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Carrie’s grief at losing Claire was almost all-consuming, and, in all seriousness, she just didn’t have the bandwidth for anything else. She returned to her car, slung her shopping on the passenger seat and sat down in the driver’s seat. As soon as she closed the door, she burst into tears.
THREE
Carrie spent most of the next few days on the sofa under a snuggly blanket. All her limbs felt leaden, still, and she slept, on and off, for most of the daylight hours. The pain in her collarbone woke her up in the night when the medication wore off; it was reasonable, in the day, as long as she took them on time. The pain seemed to eat up the pills as if it was a hungry monster from a child’s book, consuming the tablets she swallowed dutifully with water every four hours and threatening her with its teeth in the night when it was allowed out of its medically controlled cage.
Once the pain woke her at night, she found it hard to go back to sleep. On the first night, she lay on the comfortable mattress atop the cast iron double bed and stared out of the little bedroom window, which, like the kitchen, looked over the garden. The overgrown space was a riot of flowers and shrubs. In the dark, of course, she couldn’t see the colour of the dusky pink and yellow roses, the blue delphiniums, or the lilac and white lupins, but she remembered their vividness: it was almost shocking to her eyes, so used to city greys.
At night, the garden rustled with the movements of mice, hedgehogs and, probably, other creatures looking for food. Occasionally, there was a crying sound that had startled Carrie until she remembered the cries of the foxes outside her London flat. Like the foxes, she had become mostly nocturnal; it was grief that had prompted her transformation to a creature of the dark. Night in Loch Cameron was quieter than the day, and the blackness and the quiet somehow brought her feelings even closer to the surface.
Carrie could ignore her feelings in the daytime, and in the evenings, she brought her laptop into bed and binged trashy TV reality shows: dating, home renovations, makeovers. When her brain couldn’t take any more TV, she’d switch off the laptop and stare blearily into the corner of the lamplit bedroom until she fell asleep.
There was a reality show following the lives of five new nurses which she watched with interest: as a child, she’d always wanted to be a nurse. She had annoyed Claire for several years by trying to play hospital in her little white nurse cap and dress with the red cross on the front. Claire was generally an unwilling patient, preferring to play outside, climb trees, collect pebbles and come in muddy at the end of the day.
When the phase had ended, Carrie had moved on to books and dolls, and then, when their mum had passed away, she had stopped playing altogether. But she had always still liked the idea of nursing: caring for others when they needed it and making things all right felt useful. That idea, of making thingsall right, fulfilled something in Carrie after her mum had died. The nurses at the hospital had been so kind to her and Claire when their mum was in hospital in those final days: walking them to the vending machines and buying them sweets, playing catch with them in the hospital corridors, trying to distract them from what was happening and from their father, weeping at their mum’s bedside. The idea that she could do that for someone else in the future had made her feel slightly better.
The cottage bedroom was cute, like the rest of the place. The white-painted cast iron bedstead suited the cottage vibe, and the plain wood floors were stained with varnish. A rose-pink rug stretched under the bed and out of both sides, giving Carrie somewhere warm to stand when she occasionally hauled herself from under the thick hand-stitched quilts. In the corner, another brass standard lamp stood, and a built-in cupboard in the corner opened into a surprisingly large recess where Carrie had thrown her bags when she’d arrived. She hadn’t unpacked any of her clothes, even though there was plenty of cupboard space, and a rail with hangers too. She just didn’t have the energy.
The cottage was so quiet that Carrie jumped at the slightest sound – the cries of the foxes outside, foraging for the apples that had fallen from the tree, the rustling of the hedgehogs in the fallen leaves, or an occasional dog walker passing. It wasn’t spooky, per se, but she wasn’t used to how quiet it was out here. Sharing her flat in London with Patty and Marcus hadn’t been anywhere near as… still.
But that was what she’d wanted. Somewhere peaceful, where she could fall apart unnoticed after losing Claire. Because Claire had always been the one she would go to when anything was wrong, even if they had grown apart in the past few years. Claire was the one that made itall right, whoknew her better than anyone else in the world.
They’d been bound tightly ever since their mother died. Their dad had been there, but he was like a ghost most of the time. Carrie understood. He wasn’t a bad father, particularly, though he drank too much, and more or less ignored them after their mum’s death. He was just dealing with loss the best way he knew how – which was to retreat into his private world of pain.
