His & Hers

As soon as the debrief is over – it’s Friday afternoon, so I’m not the only one keen to get away – I grab my bag and head out the door. I take a cab to save time. Home isn’t where it used to be and I can’t walk there anymore. I’ve started to think that home might not be a place at all, more of a feeling. You don’t always have to cross a bridge when you come to it. You can plan ahead, tunnel underneath, or even learn to swim if you have to. There is always a way to change sides if you make up your mind to do it.

I sold the flat near Waterloo, and bought a small house in north London instead. It feels strange sometimes, living north instead of south of the Thames, but it felt like I needed a fresh start. And a house with a garden. And a driveway for the brand-new SUV; I sold the Mini too.

I pay the cab driver, then head towards the porch, my key already in my hand so as not to waste even a moment. Once inside, I close the front door, then freeze when I hear footsteps behind me.

Someone is here.

But that’s OK, because they are supposed to be.

‘Anna, Anna, the bees are alive, come and see!’

My niece takes my hand, and drags me towards the kitchen window. I stare out at our tiny garden, looking at the white wooden box she is pointing at. My mother’s beehive was the only thing I kept from her house. Something to remind me of her.

I had to hire specialists to help me move the bees from Blackdown to London. They said winter was the best time to do it, while they were sleeping, but even then – and despite considerable cost – there was no guarantee they would survive.

But now it’s spring. Six months have passed and there are cherry blossoms on the trees, a little girl living in my house, and sure enough, there is activity around the old beehive. It’s far from a swarm, but there are definitely more than a handful of buzzing black shapes dancing to and from the wooden slats. They went through a life-changing journey, it was difficult and dangerous, but they survived. Now they are starting again in a brand-new home. Not unlike us.

Jack walks into the kitchen carrying a suitcase.

‘You’re back!’ he says, kissing me on the cheek.

It’s early days for us too. Jack and Olivia only moved in with me a few weeks ago. He got a new job in London, still with the police, but part-time and office based. We were all spending so much time together that moving in seemed to be the logical next step. Jack and I feel like a family again. While nobody could ever replace our daughter, Olivia is a beautiful girl, and I feel proud to be playing a part in raising her.

‘We should get going if we want to beat the rush hour traffic,’ he says.

‘Well, I better go and get my things then,’ I reply.

I stop in the doorway and turn to look at them both, as they point at the bees on the other side of the glass. Together we’ve created a little sanctuary in the city. What happened before doesn’t matter anymore. I did what I had to do.

Choosing to forget can be a lot less painful than choosing to remember.

Him

It is not my choice to go back to Blackdown today. The idea fills me with the heaviest variety of dread. But I know it’s important to Anna, and it won’t be for long. Just a quick pit stop to check on things, before we carry on towards Dorset and the coast. A weekend away from it all, just Anna and me and our niece, who feels more like a daughter every day. Olivia loves the seaside.

Us getting back together again was what I always wanted.

Sometimes, when something terrible happens, people fall apart. We’ve definitely experienced that before, but this time we seemed to fall together.

When I look at Anna sitting next to me in the car, I see the only woman I’ve ever really loved. I let her down once, but I’ll never do it again. We have it all now. Almost everything we ever dared to dream of, and more. I would do anything to make her happy and keep her safe.

Anything.

We pull up outside her mother’s old house in Blackdown. Despite the look of fear drawn all over her face, Anna insists that she wants to go in by herself. There is a ‘For Rent’ sign up outside already and the viewings start tomorrow. I think she just wants to check everything is as it should be, and say goodbye to what was once her home.

Anna has been down here, alone, the last few weekends, busy packing up all her mother’s things and redecorating the whole house. She even cleared out the back garden a few months ago, so there are no more bees, or potting shed, or allotment-style chaos. Then she laid a new patio, completely covering what used to be her mother’s vegetable patch. Anna did it all herself. Why she wouldn’t just pay someone else, I’ll never know.

I wait ten minutes then decide to follow her inside, hoping to hurry her along.

The house still smells of fresh paint. The kitchen is brand new, and the place looks almost unrecognisable from before. I find Anna out back, sitting on the little wooden bench her mother used to love so much, staring at the new garden. The patio is a circular shape of dark grey bricks, with a single perfectly round piece in the middle. There is a bee carved into the stone. A few pots with hardy plants add a splash of colour, and a newly laid lawn leads down to the woods in the distance.

‘It looks really good,’ I say, gently closing the kitchen door behind me.

She shrugs, and I pretend not to notice her wipe away a tear.

‘It’s better for the rental market. A low-maintenance garden that will be easier for tenants to look after,’ she says.

‘Exactly. You’ve done a really good job.’

‘It’s just that it doesn’t look like our home anymore.’

‘That’s the whole point, it isn’t supposed to. Another family is going to live here now, but it will always mean something special to you. Nothing is going to change that, and it meant so much to your mum that she didn’t have to sell the place.’

‘You’re right, I’m being silly. It’s just a pile of bricks.’

‘It will be OK, I promise,’ I say, kissing her forehead. ‘Besides, you have a new home now, with Olivia and me.’

Her

I never thought I’d see my mother move out of her home.

She said she’d rather die than leave our old house, but once I understood the real reason why, I knew what I needed to do about it. I don’t know if I really believed her about killing my dad, until I dug up the vegetable patch and started finding bones. Nobody is going to find anything they shouldn’t buried in the garden now, at least not in my lifetime. What happened is all covered up with a brand-new patio, the past buried underneath for good.

I don’t feel bad about it.

My father got what was coming to him, and my mother did what she did for me, as well as for herself. The things we will do to protect those we love know no bounds.

The retirement village Jack managed to get Mum into is quite beautiful. It costs a small fortune, but I had a little money left over from the sale of the Waterloo flat, which helped secure her a place. Plus the rental income on her house – now that tenants are about to move in – will just about cover the monthly payments. Besides, her cancer is an aggressive variety. In many ways she seems well, and certainly happier than I can remember seeing her before, but the doctors say she doesn’t have long.

‘Wow!’ says Olivia from the backseat.