Liar Liar

114

How do you sum up a life?

It was a question Thomas Simms had asked himself repeatedly as he’d made plans for the girls’ funeral. When you’re deep in shock and assaulted by grief, how do you find the right way to pay tribute to someone – to two people – whom you loved more than life itself? It was an impossible task, but it had to be done – the thought of drying up while making the funeral oration was too horrific for words.

For a long time the answer had eluded him. There were so many amazing things he could say about Karen and Alice, but each time he gathered their many virtues – the many happy memories – together, he was crippled by his sense of loss, unable to think or say anything that wasn’t steeped in bitterness and regret. And nobody wanted to hear that.

But now, as Thomas pushed his son up the church aisle in a wheelchair, he suddenly knew what he would say. There was one thing that had struck him with real force this morning as he’d straightened his son’s tie and wiped the tears from his freckled face. And that was that Karen and Alice, though gone, would live on – through Luke. They all had the same colouring and shared many of the same mannerisms. His hazel eyes were identical to Alice’s and when he laughed his nose crinkled up – that was pure Karen. They had similar beliefs and shared the same daft sense of humour – many was the time they had all been reduced to hysterics by the Airplane movies. They were so similar in so many ways and Thomas was surprised at how much comfort that now gave him.

He felt himself start to smile, then immediately swallowed it back down. People wouldn’t understand and he couldn’t be bothered to explain himself to disapproving relatives. But the feeling was real and Thomas clung to it now as he prepared himself for the most difficult two hours of his life.

‘Dad?’

Thomas looked down to find Luke’s eyes fixed on him.

‘Can you hear that?’

Thomas had been so lost in his own thoughts that he hadn’t heard a thing. But he knew instantly what his son was referring to. Even above the sombre tones of the organ, loud sirens could now be heard. One, two, three emergency vehicles, maybe more, racing past the church on their way somewhere fast.

‘Do you think it’s… ?’ Luke began.

‘No, son. It’s probably just a false alarm. Nothing to do with us, so don’t worry.’

Thomas was determined that his son would not be ruled by fear. There were still many questions to be answered, many painful discoveries to make perhaps, but he refused to let his son spend his life jumping at shadows. Someone had tried to destroy his family and they had failed – Luke’s happiness and confidence would be Thomas’s riposte to the person who had tried to break them. Though his son was still working his way through his injuries, both mental and physical, it was Thomas’s job to see that he made it out the other side in one piece. As he pushed Luke to his place next to the front-row pews, Thomas knew that this was it for him now – his job was to guide his son safely through the next few years until he could stand on his own two feet. And that, Thomas reflected, was something that he shared with Karen. Had she been in his shoes, she would have done exactly the same.