Coming Home: A compelling novel with a shocking twist

CHAPTER 5

Just over twenty-four hours after I first spoke to Mum, at what was quite likely the highest point of the bleak afternoon, my taxi pulled up outside my parents’ Victorian semi. They lived in Woodside, a functional commuter town that couldn’t decide if it was part of South London or north-west Kent. On a sunny day, there was enough beauty, enough greenery, for you to believe it was Kent; in the drizzle, pavements slick with rain, it looked more like Greater London. It was true, though, that, if you stood at a high point and looked south, all you could see was open countryside.

Wrapped in the pashmina I’d foolishly imagined would keep me warm, I helped the driver haul my bags out of the boot, paid him and crunched across the gravel driveway to the door. Summer’s roses, which framed the entrance throughout July and August, were completely gone; the house looked bare without the lushness of their petals. I realised I hadn’t been home during winter in six years.

Before I could ring the bell I heard a bolt being drawn back, then another, then, finally, a key turning in a lock: Mum must have been watching out for me. She appeared behind the outer, glass-panelled door. There was the click of another lock, and another, and then the porch door finally opened.

‘Hello, dear; that was quick!’ she said, looking me up and down and then enveloping me in a hug. Despite the thick sweater she was wearing, she looked small, fragile, and hollow around the eyes. In my arms, she felt tiny. I noticed at once that she had a new haircut, which framed her face. She was wearing a different perfume to usual. It was light, floral, upbeat.

‘I got on the first flight I could,’ I said, pulling away and blinking in the cold morning light. I felt like I’d been up for twenty-four hours. The shadow of wine drunk on the flight crouched behind my forehead, and my eyes popped with tiredness.

‘You’ve grown your hair,’ Mum said, as I lugged my suitcase over the gravel. ‘I always thought it suited you shorter.’

I tossed my hair back defensively and followed Mum through the front door and into the living room, breathing in the familiar scent of the house in which I’d grown up. Until I stepped into the living room, the reality of being at home without Dad hadn’t hit me; I hadn’t given a moment’s thought to the physical space his absence would create. But the emptiness of his armchair was tangible. In the doorway, I stopped and stared.

‘Glass of champagne?’ Mum asked. ‘Toast your safe arrival?’

My head snapped round to look at her. It was barely three o’clock.

‘Got one open in the fridge,’ she said with a shrug. ‘Oh, don’t look at me like that! It’s a good one. I don’t want to pour it down the sink.’

‘No thanks.’ I flopped down in the armchair next to the shelves, my eyes running over the cluttered surfaces, idly clocking what was new; what Mum’s latest fad had been—she was an obsessive collector. Every spare inch housed a collection of something: thimbles, decanters, mugs, jugs, stuffed toys, dolls with china faces, books, videos, glassware, figurines. The walls, too, were plastered with paintings. The visual stimulation was overwhelming.

Mum fussed around the room, blowing dust from pieces of glass, holding them up to the shred of daylight and polishing them with a huff of breath and the hem of her skirt.

‘Sit down,’ I said. ‘Talk to me. I want to know what happened. Was it his angina? Are you all right?’

Mum leaned on the back of the sofa and sighed. ‘Yes, dear, I’m fine. Fine as can be.’

‘So, what happened? With Dad?’ Mum had told me on the phone that he’d been a bit breathless lately. I’d thought he was just unfit. ‘Had his angina got worse? Or was it just, like …?’ Bang, I was going to say but it didn’t sound right.

Mum twisted her hands together. ‘Oh, you know. He’d gone to see the doctor for his angina a week or so ago because he’d had a bit more pain than usual. I told him to mention the breathless thing, too—it might be linked. I told you about that, didn’t I? Anyway, the doctor had said not to worry, but that it was worth doing some further tests. An ECG and some other things. The appointment was supposed to be this week. It was him that I called when I found Dad. He confirmed it was heart failure and issued the death certificate himself.’ Mum looked at the floor and, when she spoke, her voice was small. ‘He was pottering in the garden earlier that day. We’d had a nice dinner. The doctor said it was just “one of those things”. “It happens”.’

