The Butterfly and the Bee

The solicitor’s assistant has asked us to wait outside until we’re ready to begin. I check my watch. Already ten minutes late.

I turn to Mark, my cousin. “Look, can’t we go in and get started? I really don’t–” But I’m cut off as Kiera’s Porsche hums into the carpark. Mark gives the same triumphant grin he’s always had as his sister folds out of the car and trots up the gravel.

“Nice of you to join us, Kier.” He goes all arms akimbo, trying to get us into a kind of threeway elbow-poke greeting, but Kiera just rolls her eyes. I look from her to the car and back again.

“And Ellen?” But she shakes her head.

“As if Ellen would bend the rules for this. I only got her to the funeral by the skin of her teeth.”

I pull up my mask and push the door open, leading my cousins straight to Ms Green’s office.

She offers her condolences and begins with small talk, so I take it upon myself to rush her on. I’ve got twenty minutes at a push.

We’re taken through a list of familiar-sounding objects that are split between our mothers. The punch bowl, wedding rings, antique bookends, Grandad’s cigar case. With each item on mum’s list I’m playing tetris in my head, thinking how I’m going to get it safely in the back of my car. Thankfully the glass display cabinet is going to Auntie Clem.

The solicitor stands up and hands us each a package. The cousins have all got small boxes, but mine’s more like a fat envelope. “Your grandmother’s will states that each of these gifts holds a particular value to you.”

“Ah, the old dog’s signet ring!” Mark cheers. He’s already squeezing the band up his chubby finger.

Kiera’s more delicate as she slips her own treasure out of its box. “Her eternity ring… wow.” She marvels at the opal in the light before sliding it on. “And I suppose Ellen has Nanny’s engagement ring.” Ms Green nods.

I look at my watch. Two minutes over.

“I’ve really got to go. Is there anything I need to sign?” Ms Green gestures to some forms.

“Oh come on, Bibi, you haven’t even looked in your–”

I whip out the contents of my envelope and hold it up to Mark. “It’s uh, her diary? Shopping lists? Sorry, I really can’t be late for Julia.”

I’m relieved to see Mark’s chased after me as I load the first box of heirlooms into my car. He slots another in neatly and is soon back with the last one.

“It’s good to see you, Mark. I didn’t mean to be...”

He pulls me into the hug he’s been resisting. “I hear they’re gonna go softer on us within a month or so. We’ll get together, celebrate.”

“Sure, I look forward to it. Bye Marko.”

Back home and I’ve fastened a screaming Julia into her highchair so I can make the dash up and down the stairs with boxes from the car.

“SorrybabysorrysorrymummysherejustonemoresillyboxJuJu.” And I’m in, door slammed, kid on my tit, sinking onto the sofa.

I pull out my phone. I feel like I should call someone.

Stupid Mum and Dad moving to stupid Spain before the lockdown.

Stupid Auntie Clem breaking her bloody leg and getting stuck in rehab in the arse-end-of-nowhere.

Stupid Ellen shamelessly sticking to rules and getting away with it.

Stupid good-for-nothing coward Carlos disappearing on us.

Stupid Bibi for being such a mess.

***

It all happened at once.

Nan had just moved into a retirement home ten minutes from Auntie Clem. Then Clem had her accident. They kept her in the hospital for two months.

In the meantime my parents had moved to Spain, with the idea of taking Nan out there with them every so often.

Mark a big shot banker getting burnt out in the city.

Kiera settling into married life and getting promoted to Registrar.

Ellen finishing her PhD up in Scotland.

And me? Believing Carlos when he said Norway was a no-brainer. That he’d be back each month with a packet of cash towards our deposit.

Me powering through sleepless nights with a month-old baby, too proud to call my mum.

Me holding out for Carlos to get a flight back when the borders closed.

Me making ends meet on maternity pay, selling a couple of paintings for less than I’d wanted.

Me trusting he’d transfer the money tomorrow.

Me on the other end of the phone, hearing he’d got a flight, but not to London. Back to Argentina. No work. Visa expired. Deported.

Me letting everyone believe the father of my child was still here supporting us.

Me ferrying Nan home after a week in hospital, only to hear they couldn’t let her back in in case she was contaminated.

Me, Julia and my 93-year-old grandmother slumming it through the pandemic.

Mark promised to get to us as soon as he could, but “one day just blends into the next, what with Brexit and the markets going mad… You know we’re key workers?”

Kiera begged me to hold on and promised she’d drive up and take Nan “once my back-to-back shifts are done. Just please keep her with you Bibi. If they put her in some nursing home we won’t be allowed to visit and at her age...”

And Everyone-has-to-do-their-bit Ellen? Hiding out in her home office in Aberdeen.

We got by.

It’s not like I could just use Nan’s card now that she was in my care. You need power of attorney for that. Mum sent a lump sum every couple of weeks to cover Nan’s costs, and I even qualified for a carer’s allowance.

Care assistants popped in every day, giving me a chance to get Julia out for some fresh air, to get the groceries in. So what could I really complain about? Everyone else was trapped, by work or borders or broken bones, whereas I’d be at home with the baby anyway.

