The Secrets We Keep by Stephanie Butland

day, and your mother will smile at me in turn and say, “You see?” And I can’t bear the thought of any of it.
    E xxx

Lucy had been around a couple of times, with food and sympathy and the boys, but it hadn’t been a success. The fact that the two women just don’t get on all that well, so easily concealed or ignored at birthday parties and barbecues, became obvious as soon as they tried to talk about anything more meaningful than how sorry Lucy is or how helpful Andy has been.
    They don’t dislike each other, exactly. They have just never found a way to connect. It had been awkward during Elizabeth’s first months and years in Throckton. Then one evening at the pub quiz, after a little too much to drink, Lucy had nudged Elizabeth, nodded toward Andy and Michael who were standing at the bar, and said, “If we can get those two to realize that just because they’re best friends we don’t have to be, I think everything will be a bit easier.” And it had been. Until now, at least. Lucy fumbles for something to say. Elizabeth tries not to show how difficult she finds Lucas and Toby: not for themselves, but for the way that life and noise bursts out of them, barely controlled, when she cannot bear very much of either.
    â€œWhy don’t we go for a walk?” Lucy had asked the last time she had dropped in.
    Patricia was spending her afternoon off cleaning the kitchen.
    â€œIt’s not dirty,” Mel had said when Elizabeth told her.
    â€œThat’s not the point,” her sister had replied. “It’s just what she does. I cry, she cleans. I get the cleaning more than I get the hairdresser and the social clubs.”
    Patricia looked up from where she was kneeling by the radiator—she’s cleaned down the back; Mel would say later, “I didn’t even know that was a place you could clean”—and said, approvingly, “It would be good for you to get some fresh air, Elizabeth.”
    And before she knew it she was thinking of Mike, lungs wrenching for good fresh air and finding only filthy, freezing water, and she was crying again, and Mel, who had been working in the spare room but was developing a sixth sense for when she was needed, was taking her by the arm and saying something about time, while Patricia shook her head.
    Now, whenever someone mentions that she might want to go for a walk, Mel tells them that Elizabeth can make her own mind up about that, even though it’s clear from the way that she has to be reminded to eat and drink and go to bed that that’s probably not true.
    So apart from the necessities—the funeral home, the funeral, the inquest—Elizabeth has yet to stray farther than her garden. Cold and dark and dead with the season, it’s matched her, mood for mood. The sun, when it’s come, has been watery and weak. She can stand on the patio and breathe the air with a hand still on the wall, for safety. Every now and then she puts on her wellies—unaccustomed to enclosure, her feet twitch when she walks in them—and works her way around the grass, cleaning up after Pepper, searching the earth for signs of spring and wondering if she will be able to bear them when they come, or whether the memory of Michael making her ring the bell of the first snowdrop will be too much.
    And of course, the garden is the place where the posies appear.
    Elizabeth likes it best in the morning, when Pepper is bouncing with energy, and watching him scurry gives her something other than the day ahead to think about. She stands in her pajamas and sometimes she is even able to make herself a small plan, the fulfillment of which will help to get her through the day: I will change the sheets and duvet covers, I will reply to all of the emails that need a reply, I will defrost the freezer, I will sort out the photographs. (Sorting out the photographs is one of the plans she often makes but has yet to begin. When it comes to