Katy Regan - The Story of You

I wish I did. I wish coming back was like therapy for me, like going back home was therapy for other people.

‘Yeah, not many cow-pats in Archway,’ I said. I kept looking out of the window, so he couldn’t see my eyes water.

I was glad once we’d got to Mildred’s. There was something about travelling in a car with Dad these days that was intense, what with the elephant squeezed in there with us.

We sat at our usual table at the back and ordered the same thing we ordered when Mum was alive: me a cappuccino and a millionaire’s shortbread, Dad a cup of tea and a teacake. Mum used to have a banana milkshake with cream on top and a herbal tea. She thought the latter cancelled out the former. She was a bit deluded like that. It’s probably why she thought three Rothmans a day couldn’t hurt anyone, and maybe they didn’t, who knows? Maybe the Rothmans had nothing to do with it.

Dad pulled up his red trousers, sat down and searched my face.

‘Bloody Nora, you look more like your mother every time I see you. Same beautiful smile.’ His eyes still welled up when he mentioned her.

‘Thank God, eh, Dad? I lucked out, gene-wise.’

‘Yep, you got your mother’s looks. Niamh is more of a King, I think, and Leah, well …’

The teacake had arrived.

‘Have you spoken to her, Dad?’

Dad made sure every millimetre of that teacake had butter on.

‘No, I haven’t managed to yet.’

‘But you know how upset Mum would be if she knew you two hardly spoke.’

‘She’s never in, I’ve tried lots of times.’ I was kind of disappointed he felt he could just lie like that.

‘Dad, Leah hardly ever goes out in the evenings any more, you know what she’s like about leaving the kids.’ He looked up. ‘Okay, you don’t, but I’m telling you, she’s paranoid, especially about Jack and his asthma. She had to take him to A&E the other night.’

Dad had picked up the teacake but put it down again. His whole face sort of slid.

‘Did she?’

‘Yes.’

A blackbird appeared at the window. It sounds ridiculous, but I sometimes liked to imagine it was Mum when things like that happened, checking in on us. I felt like she was urging me to get to the point.

‘Dad, also, about the ashes,’ I said. ‘Please can I have them? I’ve been asking for over a year now.’

‘Well, it’d help if we saw more of you. There’s only Niamh that comes to see us.’

Thank God for Niamh , I thought. I hated what had happened, but most of all I hated what it had done to my relationship with my father, with my home town. As a family, we used to be so close.

‘Anyway, I’ve got some news,’ he said, changing the subject. Dad never had news. ‘Denise and I – well, I … am selling the house. We’re going to move to somewhere smaller. It’s too much for Denise to clean.’

That blackbird flew off then, presumably to have a good snigger.

Weirdly, I didn’t feel emotional about them moving out of the house we all grew up in; it hasn’t been ‘our’ house since Denise moved in, four months after Mum died, anyway, and magnolia-d the living daylights out of it.

‘That’s great news, Dad,’ I said. ‘So when might this be?’

‘We’ve put an offer in on a place in Saltmarsh, so all being well … a couple of months?’

I smiled. ‘I’m pleased for you, Dad,’ I said, and I was. Staying in that house with all the memories of Mum had affected him more than he let on, and whatever I felt about Denise, I couldn’t bear Dad to feel sad. ‘It’ll be good, a new start.’ He looked pleased I’d taken the news so well.

‘So, Mum’s ashes then,’ I continued – he wasn’t changing the subject that easily. ‘All the more reason for me to have them. Mum would hate to be in any house but that one. She loved that house.’

I tried to imagine Mum being happy in a dormer bungalow in Saltmarsh when she was alive, and struggled.

‘I know, I know.’

‘Even if she never got her new kitchen.’

Dad laughed, then sniffed, his eyes misting over again.

‘Also, when are you going to call Leah?’ I said, patting his hand. ‘Because surely this is the perfect opportunity for you two to stop being so ridiculous? The funeral was sixteen years ago.’

He sighed. You conned me into thinking this was a nice cup of tea with my daughter and you planned this all along .

‘I will, okay? Just don’t bloody hassle me, Robyn,’ he said. ‘You know how I hate to be hassled.’

‘Yeah, I know, I’m sorry.’

I feared I’d overstepped the mark; rocked what was turning into the first proper, one-to-one chat with my dad for over a year, and was eager to rein things back, but then Dad looked up and his whole face lit up. ‘Oh, here she is,’ he said, smiling at someone behind me. The scent of Elnett reached me before I even turned around, to see Denise walking towards us – her jet-black hair sprayed stiff, the lashings of silver eye shadow right up to her brows, and that look in her eyes already: This IS a competition and I shall win.

I looked back to Dad. I wanted him to see my face, how annoyed I was that he’d clearly invited her, but he’d already got up and was getting his wallet out. ‘What do you want, love? I’ll get it.’

I timed my arrival at the church to avoid the bit where everyone mingles outside before they go in. I’ve never liked that part. I can still remember to this day, outside this same church, the humiliation of having to face my six-foot, surf-dude cousin, Nathan, whilst I was a blotchy, snotty wreck at my own mother’s funeral. All the embarrassing hugs from people I didn’t know. I was glad Joe was spared that part too, because he was carrying the coffin. I walked up the path of St Bart’s, just as they were taking it out of the hearse. It was pale oak against the vivid blue sky, with a waterfall of peach roses on top (I was right about those).

There was the crunch of shoes on gravel. Someone cried ‘one, two, three’ as it was lifted onto the shoulders of six men. I recognized Joe straight away, of course; at the back, one trouser leg stuck in his sock, a look of such gritty determination on his face, as if he were about to charge through the stained-glass window of the church and deliver her to the gates of heaven himself. I recognized every single one of the five other pallbearers too: Joe’s uncle Fred at the front. Peg-leg Uncle Fred, Joe used to call him, Joe being one of those people who could get away with insulting people to their face. On the other side of him was Mr Potts, still with his extraordinary eyebrows. Mr Potts would often be sitting at the vicarage kitchen table when you went round, talking really animatedly as his caterpillar eyebrows did Mexican waves across his forehead. Joe and I used to debate how differently Potty’s life could have turned out, if only he’d trimmed those eyebrows. So simple! He could have had a wife by now. Behind him was Ethan, Joe’s youngest brother, and then at the back, his other brothers, Rory and Simon, and then Joe. Joe’s dad was at the front of it, all in his black funeral regalia. So he’d made it. But then, as if the Reverend Clifford Sawyer was going to let any other rev guide his beloved Marion on her final journey to the gates of Paradise.

I gave the coffin a wide berth and joined everyone else in the churchyard. Half of Kilterdale was there. Side on, you could see how all four Sawyer brothers had the same profile: long face, these big, deep-set doe eyes and a slightly beaky nose; all put together it was somehow very handsome. Ethan has Down’s syndrome, so his features are obviously a little different, but they all have the same hair: light brown, with a hint of red, and so fine and straight you never have to brush it.