What became of us

any less, but he would be hurt. I don’t want to hurt him.’
    It all sounded very logical. Too logical.
    ‘Don’t you feel bad about it?’ Manon asked.
    ‘It’s horrible to have a secret from the person you trust most in the world,’ Penny said carefully. ‘Look, I know it sounds corny, but it didn’t mean anything with Vin. It didn’t mean anything to do with me and Roy. If anything it made us stronger. I felt as if I had finally acknowledged that Vin wasn’t what I wanted. He wasn’t the love of my life. He was the love of my youth.’
    She looked at Manon, pleading for her endorsement. Manon didn’t know what to say.
    ‘If Roy asked, I don’t think I’d lie,’ Penny went on, ‘but he won’t ask. So it’s a white lie, isn’t it? I think there must be lots of children like Lily in the World, don’t you?’
    ‘I suppose so.’
    Manon was too stunned to give her the affirmation that she wanted.
    ‘Manon, you can’t be shocked.’
    ‘What about Lily? Don’t you think she has a right to know?’ Manon asked.
    ‘Maybe. When she grows up. That’s why I’m telling you. You tell her if you think she needs to know.’
    ‘Penny, that’s not fair!’
    ‘No, I know it’s not fair, but what else can I do? I can’t leave her an envelope at a solicitor’s to be opened when she’s eighteen or something, can I? She might not want to know. She might be having a bad day. It’s horrible enough that she’s losing me when she’s three years old. I don’t want her to have to hate me too when she’s eighteen.’
    It was clear that Penny had thought all the options through.
    ‘It just isn’t like you,’ Manon said, unable to deal with the shock.
    Penny’s laughter was sunshine in the suddenly gloomy room.
    ‘Oh, but it is. It’s so like me. The one time in my life I’m adventurous and wicked and it’s with my old boyfriend... please... anyway I’m suffering for it now, aren’t I?’
    ‘What do you mean?’ Manon asked.
    ‘You mean apart from the fact that my punishment is cancer?’
    And only then had her voice cracked, her blithe facade collapsing into uncontrollable sobs.
    ‘Oh, love, Penny, of course it’s not. It’s nothing to do with that,’ Manon had said, leaning across to comfort her.
    ‘Well, why then? Why? Why? Why?’

    * * *

    Manon sniffed back tears. She didn’t want to cry in front of the children.
    She thought of Penny’s face reeling into consciousness for the last time and staring at her blankly, as if she did not recognize her, and then her smile, her last dimply smile.
    ‘You will be a friend to my girls, Manon, won’t you?’

    ‘ “... BELOVED DAUGHTER WIFE AND MOTHER”,’

    Saskia read out loud.

    ‘ “JULY 23RD 1959 TO DECEMBER 19TH 1997
    REST IN PEACE”.’

    Friend. It should say friend too, Manon thought, as the words on the stone blurred behind her tears. She thought of the sea of women’s faces the previous evening listening to the Elgar, each transported to their own individual memory of her.
    Rest in Peace.
    Are you peaceful, Penny? Can you see that your girls miss you, but they are healthy. They are fine. Am I looking after them as you wished?
    Rest in Peace.
    There was a sense of peace there. Even Lily was quiet as she persisted in her determined adornment of the grave. The air smelt of cut grass and there was the sort of rural summer silence that might only he interrupted by a blackbird’s song, or the gentle thwack of a cricket ball on a willow bat. It was so very different from the angrily dark and muddy churchyard where Penny had been buried.
    Manon stared at Saskia’s little bouquet. The colours were bright in the almost-white sunshine illuminating the grave. Manon’s eyes were clear now, so clear they felt cold, and she was suddenly aware of a peculiar sensation of recognition. The flowers were the same as those that Frank had offered her on Friday evening, but that bouquet had been so artificial in its artlessness that she had left it to wilt on the wooden boards of the cloakroom floor. She looked again. Now the flowers on the grave were a simple bunch fashioned by a child’s hands.
    Lack of sleep was playing tricks on her.
    A sudden breeze swished though the leaves of the line of poplar trees that marked the edge of the cemetery. If she were superstitious, she thought, startled, she might almost believe that Penny was trying to tell her something.
    Life is so much easier when you believe in miracles, she thought.
    ‘I’m