Miss You by Kate Eberlen Read Free Book Online Page B

into the cold.
    The morning after, while Dad was still snoring upstairs, and Hope was watching
Teletubbies
, Brendan came over from the Travelodge and reported that Kevin had already
left for the airport.
    Apparently there’d been a big row in the church hall a couple of hours after we’d gone home, when Kevin got up the courage to announce that Shaun, the man who was sharing his room at
the hotel, wasn’t in fact a colleague en route to a business meeting, but his partner of two years, a partner, he’d shouted tearily, who he couldn’t even introduce to his own
family at his own mother’s funeral!
    The fact that Kevin was gay didn’t come as much of a shock to me or Brendan (or in truth, I suspect, to my father, who’d always been suspicious of the dancing) but to come out at a
funeral, Brendan said, well, it just wasn’t on, was it?
    Dad, now twice the mawkish victim, had wailed to Father Michael, ‘I’ve lost my wife and my son on the same day!’
    So that had given Kevin the opportunity to list all the resentments he had harboured since adolescence. Ironically, it was Shaun who saved the day, arriving in a taxi and scooping Kev off back
to the Travelodge after hearing his belligerent meanderings on the phone.
    He seemed like a decent enough fella, Brendan said.
    It did cross my mind afterwards that maybe Kevin had, consciously or unconsciously, created the opportunity for a dramatic exit – he’s always been theatrical – to relieve him
of any familial duty. Or perhaps it never even crossed his mind, as it didn’t seem to cross Brendan’s, that there were three of us with a sister about to be only five years old and a
father who was a drinker.
    ‘I wanted to talk to you about what’s going to happen with Hope,’ I said, trying to broach the subject.
    ‘She’ll get over it sooner than you think,’ Brendan said. ‘Kids do.’
    He was a father with two little ones of his own now so he knew about these things. And he lived on the other side of the world. What did I ever think he was going to do? But it would have been
nice if someone had just asked if I was OK.
    I left it to the last minute to cancel my university place. Not because I forgot, or was distracted, but because I think I was hoping for some kind of miracle.
    I waited until Dad and Hope took Brendan to the airport, so I was on my own in the house.
    The woman in the accommodation office was brusque. ‘It’s terribly short notice.’
    ‘My mother died, so I’ve been busy with the funeral,’ I told her.
    ‘Oh. I’m sorry.’
    I hadn’t yet worked out how to respond to people saying that. ‘It’s all right,’ didn’t do it. ‘So am I,’ sounded impertinent.
    ‘It’s not your fault,’ I said. Which wasn’t right either.
    There was an embarrassed pause.
    ‘I’m afraid we won’t be able to refund the deposit unless we find someone else to take the room,’ the woman finally said. ‘Which I have to say is very unlikely at
this point. Obviously, I’ll inform you if the situation changes.’
    ‘Thank you.’
    I put the phone down and that’s when I cried. Great, wracking sobs. Sounds selfish, doesn’t it? But it wasn’t just the end of my dream. It was Mum’s dream too. Going to
university had been our project.
    I don’t know how long I wept, sitting in the kitchen that felt so empty without her, until I finally stopped and found myself staring at the plate that said,
Today is the first day of
the rest of your life.
    It says in all the books about bereavement that when a small child loses a parent, the worst thing you can do is change things. You’d think that a fresh start or a change
of scene would be a good idea, but it says not. The child’s had enough change. What they need is a bit of stability. I suppose that’s how it was for Hope with the plate.
    I put it away in a cupboard, but Hope noticed as soon as she came in and demanded its return. So it remained on the knick-knack shelf in the kitchen. And