After Gabe moved out permanently, their neighbors had taken him in. Gabe was glad. He had never really liked the mean old tom. One minute he would be purring, the next his claws would rake down the nearest bit of exposed flesh.
“Here you go, love.”
The old woman held out a crumpled pack of Kleenex. Her nails were embedded with black dirt. His first instinct was to tell her to go away, but then his resolve withered in the face of her small act of kindness.
“Thank you,” he croaked, taking one and handing the packet back.
“You keep it.” She shuffled away.
He rubbed at his eyes and blew his nose. Then he picked up the photographs and slipped them carefully into his wallet.
He had been so sure. And they had found the car. But what did it really prove? And the body? Maybe best not to think about that. Could he even trust the Samaritan?
Perhaps Harry was right. He needed help. If not, maybe he was destined to end up like Kleenex Lady, shuffling around a cemetery, smelling of stale piss and wheeling his very own cat in a pram.
And then something poked him in the back of his mind. Hard.
The cat.
Not the cat in the pram.
Their cat. Schrödinger.
“Daddy, Soda scratched me.”
Izzy’s tear-stained face. An ugly red line on her chin.
Gabe had applied Savlon. “There you go. All better.” But the scratch had still looked sore when he dropped her off at school.
That morning. Before the phone call. Before his life fell off the edge of a cliff.
Gabe fumbled the photographs back out of his wallet. He peered at the one of Izzy more closely. He squinted, held it up this way and that. He could see her eyelashes, the faint freckles on her nose. Every detail laid bare in the unforgiving light.
There was no scratch on her chin.
Of course, when you’re young, scratches heal quickly. But not in a few hours. Gabe was no doctor, but he knew that. And he knew something else.
They didn’t heal when you were dead.
Rain pattered on umbrellas. A bobbing sea of black. Mourners massed outside the Chapel of Rest. Black clothes, grey sky. A picture in monochrome.
Fran watched her family, staggering slowly along the uneven gravel path, her sister supporting their mother, not just through her grief but through her drunken stupor. Fran stood apart, watching from a distance. Why wasn’t she there?
Because this is a dream. Of course.
But then, in reality, she always had been on the periphery. She loved her family, but she had never felt close to her mum or her sisters. Maybe that was the way with the eldest. You grew up and away first. It was only her dad she had been really close to. And now he was gone.
The funeral party filed in and sat down. “Funeral party.” It always seemed an odd name for a mass of mourners. “A sadness” or “a weep.” That seemed more appropriate.
The coffin was perched upon a plinth at the end of the chapel. Flowers had been arranged around it. They looked too bright against the dark oak. Out of place. Dad had loved his garden, but he hated cut flowers. Preferred to see them alive and blooming. “Cut flowers are already dead flowers,” he always used to say. He didn’t want bouquets at his funeral. They’d ordered potted flowers from the florist that could be replanted. And Dad had not been cremated. He was buried.
This was wrong, she thought suddenly. All wrong. This wasn’t his funeral. It couldn’t be her family.
She walked slowly down the center of the chapel, between the row of mourners, who had now put their umbrellas back up. Rain poured down and when she looked up the roof of the chapel had disappeared, and tumultuous charcoal clouds rolled by overhead.
She walked up to the open casket and stared at the pale, still body of the little girl inside. Blonde hair fanned out around her small, heart-shaped face. She was dressed in a pretty pink dress that Fran didn’t remember buying. But then, she didn’t buy the dress, did she? Not for her funeral.
Tears started to roll down her cheeks. The rain darkened the little girl’s hair and soaked the pretty pink dress. Fran raised her head and screamed…and her mouth filled with water, pouring down her throat, choking her…
* * *
—
WATER. RUNNING WATER. Fran blinked her eyes open. Shit. Where was she? The hotel room. So why could she still hear water? She sat up, glanced across automatically at Alice’s bed. Empty. Water. Running water. She looked back at the closed bathroom door, a dark stain just starting to spread below the chipped edge.
“No.”
She leaped out of her bed and ran over, yanking the door open. The bath was overflowing, a small sea of water flooding the linoleum and seeping out on to the carpet.
Alice lay in the bath, head just starting to slip below the surface of the water. Asleep.
“Fuck!”
Fran grabbed her beneath the arms. Jesus Christ, the water was freezing.
“Alice. Alice. Wake up!”
Her skin was almost blue, her lips a cracked line of purple.
No, no, no. How had she let this happen?
She grabbed towels, wrapped them around Alice and carried her, dripping, out of the bathroom. She laid her on the bed, rubbing her gently dry, whispering into her wet hair.
“Alice, Alice, wake up.”
“M—…Mummy.”
For once she didn’t correct her. “I’m here, sweetheart. I’m here.”
Alice’s limp arms encircled her. She felt her body start to shiver. A good thing, Fran thought.
“We need to get you warm.”
She wrapped the duvet tightly around her. She needed more towels. She walked back to the bathroom. The water was still running. Crap. She squelched over to the bath and turned off the tap. She reached for the plug and then paused. What the? The plug was still wrapped around the tap. So why wasn’t the water draining away?
She stuck her hand into the freezing water and felt around. Something was blocking the plughole, wedged tight. She fumbled around and managed to dislodge it. The water began to gurgle down the drain. Fran pulled her arm back out, peppered with goosebumps, and stared at the object in her hand.
A small, pinky-white conch shell.
She sleeps. A pale girl in a white room.
The nurses look after her well every day. But this morning there is more activity than usual. Today is a special day. Today is visiting day.
Miriam helps the juniors as they hoist the girl and change her bedding. She supervises the cleaners and ensures that every speck of dust has been removed from every room; from the machines, the piano keys and the shell.