and changing my creaky old single bed for a double with an antique brass frame. If I half shut my eyes, I could still see past the flowers; I could see the contours and colours of the room in which I’d grown up.
Now, I lay on the bed next to my suitcase and tapped a WhatsApp message to Emily to check everything was OK at the office.
Dubai felt dreamlike, a galaxy away. My pillows were comfortable … they smelled like home.
Two hours later, as the afternoon started to turn its attention to dying, I went back downstairs, my knitting bag under my arm. I felt much better. I’d had a sleep, unpacked, had a shower and changed into something warm.
I found Mum in the living room having a cup of tea with Richard-from-down-the-road. Although I hadn’t seen him for years, I remembered him—he was one of those people who seemed to have been around forever, propping up the local church, leading the Cubs and organising community football matches and bonfires throughout my childhood. He’d taught Sunday school when I was five—and he’d seemed ancient even then. Twenty-three years later, it seems he’s only a couple of years older than Mum. A widower, at that.
Dressed in frumpy brown cords and a shabby-looking sweater, the threadbare collar of a beige shirt poking out from the crew neck, and wearing desperately unflattering glasses, he didn’t do himself any favours.
‘Forgive the clothes,’ he said, catching me looking at him. ‘Usually I dress like a pop star but I was trimming the hedges today.’
I laughed, caught out. I liked his humour.
‘Richard just popped round to give us his condolences,’ said Mum. ‘He was a huge support to me yesterday morning when I, um, “found” your father.’ She gave a little shudder. ‘He came with me to the hospital. It was ever so kind of him.’
I looked at them both. Mum was smiling at Richard, her teacup balanced daintily on her knee. She had a bit of blusher on and she looked pretty. On the mantelpiece, there was a vase of fresh flowers—thankfully not white lilies because Mum would have slammed those straight in the rubbish—and I guessed Richard had brought them. I wondered how much he knew; if he remembered what had happened to Graham. It had been talked about enough in Woodside, even if Richard and his wife hadn’t been that close to Mum and Dad at the time.
I poured myself a cup of tea from the pot and sat down.
‘Try the shortbread,’ said Mum. ‘It’s lovely.’
It was only then that I noticed the Petticoat Tails on the table. Heat flooded my face and I swiped my hand over my forehead, the sweat wet on my fingers. Petticoat Tails! Dad’s favourite! I blinked hard, the memory of Sunday afternoon teas before Graham had died, of ham sandwiches, buttered crumpets and shortbread, hitting me physically in the gut.
‘Have one. You’re too thin anyway!’ Mum nudged the plate towards me, and I stared at her. It was all wrong: Mum, Petticoat Tails, Richard.
‘Yesterday wasn’t the time for condolences,’ said Richard, turning his attention from Mum to me. ‘So I thought I’d pop by today to see how your mum was bearing up.’ He smiled at her and she looked away, almost embarrassed. ‘But it seems like she’s got everything marvellously under control.’
He nodded to himself. As if to reinforce that his words were definitely true.
I had to agree—on the surface, it did.
‘What do you remember of that that day, Evie? Can you talk about it?’
I pulled my knitting out and picked up where I’d left off at home that morning. I was knitting my first scarf. There was a bit where I’d dropped a few stitches but I hoped it would be good enough to wear. On the playing fields outside, half of my class was playing football. I could see them through the staffroom window.
‘We were in the garden,’ I said. ‘Mum and me.’
Miss Dawson nodded.
‘I remember the sirens.’ I concentrated on the stitches falling away from my fingers; I tried not to think about the words tumbling out of my mouth. Somehow the ‘doing’ made the ‘saying’ easier.
It had been a beautiful day. The sky had been so blue I’d imagined it reaching all the way up into outer space. We’d heard the sirens while we’d been pulling weeds. I was wearing shorts and a vest and I’d been hot; sweat had been running into my eyes and I was wishing I’d worn a headband. Mum was throwing big clumps of weeds into a trug; I was copying her, pulling the bits that looked like grass and throwing them into my own small trug. I hadn’t dared to do the weeds that looked like flowers in case I got it wrong.
‘A song came on the radio and we danced,’ I told Miss Dawson. ‘It was “Dancing Queen”.’ Mum had jumped up and run to the kitchen windowsill, where we’d balanced the radio. She’d turned up the volume and started dancing, calling to me to join her.
Mum had been strutting up and down the patio, her hands on her hips, pointing and turning like a pop star. I’d dropped my trug and tried to copy her moves. Mum had sung along, pointing at me. I remember thinking how I couldn’t imagine being seventeen.
‘Mum was going to make lemonade later, and we were going to take a picnic to the park—maybe even hire a rowing boat.’
It was then, when I was thinking about ham sandwiches and lemonade, that we’d heard the sirens. When you hear them in the distance, you don’t think that it’s your brother dying on the road. You just don’t think that. ‘Sounds like something’s happened on the bypass,’ Mum had said.
‘We heard the sirens,’ I told Miss Dawson. ‘We didn’t know they were for Graham.’
‘Oh, Evie. No. Of course you couldn’t have known.’
I barely heard Miss Dawson. I was back in the moment, stitches sliding off my knitting needles as I remembered. Mum had turned up the radio to drown out the noise. The song had finished and, out of breath
