Abby
Abby
Abby stands outside the cemetery chapel as mourners file past: shaking her hand, offering condolences, saying how sorry they are for her loss. One by one they tell her that Isla was wonderful, that they will miss her so much, that her death is an unspeakable tragedy.
Abby listens and yet she does not really hear. The words are like a phantom hovering in front of her, but she cannot think, cannot respond, does not know what these people want her to say. A part of her seems to have been frozen in time, paused the moment she opened the door to the two police officers just over a fortnight ago. Because she does not understand how it can have come to pass that she is here, again, for the second time in five years, standing outside a chapel, having just cremated one of the people she loves most in the world. It does not seem possible.
Beside her, Clio is mute, motionless, her face impassive. Abby does not know what she is thinking or feeling. She has barely reacted to her sister’s death; Abby has not even seen her cry. The night it happened, Clio stood rigid inside Abby’s embrace, did not make a sound. She disappeared to her room soon after, left Abby to deal with the police alone. Since then, all Abby’s attempts to comfort Clio have been met with stony silence or benign passivity. It is as though Isla’s death has cemented an insurmountable wall between them. Abby wants to look after Clio, to share their grief, to eliminate some of her daughter’s pain. But it is as though Clio is exuding a force field of self-protection, and she will not let Abby get close.
The October sunlight flares and then darkens as clouds drift across the sky. Abby has a sense of being disconnected from herself, as though her body is present but her mind, her heart, her soul, are somewhere else, somewhere distant she cannot reach. She is aware of a gaping chasm at the centre of her being: an excavation, an infinite abyss. And yet, at the same time, there is a constant churning, a debilitating sensation: a permanent sense of loss.
As mourners continue to exit the chapel, the events of the past fortnight play in her memory like a horror film she does not want to see. The visit to the mortuary to identify Isla’s body. The endless phone calls to notify family and friends. The day of the post-mortem, the unbearable thought of a stranger slicing open her daughter’s body, examining it, putting it back together as though Isla could be restored anew. The funeral arrangements that Nicole has overseen but about which Abby had to make decisions nonetheless: choosing a coffin and a headstone, finalising music and readings, confirming an order of service for a funeral she never once imagined might take place during her own lifetime. The countless hours she has spent visualising the final moments of her daughter’s life: questioning why Isla was outside when she should have been indoors at Meera’s party; speculating whether she was on her way home or en route elsewhere; wondering whether she saw the headlights of the car speeding towards her, knew in those final, unimaginable seconds what was about to happen. They are imagined scenes which haunt her day and night.
‘How are you doing?’
She feels a hand on her arm, finds Nicole standing beside her.
‘You don’t have to do this. Nobody expects you to stand here, thanking everyone for coming.’
Thanking everyone for coming . A part of Abby’s brain understands that this is what she ought to be doing. But still, as the next mourners traipse past, no words emerge from her lips.
‘Come on, you’ve been standing far too long. Come and sit down. You too, Clio.’
Abby allows Nicole to lead them away, to chaperone them to a quiet bench in the cemetery garden. She senses dozens of eyes on her, wishes they would all go away, wishes everyone would just leave her alone.
‘Why don’t you sit here for a moment before we go to the hotel.’
The hotel . For a moment, Abby cannot make sense of what Nicole is saying, thoughts blurring in her head.
And then she remembers. The wake – Isla’s wake – is being held at a hotel not far away, on the bank of the Thames. The wake that Nicole has organised. The wake that will involve more well-intentioned sympathy from people who cannot possibly understand the depth of Abby’s grief.
The thought is unpalatable: having to mingle with family, friends, parents, students, teachers, as though they are attending a wedding or an afternoon tea party rather than her daughter’s funeral. It is incomprehensible to her that she is expected to converse with guests when every fibre of her being wants to howl into the wind.
Across the lawn, her eyes land on Callum and Jenna, talking with the Head of Sixth Form, and she experiences a stab of envy that Jenna’s seventeen-year-old child is still alive while hers is not. She wishes they had not come, does not want to be reminded of Isla’s relationship with Callum.
Jenna catches her eye, nods, offers a cautious smile. Abby turns away, resentment throbbing beneath her skin.
‘Why haven’t the police found out who did this yet? What’s taking them so long?’ The words erupt from her mouth in a voice she does not recognise, her tone replete with unrestrained vitriol.
‘It’s still early days, isn’t that what the police said? I’m sure they’re doing everything they can.’
There is something unnatural in Nicole’s voice, like an automated response, as though she no more believes what she is saying than Abby does hearing it. Abby is sick of platitudes. She does not understand how it can be possible that the person who is responsible for killing her child – for knocking down her daughter in the street and leaving her for dead – is still walking free. ‘The police are hopeless. You know they are. They haven’t even managed to find your car yet. How do we know that the person who stole your car isn’t the same person who killed Isla?’
She sees the look of horror on Nicole’s face, knows she has gone too far. She understands that she should feel guilty, but there is no room for guilt when there is already so much rage, so much grief. ‘The police are incompetent. Do you know what percentage of hit-and-runs go unsolved?’
‘Mum, for god’s sake, stop going on about it.’
Abby darts a glance at Clio, turns back to Nicole. ‘Ninety per cent. Ninety per cent . Do you know what it’s like to feel that there’s only a ten per cent chance that the person who killed your child will get caught?’
Nicole pauses, takes a deep breath. ‘I know. They’re appalling stats. But getting angry isn’t going to help anyone, least of all you or Clio.’
A switch flicks inside Abby: a sense of maternal fury that her daughter’s killer is still at large and nobody but her seems to care. ‘Do you know what I hope?’
Nicole shakes her head.
‘I hope they find the person who did this and that when they go to prison, it destroys their life as much as they’ve destroyed mine.’
Abby hears the venom in her voice – sharp, caustic – sees the shock on Nicole’s face quickly smoothed into something more benign. And in that fleeting moment, Abby is struck by how alone she is in her grief. Stuart is not alive to bear it with her, Clio will not allow her to get close, and not even her best friend can withstand the depth of her loss.
Nicole crouches down, places a hand on Abby’s knee. ‘I can’t begin to imagine how you’re feeling today, and I’m so sorry you’re having to go through this. It’s every mother’s worst nightmare, I know.’
Abby hears the fracture in Nicole’s voice, does not know whether she wants to rage at the world or if she wants it all to stop; whether she just wants to hide beneath a duvet and stay there forever.
‘I know it doesn’t feel like it now, but you will get through this. You’re strong, Abby, and you have so much love around you. You will get through this.’
Abby feels herself drifting, out of her body, away from tropes which can offer no solace. There is nothing anyone can give her – nothing anyone can say or do – to make this better, and she almost resents them trying. It is an affront to Isla to believe that this is something from which she will ever recover. She does not want to recover. To grieve is an act of remembrance, she senses that keenly. The only thing anchoring her to the world – the only reason she has not already drowned beneath the weight of her loss – is Clio.
‘I just need to find Nathaniel, see how he’s doing, and then I’ll be back, okay?’
Abby watches Nicole walk away, sits silently on the bench beside Clio, aware that they have lost a father and a sister, a husband and a daughter. Looking out over the chapel gardens, at the hundreds of people who have come to pay their respects to Isla, Abby experiences a desolating, all-encompassing sense of loneliness, and it is all she can do to close her eyes and wait for it to be over.