Chapter 17
? Character confronts loss
Twenty years later
Everything changed that Saturday morning in October.
While I was still occupied by the throes of freshers’ mayhem in Cardiff, Livvie had gone along to her weekly orchestra club, just like she always did. But, this time, she never made it home.
She’d been waiting outside the church hall for her lift from Josh.
He picked her up every Saturday on his way home from the gym; it was their little weekly ritual.
Sometimes she’d convince Josh to go home via the nearest McDonald’s drive-thru so she could pick up a milkshake.
Back when I’d still been living at home, she’d always bring one back for me, too.
But that Saturday was different. Josh had been running late – only by a couple of minutes, but those precious seconds altered our trajectory, forever.
According to one of her friends who’d been waiting in a car on the other side of the road, Livvie had been sitting on the wall behind the bus stop when a bus had pulled in.
As the bus pulled away, Livvie had begun to cross the road, her trusty cello on her back.
Josh saw the moment it happened. He saw her flash of red hair out of the corner of his eye, quickly followed by the oncoming van, hidden from Livvie’s view by the back of the bus. And that was that. Life destroyed.
Lives destroyed, really. Because the remaining Allisters’ souls leaked away with hers that day.
Our family had never been perfect. But it was only with brutal hindsight that we could see that our lives before Livvie was taken from us had been so full of ordinary everythings and incredible nothings.
We’d belonged to each other. We’d been at such oblivious peace.
That morning, after that phone call from Dad, I was bundled into a taxi back to Scarnbrook with Elle in tow, but our destination was no longer ‘home’; it was hell itself.
I knew as soon as Mum pulled me from the taxi and we wailed and contorted and collapsed onto the lawn of our small front garden that home was gone for good.
Once our tears had stopped flowing continuously, the funeral had passed and the lasagnes stopped arriving from neighbours, each of us retreated back into ourselves.
None of us knew how to live without her.
None of us had emerged again since. And, soon, each of us had left Scarnbrook for good. Separately, not together.
While Mum and Dad had attempted to start afresh and Josh had filled his mind with exercise and the Internet, I was left to figure things out for myself, more or less.
Falling in slow motion, scrabbling for purchase.
I still hadn’t found it, although Elle had kept me hovering just above ground zero as best as she could.
As the DVD repeated and repeated, and Livvie played and played, twenty years of pent-up grief began to escape from me in the form of guttural sobs.
I had a primal urge to step into the screen and bundle her into my arms. I’d steer her back through the concert hall corridors, through the streets of Scarnbrook, to our little cul-de-sac.
Back to the bedroom we’d shared ever since she’d been a baby.
I wanted to tuck her up in bed with her favourite soft toy – a scrappy puppy called Toffee Donut – and lock the door behind her so she’d be safe, forever fifteen.
A frozen prison. And the rest of us could join her in her time-frozen bubble – our own permanent utopia.
A plasticky knock on the front door interrupted my vision, followed by a deliberate rattle of the letterbox. I paused the DVD, wiped my eyes with soap-sticky hands and tried to even my breaths as I opened the draughty door.
Right on schedule, it was Tom.
‘Should’ve guessed this place wouldn’t have a doorbell! Anyway, I heard you were in need of a hungover tall person to re-hang a curtain?’
I tried to produce a smile as I let him in, but there was something about his presence that felt safe, as if it was okay to be vulnerable. So my face did something it rarely did instead: it crumpled.
‘Shit, what’s the matter? Has something happened?’
I couldn’t get the thoughts organised in my brain, let alone any words out of my mouth. I nodded instead, letting more sobs escape.
‘Oh God, Mally, come here.’
Tom pulled me into a tight hug. I gave myself over to the embrace, completely. I couldn’t remember the last time anyone had held me like this.
‘Oh, Mal…’
He gently let me go and turned towards the TV that had caught his eye behind me. There on the screen was a frozen frame of my sister mid-bow stroke, her eyes closed and her eyebrows raised as she played. God, she was beautiful.
‘Wow, this must be so hard to watch.’
I found the remote and switched it off. Livvie’s face vanished into darkness, and it felt like I’d lost her all over again. I collapsed onto the sofa, my head in my hands, and sobbed.
Tom let me sob. He sat down next to me, not too close, but close enough to place a hand on my juddering shoulder until I’d cried myself dry. Eventually, I raised my head, my eyes still closed, and let my head rest on the back of the settee.
‘I’ll get you some water.’
I rubbed my eyes as he disappeared into the kitchen. I felt numb, raw, exposed. I wiped my dripping nose with my sleeve. So much for trying to make myself look presentable this morning. Though I was past caring.
‘Do you watch this often?’
