‘She’s called Hannah,’ he continues, and as he mentions her name, his voice regains colour, and for a moment, the daffodils don’t seem so far away. ‘I met her in the museum, about two months ago. We’ve been commenting on each other’s books for a while.’
John had been holding back the tears for weeks. It was far worse in public - they hovered behind the squint in his eyes and the hard line of his lips. Perhaps that was why she had noticed him.
“The Osiris legend is fascinating, isn’t it?” she said, and the light admiration in her voice made John look up. She laughed, all Cupid’s bow lips and friendly blue eyes, and he smiled in return. She gestured to the cabinet of ancient figures to dispel confusion, and he nodded in embarrassment. “It’s one of my favourites.” She grinned.
The museum suddenly became more than lovely relics, and it would for a while afterwards.
You’re leaving me behind? She glares, and he shakes his head, urgently trying to put his mind to rest.
‘You left me behind!’ He argues, and his eyebrows knit in frightened heartbreak, fist curling around the rough ends of the small bouquet he holds. ‘I…’ He shakes his head, knowing she wouldn’t say that, not really, and she certainly wouldn’t mean it. He simply fears.
Oh God, does he fear.
What would the neighbours think? What would the relatives think? They’d blame him, watch on from their judgmental pews and point, and question him with brash barks on the past two years, and indeed, the ten years of marriage, and they’d tell him to think of the kids… but isn’t he allowed to be happy?
‘I need you to be okay with this,’ he reasons, biting his lip. ‘She’s not a replacement. She’s not. But she’s… warm, and she understands. She knows how to make me happy. God, Luna, do I need to be happy.’
Kids fed, cat out, alarm set for the groggy morning, John settled on the edge of the mattress, hands running over his drawn features. He still couldn’t look at the empty space in the bed. It beckoned him with resentment, lost time and loneliness, but he couldn’t bring himself to feel those things. He only knew he missed her.
There is silence. Biting silence, in which flowers grow, and branches rustle and creak. Distant cars whisper by, passing footsteps clack on paved pathways. He waits for something to give, but of course it doesn’t. What does he expect? For her to throw her arms around him, tell him that it’s alright? For the clouds to part, and the spring to arrive? He wishes it was all so easy. He wishes he isn’t here at all.
Yet he is. The fact is that he has found somebody else. Love must make way for love, and despite the secrecy, the private meetings in coffee shops, and tender kisses on cab back seats… Here he is, telling his wife about the new woman in his life.
‘Hannah told me to come and tell you. I was nervous, but…’ He bends down, and he sets the flowers at his feet. ‘I know you’d want me to be happy.’
She stopped at the door, one bag slung over her shoulder – stuffed with things she needed, but didn’t want. He followed her, leaning against the door frame, watching her with sad eyes. He’d have stopped her if he could.
She noticed, and cupped his face - so gentle. Despite everything; her eyes still smiled even though she didn’t look like herself anymore.
No words were exchanged, just mutual understanding.
He steps back, and nods towards the arch of the gravestone, charcoal grey with fine, gold script across its front. It displays her name beautifully, and his own, just beneath, proclaiming him as a loving husband, when he feels the opposite now he has somebody else.
Tufts of unopened daffodils edge the grave, splashing green on an otherwise pallid backdrop. It is normally one of the more modestly beautiful graves in the cemetery, but the late spring and haphazard baby’s breath only make it look sadder.
‘Forgive me,’ he says, in a voice so soft the wind masquerades with it and carries it away.
He heaves a sigh, and gives his wife’s grave one last smile, before kicking his heels and leaving, hands buried in his pockets, head bowed. Around him, the cemetery is still asleep; false flowers waiting in fresh dirt, raindrops beading on stone angels wings, row upon row of the painfully missed and sorely forgotten.
By the stone, beneath the date of death – two years ago now, yet so recent – the first daffodil blooms.
And one by one, slowly but confidently, so do the rest.
