Flowers for the Dead

Taking up a piece of shortbread, I sink into the bed. Gently, I stroke the purple petals of the begonias sitting on my nightstand as the warm dough fills my mouth. They have raised their heads a little. I feel the earth in their pot, just to make sure they have had enough to drink. Then I smile at them, swallowing the shortbread. ‘Goodnight, my darlings.’

Snuggling down into the covers, I breathe in their familiar smell. Still the same detergent. It feels as if I’d never left. As if Mum and Dad were merely away on a holiday, a hiking weekend in the Highlands. And the dried flowers, too, spreading their scent all through the house. Mum had such a passion for them. People brought dried flowers to her funeral, hers and Dad’s. Heaps of them. There were piles of dried roses, of rosemary and thyme and laurel, even some bell heather and globeflowers. The Kenzies sent me pictures. They were dropped onto the coffins, they surrounded the funeral wreaths gifted by those who didn’t really know my parents.

One of those wreaths was mine.

I know what you must be thinking. I wish I could make you understand what it’s like to hear that the two people who’ve always been there, as long as you can remember, are gone, and not feel anything. Your mum, who used to be your idol, with her white hair and incredible bravery, and your dad, who would hug you like it meant everything just to hold you. To look at your husband as he takes you into his arms, trying to give you comfort, and swallowing down the truth, which is that you’re feeling nothing. That he might as well have told you about the death of a badger he had hit on the way home, or a wasp he had squished outside the pub with his beermat.

Maybe that was when it became unbearable, actually. When I decided something needed to change. That I needed the truth. Maybe it wasn’t the Kenzies’ parcel and the deadly nightshade. Maybe that was just the last straw.

We had a ceremony in London, of course, Sweet-O and me. That’s how I said goodbye to my parents.

I turn on my back, staring at the white ceiling. And here I am. Lying in their bed. Finally back in their house. Our house.

The deadly nightshade is back too, sitting inside the nightstand drawer, on top of one of Mum’s old Chilcott catalogues: one of those mail-order companies where you could get homely pillows and handmade blankets and scent diffusers. Every single one of their products came with a pouch of British lavender. I wonder if they still exist.

Above the bed hangs a spray of lavender. When my parents still lived here, it always smelled so much like lavender in this room, like there wasn’t any other smell in the world. Only once or twice a year would my mother go for rosemary and thyme instead, usually in winter and spring. She would never have both out at the same time; it was either lavender or rosemary and thyme. Now the scent is so subtle it barely registers with the shortbread right next to me. It’s comforting. The pillow feels soft beneath my head. I feel like I am floating. It may be a little frightening, but it’s also exhilarating. To be so light. I did the right thing.

I will have the truth.

Before I turn off the light, I have another piece of shortbread. I feel like I can have as much shortbread as I like now. Don’t know what to call this feeling. Maybe it’s the shortbread feeling. The-world-is-your-shortbread.

Involuntarily, I giggle again as I close my eyes. The pillows smell like home and the crumbs taste delicious and the night is deep and dark.

It is still dark when I wake up.

The room smells like lavender. Just like that night. The odour of the old, dry flowers feels heavy in the air. Like it is pushing down on the blanket. Like it is wrapping itself around me.

My legs are sweaty. So are my armpits. It smells.

Slowly, I breathe in and out. It’s cold. Why do I feel trails of perspiration on my body when it is so cold? Like light cuts on my skin.

I turn onto my other side, keeping my eyes closed. Go back to sleep, I tell myself.

Why is it cold?

Why does sweat run across my skin like clammy fingers?

I open my eyes. The curtains are too thick. It is dark.

I close my eyes again. Maybe I’m running a fever. That’s why I might feel cold and hot at the same time. That’s it.

Wrapping the blankets more tightly around my body, I tell myself to go back to sleep and close my eyes again.

I am already dozing off when I think:

Why did I wake up?

The doorbell rings.

I turn onto my other side, mumbling into the pillow. The drunks from the pub. They’ll go away eventually. It smells like lavender.

It takes me a moment to realise.

I am not in Leyton. I am not in my flat with Oliver.

I open my eyes. It is dark.

