Chapter 2
TWO
Nina sipped her coffee and stared out of the tall kitchen windows at the crisp blue Wiltshire sky. It was a morning like any other, except that it wasn’t. Sunshine streamed through the winter clouds and touched the distant fields and the grounds of The Tynings with its golden fingers.
‘They’re here, Mum,’ Connor called softly from the doorway.
Ignoring the tremor of her hand, Nina emptied the coffee down the sink and walked to the foyer to find her black fitted jacket.
She buttoned it up, looping the single string of pearls over the collar.
Her fingers rested on the delicate silvery orbs, a gift from Finn.
Connor and Declan stared at her from the hallway.
The shiny black car wound its way along the lanes taking a route that was familiar.
Sitting between the boys, eaten up by her own grief, she found it hard to offer words of solace or distraction on this peculiar day; instead, she held their hands, grateful for the contact.
The car dropped them at the Haycombe Crematorium.
As Nina stepped from the quiet cocoon of the car, the first face she saw among the small crowd that had gathered outside was her sister’s.
Nina broke into a smile, quickly followed by the next wave of tears.
‘Tiggy.’ Saying the name out loud, she felt a rush of relief.
‘Nina.’ Her sister said it with the Danish inflection as her mother had intended it to be spoken: ‘Neeya-naah.’ Tiggy stepped forward confidently, as had always been her way, and placed her arms around her younger sibling, squashing her face into the cool, rough fabric of her denim bomber jacket.
Nina closed her eyes and inhaled the familiar scent, a mixture of cigarettes, chewing gum and cheap floral body spray, and for a second she was a child in their grandparents’ home in Portswood, Southampton, with the TV blaring, the clutter of life all around them and her gran screaming instructions from the cramped, narrow kitchen.
Her heart seemed to squeeze with longing at the memory of that old life; not for the hardship or the discomfort, but for a time when her mamma’s spirit still lingered, when her dad came home from work with a whistle on his lips, before she knew what it felt like to wake with her heart and spirit so broken.
Nina took in the inevitable changes that had occurred in the intervening two years since they had last seen each other, at another funeral.
Tiggy, at thirty-eight, was four years older, and Nina noted how she now had faint creases of age at the edge of her mouth and eyes and a sallow tinge to her skin, which the cigarettes surely couldn’t help.
Nina coughed, a little embarrassed, and wondered how she too had aged in the time since they saw each other.
Tiggy had always been tall and slender, but she now looked a little gaunt.
Nina, the shorter of the two, was also more rounded, with the curve of a bust and generous bottom that she had always disliked and which her sister used to envy.
The closeness they had shared during their childhood had diminished to the point where to make a telephone call felt too difficult, where she couldn’t confidently predict her sister’s reaction; this woman with whom she used to sleep top to toe on a mattress, sharing thoughts and secrets and dreams.
‘Thank you for coming.’ Nina nodded with a formality she regretted.
‘Of course.’ Tiggy shrugged. As if this were a given.
The last time they had been together was to stare at each other across a church aisle, when their diminishing clan had gathered for the funeral of their great-uncle, the last survivor of their gran and her siblings.
It was sad, but after losing their mum so young and then their dad in their early twenties, these deaths – of uncles, aunts, grandparents – were never going to have the same impact.
Until now.
‘How are you doing?’ Tiggy asked.
Nina looked beyond her sister to the memorial garden. ‘I don’t know really.’
Declan walked around the car and held her hand tightly.
‘Hey, Dec.’ Tiggy ruffled the top of his head.
‘Hey.’ He whispered his response, standing close to his mum’s side as Connor let his aunt briefly wrap him in a loose hug.
‘You’ve grown.’ Tiggy looked at the boys, her nephews. Her tone was reflective.
‘It’s okay, Dec, it’s going to be fine,’ Nina offered in the most assured manner that she could muster, trying to shift the fear that sat like a stopper in her throat. He gripped her hand with such ferocity that she felt he was squeezing her bones.
