Coming Home. Annabel Kantaria

I sighed. How should I know? I sat back in the armchair and ate my biscuit. School was difficult, but home wasn’t much easier. Graham had been the only pupil from our school ever to have died and no one knew what to say to me, his kid sister. On my first day back, everyone had spoken in clichés. ‘Don’t worry. He wouldn’t have known what hit him,’ they’d said, way too graphically. ‘He’s in a happier place now. He’s looking down on you from heaven.’ My classmates repeated what they heard the adults say. A boy in Graham’s class even said, ‘Don’t worry. He’d have been happy that it was a BMW.’

      Dazed, I’d nodded at people as they spun around me, all ‘Graham this, Graham that’.

      ‘When someone dies,’ I said to Miss Dawson, ‘why is it all about them? They’re not there any more. Graham couldn’t hear them saying all those things. I could. Why didn’t anyone ask how I was? I’m the one who’s still alive!’ I knitted a row furiously. ‘And now no one talks to me about Graham at all. It’s like he never existed. But sometimes I just want to talk about him.’

       ‘That’s what these sessions are about, Evie. You know I’m here to try and help.’

      I forced myself to smile but my mouth wobbled. I looked down at the knitting on my lap. Miss Dawson hadn’t known Graham. How could she talk about him? I wanted to talk about him with someone who remembered the silly pranks he used to play, what his favourite food was, the fact that he was scared of Doctor Who.

       ‘I’d talk to Mum, but …’

      On my first day back at school, I’d come home and, out of habit, I’d pushed open Graham’s door. The room had still smelled of him, as though his dusky boy-essence had permeated the carpet, the curtains and the duvet that Mum still hadn’t stripped from his bed. I’d lain down on his bed and hugged his pillow. For the first time since he’d died, I’d fallen into a deep and natural sleep.

      I didn’t hear Mum come in but I’ll never forget the sound that came out of her mouth when she saw someone asleep in Graham’s bed. It was feral, animalistic and seemed to go on forever. Mum had grabbed handfuls of books from Graham’s shelf and hurled them at me, screaming ‘Get out! Get out! How dare you? How dare you try to fool me? Do you think I’m STUPID? Do you think I don’t know my SON IS DEAD?’ She’d collapsed on the floor and I’d slunk out, a part of me wishing it was me who’d died.

       ‘I’d talk to Mum,’ I told Miss Dawson. ‘But it’s not always easy.’

       CHAPTER 10

      10.45 a.m. saw Mum and I walking up the road towards the High Street in a light drizzle. She was smart in a beige raincoat and headscarf (‘I don’t have anything black,’ she’d said. ‘Do you think it matters?’), while I was wearing the warmest thing I’d been able to find in the wardrobe—a brown coat of Mum’s that had, frankly, seen better days. It wasn’t my finest fashion moment.

      As we trudged up the street, Mum pointed out all the things that had changed since I’d last been home, and passed on little snippets of gossip. I didn’t have the heart to tell her I had no idea who she was talking about. The walk was slightly uphill and into the wind, and I soon became breathless with it, so I let her ramble on—I think she was enjoying having me there to talk to.

      ‘Oh and number forty-two applied for planning permission for an extension, but we lobbied the Council to block it,’ she said. ‘It would have looked so ugly! You can’t mess with these Victorian houses! And this—a conservation area! And look at that ridiculous sports car that Mr Olsen’s bought. I mean! How old does he think he is? Twenty-one again? I remember when he was knee-high to a donkey! He’s mad to leave that parked outside, anyway—I bet it’ll get stolen, just like what happened to that silly Mercedes at number nineteen. Oh look! There’s Richard!’

      I looked up and, indeed, there was Richard walking towards us, returning from the High Street. Much to my disappointment he wasn’t dressed as a pop star, but was wearing a dark green anorak, hood up against the drizzle, and what looked like the same brown cords as yesterday. The jute shopping bag he held seemed heavy. Mum instinctively patted her hair, forgetting perhaps that it was mostly tucked under her headscarf. Her fringe, wet from the drizzle, was plastered against her forehead.

      ‘Off to the High Street?’ he asked, once pleasantries were exchanged. Mum took a breath to answer but before she had a chance, a police car screeched past us, its siren deafening. As Richard and I jumped in shock, Mum slapped her hands over her ears and started to shout ‘la-la-la-la!’ at the top of her voice, like a child pretending not to hear her parents. I knew about Mum’s extreme reaction to sirens but I hadn’t seen it happen for many years. Mortified, I looked at Richard but he suddenly had Mum in his arms, his hand patting her headscarf, her face on his wet lapel. It’s OK, he mouthed over her head to me.

      Then, as suddenly as they’d started, the sirens stopped, Richard sprang back and Mum’s hands dropped back down. She smoothed down her coat and gave herself a little shake.

      ‘Shopping, I wish!’ she said. ‘We’re off to the undertaker’s to sort out the funeral.’

      ‘Well, good luck with that,’ said Richard, unfazed. He picked up his wet shopping bag. ‘Let me know if there’s anything I can do to help.’

      I looked at Mum, expecting an explanation, but she angled her body purposefully back up the street, leaving me standing with my mouth open. Richard had obviously seen her act like this before, but his dealing with it so smoothly left me feeling uncomfortable, like I’d just witnessed something I shouldn’t have.

      I hurried to catch up with Mum and, as we rounded the corner, the familiar old High Street hove into view. While much had changed in recent years, many of the landmarks of my childhood were still there. The Indian restaurant where I’d insisted we go for my twelfth birthday because it felt ‘so grown up’; the pet shop where I’d bought my only ever pet hamster; and the hidden gem of an Italian restaurant in which I’d had many first dates. People stood huddled as ever at bus stops, puffs of their warm breath mixing with clouds of cigarette smoke. Outside McDonald’s, a group of teenagers dipped their hands in and out of brown paper bags—I recalled the warm comforts of a cheeseburger and a bag of hot fries while waiting for the bus in the exact same spot.

      We continued on, past charity shops, takeaways and a new crop of pawnshops and cash-converters I hadn’t seen the previous summer. On the left, the top end of the double-parked street where Miss Dawson had lived. I remembered the feeling of walking down that street to her house for counselling sessions, which continued even in the school holidays. To this day, Miss Dawson’s street still featured in my dreams. I didn’t even know if she still lived there.

      Mum turned abruptly into the doorway of a dark-fronted shop that sat discreetly next to WHSmith. A bell rang in the hushed interior, and a tall, pale man in a dark suit appeared from a back room. ‘You must be Mrs Stevens,’ he said softly. ‘I’m so sorry for your loss.’

      ‘If you can guide us through whatever we need to do, that would be helpful, thank you,’ said Mum.

      I wondered if her brusqueness was masking her grief; her upper lip was so stiff you could have stood an army on it. The silence of the undertaker’s was oppressive and suddenly I felt clammy and a little light-headed. Two days ago, I’d been living my life in Dubai, that month’s magazine about to go to press; a champagne brunch booked for the weekend. How was I now sitting here, in a suburban high street, asking a stranger’s advice on what sort of box to put my dead father in? I sat down heavily.

      The man showed us a catalogue of coffins. As he joined us at the desk, I caught a waft of his cologne and breathed it in: he smelled of Dad, and suddenly I was playing hide-and-seek in the garden, Graham and I both hunting for our father. As we’d stood next to the raspberry bushes, regrouping after a long and fruitless search, I’d caught a whiff of Dad’s signature scent: Eau Sauvage.