A fourth and fifth double yolk fell into the bowl until our streak ended – were they a sign?

Idon’t bake – or at least I didn’t really back then – so why I was cracking an egg at all, I’ll never know. I remember standing in our old kitchen, not paying attention to the rain running down the window in front of me. I was in the exact spot where my husband’s granny used to sit to watch her garden grow. My attention wasn’t on the garden though, it was on the two yellow yokes that oozed out of the broken shell, into the battered silver bowl beneath them.

I’d never seen a double yoke before – I didn’t know they existed. I noted it as odd then picked up a second egg, cracked it and watched another two yokes slip out. Robbie, my husband, was somewhere nearby because I know I called him then. He was beside me when I cracked the third double yoke. We both laughed and I picked up another – just to see. A further fourth and then a fifth double yolk fell into the bowl until our streak came to an end.

I look for signs. I like to use them in my writing. So I took to Google. The internet told me double yokes symbolised death. ‘It must be a big one,’ Robbie joked.

That night I was woken by my husband jumping from the bed. ‘There’s someone outside. Did you hear the howl?’ he asked. I hadn’t.

He raced to the window. ‘Mush!’ he cried sprinting from the room and down the stairs.

Half in a haze, I picked up a hurl. It was in the corner of the room, or maybe under the bed. Like all writers, my memory is colouring the gaps. Without thinking, I headed downstairs and out the front door. Robbie had gone for the back.

Our intruder was in the yard. Clearly on something, he was blabbering excuses and walking in circles. I screamed at him to leave. A stark floodlight chilled the rear garden as I approached. My husband was bent over

Mushka’s lifeless body.

Robbie had Mush, his husky, long before I’d known him. They’d faced a lot together and Mush had carried him at times – like all dogs do their owners. His deep love for his dog made me fall for him in ways.

He’d designed my engagement ring with three stones, a ruby, a sapphire and an emerald. The sapphire was in the middle – it represented Mushka he said.

Robbie waked him that night and the next day, he buried him in the garden, my dad standing silently by his side – he knew what the loss meant.

That was Friday. On Monday, my world changed forever.

I was dressing Jo, my three-month-old, when my phone rang. I answered. It was my sister – I think. She mumbled something about Dad and an emergency. I rang people then, I don’t know who.

My father-in-law Liam brought me home.

There was an ambulance, maybe two, outside my parent’s house. Something compelled me to walk to the church opposite. The arched door was closed so Liam led me back across the road.

Then he took Jo from my arms. I went upstairs. They were working on Dad as my sister, brother and Mam sat in the room opposite. My brother was calm, he told us it would be fine – no matter what. I couldn’t process his words.

Jo needed food. I needed to feed her. I went back downstairs and boiled the kettle. I have no memory of where Jo was. I remember shouting though. I shouted at Dad to ‘ruck over’ – he’d played rugby and for some reason, I turned to his terms.

Then Mary, Robbie’s aunt, a nurse, stepped into the kitchen. I think I’d rung her, or someone else had, and like an angel, she came. She’d been upstairs. She shook her head. Maybe she held me. I’m not sure words were said.

When she left, I roared and kicked every press in the kitchen hoping to break one. At least I think I did.

The rest of that day was a blur. The rest of that week, that year - all of it jumbles together. But the eggs, that story I remember clearly. It was a big death. I think of them together now. Two souls intertwined.

I felt safe and strong and seen when I walked Mush. He was wolf-like with deep brown eyes. He intimidated some and endeared others. But we were stopped everywhere we went by admirers. I felt safe and strong and seen by Dad – he intimidated many but that endeared him to most. He was, and still is, loved the world over.

Both had an indescribable presence, a presence so strong it’s never left.

I still look for signs. Unlike then, my attention is on my garden now.

The Lucifers I’d bedded near Mush, finally flowered this week for the first time, almost six years after they were planted there for Dad.

When I listen, I can hear them whisper, ‘It’s time to let go of the story and bake something beautiful with those eggs.’