The Things We Learn When We're Dead

by Charlie Laidlaw

  In a flash, Austin was off to the kitchen, coming back with the plastic washing-up bowl into which Lorna vomited, feeling wretched and stupid and useless. Then she tried crawling to her bedroom, realising that there was no point in even trying to stand up. How could anybody, drunk or sober, stand up on only two legs?

  Austin was kneeling beside her as she inched past like a slow tortoise. ‘Do you want me to call a doctor?’

  ‘No doctors,’ she said. ‘Bastards prescribed me these.’ The pill bottle was still in her hand and she threw it against the wall, shearing off its lid and scattering her medication across the floor.

  ‘Christ!’ said Austin, not knowing what to do.

  ‘I’ll be fine.’

  ‘Lorna, you can’t even stand up.’

  ‘I can crawl. Look,’ she managed to say, inching forwards again.

  Then, without warning, she felt herself being hoisted into the air and for a few moments wondered if she was asleep and dreaming and had regained the power of flight. She allowed herself to be carried to bed and laid down on top of the duvet. Austin returned with the washing-up bowl, cleaned, and laid it down beside the bed.

  ‘What should I do?’ he asked.

  She couldn’t form words.

  ‘Lorna!’

  He tried shaking her, but she had already sunk into near-oblivion.

  ‘Christ!’ He walked to the window and back again, a hand to his forehead. Lorna was lying on her side, vaguely aware of him looking at her and swearing several more times. He tried propping a pillow and duvet next to her, as if to prevent her from rolling on to her back. But she felt too hot and with a last effort from her leaden limbs she pushed them away. Austin swore again and walked backwards and forwards, rubbing his face. Eventually, he lay down beside her, propping himself against her. And she fell into a deep sleep.

  * * *

  Suzie arrived back in the middle of the night. She’d been planning to spend the night in Glasgow, then been concerned for her friend. The next thing that Lorna knew was that her bedroom light had been turned on.

  Suzie was standing at the foot of the bed, eyes blazing.

  ‘Lorna, you fucking slut!’

  Austin had leaped out of bed. Suzie didn’t register that he was fully clothed. Instead, Suzie had marched across the room, nostrils flared.

  Lorna raised herself on her elbows, then planted her feet on the bedroom floor. Suzie didn’t seem to notice that Lorna was fully clothed as well.

  She knew what was coming and closed her eyes. She could have raised her hands to protect herself, but it hardly seemed worth the effort. She was still befuddled and, through Suzie’s eyes, she knew what it must look like.

  ‘You fucking, fucking, bitch!’

  There was an explosion of pain on one side of her face. Lorna just sat there, her mind blank and her eyes closed. When she opened them again, the Porsche was revving in the street and Suzie had left.

  * * *

  Lorna was sick several more times, and then swallowed aspirin. She couldn’t have been asleep for more than three hours, but it felt like three days, because she could now stand on two legs, even walk to the kitchen unaided, despite feeling like death. Neither of them quite knew what to do, or where Suzie had gone. A hotel, probably, or maybe North Berwick. Perhaps she’d come back. They both tried phoning her, but Suzie wasn’t taking calls, so they sat in the kitchen, thinking separate thoughts, Lorna shielding her eyes from the overhead light, and suffering from a crashing headache. After a while, there seemed no point in waiting up for her. She’d gone somewhere, and wasn’t coming back that night. Austin retreated back to Suzie’s room, his mobile pressed to his ear, leaving yet another message.

  Lorna sat in the kitchen by herself, the aspirin beginning to work, for some reason remembering a careers talk from Mr Sullivan. It was spring; there were daffodils under her classroom window. It was Mr Sullivan’s job to prepare that year’s school leavers for the wider world. Some of the class, herself included, already knew what they wanted to do. Suzie, already blurring the lines between school and what lay beyond, had been modelling for years. Kiddie stuff, then adolescent stuff, then beachwear. Others in the class had no idea what they wanted to do, even some who weren’t planning to go onto university. It was Mr Sullivan’s job to look at strengths and weaknesses and suggest alternatives.

  Later on, said Mr Sullivan, I’ll want to see you each individually. For now, he said, I’d simply like to know what kind of people you most admire.

  Two of the girls in the class said nurses. Under pressure from Mr Sullivan, they explained that nurses cared for people but didn’t get paid very much. Another girl said a policewoman. She was planning to go into the police force. You have to care and have courage to be a police officer, she said, puffing out her chest. Mr Sullivan didn’t bother to ask Suzie who she most admired.

  One of the boys also said policeman and a second suggested astronaut. You can’t get more courageous than that, he explained. Did he want to go into space? asked Mr Sullivan. The boy shrugged; he was planning to be a plumber, like his dad.

