by Graham West
“What about boys?”
“Well, there’s a lad sniffing around her at the garage,” I told her. “But I don’t think Jen’s interested.”
“Have you seen him?”
“I took a peek.”
“And?”
“He seems like a nice kid. Very polite.”
“Good-looking?”
“Yep, he’s good-looking!”
Josie smiled, and I suppressed the urge to lean forward and kiss her. I wished, in that moment, that I could have buried the past along with the pain the memories brought with it. I wanted to begin again, cleansed of the grief that held me in a vice-like grip.
Chapter Three
Jenny and I visited the grave the day after the first anniversary, both hurting like hell. We drove with the radio switched off, alone with our thoughts; neither of us uttered a word until we reached the gates of the cemetery.
“I want to speak to Mum,” she said in a tone that sounded more like a demand.
“You want some time alone?” I asked. “I’ll sit in the car for a while.”
Jenny looked at me as if I was crazy. “No! I want to speak to her—you know—actually speak!”
I pulled over and killed the engine. “How?” I asked, unable to mask my frustration.
Jenny shrugged. “One of the girls in school lost her dad. She went to see this medium—”
I should have let her finish, but the word medium sent my mind into a spin. “No! You’re not.”
Jenny stopped, looking as if she’d been hit in the stomach by a cannonball.
“We’re not going to see a medium, Jen. It’s out of the question.”
I saw the tears forming in my daughter’s eyes, and I remembered how fragile she really was.
“Look, sweetheart,” I continued, softening my tone, “it’s a dangerous game. Let’s just stay well clear. Hanna and your mother are still with us. You have to believe that. You can talk to them in your heart.”
Jenny turned. “Bullshit! That’s what people say when they don’t believe in life after death!” My daughter wiped a tear from her cheek, her eyes blazing. “So you believe Mum and Hanna are just rotting in that grave? Is that it? We die and get eaten by worms?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“Then what do you believe?”
My head felt devoid of an answer yet the words tripped off my tongue. “I’m not sure. I’d like to think—”
“Well, Granddad always talked about God—what happened to you?”
I swallowed hard as another tear trickled down Jenny’s cheek. My own father would have put his arm around his granddaughter’s shoulders, and the words of comfort would have flowed like honey. I placed a reassuring hand on my her arm, but she pulled away. “Mum and Hanna aren’t dead,” she snapped. “Not really.” She glared at me. “It doesn’t matter whether you believe it or not, does it?”
“I want to believe, sweetheart, honestly. I’m just not as sure as I once was.”
Jenny huffed and turned away, staring out of the passenger window.
“But I really don’t want you to start that talking-to-the-dead stuff, okay?”
She didn’t answer. The conversation was closed.
***
The following Friday, Jenny and I had lunch with Josie and Lou at a table they had dressed in the corner of The Keys. The white embroidered tablecloth seemed to glow under the light from the window, and as Jenny pulled out her chair, her eyes fell on the two red roses in the centre. “Mum and Hanna,” she whispered to herself.
Josie smiled softly, but Lou looked a little embarrassed.
“Thank you,” I said to him, trying to put the big guy at ease. “That was a nice thought.”
Lou relaxed immediately and nodded. I swear I saw a tear form in his eye. The meal was on them. Josie ordered a bottle of champagne, although Jenny grimaced at the mere sight of it. I knew she still felt there was nothing to celebrate. For several months, she had kept herself hydrated but had barely eaten and had dropped several pounds. Josie had noticed, and I was guessing she wanted to see how my daughter dealt with a plate full of food. I could read that woman like one of her many books. The word ‘anorexia’ would never have passed her lips, but it was there in her mind.
Jenny ordered the chicken with pasta, and Josie seemed to relax, realising that it wouldn’t have been the first choice of a girl who was starving herself. I settled for the haddock in a fancy sauce and potatoes with fresh vegetables. Jenny and I both cleaned our plates, and Josie slipped my daughter a glass of the champagne. “It won’t do you any harm,” she whispered. “Just don’t tell your friends, okay?”
