‘Mummy, watch this!’ Oscar star-jumps off the sofa. Ed pulls me into a slow dance. Kerry twists the top of a bottle of beer and takes a slug, dancing behind us, with her eyes closed, lost in the moment, swinging the bottle as she does. My head rests on Ed’s shoulder as he dances with me. I close my eyes and concentrate on this moment: the feel of Ed in my arms, the grins on the kids’ faces as they bounce up and down on the sofa and the image of my sister singing. My eyes open as Ed pulls back from me.
‘Why have you got the conga on your playlist?’ he asks, humour creasing around his eyes.
‘Butlin’s.’
‘Oh God, the night of the sambuca?’
‘And the night I got pregnant with Oscar,’ I say quietly.
‘I’m amazed I was able to perform.’
‘It was conga night . . .’
‘It sure was.’ He winks and I laugh.
‘Come on!’
Kerry stands in front of us, turning her back and gesturing me to put my hands on her shoulders. I wish I could. Instead, I turn my back to Ed and pull his hand to my waist. Ed shouts instructions to the kids to join our conga line as I lead them through the lounge, Ed and I singing loudly and ‘Oh-eh-oh-ing’ up the stairs, circling the middle of each of the bedrooms before finally snaking back down the stairs into the lounge, where we all slump onto the sofas in a fit of giggles.
The playlist moves on to Bruno Mars. My heart hammers in my chest as Kerry begins singing into her beer bottle, her face changing from amusement to serious intensity as she looks me straight in the eyes, beginning to repeat the lines of the song: she would catch a grenade for me, step in front of a train for me . . . she would die for me, she tells me slowly, putting down her beer bottle onto the mantelpiece.
‘Please don’t do the same.’ Kerry echoes Bruno as the playlist finishes.
Chapter Seventy-Two
Ed
‘I don’t know why anyone would enjoy it!’ Jen says as she double-checks the locks on the front door for the third time. ‘I mean, the guy was normal, all geekily shy, endearing and then . . .’ she shivers, ‘you hear his inner dialogue and he’s all . . .’ She shudders again. Jen has been enjoying a round of horror films since her trip to the cinema with Nessa. She had popped her horror-film cherry and now couldn’t get enough – Jen’s words, not mine. But we’ve just watched a box-set on Netflix about a stalker and it has turned her off.
I follow her up the stairs, pulling my dressing gown around me. Yep, I’m Dad-who-wears-a-dressing-gown; he’s not quite as cool as Park Dad, but is still infinitely cooler than Dad-who-wears-slippers. I’m freezing, and we haven’t even left England yet; God only knows how I’m going to cope with being in Lapland. We fly in a week’s time, the anniversary of Kerry’s death and two weeks before Christmas. When the tickets came, my heart sank; how was I going to tell Jen? But she already knew, of course she did. She said it was the best way to spend the day, that we’d be so busy travelling and finding our luggage that she wouldn’t have time to think about it.
I walk behind Jen into the bathroom; I pee while she brushes her teeth, intermittently continuing the conversation between brushes and spits. ‘Can you imagine what must have been going through the writer’s mind? I bet she didn’t sleep for months.’ Jen puts her toothbrush under the running tap as I shake, flush and wash my hands.
She is still chatting about it as we climb into bed. I spoon behind her, pulling the duvet tightly around us and tucking her fleecy-bottomed legs towards me.
‘Ed . . . do you think Hailey is too young for us to tell her about stalker types?’
‘Yes. Go to sleep, we’ve got loads to do tomorrow.’ I yawn and close my eyes. My lids are heavy, my eyes gritty and sore after a day looking at spreadsheets. But Jen is fidgety and rolls over to face me. I open one eye.
‘If . . . if say, something happened to me, you know like I got cancer or something, you’d tell her about stuff like that, wouldn’t you? And Oscar too?’