  When Mr Sullivan’s eyes fell on Lorna, she told him that she admired people who didn’t drop litter. A few people in the class stifled giggles. A few didn’t bother, and laughed. Mr Sullivan held up a hand, then motioned her to go on. I admire people, said Lorna, who make an effort. I like people who try to do well at things, whatever those things are. It doesn’t have to be work things, she said. I admire people who try to be good mothers. I admire people who make an effort to be good husbands. I like people who take the trouble to find a rubbish bin.

  Lorna wasn’t being particularly serious but, with her own future mapped out, she couldn’t be bothered playing along with Mr Sullivan. But she didn’t know that Mr Sullivan hadn’t tried hard enough at being a good husband and that, not meaning to, she’d said something horrible to him.

  * * *

  That same year, confiding in Suzie about losing her virginity, she’d hurt Austin. Suzie had blabbed to everyone, as Lorna knew she would. Then, at least, it hadn’t really been her fault. But in the years that followed, she’d hurt him again and again, deliberately, sending terse messages of rejection.

  * * *

  Years earlier, pottering on their boat, her mum and dad talking about things that she didn’t understand, Tom was sick. They’d eaten lamb cutlets for supper and most of them were now spread across Tom’s bed. Instead of sympathy, Lorna gave him a mouthful of abuse. Their small cabin stank. She’d been dreaming about piloting a rebel X-wing, and hadn’t wanted to be woken up, and then be forced to endure the stench of his sickness. She’d fetched him a bucket and cloth, but told him to clean it up himself. She’d hissed bad things in his ear, not wanting to shout and wake up their parents. You’re always being sick, she accused him. God, I wish you were dead, she said.

  * * *

  Lorna had always been innocent of bad intentions, but that didn’t mean that she couldn’t hurt people. Her cheek ached; but it was no more than she deserved.

  Towards dawn, drifting in and out of troubled sleep, her phone bleeped. It was an incoming text message, from Suzie.

  I’m sorrry, it said. Austn explliened thngs.

  * * *

  Relief finally brought sleep. Her dream was of running, with something behind her: she didn’t know what it was that was chasing her, except that it seemed only to be a shadow, without substance or form, but that it was close behind. It had reptilian eyes, and it wanted to harm her. Only by running at full tilt could she stay safe, keep ahead of the creature. As she ran, hotter and hotter, bathed in perspiration, she felt the creature slip back, until its shadow was in the far distance and then nowhere to be seen.

  In the morning, when she made it to the kitchen, Austin was already dressed, drinking black coffee and wearing a big grin.

  ‘Sorry about last night,’ said Lorna, feeling chastened. ‘Should’ve taken the doctor’s advice. God, I feel awful.’ She searched in a drawer for more painkill
ers, now shielding her eyes from the low morning sun.

  ‘I’ve spoken to her, Lorna. She’s calmed down. Stupid cow drove to London.’

  ‘She sent me a text.’

  ‘She finally remembered that we weren’t both starkers. Once that small detail dawned on her, she began to see sense.’

  Lorna had opened a cupboard to fetch down a new jar of coffee. Austin was drinking the remains of the old one. Then she realised that she hadn’t been out to the shops for days and days.

  ‘Oops,’ said Austin, ‘I seem to have finished it.’ He was wearing blue jeans and a grey shirt, the same grey as her father’s suits. His smile was dazzling.

  Lorna was dialling Suzie’s number.

  ‘Oh God, I’m really sorry, babe.’ Suzie sounded close to tears.

  ‘Suze, I don’t blame you.’

  ‘I was tired, that’s all. Hours and hours of a bloody photo-shoot and then three fucking hours with the most boring imbeciles I have ever met! Three fucking hours of smiling sweetly and being leered at! Lorna, I shouldn’t have flown off the handle. I shouldn’t have done what I did. But I didn’t know what to think.’

  ‘I’m sorry too, Suze. It’s just that I’d taken those pills...’

  ‘I should have been there, Lorna. Christ, you’re my friend! I shouldn’t have left you alone. On top of everything, the fucking puppy peed on my shoes. I couldn’t even kick the damnable thing to death, what with everybody looking at me and cheering. What a fucking nightmare! The highlight of their bloody evening! Then, guess what they gave me to clean my shoes with? Actually, babe, no guesses needed! Ultra-absorbent bloody toilet paper, that’s what!’ Suzie, back at full volume, now paused. ‘Still best friends, huh?’

  Lorna was standing by the kitchen window, her face turned to her castle. ‘Of course, Suze. The bestest. Always.’

  Maybe Suzie heard this, maybe not. The line had gone dead.

  * * *

  Lorna got dressed and, from behind dark glasses, walked to the corner shop at the end of their street. She’d made a small list of essentials they were running low on. Coffee and painkillers were top of the list. The small grocery was run by a middle-aged Asian man who had been there since she’d moved to Arthuria Road. They were on first name terms, Ali and Lorna, but she’d never asked whether he was Indian, Pakistani, Bangladeshi or Scottish. Or maybe he was from somewhere else entirely. She didn’t want to offend him by asking impertinent questions.

