Helen Brown - After Cleo

As I revised, reliving the painful days after Sam’s death wasn’t easy, though I was surprised how much detail I remembered. But remembered pain isn’t as bad as it is first time round.

I hoped maybe now the book would have a better chance of reaching out to other parents who’d suffered loss – and that Cleo might find a few readers not just in New Zealand, but Australia as well.

As the wedding day drew closer, the house hummed with excitement. Every phone call and early wedding present delivered to our doorstep brought more happiness. The fact that six months earlier I’d worried I mightn’t be around to be part of this, made it all the more wonderful. Nevertheless, I still had to be careful. While my body was stronger, I still wasn’t entirely back to normal. Whenever I pushed myself too hard, I’d crash in a heap of exhaustion. Occasionally I’d collapse in tearful frustration, wondering if I’d ever feel strong again. During these low moments, malevolent thoughts crept into my mind. What if this extraordinary tiredness was abnormal, and cancer was still swirling inside me?

It was hard to believe Rob was getting married. I still thought of him as a six-year-old playing hide and seek with Cleo, or as the young Sea Scout who loved sailing. Then there was the fourteen-year-old hurrumphing home in his blue school uniform through a cloud of teenage hormones. We were all thrilled when the boy who’d had ‘learning difficulties’ won a scholarship to engineering school. Then devastated when at the age of nineteen he was struck by serious illness.

Rob and I had been through so much together. The day I’d had to phone him to say Cleo had died, he’d sighed and said, ‘There goes the last link with Sam.’ Our grief would always be an invisible bond between us. Even these days, when we had a moment alone, we’d thumb through old photos and talk fondly about Sam.

Rob always says bad times help you appreciate the good. Casting my mind back over the uncertainty and pain of recent months made these joyous days leading up to the wedding so precious.

In quieter, sombre moments I’d Google the latest events in Sri Lanka. The month before Rob’s wedding a suicide bombing in the town of Anuradhapura claimed the lives of twenty-seven people, including a former general. While Lydia insisted the monastery was a million miles from these atrocities, my maternal heart still fretted.

With the wedding only two weeks away, we were just about ready for visitors. Ahead of them all was one very important arrival. When I phoned the airport an automated voice said the flight would be arriving ten minutes early. That couldn’t be right. Planes are never early.

Philip and I bustled into the car and hurtled down the motorway.

‘She’ll have lost weight,’ I said. ‘Two vegetarian curries a day must be incredibly purging. I’m not going to say a word.’

Philip smiled tactfully, but remained silent. He dropped me outside the Arrivals Hall and went to park the car. There was no sign of her among the passengers spilling in from Singapore. Maybe she’d missed her connection. The trip from the monastery to Colombo airport would’ve taken more than four hours. There could’ve been all sorts of hold-ups – elephants, pot-holes, terrorists. Alternatively, the flight from Sri Lanka to Singapore could have been delayed.

There’s nothing like an airport Arrivals Hall to reinstate faith in human nature. A young Indian man clutched a cellophane-encased rose. A Chinese family stared intensely at the automatic doors. The atmosphere crackled with expectancy. The doors snapped open to reveal a tired-looking man in a suit. A woman ran forward trailing a child. They embraced in a pyramid of joy. All those stories about smiling being good for people’s health must be true. He looked suddenly younger and relieved of his jet lag.

Calls from Lydia over recent weeks had been sporadic – either she was in silent retreat or the monastery’s electricity supply was disabled. Once she’d written a letter but the post office had run out of stamps.

The doors opened again. My chest lurched. But I could tell from the luggage trolley it wasn’t her. Expensive suitcases and duty-free booze weren’t her style.

‘No sign of her yet?’ Philip asked, slightly breathless after jogging from the car park building.

The doors weren’t being co-operative. They spat out a beautiful young Indian woman who was swept away by her rose-toting lover, followed by an ancient Chinese woman to be mobbed by her family. Maybe customs officials were giving Lydia a hard time. I’d watched Border Patrol enough times to know how they operate, always on the lookout for weirdos. Maybe they’d mistaken a lingering aroma of incense on her clothes for something else.

Even if Lydia hadn’t become a nun, she’d certainly been living as one, sleeping in a cell and meditating more than twelve hours a day. I steeled myself for the possibility she’d decided to surprise us with a shaved head and maroon robes.

Years of waiting at airport barriers have taught me one thing. The only way to get people to walk through those doors is to go to the cafe and buy a polystyrene cup, preferably two, full of unbearably hot tea. Staggering back through the crowd, with splashes of tea scolding my hands, I heard a shout of delight from Philip. She’d arrived.

Thinner, yes. Almost worryingly so. Yet there was beautiful warmth in her eyes. Her clothes were reasonably normal, thank goodness. White pants and an ethnic-looking jacket. I was relieved to see her hair was still all there. The expensive colour job I’d booked her before she’d left had given her several inches of regrowth. The overall effect was unkempt or possibly rock star, depending on your perspective.

Thrusting the teas in a rubbish bin, I ran toward her and wrapped her in my arms.

‘You look . . .’ I said, way too skinny but I’ll fatten you up in no time .

‘. . . wonderful!’

Allure

A house is happy when a daughter knows she is beautiful

Instead of getting more independent with age the way Cleo had, Jonah became more needy. He missed the painters terribly, waiting by the door for them in the mornings. When they didn’t show up, he followed me around the house meowing and meowing, reminding me of the children when they were unsettled as babies. When they couldn’t stop crying, I’d carry them around in a shoulder sling. It always worked. The warmth and closeness calmed them down.

Using the same technique with our unhappy cat, I put him in a cloth supermarket bag, slid the handles up one arm to my shoulder. Cocooned in the bag, he stopped meowing and started purring. The rhythm of my footsteps soothed him. With his head peering over the top of the bag, he saw everything that was going on and was comforted.

Jonah would’ve stayed that way for hours, but he was getting heavy these days. My arms still tired easily. Even when I lowered him gently back on the floor, he’d stay curled inside the bag hoping someone might take over nursing duties. Jonah needed attendants – lots of them. It was just as well Shirley was filling up with people again.

He romped tail aloft down the hall to greet Lydia, but refrained from throwing himself at her. Most people who left the house for more than twenty-four hours were treated as traitors and snubbed for at least two days. After three months’ absence, Lydia clearly deserved serious punishment. He sniffed her sandals. The aroma intrigued him. He ran his nose over her fisherman’s pants, her backpack and, when she lifted him up off the floor, her hair. He seemed to be reading her perfumes the way a person would absorb the contents of a book. I wondered if the scents whispered tales of snakes and temples, incense and elephants. Even my dull human senses had detected wafts of spice, smoke and dust combined with something vaguely floral.