Page 82 of Always Beth
‘Lauren. Lauren. Lauren…’ As her grip on my hand weakens, the sharp echo of glass shattering travels from the kitchen.
James.
I step back from the bed and grip the door frame tightly, my heart pounding in my chest. As silence unexpectedly consumes the cottage, I turn and make my way slowly down the staircase.
She chose me?
In the kitchen James faces away from me, surrounded by water and broken glass.
‘James…’
‘She’s gone…hasn’t she?’
I open my mouth and my lip quivers as I try to formulate the simplest of answers. ‘I’m so sorry.’
He turns to face me and I don’t think I’ve ever seen pain like it. ‘She changed the clocks, didn’t she?’
I nod, quickly swiping the tears from my eyes.
His breathing becomes heavy and his shoulders rise and fall rapidly. Reaching out, he grips on to the worktop to steady himself. Rushing forward, I drag him away from the glass and he collapses against me, and I try to hold him with everything I have, but we slide slowly to floor as he breaks down in my arms.
‘I knew if I wasn’t with her, that I’d know.’ He pushes out as he gasps for breath. ‘I knew, Beth, because I felt my heart break.’
James
I’ve never known an emptiness like it. Not even when my parents died. I could search for a lifetime, and I don’t think anyone could ever fill this void.
Twelve days. Twelve long-drawn-out days and twelve long-drawn-out nights. Funerals are never quick in this country. If it wasn’t bad enough that I pull two mugs from the cupboard every morning and turn the TV straight on to that MTV reality shit, I have to watch Dick search for her frantically, every waking minute of the day. He’s as distraught as I am and I don’t think either of us would have coped without Beth and Poppy. She’s fed us both when neither of us have felt like eating and stayed from the first drop of sunlight to the last glimpse of it on the horizon and never asked for anything in return. Every night I insist on walking her home and every night she refuses, but after everything I’m too cowardly to ask her to stay. As we sit across from one another in the lounge, like we have done every day since Lauren left us, I find myself staring at her, trying to process the confusion inside me. My heart aches, hollow from its loss but burning with desire for her at the same.
‘How many people are coming?’ she asks suddenly.
‘Huh?’ I drag my eyes back to her.
‘To the funeral? How many?’
‘About fifty.’
Beth sits in stunned silence for a moment. ‘Wow, I don’t think I know fifty people.’
I smile as I think of Lauren’sdeath guest listor so she called it. ‘Yeah, well if you’d had as many jobs as she’d had over the years, you’d know fifty people as well.’
‘What did she do?’
‘Besides collect dachshunds?’
She smiles at me gently, if I wasn’t in mourning, I think she’d have laughed.
‘No for a job.’
‘She was a librarian, a museum guide, a curator of Elizabethan art. You name it, she’d done it. Terrible at all of them. I used to tease her that the only thing she ever used that history degree for was to name her dogs after dead monarchs.’ I pause for a second, choked by the pain. ‘Brilliant at being my twin though. No one could have been better qualified.’
Her deep-set frown tells me that the next question isn’t one I’m looking forward to.
‘Are Jacob and Grace coming?’
My teeth grind at the mention of them in the same sentence, but there’s no point me denying it, to either Beth or myself. ‘Yes, they’ll both be there.’ Seeing them apart is one thing but seeing them in the same place at the same time is another – I don’t want it to overshadow the day. God only knows the last time they even saw each other.
‘Oh my god.’ Beth’s hand flies to her mouth and my eyes fall to the order of service in her lap.
