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  “Hi, Jeremy. Hi, Danny.” She sits at the table, looking first at one and then at the other. Each boy senses now that something is wrong. The moment becomes frozen in time and in her memory; tall, handsome Jeremy standing looking at her with a carton of milk in his hand, Daniel propped on one elbow, the cartoon instantly forgotten.

  “Where’s Lou?” she asks, and then nods as Jeremy indicates that she is upstairs, no doubt watching TV.

  She sighs in inward relief. What she has to tell the boys now, they can all rally in a while to tell Lou together. They are the Musketeers, after all. They will need all their collective strength for the hours ahead.

  Chapter 3

  23, Lancaster Row

  Ellington

  Birmingham

  0121 992 9985

  October

  Dear Joanna,

  It must be ten years or so since we were in touch, so I truly hope that you won’t mind this note.

  I heard from Moira about Stephen. I also heard how he died. What can I say except that I am so very, very sorry? You know that I felt miserable when you married him, but please believe me when I say that I send you all my best thoughts for the time ahead for you and the children. You are a strong person, Jo, and will need your strength. It’s a good thing that you have the youngsters around you. They will support you and you will be occupied in looking after them.

  Please don’t misinterpret this letter in any way – I am very settled now and the past is the past.

  If there is anything that I can do, now or in the future, you will find me down here in Birmingham. (I work for the Government now, inspecting local authorities. Who would have thought it?)

  Love, Annie

  PS

  Ring if you would like to.

  Joanna reads the letter abstractedly. She has not heard from Annie for years. It is Moira, their friend in common, who has been the staunch one and kept in touch. These friends from her undergraduate days are kind to be thinking of her just now. Over the years, Annie did not keep in touch. There were good reasons for that. But Joanna often thought about her and wondered how she was faring. Now, letter in hand, she feels nothing about this woman from the past. She is numb and inured to emotion. She crumples the letter and tosses it into the bin.

  Chapter 4

  It is dark and damp outside, the early winter light fading and auguring the dark days ahead after the clocks go back over this weekend. The house has only one lamp lit beside Joanna, where she has sat since Lou came home, curled up on the battered armchair with its beige throw, the cat on her lap and a copy of ‘The Orchard House’ open and unread under the cat. She barely noticed Mr Macnab’s arrival and she has not stirred in the last hour. The dusk matches her mood. Lou is asleep on the sofa, lulled by the warmth of the fire after her day at school. The child’s presence is a comfort.

  The front door opens and slams shut, and she starts, aware that there is no early tea ready for the boys. Mr Macnab leaps down and starts to clean himself with his front paws, simultaneously showing his disinterest and his displeasure at the interruption to his sojourn. She listens, hoping that the footsteps will come into the lounge, which will mean that it is Jeremy who is the first lad home. But no, they head upstairs at the double and another door slams – bedroom or bathroom, she is not sure which. It is Daniel, Daniel who has barely spoken since she told him about his father.

  She gets up reluctantly, dreading the exchange that she now thinks will be inevitable, but powerless to change the impasse between her and her darling son. Even though this has only gone on for nearly three weeks, she is already struggling to like Daniel as well as love him. As if robotic, she moves to the kitchen, putting lights on as she goes, opens a packet of pizza wedges from the fridge and puts them into the cold oven. Barely thinking, she flicks the switch to full heat. She sets the timer for ten minutes and closes the blinds at the kitchen window, glancing out at the patio with its autumn leaves. As she does so, she thinks vaguely that it is high time she swept them up. A mental picture of Stephen brings her to a jarring stop. It is several years ago and Stephen is doing just that - sweeping up leaves. She remembers the ring of laughter that day as the boys came up behind him and enraged him by kicking the leaves up in the air. It was just before Lou was born, the child that Stephen had so wanted, the child, she now realises, who he thought would save their marriage. When will all the flashback memories stop controlling her waking moments, the nightmares her sleeping time?

