The Square Root of Summer(54)

I’m ready to live in the world again, but the world won’t let me.

He’s warm and safe and cinnamon as he promises me, “I have to go. But you remember my promise, right? I’ll always—”

Before I hear the rest, I spin away down the drain.





Thursday 5 September (Last Year)

[Minus four]

I’m sweating hot. Autumn, and the air is glossy with sunshine. It’s the wrong day to be wearing a black wool dress. Any day is the wrong day for what we’re doing.

We’ve been standing, singing hymns I don’t know, for ten minutes. I’m not used to wearing heels; Sof got the bus to town and bought me these. They’ve rubbed all the skin off the back of my feet—I can feel my tights sticking to the blood. I sway in the heat, shifting my weight from one foot to another. I want to sit down, I think. Then immediately try to unthink it.

Ned grips my elbow as I sway, and I look up at him. His hair is tied back in a neat bun.

“You okay?” he mouths. I nod as the hymn finishes and we sit down with a murmur, a clatter of pews, a rustle of paper. There’s a pause while the pastor climbs back up to the lectern. I glance over my shoulder, searching for Jason. He’s looking at Ned, not me. Sof catches my eye. I turn back to the front.

“Grots,” Ned hisses at me, nodding at the coffin. “It kind of looks like a picnic basket.”

A giggle forms in the back of my throat. I chose it—one of those woven, willow branch ones. Grey would have been pushed out to sea and shot at with burning arrows if he could. Instead, after this, there’s—

Don’t think about it, don’t think about it, don’t.

We stand up again.

Papa gets the words of the next hymn wrong, confidently launching into a second chorus. Ned snorts.

It’s been like this all day, lurching from ordinary to horror, a binary rhythm.

Washing my hair with mint-flavor shampoo, eating a piece of toast. Putting Marmite on the table before I remembered. Pulling on black tights even though it’s twenty-nine degrees outside and Grey would want us all barefoot anyway. I took them on and off a thousand times and I was still ready too early. Ned’s arm around me on the sofa, flicking through the channels. Waiting for the motorcade to arrive, even though the church is a five-minute walk from our house.

Traveling in a hearse. Feeling hungry. Trying to remember what food I asked the pub to prepare for afterwards. Papa red-eyed. Ned asking me to tie his tie.

The word eulogy.

Listening to the pastor talk about James Montella. Thinking, who’s that? Why aren’t you calling him Grey? Everybody laughing at a story the pastor tells about him trying to jump across the canal to prove something, and his daughter asking him to at least hand over the keys to the Book Barn first. I try to remember, then understand he’s talking about something that happened before I was born. He’s talking about Mum.

We’re standing up again, another hymn. I wince, my feet aching.

“Take them off.” It’s Ned, his hand steady on my shoulder. “It’s okay, Grotbags. Take them off.”

It’s what Grey would do. But I can’t, I don’t deserve to be comfortable, and I sway in the heat and I’m falling—





Saturday 16 August

[Minus three hundred and forty-nine and Minus three]

“No, like—forsythia, or heather. That color yellow.”

The florist shows me more lilies, creamy ones, and I want to shout at her because she’s not getting it. She won’t give me yellow tulips and it has to be right; it has to be yellow tulips at the funeral! I’m practically screaming it, and she’s looking at me blankly, saying, “It’s September…”—

*

[Minus two]

I yank the dress over my head. It gets caught around my bra. I’m sweating already, huffing and puffing as I tug on the zip. Sof’s outside the changing room curtain and she needs to shut UP, everything comes up too short around my thighs and stretches tight round my armpits, I’m too tall. I’d never choose this dress anyway, this color. It’s black, but then, it’s supposed to be—

*

[Minus one]

The phone in the kitchen rings and none of us move to answer it, just carry on staring at nothing like we have been all evening. After a second, the machine cuts in. “This is James, Jeurgen, Edzard, and Margot,” Grey’s voice booms out and then he starts chuckling at our ridiculous names and he’s laughing fit to burst, it fills the room, like his death is just a big cosmic joke the universe is playing on us. Ha, ha, ha—

*

It’s obvious what’s coming next. Since the funeral, I’ve been lurching in and out of time, closer and closer to Grey’s death. Four wormholes in three days, their intensity and frequency leaving me dizzy. I only know it’s Saturday, the day of the party, because this morning Ned was staggering round the kitchen, haphazardly assembling a bacon sandwich and asking me if I wanted to borrow his eyeliner for tonight.

I have time-travel jet lag and a sick, sour headache. There’s a stale taste in my mouth as I sit in the Book Barn, a pool of darkness waiting in the shadows. Papa is harrumphing. He’s prowling around the shelves near the desk, while I painstakingly type. The computer is so slow, it clicks and whirs between each keystroke.