by Ryan Casey
Steve cleared his throat. Loosened his fist. “Sorry,” he said, staring at the table, tears in his bloodshot eyes. “I’m just…Sorry.”
Officer Pembrokeshire nodded. He took a brief glance at Ashley, who held onto Grace’s hand. Ashley wasn’t sure about this glance. What it implied. What it suggested. Did Officer Pembrokeshire believe his colleague? After all, what was more plausible? That a woman presumed dead—no, obviously dead—in last year’s sinkholes comes wandering back into the world unbruised, untouched, and wearing the same clothes she died in. Or that somehow, her death had been faked. A compensation stunt. After all, the Wisdom family—and Ashley, partly—had received a grievance token from the Lancashire County Council, as well as a whole load of other charities around the country and the world. Not enough money to make a person rich, but enough.
“We’ll talk more on Friday,” Officer Pembrokeshire said, closing the black folder in front of him. “As much as I want to get this done now—as much as we all want to get this done now—it’s best if we wait just a short while.”
Mr. and Mrs. Wisdom nodded and stood up. Grace kept hold of Ashley’s hand as he rose to his feet, his knees wobbly as jelly. Steve was the last to rise. He didn’t even look at Grace, or Ashley, or anyone else for that matter.
Ashley and Grace walked towards the door, Grace’s parents either side of them.
“Go home. Get some rest. Get used to…I dunno. Living again, or whatever. We’ll talk more Friday.”
Ashley nodded. He held Grace’s hand, his sweaty fingers interlocked through hers, and as Officer Pembrokeshire stood aside, he walked out of the interview room and into the corridor.
The second they stepped out of the room, Ashley felt the eyes on Grace and him. He saw the jaws drop. The hands cover mouths. Police officers completely freezing in time, all sorts of thoughts in their heads, all sorts of possibilities adding up.
“Oh, it’d probably be best if I took you lot out of the back door,” Officer Pembrokeshire said. “Keep the media away for another five minutes, or something.”
Ashley followed Officer Pembrokeshire away from the gawping crowd and back towards the grey door he’d entered this corridor through.
He held Grace’s hand tightly. She was back. She was here.
But he could still taste that Hubba Bubba in his mouth. The taste of her car falling. The taste of the fear—the knowledge that death was imminent—she must’ve experienced.
Although he held her hand, smelt her perfume, he realised that the Grace-shaped void hadn’t been filled.
It’d just got a whole lot bigger.
EIGHT
Ashley and Grace sat in the back seats of Mr. and Mrs. Wisdom’s silver Mercedes. Sitting in the back of this car, the smells of the minty air freshener wafting in his face, Ashley thought back to the days when he’d first met Grace in his early twenties. He couldn’t drive—still couldn’t; get over it—so often relied on lifts from Mr. Wisdom either back home or from his place to the Wisdom household. No matter what—no matter whether there was just Mr. Wisdom and him in the car—Ashley always sat in the back seat. There’d always be some files on the passenger seat, or some shopping, or some boxes.
He looked up at the rear-view mirror. Saw Mr. Wisdom peering through at him, his eyes as stern as ever, only tireder. Redder. This was an ordeal for all of them. A new reality for each and every one of them.
They were going back to the Wisdom family household. Mrs. Wisdom had kindly suggested that her daughter and Ashley should eventually get some time alone, but as soon as Ashley remembered the sickly state his bathroom was in, he disagreed.
Besides, there was another reason he didn’t want to be alone with Grace, not just yet. And that was the same reason his lips were sealed tightly together as they sat in the back of the Wisdom car, Grace’s warm hand still resting in his. And the truth was that he was scared. Scared of saying the wrong thing. Scared of saying nothing. Scared of asking where she’d been, why she was back, but scared too of hearing the answer. Because he needed an answer. They all needed an answer. But sometimes the hardest part was mustering up the courage to ask the question.
Grace didn’t speak a word in the car journey back to the Wisdom household. That said, nobody did. It was as if they were all adjusting to the new reality of the situation. Finding the right words to say. Gearing up and preparing for eventual conversation. But those questions. Those elephants in the room. They were fucking huge.
