The car park at Morecambe Cricket Club is half-full by the time I pull in, vehicles clustered near the entrance in that awkward way people park when they don’t want to be the first to arrive but don’t want to seem late either.
Graham’s van sits at the far end, beneath the sycamore where the sodium light doesn’t quite reach. He always parks there. Away from door dings, he says. Away from prying eyes, I think, though I’ve never said it aloud.
I kill the engine and sit for a moment longer than I should.
Through the clubhouse windows, silhouettes move against the yellow glow. Someone laughs—I can’t hear it from here, but I can see the head tilt back, the shoulders shake. Too loud for a memorial. Too normal.
The taste of gin still coats the back of my throat from the swig I took in the driveway before I reversed out, and I tell myself it was just to settle my nerves, just one, just enough to get through the door.
Holly would have hated this. Fifteen years old and already rolling her eyes at “club people,” at the men who propped up the bar talking about spin bowls and silly mid-off, at the wives who smiled too hard and watched each other’s waistlines. I can see her now, bracelets clacking as she pushed through the door, already planning her escape.
I check my reflection in the rear-view mirror and arrange my face into something appropriate. Grieving but coping. Sad but grateful. If anyone asks how I am, I’ll say I’m taking it one day at a time, because that’s what people want to hear.
The smell hits me first: lager, old carpet, the cloying sweetness of air freshener fighting a losing battle against decades of cigarette smoke that seeped into the walls before the ban. A television mutters in the corner, volume low, and someone’s turned off the fruit machine for once, which I suppose counts as respect.
The memorial table sits just inside the door, positioned so you can’t avoid it.
Holly’s school photo watches me from a silver frame, that awful one from Year Ten where they made her take off her jewellery and she sulked for a week afterwards. Battery-powered tealights flicker around it, and someone’s laid a bouquet across the white tablecloth with a ribbon that reads Forever 15 in curling gold script.
There’s a guestbook open to a half-filled page, a pen on a string, and a stack of printed orders of service with the words I’ve been avoiding for seven years.
Declaration of Presumed Death.
That’s what the coroner’s letter said. That’s what Graham showed the neighbours, the solicitor, the life insurance company. Holly Renee Henshaw declared dead in absence. A legal term for what happens when there’s no body but everyone’s stopped looking.
After seven years, Holly is officially dead.
My fingers catch on the edge of the guestbook as I reach for the pen, and I can’t make myself write. Not yet. The photograph is wrong, I think. The wrong smile, the wrong Holly—the one who sat still for cameras instead of the one who ran through the house trailing scarves and chaos.
Graham’s voice cuts through the room, warm and measured, and I turn to see him shaking hands with Dave Pointer from three doors down. His shoulders are set at exactly the right angle: open but not casual, strong but not stiff. He’s wearing the charcoal suit I picked out for him six years ago, and someone’s already told him he’s bearing up well. I can see it in the way Dave claps his arm.
Brave. That’s what they’ll call him. Strong.
I’m the one they’ll watch.
“She’s in a better place.” The woman saying it has a new haircut, blonder than last month, and she keeps glancing past me towards the bar.
I nod and say thank you.
“At least you’ve got closure now.” This one’s from a man I half-recognise, someone’s husband, someone’s brother. He says closure the way you’d say receipt, like it’s something I can fold up and file away.
I nod and say thank you.
A cricket club regular whose name I should know grips my hand too hard and tells me Graham’s handled everything wonderfully, really wonderfully, and then launches into a story about Holly as a toddler at the summer fête. She knocked over a whole table of raffle prizes, apparently. Sent bottles rolling everywhere. He laughs at the memory, and I try to place myself there, to remember the weight of her in my arms, but the details have gone soft around the edges.
“Excuse me,” I say. “I should—”
I don’t finish the sentence. I don’t have to.
The bar is three steps away, and I order a gin and tonic before I’ve properly stopped walking. The barman pours without comment. I wrap my fingers around the glass and the cold bites into my palm, sharp and clean, and I take the first sip standing right there at the counter because I don’t trust myself to carry it without spilling.
Behind me, the room hums and murmurs. I catch the shape of my name in someone’s mouth, the slight dip in volume when I turn around. I’m imagining it. I’m always imagining it.
Except I see the look anyway, from a woman near the window. That quick flick of the eyes towards my glass. That tightening of the mouth that says still drinking.