  The front door goes again and a second later, Jeremy comes into the kitchen, looks closely at his mother to check how she is and kisses her fondly on the forehead. He towers over her five foot four inches. She smiles up at him, a smile that is somehow distant as she tries to conceal her depth of misery from him. But Jeremy knows. He has his own misery by which to measure hers.

  “How went the day?” he asks, his tone upbeat and his voice light. He knows that his mother has been signed off with depression since his father’s death and he is doing all he can to keep things as ordinary as possible. He sits and Lou, who has heard his arrival and run through to greet him, comes to him with a hoop of delight and jumps on his knee. She wants to compare notes with him about their days at school, as if they were of the same order of things.

  “Just the same, Love.” Joanna smiles at Jeremy and looks into the oven to check the pizza. “How was your day?”

  She listens half abstractedly as Jeremy tells her about his school’s planned trip to

  Paris in the spring and how he and his pal Alan intend to go to basketball tomorrow, Saturday morning. Beginning to show signs of being ready to shine academically, he says little about the day’s classes – school subjects seem to be something that he just takes in his stride. His father’s death does not appear, so far at least, to have thrown him off stroke in any of his subjects. Mind you, she reflects, he was already taking the role of man of the house long before the day of the suicide. It is in Jeremy’s character to carry the burden at this time. He has been sad - gutted even - but he has also been composed. His reaction to Stephen’s death has been far removed from that of his brother.

  She relives the moment in her mind when she sat down here at this pine table on the Sunday morning and called them to her side. They came slowly, knowing already that something had happened. She found the words. There was no way to cushion them. Dad had had a terrible accident. She was just back from the hospital. There was nothing the doctors could do. She watched as the recognition and the shock hit each boy. Jeremy said nothing, just sort of grunted and bent forward as if to absorb a body blow. But Daniel let out a kind of a howl and went hysterical for a good few minutes. They let him scream and cry, Joanna unable to touch him because he had sheered away, and Jeremy too paralysed by his own pain. She waited till Daniel’s distress-torn face finally looked at her through his tears and he asked ‘what happened?’ Then she said the worst bit. Stephen, their father, had committed suicide. Jeremy gasped, “how?” - his face tortured with the new knowledge.

  She told them, fabricating the fact that his death was instant, that he was so drunk at the time that he would not really have known what he was doing and would have felt nothing. She used this version because the boys knew their father drank. That would not be new information – far from it. She hoped that this version was true and that it was quick and painless for Stephen.

  Then she was comforting them, saying that Stephen loved them. It was hard, but this did not mean that he loved them any less. It must have been that he just could not go on any longer. It was not anything that they should feel guilty about.

  They listened to her, Jeremy taking it in and coming to her to put an arm round her, Daniel just staring at her. It seemed that there was a long silence then. She felt as if her words were those of the social worker that she was; not the mother to the boys in front of her that she was. Then Daniel’s face changed. She saw hate in her son for the first time ever. Daniel exploded. He screamed at her,

  “It’s your fault. It’s
all your fault. He never wanted to leave us. He wanted to be with us. You sent him away.”

  They were words about the separation that he had never used before, but she knew then that they must have been what he thought. Or worse, they were words that Stephen had used to his two boys.

  She looked helplessly at Jeremy, but it was too late. Daniel was up and out of the room. They heard the front door slam. Jeremy shot out after his younger brother. He was back in five minutes telling her that Daniel had been out of sight by the time he reached the end of the garden.

  Her younger son came home two hours later and never did say where he went. She did not tell him off. There was no point in that. But she sat on his bed and talked to him for an hour. She did the talking to a back turned towards her. He said nothing and acknowledged nothing. He did not want his mother’s comfort and attention. It has stayed like this till now.