The car pulled up in the driveway of the Wisdom household.
“Looks like they beat us to it, drat it,” Mr. Wisdom muttered under his breath as he lifted the handbrake.
Ashley wasn’t sure what Mr. Wisdom was referring to at first, as he looked out at this familiar bungalow that he hadn’t set foot in in almost a year. But then he spotted somebody outside the front door of the bungalow, beside the swinging hanging baskets. Two people, actually. One of them had a camera. Another had a notepad. Journalists. Shit.
“Gits,” Mrs. Wisdom muttered, twitching, fiddling with her pink cardigan. “Gits. Why can’t they—they give a girl some peace? Why can’t they show respect? Dignity?”
Mr. Wisdom grabbed hold of the door handle as the journalists spotted the car and started to scoot over towards it. One of them was short and bald. The one with the camera was his opposite, tall and lanky with thick black sideburns.
“I think the most positive course of action here would be to swiftly move towards the front door. Ashley, keep hold of my daughter’s hand, and don’t say a word to these people.”
Ashley turned to Grace as the journalists got close to the car window, the camera already flashing, the journalists’ voices muffled through the glass of the window but clearly asking some kinds of questions. “You okay with that?” Ashley asked Grace.
Grace, who barely even seemed to notice the journalists as she stared towards the front of the car, looked to Ashley and smiled the largest smile she’d smiled since Ashley had seen her. Her blue eyes seemed to get even bluer, even deeper, as Ashley stared into them. She squeezed his hand. “I’m okay. Let’s get inside.”
Ashley reached for the door handle at his side, the side opposite where the journalists were.
“What are you doing? Why are you leaving through that door?” Mr. Wisdom asked.
“Trust me,” Ashley said.
“I’m not sure I do.”
Ashley didn’t read too much into these words, not right now. He knew what they meant, but truth be told he’d been through enough emotions today already to leave him feeling a little numb.
But these journalists rushed around towards Ashley’s side door as he opened it up and started to pull Grace out with him.
Then, when they’d made their way around the car, Ashley jumped back inside and opened the door nearest the bungalow entrance and made a swift dash for it, Grace’s hand in his, the journalists left behind.
Still, as he moved towards the bungalow entrance, stones from Mr. Wisdom’s driveway sticking into the soles of his shoes, Ashley heard the questions the journalists were asking, and heard the flicker of a camera behind them.
“Miss Wisdom, is it true that you never actually were a Sinker at all?”
“Grace—you’re looking awfully pretty for a girl who’s been underground for a year. How’d you manage that?”
Ashley and Grace rushed towards the wooden front door of the bungalow, which Mr. Wisdom struggled with his keys to open. Ashley’s cheeks burned. He wanted to turn around and tell the journalists to fuck off. He wanted to blast them and tell them to leave them alone.
But then, another part of him saw what they were asking, and accepted it. Because they had a point. How had Grace managed this?
“Stop fiddlin’ around with that, Harold,” Mrs. Wisdom said.
“I am not fiddling around,” Mr. Wisdom said, struggling to turn the key in the door. “This lock is temperamental. You know th
at better than—”
“Just—just shush and open up!”
Ashley, Grace and Mrs. Wisdom stood there in front of Mr. Wisdom as he tried and tried to open his front door. All of them kept their eyes off the people behind them; the noises of the camera flashing and the voices of repeated questions.
“What do you remember about the sinkhole?”
“How did you manage to pull this off?”
Ashley’s heart thumped. He tasted something metallic in his mouth, and realised it must’ve been blood through biting his lip too much.
“It’s okay, hun,” he said to Grace, keeping his eyes on Mr. Wisdom struggling with his own bloody front door. “It’s okay.”
“When are you going to talk, Miss Wisdom?
“What actually happened, Grace?”
“I don’t remember a thing,” a high-pitched voice said. “Only falling. And then darkness. And then…and then reawakening.”
Ashley didn’t recognise the voice at first. It wasn’t a voice he’d heard say many words in a long time, and judging by the way Mr. and Mrs. Wisdom turned around with wide eyes, it wasn’t either of them. And it certainly wasn’t any of the journalists.