‘I still can’t believe it.’

‘Neither can I.’ Mum gave herself a little shake. ‘Still. Onwards and upwards. Life goes on.’

‘And I’m here to help.’ I wanted her to know she could lean on me.

‘Yes, dear.’ She turned towards the kitchen. ‘I’ve just made some bread. I’ll pop the kettle on and we can have a nice cup of tea and some toast?’

‘Sure.’

I looked back at Dad’s chair, still trying to take it in, then something caught my eye: under the coffee table lay Dad’s cold slippers. Presumably where he’d left them two days ago. Before he died.

As I looked at them, moulded to the shape of Dad’s size elevens, it hit me again that he wasn’t coming back. Why hadn’t I made more of an effort with him? Insisted he come out that autumn? I blinked hard. I’d been protecting my mother since I was eight years old. No matter what I felt inside, I would not cry in front of her.

I hadn’t known what sort of state Mum would be in. On past performance, she could have been anything from a bit teary to shopping naked in Tesco. So I was relieved to find her acting so normal. She was chomping at the bit, desperate to get things done. I hoped it wasn’t just a front; I hoped she wasn’t hurtling headlong towards another breakdown. I wanted to ask more about how Dad had died but she didn’t give me a chance.

‘Toast’s ready,’ she said, setting the plates on the dining table with two steaming mugs of tea. ‘Eat up. We’ve a lot to do.’

I sighed.

‘Apart from the funeral, what else is there?’

Mum pulled out a notebook and ran a pencil down the page as she read a list. ‘Well, we’ll have to tell people, for a start. So far only a few friends from church know.’ We had a very small family—all four of my grandparents were dead; Dad was an only child, and Mum might as well have been one, too: she had an older brother, but I’d never met him and I’d learned years ago never to ask about him—all I knew was that he hadn’t come to her wedding. I wondered if things might be different now; perhaps it was my tiredness that made me less guarded than usual.

‘Will we let Uncle David know?’

Mum didn’t even answer. An imperceptible huff and a miniscule shake of the head, and she was off again, as if I’d never asked.

‘Once we’ve got a date for the funeral, maybe you could help me go through Dad’s address book and let people know? Tell them no flowers, too. I don’t want people wasting their money on flowers. If they want, they can give the money to charity.’

I nodded, already dreading it.

‘And then we have to arrange the funeral. We have an appointment at the funeral place up the road at eleven tomorrow—you don’t have to come, but it’d be nice if you did. Then, obviously, the catering for the party. I’ve no idea how many people will come, but I was thinking at least three hundred for the funeral, maybe a hundred will come back, so we need to think about that. And we need to speak to the crematorium—Dad wanted to be cremated, by the way—and arrange the service there and the committal.’

She looked up to see if I was still listening. I was. But I was also stunned. Dad had only died yesterday morning and already she’d gone through all of this. It was like she was competing to be PA of the year. Either that, or she was clinging onto her list like it was a piece of flotsam in a tsunami.

‘I’ve taken a couple of weeks off from work but, well, if you could help me sort out Dad’s papers and make sure that everything’s in order in terms of bank accounts, the house, insurance policies, the mortgage, bills etcetera, that’d be very helpful? Dad took care of all of those things and I don’t know where to start.’

‘Are you still enjoying work? Do you think you’ll carry on?’ Mum was a part-time administrator at the local hospital.

‘Yes. Why wouldn’t I? Dr Goodman would be lost without me. You know how he depends on me. I might even go full-time!’

‘Really?’

‘Yes! Why not?’

I shook my head, lost for words, changed the subject back. ‘What about Dad’s computer? Do you want me to close down his email account and stuff?’ Mum’s fantastic ability at the hospital had never translated to her home life: she was rubbish on the home computer, a fact that even the PC seemed to sense, given it always seemed to shut down on her midway through an email to me, causing her to lose everything.

