The Forgetting(34)
Livvy snapped closed the laptop, frustration pulsing at her wrists; whatever Dominic’s cavalier attitude, she knew that Christian wouldn’t keep the job open for another two months, and she was damned if she was going to give it up now.
ANNA
LONDON
It is early in the park. Too early, even, for parents with young children. An elderly man walks a limping black Labrador. Two young women run side by side in black Lycra leggings and fluorescent tops, each with headphones pressed against their ears. A middle-aged woman power-walks past the bandstand, elbows thrusting back and forth as she strides along.
The morning breeze winds its way around my shoulders, slips beneath the open collar of my jacket. I fasten the zip, pull it up to my neck. The sun is making valiant attempts to burn through the clouds but is yet to gather its strength for the day.
Glancing over my shoulder, I scan each of the paths, left and right, but there is no sign of them yet. Looking down at my watch I see that it is not yet nine-thirty, tell myself to be patient. A part of me feels foolish, waiting for a woman I have spoken to only once, a woman who does not even know I am here. I cannot explain this need to talk to her, to tell her what I have learnt. Only that, since finding out about my parents’ death last Friday, I have felt a need to confide in someone, as though perhaps only the act of telling another person will enable me to comprehend it fully myself.
When Stephen got home from work last night and asked about my trip to the V&A, I almost fibbed and told him I remembered visiting it before, just to avoid our collective disappointment. But instead, I told him the truth, and he wrapped his arms around me, said he was sorry, reminded me that it’s still early days. He urged me not to get too despondent, reassured me that my past would return soon enough. I want to believe he is right and yet, with each passing hour, my faith in my recovery seems to wane.
‘Hey.’
I turn around, feel a rush of relief.
Zahira lowers herself onto the bench beside me as Elyas runs straight for the sandpit. Zahira is dressed casually – skinny jeans, a loose-fitting white t-shirt, navy blazer rolled up at the sleeves – but she looks elegant, poised, and there is a sense of calm about her that seeps into me as if by osmosis.
‘How have you been?’
It is such an innocuous question and yet I know there are two possible answers: the platitudinal and the truthful.
I tell her all I have learnt over the past few days, watch the emotions shift across her face like clouds across the sky: shock, horror, sadness. It is reassuring, somehow, to see my own emotional journey reflected back at me.
‘I can’t imagine what you must be going through, finding that out after everything that’s happened. How are you feeling?’ Zahira rests a hand on my arm, her eyes flitting between my face and her son playing in the sandpit.
‘I’m not really sure. Numb, I think. And then I feel guilty because I think I ought to feel something, some sort of grief, but it’s like it’s out of reach somehow.’ I think about the past few days, about my fear that I cannot seem to mourn my parents’ death. There is only panic that perhaps I will never remember them.
‘I don’t think there’s any prescribed way to feel when you’ve been through what you have. You just have to be kind to yourself and get through each day as best you can.’
A phone rings and Zahira reaches into the pocket of her jeans, pulls out her mobile, turns to me apologetically. ‘Sorry, I need to take this.’ She steps up from the bench, walks a few paces away, eyes still tracking her son.
Elyas plays happily for a minute, clambering up the short wooden ramp to the top of the toddler slide and gliding down. But then he looks towards the bench and his face crumples at the empty space where his mother had been sitting. Fear clouds his expression and I can almost feel his panic thumping in my chest. I dash towards him, crouch down to his level. ‘Don’t worry, poppet, your mummy’s just over there, look.’ He follows the line of my finger to where Zahira is waving at him, just a few yards away, and I watch the anxiety melt from his eyes. ‘How about we go and sit on the bench, wait for Mummy to finish her call? She won’t be long.’
He stares at me with non-committal eyes, studying my face with concentrated intensity. Looking towards his mum, she nods encouragingly and it is reassurance enough. Placing his hand in mine, Elyas lets me lead him towards the bench. Settled on the wooden slats, he looks up at me expectantly as though, now I am here, I might at least entertain him.
‘Do you like poems?’
He eyes me suspiciously and I remind myself that he’s only three, he probably doesn’t know what a poem is. I wrack my brain, try to summon a remnant of children’s verse from deep in the recesses of my mind.
‘The Owl and the Pussycat went to sea,
In a beautiful pea-green boat.’
‘My granny has a cat. It’s called Pusskins.’ Elyas grins and I smile at him, continue.
‘They took some honey, and plenty of money,
Wrapped up in a five-pound note.’
The rhyming stanzas follow, one after another – the land of the Bong-Trees, the pig in the wood, the turkey on the hill – and I do not know where they have come from, why they have managed to appear now, when I need them. And yet here they are, every line, until the end.
‘They danced by the light of the moon,