Ashley looked to his side. Grace was staring directly at the two journalists with her beaming, bright smile and her deep blue eyes on show.
“So…so you remember nothing?” the lanky journalist said. He’d stopped clicking his camera. Literally just stopped, right there, as had his bald mate with his pen and paper. Both of them stared back at Grace with wide eyes. With amazed fixation.
Grace took a deep breath. Shook her head.
“You don’t have to—” Ashley started.
“I remember my car shaking,” Grace continued, her voice getting louder and croaky, showing the wear and tear of not having spoken many a word in a long time, like a tonsillitis patient gradually recovering. “I remember the earth shaking. Hearing metal screeching. I remember seeing the cars in front of me falling. I remember hearing the sounds of screams on the bus. And then I remember my car tipping forward and taking a look at Ashley. After that…I don’t remember anything. Just darkness. Then reawakening.”
A silence came over the driveway of the set-back cul-de-sac in the quiet neighbourhood. A cool breeze pricked against Ashley’s cheeks. Birds tweeted in the distance, as one of these two journalists pressed his camera less frequently than before, the other barely making a few notes. Both of them looked stunned, as if they were talking to a ghost.
Again, they were, kind of.
“A-ha!”
Ashley heard a clunk behind him. A loud creaking noise. He turned around and saw that Mr. Wisdom had managed to get the lock open.
“Come inside,” he said, staring judgementally over at the journalists, slightly more glassy-eyed after his daughter had finally spoke. “Let’s get inside and get some rest.”
Ashley stepped forward, gently tugging on Grace’s hand for her to follow. But she didn’t move. Not at first. She kept on looking back at the journalists. Kept on smiling, her blonde hair shaking in the breeze.
“Hun?” Ashley said.
Grace fluttered her eyelashes. Turned to Ashley. Smiled.
“Coming,” she said.
The pair of them walked out of the breezy driveway and through into the Wisdom household.
The journalists watched with wide eyes and dangling jaws as the front door slammed shut.
NINE
Ashley wasn’t sure what was more awkward: the fact that he was back eating dinner at Mr. and Mrs. Wisdom’s place, or the fact that he was eating dinner with his presumed-dead girlfriend. Probably the latter, in all truth.
Ashley sliced off a piece of gammon. It was salty and the edges were covered with crispy, juicy fat, just how he liked them. But it didn’t taste right. It tasted off. But that was probably the bitter taste in his mouth. The bitterness of the hangover. The bitterness of Grace’s return.
Mr. Wisdom was the first to attempt to slay one of the elephants in the room as he reached for a condensation-laced glass of water. “So…you say you remember nothing?” he said. He immediately brought the glass of water to his mouth, covering his face so to pretend he hadn’t even said a word.
“Harold,” Mrs. Wisdom said. She’d barely touched any of her food, but twitched her fork and knife around the plate, cutting the gammon into small pieces, chopping the ends of chips, and the like. “She—If she doesn’t want to talk, she doesn’t have to. She’s been through a lot. A lot more than we know. If she doesn’t—”
“It’s okay, Mum,” Grace said. Her voice had a calmness to it. It always was soothing and quite high-pitched, like the voice of an angel, but there was a weird detachment about it now. And the way her blue eyes were constantly wide. It was as if she was walking through a dream, not really absorbing or taking in the severity of anything. And yet, she still seemed so fragile. So tender. One had to be so wary of what they said.
Ashley slipped another piece of salty gammon into his mouth. Sat there in disbelief as the sweet smell of Grace’s perfume continued to surround him, overriding all of the food, everything else.
“I woke up with a headache,” Grace said. Her plate was the emptiest. She hadn’t wolfed her food down. Rather, she’d eaten quickly with grace. Funny. “I…I remember falling and then waking up.”
“Where was it you woke up, did you say?” Mr. Wisdom asked, again hiding his mouth behind his ice-cold glass of water.
Grace stared across the dimly lit room and over towards the family photos that rested atop the desk away from the dining table. “I…I don’t remember.”