The teenage obsession with alcohol had bypassed Jenny. Too much drink made her ill, and she had experimented only a couple of times and then backed off. Maybe God had granted me one favour—a daughter who wasn’t going to waste her weekends throwing up in the street outside the city clubs.
That afternoon at The Keys passed quickly. Lou bought another bottle of bubbly to the table, and we talked well into the early evening. Jenny seemed to thaw as the afternoon wore on and seemed happier than she had since she lost her mother and sister. Maybe the drink was kicking in, but I believed that there might be a future for both of us. The wounds were still open and raw. We would still ache and cry. We would still wake to empty days when the sun shone on everyone but us and left us feeling so desperately cold inside. But somewhere in my soul, I felt a faint stirring of a new life, and Jenny obviously felt strong enough to bring up the contentious issue of life after death.
“What do you think about mediums, Aunt Josie?” Jenny asked casually, pushing an empty plate away.
Josie frowned. “Mediums? Well, I’d exercise extreme caution.”
Jenny seemed to accept the reply, nodding thoughtfully. “But if you found someone genuine, someone—”
“That’s the whole point, hun,” Josie cut in. “How do you know?”
Jenny smiled. “Well, I’d put on my best poker face. They wouldn’t be getting any clues, so if my mum came through, I’d know, wouldn’t I?” Jenny took a sip of water. “I’m not some silly kid. I’m not going to get taken in by some crazy old crow with a crystal ball.”
Josie laughed, shaking her head. “Just be careful, hun, that’s all.”
I resisted adding anything to Josie’s warning, having decided that the conversation would move on a lot faster if I kept my silence. When we arrived home, Jenny took herself up to her room and I took a bottle of red wine from the cupboard, intending to treat myself to a glass while watching the twenty-four-hour news channel. The glass turned into a bottle.
***
The following morning, I washed and shaved as usual, although sometimes, even this seemed like a waste of time. Who was going to worry whether I was clean shaven and smelled of soap? Who gave a shit whether my hair was greasy? Elizabeth was gone.
The metallic aftertaste of red wine remained on my tongue despite several rinses of mouthwash, and I vowed to stick to white in future.
Jenny was watching an American sit com with a coffee in her hand, suspended in front of her lips, and looked up with a cursory smile as I walked in. She had on her rose-petal pyjamas—the ones her mother had bought her for Christmas—and my heart lurched in my chest. Suddenly, we were all back together, watching Hanna rip the wrapping paper from her gifts and squeal with excitement. It was the first Christmas she had really understood the whole Santa thing. I had no idea it would be her last.
Chapter Four
The sun was shining and I thought about taking a camera and stopping off at the old church on the way to the grave. I might have got lucky and snapped the sun as it dipped behind the steeple, catching that elusive picture that would find its way onto the cover of a glossy monthly.
My relationship with photography had always been uneasy; the resulting images always appeared lifeless and uninspired. Even the idea of changing my old camera for an all-singing, all-dancing contraption failed to inspire me to get back behi
nd the lens, and I found myself driving past the church without so much as a sideways glance.
I reached the gates of the cemetery just as the sun sank behind the trees, casting long, dark shadows across the graves. I stopped the car near the entrance and pulled on my jacket. Sometimes, when the mood took me, I found myself reading the epitaphs on the headstones. Each time, I’d take a different route, stopping at any grave that caught my eye.
There was a history engraved in every stone, lying between the lines. What, for instance, did Constance Penworth die from? Aged thirty-two and loved only, it seemed, by her husband. No other name appeared on the old white stone. No children. No brothers. No sisters. Maybe their love had begun as an illicit affair—an affair that had left them ostracised and destined to live the rest of their days alone.
I wondered if Constance was watching me as I stopped at her grave. Did the spirits of the dead gather there, hovering in the ether above their bones? Was Elizabeth waiting for me, holding Hanna close to her side? Here’s Daddy, my darling; he’s come to see us.