Remember, Remember
Remember, remember, the fifth of November...
Without meaning to, Sophie found her footsteps beating out the steady rhythm of the nursery rhyme as she rounded the last corner and headed up the muddy track to the village recreation ground – the “wreck”, as she and the rest of the village kids called it, due to its scruffy, time-worn, but well-loved, appearance.
It was basically a field that had been glorified after the War as a place to kick a football around, or bat a cricket ball haphazardly during the summer. Then the village fetes and maydays had thrown in their lot, until finally one rare, hot summer in the late ‘70s saw the installation of a children’s playground at one end, beneath the willow trees. A couple of picnic benches added a decade later marked a dividing line between the playground and the sports pitch that still formed the bulk of the grassy area.
And tonight, as per traditional holiday usage, the “wreck” was home to a shambling assortment of fairground rides, toffee-apple stands, fireworks and shrieking kids running wild everywhere...
Bonfire Night.
Sophie couldn’t believe that it had come around again already. She paused by the gate, watching the scene that was silhouetted in shadows before her, flickering against the pitch black night sky. It was freezing cold; Sophie had been forced to assemble the full winter wardrobe against the biting wind, her hat, scarf and mittens firmly in place, although she couldn’t stop her unruly straw-blonde curls from blowing across her face even with the woolly beanie. She was going to have to watch that later, lest it get tangled in the sugary goo of the toffee-apples and candy-floss that always accompanied the firework finale.
Always.
Sophie was beginning to grow dubious about that word. For the past sixteen years, she had never really known anything different than “always” for her and her best friends, Louise and Debbie. The three of them had been friends since reception class and every year saw them uphold the same traditions and jokes... Bonfire Night was no exception; they would always go to the wreck, they would always bypass the bigger carni rides for the spinning teacups and they would always eat enough sugar to make their legs twitch when they finally returned home and sat down for hot chocolate and a few eternal episodes of ‘Friends’.
Only this year they had turned sixteen and, without warning, everything had changed – as if this milestone in teenage birthdays had exploded something at the back of Louise and Debbie’s minds that had been threatening to detonate for a while. Their old interests had suddenly snapped into nothingness, melted by the flooding hormonal acid of fashion, boys and an endlessly trivial interest in the minutiae of celebrity lifestyles.
The sixteenth birthday meltdown didn’t appear to affect everyone though, Sophie reflected bitterly; although she didn’t exactly hate any of those things, her interest in them definitely didn’t extend to the pedestal-heights Lou and Debs held them at... She’d rather read, or watch a movie with a mound of popcorn, or go out and play basketball at the wreck – things Lou and Debs told her were boring, fattening, or else might break a nail...
She was beginning to irk them, Sophie could tell.
But they were beginning to irk her just as much.
Steeling her nerve, she plunged on into the Bonfire Night fray, which was mainly made up of kids, although a few adults were clumped together in groups around the edges, mainly parents of the younger children. It was one of those rare village-run occasions where guys and girls of all ages could hang out together, regardless of the usual social boundaries and barriers, and so the n
ight was a teeming mass of raucous screams, yells and laughter. The darkness of the sky above them, spattered with stars, and the flashing lights of the fairground rides merged people with their shadows, until the field gave the illusion of being twice as full.
Sophie looked around vaguely for her friends. The bonfire was a huge mass of burnt orange at the other end of the wreck, burning steadily like a beacon in the middle of the roughly marked football pitch; just behind it was a rustling line of safety tape, halting children who might unwittingly approach the regiments of unlit fireworks that were waiting for the crux of the evening. The figures warming themselves beside the fire’s rosy glow were flickering, distorted shapes, moving spasmodically as they chatted and laughed. Sophie’s stomach rumbled at the thought of a huge bag of sickly-sweet candy-floss, munched beside the bonfire’s crackling roar – the cosiest scene she knew. Now just to find Lou and Debs and she could get started on making it a reality...
