Chapter 24
Two years ago
Granny always loved embroidery; she’d spend hours with her glasses perched on the end of her nose, stitching away at her intricate designs.
But as she got older, her fingers lost their strength, and all of her designs lost their little details.
When I asked her one day why she didn’t just buy an embroidery machine, where she wouldn’t have to use her hands or rely on her failing eyes, she looked at me a bit perplexed.
‘I don’t sew because it’s convenient, or easy,’ she said after a moment.
‘I sew because every single thing I create has some of me in it. When I see you wearing your dresses, or your costumes, I see my pricked fingers, and my strained eyes, but I also see that dress as time – time I spent on you. You may come here every summer, and pop in in the holidays, but when you’re not here, I still spend my hours with you, stitching the fabric in a way I know won’t tickle that spot on the back of your neck that always makes you itchy, or in a pattern in which I know you can be a princess that also gets stuck far too often in the mud.
Every time I sit down to embroider, I think of you and your brother.
Anyone could make a t-shirt out of this fabric, but not everyone has a t-shirt that they know someone made with love, that they can look at long after I’m gone, and feel like they still have my time. ’
That was when I realised her own clothes never had embroidery like mine. She didn’t have castles on her hems, or flowers on her sleeves. She gave everyone else her time, her art, but no one ever returned the favour.
I couldn’t help but think of that as I faced her wardrobe. It was an explosion of colour, as though stepping into it would transport you, not to Narnia, but somewhere warm, where the sky was always blue, and flowers grew even through winter.
Granny hated wearing black. Even to the funerals of her friends, that felt like they came almost monthly, she always made sure to wear a colourful scarf.
‘Everyone deserves to leave this world getting to see the colour of life,’ she used to say.
She knew full well that dead people don’t see colour, but I think it made her feel better.
Sitting in rooms shrouded in black must’ve got tiring, bleak, but that pop of colour gave her a little hope.
Her scarves were hung up on the inside of the wardrobe door, like a rainbow waterfall.
She’d hate that we’re wearing black for her now.
‘Oh, Ava.’ Grandad shuffled into the bedroom with his shoulders hunched. ‘You scared me, duckie,’ he said quietly as he sat down on the edge of his bed, following my eyes to her wardrobe. ‘She always looked so beautiful, didn’t she.’
Granny and Grandad had always had enough love between them for the rest of us.
Sure, Grandad used to tease Granny like crazy – he’d make fart noises when she’d sit down, or pretend to be asleep in his armchair every time she’d ask him a question, or hide her glasses under the tea cosy – and yet with every tut and shake of her head, she’d always let her grin slip through.
When Granny got sick a few years earlier, his humour didn’t change, at least not in front of her.
He took the tea cosy to her bedside at the hospital, just to hear her laugh again.
Back home, however, was when you could really see how he loved her.
He kept every inch of the place spotless, awaiting her return.
He fretted in the kitchen by a phone he didn’t know how to use, waiting for word.
He looked utterly lost without her. He still does, even still now.
I’d cried so much those last few weeks that I couldn’t summon the energy for more tears, but his words made my eyes sting. Unable to fashion a reply, I could only nod, still facing the wardrobe, too afraid to look at him.
‘Look at this one.’ He picked up a photo frame from his bedside table.
I’d seen it a thousand times. When we were kids, we’d sneak into bed with Granny and Grandad for a story and a cuddle before bed.
The photo was of Granny and Grandad in their younger days, maybe thirties, just smiling together in the farmyard.
It was simple, just two people in love, surrounded by the place they call home.
That time, I took note of what she was wearing.
It was a baby blue dress that floated across her body as though she had plucked a cloud from the sky and fashioned a skirt from it.
The chiffon sleeves fell over her arm in a gentle caress on one side, and a breeze gently lifted the other.
‘She made that dress herself. Made me a matching tie with the fabric.’ Grandad smiled sadly at the memory. ‘They’re both still in there.’
