Jack and Freya live in Brixton now, not far from where Cassie grew up. If they stay, Freya could go to the same nursery her mum went to. Sometimes, every now and then, life does seem to cough up another chance.
Jack told me in his letter that Freya’s doing well, putting on weight but she seems too gripped by the world, too fascinated to sleep much. He didn’t mention Charlotte. He enclosed two photos, one of Freya, in just a nappy and a white sun hat, her face somewhere between a laugh and a squeal at the person taking the photo, her sweet rolls of baby fat like an in-built crash mat. The other was of a group of about thirty people in bright clothes standing barefoot in a semi-circle on a cliff top, the huge sky a swirly watercolour of setting sun behind them, the sea stretching all the way to the horizon to meet the sunset. Jack wrote that the photo was from Cassie’s memorial ceremony on the Isle of Wight; April’s ashes were scattered there as well. In the photo some people are holding hands; some have their eyes closed as if in prayer. Marcus is amongst them, his eyes cast down, a faint smile on his face. He’s holding Freya in a light-blue romper suit; she’s grabbing chubby fistfuls of white hair. I wonder if he has a diagnosis. I hope someone is looking out for him. I move the letter and photos back into my bag, next to the adoption papers I completed late last night, as David comes out of our empty house with the final box. He closes the door behind him for the last time. He moves slower than normal, squinting in the bright sunlight towards me. He moves the box onto the back seat before he comes next to me, and leaning his back against the car, he places his hand on my bare knee.
‘OK, that’s the last of it. Ready to go?’
I nod and we kiss briefly on the lips and I know that even if our lives aren’t as we planned, they are still just as rich as we hoped.
As we drive away I look across at David, already singing along to the radio next to me, and just like I did eight years ago when we arrived here, I feel full of the future, entirely blessed because this is it, my tiny family, and I know it’s all I need.