The path beneath me, I notice, is made of recently laid smooth tarmac and has a distinct ‘downhill’ feel to it.
‘Oh nuts.’ I try to slow my momentum, while simultaneously calling Nessa’s name. She has stopped walking and is staring at me with wide eyes as I career past perplexed shoppers, my arms gesturing wildly in strange semi-circles à la the Karate Kid: wax-off, wax-off, wax-off. Behind me, I can hear that the teenager has given chase.
‘Neeeesssaaaaa!’ My eyes widen, an expression of ‘help!’ and ‘look out!’ all in one. I crash into her arms, knocking her body backwards. We both land with a thud, on Wilko’s doorstep.
‘Are you OK?’ I ask as she removes herself from my tangled limbs. The teenager has come to an abrupt stop and is removing the boots from my feet.
‘Oi!’ An outraged woman pulling along a material shopping bag has begun hitting him on the head with her handbag. ‘You.’ Thwack. ‘Thieving.’ Thwack. ‘Little.’ Thwack. ‘So and so!’
The teenager releases my feet and tries to protect his head. I untangle the laces, pull the boots free and give them to the boy with an apology as Nessa brushes herself down. The woman stops her assault, registers what is going on in front of her and gives me a look of contempt usually saved for dog poo offenders.
The teenager and lady retreat and I’m left in my socks, which are odd, I notice, one red and one blue.
My arms envelop Nessa in a hug, but her back remains rigid, wire arms hanging limply by her sides.
‘Come and have some cake,’ my eager voice says, laying out the word cake like a travelling salesman: cake is the answer, it can fix you, the voice implies, you cannot carry on living your life without it. I gesture to the café behind me. She twists her neck from side to side, both of us ignoring the cracks and snaps of her ligaments.
‘I don’t like cake.’
Kerry is standing beside her, skates swinging from the laces looped over her fingers, while her other hand slips into Nessa’s, her head leaning against her shoulder. ‘Ask her for help, she never could turn down a lost cause.’ Kerry’s smile is sad.
‘A coffee? Tea?’
Nessa passes the phone between nervous hands and looks over her shoulder; for a moment I wonder if she can see Kerry too, but she’s looking through Kerry’s face, as though she is looking for an excuse not to follow me. Kerry steps back from Nessa and I replace her hand by linking my arm through Nessa’s. She is covered in grey, in darkness; her body seems to be weighted, each movement hampered by something hidden, something dark. She detaches herself from my arm.
‘I don’t think this is a good idea.’ Nessa steps backwards from me. ‘I don’t think I can just—’
The teenager returns to our side and drops my Converse at my feet without saying a word.
‘Thank you and sorry—’ I begin, but he has already turned back and is returning to his duties.
‘Just one coffee?’ I ask Nessa again. She gives me a short nod and follows me in, sitting herself at a table while I go to the counter and order two drinks.
‘Get her a chocolate-chip cookie, she can’t resist a cookie.’
I return to the table. Nessa is tapping it repeatedly.
‘I’ve never been in here before,’ I tell her, trying to force a conversation across the table along with her cookie.
‘Me neither.’ The conversation slides back towards me.
‘Seriously? That’s what you’re going with? Do you come here often?’ Kerry snorts from the seat opposite me, next to Nessa, spraying bits of chocolate muffin all over her blue-and-white-striped shirt: the shirt we had her cremated in.
‘Where are you staying? Back at the flat?’
Nessa’s skin pales as she breaks the cookie in half. ‘No. I’ve left the flat. I’m renting a house. I put K—’ . . . the name Kerry seems too hard for her to say and she gulps it back down, ‘her things into storage. I’ll take them to your mum and dad’s when—’
‘The dust settles?’ I hear myself saying. The image of Kerry’s ashes seems to float between us, like motes dancing in the sunlight, before gravity pulls them down and they crash from the air, landing like a mound of dirt.
She nods.
‘How’s Erica?’
‘She’s OK. I don’t think she understands that Kerry is not . . . not . . . coming back. She was used to her staying over and then not being there for a few days. Even though I’ve tried to explain, she keeps forgetting and will ask if Kerry’s coming over. It takes everything in me not to scream at her, you know?’
I nod my head, even though I don’t know. Kerry’s death has had the opposite effect on me; I can’t bear it when I’m not with the kids. They are the ones who brought me back when I didn’t think I would ever shake off the grief.
‘Where did you go, Ness? After the funeral.’
‘Dad’s.’
‘Scotland?’
She nods. ‘I just needed to be away. From here, from you and Ed and the kids and Kerry’s ghost, I guess.’
‘Well, that’s rude.’ Kerry crosses her arms and wears a mock annoyed expression.
‘Are you sleeping?’ I find myself asking.
Nessa shakes her head, confirming the negative, her eyes meeting mine, a thousand nightmares and night sweats shared between us with one look.
‘Are you still thinking about getting a job?’ Nessa changes the subject. Before Kerry died, I had been looking into going back to work since Oscar had started school.
I shake my head, remembering how I had tried to fill in applications. ‘I tried to, but when Kerry . . . when she died and I, well, I . . . it’s a long story.’ I dismiss my months of crippling grief with a waft of my hand. ‘Are you managing to—’ Work, breathe? Live? My mouth opens and closes, chewing on empty words: ‘Work?’
‘Not yet. I’ve written a few reviews but not submitted them yet, I think they may well be a bit crap.’
‘The films or the reviews?’ I ask, trying to make light of the idea that not being immersed in her job as a film critic for the local paper is normal behaviour for her, when we both know that her job is as much part of her as Kerry was.
Nessa drains her coffee and wipes the cookie crumbs from her jeans; they are expensive, ripped in all the right places, faded with expensive dye. Kerry had loved the way Nessa dressed. ‘Dress messily, see the dress, dress beautifully, see the woman.’ I ignore Kerry as she manages to misquote both Coco Chanel and Working Girl in one go.
The vibration of Nessa’s phone and the face of Erica flashing up from the screen attract our attention. Across Erica’s smiling face are the words ‘Erica’s School’. Nessa’s body folds, her shoulders slump as she reaches for the handset.
‘Hello?’
I try to look like I’m not listening, which is hard when your dead sister is leaning her head towards your companion’s phone.
‘It doesn’t sound good,’ she whispers.
Why are you whispering? She can’t hear you.
‘OK. I’ll come and fetch her.’ She hangs up the phone. ‘I have to go, Erica is acting up. She didn’t settle in the school in Glasgow and now she’s bitten another kid. Thanks for the—’