Winman, Sarah - When God Was a Rabbit

A few days after they had taken his ear, he awoke very late in the afternoon and climbed up to the window and saw that a small lemon tree had been brought into the yard. And in the fading light, the lemons seemed to glow and they were beautiful, and his mouth watered, and there was a breeze and he could smell coffee, perfume, even mint. And for a moment he was all right because the world was still there, and the world out there was good, and when the world was good, there was hope.

I reached for his hand. It was cold.

‘I have to go back to England,’ I said. ‘Come with me.’

‘Not without him,’ he said.

I knew they’d want something with his DNA in case they found him, found something of him. I went into the bathroom before I left and bagged his toothbrush and a hairbrush, but not his favourite brush, in case he came back, you see; I left that on the side next to his aftershave, next to an old copy of Rugby World . I sat on the edge of the bath and felt so guilty that I was to go home and leave him there, but I had to go; had to go and bridge the distance that now separated my stricken parents. And so I left Charlie there, in the house we spent months working on, the house with the bird’s nest and the ailanthus tree and the old gold coin we’d found whilst digging out the garden. I left Charlie there to man the phone line, to make calls to the Embassy, and to be there when they called. Charlie, the old hand at trauma; Charlie, the unexpected proof that life can sometimes turn out all right.

It is all so much smaller. The shops have gone, wiped clean except from memory. The deli, the newsagent, the butcher with its sawdust floor, and the smart shoe shop we never went in, they’ve all gone. I don’t feel sad, feel nothing, simply nothing. I drive along, signal left and turn into the street where we all began.

I don’t stop outside, but a few houses before, and I see the swish of saris now, the changing constellation of immigration. I imagined that I would walk up the path, the path that cut through the grass and the flowerbeds, and I would stand in front of the door and ring the bell. ‘I used to live here,’ I would say and there would be smiles and an invitation inside, and maybe even a cup of tea, and I would tell them stories of our life and tell them how happy we were, and they might look at each other and think, I hope their joy and luck rub off on us too.

There is a loud knock on my window. I look into the face of a man I don’t know. He seems angry. I lower the window.

‘Are you going yet? ’Cause I live here and I want to park.’

I say nothing to this man. I don’t like him and so I say nothing. I turn the ignition and pull away. I roll slowly down the street, until I see it. I stop outside. The wall has gone, garden gone, and a car is parked where the flowerbeds used to blossom. There is a porch, and I can see coats suspended in the condensation. I am a stranger. I drive on. Nothing is as it should be.

I look at my watch. Late. I am cold. Waiting for house lights to retire. The alleyway smells the same; I am alone. I see the movement of a fox. It comes closer – they’re urbanised now – I kick stones its way and it saunters off, unafraid but irritated. I look over the fence. As I do, the last light disappears. Now I feel nervous; definition of shadows all around. Is that a man? I move against the old gate. Blood pounding. Move on, move on, move on . I hear his footsteps recede on the gravel. I count the silence that remains.

I lift the latch easily and secure the gate with a brick. The small torch beam is surprisingly strong, and the jumble of junk at the bottom of the garden appears untouched, apart from the addition of fox faeces and an old trainer. Half a chicken carcass.

I dig through moist leaves until I hit the dirt. I follow the line down from the slatted fence and measure a hand’s-width away. I scoop out handfuls of earth until I feel the chilly sensation of tin. I pull it free and wipe the lid clean: Biscuit assortment (we ate them all).

I put nothing back, don’t cover my tracks. It will be blamed on a fox. I want to get away from here. I kick away the brick and secure the gate. I stride quickly away. Darkness enfolds the wake of my presence. I was never there.

The Polaroid is surprisingly clear in the early morning light. The girl who became a boy. I am smiling, (I am hiding). The Christmas of my rabbit. Leave something behind, he had said.

I reach for my coffee. I put on another layer and look out over the familiar of my adult world. I unfold his letter. The scrawl of his fifteen-year-old handwriting grips my throat – to my eyes, a jumble of ciphers. To free, to explain.

I arrived as a grey afternoon chill descended upon the station and heralded my arrival with the promise of nothing. The station was quiet; only one other passenger disembarked with me, a passenger who carried his home on his back and who strode up the hill with the practised gait of a professional walker. I let him go ahead.

I’d told no one I was coming, not even Alan, and had simply picked up a local cab outside the station. In truth I’d wanted to stay in London, away from everything that said, This is Joe; for the views and the smells and the trees were all him as they were also me, intertwined as we were in this landscape, forged and rooted and held.

I asked to be dropped at the top of the roadway by the old bar gate, by the mossy indented word TREHAVEN that we’d first seen twenty-three years ago, when we were poised on the edge of adventure, me with a timid yearning to start my life again, him with a broken heart that had never healed.

It was cold and I wore too little, but the cold felt good and it cleared my head, allowed me to stop and listen to the faint drilling of a woodpecker. And as the hill took me down towards the house, the space he’d left seized me and something somewhere in that space whispered, He’s still here . I heard it as the hill propelled me towards the silence of meal times and the masked pain, and the open photo albums no longer stored away in musty drawers. He’s still here , it whispered as my pace quickened and my tears fell, still here , until I started to run.

They were in the kitchen, all three of them, drinking tea and eating sponge cake. It was Nelson, Arthur’s guide dog, who noticed me first, the little chocolate-brown Labrador who’d become his eyes a year ago when mine could no longer commit full time. He bounded towards the door and barked, and I saw Arthur smile because he knew the bark, knew what it meant, and my mother and father got up and ran towards me, and everything seemed strangely normal that first moment when I arrived. The cracks appeared only after I went up to my room.

I hadn’t heard her behind me; the weight she’d lost made her tread lighter, or maybe I was distracted by the sudden emergence of a photograph on my dresser, a photo of me and Joe at Plymouth Navy Days, when we were young, a photo I hadn’t seen in almost fifteen years. He was wearing a sailor’s hat and I had wanted to laugh, but it hadn’t been placed in irony, and so I didn’t. My mother picked it up and looked at it – ran her fingers across his face, ran them across her brow.

‘We were so lucky that he was ours,’ I said.