That is what has woken me.

Someone is standing in the hollow. Someone is standing in front of my door.

Someone is ringing the doorbell.

THE NEIGHBOUR

Her house is dark in the night.

THE DETECTIVE INSPECTOR

The one case I couldn’t close.

THE NEIGHBOUR

I am not obsessed.

LINN

I cannot breathe.

Those aren’t the drunks from the pub.

I lie as still as I can. There is no pub. There are no neighbours, nothing but the Kenzies’ old place. This is a back road, a dead end, dwindling down to a path through the woods. Dead trees on all sides, rising like thin fingers through the thick fog.

The sheets rustle beneath my shaking hands. I ball them into fists. It might be nothing. They might need help. Maybe their car broke down.

On a dead-end country road.

I feel the sweat collect beneath my armpits. Between my thighs. There is no sound. Only the stale smell of dead flowers and perspiration. There is someone standing down on the porch. In front of a large, dark house. The door isn’t sturdy. They could come in if they put their mind to it.

Maybe they already have.

Maybe they are already inside, walking through the hallway, towards the stairs leading up to my bedroom. The carpets, grey and silent, swallowing the sound of their steps. More than one person. Or just one man. One man and his silent steps on the stairs to my bedroom. The closed door coming into view. His hands are gloved. His breath is going quickly. His pupils dilated. His heart beating with excitement.

I almost choke on my own breath.

Stop. A car’s broken down, that’s it.

Should I check? What if they need help?

They would ring again then, wouldn’t they?

Wouldn’t you ring again?

I pull the blanket up to my nose. There are no sounds at all. I didn’t hear a car. You hear cars from miles off on this road.

As the minutes pass by, I start wondering. Did I only imagine it?

My teachers always said I had an overactive imagination.

Slowly, I sit up. Rise, carefully. Tiptoe across the carpet. To the window. I don’t dare draw back the curtain. Only lift it, not even by an inch. Through the narrow gap, I peek out.

It takes my eyes a while to get used to the darkness. When they have, I look out across the hollow.

There isn’t a single soul. Not a car, not a bike, nothing. Only the long shadows of the bare birches, a little darker even than the night, like fingers stretched out towards the house.

I drop the curtains again and move back under the blanket.

I only imagined it.

The sweat dries. It leaves sticky patches in the dip between my collarbones, on top of my breasts, beneath my arms and at the seam of my panties. Slowly, I close my eyes. I listen for sounds. A breeze strokes through the naked boughs of the trees. Wood creaks. It’s not the stairs. It’s no one coming up the stairs. It is just the trees. Just the trees and their long shadows.

The sweat is cooling on my skin. It prickles.

Chapter 2

It is a summer day in the year 1988. Three children are running up the High Street, out of breath. They are giggling as they turn into Cobblestone Snicket to hide, two girls and a boy. The heat lurks in the narrow alley, the air oppressive. A thunderstorm may be coming. Everyone is wearing shorts, skirts and crop tops, humming ‘I Should Be So Lucky’.

The kids all try to peek back around the corner at the same time. ‘Move, Linn,’ the boy hisses, ‘I can’t see!’

‘Shhh,’ Linn, the girl in front, says to the boy, her dark eyes wide and curious. ‘Shh, Anna!’ to the other girl.

The other girl’s blonde hair is falling down onto her shoulders and she’s whispering, ‘Don’t let them catch us, please don’t …’

Five houses down, a front door is thrown open. A woman in her forties, she seems ancient to these kids, steps out. Her son is watching from the window. He is their best friend, Jay is, but he has been grounded. His mother is wearing a brown cardigan and frameless glasses, sweating in the heatwave. ‘I know you are there!’ the woman calls out. Her name is Mrs Mason. She is their teacher in kindergarten, teaches them colours and songs and the clock, which is really hard. Now her doorbell had rung just like the stupid fake clock she brings into kindergarten with her to bully them. Ding, ding, ding, three short chimes. Linn giggles.