  In the end it was she and Jeremy who told Lou. Daniel and Lou were never that close, Daniel the usurped youngster when the baby - Louise to give her proper name - came along. Lou was an unwanted addition as far as he was concerned. Lou cried of course, sensing everyone else’s pain as well as her own. But she could not really take it in. The Daddy who was not ever a fixture in her life would not be coming home again. After that she almost instantaneously poured all the affection that she had for Stephen into Jeremy. Joanna sort of watched it happening and did nothing to alter it. If this would cushion Lou, so be it. There was no safer place for Lou’s affections than with her big brother.

  As the days went on, Jeremy acted as a kind of go-between between mother and son, reassuring her that Daniel would be all right if she just gave him time. And so, the four grieved and dwelt on the facts in their own different ways. Jeremy got on as best he could. Daniel went in on himself and looked constantly angry. Lou was outwardly the same, but quieter, as she adjusted to the distress in the family as much as to her loss of Stephen. There were times when Joanna worried for her daughter; times when Lou would go in on herself and become distant, as if lost in some unreachable place. Joanna went into depression. The whole thing became too much to talk about. They all simply had to get through the days as best each of them could.

  Jeremy volunteers now to take the pizza to Daniel but she shakes her head. She will do it. She will act as normally as possible, just as she has done for weeks. She takes the spiced bread from the oven, divides it into three and puts one piece on a tray with a glass of milk. The other pieces are for Jeremy and Lou. She heads for the door and up the stairs. She knocks and goes into the responding silence. Daniel is at his computer, some fast moving fantasy game of warriors and guns blasting away the silence. Even in profile from behind, he is beginning to take on the same look-alike features of Stephen and Jeremy.

  “Supper, Danny. I thought you might like pizza. How was your day?”

  She only ever uses the name ‘Danny’ when she is particularly close to him. Today it is an appeal to their lost closeness.

  “Fine.” Comes back the monosyllable.

  She sits on the side of his single bed.

  “We should talk,” she ventures gently.

  Silence. She tries again.

  “We should talk, Danny. This can’t go on.”

  “What can’t?”

  She snaps. There is anger in her response.

  “You know perfectly well, Danny. It was your father who decided to do this. He was ill, Danny. Otherwise it would not have happened. But no matter how ill he was, it was he who did it. No one else did it. Not me. Not you. Not Jeremy. Your Dad did this. He did it to hurt himself, not to hurt us. But we are all left with this, Danny, all of us. Not just you.”

  The words are reasoned. But now that she has snapped, her anger is coming through the words. And she knows that this might end up being cathartic for her and damaging to Daniel. She tries to stay calm. Her voice softens.

  “No matter what, Danny, I love you and your Dad loved you. No matter why he did this, it was not about you. I know that is hard to understand.”

  She sees his young shoulders begin to quiver. He is trying not to sob. But he loses the struggle and she watches as he leans forward. She wants to go to him and to hold him but as she moves he shrinks away. She sits back down. The door opens and Jeremy is in the frame, checking that they are both all right. The moment for closeness has eluded her, through no intention of her older son. Jeremy goes to Daniel and puts an arm over his shoulder. Daniel does not resist. She can only sit.

  “Come on boys, we have a difficult future to face. We were united at the funeral. We can do it again.”

  “Mum’s right, Danny,” Jeremy cajoles his brother with a gentle shake to his shoulder. “Dad would want us to bat together as a family. We can do it. Can’t we?”

  “Suppose so.” Daniel mutters reluctantly.

  Jeremy smiles at his mother, a smile that says that it is best left at that. But whether Daniel wants her to or not, she is going to touch him, make contact physically with him, her baby. She goes to him, puts an arm round him and presses her lips to his cheek.

  “I love you, Danny. I know how you feel. And I’ll tell you anything you want to know about why your Dad and I split up. I tried to tell you when it was all happening but you were much younger then. You can ask anything you want, you know.”

  She has gone as far as she can. She leaves the two boys alone together and goes back to the kitchen. Lou wants attention and is bringing her dolls for a cuddle. Lou wants to play hospitals, in a sad reprise of the news she heard of her father’s death.