And it wasn’t all bad. We reminisced. I found out Nan had been engaged before Grandad, and that she’d had an older brother who ran away when he was sixteen. She made me laugh. Calling Julia a “handsome little fellow”, remarking at the “best ready meal” she’d ever tasted.

But there were also the nights when she’d call out for her mother. She’d fall trying to get out of bed alone. “It’s time for me to fetch Annie from ballet.” Begging me to let her go home. “My husband will be worried.”

Then one night her breathing turned raspy. Mark got there just ten minutes after the rasping stopped. Kiera arrived the next day.

The funeral was limited to fifteen people, but in the end we were only eight.

***

Julia’s face flops to the side and I lay her in her cot. I shove the boxes of Mum’s inheritance in the airing cupboard and pick up the envelope again.

It’s a soft black book with an elastic fastening running around it. Neat, like Nan was. I have zero recollection of it.

A small black and white photo is glued to the inside cover, showing my grandparents with my mum and aunt standing in the front garden of their house, the twin girls in matching dresses.

I look up at my one-bedroom rental, at the laundry that’s taken two days to dry on its clothes horse, overflowing bin, and the snuffling baby passed out in the middle of it all. And to think Nan landed this dump for her deathbed.

A list of family birthdays. A pressed wildflower. Tips for starching shirts. Three pages about afternoon tea. Cucumber soup.

Then about a quarter-way in a sudden format change. The elegant script remains, but it’s disturbed, working its way around a grease mark in the middle. It’s the recipe for Nan’s apple pie. She’s annotated the translucent spot with an arrow and a comment:

Sweet Bibi (3.y.o) helping out!

Something flickers. The kitchen with mosaic tiles. Rubbing the flour and butter with four hands in a bowl - mine and Nan’s? Dropping an apple from the garden when a maggot wriggled out. Making snowmen with currant eyes from the leftover pastry. I can taste the syrupy apples, feel the sandy texture of the crust in my mouth. My chest at once fills with the warmth of the memory, and tightens with a new wave of grief.

Julia sighs in her sleep. I read on.

The writing becomes denser in the second half of the book. Again I’m transported back to the house from the photo, night time now, and Nan’s telling me a story. We all preferred the ones she made up herself, cosy tales about field mice chewing through a thatched roof to make a nest in an attic, the old woman selling icicles for foolish men to build crystal palaces. I hadn’t known she’d recorded them. My favourite, about a bee and a butterfly who meet in a tulip, is also in there.

I read it, Nan’s voice in my ears, and I’m transformed back into the child half-asleep in soft feather quilts, and then read it again, with a new appreciation as a mother. Yet again, remarking at my grandmother’s craftful storytelling, her beautiful turn of phrase and nuances. And again, I thumb back and forth across the pages as an opportunist.

My sketchbook is lying on the kitchen table.

I hesitate, then go for it. Even when Julia wakes up I don’t stop, holding her to my chest with one hand whilst I sketch, hash, cross out, crumple then start again, to rework the scenes I’ve carried in my head since my own infancy into a series of freeze frames captioned by Nan’s words.

In less than 24 hours I’m converting my ideas to digital artworks. I’m wired from lack of sleep. Before I know it I’ve packaged up the whole file and pressed Send on an email to my agent, Lindsey.

***

Mark wasn’t far off. Within a few weeks measures ease. Pubs reopen and travel restrictions loosen. Auntie Clem’s been sent home so we agree to meet up there.

Ellen answers the door. We’re awkward at first, I’m not sure how she’ll react to a hug, but she goes ahead and scoops Julia out of her pram.

Lying in a sun lounger, Clem looks surprisingly well and is handing her empty glass to Mark as I walk out onto the patio. Lucas is there too, with his arm around Kiera’s waist.

“Just in time, Bibi!” Mark roars and a cork fires through the air. Ellen squeals as she and Julia are sprayed. “Plenty more where that came from. We’re celebrating!” He sloshes champagne out for each of us.

“I can see that.” I laugh.

We sit outside until well into the evening. The sun and champagne have left me in a trance as I half-listen to the conversation, but my phone buzzing stirs me. I take the call in the kitchen.

“Bea? Sweets, sorry I’ve taken so long to get back to you. Up to my eyes in proposals since all these artists’ve had more time on their hands.”

“Lindsey? Hi.”

“Look it’s not really my thing, you know that.”

“No… ok, well–”

“Don’t get me wrong, I passed it on to a contact, they like what they see.”

“That’s... great?”

“We’re already discussing your advance, it’s looking good. Tidy it up a bit and you’ll be in the region of 20k.”

She talks and talks and I half listen. The dream in my mind of leaving that hole of a flat had been fading, but now the outlines become bolder and fill with colour.

After we hang up I take a few minutes to process what Lindsey’s told me.

I look up at my family, relaxed and laughing through the windows. At my little girl, whose life will be better.

For the first time in all these months I feel myself breathe.