Tilly thumped downstairs hours later, proclaiming that she was starving, I was still sitting at the kitchen table.
Still wearing my coat.
The following day, I was rifling through the fridge, seeing which withering vegetables from the Oak Leaf Organics bag I could salvage for Sunday lunch, when the doorbell chimed.
‘Iwan!’ My eyes darted left and then right. He was alone. ‘Come in.’ I stepped back and gestured for him to go into the lounge as I returned to the kitchen to make tea, putting some space between us. I gathered my thoughts as I gathered the milk and the sugar. I needed to repair my shrinking family. Iwan was my last link to Gavan. Their dad had passed from cancer two years ago, and their mum followed six months later. A cardiac arrest, the young doctor had said, but privately we thought that grief had broken her heart in two. There were no other relatives.
My breath caught in my throat as I carried the mugs through. Iwan was filling Gavan’s chair, his elbows resting on the arms, fingers steepled together in front of his mouth the way Gavan used to sit when I’d laugh and tell him it looked like he was praying.
‘Praying for a kiss,’ he’d say and I’d roll my eyes but kiss him anyway.
I’d never noticed before how similar their fingers were, their mannerisms. Iwan cleared his throat. The brothers even had the same husky undertone and I had a crazy impulse to close my eyes. To ask him to whisper ‘I love you,’ just to hear it one more time.
‘Laura, I’m sorry about yesterday, about Anwyn,’ he said and the spell was broken.
‘I’m sorry too. I should never have slapped her.’ Just the thought of it made my palm sting.
‘She has a knack of bringing out the worst in people sometimes.’ It was a strange thing for him to say about his wife. Again, I wondered what they had been arguing about before we had arrived. The silence stretched. He spoke first. ‘I miss him too. It was never… It should never have ended that way. He was my brother and I let him down.’
‘He understood.’ I told him what he needed to hear. ‘That night… He was excited about the business.’
‘There was a deal agreed in principle,’ he said.
‘And now?’ Iwan couldn’t meet my eye. He didn’t speak. ‘You’ve taken the deal to your new firm haven’t you?’ There was a sour taste in my mouth.
‘It’s not that, it’s… complicated. Look, I’ll make some enquiries. See if there’s anything I can do. If I can get you some money, Laura, I will. You know what Tilly means to me, what you both mean to me.’ He rubbed his fingers over his lips the way Gavan used to whenever he felt uncomfortable. Trying to press the words back inside.
‘Thank you.’ The pressure on my chest eased.
‘Don’t thank me yet. Even if I can do anything, it will be a slow process. Months if not longer. There’s a situation.’ He sipped his tea which was still steaming and I knew it was a delaying tactic.
‘Anything I should know about?’ I asked.
‘Laura.’ His eyes met mine. ‘Sometimes there are things you’re better off never knowing.’
‘Sorry, there’s nothing we can do.’
That was the phase I heard over and over that week. Each day was a battle. After I’d drop Tilly at school there were endless phone calls and visits. The benefits office was sorry but there was a backlog and they couldn’t process my claim for weeks. My landlord wouldn’t accept housing benefit tenants. There were some flats which would but they were in a rough area and quite far from Tilly’s school. The insurance company smothered me with terms and clauses and legalities I couldn’t understand. Citizen’s Advice couldn’t fit me in until the New Year. The landlord of the shop was sorry, but in light of the arrears he’d found a new tenant and he’d be keeping my deposit to cover some of the rent I’d missed.
Sorry. Everyone was sorry.
It was Friday that finally broke me. Although I’d applied for every job going, from cleaning to waitressing, it was the position in the flower department of my local supermarket I had pinned all my hopes upon. I knew it would only be unpacking cellophane-wrapped bouquets from boxes and dumping them in plastic buckets but I was certain I’d get the job.
The white envelope imprinted with the shop’s logo dropped onto the doormat. I pounced on it eagerly.
We regret to inform you…
The rejection punched the back of my knees, tore sobs from my throat. I slid to the floor, curling myself as small as possible. The hessian doormat bristled against my cheek as I cried for the things I didn’t have; a job, money, a home, but most of all I cried for Gavan, his name rising from the pit of my stomach, spilling out into the cold empty hallway where he would never again kick off muddy boots and trail brick dust over the carpet.
Eventually, I exhausted myself. I shuffled on my knees to the bottom of the stairs and unhooked my handbag from the bannister. It was while I was rooting around for a packet of tissues that my fingers brushed against the piece of paper Saffron had given me.
‘If it weren’t for Alex I honestly don’t know where I’d be.’
Was there such a thing as a truly altruistic person?
I had nothing to lose by asking, but still it was gargantuan to tentatively dial her number, not allowing myself to hope.
‘Hello.’
‘Saffron, it’s Laura. From the florist.’
‘I was just thinking about you! The shop’s been locked all week. Are you okay?’
‘No,’ I whispered. The rivers I’d cried had dried my throat. ‘No, I’m really not.’
‘We can help,’ she said.
And those three words were enough for me to drive to Gorphwysfa the following day.
It’s easy, with the benefit of hindsight, to realise that taking Tilly was my second mistake. We may have been broke, homeless, longing for support, but nobody had died then.
Nobody had killed.
LAURA
What sort of people shun society and build their own community? I tried to discuss it with Tilly during our scenic journey to Abberberth but the further out of town we drove, the quieter she became. Tufts of grass sprung in the centre of the unfamiliar road that twisted and turned as it led away from the coast towards Mid Wales. We dipped into a valley, the rolling hills swallowing the car, the tips of their peaks hidden by mist. Free from the buildings that crowded our town, it seemed we were driving into the vast slate-grey sky.
Tilly had her face turned away from me, staring absently out of the window at the bleak and empty fields, her mood as low as the clouds that threatened rain. I wanted to ask her what she was thinking, what she was feeling, but I didn’t know how to reach her. I was seventeen when she was born, little more than a child myself. My best friend at the time, Natasha, told me it was really cool I had a daughter. ‘You can go shopping together, hang out, you’ll be mates.’ But I didn’t feel like Tilly’s friend right then, and with all the ways I was letting her down I didn’t feel quite like her mum either. Gavan was always the calmer parent, right from when she arrived red-faced and squalling into the world. He had held her against his bare chest, as he’d read about the importance of skin-to-skin contact, while I was mopped up, stitched up. I fought against climbing down from my cloud of pethidine into reality, where I was responsible for this tiny creature with fisted hands and a furious cry. I wondered how we’d cope, but Gavan was the perfect balance