perhaps a little unusual to ring the doorbell but surely once they had access they could force their way in and run amok. I felt outrage building inside me as I prepared to face them, my hand shaking as I opened the door to peer through the thin crack. Three faces stared back at me.
I fumbled with the lock. ‘You!’
‘Us!’ Arjun, Geoffrey and Howard all exclaimed as they pushed their way into the house. ‘Knew it was today. Thought you’d both need cheering up.’
They were all holding carrier bags clinking with bottles. The rustle of jackets, perfunctory kisses on the cheek as they moved past me in the corridor. There was no polite request, no ‘Is he all right?’ ‘Can he face us?’ ‘We’ll only stay for five minutes’, they just bustled past, knowing to come on inside and inject some life and energy into the day. And hearing my grandad’s faux annoyed voice calling from the garden I grinned, knowing they had done absolutely the right thing.
‘Thank you,’ I whispered.
Arjun gave my shoulder a squeeze. ‘Geoffrey’s idea, and of course we’d be here. We all loved Cora. So if we miss her, I can’t imagine what you both feel.’
Oh, the tears were coming again. I didn’t respond, just swallowed, nodded and followed him through the kitchen.
They were all crowding around the patio table, pulling up chairs, producing drinks from bags, their voices filling the space. Plastic bowls were being filled with peanuts and crisps.
‘Bit early for Gin o’Clock but it’s a special occasion,’ Howard said, twisting a bottle and reading from the label. ‘This one is Spanish, flavoured with toasted almonds. Can’t be any worse than that revolting one Geoffrey produced last week.’
‘That cost me £36.’
‘You were robbed, my man.’
‘The garden looks wonderful. She would love that rose bush,’ Geoffrey said quietly to Grandad. I watched them shake hands, clutching each other with both.
‘It’s almost big enough for croquet out here,’ Howard was saying.
Arjun was sitting on a wicker chair, quieter than usual. I wondered if he was simply thinking about Grandma. He looked a little stooped in the shoulders. Grandad was glancing across at him too, a small frown creasing the skin between his eyebrows before his expression cleared.
They stayed for hours, telling stories about Grandma, making me laugh. Sometimes the picture aligned with the woman I had known and sometimes things still managed to surprise me.
‘What happened to that duck-egg blue moped?’
‘Do you remember when she threatened to get a tattoo?’
‘Terrified of emus. Never seen a woman so scared. Cheered up that boring outing to London Zoo no end.’
‘Did she ever write another children’s book, Teddy? Do you remember the one she said was so bad she threw it on the fire.’
‘Oh my God, I had no idea,’ I said, wiping at my eyes as they continued to regale me.
Grandad looked relaxed and happy and I stared round at this group of men, a group I had often dismissed simply as his ‘golfing friends’, Grandma and I rolling our eyes at each other as he sloped off out with them again. Now I really saw the connection between them, the easy jokes, the ability to be completely truthful, how they just knew what to do and say.
I wondered for a second if my friends would know to appear when I needed them. I thought of Amy. We had been so close as school friends and then flatmates, always sharing every detail of our lives, giggling, bickering, supporting each other. I had been there for the big moments in her life: celebrating with her when she had finished her PGCE, got her first job in a school, met Will, her now fiancé, been made head of department, then deputy head. I felt the urge to reach out to her, tapping a text to her on my phone, pushing the guilt away at seeing the three previous messages from her, all unanswered. I typed, Love you, Ames.
Then there was Luke, my other best friend. Here in this garden I suddenly saw our relationship clearly. He had known what to do this morning. He had known to offer to come, backed off when I wanted to be alone, made me feel loved but not stifled. I remembered our first holiday together, to Majorca. A woman had stopped to tell me that after I had fallen asleep on a lilo in the swimming pool, my boyfriend had spent an entire hour doggy paddling round me, stopping me from hitting the sides