After the Eclipse

by Fran Dorricott

  I’d given up around dinnertime and driven to Ady’s for a few essentials. He’d surprised me by still being in the shop – normally he only worked mornings, but he’d muttered something about staff holiday and working all hours and rolled his eyes while I tried to be sympathetic.

  Posters about the eclipse had been everywhere: warnings not to watch without special glasses; offers of half-priced cake and tea at the church and for the viewing at Earl’s café. Even Ady, after the initial worry about my Gran, had stated his excitement for the eclipse, his superstitious nonsense about “new beginnings” setting my teeth on edge. He sounded like my grandad, with his four-leaf clovers painted in his studio, the copper band he wore around his wrist because he claimed it connected him to the earth.

  Now, sitting on the sideboard along with a new loaf of bread, was a bottle of vodka. And there was a bottle of incredibly cheap rosé in the fridge, as well. I knew I shouldn’t, knew that this was a slippery slope – but there was nothing to stop me. No reason not to without Gran to keep an eye on, and the jelly feeling in my limbs seemed like every reason to go ahead and just forget the rest of the world existed.

  I sat in silence for what seemed like for ever. The sky began to darken, and I didn’t move. I didn’t get up to turn the lights on as I would have if Gran had been here. I didn’t make myself dinner or set up a TV show on my laptop.

  I just sat, completely still, and stared out of the window at the road. One by one the street lamps came on. A flickering orange light filtered through the blinds and striped everything in a ghostly gold.

  When I did get up, I used the bathroom and then went straight back to my spot with a glass of vodka. I smiled just to see if I still could, the small movement making my cheeks hurt because they’d been still and tense for so long. I sniffed the vodka, let a tiny taste of it sit on my tongue. I hated it, but the hangovers from sugary cocktails were much worse. Plus, the corner shop had cheap bottles that cost less than I’d ever paid for booze – or sleeping pills – in London.

  I wrinkled my nose in disgust. And then I drank the whole glass in two swallows.

  I was five drinks deep when my phone buzzed. I swiped at it ineffectually, getting into the message on the third try.

  It said:

  Hi. We met before. I have some things I want to tell u abt Grace, but I dont want to txt it. Can u meet me after school tomoz? I’ll wait outside the gates. Bx

  I paused, my brain going into overdrive. I started to type a reply, stopped. Fumbled with my phone and started again. Relief mingled with excitement and concern. Perhaps here, finally, was a solid lead. But it was late. Who was texting now? Was it the girl who had said Grace didn’t keep secrets, Bella somebody? In the end, I managed to type, “Sure.” My brain was unable to formulate clearly the many questions I had.

  As the night went by, and the moon started to rise, I took my glass out into the garden, my thoughts spinning. There was a wooden swing out there along with an old fire pit. I set it up, and then sat in front of the glow with the bottle of vodka. It was liberating, like I’d been able to drop the worry and the guilt and now I was free. I didn’t have to clean up, or make sure Gran was in bed. I didn’t have to cook for her or make her a cup of tea. I didn’t have to do anything.

  I didn’t have to do those things but I found that I missed them. Gran’s absence was like a sliver of glass in my heart and every action made it ache that much worse. I hunched on the wooden bench, feeling the fire warming my face as the cool night air caressed my back. I leaned into it, drank some more, and let the fuzzy warmth envelop me. Wrap me up and keep me safe.

  As I sat, I realised that I’d left my phone inside. But I didn’t bother to get up and find it. I’d instructed the hospital to call the landline if they ever couldn’t reach me, which I could hear from out here, and I didn’t want to talk to anybody else anyway.

  I just poured myself another drink and nursed it quietly, the buzz of the alcohol sitting low across my brow, obscuring the heart of my thoughts about tomorrow. The eclipse. I was a failure now, just like before. I wasn’t any closer to finding Grace than I had been days ago. I thought vaguely about the text message, and promised meeting, but now struggled to believe Grace’s friend would be able to tell me anything useful.

