The Key to Anchor Lake ✓

02 : Blaire

B L A I R E

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I didn't know I had an aunt until my mother died. That was ten days ago. It's been eight days since the news broke, seven since I heard from Mum's solicitor, and two since I stood next to the Celebrant and watched as a pair of curtains closed around her coffin on the catafalque. Yesterday, after a sombre call told me her remains were ready for collection, I broke down in the middle of an empty crematorium with an urn full of ashes clutched to my stomach.

I wasn't prepared for how small the urn would be. How little of my mother would be left once whatever made her Mum had fled the earth and her body was burned in a nine-hundred-degree fire. There isn't enough of her here. I shouldn't be able to hold the urn in the crook of my elbow, wedged against my ribs like a football. She was tall and strong and quick, and now she's three litres of ash.

Something about my damp cheeks and my bulging bags and the urn in my lap has kept the seat next to me empty ever since I boarded this train five hours ago, dragging my life onto carriage F at Euston after paying way too much for a black cab from Greenwich. Eleven stops later, more people have got on than off, and every single one of them has walked straight past the aisle seat beside me.

I'm sure it's the sniffling tears and the remains of my mother they want to avoid, rather than the fat girl, but who knows. I don't care for once. For the first time in my life, I'm not trying to take up as little space as possible, knees pressed together and body glued to the wall. I'm too damn tired for that charade, my restless mind cycling between a handful of thoughts that keep the boulder of a lump in my throat and the wetness in my eyes.

My mum's dead and I saw her body and I have an aunt and what the fuck do I do now?

One step at a time, I think. That's what I do. I take it one step at a time, because any more than that and I will crumble.

That mentality carries me from one train to the next, across Glasgow station with three bags draped across my body, a suitcase bouncing over the uneven tiles, and my mother in my arms. My second journey is shorter, two hours to Crianlarich with two seats to myself, and I continue the mantra as I drag myself onto my third train.

One step at a time. Just take it one step at a time.

And then Mum's voice transposes my own, her soft vowels a painful lullaby that aches between my ears and behind my ribs and in the pit of my stomach.

Just keep swimming, Libby. One stroke at a time. Just. Keep. Swimming.

I can't be Libby anymore. She's not me. She's someone my mother loved and moulded, someone who travelled the world and never stepped foot in a classroom and never figured out how to make a friend. Like a snake shedding its skin, I shake her off with a shudder of my shoulders. How can I be Liberty when I feel the opposite of free?

I've always liked my middle name, anyway. Blaire. Simple. Straight to the point. Blaire doesn't mess around: she gets things done. She understands her emotions and knows exactly how to untangle the knotted threads of her thoughts, and she isn't decimated by grief.

I'm not quite Blaire yet.

But I'll get there. Once it stops hurting to breathe. Filling my lungs is an agonising effort; I have to focus on the rise and fall of my chest to keep my panic at bay, homing in on every jagged breath as though it'll be my last if I'm not careful.

Everything about this situation is so wrong and I'm numb, my body so wrecked by shock and confusion and anger and sorrow that it's gone into overcompensating overdrive and I don't know what to feel. Maybe I'm not feeling anything and it's all in my head, and if I could stop thinking so much then I would be able to breath without feeling like my ribs have been smashed and sharp edges are digging into the tender flesh of my lungs.