Mrs Mason steps out of her doorway. Anna’s murmuring turns louder. ‘Please, God, help us, make her not see us, make her not see us …’

‘Come out!’ Mrs Mason calls again. Anna slinks back further into the alley, praying in another language now, one Linn doesn’t understand. Teo is clutching Linn’s shoulders. ‘What do we do?’ he whispers. ‘She’s coming right at us!’

His brown eyes widen as he sees how close Mrs Mason is already, her flat shoes making funny sounds on the pavement. ‘Come on, Linn!’

Teo takes her hand and pulls her with him, following Anna, who’s already well ahead. They run down the narrow alley, pushing through the stifling heat, emerging on the other side into the parking lot of the supermarket. It is new and shiny, and they run up to it and inside and pretend to be looking at the sweets machine. The sweat prickles as it dries on their skin. Anna is looking so hard at the sweets, Linn is afraid her eyes will pop out like the chewing gums pop out of the machine. Teo keeps clutching her sleeve and Anna’s, and then Anna takes Linn’s hand. ‘Girls Just Wanna Have Fun’ is playing over the speakers.

Finally, Anna glances up and grins, in her pretty floral dress and her pretty ponytails. ‘Ding, ding, ding,’ she whispers, and the three kids start giggling until they are out of breath all over again. ‘Ding, ding, ding.’

LINN

When I wake up in the morning, I’m sticky all over. It takes my eyes a while to focus on the ceiling. And for my brain to remember what happened last night.

What I imagined, anyway. I lie in the damp sheets, breathing more heavily than I should. I did not expect the first night to be easy, but I will deal with the nightmares. I’ve dealt with them before. They are a price I am willing to pay. And the begonias look bright and purple in the daylight, and the deadly nightshade is buried deep in the nightstand drawer.

‘Good morning,’ I say to the begonias, determinedly cheerful, taking them to the bathroom to make sure they get their breakfast. Then I go down to put on the washing machine for the sweaty sheets. There is only a little detergent left. As I stand bent over my parents’ old machine, in that basement, naked light bulbs casting dark shadows into the corners, I tell myself that I cannot feel fingers of sweat on my body. On my eyelids.

Hurrying back upstairs and into the bathroom, I tell myself I can still try and find a hotel in the area, should the nightmares get worse. Although that would be too expensive, I fear. And there are no friends I could bother.

There were only ever the three of them, really, weren’t there? Anna, Jacob, Teoman.

One of whom has come back, too.

Teo.

Standing naked in the bathroom, waiting for the water to turn hot, I watch the frost flowers on the windows while I remember them. Teoman and Anna and Jay. My best friends for as long as I could remember.

Teo. The only one the police ever arrested.

Involuntarily, I shiver. The Detective Inspector let him go the next day and said all the evidence pointed to a stranger. Maybe the DNA sample could have helped, but it was contaminated. Got mixed up in the lab. Human error. All too human.

I never asked Graham what made him take Teo in. What made him let him go.

I didn’t want to know.

Besides, it didn’t matter, did it? We thought it was a stranger.

Now, things look a little different.

Every muscle in my body cramps up. As I step into the shower, I resolve to speak to Graham as soon as I can. Find out what he thought about it, about them: Anna, Jacob, Teo. And we all went to see Miss Luca, too, afterwards, so she’s someone to speak to.

After the shower, I make some porridge with the blueberries I brought from London, listening to my favourite Dresden Dolls song, ‘Girl Anachronism’. Some of the blueberries are already mouldy. Today, groceries, no matter what. When I’ve breakfasted, I put on a pair of wellies, grab the car keys from the mud room and go out.

The cold folds around my body like the clammy sheets in the night. Lifting my shoulders, I wrap my coat more closely around me. It’s a city coat. Useless. But at least the fog has lifted. I can see the hollow lying before me, the front porch surrounded by dead grass covered in hoar frost, and the brown circular driveway up to the top. The wood of the porch creaks under my shoes, the soles loosening thin splinters of wood.

My hands are still cramping as I get into the car, no matter how forcefully I rub my palms. I start up the engine, go up the drive and onto the main road. It’s Sunday, so Graham won’t be at the station. Where did Kaitlin say Miss Luca lived? Corner of Meadowside and Foster Lane, wasn’t it? Maybe it’s time to pay her a visit.