Jenny would talk to her mother every time we visited the grave; she would chatter freely, almost as if they were standing face-to-face. I longed for her faith, the unshakeable belief in the afterlife that would allow me to converse with my wife and child free from the restraints of my own scepticism.
I hadn’t bought any flowers; the visit had not been planned. “I just thought I’d drop by, darling,” I muttered uneasily, casting my eyes across the inscription bearing my name.
Beloved wife of Robert…
There was a space underneath—a space that would be inscribed with the date of my own demise. I shuddered, the reoccurring fear of being buried alive passing through me like a cold wind.
I stood over the grave for several minutes, alone in a landscape littered with bones, wood, stone and earth. Yet I felt at peace there, a member of an exclusive club which allowed me to walk freely amongst the dead with impunity. I would nod and smile in the direction of others who attended, with an understanding hanging between us. They were my brothers and sisters in grief, in loneliness, in longing. We needed no words, no explanations and no apologies.
***
When I arrived home, Jenny was in her room. Not that it would seem unusual to find a teenager sitting on her bed and watching TV, but my daughter was not a bedroom girl, preferring to sit at the kitchen table, surfing the net and chatting to friends on social media. I left her. Maybe she needed some space.
But over the following days, I found her spending more and more time alone, venturing down only to make herself a coffee before disappearing again. She was pale, and had that look of a rabbit caught in the headlights of a car. I felt the storm clouds gathering, I swear. Was it a premonition, or was it an inert sense that since the deaths of Elizabeth and Hanna, everything in my life was destined to go wrong?
On the night it all began, Jenny had, as far as I can recall, eaten nothing but a piece of fruit and a diet drink. I’d started to wonder if Josie’s suspicions had been well-founded. Maybe she might have taken to one of these starvation diets and was staying out of my way. Maybe she needed something she could control: the image that stared back at her from the bedroom mirror.
I had a glass of whisky, my thoughts lost in the TV screen as I wondered if my decision to leave my job at a local investment company had been a wise one. Elizabeth’s life insurance had paid out handsomely, and I’d cashed in my shares, leaving me with enough money to live on providing I didn’t live like a lottery winner. But I needed something to fill my days—to occupy my mind. Maybe I could give Martin a ring in the morning and see if there were any vacancies.
By the time I’d emptied my glass, the day had been planned. I took a few gulps of cold water and turned off the lights. I didn’t bother to undress but collapsed onto the bed, falling into a hazy sleep as soon as my head touched the pillow.
At two in the morning, I was wakened by a scream.
I ran to Jenny’s room to find her sitting up in her bed, shaking violently. She was staring in my direction, but I knew that she wasn’t focusing. Her eyes were filled with what I can only describe as pure, unadulterated terror.
“Jenny!” I cried, fearing to approach her. “What the hell…”
My voice seemed to cut through her semi-consciousness. She blinked, fell back onto her pillow and sighed deeply. “A dream,” she gasped. “Just a dream…” Her eyes closed. “I’m okay…go back to bed.”
The following morning, I attempted to elicit some kind of explanation from my daughter, treading like a barefooted man through broken glass. But Jenny would offer me nothing, claiming that she couldn’t remember. I didn’t believe her. I could still see the fear in my daughter’s eyes.
***
“She’s hiding something from me,” I told Josie the following day. “I just can’t work out what it could be.”
Jo thought I was imagining it all. “It’s probably just a phase,” she told me with a reassuring air of confidence. “And as for the nightmare—well, that ain’t rocket science, is it? She’s probably reliving the accident.”
“Then why couldn’t she tell me?”
Josie just looked at me as if I’d grown another nose. “Come on, Robert, you’re not that stupid. The kid isn’t going to risk upsetting you, is she?”
When I left Josie, I felt a little happier. It was all part of the grieving process—the loss, the loneliness, the memories of that Sunday afternoon which haunted me every day. I had never relived the moment in my dreams. I’d been spared the terror of watching my wife and daughter dying all over again.