  I missed Olive with a keenness I hadn’t felt in years, and I felt the threat of the twilight-like darkness hovering over me like a spectre. I tried to push it away.

  When I closed my eyes, I saw Marion. Her smile. The warmth in her eyes and the way she leaned towards me when she spoke. I tried to remind myself of the man I’d seen leaving her house – but instead I saw the curve of her jaw, the jut of her collarbone beneath her shirt.

  I remembered the first brush of her lips against mine, the feeling of the moon cooling my skin as she sun disappeared during the eclipse. The way my heart thudded. The way I could see her pulse in her throat as she licked her lips…

  I hadn’t ever stopped thinking about Marion. Even when I’d been with Helen, even when things had been good, Marion was always there. Always in my mind, in my heart. But with a detached sense of shock I realised that loving her from a distance wasn’t enough any more.

  I wanted her hands in my hair, her mouth on mine. I wanted to feel her skin at my fingertips, wanted her support and help with my gran… I didn’t just want Marion; I needed her.

  * * *

  Sleep came reluctantly. At some point I’d moved back inside. The lounge was cold and the world shifted and spun, images shooting past my eyes so fast I couldn’t tell whether they were memories or fabrications.

  In my dream it was hot. I stared at the bruise that was blossoming on Olive’s pale arm. It was purple and green and had the very definitive shape of fingers. Angry fingers.

  “She didn’t mean to,” Dream Olive said, rubbing at it gently. “I almost got hit by that car. She pulled me back. She freaked out.”

  “She pulled you bloody hard,” I said. Did I say that? I said it in my dream.

  “You shouldn’t swear.”

  “Yeah, well, Mum shouldn’t have hurt you. You need to tell somebody when she gets stressed.” I scowled, and Olive smiled. A big dream smile. In the waking world I wasn’t sure I remembered what her smile looked like.

  “I know. But it was an accident. She was so sorry afterwards, even got me an ice cream from the little shop. She just doesn’t realise how strong she is.”

  I remembered that it was days before the bruise started to fade, even though it wasn’t big. As I tried to get comfortable in the waking world, in my dream Olive told everybody about the car, about how she wasn’t looking where she was going. How somebody had yanked her to safety, hard enough to bruise the skin.

  Olive was slipping away. All I could see was the back of her head.

  “Olive, wait!” I shouted. “Wait for me!”

  But she was going. Slipping further, gliding now. The darkness closing in, just like it had done during the eclipse.

  And then she was gone.

  I screamed to consciousness, my mouth desert-dry. Wiping my forehead, I felt the sweat that trickled down my neck. I paused, listening for Gran, but of course she wasn’t there. I thought of the car that had hit her. How it hadn’t been going fast. There was no doubt in my mind that the driver was the person who had sent me those texts.

  Could it be Darren Walker, the weirdo with the van, who’d sent them? The missing-and-presumed-dead Cordy Jones? But the texts had been strangely typed, punctuation non-existent. Nobody who had my mobile number would text like a teenager under normal circumstances.

  I had a jolt, then, wondering if it could have been. A teenager. One of Grace’s friends. That would make sense, wouldn’t it? Except that didn’t explain Gran’s accident or the text from the other friend. So could it be somebody familiar with children? A parent? A teacher? Or anybody for that matter. I was going round in circles.

  I resettled, trying to even out my breathing. I could see the bruise on Olive’s arm, stamped across
my vision like sun spots. I hadn’t remembered it until now. It had happened the week we came to Bishop’s Green for the summer. Mum had been frustrated. Stressed. Angry with Dad. They fought that morning and she was still angry when Olive stepped into the road outside the corner shop. It was an accident, Olive’s arm getting twisted like that, and Mum was distraught afterwards. People had seen the bruise and the judgement in their eyes had made me feel hot with shame. Even Doctor White had asked the question, “Did your mother do this?” and we had both been mortified.

  I didn’t want to think about my mother. So I half-lay, half-sat, perfectly still, until I finally drifted back to sleep.

  18

  Friday, 20 March 2015

  ECLIPSE DAY.

