‘You’d think Josie wouldn’t dare leave her in sole charge of her granddaddy, wouldn’t you?’
‘You don’t think she’d …’
‘Well, you don’t know. She’s done it the once, after all …’
My cheeks were flaming. My money clattered onto the counter. Granddad was still repeating, ‘OH FAT. OH FAT,’ at the bemused checkout girl, waiting for her to get the joke. I pulled at his sleeve. ‘Come on, Granddad, we have to go.’
‘Oh fat,’ he insisted, again.
‘Right,’ she said, and smiled kindly.
‘Please, Granddad.’ I felt hot and dizzy, as if I might faint. They might still have been talking but my ears were ringing so loudly I couldn’t tell.
‘Bye-bye,’ he said.
‘Bye then,’ said the girl.
‘Nice,’ said Granddad, as we emerged into the sunlight. Then, looking at me: ‘Why you crying?’
So here is the thing about being involved in a catastrophic, life-changing event. You think it’s just the catastrophic life-changing event that you’re going to have to deal with: the flashbacks, the sleepless nights, the endless running over events in your head, asking yourself if you had done the right thing, said the things you should have said, whether you could have changed things, had you done it even a degree differently.
My mother had told me that being with Will at the end would affect the rest of my life, and I had thought she meant me, psychologically. I’d thought she meant the guilt I would have to learn to get over, the grief, the insomnia, the weird, inappropriate bursts of anger, the endless internal dialogue with someone who wasn’t even there. But now I saw it wasn’t just me: in a digital age, I would be that person for ever. Even if I managed to wipe the whole thing from my memory, I would never be allowed to disassociate myself from Will’s death. My name would be tied to his for as long as there were pixels and a screen. People would form judgements about me, based on the most cursory knowledge – or sometimes no knowledge at all – and there was nothing I could do about it.
I cut my hair into a bob. I changed the way I dressed, bagging up everything that had ever made me distinctive and stuffing it into the back of my wardrobe. I adopted Treena’s uniform of jeans and a generic T-shirt. Now, when I read newspaper stories about the bank teller who had stolen a fortune, the woman who had killed her child, the sibling who had disappeared, I found myself not shuddering in horror, as I once might have, but wondering instead at the story that hadn’t made it into black and white.
What I felt with them was a weird kinship. I was tainted. The world around me knew it. Worse, I had started to know it too.
I tucked what remained of my dark hair into a beanie, put my sunglasses on, and walked to the library, doing everything I could not to let my limp show, even though it made my jaw ache with concentration.
I made my way past the singing-toddler group in the children’s corner, and the silent genealogy enthusiasts trying to confirm that, yes, they were distantly connected to King Richard III, and sat down in the corner with the files of local papers. It wasn’t hard to locate August 2009. I took a breath, then opened them halfway and flicked through the headlines.
Local Man Ends His Life at Swiss Clinic
Traynor Family Ask for Privacy at ‘Difficult Time’
The 35-year-old son of Steven Traynor, custodian of Stortfold Castle, has ended his life at Dignitas, the controversial centre for assisted suicide. Mr Traynor was left quadriplegic after a traffic accident in 2007. He apparently travelled to the clinic with his family and his carer, Louisa Clark, 27, also from Stortfold.
Police are investigating the circumstances surrounding the death. Sources say they have not ruled out the possibility that a prosecution may arise.
Louisa Clark’s parents, Bernard and Josephine Clark, of Renfrew Road, refused to comment.
Camilla Traynor, a Justice of the Peace, is understood to have stood down from the bench following her son’s suicide. A local source said her position, given the actions of the family, had become ‘untenable’.
And then there it was, Will’s face, looking out from the grainy newspaper photograph. That slightly sardonic smile, the direct gaze. I felt, briefly, winded.
Mr Traynor’s death ends a successful career in the City, where he was known as a ruthless asset stripper, but also as someone with a sure eye for a corporate bargain. His colleagues yesterday lined up to pay tribute to a man they described as
I closed the newspaper. When I could be sure that I had got my face under control, I looked up. Around me the library hummed with quiet industry. The toddlers kept singing, their reedy voices chaotic and meandering, their mothers clapping fondly around them. The librarian behind me was discussing sotto voce, with a colleague, the best way to make Thai curry. The man beside me ran his finger down an ancient electoral roll, murmuring, ‘Fisher, Fitzgibbon, Fitzwilliam …’
I had done nothing. It was more than eighteen months and I had done nothing, bar sell drinks in two different countries and feel sorry for myself. And now, after four weeks back in the house I’d grown up in, I could feel Stortfold reaching out to suck me in, to reassure me that I could be fine here. It would be all right. There might be no great adventures, sure, and a bit of discomfort as people adjusted to my presence again, but there were worse things, right, than to be with your family, loved and secure? Safe?
I looked down at the pile of newspapers in front of me. The most recent front-page headline read:
ROW OVER DISABLED PARKING SPACE IN FRONT OF POST OFFICE
I thought back to Dad, sitting on my hospital bed, looking in vain for a report of an extraordinary accident.
I failed you, Will. I failed you in every way possible.
You could hear the shouting all the way up the street when I finally arrived home. As I opened the door my ears were filled with the sound of Thomas wailing. My sister was scolding him, her finger wagging, in the corner of the living room. Mum was leaning over Granddad with a washing-up bowl of water and a scouring pad, while Granddad politely batted her away.
‘What’s going on?’
Mum moved to the side and I saw Granddad’s face clearly for the first time. He was sporting a new set of jet black eyebrows and a thick black slightly uneven moustache.
‘Permanent pen,’ said Mum. ‘From now on nobody is to leave Granddad napping in the same room as Thomas.’