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Once we settle in, I plan to teach piano lessons. Eventually, I might return to the classroom; we’ll see how it goes. I have played my mum’s piano daily for months now, and together with my beautiful son, music has the power to bring me moments of joy. I still haven’t mastered Chopin’s Ballade No. 1, but that is a torture I have chosen for myself.
I no longer check the door four or five times every time I come home; my aim is to stop altogether in this new place. My sessions with Barbara ended when I moved north, but if I think I need help, I will make sure I get it. I know I must look after myself, in all respects, so that I can look after little Fred. Our son is seven months old now, sitting up – at this very moment, actually, napping in his new buggy in the hall. He is becoming himself, shouts ‘Oi!’ sometimes when he wants our attention, and this makes us laugh. I still have nightmares regarding him and Abi, but they are less frequent now.
So yes, here we are, Matt and I. We have survived. We are together. What he did was unforgivable, but love does not switch itself off so easily. A terrible act can define us or change us fundamentally; that is what I have come to believe – existentialism with a caveat, if you like. I believe Johnnie Lovegood’s actions did define him. He was able to absorb what he had done and carry on. I believe that Neil’s actions are not fundamentally who he is and that is why he was not able to exist as an authentic version of himself afterwards. I believe that Matt understands the consequences of what he did, that he understood them the night I told him there was no future for us. I believe the shock broke a pattern within him, and that night, he became a man strong enough and brave enough to finally take responsibility. I don’t know exactly how I can be so sure, only that he seems, he feels, changed to me.
We all lie to one another, all the time. That day, that beat-by-beat morning, when seconds turned out to be the difference between life and death, the lies were flying around like bees. I too am to blame, and I know it more than anyone. If I hadn’t gone upstairs for my phone, I would have seen Matt come back and stopped Abi from unclipping herself from her buggy. If I hadn’t been on my phone, she might still have unclipped herself to follow her daddy outside, but I could perhaps have saved her from Johnnie Lovegood’s car. If I hadn’t been so glad of her silence, if I hadn’t taken the break I thought I needed, she might still have been hit by Johnnie’s car but I could have – perhaps, perhaps I could have – saved her from his callous and fatal disposal of her, his inability to see that she could so easily have been his own daughter, that in a sense, she was. But as Barbara would tell me, none of these things means I didn’t love my daughter.
When they found her coat, I smashed my iPhone into little pieces with the hammer. But lately I’ve come around to thinking that my daughter’s death is not really the fault of the material trappings of our lives: expensive phones, big cars, kitchen extensions, status symbols. To blame these things is too easy. For me, it is down only to how we act towards one another. So many people helped us that day, and showed such kindness in the weeks that followed; I can truly see that now, with distance. As for us, Matt and I plan to look after each other and those around us as best we can. It is all we have – this, and the seconds and minutes and hours of our lives.
It is all any of us has really.
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