Human Remains

old mum, anyway. I saw a group of girls by the lake, they were scuffling, laughing, you know, mucking about. I saw something fly up into the air and sail in the wind out on to the surface of the lake, something bright blue, like the wing of an exotic bird. It sailed up into the air and the breeze caught it.
    Then the girls ran away, laughing, leaving one of their number behind at the edge of the lake.
    The blue thing – a silk scarf, as it turned out, that had been given to her French mother when she had lived in Paris before the war, a scarf that young Vi was forbidden to look at, never mind take out of the house, never mind wear – was lying forlorn in a little blue puddle about ten yards from the edge.
    Before I could get to her to help, she’d set one foot on the ice and then another, and was walking with a determined but cautious gait towards the middle of the lake, and the scarf. She was only a slip of a girl, just eighteen, light as a feather and tiny, but even so the ice was thinner than it had been when she’d skated on it the weekend before, thinning by the day thanks to the weak February sunshine.
    When I was still a hundred yards away the ice cracked beneath her. I was close enough to see the shock on her face, hear her scream, before it cracked again and gave way. She only fell in up to her chest – thankfully the water wasn’t deeper than that – but still she clawed on the edge of the ice and could not get any purchase to pull herself out.
    ‘I’m coming,’ I yelled, ‘don’t worry!’ – as though that would make any difference to the terror and the pain of being stuck in an icy lake.
    I took off my woollen coat and my jumper that mum knitted for me last Christmas and my shirt too, and tied all the sleeves together. That wasn’t long enough, so I ended up taking off my vest too and tying that on the end. All the while I could see her turning blue. After that it was just long enough for her to reach, and I told her to wind the end of it around her hands so that she didn’t need to grip, and then I hauled her out.
    We were both shivering, her more than me of course. By this time a little crowd had gathered, including my brother Tom, who’d come to see where I’d got to. He gave me the coat off his back, and someone else took off their coat and put it round the young woman.
    She was taken to hospital but she was alright after that. She even managed to get the scarf put away back in her mother’s closet before it was missed.
    The next day I went round to see her before I had to go back to the ship and she told me that I’d saved her life. It didn’t feel like all that big a deal to me, after all what was I going to do, leave her in there? But by that time I’d seen her big beautiful grey eyes and how she got dimples in her cheeks when she smiled.
    We got married in 1943, which was the next time I put in to port – just a quick wedding, me in my uniform, her in a coat she borrowed from a friend and wearing the beautiful blue scarf, lent by her mother.
    Vi died the year before we would have had our diamond wedding. We were planning a big party, with our daughter Susan and all her family coming over from Australia, but by the spring both of us knew she wasn’t going to last that long. She fought so hard, but in the end it took her the way we knew it would. She died with me holding her hand on a rainy day in March.
    I kissed her goodbye and went home.
    You want to know about my story, don’t you? Well, my story ended on that day I left my Vi behind in the hospital. Things happened after that but they weren’t important. Nothing was important any more.
    Susan came over from Australia for the funeral. She stayed two weeks and then went back again. I knew she wouldn’t come back to England again until it was my funeral, and maybe not even then – after all, I wasn’t to know about it either way, was I?

Annabel
     
     
    Mum’s funeral took place eleven days after I left hospital. Sam had helped with the arrangements. He’d asked for quotes from other funeral directors and then got on with the organising, once I was able to start making decisions again. He hadn’t wanted me to go back to the Co-operative Funeralcare on my own once I’d worked out that that was where it had happened… where I’d met him, the angel, whoever he was really.
    Irene helped me get ready. She let me borrow a black skirt and a nice cashmere sweater; I didn’t think it would fit me, but to my surprise it