Five Winters(40)

Finally, Sylvia pulled away, voicing what we were all thinking. “However will we do life without him?”

I didn’t know. I couldn’t imagine. As I leant against the warm support of Mark’s shoulder, I only knew that I didn’t want to.





13


We couldn’t bury Richard until the New Year because everything but grief stops for Christmas. I stayed at Sylvia’s house for a couple of nights—so did Mark and Rosie. None of us really tried to sleep, not that first night, anyway. I spoke to Jaimie on the phone, but afterwards I couldn’t remember what we’d said to each other. I felt frozen, I think. Numb. Nothing made sense. I knew he asked me when I’d be coming home, but I couldn’t tell him because I didn’t know, not exactly.

“Don’t worry,” I promised. “I’ll be back for Christmas Day.” Although it seemed the most unlikely thing in the world to be saying.

The day Mark went with Sylvia to register the death, I left my car at Sylvia’s house and took the train into London. Rosie was taking compassionate leave from work but had to go in to see to a few things, so it seemed as good a day as any for me to go to my flat to see what sort of a state my tenants had left it in.

Dalston is twenty minutes by bus from Liverpool Street Station. I sat on the top deck and looked out at the passing streets—at the bustle of the last-minute Christmas shoppers; a man dressed as Santa ringing a bell as he collected for charity; an optimistic display of sleds outside a shop, waiting for the snow we hadn’t had for years in the UK. As we got closer to my stop, I spotted Dalston Vets. What was going on in there right at this moment? Had any puppies uncovered hoards of Christmas chocolate and made themselves ill on it? Or eaten a Christmas ornament or a strand of tinsel? Very probably. There had always been some Christmas emergencies to deal with when I worked there.

Then it was almost my stop, and I stood up and rang the bell. As I got off the bus, a woman was approaching me, pushing a buggy. She was wrapped up against the cold—a heavy coat, a huge multicoloured scarf, a hat pulled right down over her ears—but I still recognised her.

“Naomi!”

“Beth!” Naomi’s face lit up, and we hugged each other in the middle of the busy street as if our lives depended on it. “It’s so good to see you! It’s been ages.”

“I know. I haven’t been back here in ages. How’s this little guy?” I bent over the buggy to take a look at Bembe. He was sitting up, wrapped up in warm clothing, his feet kicking at the toasty-looking blanket covering his legs. “Wow, you’re not so little now, are you, little man?”

Naomi laughed. “No, definitely not. He’s doing well. We all are. How about you? What brings you here?”

I straightened, the sadness descending all over again. “My tenants left. I came to check the flat over. But I was here anyway. Well, in Enfield. Because . . . because . . . well, Richard died. You know, Rosie’s dad?”

“Oh, Beth, baby. I’m so sorry. I never met him, but you spoke about him so often, I feel as if I did. He was a good ’un.”

“He was. It was a heart attack. On Sunday. All very sudden.”

“I’m so sorry.”

“Me too.” A tear ran down my cheek. I wiped it away.

“Listen,” Naomi said. “We were just on our way home. Why don’t you come back for a coffee? Tony’s out.”

I looked down the street in the direction of my flat. I hadn’t been there for more than six months. I wasn’t looking forward to finding out what sort of state it was in.

“All right,” I said, smiling at Bembe because you couldn’t help but smile at Bembe, even when you felt sad as sad could be.

Naomi’s house was like an explosion at a Christmas factory, the way it was every year. Fairy lights twinkled over mirrors and pictures. A giant Father Christmas figure stood proud in the hallway. Candles waited to be lit. There were no fewer than three red-leafed poinsettias on the windowsill. And there was, of course, a Christmas tree. Slightly smaller than usual probably, so that it could be set up high, out of Bembe’s reach. But it was extravagantly decorated nonetheless, with tinsel and baubles and chocolate treats.

I walked past it all, trying not to let it all exhaust me, while Naomi popped Bembe into his high chair and gave me rice cakes to feed him while she made coffee. The little boy’s dark eyes were huge and lively, examining every facet of my unmade-up face—a face suffering from neglect and pinched by the cold of endless winter dog walks—then the next minute dropping to focus on the very important task of dismantling his rice cakes on his high-chair tray.

“He’s just so adorable, Naomi,” I told my friend, taking my mug of coffee from her.

“He is, isn’t he? Which is just as well, isn’t it, mate? Since you’re such a lot of hard work for Mummy?” She chucked her son under the chin, speaking in a funny, high-pitched voice that made him giggle. “Yes, you are, aren’t you?”

I smiled. “He likes that.”

“Oh yes, he laps up anything fun. You should see him with his dad. Tony throws him up in the air and catches him. I can’t watch sometimes. But Bembe loves all that rough stuff.” She sat next to me at the table. “I don’t suppose you’ll be able to have the funeral for a while, what with Christmas coming?”