I order a second before the first is finished and tell myself it’s for Graham, even though I won’t give it to him.
Across the room, he laughs at something. Too soft. Too normal.
Graham’s always had a gift for rooms.
He moves through the crowd like he belongs to each conversation, refilling cups of tea without being asked, remembering names I’ve long forgotten, asking after children and jobs and ailing parents with just the right amount of concern. When he passes me, his hand finds the small of my back, guiding me gently towards a quieter corner, and to anyone watching it looks like tenderness.
I know better. He’s steering me away from the bar.
“You’re doing so well,” Lynne Carver says, appearing at his elbow with her hand already reaching for his arm. Her nails are new, coral pink, and her perfume is strong enough to taste. “Both of you. I don’t know how you cope.”
“One day at a time,” Graham says, and his smile is soft and sad and perfectly calibrated. “She’d hate all this fuss.”
Lynne laughs, dabbing at her eyes, and I stand there with my gin and my silence and my arranged face. She’d hate all this fuss. He says it like he knew her. Like he understood her. But I hear the edge beneath: don’t make a scene.
My stomach tightens. Not grief, exactly. Something older.
Two more women stop to touch his arm before he finishes his tea, and I watch their fingers linger on his sleeve, their heads tilt towards his. They’re comforting him, I tell myself. It’s natural. It’s normal.
I tell myself a lot of things.
Graham’s phone buzzes against the table, and his hand moves to cover it before I can see the screen.
“Back in a minute,” he says, already standing. “Dave wants a word about the extension quote.”
He crosses the room, angling himself towards the side door where the corridor leads to the toilets and the fire exit. I track the set of his shoulders, the deliberate way he doesn’t look back. He’s not heading towards Dave. Dave’s at the bar, laughing with the treasurer.
Graham disappears around the corner, and I count the seconds. Ten. Twenty. I finish my drink and the ice clinks too loud in the empty glass.
His phone sits on the table where he left it, face down, next to his car keys and a crumpled order of service. He must have set it down when he stood up. Must have forgotten.
Except Graham doesn’t forget. Not things like that.
I shouldn’t look. I know exactly how the conversation will go if I look—the sighing disappointment, the patient explanation about trust and privacy, the quiet reminder that I’ve been drinking and I’m not thinking clearly. I’ve had this argument before. I’ve lost it before.
My hand moves anyway. Hovers over the phone without touching it.
The screen lights up.
Can’t wait to see you later x
The words burn bright in the dim room, white text on a grey bubble, and then the screen goes dark again.
I don’t breathe. The room shrinks to the size of that phone, that message, that single letter at the end. X. A kiss. An intimacy. A promise.
The sender’s name was there for half a second, maybe less. A first name I didn’t catch. Or didn’t recognise. Or my brain refused to hold because holding it would mean something I’m not ready to mean.
My pulse thuds in my ears. The gin turns sour in my stomach.
It could be anyone. A mate from work, taking the piss. His brother, though his brother never signs off with kisses. Someone about a job, a quote, a pickup time. It could be nothing. It could be completely innocent, and I’m sitting here in a room full of people who came to mourn my daughter, turning a text message into something it isn’t.
Across the room, Graham laughs. Closer now. Coming back.
Holly’s photograph watches from the memorial table. Forever 15.
I move the phone back to exactly where it was, screen down, edge aligned with his keys. My hand finds my glass, empty but present, something to grip while I arrange my face into neutral. When Graham rounds the corner, I’m studying the order of service like I’ve never seen it before.
“You alright?” He slides back into the seat beside me, checking the phone with a glance so quick I almost miss it.
“Fine.” I keep my voice level. “Just—a lot.”
He nods, and his hand covers mine on the table, warm and dry and deliberate. “She’d be proud, you know. The turnout. Everyone who came.”
I look at his fingers wrapped around my knuckles and think about the last time he held my hand where anyone could see it. I can’t remember.
“We should head off soon,” he says. “You look tired.”
There it is. The suggestion dressed as concern. The lid sliding into place over my mouth.
I nod and say yes, soon, just a few more minutes. I don’t ask about the text. I don’t ask about Dave’s extension. I’ve learned what questions cost in this house.
But I watch him accept another handshake, another murmured condolence, another touch on the arm. I watch him play the grieving father with the same steady grace he brings to everything.
And I wonder who can’t wait to see him later.