Connor walked ahead in his navy suit, bought last year for school speech day, and one of his dad’s ties.
Speech day . . . She recalled the rare occasion when Finn had kept his word and made it to a school event.
They had sat at one of many prettily dressed tables on the school field and had tea and cake, clapping as pupils traipsed up to the temporary stage to gather scrolled, beribboned awards.
Parents clapped loudly and crowded their kids with congratulatory hugs and handshakes.
Finn had teased Connor for not getting an award, gently punching the top of his arm.
‘All that bloody money spent on your education and not one single scroll to show for it!’ They had all laughed and then ridden home in the car with the radio turned up loud and Billy Ray Cyrus’s ‘Achy Breaky Heart’ blaring, to which they had sung along . . .
Nina stared at the entrance to the crematorium, a building she had entered a couple of times before to bid farewell to a neighbour and one of Finn’s staff, never imagining that she would be here today in this surreal situation.
She tried to breathe; it felt like she had been kicked in the chest by something so powerful that it had broken her bones.
She glanced over her shoulder and for a second considered bolting, running for the fields with her arms spread wide.
If her sons on both sides hadn’t anchored her, she just might have.
The crematorium was full. People greeted them with pitying looks and quiet murmurs of condolence as they waited for the service to begin.
Person after person filed by and reminded Connor well-meaningly that he was now the man of the house and it was his job to look after things.
If time, place and her confidence had allowed, she would have screamed at them all that he was a boy of fifteen who was grieving for his dad and they, as a family, would look after each other.
Connor’s school friends, Charlie and George, stood close, placing hands on his shoulder, reminding him to be strong.
They looked to her so much like little boys playing grown-ups.
She hated that this thing had come knocking on their door, singling out her children, making them different.
She recognised Mr Monroe, Finn’s accountant, a short, fleshy man, as he made his way over to her, cutting a swathe through the mourners with a fixed stare.
She felt a flush of unease. It had been easy to ignore his calls, which she wasn’t ready to deal with yet, but here, face to face, interaction was inevitable.
‘I am so very sorry for your loss.’ His eyes looked pained, as if even talking to her were agony.
‘Thank you,’ she managed, looking down at her shoes. Her voice sounded small.
He pumped her hand up and down in a vigorous shake. ‘I am seriously so very, very sorry – about everything.’
‘Thank you,’ she mumbled again. She almost had to yank her hand free from his grip.
‘I left you a couple of messages and emailed you too,’ he pressed, before whipping a business card from his top pocket and sliding it into her hand.
Why did he think this might be appropriate on the day of Finn’s funeral? What did he want? An apology for her lack of response? An explanation as to just how grief had placed the answering of emails and the returning of calls a little low on her priorities?
She shoved the card into her narrow shoulder bag. ‘I really must . . .’
Mr Monroe reached out and held the top of her arm. ‘I don’t mean to be so pushy, today of all days, but I really do need to talk to you. You have my number now.’ He stared directly into her eyes.
Pulling her arm free, she could only nod. Whatever plans or advice he might have for their money and investments could bloody well wait.
The funeral seemed to pass in a blur. She was aware of Finn’s brother Michael crying through his eulogy, and his drinking buddy, one of the old site managers from McCarrick Construction, leaning too close to the microphone, distorting the few words he gave about how much they were all going to miss Finn.
She felt the eyes of those in the pews behind her on her back and it made her feel sick.
She wished they were there alone, she and the kids, without all these people.
With Declan holding on tightly to her hand, the three of them stared, stony-faced, ahead, their tears tracing familiar tracks over skin that was already wet.
Declan’s noisy sobs punctured the air. She glanced at the coffin only once.
She even positioned her fingers to cover the handsome face of her husband on the Order of Service, because to see these things would make it real, whereas right now she could kid herself that the coffin was just a box, the pamphlet in her hand just paper . . .