Another night. Earlier. Springtime. Before the voices. The house breathed and settled around Esther who slept deeply and comfortably. Outside, the quiet road of proud pre-war houses stood bathed in the otherworldly sodium streetlight glow, the sky was a purple bruise above. There were no cars, there was no movement at all except Mrs Smith’s serpentine black cat undulating through the hydrangeas. It was a Monday night. A school night. A night that was to forever scar and damage.
The knock on the door was brisk and confident. Immediately, Esther woke. She heard muffled stirring from her father’s room. His door creaked open. He seemed to hesitate for a second on the landing. She imagined him fumbling with his dressing gown, running his fingers through his wild, white hair (mad professor hair, she called it), composing himself before he went downstairs. The knock came again. Louder, more insistent this time. More chilling somehow. Seconds later, Esther heard the jangle of keys and locks and the hush of serious, grown-up voices.
‘Good night then. And thank you,’ she heard her father call and the door was closed and locked. The house was silent. Minutes passed slowly. Esther heard the sound of soft footsteps on the stairs. Her door opened. Esther held her breath. She pushed her face into the pillow, warm and damp with sleep. She could picture her father approaching, shuffling through the angular chink of light slicing the room from the hallway. She heard the creak of springs and felt the bed lower as he sat. He put his hand on her shoulder. It felt cold, as if he had been outside.
‘Esther, are you awake? Come into Matthew’s room please,’ he said. His voice was as soft as the whirring of tiny wings, but she felt uneasy. She took her father’s hand. He squeezed it tenderly. It was the tiniest of gestures yet it seemed heart-breaking to the girl as she allowed herself to led out of the bedroom. Her eldest brother, Luke, was already out of bed, his face a mask of foreboding. ‘What’s the matter? Who was that at the door?’
‘Come to Matthew’s room, Luke. I’ve got something to tell you.’
Matthew’s room was at the back of the house, in a tiny room built into the eaves. His light was already switched on and he was hunched in the corner of the bed, a morose tangle of teenage limbs and attitude. The floor was strewn with the grubby detritus of adolescence: trainers, cassette tapes and magazines. Her father crossed the room.
‘Let’s sit down on the bed. Luke, come on.’
Luke leant on the doorframe, unable or unwilling to move. Esther understood. She had known since she heard the knock at the door. She knew exactly what was coming. She looked at her father; vulnerable and distracted in his pyjamas and Christmas slippers; he seemed barely awake. She had never seen him look so small, so lost. He looked all at sea. That’s what people said, wasn’t it? At sea. Esther had a sudden fleeting image of them all adrift in a tiny, rickety boat being tossed like a toy upon dark swooshing waves.
Her father was a quiet, dignified man. A gentle man. A modest man. A man most at home in the cool pew of the village church or with his hands deep in soil in the garden. Now he was breathing slowly, shakily. He placed a hand on Matthew’s knee and an arm around Esther’s shoulders. Esther could feel that he was trembling, almost imperceptibly, like a softly strummed string. It reminded her of the time she had picked up an injured bird in the garden. Its whole body was coursing with bewilderment and fear.
The children waited for their father to speak. For the words to come.
‘Your mother died tonight, he said. ‘That was the police.’
Fear came to Esther, but not surprise. Fear. It was a shivery, liquid thing, like a stain running through her father’s arm, which was still around her shoulder, to Esther, infecting her whole body with its chilly darkness.
‘You’re joking,’ Matthew spat angrily from his corner of the bed, shadowy under the eaves.
Their father shook his head, sadly, matter-of-factly. ‘No. No I’m not, Matthew. I’m not. We’ll be OK, I promise. We’ll . . .’ the words bled out into silence.
‘I should be crying,’ Esther thought. ‘I am eight years old and my mother has died. I am eight years old and that makes me the baby of this family. I cried when Marmalade the cat was run over and we buried her under the pear tree. I cried last week when the farmer took the calves from the back field and Matthew said they were taken away to be slaughtered. I cried in class when Miss Finch read the story about the rabbits. I cry all the time. Why not now?’
She looked up, ashamed to see that she was indeed the only one who was not crying. Her father’s eyes were shimmering under pooling water. Matthew’s tears were hot, angry and silent. Luke, covering his eyes, was rushing from the room, slamming the bedroom door behind him.
Later, in bed, Esther thought about Matthew’s bitter words. ‘You’re joking’. That’s what he had said. It seemed a ridiculous thing to say. Utterly stupid. Surely, he didn’t think it was a joke. Surely, he can’t have been surprised by the news. After all, the metal hospital bed was still in front of the French windows in the sitting room. The wooden walking stick still leant against the wall. The mahogany dining room chair, a makeshift bedside table, still stood with its box of hankies and vase waiting for well-wishers’ flowers. Of course, this was not a joke. It was inevitable. It was as inevitable as night following day.
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