Ashley’s stomach sank as he swallowed a dryer piece of gammon. And so the cycle continued. They’d spent the whole afternoon trying to find out little hints and clues about Grace’s reappearance. Tried to press her for answers as gently as they could, all the while getting used to the fact that, shit, she actually was back. She actually was alive.
But the honeymoon period was already wearing off. Everybody needed answers. A person didn’t just drop down a sinkhole that destroyed all traces of everything it swallowed up then come walking back into the world again. It didn’t work.
Which was another reason Ashley was so scared. He’d been the sole close witness of Grace Wisdom’s fall into that sinkhole. More and more, as he sat there chewing on this gammon and these slightly undercooked chips, he could see Mr. Wisdom peering over the table at him, casting an investigative eye in his direction.
“We’re just glad you’re back, honey,” Mrs. Wisdom said with a shaky smile. “We—we know everything’s in your own time. Got plenty of time to catch up before—before speaking to the police. And the media, they—they’ll get bored. They’ll move on.”
Ashley noticed the corners of her smile twitching even more. Mrs. Wisdom scratched at her arms. Cleared her throat and went back to cutting more food. Ever the optimist, even in the most unrealistic of situations.
“I just think it would be advisable to at least know what we’re going to say when we head back to that police station in three days,” Mr. Wisdom said, in his ever-slow and silky manner.
“What is there to say?” Grace said, before her mum could get a word in edgeways. Her voice was still calm. Controlled. “I fell down a sinkhole. I blacked out. I woke up. I remember walking into the police station fully aware of what happened to me. Knowing I just had to tell them what had happened, who I was. That’s it. That’s the truth.”
Hearing these words didn’t make Ashley feel any better. In fact, not even Grace’s warm hand on his thigh made him feel much better, not now. Because there was so much unanswered. So much wrong about this. And until he knew—until he partly understood what was going on—it would remain weird.
“What about you, Ashley?” Mr. Wisdom said. This time, he didn’t hide his face with the glass.
Ashley felt his cheeks warming up. Felt Mr. and Mrs. Wisdom’s eyes burning against him.
Felt Grace’s hand tensing and tensing on his thigh. “What—what about me?”
“Well,” Mr. Wisdom said, prodding a lone chip and examining it as he raised his fork like it was some sort of evidence. “Just with you seeing our daughter fall. There’s no chance you simply…simply imagined this, is there? I mean, it must have been stressful, seeing all those people fall through those sinkholes. It must have been—”
“No,” Ashley said. His face was warm and his fists tensed. He’d raised his voice slightly, reaffirmed by Mr. Wisdom’s sudden blink and freezing. He remembered Grace’s eyes. Grace’s wide eyes as the sinkhole swallowed her up. The taste of cherry Hubba Bubba in his mouth. The sound of crumbling ground, of screeching metal. The feeling at the pit of his stomach of utter, utter defencelessness.
“I’m just suggesting—”
“I know what I saw,” Ashley said, his voice raised but croaky. “I saw Grace fall. I—I watched her car fall. I know you’ve never been my greatest fan but I’ve suffered, just like you two. And I’ve no answers for this. None at all.”
The heat started to drift from Ashley’s face as he sat there in silence, taking a few deep, calming breaths. Mr. and Mrs. Wisdom looked at one another, Mrs. Wisdom narrowing her eyes at her husband. Grace’s hand tightened on Ashley’s leg.
“I’m—We’re all just tired,” Mr. Wisdom said, rising from his chair and taking away the plates, all in various levels of finishing.
Ashley didn’t say anything to this. He took it as a kind of apology.
Mrs. Wisdom turned to Ashley and her daughter as Mr. Wisdom opened up the door through to the kitchen, the smell of a chocolate cake drifting through into the dining area, just like they always made on special birthday occasions back when Ashley and Grace had been younger. Before he’d felt uncomfortable even coming to this place.
“I’ll go check on him,” Mrs. Wisdom said, smiling at both Grace and Ashley. “It’s—it’s good to have you back, honey. Strange. But good.”
