Page 63 of The Second Chance Bus Stop

London

I don’t think I can read the letters Zara found while sitting next to Mum, so I go and sit outside the hospital. They are

Sven,

I am so sorry that I didn’t find you before it was too late. Life feels so endlessly long doesn’t it? Like one long slog.

Drain the pasta, wipe your shoes off, don’t forget to pack lunchboxes.

We talked about dying once. As we walked through Brompton Cemetery and read the inscriptions on the tombstones. Couples’ names

written next to one another and sometimes whole families: five, six, seven names in a vertical row. It never made me sad,

reading their names, it made me feel like more life than death existed. That there were so many people that had lived. That

life was somehow more powerful than death. Giving off the impression that it could win.

‘I don’t know where I’d want to go once I’m gone,’ I said.

‘Ashes are less trouble, less environmentally taxing. I’d like to not be a bother.’

Which made perfect sense. You never wanted to be a bother.

‘But where? Ashes can go anywhere.’ I thought about ashes then.

‘I guess everyone likes a field. Some people don’t like the ocean. Too windy, too salty, too crowded, can’t swim. But do you

ever hear someone say, “I don’t like an open green space”? No. I wouldn’t think so.’

Then you laughed, and we sat down and ate our sandwiches.

I wonder if you are one with a Swedish rapeseed field now, glowing yellow and bright.

I hope that you are. That you didn’t feel you were a bother; even at the end, you would have hated that. That you found a

field you liked and could be at peace in. I hope for that and so much more for you, my Sven.

I fold it up again, as if I’ve read something secret. Mum looked for Sven in 2016 and found him. I can’t believe I never found

them—the answer was always within the walls of our house. She’s written an endless stream of letters but never sent them.

Folded neatly into blank envelopes, no stamps. All this time she’s known that he was dead. That it was too late.