of her bony hand in mine, the skin dry but her squeezing with all her remaining strength. ‘Don’t let me down. Live long and hard for my boy.’
I hoped she’d be pleased to know that he’d formed some kind of a bond with Patrick, even if I hadn’t managed to get past that superficial politeness.
The bitter wind was whipping around my knees and instead of feeling close to Ginny, I felt foolish, distracted by Victor and Patrick behind me, as though I was playing out a scene in a film, the cliché of the grieving friend seeking guidance at the graveside.
I stood up. ‘Shall we go?’
The other two fell into step and we wandered back to the car, the light already fading. Victor asked if we could drive past his old school. I didn’t want to be on the motorway in the dark, but Patrick showed a surprising level of flexibility of thought. ‘Don’t see why not. We won’t hang about for too long, though.’
We drew up outside Victor’s old comprehensive. The longing on his face for his former life caused a physical sensation of sorrow in my chest. That poor boy, forcing himself forwards while wishing he could turn the clock back to when life was simple, when he didn’t have to think about anything, could just career along with no deeper thought than whose parents would allow a party.
Suddenly his head lifted. ‘That’s my mate, Dan!’
Patrick said, ‘Go and say hello. We’ll wait here for you.’
If ever there was a perfect combination of pleasure and pain, it was observing these two young men clasp each other in a way that didn’t pretend to be cool, that held so much more than ‘Good to see you, mate’ in its embrace. Victor’s face spread into a huge beam, his whole body seemed to loosen as though he was steady on the ground, back on familiar turf. A couple of other lads joined them, with much fist bumping and pretend sparring.
I turned to Patrick. ‘I don’t know whether we’ve done the right thing. Look how happy he is to be back with his friends.’
Patrick sighed. ‘Jo, it is what it is. How could he have stayed in Cardiff? He couldn’t have carried on living with Ginny’s dad. The only real alternative would have been sending him off to her brother in Oz.’
‘Do you think it’s the colour thing that makes him feel at home?’
‘What, being with other black boys?’ Patrick considered my question for a moment. ‘I don’t know. I don’t think so. Ginny always seemed perfectly happy to hang out with us. I don’t remember her having loads of black friends or it even being that much of a subject for discussion.’
‘It must be weird though, to have everyone know you in our village just because you’re the only black person there.’
The conversation was cut short because Victor came over to the car with a couple of the boys.
Patrick got out. Victor did an awkward, ‘This is Patrick, he sort of looks after me.’ He suddenly sounded so much more Welsh, as though he’d remembered his tribe.
I didn’t know whether to get out or not, so I ended up leaning across into the driver’s seat, waving out of the door where they probably couldn’t see me from that angle and saying hello in a voice that they would struggle to hear.
Victor suddenly seemed so different in the company of these young black men with their diamante earrings and semi-shaved heads. I had a horrible feeling that they’d take one look at me, a middle-aged white woman with my beige polo neck and sensible stud earrings, the opposite of Ginny with her big gold hoops and penchant for jewel-coloured scarves, and tilt their heads pityingly at Victor.
Patrick seemed to be doing okay, talking about the Millennium Stadium and what a brilliant day out he’d had there a few years ago. I didn’t know what I’d say to them, but then I didn’t have a lot of experience with teenage boys. Especially super-cool black kids who looked so urban streetwise. When Ginny was alive, I’m sure I would have said I didn’t notice skin colour. I spent hours being outraged on her behalf when someone said, ‘I don’t think of you as black,’ as though it was some kind of super-flattery. And now I’d become one of those people she used to laugh about, squirming because they were trying so hard not to be racist. ‘I love it when I’m the only