After a few seconds of scanning, Sophie finally caught sight of the two girls perched on the unnaturally stationary roundabout with a couple of other girls from the year – and a cluster of boys. Sighing, Sophie headed over.
‘Soph!’ Debbie waved enthusiastically as she approached, looking eerily and unnecessarily glam in the flickering light of the bonfire that raged off in the distance behind them. Sophie noticed, her stomach plummeting like a rock as she did so, that both girls were wearing garish pink wellies with chunky, “high” heels – the kind Sophie hated because, well, was there anything more pointless? Wellies were meant to be for muddy walks and splashing through puddles – they weren’t designed to have ridiculous heels that would damage their practicality.
Then she noticed that all the other girls in the group – vague blurs of names and faces from school who, without the uniforms, just merged into one indistinguishable mass of bleached hair and orange foundation – were wearing the same boots as her friends.
Sophie suddenly felt horribly conspicuous in her plain green, flat wellies...
They didn’t even have a pattern, horror of horrors.
‘Where’ve you been, Soph? We’ve been waiting for an age.’
‘Sorry, I got held up – Mum – ’
‘Yeah, we’ve been at least twenty minutes waiting for you,’ Louise interrupted her, although her gaze remained upon Dan Stockett, who was scuffing his trainers against the softened asphalt of the playground and chatting with a couple of other boys. He thought he was David Beckham, the class "premier" footballer; unfortunately for him, nothing could be further from the truth. ‘We were just about to go on the ‘Spin Doctor’; it looks awesome this year.’
No, it pretty much looks the same as it does every other year, Lou.
Sophie bit her tongue, swallowing the retort quickly.
‘So you coming?’ Debs was already on her feet, the group lurching towards the whirling lights of the fairground rides, where other kids were already clumped in straggling lines. Sophie opened her mouth, but already Debs was listening to the chatter of another girl and Sophie felt a molten knot of irritation clasp her at stomach again.
‘Actually, I’m starving so I might just skip this ride and go get something to eat.’ That seemed to get through, since both Debs and Lou turned to look at her, bemused. They’d surely realise now, right? Hang fire for a few minutes, go with her for toffee apples and hang out, just the three of them again – right?
‘Oh,’ Louise pulled a face, half-surprised, half-dismissive. ‘Well, if you’re sure.’
Sophie felt the molten knot climb higher, burning her gullet.
‘Come on, Sophie! It’s the ‘Spin Doctor’; you can eat after!’ Debs at least was trying to keep her included – it was just too bad that Sophie knew how quickly that loyalty would waver as soon as they reached the ride. Half the summer holidays and two months stuck in school together had already proven to Sophie how much things had changed; their old gang of three had been sacrificed for the wider crowd... So why was she so surprised now?
‘No, seriously, Debs – I’m starved. I’ll just go and – ’
‘You’re really not coming?’ Sophie felt tongue-tied; she desperately wanted her oldest, closest friends to think highly of her - but equally she couldn't hide away how much she just ended up feeling like a stupid little kid around them these days. She was blushing furiously now – a beetroot beneath a grape-purple beanie – and she could feel Debs glaring daggers into the back of her neck. Lou, meanwhile, was gone; linked with Daniel Stockett, her laughter shot back to Sophie, too high, and the irritation boiling her blood finally overtook the flush of embarrassment. Her stupid, so-called friends only wanted to go on the stupid ride to “accidentally” fall against the clueless boys, screaming girlishly all the while –
She’d rather just have her toffee apple by the bonfire.
‘Yeah, I’m fine – I’m actually really hungry, so... I’ll just grab some food and wait for you guys by the railings or... whatever...’
Sophie trailed off as Debbie frowned at her, looking as though food was something so un-cool she’d actually never heard of it before. Then, with a dismissive shrug, she turned away to rejoin the others: no backwards glance.
Always; yeah, right.
