Epilogue
I wanted her bedroom to be just right. I leafed through my sketchbooks and teased out my favourite charcoal and pencil drawings of strands of seaweed that twisted like ribbons, seagulls with bracket-like wings, lumpy sand dunes, the vast and open sea.
I took them to my local framer, then I arranged them on the carpet and one by one hung them all on the same yellow wall, an ode to Norfolk and our very own stretch of the beach.
I dotted the windowsill with shells and pebbles I’d collected over the years and brought back to the house, my coat pockets clattering.
On the chest of drawers is a small ceramic vase that I keep filled with flowers : pink and red tulips, honey-sweet freesias, creamy anemones.
Occasionally I leave them too long and the petals begin to fade and lose their grip.
My mother always told me not to look too far ahead, to live in the present.
For a while I forgot to heed her advice.
But I wasn’t the only one forgetting. Christmas came and went and one year rolled seamlessly into the next.
By mid-January I was spending more than half my time in Norfolk.
I’d heard friends talk about babyproofing their homes and now I felt I was doing the same, in a way.
I replaced her house phone with one with extra-large pads and speed dial, writing my name, along with Peggy’s and Edna’s, in block capitals on the programmable buttons.
With the remote, I taped up every button except for the soft red nodule that turned the TV on and off.
I tucked away any electric cords and cables that might cause her to trip and bought first a non-slip mat with tentacle-like suckers, and later wall handles and a small white stool, for the shower.
I replaced her lace-up shoes with Velcro ones.
All the while, she watched me with eyes that grew more and more narrow.
By the spring she had a professional carer with her five days a week.
She was struggling to focus on any given task, to stay connected.
She would start reading a book and a few pages in forget what had happened and go back to the beginning, two, three, four times before sending the book flying.
One week she went flying herself ; the carer didn’t see what happened, and my mother didn’t tell anyone, but when I visited her next, I noticed that her wrist was bruised and swollen.
I asked her if it hurt, and she looked at me with vacant eyes and asked, What, darling?
The sky was an azure blue and the fields glowing gold with rape when Peggy and I finally sat down together at the kitchen table and made the decision we’d both known was coming all along : it was time to move my mother into a nursing home.
Her bedroom overlooks a garden that’s small and plain in comparison with the one she so lovingly planted at home, but tidy and inviting, nonetheless.
The lawn is mown every other week by the same friendly man who comes to water the flower beds and the hanging baskets in the days in between.
If the weather is nice, my mother is encouraged to walk around or sit for a while on one of the wooden benches.
When the temperature drops and she refuses to come back inside, a kind woman brings her a mug of milky tea and a soft woollen blanket.
For the first few weeks, she would pack her bag every night in anticipation of returning home the following morning.
To ease the transition, we’d been advised to tell her that her house needed some building work and it would be best for her to move out temporarily.
A month in and any thoughts of home were forgotten, like an item of clothing that had slipped down the back of the sofa and begun to gather dust. My nerves quietened when I saw her settled, but a part of me also willed her to keep fighting.
Her body has become a plaster cast – a copy of her former self.
Her mind is torn with holes, more recent memories muddled with those from long ago.
Frayed recollections of my father and me are interspersed with those of her own parents and herself as a child, the whole lot jumbled up. Hers is a static sort of half-presence.
‘There you are.’ Noah finds me sitting on the wooden bench my father installed in that awkward corner at the top of the stairs, facing the narrow, arched window.
‘Here I am.’ I watch as he walks barefoot towards me. Against his linen shirt, a pale grey, his skin is a light brown, fresh from spending the day on the beach. I feel my cheeks lift when I see he’s still wearing his shorts. The summer air is hot and thick, even though it’s evening.
‘I brought you a nightcap,’ he says, handing me a small glass of something honey-coloured.
I crane my neck to look up at him, and I smile.
He leans down to plant a kiss on the crown of my head, then slots in behind me, the two of us facing towards the window now, which is open a crack, overlooking the sea.
Apart from birdsong and the gentle rumble of a farm vehicle still hard at work in the next-door field, there’s no sound.
The sky is dark, with a hazy yellow strip running like gold leaf along the horizon.
‘What time are we expecting the storm tomorrow?’ he asks.
I laugh. ‘Anna said they’d be here around midday.’
Noah has an unofficial goddaughter now, a sister to my unofficial godson.
Anna’s pregnancy continued without complications, and she gave birth to a baby girl called Camille.
We asked if they were sure that they wanted us both to be godparents, and Caleb told us yes, and that in fact they also wanted us to be the children’s legal guardians.
He said there was no one else they would trust more to take care of them if anything happened to him and Anna. When he said it, my heart swelled.
‘Then we’ll probably all head back to London on Sunday evening, if that works?’
‘That works.’
Noah slips an arm around my waist, and I lean back until my body is resting against his. I stretch out my legs and gently push the window open wider with my toes. He remarks on how dextrous I am.
The marshes stretch out like a dozy animal beneath the night sky. I can no longer make out details, just vague shapes, highlights and shadows. I squint at the sea, just for a moment, then I blink and, like a camera lens, readjust my focus to what’s there right in front of my face.
It was a year of asking questions. A year of indecision. And now? The questions remain, but there’s no longer just one option.
I look down at my hand, in Noah’s.
I see clearly now.