Tom’s voice interrupted my vacant staring. I took a thirsty gulp of the water.
I shook my head.
‘It’s not even my DVD.’ I swallowed, my throat aching from crying. ‘Becky put it through my door this morning and…’
‘Becky?’
Surely Becky hadn’t known this was on the DVD? She hadn’t mentioned Livvie once since I’d been back – no doubt because I hadn’t, either.
‘Oh God, I don’t think she realised this was on it, Tom. There was… something else she wanted me to see.’
I’d completely forgotten about the ‘snog, marry, avoid’ footage. It felt beyond trivial, now.
‘Do you want me to take it back to her and have a word?’
A rush of possessiveness engulfed me.
‘No! God, sorry, I didn’t mean to shout. It’s just that now that I’ve seen this video of Livvie I don’t think I could give it back, if that makes sense.’
‘You never have to say sorry for any of this, okay? I’m here for you.’
My lip quivered as I met his gaze and nodded with genuine gratitude.
‘Thanks for saying that. I guess I just feel a bit silly, you know? She’s been gone for twenty years, for Christ’s sake. Surely I shouldn’t still feel like this?’
I tried to even analyse what ‘this’ feeling was, but it was impossible, because it was everything and nothing all at once.
‘Grief is a weird thing, Mally. It can creep up on you when you least expect it. I mean, I know it’s not the same thing at all, but I still cry about my grandad whenever I hear the Sports Report theme tune on the radio, and he’s been gone for almost thirty years.’
I smiled for the first time since Tom’s arrival, because my own grampy had loved that radio show, too.
‘But it’s never crept up on me like this before, Tom. Right now it feels as if it’s just happened.’
But deep down I knew why that was. It was because I’d spent the last twenty years of my life dodging any chance of this happening.
Avoiding any risk of feeling this kind of searing loss, of re-opening this wound.
But it was well and truly open, now, and everything was pouring out.
And in. I walked into the kitchen to splash some cold water on my face.
It was the kind of thing that characters in films did when they felt distressed and I could never understand why.
To be fair, it felt pretty invigorating.
I patted my face dry with a tea towel while Tom hovered in the doorway.
‘I know we’ve not talked about it, but I’m so sorry for what happened to Livvie back then. I can’t imagine how horrific it must have been for you. Me and Mum were so shaken up by it at the time. I mean, the whole of Scarnbrook was.’
‘Really?’
‘Yeah, I keep forgetting you weren’t here to see any of it after the funeral. There were endless tributes. School assemblies, candlelit vigils – the works. Your sister was so loved.’
‘It just got too much. Everyone thought it was best for me to go back to uni and keep things as normal as possible.’
‘Is that what you wanted, too?’
‘I… I just wanted to block it all out for a bit. But, well, let’s just say that “a bit” went on for rather a lot longer than planned. Oh God, I’ve handled all of this so, so badly, haven’t I?’
‘God, Mally, no, not at all. What you and your family went through was so fucking awful. I don’t think there’d ever be a “good” way to handle it. So, whatever you’re feeling right now – which is understandably a lot – is totally cool, all right?’
I nodded.
‘Is there anything I can do to help you right now?’
I shrugged and leant against the oven to directly face him. ‘Bring my little sister back?’
‘I so wish I could.’
I locked my eyes on to his, which were bloodshot with tiredness but wide with care and concern. ‘You know, I haven’t seen any videos of her at that age for, well, forever. I can’t actually remember the last time I saw a video of her at all.’
‘You family doesn’t have any home videos or stuff like that?’
‘I mean, probably, somewhere. Dad loved his camcorder back then. But most of it’s in a storage unit somewhere.’ Locked away. Pushed down.
Tom puffed out his cheeks. ‘I have an idea, but it might be the opposite to what you need right now.’
‘I’m listening.’
‘Tell me to stop talking at any time. But my mum is a bit of a hoarder as you’ve seen for yourself. She’s got tons of newspaper clippings from back then – not just that year, but all the years before. Your sister used to be in the local paper quite a lot from what I remember?’
‘Yeah, she was always involved in some shenanigan or another.’
‘What do you reckon – shall I give my mum a call and see if she can find some stuff for you to look through?’
‘Yeah, go on, then. Now?’
‘If that’s what you want?’
I nodded again, but in truth I didn’t know what I wanted. Well, I did: I wanted Livvie to burst into the room right now and for the last twenty years to have been a horrific nightmare.
But she could never come back. And I realised that was precisely why it’d taken me so long to return to the village: because Scarnbrook could never be Scarnbrook without Livvie.
It was as if the version of it I’d returned to this week was a cheap, soulless imitation of what it had once truly been: home.
My family wasn’t my family without her, either.
And I missed my family so, so much.