Chapter 69
NADEEKA
It is the sort of sunny day that makes people smile at strangers in the street, Nadeeka thinks, as she does just that.
The girls skip ahead of her, although Maya looks back every few minutes – a habit she’s acquired since that day in the Civic Centre.
She is eating an ice-cream and arguing with Nish – who has long since finished her own – about whether strawberry Cornetto is superior to chocolate.
They’re heading to the hill above the reservoir where Nadeeka and Jamie had their second date.
He had already been there when she’d arrived, with a tartan rug spread across the grass, and a bottle of wine in an ice bucket.
Too much? he’d said anxiously. Just perfect, she’d thought, even when they’d discovered he’d forgotten to bring glasses, and they’d had to take turns swigging from the bottle, like furtive teenagers with vodka swiped from their parents’ drinks cabinet.
After Jamie’s funeral, Nadeeka had thought long and hard about what to do with his ashes. She had offered them to Jamie’s parents, Frank and Penny, who had insisted it was up to Nadeeka where they were scattered.
‘He loved you, darling girl,’ Penny had said. ‘You should do whatever brings you the most peace.’
For a long time, the ashes had stayed in their plastic box on the kitchen windowsill, exactly where Nadeeka had propped her iPad before Jamie had moved in, so they could have long video calls while Nadeeka cooked tea or made packed lunches.
Then Nadeeka had taken the girls to Blackpool, in an off--kilter facsimile of the weekend they had spent there with Jamie, and just as they were leaving the house she had grabbed the plastic box.
Later, she had decanted a teaspoon of ashes into a tissue and taken it down to the end of the seafront.
As the girls screamed down the helter-skelter, Nadeeka had let the sea take this tiny piece of Jamie.
Since then, she has taken pieces of Jamie everywhere.
To places they went together, and places they planned to go.
To parks and pub gardens and to the cricket field where he took his first wicket.
Penny and Frank have buried a spoonful with their roses, and Nish was most upset when Nadeeka wouldn’t let her take a jar into school for show and tell.
‘There they are!’ Maya says now, waving. They’ve reached the top of the hill, and Penny and Frank are waiting. The girls give them both hugs and then throw themselves down on the ground, declaring themselves exhausted.
‘Mum made us walk all the way!’ Nish says.
Maya and Nish had met Frank and Penny at Jamie’s funeral, and again a fortnight later, when Penny had called to say they were in the area and would it be okay to pop in for a coffee?
She had been vague about her reasons for being nearby, and Nadeeka had suspected there had been none, but it had been so lovely to talk about Jamie with someone who missed him as much as she did.
She and Penny had fallen into the habit of messaging, and occasionally videoing, the girls often sticking their heads into shot to say hello.
It’s like having a spare granny, Maya had said one time, and the name had stuck.
Spare Granny and Grandad had become a regular fixture in the Prasanna family’s life, going some way to ease the grief Nadeeka carried deep inside her.
They don’t make speeches. They did, in the beginning, when their pain had been raw and close to the surface. But over the past eighteen months life has grown around them, and what once felt impossible to survive is already more bearable for them all.
Nadeeka takes a pinch of Jamie’s ashes. She catches Penny’s eye, and they smile, then Nadeeka opens her fingers and lets the breeze take him.
She thinks of the restrictions now placed around New Dawn, and how Jamie’s actions have resulted in so many convictions.
But mostly she thinks of swigging wine from the bottle; of lying on their backs on the tartan rug with her fingers tangled with Jamie’s.
The breeze drops, and, for a moment, everything is still. The girls are arguing again – this time about which of them is better at cartwheels – and Penny is rummaging in her bag for snacks.
Nadeeka is lucky, in so many ways. She has her girls, and they have their dad; and although Nadeeka despairs at Scott’s continuing steam of girlfriends, he is more involved in Maya and Nish’s life now than ever before.
There’s the ever-dependable Kath, and now Spare Grandparents too, and it might not look like a conventional family, but it works for them.
Nadeeka brushes her hands on her jeans and sits on the grass. She tips her head up to the sun and closes her eyes, and, for the first time in a long while, she feels hopeful for what’s ahead.