Fionnuala Kearney - The Day I Lost You - A heartfelt, emotion-packed, twist-filled read

‘Anna’s dead, isn’t she?’ Finn added.

Theo thought some more before replying. ‘More than likely, but until a body is found …’

‘No one could survive seventy days buried under snow, not even if they were in a hole of some sort.’ Finn had counted the days.

‘The human instinct is to survive against all odds.’ Theo picked up a chip and placed it in his mouth. It was already cool.

‘You’re a doctor. What do you think?’

When Finn stared up at him from his huddled stance, Theo saw fear and confusion and remembered what it was like to be young and afraid. He felt bad for not recognizing that two epic events had happened within such a close space of time. Harriet is his mother. And she had left him. Anna had been his beloved babysitter for years. And she was probably dead.

He hugged his son close. ‘I think we don’t know until we know. We have to have hope.’ Theo felt Finn’s body hold back tears. He held him as tight as he could without making him want to pull away. In the distance, the Isle of Wight had disappeared into black clouds. ‘However awful things might seem, we have to have hope.’

Finn’s lower lip trembled. ‘Did you like her, Dad? Anna?’ His voice caught on her name.

‘Of course.’ Theo angled himself to try and catch his son’s expression. ‘What a strange thing to say. Now …’ He loosened his grip on his son and gathered the rubbish into the plastic bag he had brought. ‘You put this lot into that bin over there, then I’ll race you to the car.’

Finn grabbed his arm. ‘Dad?’

‘Yes?’

‘Mum … She’s not coming back, is she? Like, never.’

Theo drew the cold air through his nose slowly, and exhaled it even slower. ‘No, Finn. I don’t think she is.’

‘See, I do hope. I keep hoping that Mum will come home. I keep hoping that Anna’s alive but …’

Theo paused before speaking again. ‘I know you do.’ He took one of his hands and squeezed it hard. ‘But we’re here. Alive and kicking. And your mum may be living somewhere else now, but she loves you very much and you can see as much of her as you want, any time. Any place. We will both make sure of that.’

Theo let the statement rest with his son for a few minutes, then turned and play-punched him. ‘So, what about that race?’

As Finn walked towards the bin ten feet away, Theo sprinted down the dune. ‘But you have to give me a head start!’ he yelled back through the wind as he slowed down and backed himself slowly up the beach. When he saw Finn running towards him, his hands waving dramatically, he turned around and ran again. The wind lashed his cheeks, made his eyes water. It is good to be alive , he thought, as he filled his grateful lungs with the sea air and ran, aware of his son’s laughter just over his shoulder, gaining on him, getting ready to overtake. He slowed and watched Finn pass. His son seemed to be running in slow motion, his limbs all angled, his hair, salt sprayed and stuck to his head, his head glancing back occasionally, his arms pumping like train pistons. ‘ Did you like her, Dad? Anna? ’

At the car, Theo panted loudly, leaned his body forward, his hands on his waist. ‘Not easy to run with all these layers,’ he protested.

‘You’re just old,’ Finn grinned.

‘I’m forty-five!’ Theo panted the words as he opened the car.

Inside, Finn rubbed his face warm with the palms of his hands. ‘That was good, Dad,’ he said. ‘But next time let’s wait for some better weather.’

‘Nah.’ Theo reversed the car away from the café, down towards the barriers that allowed paying visitors entrance to the beach to park. ‘The crowds come with the sun. We practically had the whole place to ourselves.’

Finn unravelled his white earphones for the journey home. ‘It was good, Dad,’ he repeated. ‘Some father-son-together crap.’

Theo frowned at his son’s language, but decided against a rebuke which, wired into his phone, Finn wouldn’t have heard anyway. He eased the car through the narrow barrier as Finn drummed his fingers to the music already pulsing in his ears and ignored the question repeating in his own.

‘ Did you like her, Dad? Anna? ’

When we reach Windermere, I try not to react when I see my mother’s hair.

‘Darling,’ she says, ‘you came. I’m so glad you came. Your dad will be thrilled to see you. Oh, thank you,’ she says as she hugs me tight. I breathe in her scent, relax in her arms, close my eyes and ignore the fact that she has gone from being an ash blonde to a piccalilli yellow. She pats her head, as if she knows what I’m thinking. ‘I haven’t been able to get out, dear, found this colour in a cupboard, thought I’d better try and get rid of the greys before you arrived.’

Great. It’s my fault she’s yellow.

‘And who’s this?’ She looks down to the other end of the lead I’m holding.

‘Pug.’

‘Is that it?’

‘Yes.’

‘Is Pug a boy or girl?’

‘Girl.’

Mum sighs with relief. ‘Good, they piss less. I have enough trouble dealing with your father.’

Leah laughs out loud, comes in for Mum’s second hug of the day. ‘How is he, Mum?’

‘Leah, love. Good to see you too. Go on through, he’s in the back, looking forward to seeing you all. Hi Gus. I have lunch ready. Hope you’re all starving.’

Leah’s eyes roll at me as Gus embraces my mother too. She points to my mother’s hair behind her back and mouths the words ‘What the hell?’ at me, then leads the way with Gus, who hits his head on one of her empty hanging baskets. Mum pulls me back.

‘Have you heard from Rose?’ she asks, her expression grave.

‘Just a text from Sean to say they’ve got there safely.’

‘Oh.’ She looks disappointed on my behalf, then strokes my hair. ‘How are you?’

Straight away I don’t resent the question that I normally rail against. Instead, I feel some strange primal comfort. The touch of a mother. ‘Not so good.’ I shrug. ‘Yesterday was hard.’

She squeezes my hand, caresses the edge of my little finger. I miss my mother’s touch. And I miss touching my daughter …

Dad is sitting in his usual perch, staring out over the lake from the back of the house. There’s a huge expanse of windows that they both put in in the Seventies, way before they were trendy, and the view from this part of the house is spectacular. Today there are too many sailing boats to count. Some glide across the shimmering water like a knife through butter. Others, not quite catching the wind, move more slowly. Dad’s eyes seem fixed on a small, slow one near the edge of the lake, close to the end of the back garden.

Leah and Gus are already with him. She has her hands wrapped around one of his, is chatting animatedly to him with Gus beside her, prompting stories with witty asides. Dad responds to neither of them but he keeps his eyes fixed on Leah’s face. She’s good at this, pretending that nothing is wrong; pretending that the contracted body of the man in the chair is still Dad, though both of us mourn in private. Both of us hate how the stroke has affected him; how much that tiny part of him that died in his brain, the most minuscule area of shaded capillaries on a CT scan, has really altered him. I lean in and kiss his cheek. I haven’t told him yet. Mum has asked me not to, certain that if he knew – if he had any understanding of what’s happened to Anna – it would kill him. He’d keel over and die. Anna is his only grandchild.

I focus on the shelf next to us. It’s white melamine; one of a row of three put up by Dad years ago. I remember Mum fussing when he used the drill to put the brackets in the wall, sure he’d puncture a gas pipe or electrocute himself. The shelves are still in place, perfectly stable and horizontal, while my dad sits curved in a chair. I reach out and touch a Dinky car, one of the many he has collected over the years. It’s not in a box like most of the others on display. It is from the Thunderbirds range, Lady Penelope’s pink car. Anna used to love it and it’s one of the ones he allowed her to play with when she was little.