My heart felt like it was breaking with the pain of loving and losing, but there was also a feeling of something being put to rights, of the world settling back on to its axis.
The wind whistled a mournful tune across the sand, and beneath the cries of the swooping gulls I watched as my sister took her last breath with a peaceful smile on her lips and Sam’s hand in hers.
EPILOGUE
LATER
It happened for the first time at the dry cleaner’s. I’d just dropped off a couple of Nick’s shirts and was already planning the next stop on my round of errands.
‘Can I take a telephone contact number?’ asked the young girl behind the counter.
I was looking through the shop window, wondering if the uniformed figure walking slowly down the street was a traffic warden.
I was distracted.
‘Phone number?’ the assistant prompted.
I spun around, with an apology. ‘Sorry. It’s 079— No, its 0971— no, that’s not right. It’s 0779…’ My voice trailed away, and I frowned in confusion.
‘Don’t worry,’ the girl assured me with a carefree laugh. ‘No one can ever remember their mobile number. Most customers need to get their phones out.’
It was an obvious prompt telling me what I was meant to do next, but I made no move to extract my phone from my bag.
‘But Iknowmy number. I give it out all the time.’
There wasn’t much the girl could say to that, and I could tell she was anxious to move on to serve the customers waiting in line behind me.
Embarrassed and flustered, I retrieved the phone from my bag and read the number off the screen. I’d like to say it sounded instantly familiar. But it didn’t.
Several weeks passed before it happened again. Just long enough for me to convince myself the incident in the dry cleaner’s had been a random one-off occurrence.
Mornings in our house were always chaotic. They were filled withDon’t forget your…andHave you got your homework…comments from me,and the usual dramatic teenage sighs and eye-rolling in reply.
They forgot things. They lost things and I found them. That’s how it worked. But not that morning.
‘You’re both going to be late,’ I warned, as one child snatched up a slice of toast from the table. The other was still upstairs. I picked up the car keys and then stopped and looked around the kitchen.
‘Have you seen my phone, Cassie?’
My fifteen-year-old rapidly swallowed her mouthful of toast before grinning cheekily. ‘You know, if you put your things away, you wouldn’t forever be losing them.’
At any other time it would have been funny to hear my own words being quoted back to me, but not today.
‘Seriously, Cassie, have you seen it?’
Perhaps she heard something in my voice, for she began a half-hearted search, moving a couple of items on the table, none of which were big enough to conceal my phone.
‘I’ll ring it for you,’ she said, reaching into her school bag for her own mobile.
A thundering stampede of feet shook the staircase as Jessica, our younger daughter, hurtled into the kitchen the same way she moved everywhere, at speed.
‘What’s up? Why isn’t everyone in the car already?’
‘Mum’s lost her phone.’
‘It’s not lost… it’s just… misplaced,’ I said, wondering why this all felt horribly familiar.
The three of us looked expectantly around the kitchen as we waited for the call to connect. When it did, the ring tone sounded oddly muffled and tinny. I followed the sound to the far side of the kitchen. Behind me, both girls were already giggling as they realised where the sound was coming from. Like a magician performing a big reveal, I pulled open the bread bin. Inside it was a sliced loaf of wholegrain, a packet of crumpets, and my mobile phone.