Page 40 of Carry Me Home

‘Uneventful. The Treloars sulked. Ayo counted the money. Bill tried to argue we’d cheated on the ferret question.’

‘The ferret was legitimate.’

‘I know. I told him that. He didn’t believe me.’

‘Bill never believes anyone. It’s his defining characteristic.’

‘That and the cheating.’

‘That and the cheating.’

Silence. I close my eyes and listen – the sea through the window, the building settling, Tom breathing. It should be strange, lying in bed talking to someone about nothing in the middle of the night. It doesn’t feel strange. It feels like the safest place I’ve been all day.

And then – without planning it, without permission – a flash of his face from quiz night. Close to mine. His eyes, lighter than I’d expected at that distance. The heat of his hands through my shirt, the five – no, I hadn’t been counting. I hadn’t counted his fingers on my waist.

I open my eyes and stare at the ceiling.

‘Dot’s declared war on the ice-cream van,’ Tom says, and I grab the sentence like a rope thrown into water.

‘Again?’

‘Again. Apparently it parks too close to her shop and the music is, quote, “an assault on human dignity”.’

‘The music is “Greensleeves”.’

‘She finds “Greensleeves” particularly offensive. Something about historical inaccuracy.’

‘“Greensleeves” is historically inaccurate?’

‘According to Dot, yes. She’s written a letter to the council. And to the ice-cream van owner. And to the local paper, which they definitely won’t publish but which she’s framed and put in the shop window anyway.’

‘Of course she has.’

‘She used the phrase “acoustic terrorism”.’

‘That’s Dot.’

‘That’s Dot.’

The silence comes back. Longer this time. I can feel the conversation shifting – the way water finds the lowest point, the way every late-night phone call eventually finds its way to the thing you actually needed to say.

‘Sometimes it feels like time is going so quick, Tom, then it’s not moving at all,’ I say, and I don’t know why I’m saying it except that it’s been sitting in my chest for days and somehow nightfall makes it easier to let things out. ‘Seven months.’

Tom doesn’t respond immediately. Just his breathing, steady and patient, holding the space open. ‘I don’t think there’s a timeline,’ he says eventually.

‘Everyone else seems to have one. Brynn keeps looking at me like she’s waiting for something. Tilly keeps saying I’m doing so well, like there’s a version of me that should be doing badly and she’s relieved I’m not.’ I press my face into the pillow, phone wedged against my cheek. ‘And I don’t know what they’re expecting, or what I’m supposed to be, or how I’m supposed to feel about any of it.’

He doesn’t interrupt. Doesn’t try to fix it. Just holds the line open, and I talk into it because I can – because it’s dark and it’s Tom and these are things I can say to him that I can’t say to anyone else.

‘What do you want?’ he asks eventually. ‘For the anniversary. What do you actually want?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘If you didn’t have to worry about anyone else. If it was just you, deciding.’

I think about it. Not the reflexive answer. The real one.

‘I want to remember him without it destroying me,’ I say slowly. ‘I want to be sad and also okay. I want to miss him and also be glad I’m still here. Is that allowed? Can both of those things be true?’