I thought of her as old back then, but she can’t have been much older than thirty. She wrote me a letter, after Oliver and I had moved, recommending a few therapists close to his university, but I never phoned them up. I know what you must think, but I was already struggling to feed our fish. Even though the aquarium had been my idea. As I sit in the car, the corner of my mouth twitches upwards as I remember. I’d wanted something to care for, some company, too. We had one fish we’d called Buttercup, a big yellow one, our favourite.

When I found Buttercup swimming upside down three months after we’d moved in, Oliver suggested I get rid of the aquarium and try with a cactus first. He grinned as he said it, but his eyes were worried, and I knew what he was thinking: I wasn’t even capable of taking care of a fish. How would I take care of myself?

I turn into Meadowside and make my way past the kindergarten. There is a kindergarten not far from our flat in Leyton. I remember how Oliver would stop at the playground to watch the children. He had worked at a children’s hospital for a few years, bringing home drawings all the time, of small stick people with blond and black hair holding the hand of a stick person with no hair at all, laughing at his own baldness.

On the corner of Foster Lane, I kill the engine, peek out of the windshield. That must be Miss Luca’s house. Kaitlin was right: it’s very nice. All white, three storeys, a slate shingle roof. Green hedges growing all around it, a metal gate in front of the white gravel driveway.

Go on, ring her doorbell.

But all I do is keep sitting in the car. My limbs are heavy.

Come on. Get up. She might be able to tell you something.

I try and move my legs, but they won’t budge.

Move. Raise your arm.

Slowly, I raise my eyes. Look into the rear mirror and focus on the tip of my nose. Then I breathe.

I am raising my hand to open the door. I am raising my hand to open the door. I am raising my hand to open the door …

My hand is moving, inching towards the door handle. I use the momentum to go all the way and push the door open. Mrs Dündar taught me that trick, Teo’s mum, when I was a child. Teo called it magic. That made her laugh. We all thought it was magic when we were kids.

I get out of the car. Autosuggestion it’s called, I know that now. An easy trick. That’s how I managed to open the door to the delivery man the night the Kenzies’ parcel was delivered. That’s how I manage most of my life. Oliver thinks it is stupid. Says I don’t need hocus-pocus like that. I think it reminds him too much of how far gone I am sometimes.

Slowly I make my way towards Miss Luca’s house. The gate isn’t locked, opening almost silently. The gravel crunches under my feet as I walk up to her door. Check the name on the bell. LUCA. I’m in the right place then.

Nervously, I lift my hand. Ring the bell.

Then I wait. I can hear nothing moving inside. Maybe she’s out in the garden. It’s Sunday, but really a little cold to be out. I ring again.

When nobody opens up, I return to the car to tear a piece of paper out of my notebook. Before I can change my mind, I scrawl my name on it, tell her I’m back at the house and ask her to get in touch if she wants to. I almost leave her my phone number, but then remember that there is no reception at our house. Never has been. I remember getting my first phone and how I always had to go into the village to do anything with it. Reception is fine in Northallerton and Kendal, and even here on the High Street my phone works well enough, and on the tarmac road into town. Maybe it’s the hollow. Maybe that gives them trouble. The Dales are difficult to tame, Mrs Mason always used to say.

God, how long I haven’t thought about Mrs Mason. About Jacob. Jay was what we called him. How long I haven’t thought about the peaks, Bolton Castle after dark, Cobblestone Snicket and how we say snicket instead of alley and flayed instead of scared.

I still haven’t thought about where it was that my parents fell.

I drop the note into her postbox, watching it slot in place next to an issue of Psychology Today. Then I get back into the car. When I sit down in the driver’s seat, I feel like I’ve run five miles. But I’m also proud. I made a start.

Turning the car around, I glance at my list. Jacob Mason is next.