‘Oh, yes please, darling. Maybe you could ping any house-related emails over to my email so I can get the details changed to mine. Good idea.’

Ping?

She looked at her list again. There was more?

‘And then, depending on how long you’re here for, there’ll be the scattering of the ashes. If the crem can get them to us quickly, we could probably fit that in before you go back?’

She looked at me, maybe misinterpreting my silence as reluctance. ‘I don’t really want to do it on my own,’ she said. ‘And I couldn’t ever be one of those people who keep him in a pot on the mantelpiece. Can you imagine? He’d be home more now than he ever was when he was alive!’ She burst out laughing, a raucous sound that jarred.

‘I can stay as long as you need me to,’ I said, trying not to sound churlish. ‘Of course I’ll help with the ashes.’

Mum’s laughter stopped as abruptly as it started. She opened her mouth to say something then stopped. I waited, but she must have thought the better of it.

‘Right,’ she said, noticing I’d finished my toast. ‘Why don’t you unpack and freshen up? We could look at the paperwork later?’

I stared into the middle distance, slightly dazed. Despite, or perhaps because of, the conversation we’d just had, I still had no idea what was going on in Mum’s head, and that worried me. Over the years I’d learned how to read her moods; how to avoid her flashpoints; handle her unpredictability; but now I felt I’d lost that skill. I was back to square one, almost as nervous of Mum as I’d been when I was growing up.

Perhaps it was just the lack of sleep, or maybe it was just that peculiar feeling of arriving in a different country without having psychologically left the last one, but suddenly I felt drained. I stood up and turned for the stairs, hauling my suitcase with me.

CHAPTER 6

They say every expat is running away from something. I don’t want to believe it about myself but somewhere, in a dark place where I try never to look, I know it’s probably true. I was never running away from Graham; I was running away from what had happened after Graham. I heaved my suitcase onto my bed with a grunt worthy of a championship tennis player then went to have a look at Graham’s old room. It was now a little-used guest room but, despite the fact that barely anything of his remained in there, I could still feel his essence as if it were ingrained in the walls.

Graham was a typical older brother. I’m not going to lie and say we got on like two members of the Brady Bunch when we were young. There was squabbling, of course there was, and there was hitting, pinching and hair-pulling. Once Graham drove me so mad I pushed him down the stairs and then watched, aghast, as he tumbled down. I thought he’d be dead at the bottom. He cried a lot, but he was fine—still alive, nothing broken—and, boy, was I in trouble.

No one could make me as angry as Graham could—but he was my brother and, when we got on well, he was my best friend. We’d spend hours inventing games in the garden; climbing trees, making ‘tree houses’ and cutting muddy tracks in the lawn as we raced our bikes up and down, skidding around the vegetable patch, dodging under the washing line and trying not to smash into the apple tree.

As was my ritual whenever I came home, I crouched down and peered under the bed. The box was still there. Lying flat on my tummy, I stretched my arm out as far under the bed as I could, trying not to breathe in the dust, and pedalled my fingers to get a hold on it: our old Mastermind set. Sliding it out along the carpet, I opened the box and touched my fingertips to the coloured pegs. They were still in the sequence they’d been in during the last game I’d played with Dad. Yellow, yellow, red, green.

My mind slipped back to that day. Dad and I usually played the Mastermind Challenge when Graham was out. Each time Dad won, I’d be torn between pride and disappointment: disappointed that I’d lost, but proud that Dad wasn’t humouring me—proud as punch that he hadn’t ‘allowed’ me to win simply because I was eight and his daughter.

On this particular day, Graham had been neither at band practice nor football training; he’d been outside, playing Red Arrows on his bike. He’d begged me to join in—Red Arrows weren’t as much fun without a fellow plane to swoop against in death-defying near-misses—but I’d lost the last four games to Dad and was desperate to win back at least one point before the weekend was over.

