‘Ah, that is so refreshing!’ she sighed as she sipped the cold iced tea.
‘It is rather, isn’t it?’ Margery smiled. They were sitting on an old, white, rusty set of garden chairs. Cotton wool clouds flitted overhead like daydreams.
‘We’re nearly there,’ Helena said. ‘Only upstairs left to do now.’
They had had an extremely productive couple of days blitzing the kitchen and the staircase. Margery had done a huge amount of sorting over the weekend which had helped. The amount of clutter that had been stored in each room was mind-boggling. Luckily at least ninety per cent of it seemed to have little sentimental or monetary value, nor any real use, so they had been able to get rid of most of it, necessitating several more trips to the skip andthe charity shop. The lady behind the till was too polite to ask where all these carloads of possessions were coming from, though Helena could tell she had piqued her interest. Helena was being quite ruthless, but Margery had surprised her with her practicality as to what was worth keeping.
Margery leant back in her chair, stretching her arms over her head. ‘Goodness I’m stiff. This is back-breaking work! Are you sure you’re happy to come again tomorrow? You’ve already given up so many days. I don’t know how I can thank you enough.’
‘Don’t be silly. I love nothing more than a good decluttering session!’ Helena smiled.
‘It is looking rather splendid, isn’t it?’
‘It’s looking fantastic. Johnny is going to love it when he arrives.’
‘I must get the spare room sorted out,’ Margery frowned, ‘perhaps I should buy a new mattress for his bed? I’m not sure where that one came from but I suspect it’s rather ancient.’
‘I can help you choose one if you like? We could go to the shops together? Or I could show you how to do it online? Either way, they’ll be able to deliver it for you.’
Margery dabbed a dainty white handkerchief across her forehead. ‘I should probably get some new bedding too.’
‘Sounds like he’s going to be very spoilt by his aunty.’
Margery laughed. ‘Well, I haven’t really bought anything new for the house in fifteen years, not since before Jeremy died.’
‘In that case I’d say it’s definitely time to treat yourself!’ Helena grinned, draining the glass and setting it back on the table.
‘I think that’s when it started, the junk piling up…’ Margery paused, looking wistfully into the distance.
Helena bent down to tickle Tammy, or was it Terry, sprawled out in a strategic position next to her foot. ‘It must have been horrendous. I can’t even begin to imagine how it must feel to lose your husband.’
‘It can be rather lonely at times,’ Margery admitted, her eyes filling with tears which she blinked away. ‘Yes, Jeremy was always the organised one, you see. He was in charge of everything to dowith the house. He had his military precision, drilled into him at Sandhurst. Everything had to be just so. I suppose he rather indulged me. He thought of me as the creative one… he looked after me so well.’ Her voice cracked, then, and she shook her head vigorously, like one of her dogs after a swim in the pond, as if to rid herself of feeling.
Margery explained that Jeremy had heard her performing once, at Cadogan Hall, and had been spellbound by her voice. He had sought her out after the concert, tracking her down via mutual friends, eventually managing to ask her out for a drink. They had been together thirty years when he had died after a sudden stroke, leaving Margery utterly heartbroken. Helena’s eyes glistened at the smallness of her voice, the agony that was so clearly still welling beneath the surface, even after all this time. She prayed that she would never have to experience losing either Noah or Raffy. She truly didn’t know how she would survive, now that she had finally found them.
*
That afternoon, having picked Raffy up from school and spent a good hour building a convoluted track with him in the garden, Helena set about preparing some dinner for her and Noah while Raffy played with his trains. She made a lamb tagine, another brainwave to put the apricots to good use. She decided to set some tagine aside in a Tupperware to take to Margery the next day. It must have been far too long since she had had a homecooked meal from someone other than herself. She smiled as she thought of Margery’s deep belly laugh, uncannily similar to her mother’s, a sound so joyful you couldn’t help but laugh along with her. Her voice was husky, the sad consequence of a life spent singing, something she was no longer able to do thanks to the vocal polyps that had developed in her sixties, putting an end to her career as a singing teacher. She had told Helena she had once run a very popular youth choir in the village hall, and she had put on nights at the opera to raise money for the church. It must have been so hard for her when she could no longer sing.
‘Helly,’ Raffy said a short while later as she ran his bath, looking up with those angelic blue-gold eyes. ‘What do you think happens to you when you die?’
‘Where did that come from?’ Helena laughed, momentarily floored by the deep question.
‘We were learning about Rome again today and Mrs Petherbridge told us that one of the twins that Rome was named after died. I started thinking about what happens. Where Mummy is.’
She checked the temperature and emptied some bubbles under the running water. Her mind whizzed with possible answers as she tried to select the most helpful response. You really never knew what was coming next with a small child around. She thought about what her mum would say – she’d have known exactly how to answer that question. She remembered her experience with the psychic and how sure she was that her own parents were still there somewhere. ‘I think what happens is that your body stops working but your soul is free to fly away, to go to heaven.’
‘But are you still alive then?’
‘In a sense. I think you know who you are and who you love, and that you can find them whenever you want to just by thinking of them, to see how they are.’
‘So Mum can watch me whenever she wants?’
‘Of course she can, she is always with you.’
‘That’s good,’ Raffy said, nodding his head slowly and thoughtfully. A quizzical look settled over his features, as if he was formulating his next question.
‘Something else on your mind?’ Helena asked.