Because of this the girls had started to learn to look after themselves: cooking, cleaning, shopping for what they needed. When they got older, they took the bus to their secondary school and back every day, made their dinner and breakfast. There were no lifts to school from a kind father, no picking them up from their friends’ houses after parties, or helping them revise for their exams. Their dad still loved them – probably – but he couldn’t show it anymore. The girls knew it and, without ever discussing it, they learned to rely on each other. They were each other’s support system, from braiding each other’s hair before school every day to checking each other’s homework, doing their laundry and cooking their meals. Carrie was there for Claire, and Claire was there for Carrie, and that was just how it was.
Until it wasn’t.
I wish I could talk to you, Carrie thought, as she stared into the corner of the room.You’re the person I talked to about everything. Even when we weren’t talking, you would have been there if I needed you.
She picked at a hole in the sweatshirt she’d been wearing for the past three days. ‘I never told you I was sorry about being distant. But I was. I am. And I wish you could hear me now,’ she said, out loud this time. She knew Claire wasn’t there. But, somehow, saying the words helped her feel that, in some way, perhaps Claire would hear.
‘I’m not talking about the crash. Though I am sorry for that too. Of course, I am.’ Carrie felt the emotion catch in her throat, and she struggled to keep her voice steady. ‘I was a brat. I should have turned the music down. I should have listened to you.’
She took a deep breath, then continued. ‘But I mean the other thing. You know what. I’m sorry.’ She sighed, and two tears rolled down her cheeks. She hadn’t washed her face or cleaned her teeth for days. She was a mess, but she didn’t care. Nothing mattered anymore. ‘Please. I wish you could forgive me. If I could go back and change it, I would. I’d change so much. But I can’t.’
She started to sob, and the tears racked her body so that it shook. Carrie felt as though she might be sick; there was so much grief in her that she felt as though it would never all come out.
She hadn’t cried at the funeral. She’d just about been able to stand through it, two weeks after the accident, and maybe the pain had distracted her from her feelings then. Or maybe it had been shock. Everyone talked about the stages of grief, but she didn’t know if shock was one of them, or whether it was just part of a person’s brain trying and failing to take in the enormity of losing someone so close to them.
At Claire’s funeral, she’d felt a strange sense of unreality, as if she’d look up any minute and Claire would be standing on the opposite side of the grave, casting a flower into the hole in front of her, and it would be someone else’s funeral. Someone else that had been lost forever.
The thing that was torturing Carrie the most, though, was the thought that the accident had been her fault. And that she could have saved her sister.
She had failed Claire twice, and she would never forgive herself.
FOUR
After four days under the covers, Carrie made herself leave the cottage.
You need fresh air, she berated herself, wrapping up in jeans, boots, a thick sweatshirt and her coat on top. She ran her hand through her hair and looked at herself despairingly in the mirror. She needed to get her colour re-done, and a cut wouldn’t hurt either. But it felt like ages since she’d thought about anything like that.
Doesn’t matter, she thought, grimly.Doesn’t matter what you look like. Hairstyles don’t matter. Or clothes.Nothing mattered anymore, without Claire.
The only reason she was leaving the cottage was because she had run out of food, and she hadn’t been able to sleep at all the night before. Being up all night and then being exhausted and in pain all day wasn’t great. At least if she got out for a while, the air and a walk might make sleep come easier. That was all she wanted. At least if she was asleep, she could forget Claire for a while.
Well, here goes nothing, she thought, pulling the cottage door closed behind her and making her way up the little path through the cottage garden that wrapped around the house. It was full of wildflowers, planted seemingly at random, and rose bushes that bordered the edge of the property alongside other shrubs and bushes: Carrie had no idea what they were, but she could recognise roses, even if they weren’t in bloom. Roses had been her great-aunt’s favourite flower.
Carrie remembered her Great-Aunt Maud letting Carrie and Claire use her special secateurs in the garden, showing them how to cut the tough rose stems and avoid the thorns. She had arranged vases of beautiful roses around the house in the summertime when her cottage garden was in full bloom: Carrie still couldn’t smell roses without missing her. She’d taken such good care of the rose bushes, cutting them back every autumn, feeding them special mulch and covering them over when there was a frost.
