The Two Lives of Lydia Bird - Josie Silver Page 0,10
the same. Come to think of it, you could say the same for Mum – she’s had the same ash-blonde bob for as long as I can recall. Elle and I inherited our heart-shaped faces from her and we all share the same deep dimples when we laugh, as if someone screwed their fingers into our cheeks. She is our safety net and this house is our sanctuary.
‘We did our homework on this table.’ Elle lays a protective hand on it.
‘Every Christmas dinner I’ve ever had has been around this table,’ I say.
‘But it’s drawn all over,’ Mum tries.
‘Yes,’ Elle says. ‘With our names from when I was five years old.’
She gouged each of our names deep into the surface with a blue ballpoint not long after she learned her letters. The story goes that she was terribly proud and couldn’t wait to show Mum what she’d done; they’re still there now, childish capitals beneath our place mats. Gwen. Elle. Lydia. A scrawny little bird after each of them.
‘Would you like to take it to your house?’ Mum says, looking at Elle, who has a screamingly tidy home where everything matches or complements, and absolutely nothing is battered or gouged.
‘It belongs here,’ Elle says, firm.
Mum looks at me. ‘Lydia?’
‘You know I don’t have the room,’ I say. ‘But please let it stay. It’s part of the family.’
She sighs, wavering. I can see she knows it’s true. I don’t think she really wants to lose it either. ‘Maybe.’
‘Omelettes are lovely,’ Elle offers.
A thought occurs to me. ‘Did Kathrin Magyar sell you a new dining table?’
Mum reaches for her coffee and pats the tabletop like an old friend. ‘I’ll cancel the order.’
Kathrin Magyar might be good, but she never stood a chance against the Bird family collective.
I look down at Freddie’s grave, at a bunch of cellophane-wrapped roses laid along the base of the headstone, garish beside the bedraggled arrangement of daisies and wildflowers I placed there myself last week. Someone else must have been. A colleague, or perhaps Maggie, Freddie’s mum, although she doesn’t come that often – she finds it too distressing. He was her beloved only child, so much so that she found it a struggle to include me in her circle of love. She wasn’t unkind, it was more that she took underlying pleasure in having Freddie to herself. We’ve met up a couple of times since Freddie’s death, but I’m not sure it does either of us any service. Hers is a different sort of loss, one I can’t relate to.
The fact that I don’t find it maudlin myself has surprised me; I appreciate having a place to come and talk to him. My eyes flicker back to the roses as I open the fresh flowers I picked out at the florist on the way here. Sweet Williams, freesias and some interesting silvery green foliage. Never anything as obvious as roses. Roses are for Valentine’s Day, the romance-by-numbers choice of the unimaginative lover. Throw in a teddy and the job’s a good one. Mine and Freddie’s love was a world away from card-shop clichés and helium hearts. It was big and real, and now I feel like half a person, as if an artist turned their pencil upside down and erased half of me from the page too.
‘Who’s been to visit you, Freddie?’ I say, settling my bum down on the grass, my bag at my feet. There’s something terribly depressing about keeping a bag in the boot of the car with cemetery essentials, isn’t there? An empty water bottle I fill up at the tap, scissors to cut the flowers to size, cleaning wipes, those kinds of things.
When I first started to come here, I used to try to prepare in my head what I was going to say. It didn’t work. So now I just sit in the silence, close my eyes and imagine that I’m somewhere else entirely. I’ve conjured all kinds of places for us. I’ve been at home on the sofa, my feet on Freddie’s lap. I’ve been beside him on a sun lounger in Turkey, an ill-advised package holiday to a godawful hotel survived mainly thanks to endless free shots of raki. And we’ve been opposite each other in Sheila’s small, steamy cafe around the corner from our house, the one we used to go to for a hangover-busting full English after a heavy night out, beetroot on mine, specially bought in for my regular order by Sheila. It doesn’t take