Sliding through the rail, I felt each fabric against my fingertips, all of them soft, all of them natural, all of them felt like they’d be a privilege to wear. I found the dress near the end, and plucked it out from the others, running the material across my hands until the little hairs prickle.
‘You can have it,’ Grandad said, pinching one of the sleeves between his fingers and lingering, as though remembering the way it felt when he held Granny all those years ago.
‘Are you sure?’ I whispered.
‘Everything in there is yours. Your Granny always made sure to tell me that.’
‘Thank you.’ We sat side by side for another moment. The memories we were both replaying in our minds of her would have been different, I’m sure, but our situation was the same: we’d both lost the most important woman in our lives, and the idea of navigating the future without her was terrifying.
For the next week, I sat in the treehouse alone, embroidering Granny’s dress.
I took the photo too, to ‘spend time’ with Granny as I worked.
My fingers burned with each stitch, and my eyes were so blurred that I could hardly see at some points, but still, I threaded flowers up and down the skirt until the whole thing was covered in a garden of embroidery.
My tears darkened the fabric with every fallen drop, but after a little while, they disappeared and didn’t stain.
I told myself each time that it was Granny, there with her hanky, blotting them away and fussing that if I didn’t stop soon, she would have to stick it on a boil wash.
A plate of sandwiches slid across the floor of the treehouse towards me, and I stabbed my finger with the fright. Jacob’s head popped up behind it, and my heart rate quickly returned to its comfortable state.
‘What’s this about?’ I eyed him and the sandwiches suspiciously.
I had seen him only in passing since we got the news about Granny.
The Thorogoods were the first ones around with dinners packed into Tupperware and sorry faces.
But I had hardly spoken to anyone in weeks, either shutting myself away in my bedroom to cry, or hiding in the treehouse, desperate to do something to bring me just a little bit closer to her.
‘You need to eat,’ he said gently, inching the plate closer still.
‘I’m not hungry,’ I murmured, afraid his kindness might set off my crying again.
‘You’ve been up here for six hours, Ava. You need to look after yourself too, you know.’ I didn’t ask him if he’d been watching me. My traitorous stomach answered him for me and groaned loud enough for both of us to hear.
Taking one of the triangles, I thanked him with a smile, and he took that as an invitation to slide across the treehouse to sit beside me, and take one for himself.
‘Is that the same dress?’ he remarked, looking at the picture of Granny and Grandad. I nodded. ‘It’s beautiful.’
We were silent for a little while longer, not needing conversation, just needing the company. It was almost dark by the time I found my voice again.
‘Will you come?’ I spoke, hoarsely. ‘To the funeral I mean.’
‘Of course I will. I’ll always be there. Why wouldn’t I?’
‘You’ve always hated wearing suits. I remember distinctly you saying you’d “rather jump in the slurry pit than wear that many layers”.’
Jacob laughed softly and shook his head.
‘Hey, I said I’d be there, I didn’t say what I’d be wearing.
’ He nudged me gently with his shoulder.
‘You have nothing to worry about, Ava.’ Seriousness took over once again.
‘I’ll be there for you; we all will. And we’ll be there for Granny.
And you only need to give me one look, and I will whisk you right out of that church, and we will finally disappear into the wilderness. ’
I believed him. I believed every word he could ever say.
The last time we were alone together like this, we were at each other’s throats on the beach.
But none of that mattered any more, at least not right now.
Adam, Pen, all of our childish jealousies and gripes meant nothing in that moment, forgotten temporarily as something far more important took precedence.
It was like we’d settled into an unspoken truce.
Maybe we would argue about it again another day in the future, but all that mattered was that regardless of how angry we were with one another, he was here when I needed him most. No words spoken before then were more important than my best friend supporting me through the worst days of my life.
Jacob did come to the funeral. As I climbed out of the car in my powder blue dress that was covered from bust to hem in hand-stitched embroidery, he waited for me outside.
His suit was perfectly pressed, his trousers reached his ankles, and his tie was almost an exact match of the one Granny made for Grandad.
It was then, I knew, I could get through that day.