I didn’t call Martin. I’d only be talking to an answering machine, and my ex-boss was never that good at returning calls anyway.
***
We visited the grave together the next weekend. It was the first time my daughter had ventured outside of the house in nearly two weeks, but her mood hadn’t changed. It was as if she had given up on life, choosing to wallow in her own misery. I’d tried to talk to her, but the replies barely formed the basis of a sentence, and I’d hoped that the visit to the grave might at the very least provoke a conversation of some kind.
We stopped at the florist and bought a bunch of flowers—pink and white. Jenny nodded her approval as I placed them on her knee and slid back behind the wheel and fired up the engine. The journey was undertaken in silence with the radio playing low. I turned it off as we drove through the gates of the cemetery.
“I don’t know why we bother coming here,” Jenny mumbled. “Mum and Hanna aren’t here, so why are we?”
I turned. Jenny was staring ahead of her. “Because the grave is here, that’s why we come.”
“Wrong!” Jenny spat. “Their rotting flesh and bones are here. Mum and Hanna are with us—all the time—every day!”
We were back on the subject of my scepticism, and it was eating Jenny up.
“So where do you suggest we go to place flowers and pay our respects?”
Jenny shrugged. “Does it matter?”
“It does!” I retorted angrily. “It matters to me!”
I pulled up and killed the engine. “Look, Jen, I don’t know what this is all about, but for the past two weeks—”
She didn’t let me finish. “What? You think I should be out clubbing, getting pissed and shagging anything with a pulse? Would that make you happy?”
“No, I didn’t say—”
“You want me to be happy? How? How can I be happy?”
“Jenny…I—”
“Dad!” She glared at me with a hatred in her eyes that was like a stab in the heart. “Why don’t you just stop fucking with my head?”
Jenny flung open the door, pulling free of my hand as I reached out to stop her. She was gone before I’d drawn breath. I watched in desperation, never having heard my daughter use even the mildest of swear words. Her grandfather had instilled the old-fashioned values he had held and lived by. He believed that there was nothing as vulgar as bad language, and only in ext
reme circumstances could it be forgiven. Maybe this was one of those occasions. I didn’t know.
I stood at the grave alone, waiting, hoping. But Jenny was nowhere to be seen. I spent the whole afternoon searching, texting and calling while wandering between the graves, nodding in the direction of my brothers and sisters in grief and asking if anyone had seen a teenage girl. No one had. I drove home expecting to find Jenny in her room, but her bed remained unmade and the curtains were still drawn. I called Kelly Dawson’s house. If she had needed a friend, Kelly would have been top of the list. Mrs. Dawson answered the phone.
Kelly’s mother was a petite blonde who pretty much lived in Lycra. I’d met her at a couple of parents’ evenings and mistaken her for Jenny’s teacher. She ran keep-fit classes at the local gym, which she conducted with an enthusiasm that left her subjects exhausted and debating if they would return the following week. Despite this, she had a warm manner.
“Jenny?” she said. “No, we haven’t seen her for some time. Is there a problem?”
“It’s nothing, really. She’s probably out walking, trying to clear her head.”
Kelly’s mother laughed. “Aye, probably. I’m sure she’s okay. Jenny’s a sensible girl.”
I replaced the receiver and flopped back into my chair. I was weary, yet to close my eyes was an invitation for the demons who would be lingering on the other side. I flicked the remote and the TV burst into life like a faithful old friend.
And on tonight’s programme…
A young woman in her mid-twenties stared out at me from the screen. In the background, children played at the water’s edge while their parents basked in the Mediterranean heat. My mind slipped back. Suddenly, I was standing on the beach in Kos, watching Elizabeth at the water’s edge holding Hanna’s hand. Jenny was riding the waves, a fourteen-year-old girl in a skimpy white bikini, unaware that several boys were watching her as she climbed onto the cheap plastic dinghy. My daughter had grown into a young woman overnight, and I’d only just noticed.
