Chapter 6
Her tights itched. Mum would never have bought cheap tights from the local shop. But Dad didn’t know anything about tights. These were thinner than her usual ones too; already they had a small ladder on the right ankle.
She didn’t understand why everyone had to wear black, either.
Kitty and her, obviously. And Dad of course.
But there were people there at Mum’s funeral whom she’d never met.
Some of them were crying. It didn’t seem right that these people were here to mourn her mum when she’d belonged to Bella and Kitty and their father and no one else. Not really.
And why had Dad decided to have the ceremony in a church?
Mum hated churches – said they gave her the creeps.
She’d hate to know that she was in a coffin in front of the pews (although a part of Bella still didn’t believe that Mum was in that thing in front of the altar).
Mum had liked outdoors and sunlight and happy places.
But Mum was dead.
The word ‘dead’ seemed to flit across her mind every few minutes.
It was such an odd word. Such a flat, final word.
It didn’t seem to fit the lively, loving mum who lived in her memory.
She thought again of the last time she’d seen her, her back to Bella as she rinsed out her coffee cup at the kitchen sink.
‘Bye, then,’ Bella had said, bag over her shoulder, annoyed that she had to go to school.
‘See you, love!’ Mum had called.
And she’d left.
Bella had relived this moment hundreds of times since – when Kitty had given her the news about Mum’s accident; when Dad had come home, ashen-faced, and told her the same story all over again; that night when she’d been lying in bed and it’d felt like the house was holding its breath; and in the morning when she woke up feeling normal, and it had hit her thirty seconds later – a blow enormous enough to take her breath away.
She’d thought back to that final exchange and hated herself.
Why hadn’t she turned and given her mum a hug?
Slipped her arms around her and leant into her and sniffed her lily of the valley perfume and just said something like ‘I love you’.
It would have taken a second. Maybe if she’d said that, things would be different.
Somehow it felt as if Mum hadn’t died because of the van that had ploughed into her car at a roundabout, but because Bella hadn’t loved her enough, hadn’t made it impossible for her to leave.
A woman turned and looked at Bella, her face creasing in sympathy, and Bella looked sharply away. All people did now was look at her, or ask her how she was. Even Kitty, with her sad face, her worried questions.
Of course she wasn’t OK. Nothing would ever be OK again.
After the service, they all crowded back to their three-bed detached house and ate sausage rolls and little sandwiches. They drank tea and coffee and orange juice.
As soon as she was able to, Bella escaped to the garden, away from the gaping mouths filled with half-chewed bread, the inane chatter, the ordinariness of it all.
The funeral had been awful, but the sandwiches were worse.
They reminded her of packed lunches and picnics and boring ‘this will do’ teas.
Of everyday things that had come before and would come again.
She couldn’t understand how easily people could put food in their mouths and chew and talk about what a lovely woman her mother had been.
She couldn’t understand why people wanted sandwiches.
She’d had one forced into her hand by Kitty, and as she stood behind the huge oak tree in their garden, she shredded half of it into crumbs and threw it, piece by piece, to a blackbird that was hopping at a safe distance, regarding her with its side-facing eye, its head on a tilt.
The bird table was empty. Mum had always been the one to cover it in titbits for the birds, to hang disgusting fat balls from its special hook. Bella walked over and crumbled the rest of her unwanted sandwich onto its surface.
As she turned away, she noticed a feather at the base of the structure. Bending, she picked it up, remembering times when she’d done so as a child; how exciting it was to find one. And she thought of Mum. And she tucked the feather into her pocket before making her way back into the house.