  How Joanna would love a drink. But she must not, not on the anti-depressants. She knows she would be drunk within minutes. She also knows that one drink would lead to another. And she will not do that to herself. She will not do that to the children. She cuddles Lou as she hears yelps of laughter coming from above. In other times she would have called for hush and warned them about fooling about. But now it is different. This is the first buoyant moment in weeks; the first time that there has been a laugh in the house. And, ironically, it is Daniel’s laugh that she is hearing. She could feel jealous of Jeremy’s success in breaking the first barrier of the impasse. But she knows that she played her part just now. This is the first moment of cheer she has felt herself.

  The phone rings and interrupts her moment of weakness in needing a drink.

  “Hi. It’s Moira. How is it going?”

  Moira is her pal from undergraduate days in St Andrews, a stalwart friend in those years, and later during their postgraduate days in Edinburgh. Moira lives in Somerset now, a wife and mother who gave up her career as postgraduate secretary to a London bank.

  “I’m as well as can be expected. I need a drink,” she informs her friend, her tone matter of fact.

  She does not need to pull the wool over Moira’s eyes and she could not, even if she tried. They are the product of an undergraduate friendship that has left each with a life long sense of who the other person is. She tells Moira what has been happening since the funeral, the last time they saw each other and spoke. Moira barely knew Stephen, but she flew up to Inverness, just to be there to support her long-term friend.

  It was a dreadful experience, the funeral. There were too many sympathetic people there. She and Stephen had built up a wide circle of friends who had split down the middle, as is the way of things when a couple separates. Some took Joanna’s part, others Stephen’s. But they all stayed friends of one of them, in some form. And they all turned out to the funeral and formed a tense, uncomfortable mass. It was her Gang, the women friends of the last twenty years, people she met in the early part of her career up here in Inverness that she felt safest with – the very friends whom Stephen had resented do much. The Gang were all there, with their three remaining husbands. They are two husbands down now, and three left, since Geraldine’s husband, Anthony, and now Stephen are both gone. The Gang and Moira saw her through the funeral.

  Stephen’s relatives, estranged from Joanna since the separation, were out in for
ce at the crematorium, resentful in unspoken anger at the attention to Joanna from the Church of Scotland minister. During the service, Joanna’s Gang hovered around her, ready to protect her from any criticism that might be levelled at her over the suicide. The service started in a mix of silence and hostility, and took its painful course.

  The minister was wonderful and somehow steered his way through the whole thing by focussing on Jeremy and Daniel, and on young Lou in particular, forcing the different factions to respect the children first and foremost in all this. The moment when the closed coffin disappeared behind the curtains on its way to the furnace was the worst, and Joanna stood, a boy on either side of her, Lou in front of her and cuddled into her, all four of them transfixed with the knowledge that the shattered body would quickly cease to exist. That was the worst moment. It was the moment when all thoughts of suicide and of the last years of strife and separation vanished. What she was watching at that moment was the coffin of the man she had once loved as it transported his body to its waiting furnace. In that moment, Joanna felt again her love of Stephen and Stephen’s love of her. That was the worst moment. She thought that her legs would give way under her. Then the whole thing was over and she was outside, in the crisp of the frosty afternoon, shaking hands with a hundred or so people, all of them somewhere on the spectrum from sympathy to blame. It was all she could do to hold her head up high. The boys were magnificent, young men now, as they stood by her, Jeremy to her right holding Lou’s hand, and Daniel to her left, thanking people for coming and accepting their words of condolence, like men should.

  And Moira was great. She was the one, maybe even more than the Gang of Geraldine, Wendy, Bobby and Michelle, who eased Joanna’s sore heart almost without a word being said. They were used to non-verbal communication, these two, from their empathic understanding, each of the other. They just stood looking at one other when it was Moira’s turn to give her condolences, all the assembled funeral party about them in their sombre clothes ceasing to exist. And then Moira held her, firmly and quietly. Her embrace brought relief and comfort.