What became of us

that something was different. She told herself that the estate agent’s sign was outside another house, but she knew it was not. Just as she knew, even though she could not at first read it at distance, that the sign had only one word in bold black lettering. SOLD. She began to run the length of the street, stopping outside number 3 breathless, unable to believe that Penny’s house had been sold and she did not know. The house was a boxful of memories. It was impossible to imagine anyone else living there. In the sunshine, the curtain-less front windows reflected her bewilderment back at her.

    She remembered lying on Penny’s bed the day after the thirty-eighth birthday party, with Penny under the covers and Manon next to her on top.
    Manon had brought sandwiches upstairs for their lunch and after they had eaten she had put the tray down on the floor and asked, ‘Do you want me to take the children out this afternoon so that you can get some rest, or shall I stay here?’
    ‘No, Roy will take them out later,’ Penny had replied, too exhausted in her body to pull herself up to sitting, but still clear and businesslike in her voice. ‘If you wouldn’t mind, I want to make memory boxes for the girls. What I want you to do is take my purse and buy two of the prettiest boxes you can find. Little Clarendon Street, I should think.’
    ‘Little Trendy Street?’ Manon had asked, trying to remember the layout of the town.
    ‘Yes!’ Penny smiled.
    ‘How big?’
    ‘Hmm. What do you think? I don’t even know what I’m going to put in them.’
    When Manon returned with two gift boxes the size of shoe boxes, Penny was asleep. She sat on the end of the bed and watched her friend’s frail chest moving up and down.
    Then Penny had stirred and woken up.
    ‘Perfect,’ Penny said, seeing the boxes, ‘but which one should get which, do you think?’
    ‘Should I have bought both the same?’ Manon asked, perfectly willing to go back and change them.
    ‘No, I don’t think so. I want them to be individual, but I just don’t want one of them thinking that the other’s is prettier and that I loved her more...’
    ‘Stripes for Lily and flowers for Saskia?’ Manon suggested.
    ‘Then Lily might think that I thought she was a tomboy. Oh, it’s so difficult!’ She giggled like a teenager on a shopping trip weighing up which shade of eye shadow to spend her pocket money on, and then suddenly the smiling mask dropped from her face.
    ‘How can I possibly encapsulate what I feel about them in a box?’
    ‘You could write to them,’ Manon suggested, frightened by the sudden emotion.
    ‘I’m not much good at letters.’
    ‘Of course you are,’ Manon lied, thinking of the long, chatty screeds she had received in Rome, which had told her nothing. They were all about things the children had done, with long descriptions of the weather and holidays, but there had been no hint of what Penny had been going through.
    Together they rummaged through photos of Penny to find a special one for each of the boxes, here was a particularly beautiful one of her breast-feeding Saskia.
    ‘There’s none like that of Lily, though,’ Penny said, ‘because you just don’t bother to take all those reels of film with your second.’
    They deliberated whether to include Saskia’s anyway and finally Manon found a photo of Penny throwing Lily in the air, which they deemed a satisfactory alternative for her.
    The pair of gold hoop earrings Penny had worn when she was confirmed, and the pair of pearl studs she had been married in were divided one in each box.
    ‘What else? Toenails?’ Penny laughed.
    ‘Hair?’ Manon said.
    ‘Nail scissors on the dressing table,’ Penny pointed.
    Manon snipped a lock for each box. It was like down.
    ‘I know, get a couple of plastic sandwich bags to put it in. There’s some in the kitchen drawer,’ Penny had instructed, ever practical.
    But when Manon returned, Penny’s tears were dripping onto the cotton sheets.
    ‘I should have done this before the chemo,’ she said in a strangled, desperate voice. ‘They won’t even know what my hair was like.’

    After staring at the house for a few seconds, minutes, she did not know how long, Manon heard a voice behind her. The old lady who had always lived opposite and had observed their comings and goings, was calling from her tiny square of front garden. Manon took a deep breath, wiped her eyes with her forearm and walked across the quiet