Without realising it, I am standing at the house. His house. My Gramps.
I let myself in with the key under the third stone. I expect silence, but there's life here still. There's the steady buzz of the boiler and the birdsong tumbling in from the cracked-open window.
Mum was lying. He is still here. I step into the living room. His red chair has a dent from where he has been sitting. His slippers scattered beneath it. There's a half-finished Sudoku on the side and if I were to turn on the small television, there would be recorded episodes of Only Fools and Horses. He must be in the kitchen then.
There's a butter knife on the side. It has butter smeared along the blade. There's Jammie Dodgers in the cupboard and milk in the fridge. In the dining area, there's a faded grey cardigan draped across a chair. He is in the garden, he must be in the garden.
I take an unstable breath out and peer through the window. I expect him to be snoozing on the swing chair. The chair flutters in the breeze, no weight to steady it. Then there's the hand-painted bird feeder. A robin perched on it, pecking at the handfuls of birdfeed still atop.
I pull the mug, with the duck on it, from the cupboard and hold it to my chest. Gramps is going to walk in any moment, he will walk in and make me some tea. Please, just walk in with the clack of your walking stick and your musky smell and some tea, please.
Everything is still now. That's the thing with death, lives don't come softly to an end. They just stop, halfway through. It's not fair. It's too still now, like everything has been frozen. It's too much.
The mug slips from my hands and fractures to the cold floor. I let out a small choke and then thrust myself after it. I try desperately to put the pieces back together but you can't fix what has happened. You can't reverse time. I should have spent more time with him. I should have been better. I should have been able to make him proud. I failed him. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry.
I lie between the fragments, crumpled on the floor of a desolate house. Shards of china dig into my skin. Why did you leave me? Why does everyone leave me?
YOU ARE READING
Joining the Dots
General Fiction"Life doesn't come gently, it hits you all at once. A tsunami of events." "Anxiety makes being a musician hard. Anxiety makes life hard. My passion, my dreams seem so far away. I could touch it all once, but once is distant now." "I want to be happy...
