As If I Were A River

This is a chapter from my novel, which is complete in first draft and I am editing for submission.

I sit for a while enjoying the late summer sun streaming through the windows. It warms my face and illuminates the blanket on the back of the sofa so that it glows like embers in a winter fire. I drink a cup of Granny’s favourite rooibos tea, remembering when she’d first made us some the day that Laura took us to her house. Laura’s nose had wrinkled up at the smell.

‘I like it,’ she’d said.

They had always seemed so close, as if Granny was Laura’s mum not Ken’s. Laura’s mum was dead though. She died when Laura was sixteen, in a car accident, I think. I wonder if Laura ever thinks about me and Jules. After not thinking much about her for years, since Jimmy disappeared she has been on my mind. I wish I could remember what she looks like but I can’t – just impressions. Wavy brown hair, green eyes, long thin hands that always felt cold. When we were little she had seemed so light and free with her tinkling laugh. But then she’d become quiet, sad, sometimes scary and angry, and she didn’t want to do anything anymore. Then she’d gone – surely she hadn’t meant to leave us forever.

I can feel melancholy setting in so I stand up. It is a beautiful day so I’ll make a start sorting out the garden even though I feel a bit daunted at the thought of it. The sun is really warm already as I go out into the front garden and it’s only ten o’clock, so if I’m going to do anything I better get started. I go back into the house and change into old gym shorts and a t-shirt, slip some flip-flops on then dig out the key to the shed from the drawer in the kitchen.

It’s dark and hot in the shed, the air stale and undisturbed. I feel bad as I wonder how long Granny had been too sick to garden. The spiders have been busy and there are webs connecting all areas of the shed – an arachnid super highway, with flies dotted around for sustenance like service stations on a motorway. Jules is petrified of all spiders but I don’t mind them. I say sorry under my breath as I brush the webs aside and grab some gardening tools then walk round the house to the front garden.

I only work for a couple of hours before it gets too hot. I have made good headway though and the plants and bushes lining the pathway are neater, smaller. You can walk up the path without getting snagged or having to push them out the way. I drop the secateurs on the pile of cuttings and push my hands into my lower back. I’m hot, achy and sticky but it’s been a good morning and I haven’t thought about gin or Jimmy the whole time I’ve been working.

***

After a shower, I go into town to have some lunch. Apart from Granny’s funeral it’s the first time I’ve been to Lancaster for years, but when you’ve grown up somewhere it never takes long for it to feel like home again. I get a roll, a bottle of water and a banana and walk up to the castle where I sit under a tree in the grounds and look out over the town to the river, still a muddy brown despite the sun, like a sullen child that won’t be cheered with a sweet. It’s quiet, peaceful, and I realise that the familiarity and beauty of the town seem to be outweighing all the sad memories I’ve always associated with it. Or maybe what’s happened in my life in the past nine months has just helped me to put it all into perspective.

‘Kate?’

I look round and see a man standing a couple of feet away. The sun is behind him and I can’t make out his face.

‘Yes?’

He moves closer and as he comes into the shade under the tree his face comes into view. He looks familiar but I can’t quite place him.

‘I thought it was you. You’ve hardly changed!’ he says with a smile.

‘Hi,’ I say as he sits down opposite me. He’s wearing work clothes – shorts, a t-shirt, sturdy boots.

‘It’s Mark Gosling, from school. We were in the same year.’

I know him then. My cheeks burn as the night of the school disco in our sixth year comes to mind. He grins as he sees the blush and I know he’s remembering it too.

‘How are you?’ he asks, ‘it’s been years.’

He’s familiar but also different to the boy I remember. He’s comfortable in his skin now but back then he’d been too tall and hadn’t known where to put those endless arms and legs. I look at his left hand. No ring. Not that I’m interested, just curious.

‘It was in our last year at school I think,’ I smile back at him.

‘It was; the leaving disco I believe.’

Our eyes meet, we both laugh and any residual embarrassment left over from that seventeen year old drunken snog drifts away on the summer breeze.

‘So, what are you doing here? I thought you moved away years ago,’ He says.

‘I did. I went to uni in Bath then moved to London. I’ve been there ever since. Well, until now. My Granny died so I’ve just moved back.’

‘Oh, I’m sorry to hear that. I liked your Granny. She always seemed so exotic.’

I wonder how he knows her but then I remember that his dad owns the hardware shop and he used to work in there after school and on Saturdays. Granny would have been a regular customer with the many projects she always had on the go in the house and garden. I nod my thanks.

‘So what about you, have you always been in Lancaster?’

‘On and off. I’ve lived in a few places but I came back when my dad was taken ill and decided to stick around when he got better. It was nice being near the family again.’

‘And do you have a family of your own?’

‘No. I was married for a while but it didn’t work out. What about you?’

There is absolutely no way I am going to tell him about what’s happened with Jimmy so I just say that I had been married too but it had also broken up, and that’s why I’d decided to move back. I feel conscious of my wedding ring still on my finger and wonder if he’s noticed and thinks I’m one of those clingy women who can’t let go of things.

‘So what do you do for a living then? Have you got yourself a job here yet?’

‘No, I haven’t. I worked for a publisher before but I’m not sure what I’m going to do now. What about you – do you run your dad’s shop?’

He shakes his head. ‘No, it’s long gone. That’s what made him so ill. The business struggled after they opened up the big Homebase. He didn’t want to tell anyone, or even admit it to himself, and the stress of it all got to be too much and he had a heart attack.’

