In Her Place by Edel Coffey

Author:Edel Coffey [Coffey, Edel]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group
Published: 2024-03-20T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twenty-Five

Deborah

The day I went back to the house felt like a dream. I couldn’t understand why I had agreed to do it the way we did it, local media, national media, all filming me leaving the hospital and on the drive from the hospital to my home, the home I hadn’t been in for almost two years. They told me it would be better this way. If Justin and Sophie waited for me at home, instead of picking me up from the hospital.

I hadn’t realised how utterly raw and exposed I would feel. I wanted to collapse in the dirt, roll around in the earth, tear at the grass and flowers and trees. I wanted to cry and scream, I’m alive! I’m home, home! I didn’t think I would feel like that. I usually felt very little. I had been brought up to be stoic, reserved; any sign of emotion was weakness. I had developed an insulation between my emotions and the outer world, which meant my feelings never crossed that barrier. I was the person people asked to read at funerals. I was always the one to hold it together. I could see children being born and couples being wed and be happy but never moved to tears. Those old habits learned in childhood die hard. But as we rounded the corner that led to the avenue up to the house, I was scared, like I couldn’t breathe.

When we drove up the avenue and the house came into view on the cusp of the bend, falling away to reveal the water, my breath caught in my chest and all of the insulation was torn away. I was completely naked. It was just as I had remembered but more beautiful. The shrubs were more mature, of course they were, the flowerbeds more densely planted. Memories filtered through my brain like images on a screen, sunlight shuttering past my eyes, memories I didn’t even know I had of this house strobed through my mind. I felt like my whole body was palpitating. I had brought Sophie here after she was born. Those memories had not been accessible to me until this moment, unlocked now as comprehensively as if I had finally entered the correct password and every single file was downloading simultaneously. Sophie grabbing my face and laughing, us sitting together in the quiet night light at 3 a.m., her huddled on my chest in the living room under a sheepskin blanket. Me trying not to move so I wouldn’t wake her. Time was a deceiver. That felt like a memory from a hundred years ago. But it also felt like a memory from today. But Sophie wasn’t a baby any more. She was a different person, I could see her standing at the top of the steps now with Justin, tall and slim, with long lustrous hair that flowed like liquid. The tears began coursing down my face. The cameraman sitting opposite me twisted the magnifying ring to zoom in and I said, ‘Please, don’t.

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