Scattering David

Angela took another drink of wine and wiped away an imaginary tear. “Maybe he wasn’t such a bad man.”

Her sister shook her head. “He was a bastard.”

Angela looked down at the plastic bag at her feet to check the urn was still upright and that David wasn’t spilling out all over the train.

“He always did the washing-up.”

Her sister held up her arms in mock praise “Well, halle-bloody-lujah. A saint.”

Dropping her arms she topped up Angela’s plastic cup with cheap sweet wine. “He was a rat-faced scumbag of a man who only ever cared for himself. He had affairs behind your back and later, to add insult to injury, in front of your face. He was a bully who picked on anybody weaker than himself. In short, he was an abusive, homophobic, bigoted, sexist, racist bastard.”

“Well … nobody’s perfect.”

The two held each other as they laughed. Tears running down their faces.

Somebody looking from afar, seeing the urn at their feet, could easily be confused into thinking that they were overcome with grief.

Angela looked out of the train window and watched the cows lazily browsing the grass. The same herd David and her had passed just a fortnight ago.

#

It had been the height of summer, everywhere was busy.

David hated crowded beaches, so they had spent an hour traipsing up and down the coast, looking for a quiet spot.

Eventually they found a cove, deserted, only because its beach was covered in sharp shingle instead of soft sand.

Angela set a towel upon the shore, plugged into Spotify, turned on her Kindle and bathed in the sun.

It had been just by accident that ten minutes later she had looked up to see her husband’s head bobbing in a sea of blue and white foam, his hand waving frantically at her.

Her response had been to remove her glasses, turn up the music, lie back, and let the sun warm her face.

By the time the next track had begun David was fish food.

#

Once off the train the sisters found the most crowded beach, close to the rattle of the amusement arcade, where the smell of fried food dripped over everything, so full of grease that the bathers had little need of sun oil.

Everything David would hate, for eternity.

Without ceremony they tipped the ashes out of the urn. An offshore breeze briefly played with David’s remains before dropping him onto the sand.

Angela knelt on the wet sand, caressed the sea as if stroking a loved pet and kissed the waves. The sea washed away a little of the make-up from her face revealing the yellow swelling beneath her eye. Changed now from the purple and the green, soon even this would fade and then there would be no reason to hide any more.

On the way home Angela slept peacefully on her sister’s shoulder and dreamt of soaring over the sea on the back of an eagle to a distant shore.

She could still taste the salt on her lips.

It tasted good.