‘Oh, Mark, that’s awful. Is he OK now?’

‘Yeah, he’s fine. But the doctors said no more stress and when he was in hospital and mum and I saw the state of things in the shop, we closed it down and he hasn’t worked since.’

‘So what do you do then?’

‘I’m a boat builder.’

‘Really? Do you get to build a lot of boats around here?’

He laughs. ‘Yes a few. I’ve got my own boatyard out Halton way.’

He stands up then. ‘Well, it’s been lovely to see you, Kate. I’ve got to get off though – work calls.’

I stand up too and there’s a moment of awkwardness – should we shake hands, kiss? Mark leans in then and kisses me on the cheek – his rough hands warm on my forearms.

‘You too, Mark. Take care.’

‘I’m sure we’ll see each other around, Lancaster’s a small town.’

He waves back over his shoulder as he walks off. I sit back down again and lean against the tree, surprised by the smile on my face.

***

Back at the house I make a start clearing Granny’s room. It still smells of her. Rose oil. I wish she was here so I could tell her how sorry I am for how things turned out, for only coming to visit a handful of times since I went to university. I worried that she would try and spring a surprise reunion with Ken on me. I was stupid to think that though. I sit down on the bed and let my head fall onto the pillows, the smell of her engulfing me. Tears roll down my face but I smile too as I remember her.

When I’m done crying I get up and open the wardrobe doors. I’m shocked by the mess. Clothes crammed together so tightly that you can barely move them along the rail. A jumble of shoes at the bottom, the shelf at the top a muddle of boxes with scarves, gloves and hats stuffed in all around them. I sigh – this is going to be a much bigger job than I thought. I move the dressing table stool over to the wardrobe and climb up on it. Things on the shelf are even more of a muddle when I get level with it – there are boxes crammed in right to the back. I take a pile from the front then climb down and place them on the bed. I do this again and again until all the boxes are on the bed and the floor in front of the wardrobe has disappeared under a rainbow mountain of accessories.

I open a heart-shaped box that seems familiar and inside, nestled on faded red tissue paper, is the Valentine’s gift Jules and I made for Granny that first February after she’d come home from Africa. We’d found a smooth grey stone shaped like a heart on the beach and Laura had helped us decorate it. There are still bits of glitter glinting on it now but the painted patterns are not quite so bright. I turn it over and there just about still visible, written in the gold pen that we had so adored, is the little poem we’d composed.

We’re glad you are our Granny

We’re happy you came home

We’ll never call you Nanny

No matter where you roam

Smiling over the burning lump in my throat I see Jules opposite me at the kitchen table, glitter in her hair and paint all over her hands as we’d tried to think up rhymes to express our love for our newly discovered Granny; Laura telling us something about A and B rhythms. I put the box to one side to show Jules when she gets back. The next three boxes are filled with more scarves – how many did one woman need? They all have exotic prints on and look like they come from Oxfam or Traidcraft, and then I realise that Granny must have just kept buying them to support the women who made them.

I look up as Jeff meows when he comes padding into the room. He’s been out of sorts since we moved here and completely lost without Ada, who ran off somewhere while I was in the hospital. He jumps up on the bed and knocks a pile of boxes onto the floor then scampers from the room, hissing, his tail fluffed up like a foxes brush.

‘Oh, Jeff, look what you’ve done,’ I call after him.

Necklaces and bracelets of brightly coloured beads and glass spill out over the rug. I scoop them up and dump them back in a box then lift up another box that hasn’t spilled open. I put it upright on my lap as I lean back against the bed and lift the lid. It’s full of letters. I pick up a handful and sift through them – many are postmarked from different places in Africa, some from Eriskay, they must be from Granny’s brother. He lived up there counting waves, or something like that. I read the start of one but then see that there’s a bundle of letters all kept together with an elastic band and I pick them up instead. The writing on them all is the same and they’ve come from New Zealand. I open the top one and start reading. It’s dated two thousand and seven so I wonder if Granny had got herself a pen pal over there. She was always getting involved in letter writing schemes – to women in prison, children in homes.

Dear Una,

I know it’s been some time since I’ve written and I hope this letter finds you and the girls well.

The girls? Me and Jules? Who’s this letter from? I turn over to see the signature and it’s signed:

with love always, Laura

Laura? What’s going on? I go back and read through it. It’s our Laura. I throw the letter down on the rug as if it’s scalding my fingers. I’m going to be sick and as I stand up to run to the bathroom, the rest of the letters spill to the floor and her writing stares up at me from them all.

After I’ve vomited I sit on the bathroom floor, my skin clammy, shivering despite the sticky August heat. I stand and run the cold tap in the sink, rinse my mouth and splash my face with water. When I look at myself in the mirror, my eyes are sunken and dark, skin pale. The improvements I’d seen in the past weeks wiped out in an instant. I sit down on the edge of the bath, shaking and scared. I don’t want to look at the rest of the letters.

Back in the bedroom they are still there. I’d half expected them to have vanished. Worried that I am losing my grip on reality again I bend down and scoop them up. I will not let this set me back. I take them and sit in the armchair by the window, there are twenty eight. I open them all and look at the dates – they go back to nineteen-ninety-one, five years after Laura left. My head spins. I can’t deal with this now after all. I put them in a pile on Granny’s bedside table and go into my room and lie on the bed. Tears soak into the pillow as I lay there for a long time before sleep finally comes.