The Flavours of Love by Dorothy Koomson

falling asleep on our double deckchair while reading a book and them leaving me there to go for ice cream and a paddle in the sea, then coming back to gleefully tell me what I missed. Joel making a dent in the roof with the cork from the bottle of champagne he opened after our tenth anniversary blessing. The photo I took of our family last summer, each of them pulling a stupid face at the camera right before I hit the button.
    I had to sell it , I remind myself. There was no choice, for the greater good I had to do it .
    6 weeks after That Day (December, 2011)
    ‘Police today confirmed they have arrested a thirty-two-year-old man in connection with the brutal murder of Brighton man, Joel Mack-el-roy. Forty-year-old father of two Mack-el-roy was found on Montefiore Road in Hove, bleeding from a stab wound, and died on the way to hospital without regaining consciousness.’
    I pause in the middle of the kitchen, staring at the stain on the floor, listening to the radio tell me things I do not know about my life. I didn’t know they thought they knew who did it. I didn’t know they’d arrested anyone. I didn’t know anything.
    ‘Police are still appealing for information in relation to the murder. In other news—’ I don’t hear the news item that comes next because I am bracing myself. The house was silent until I put the radio on ten minutes ago, and now I’m waiting for the howling, the noise of the outside world wanting to know everything they think I should know, to come for me.
    My mobile wins the race, lighting up on the table; the house phone is next, trilling from its place beside the kettle. I push my hands over my ears – drowning out the radio, blocking out Mum on my mobile, silencing Joel’s mother on the house phone.
    It’s all too noisy.
    8 weeks after That Day (December, 2011)
    ‘Why do you think it’s taking so long for them to find out who did this terrible thing?’ Mum asks.
    ‘I don’t know,’ I reply listlessly. ‘The police are doing the best they can.’ She is sitting on my sofa while my dad is in the attic sleeping off Christmas dinner and the children are hiding upstairs.
    This wasn’t how Christmas was meant to be. We had planned to spend it alone so we could start to sort out how it would work, how the three of us would cope on important occasions.
    Despite me explaining that, my parents – my mum – insisted theycome. At the moment we have to break up time with other people who knew him, section them into little chunks or it all becomes overwhelming. We’ve found that you’re almost expected to take on their grief, too, acknowledge what they have lost too, when really, all we want to do is focus on ourselves, examine how we feel and not worry about the others. With the grandparents it is harder still, because they are family and family always comes first, even if that means putting their grief above yours. Joel’s parents have gone to Jamaica for Christmas and have taken Aunty Betty with them, they couldn’t stand to be here this year, knowing they wouldn’t see Joel.
    ‘I still don’t understand why they let that man go,’ Mum says. ‘If they thought he did it, why did they let him go so easily?’
    ‘Because he can prove where he was at the time it happened. For the whole day it happened, in fact. He didn’t tell them straight away because he was somewhere he shouldn’t have been.’
    ‘But—’
    ‘He was innocent, Mum! OK? He didn’t do it.’
    Mum’s entire body bristles and she sits back in her seat, lifts her chin slightly and fractionally purses her lips into a pout. I’ve upset her. She has been virtually no help preparing Christmas dinner, instead sitting around expecting us to serve her. She’s told me that I should still be wearing black but not near my face as it drains me. She’s explained at length – and in their hearing – that I shouldn’t let the children stay up so late, even if it is the school holidays and they are often scared to