On my way to his house I stop at the supermarket. Considering that the shop still looks the very same on the outside, it comes as a surprise that they’ve changed practically everything on the inside. It’s impossible to find anything. The products are different, too. Did they sell avocados back then? I don’t remember. All I remember is going shopping with Mum, and how large I thought the trolleys were, and meeting Mr Dündar in aisle 7, bent down very low to pick up the raisins he was looking for. ‘These are the good ones,’ he used to say, and give me a few straight from the package, right in the aisle. Mum was scandalised. The cashiers never minded, I don’t think. I don’t know. Mum always pulled me on after the barest bit of small talk. Whenever I turned back to look at Mr Dündar as a child, I saw him watch us leave, his expression inexplicably sad.

After a few confused rounds through the aisles, I finally manage to get a sense of the place. In aisle 6, I run into Mr Wargrave, who was already old when I was born and now uses a walking frame but seems all right otherwise. Only when he greets me with a friendly ‘Hullo, Martha dearest,’ do I realise he might not be holding up as well as I thought.

‘Hello, Mr Wargrave,’ I say. ‘How are you?’

‘All right, aye. Getting a paper. The obituaries,’ he says, pointing shakily at the local newspaper sitting on his walking frame. His nails have turned yellow. They are splintering at the edges. Then he grins at me. He’s got new teeth, I think. ‘It’s always good to see you’re outliving all them bastards, isn’t it?’

I smile, not sure what to say to that. ‘Mason,’ he goes on. ‘She’s still going strong. Nursing home now. Good for her, though, with that son of hers.’

I furrow my brow. ‘What do you mean?’ I ask him. Jay adored his mother.

But Mr Wargrave only waggles his eyebrows, grown far too long, just like the hairs sprouting out of his nose. ‘I’m not in a home yet. All alone at my place. Neighbours are gone, too. No one to listen in on us. You remember that, Martha.’

Well, that was a disturbing experience. As quickly as possible, I go to one of the self-checkouts, grabbing a prepaid SIM card as I pass. I will be needing it. I don’t think I’ll be able to bear seeing all of Oliver’s messages and not respond. For the first time, I’m almost grateful there isn’t any signal down in the hollow.

Once all the groceries are in the boot, I steer the car towards the High Street and put the Dresden Dolls back on. ‘Coin-Operated Boy’. Sing, under my breath, watching the houses I drive past, looking for the Masons’. There’s an uneasy sensation at the bottom of my stomach. He is just a toy, but I turn him on and he comes to life, automatic joy …

What did Mr Wargrave mean when he talked about Jacob like that? I remember the way Anvi and Kaitlin talked about him, too. The tone of their voices, far too disapproving for the boy I remember: Bright eyes, well-spoken, well-mannered. Entitled, maybe, but good at heart. He’d wanted to be an artist, or a graphic designer at least. While we went out, and when we were friends, too, he would make me little drawings and pass them to me in class. Of flowers, instead of giving me bouquets. Of chocolates, to tease me. Of myself, when he was feeling particularly brave. I was the only one he showed his sketchbook to.

The uncomfortable feeling at the pit of my stomach intensifies as I get closer to where his house should be. He was my friend. The first person I fell in love with. You don’t forget your first crush. I haven’t seen him in nineteen years, and even at seventeen, we’d been split up for a while. Goodness, we’d been so young when we got together, we didn’t even have sex. Even though we did do all sorts of other things. He wasn’t exactly shy about what he wanted, and neither was I. We weren’t in a healthy place, so we thought the more bruising it involved the better. I still remember how he’d sneered at me when I broke up with him, sneered and insulted me to hide how hurt he was, a teenager about to lose everything but unable to stop it.

Driving down the High Street has memories batting into me on every corner. About the first time that Anna, Teo, Jay and I tricked the goody machine, spilling sweets into our laps like a miniature version of Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory. The first time the three us scratched our names into a bench, Anna and Teo and I, in the small park by the graveyard. The first place I rode a bicycle, in the parking lot just behind the town sign, with Jay teaching me, already carrying around his box of crayons wherever he went, painting broad colourful patterns onto the pavement along the High Street and into their front garden.

I follow the road past the red parasols. Just behind the bend, that’s where it should be.

And then it comes into view.

It looks just the same. The door is still painted red, the stone still grey, the front garden filled with sad shrubbery and grey stone tiles, the front room hidden behind large artificial flowers. I don’t think they’ve even changed the curtains. They look like they’re straight from the Eighties.