The Scrapbook by Carly Holmes

anyway.
    Contrary as ever, she jumps and focuses when I open the car door. ‘What’s going on? Where are you going?’
    The wrench from past to present is too abrupt, the sudden sweep of chill air on her skin too disorientating. She sounds afraid and I reach to soothe her. ‘It’s okay, mum, I’m just having a quick look at Granny Ivy’s grave. I won’t be long. You stay here in the warm.’
    She fumbles out of the car and almost falls into the road. I have a quick sniff at her breath as I rush to steady her and she takes my arm.
    â€˜I’ll come with you, love. Don’t leave me here by myself.’
    She leads the way through the side gate, into the graveyard. Waist deep amongst the markers for the dead, we both pause and squint across the fields, looking for our house. Her house. It’s partially obscured by a tumbled, rusting barn that severs the landscape. Just the poke of a chimney and the thrusting oak are visible. The sea in the background, flat and grey.
    â€˜They’re going to take that down.’ Mum nods towards the barn. ‘He died, the farmer. His family have sold the land off. They weren’t interested in staying round here. This whole area will probably be an estate before too long.’
    She doesn’t sound too bothered but I’m enraged for her.
    â€˜That’s awful. You don’t want a housing estate right next to your back garden, surely? I’ll give the council a ring.’
    She scuffs her feet through the fallen leaves and starts to walk on. She looks as if she’s floating through flaming tissue paper. ‘Don’t do it on my account, Fern. But do it for yourself if you want. The house will be yours, after all.’
    She moves away and I let her go. We wander in different directions, pursuing our pieces of the past. Whenever I glance over she seems content to potter and mutter and so I leave her alone while I locate and tidy my grandparents’ plot.
    I run a hand gently over Granny Ivy’s gravestone and use a fingertip to write ‘beloved’ before her name. The word imprints for a second on decades of decay before collapsing into the moss. The granite has acquired a gothic finish, coated as it is in bird droppings and draped with creeping weeds. It leans over my grandfather’s grave as though the earth itself has shifted to allow a closer embrace. She would be pleased if she were here to see it.
    I wander into the little side porch to look at the ivy carving on the window frame then stroll back to check on mum. She’s picking her way through the overgrown grass at the far end of the graveyard and doesn’t turn when I speak. ‘What are you up to over here? I notice that you haven’t bothered to do a damn thing to maintain Granny Ivy’s final resting place. I bet you only pop over to sprinkle breadcrumbs over her crumbling bones and encourage the local bird life to crap on her …. Mum?’
    She’s got herself tangled up in brambles, thorny ropes cling around her ankles. She teeters and almost falls.
    â€˜Wait, mum, let me …’ I bend to free her and swear as my fingers get scratched. Her legs are already laddered with blood. She stands patiently, staring over my head, humming something I can’t quite catch.
    â€˜There you go. Take a big step now, and watch that clump by here.’
    But she turns and walks away, wading further through the brambles. Every time it seems as if she’s in danger of getting snarled up again she pushes through, hard, with her knees. I can hear small ripping sounds and hope very much that they are coming from her skirt and not her skin.
    â€˜Mum, for Christ’s sake what are you doing? I’m not coming to get you if you fall over.’
    She looks back at me and her face is soft with delight. The kind flush of the setting sun lends her a youthful beauty. She glances down, shuffles her feet to disturb the vegetation, and then