We Own the Sky(80)

“Please, Anna, please give me the bottle back.”

Her chest and face were bright red, and she spoke through clenched teeth, her

words a whispered hiss. “That was a disgusting thing to say. The most disgusting thing you have ever said to me. How dare you judge me. How dare you! Your father would be ashamed of you. Ashamed, Rob, because you’re half the man he was.”

I grabbed the vodka from Anna, but the bottle slipped out of my hand and

smashed onto the kitchen floor. We watched as the vodka spread across the tiles, the splinters of glass sparkling in the afternoon sun.

Anna said her words with such poise, such clarity, I knew they must be true. “I hate you, Rob,” she said. “I fucking hate you.”

  *

Maybe this was the booze talking, but you think you know a person, though you never really do. You bury the bad things, keep them out of sight. I remembered the first time I noticed Anna’s coldness. A group email she had sent after her family dog had died, just after we had moved to London. A eulogy that was so awkward, so unfeeling, it was as if she had only sent the email out of a sense of duty, because she thought, in those circumstances, that was what one did.

I saw that coldness again, a few times over the years. Her curt and final “we were never that close” after her grandmother died. Her insistence that she would never give money to beggars, because there were charities for that. While her lack of empathy sometimes bothered me, it was mitigated by the fact that it wasn’t ever directed at me.

Anna’s intransigence. The rules are there for a reason. That’s what she always said. The rules are there for a reason. Because in Anna’s world, there was a proper way of doing things. You didn’t cheat on your tax return, or even try to get out of a parking ticket, because what if everyone did that? You didn’t sneak in to watch a second movie in the theater, when you had only paid for one. You didn’t go to unregistered cancer clinics in the Czech Republic, even if it meant your dying son would be given a chance.

I cleaned up the broken glass in the kitchen and got another bottle of vodka from my backpack. Through the French windows, I could see Anna in the backyard. She was frantically digging in the flower beds with a spade. I watched her as she bent down, scooped out soil with a trowel and flung it over her shoulder.

  *

“Can we talk?” Anna was dressed for work, in pinstripes, her hair tied back. It was two or three days since we had argued, and we had barely spoken. I nodded, confused, unable to remember what happened last night. There was a large purple bruise on my forearm.

“I made you a coffee,” she said, placing a mug on the table.

“Thanks.”

“I wanted to speak to you now, while you’re sober.” She took a deep breath. “I can’t do this anymore, and I’m leaving.”

I did not feel anger but a sense of relief. Relief that I wouldn’t have to hide my bottles anymore, that I could sit here in the living room and drink in peace.

“Okay,” I said.

“We should work out what we’re going to do with everything,” she said, “but let’s do it through lawyers. I can’t deal with that right now.”

“Okay,” I said, and Anna bit her lip as if she had something she wanted to say but couldn’t. I lay on the sofa and heard her carry a suitcase downstairs and then quietly close the front door.

  *

Six weeks later, after I had drunk through our wine collection and our drinks’

cabinet, I left. I couldn’t be in that house anymore. There was nothing left; Anna had taken everything. No little shoes by the door, no dinosaurs or Lego for me to trip on in the hall. I could no longer hear the sound of Jack’s songs as he sat in the bath or hear his little feet padding up the stairs.

I put our furniture and the things Anna hadn’t taken into storage. The movers took my stuff to the rented house in Cornwall, a place I had chosen because it seemed suitably remote and I had been there on holiday as a child.

On the day that I left, when all the furniture was gone, I had one last drink, sitting on the floor in the empty kitchen. I finished my glass of vodka and then filled up my Diet Coke bottle for the train. Just before I left, I went into the sunroom to check that the French windows were locked. As I was looking out over the backyard for the last time, I noticed it. A third sunflower swaying in the wind.





Part Three





1

The rain soaks through my trouser legs as I make my way through the long grass toward the back of Hampstead Cemetery. To get to Jack’s plot, from the entrance by the church, there is a shortcut through the oldest part of the site. The gravestones here are ramshackle, resting at oblique angles, battered by the wind; the grass is overgrown.

My shoes are caked with mud but I trudge on, leaning a little into the wind.

There is always one grave that catches my eye, where I have to stop and stand still for a moment. A little girl carved into stone, tortuously thin and covering her face, as if she is hiding from death itself.

As I approach Jack’s grave, I stand behind an ash tree, which always seems incongruous in company, as if it should be standing alone on a Winnie the Pooh hill, waiting for lightning to strike. I peek out from behind the tree to see if Anna is here, but the graveyard is empty. I know she comes here, because sometimes there are flowers.