The Rose Petal Beach by Dorothy Koomson

Author:Dorothy Koomson
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub, mobi
Tags: Fiction, General
ISBN: 9781780874968
Publisher: Quercus
Published: 2012-08-29T23:00:00+00:00

Tami

It’s just me here at Mirabelle’s graveside.

Everyone has drifted away, either to go home, back to work, or back to our house for the wake. Everything is so surreal. We’ve just buried Mirabelle. She was so there, all the time. Vital is the word, I suppose. It doesn’t seem possible that this has happened to her.

And she was gay. She was gay and she never told me.

Fleur is gone, too, having delivered the news that has rocked me at a time when I didn’t think it was possible to be any more shocked and rocked. I hope she’s gone off with that man, I hope he’ll take care of her. I can’t remember what she called him but she’d mentioned she was seeing someone and it wasn’t serious. But I could tell from the way she spoke, the way she lit up, that she was serious about him no matter how he felt. The memory of feeling like that never goes away, it stays there in your heart to help you through the bad times; to see you through to the other side. Although, is there enough left for us? With everything that has happened between Scott and me, I don’t think there is enough to see us to the other side. Especially now I know they weren’t having an affair.

She was gay.

She was gay; she did not have an affair with my husband. My mind stops me there, stops me from going to that place, that place where I have to accept what he has done.

Beside the head of the grave there is a gold box of red rose petals, passed around for those in attendance to throw in instead of earth. Crammed in the hands of those who came, then released in sombre, respectful movements, some of the petals danced away on the breeze, tokens of who she was, what she loved. Most of the petals have fallen on top of the brown, maple-wood box with the brass plaque declaring her name, and they’re going to stay with her forever.

I scoop up as many of the remaining petals as I can from the box, they’re satiny and almost weightless against my skin, and drop them in, covering more of the box with red. I want it to be like the story of her beach. I want there to be a velvety, fragrant blanket of rose petals that will cover her while she sleeps. I gather up more of the petals, drop them in. I want her to be always surrounded by roses, to be comforted by them as she begins her journey into eternity. I want Mirabelle to never be on her own.

‘That’s a lot of rose petals,’ someone says to me as I release another armful of petals.

Rubbing at my eyes, wicking away the tears that are falling, I turn to the speaker and it’s the policewoman. Detective Sergeant Harvan. Her sidekick is nowhere in sight, but he’ll be there somewhere. They seem to travel in pairs, unable to work without each other.

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