Yellow, yellow, red, green. I’d chosen carefully, trying to double bluff, to avoid any obvious patterns. Dad’s opening bet had been blue, yellow, green, red—he’d known I’d think ‘blue plus yellow equals green’ and then I’d have given it a red teacher’s tick. Not this time. I’d given him the white peg for the second yellow, and he’d raised his eyebrows and rubbed his chin before slowly placing red, yellow, green, blue.

I’d known what he was thinking there, too: colours of the rainbow. I’d sighed, acting as if he was right, then given him still only the one white peg for the yellow. There was nothing predictable about my colours this time. I’d spent the previous evening in my room, going through all my predictable patterns to come up with something that didn’t fit any of them. Who knew how difficult it was to be random?

‘Evie! C’mon! I need you!’ Graham had shouted through the open patio doors to the dining room where Dad and I were playing. ‘Stop being such a boring old fart!’

‘Just one more game and I’ll come!’ I’d shouted back. ‘Just let me beat Dad!’ I loved playing Red Arrows, too, but it wasn’t the same as winning at Mastermind.

‘It’ll never happen!’ Graham had shouted, zooming back down the garden on his bike. ‘I’ll be playing on my own forever!’

Nine guesses in and Dad had had three white pegs to mark the three colours he’d guessed correctly. But he was having trouble with the fourth—I never put doubles and he knew that. The whole game had hinged on his last guess. Blue, yellow, red, green, he guessed. I’d won!

‘Well done, sweetheart!’ Dad had said as I’d jumped onto his lap for a hug. He’d ruffled my hair. ‘I’m so proud of you! What a great combination, you completely out-guessed me by choosing that double yellow.’ He’d given me a big kiss. ‘You know? I think you could be Prime Minister one day with smarts like that. Now, are you going to let me get my own back, or go and play with your brother?’

‘I’m going to play with Graham and think about my next combination!’ I’d said, putting the set into its box. ‘Is it OK if I don’t clear this game? I want to remember it forever.’

I remembered the day clearly. About a month later, Graham was dead. There was no more Mastermind with Dad after that.

I put the set carefully back into its box and, lying flat on my tummy, pushed it back into its hiding place. Standing up, I brushed the dust off my sleeve and took a deep breath.

‘Hello,’ I said softly. ‘You all right?’

There was no reply, of course.

‘Don’t worry, I’ll look after Mum,’ I said. I closed my eyes for a second, then backed quietly out of the room, pulling the door gently to behind me.

The only things left in my room from when I’d lived there were the scant clothes I’d left when I moved to Dubai, a couple of old perfumes and some of my childhood books and toys. With my blessing, Mum had redecorated after I’d left, choking the room with flowery wallpaper, adding bright curtains and changing my creaky old single bed for a double with an antique brass frame. If I half shut my eyes, I could still see past the flowers; I could see the contours and colours of the room in which I’d grown up.

Now, I lay on the bed next to my suitcase and tapped a WhatsApp message to Emily to check everything was OK at the office.

Dubai felt dreamlike, a galaxy away. My pillows were comfortable … they smelled like home.

Two hours later, as the afternoon started to turn its attention to dying, I went back downstairs, my knitting bag under my arm. I felt much better. I’d had a sleep, unpacked, had a shower and changed into something warm.

I found Mum in the living room having a cup of tea with Richard-from-down-the-road. Although I hadn’t seen him for years, I remembered him—he was one of those people who seemed to have been around forever, propping up the local church, leading the Cubs and organising community football matches and bonfires throughout my childhood. He’d taught Sunday school when I was five—and he’d seemed ancient even then. Twenty-three years later, it seems he’s only a couple of years older than Mum. A widower, at that.

Dressed in frumpy brown cords and a shabby-looking sweater, the threadbare collar of a beige shirt poking out from the crew neck, and wearing desperately unflattering glasses, he didn’t do himself any favours.

‘Forgive the clothes,’ he said, catching me looking at him. ‘Usually I dress like a pop star but I was trimming the hedges today.’

I laughed, caught out. I liked his humour.

