Chapter 10 - Things She Touched

Lists, gloves, a pouch with nothing inside — the quiet proof of a life lived in small, deliberate gestures.

He hadn’t planned to return to the bedroom.

There was talk of lunch, Anna asking if he wanted anything, the children’s voices tumbling through the open kitchen door. But something about the quiet upstairs had called to him. Or maybe it wasn’t quiet. Maybe it was something else. A presence. The feeling of being on the verge of something.

He shuts the bedroom door behind him, gently this time. The latch clicks once more, not loud, but final.

The light through the curtains is shifting. Soft. It dapples across the carpet, catching on the edge of the chest of drawers.

He kneels again, not with any ritual in mind, just because it feels necessary. He presses his hands into his thighs, breathes once. Then, opens the second drawer.

The wood slides more easily than the first.

Not packed, but arranged. Thoughtfully. Not with aesthetics in mind, but habit. Care. There’s a kind of softness to it all, as though even the smallest things had been considered.

A folded list sits on top. He opens it, careful not to tear the thinning paper.

Call Carol - allotment fees
Trish - Lucy’s measurements
Ask GP re: swelling
Get more Vaseline for heels

He scans the list. Ordinary. Intimate in its ordinariness. The sort of things someone notes in a rush, between chores, between appointments.

There’s no pang of recognition. No memory stirred. Just the quiet realisation: she once lived her life inside lists like these.

Tucked beneath the list: a spiral-bound notebook with a biro still caught in the rings. He flips through blank pages at the front.

Fishcakes for Sunday.
Find Tom’sgloves.
Check PO book - balance?

That middle line catches him.

His name. Written plainly, mid-thought.

That name. His own. His chest tightens, not because he remembers anything, but because here it is: proof he was someone to her. Not abstract. Not just a child who needed looking after. Someone named. Noted. Folded into her life like the gloves she could have gone searching for.

He turns the page again. The handwriting loosens, becomes more fluid. A change in her hand, perhaps later, perhaps when she was tired. Or something else.

There is no second chance.
Make it matter.
Don’t leave too much behind.

Tom traces the last line with his eyes. Not advice. Not quite a warning either. Something in between. Like the end of a conversation he wasn’t there for.

He places the notebook aside.

Toward the back of the drawer, beneath a folded scarf that smells of mothballs and dust, he finds a small cloth pouch. It’s empty.

At first.

Then he remembers, a passing comment, years ago, from his father. They’d been talking about something else entirely. A misplaced photo, perhaps, or a lost key. And his father had said, almost offhandedly, “She was buried with her rings.”

He hadn’t thought much of it at the time. But now, with the pouch still open in his hand, the memory settles somewhere deeper.

The rings aren’t here because they were never meant to be kept above ground.

And somehow, that feels right. Not tragic, just... true. A gesture of continuity. One last thing she took with her.

He sets the pouch back down, gently, as though even its emptiness deserves to rest undisturbed.

Near the back, a postcard. Slightly bent at the corners. He turns it over.

Brighton Pier. Ferris wheel, sunlit planks, seagulls mid-flight. A summer that looks imagined.

On the back, her handwriting again:

We’ll come back one day, promise.

No stamp. No address. Maybe never meant to be sent.

He wonders who we was. Not him, surely not. A friend? His father?

Or maybe it was a kind of wish, scribbled in hope, folded away.

He reads the line again, mouthing the words like a spell that won’t quite take.

There’s no revelation. No answer that ties it all together.

But there is the weight of her. Not the loss of her, but her life. The small, quiet pulses of it, the errands, the gloves, the pouch that once held rings.

He closes the drawer with both hands, slowly. As though not wanting to disturb anything further.

He doesn’t feel settled. Doesn’t feel enlightened.

But something has shifted. Not in the room. In him.

He remains kneeling a while longer, as if waiting for something. But there’s nothing more, just the hush of the house, the creak of floorboards below.

Eventually, he stands, legs stiff, and steps back. He glances once more at the chest. The drawers are closed now.

But he knows a little of whats inside. And for the first time, that feels like enough.