“Save it for best,” Mum always said, squirrelling away the fancy china and silk pyjamas.
The saddest thing about sorting through Mum’s possessions is that there are no memories attached to most of them. The house is full of relics that, like Mum, have gathered dust for decades, waiting for a day that never came.
What would have been a special enough occasion to don her finery and leave the house? A meeting with the Queen? Certainly not lunch with me. My wedding. A day out with my children. That is why I stayed away, even as her health declined. It made sense that Adrian, my brother, should look after her, given his closer proximity and the fact that he doesn’t have children.
I’d felt justified in this position until I arrived in Brighton yesterday ahead of the funeral, returning to my hometown for the first time in years. As I walked along the beach, I passed the burnt-out corpse of the West Pier, rising from the sea in a sunset halo. I don’t believe in ghosts, but my first thought was, “Mum?”
A murmuration of starlings swirled around the pier before disappearing into the distance. Some of them would be preparing to migrate back to northern Europe at around this time, having seen out the relatively mild winter here, but most are home-birds, staying year-round. The parallel with the transient nature of my presence in Mum’s life compared with Adrian’s, was not lost on me.
I can feel his frostiness emanating through the floorboards now as he deals with the clutter downstairs. He barely spoke to me at the funeral earlier, and how can I blame him?
I select a dress from the wardrobe and breathe in its musty scent. Then I twirl, red taffeta rustling a lament as it swings. Is Adrian doing the same downstairs, dancing alone in his grief?
He’s sitting on the floor, a rusty candelabra in his hand when he senses me in the doorway and looks up.
“I don’t even remember this,” he says, his voice so tight it reminds me of how he spoke as a boy. “I don’t remember any of it.”
Before I know it, we are crying in each other’s arms. “I’m sorry,” I manage, and I hope he knows that I mean for everything.
“I think Mum’s message in all of this,” I say later, as we sit side-by-side on the sofa, having cast off the dustsheet to reveal plush velveteen beneath, “is to live for the moment. Carpe Diem.”
It’s then that I spot them. Two perfectly ripe peaches in the fruit bowl on the coffee table. I grab one and sink my teeth into the skin. It gives way like butter. Slurping the sweet flesh, I let the juice run down my chin and off my hands into my lap.
Adrian is in a similar state. We look at each other and laugh until we cry.
Then, with sticky fingers, we box up the wasted treasures.