‘Richard just popped round to give us his condolences,’ said Mum. ‘He was a huge support to me yesterday morning when I, um, “found” your father.’ She gave a little shudder. ‘He came with me to the hospital. It was ever so kind of him.’

I looked at them both. Mum was smiling at Richard, her teacup balanced daintily on her knee. She had a bit of blusher on and she looked pretty. On the mantelpiece, there was a vase of fresh flowers—thankfully not white lilies because Mum would have slammed those straight in the rubbish—and I guessed Richard had brought them. I wondered how much he knew; if he remembered what had happened to Graham. It had been talked about enough in Woodside, even if Richard and his wife hadn’t been that close to Mum and Dad at the time.

I poured myself a cup of tea from the pot and sat down.

‘Try the shortbread,’ said Mum. ‘It’s lovely.’

It was only then that I noticed the Petticoat Tails on the table. Heat flooded my face and I swiped my hand over my forehead, the sweat wet on my fingers. Petticoat Tails! Dad’s favourite! I blinked hard, the memory of Sunday afternoon teas before Graham had died, of ham sandwiches, buttered crumpets and shortbread, hitting me physically in the gut.

‘Have one. You’re too thin anyway!’ Mum nudged the plate towards me, and I stared at her. It was all wrong: Mum, Petticoat Tails, Richard.

‘Yesterday wasn’t the time for condolences,’ said Richard, turning his attention from Mum to me. ‘So I thought I’d pop by today to see how your mum was bearing up.’ He smiled at her and she looked away, almost embarrassed. ‘But it seems like she’s got everything marvellously under control.’

He nodded to himself. As if to reinforce that his words were definitely true.

I had to agree—on the surface, it did.

CHAPTER 7

‘What do you remember of that that day, Evie? Can you talk about it?’

I pulled my knitting out and picked up where I’d left off at home that morning. I was knitting my first scarf. There was a bit where I’d dropped a few stitches but I hoped it would be good enough to wear. On the playing fields outside, half of my class was playing football. I could see them through the staffroom window.

‘We were in the garden,’ I said. ‘Mum and me.’

Miss Dawson nodded.

‘I remember the sirens.’ I concentrated on the stitches falling away from my fingers; I tried not to think about the words tumbling out of my mouth. Somehow the ‘doing’ made the ‘saying’ easier.

It had been a beautiful day. The sky had been so blue I’d imagined it reaching all the way up into outer space. We’d heard the sirens while we’d been pulling weeds. I was wearing shorts and a vest and I’d been hot; sweat had been running into my eyes and I was wishing I’d worn a headband. Mum was throwing big clumps of weeds into a trug; I was copying her, pulling the bits that looked like grass and throwing them into my own small trug. I hadn’t dared to do the weeds that looked like flowers in case I got it wrong.

‘A song came on the radio and we danced,’ I told Miss Dawson. ‘It was “Dancing Queen”.’ Mum had jumped up and run to the kitchen windowsill, where we’d balanced the radio. She’d turned up the volume and started dancing, calling to me to join her.

Mum had been strutting up and down the patio, her hands on her hips, pointing and turning like a pop star. I’d dropped my trug and tried to copy her moves. Mum had sung along, pointing at me. I remember thinking how I couldn’t imagine being seventeen.

‘Mum was going to make lemonade later, and we were going to take a picnic to the park—maybe even hire a rowing boat.’

It was then, when I was thinking about ham sandwiches and lemonade, that we’d heard the sirens. When you hear them in the distance, you don’t think that it’s your brother dying on the road. You just don’t think that. ‘Sounds like something’s happened on the bypass,’ Mum had said.

‘We heard the sirens,’ I told Miss Dawson. ‘We didn’t know they were for Graham.’

‘Oh, Evie. No. Of course you couldn’t have known.’

I barely heard Miss Dawson. I was back in the moment, stitches sliding off my knitting needles as I remembered. Mum had turned up the radio to drown out the noise. The song had finished and, out of breath and laughing, we’d gone back to our trugs. ‘Out of breath’. How that haunted me now.