The day our son was buried we lay together on the settee, drinking wine. It was evening, heading into night, but it was still hot, a steamy September day. The window was open because of the heat, and because we�d wanted to listen to the birds chattering, but they were quiet now in the darkness, which meant it was up to us to talk. We used to be good at that.

I sipped my wine. Torrontes grapes, I said, rose petal flavour, bursts in your mouth, explodes across your palate, leaves the scent of roses in your head. We were connoisseurs once, analysed every bottle, classified it according to taste and smell and colour and weight. It became routine after a while, we just drank while we talked about other things but, that night, it felt like a night for discernment. Gene followed my lead.

�Tastes like a summer afternoon,� he said.

�An Indian summer.�

�Like today.�

We stopped. Sometimes, word association takes you where you don�t want to go. His arm was around me, his hand clammy on my skin, his body hot but it felt real and I stopped myself from pulling away. We were both in our underwear, glad of the heat as an excuse to throw off the clothes we�d worn all day and with them the solemnity, the rigidity, the properness of the moment. Stretched on the settee, our legs touching, feet waving apart and together, apart and together, we stared out of the window at the moon and the trees and the shadows that hid the silent birds.

Difficult conversations were out of the question, not that night. I stroked him, hugged him, circled my finger round his nipple. We talked of summers past, storms and heatwaves, the times when Simon was good, when he was bad, his obsession with dinosaurs, his fear of monkeys, how he collected five pences and refused to spend them. He seemed close, almost touchable, nothing felt like memory that night, just remembering. The one thing we couldn�t do was think about the future, not now the future was slimmer.

Our first glass of wine steadied us, gave us the liquid impetus to recover from the day. We watched the darkness building outside. After two glasses we were flirting, still thinking we could make it easier.

�Does it feel the same as when your dad died?� I asked.

�In a way. The suddenness of it.�

It was different for me. My father died the way old people are meant to, quietly, no fuss, after a long illness. Gene�s father died in an accident on the farm. He was a vigorous man. He wasn�t ready to go. Like Simon.

�I never got to say goodbye,� he said. �That�s what hurt.�

The first time Gene told me that, immediately after his dad died in 2000, I nodded and squeezed his hand, thinking I understood. If I could live that day again, I�d hold him and hug him and not let go.

I don�t even remember the last thing I said to Simon. It would have been two days before he died, on a visit home from college with his laundry and an empty wallet. It was what he always did, I saw no reason to remember it. He was going to Leicester for the weekend, he said. Be careful, I said. Maybe that was the last thing: I hope not, that would be cruel. He drove off in his Volkswagen Polo, a wreck of a thing but cheap, waving behind him the length of the street and beeping his horn as he turned the corner.

Beeping his horn. My last sight of my son.

Gene�s grip tightened as he sensed me slipping into thought. �I know,� he said and kissed my head. His stomach was beginning to show a mid-forties bulge, but he was still fit, displaying the evidence of twice weekly squash and tennis on Thursdays and golf on Sunday. He taught Simon to play golf but they always ended up arguing, the way fathers and sons do, and decided it was best to play different sports. Simon took up windsurfing instead, floating on Rutland Water every weekend, every weekend except that weekend.

Wine has no sensibilities. It insists on asking the questions you don�t want asked, that don�t have answers. Why did he have to go to Leicester? Why did his stupid car break down? Why did he get out? Why didn�t the other driver see a hulking six foot boy on the road?

�Don�t, Becky,� Gene said, but don�t is so much easier than won�t. I opened a second bottle and poured another glass, our fourth. We chinked glasses, like a New Year or birthday toast. Gene slouched further down the settee, still with one arm around me. The shape of his penis was clear beneath his boxers. I could tell from his eyes he was getting sleepy � he always did after four glasses of wine. I talked. He liked to hear me talk and I wanted to say something, anything, anything to stop me thinking. I talked about the service, the way the minister caught Simon�s nature so well � the individualist, the outdoorsman, his ambitious streak, just like his dad. I talked about the flowers, though Gene, country boy, would have known more about them than me. I talked about Aunt Caroline�s dress, too short, and cousin Sarah�s new boyfriend and the way they held hands like teenagers. I talked about our boy, twenty years old, our boy, the first in the family to go to university, our boy, studying chemistry when he wasn�t studying girls. I talked about the time, aged ten, when he left home because I wouldn�t let him go camping at Rutland Water. How he soon gave up but was too proud to come into the house and stayed outside in the garden till Gene went and bought him fish and chips, and in the end he talked his dad round and both of them were too proud to come indoors till I came and shouted at them, pretending I was angry, pretending I was the strict one. It�s funny how families assume roles, and sometimes they�re nothing like the truth.

Even after Gene fell asleep I carried on talking. There was too much to remember to be able to stop and, anyway, it slowed the tears. Gene�s breath whistled through his open mouth, high and steady above a rhythmic, wheezing whump from his chest. He looked like a young man when he slept. He looked like the man who seduced me quarter of a century before, the man who helped me create a lovely slice of humanity. When he woke up, I knew we would make love, there on the settee, with an open window and darkness and quiet outside. We had spent all evening not thinking about making love, but getting ready for it all the same. It was the way of things. It�s where nature and life and love and fate come together.

We would finish the night with Gene inside me and our bodies entwined.

Just the two of us.

Author Bio

Thomasina Canterbury lives in England but was born in Scotland. She works in local government and has been writing for the past two years.