Bristling, she turned her back just as deliberately on the superficially chattering group, squaring her shoulders in the direction of the bonfire and food – the night’s only potential salvation. The warmth of the fire smouldered against her cheeks, the logs crackling and snapping above the voices and laughter of neighbours and friends. About fifteen feet from the bonfire, Sophie paused, deliberating the stands: toffee apples or candy-floss? She could even go for a hotdog, but it seemed less fitting somehow...
She was veering towards the pink, sickly-sweet fluff of some candy-floss (less embarrassing to try to eat in front of the others, lest they find her again after their ride) when she saw it – and her heart froze mid-beat.
‘Hey!’ The yell burst from her chest and Sophie took off running, ignoring the strange looks from surrounding teens; how the hell had no one else noticed him? ‘Hey! Zach! Zach! What do you think you’re doing?’
Sophie had curved around the side of the bonfire, nearing the hazard tape that was flapping in the November breeze; up this close, the flames were sizzling hot, the sparks miniature firework explosions above the smoking logs and debris. Lurking in the shadows, just beneath the hazard tape, was a small figure, crouched on his hands and knees, poking a long stick into the burning embers with the naivety of the very young towards his safety.
‘Zach!’ Sophie repeated, her voice tight with panicked, but subdued, volume. ‘Get away from there now, what the hell do you think you’re doing?’
The little boy – nine years old, her next-door neighbour and frequent babysitting charge – looked up with large brown eyes, bemused at her anger. Sixteen now and yet still really fun, Zach idolised Sophie and, although she complained that she was too old for the job now, secretly she liked him just as much. He was a sweet little kid, funny without realising it and deeply intelligent; he had an almost scary aptitude for constructing things and could solve a Rubik’s cube in three minutes flat. Which was why Sophie was so surprised to find him playing somewhere so dangerous.
Taking hold of his arm, she managed to draw him a couple of feet away before he wriggled out of her grasp; crouching to her knees to level with him, she gave him her most serious and adult look.
‘Zach, you need to come away from the bonfire now, it’s not safe. What were you thinking?’
‘But I can’t leave yet – I have to make sure it’s in properly!’ The boy protested, turning his gaze back to the fire. He was a skinny thing, with a mop of deep brown hair that was almost-black; his ears stuck out a bit beneath his woolly hat, in that little-kid fashion that hovers on the cusp between childhood and adolescence. In the gleaming orange glow of the fire, Sophie could see the freckles smattering across his nose – just as cute as hers had been when she was nine. At sixteen, they just made her
feel awkward, peppering her pale skin.
‘Make sure what’s in?’
Zach’s answer almost toppled her to the ground in surprise.
‘The phoenix egg.’
‘Wh-what?’
‘The phoenix egg,’ Zach repeated, looking up at her as though she were stupid.
‘Oh-kaaay,’ Sophie paused, wondering what sort of strange game this was; a quick glance around, though, told her that Zach was as on his own tonight as he was every other day. His parents had just had another “miracle” baby, their time currently devoted to the six-month old in a way that Zach was finding it hard to compete with. He didn’t usually resort to dangerous activities to get attention though... ‘So, you were putting a phoenix egg in the bonfire to...?’
‘That’s how phoenixes are born, Sophie.’ Zach’s voice definitely had an undertone of “jeez, don’t you know anything?’ to it this time. ‘They come out of the flames.’
‘Well, yeah,’ Sophie was at a bit of a loss. ‘But I don’t think they mean bonfires. Look, come away, yeah – it’s really dangerous to be so close, Zach.’
‘But I need to make sure it’s in far enough, otherwise it won’t hatch!’
With a sigh, Sophie leant forwards, peering through the swaying flames into the dark heart of the bonfire’s burning, criss-crossed wooden base. The heat made everything blur hazily, like petrol fumes over tarmac in the heat of summer. She shook her head.
‘Well, I can’t see anything, Zach, so I think it’s pretty far in, okay?’ Gently seizing his elbow once more, she tugged him back from the fire and the hazard tape; this time he went with her, albeit reluctantly.