  When I woke the house was empty and the fire in the garden was long dead, the ashes blown about on the grass. I looked down and saw no evidence of the vodka, neither bottle nor glass, and I couldn’t remember what I’d done with them. I winced as the world swayed and I felt the familiar heavy sickness unsettle itself in my stomach. Slowly, and with little grace, I staggered back inside to put the kettle on.

  It was a minute before I felt a dropping sensation in my stomach, and I glanced at the clock. It was almost nine thirty. The eclipse. A shudder raced through me like a shock of electricity and I darted outside to throw up in the bushes.

  I could feel the morning already cooling, the sky getting darker even as I resolutely avoided looking at it. If only I could have stayed asleep I would have missed the whole thing.

  Half of me wanted to bolt upstairs, turn the shower on and sit under a stream of hot water all morning so I wouldn’t have to see it. The other half of me knew that I couldn’t do that. As much as I wanted to avoid it, I knew what was going to happen.

  I was going to watch it.

  As it began, a knot of fear, excitement, dread, all roiled in one in the pit of my stomach. It was nothing like the feeling I’d had sixteen years ago, with Marion at my side, her hands in mine – the first touch of her lips and the fear and adrenaline rushing through me at the thought of being caught by somebody who’d tell our parents…

  This time there was no wonder. No magic. I felt despair threaten to swallow me whole – but I forced myself back inside, finished making the tea I’d started. And then in the garden once more I clutched the burning mug in my hands, relishing the pain that blossomed in my fingers as I held it tight.

  I turned my face towards the sky, taking in the greyness, and in contrast the bright blue that was currently surrounding the sun. I had no glasses to watch with, but I couldn’t bring myself to care. What was the worst that could happen? A bubble of sickness was still in my stomach, even as I sipped at my tea, and I realised it had nothing to do with my hangover or the alcohol still in my system.

  I couldn’t shake the memories. So many memories. The feeling of Marion’s hand in mine, tense and cool despite the August heat. The wind blew and the ghost of Marion’s lips brushed the hair out from behind my ear. I shivered, the zinging feeling running up and down my spine. Even now I couldn’t separate the glory and pleasure of that morning from the pain and the grief that had come afterwards.

  I remembered the pressure of Marion’s skin against mine, the feeling of her shoulder, her hip, the way we moulded together almost seamlessly.

  Sitting in the garden now, completely alone, I had to hold back another wave of sickness tasting like bile and alcohol and guilt. Because even now, even after all these years, I could still remember what she whispered to me. I think I love you. And I could barely remember the last words I shared with my sister.

  But it was Olive’s face I had seen every day since, in passing strangers or caught in the corner of strange mirrors. Her golden eyes. Her crooked smile. I massaged the small circular tattoo on the inside of my left elbow. It had faded in the fifteen years since I’d snuck out and had it done without Mum realising. I often forgot it was there, and whenever I saw it I remembered Olive, and that was good. Such a small thing, a little circle no bigger than my thumbnail. An “O”. For Olive. For the eclipse. For everything.

  When Helen had first asked what it meant, I’d told her it was a full moon. She probably figured out I had lied about it later, but she never said. I was sure she hadn’t understood. It was a symbol, a symbol of the shitty ending of a story in which I was the villain. It was a reminder of everything I had lost.

  The sun began to slip away behind a crescent of darkness, and I realised that I must have been sitting out here for half an hour already. Half an hour of ghostly thoughts and images.

  I remembered the distinct moment that my excitement had become horror on that day. A sick hollow feeling that exploded into anger when we couldn’t find her, like somebody putting a trapdoor beneath us. Marion said she couldn’t have gone far. But she had. And the darkness was too much, sucking and pulling us into a world where the people of this friendly town could be capable of hurting an eleven-year-old girl.

  How could it have gone so wrong?

  Dad said it was my fault. And although Mum had denied it when he was around, I’d noticed that she looked at me differently after that. It was my fault. But even now I couldn’t pretend that I hadn’t wanted to kiss Marion, hadn’t wanted her more than anything. That she was the source of the warmth that coiled deep inside me, that magical, tingling heat like no other.

  I tried to force the thoughts from my brain but they remained imprinted behind my eyelids like sunspots. My tea was cold, and I started to shiver.

  I was frozen. I couldn’t move even if I wanted to. Something about this moment pinned me to the bench. I was unable to reclaim my limbs. I shivered uncontrollably, this time the tea in my hand sloshing over the edge of the cup. But I didn’t move. Because although I tried to deny it before, there was something there – some feeling of wonder amid the horror.

  As I watched the moon devour the sun, as the garden was plunged into greyness, I realised that the shivering was not fear. Or cold. But excitement. A zinging excitement that rocketed through me, making my fingers and toes tingle and my tongue feel heavy in my mouth.

  I drank it in. As the day grew darker and darker still, and I began to feel the cold more than ever before, tears welled in my eyes. This was it, what I’d been waiting for. I held my body tightly coiled, as if something terrible might leap out at any moment.

  But nothing happened. Nothing bad. Nothing good, either. Just… nothing.

  When it was over, I let the feeling wash over me. Relief. It must have been relief, that warm, fuzzy feeling, only brushing the inner core of coldness. I shivered again, and got to my feet. My whole body hurt. I could feel the tension rolling off me – in the stiffness in my neck and back, and the way my legs felt wooden, like somebody else’s – and I knew I needed to get myself sorted.

  I had to be an adult. That was what this was all about, wasn’t it? Growing up. Facing the things I’d been running from my whole life. Coming to Bishop’s Green, taking care of Gran… Moving back so I could go forwards.

  It was more than that. It was almost like I was pushing away my childhood – by coming back here, I was refusing to accept the way things had worked out. It was more than just a fresh start, it was a new life.

  I risked one more glance upwards, towards the sun and the few clouds now covering the glowing circle in the sky. I pictured that crescent again, the one that was so like the one I remembered. It was as if by staring too much at the sun I’d burned the image into the backs of my eyelids. And now it was all I could see whenever I closed my eyes.

  * * *

  I started to feel better as the minutes after the eclipse slipped away. I washed my face, determined to make it to the hospital for Gran’s visiting hours. The house was still a mess, and I couldn’t find my phone, but I ignored the stab of frustration and grabbed my keys. It was hardly a big deal. I just prayed that I was sober enough to drive.

  At the hospital I repeated my instruction for them to call my landline if they needed me – not having my p
hone felt like I was missing a limb – and then I headed straight to Gran’s room, which she shared with two other patients. The whole ward smelled of antiseptic and, somewhere, the faint trace of urine. I grimaced, crinkling my nose as I stepped inside.

  The atmosphere was hushed, with the other patients sleeping or reading quietly. Gran was asleep, and I found that I was almost glad – because today I couldn’t face any of it. The buzz I had felt this morning was gone and here was the reality. I was bone tired, sick, and disgusted with myself for the feelings I’d had during the eclipse. I couldn’t handle this as well.

  Gran looked so small with the covers drawn up to her chest, her arms straight down by her sides. She looked so thin and frail. I wondered, with a shock, when Gran had become so other. It was like she’d become somebody else overnight. Her face was veined with bruises from the accident, and as her chest rose and fell I could see the hint of the damage under the blankets. The doctors said she must have used her arm to catch herself and the weight of her fall had broken it.

  I remembered the solid presence of my childhood, feet always firmly planted as though she expected a fight, shoulders squared. She was formidable, even as much as she was fun and carefree. What a grandma was supposed to be.

  “Are you her?”

  I spun around at the sound of an unfamiliar voice, reedy with old age. I realised it had come from the bed next to Gran’s, where an elderly dark-skinned lady was propped up on some pillows with a book. Gran’s newest roommate looked gaunt, but her smile was warm. I smiled back, confusion and hangover making me slow.

  “I’m sorry, what?”

  “Are you the girl?” The woman gestured with gnarled fingers at my gran, and then smiled at me showing a row of unnaturally straight dentures.