  In the corner of his shop was a small TV that sat on a bracket suspended from the ceiling. Normally, it was patched into the shop’s security camera and Lorna could watch herself shopping. Now, it was showing a news broadcast and a knot of other shoppers were gathered under it.

  Lorna handed over money.

  ‘I take it that you haven’t heard?’ said Ali, handing back change.

  ‘Heard what?’ she asked.

  Fault

  Lorna been dreading the Redmarsh dinner party, having only accepted the invitation from a sense of obligation; that Toby was going to be, in all likelihood, her senior partner and that such invitations would only come rarely. This was her chance to shine, to make a first impression. Thinking positively, she’d also concluded that it might do her some good. She’d hardly been out of the flat all week, except to visit a hillside. The dinner party would force her to put on make-up, get dressed up and, perhaps, finally emerge from the dark tunnel in which she’d been sheltering. To be on the safe side, she collected up all the pills that had scattered on the floor, vowing not to drink that evening.

  But, despite Suzie’s forgiveness, she still felt guilty and tearful. The torpid sadness of the evening before, lying on the sofa and watching the ceiling start to spin, had been replaced by something sharper. She watched the news on TV, her own loss receding as the carnage in London unfolded. All day there were graphic updates and more images of the injured. She phoned Toby to ask if the dinner party was still going ahead. She was told that it was. Things have to go on normally, Lorna was told. Later, applying mascara, she started to cry. The void was still inside her, suddenly sore again, but it was also now visible from the TV. Lorna tried to call Suzie, but her phone was turned off.

  Back from the Redmarsh dinner party, Lorna found a note on the kitchen table, written in pencil from Austin. He’d decided to follow Suzie back to London. Reclamation can wait! he’d written in big, bold writing. He’d obviously come back to the flat during the evening, packed a few things, and left.

  Lorna poured herself a glass of orange juice and flushed her pills down the loo. She’d never had to rely on chemicals before, and wouldn’t do so again. She sat down and switched on the TV. She didn’t have to work the next day; she didn’t have to do anything all day. The HappyMart could do without her, her coursework was almost complete; an honours degree was as good as hers.

  It took her some moments to realise that the phone was ringing.

  It was Suzie’s mother and she was crying. ‘Oh God, Lorna, I’m so sorry.’ Lorna listened to sniffles, then the phone was passed to Suzie’s dad. ‘We thought you should know. You’re her closest friend.’ He sounded tired and angry. ‘We’ve been trying to get hold of you.’

  Lorna didn’t say anything.

  ‘She was on the King’s Cross tube train.’ Her father, presumably at the hospital, was speaking over sirens.

  Lorna’s heart had stopped. The walls of the flat seemed to sway. There was something awake in her stomach and she could feel it uncurl, pushing against her ribcage so she could hardly breathe. She put out an arm to steady myself. ‘She’s alive but she might not make it, Lorna,’ he said.

  She said nothing, couldn’t breathe. The thing in her stomach was forcing air from her lungs.

  Lifting her eyes, her castle was flying effortlessly above its rock. She couldn’t speak.

  ‘She got caught in the blast, that’s all we know. She’s lost a lot of blood. Lorna? Lorna?’

  But by then the phone had slipped from her grasp. The creature inside her stomach was growing larger and more venomous. The dark place it inhabited was closing in around her. She couldn’t suck in air and needed to be free.

  * * *

  Lorna had come up against a brick wall. Her memories had come to a full stop. All she could now remember was the push of wind against her face.

  ‘I told you, Lorna, that we regenerated your body at the precise moment you killed yourself.’ Irene was looking at her, a cigarette between her fingers. ‘At the time, you didn’t believe me.’

  Lorna had flown from the flat; she hadn’t wanted to be inside. She didn’t want to be anywhere, except with Suzie. She looked up and down the street, looking for the Porsche, then remembered that it was now in London. At that time of night, the airport and railway station would be closed. London seemed a universe away. Her thoughts had flown apart; she had made things go wrong.

  On the pavement, Lorna saw only darkness; a darkness that she had made for herself, and a darkness she had inadvertently created for her friend. She remembered the approaching car’s lights, not caring one way or the other what happened. Its impact would offer a kind of escape: an atonement, if not a very good one. She hadn’t meant to step off the pavement. She’d stumbled and lost her balance. Then, watching the approaching car, Lorna had felt a sense of judgement. Being run over made no sense, but it also made perfect sense. Not moving offered a solution. Lorna looked up, seeing stars, the breath of the car touching her face.

  ‘Is she okay?’ she asked God.

  He spoke in a low voice. ‘I really don’t know, Lorna. News takes a while to reach us.’

  ‘It was my fault.’

  God looked pained. ‘The people who set off the bombs were responsible, Lorna. Not you.’ He looked up at Irene, who put a hand on Lorna’s shoulder. ‘I don’t know if you meant to step in front of the car,’ said God softly, ‘but once you had, you didn’t get out of its way. You neither chose to live nor to die. I told you, I felt sorry for you.’

  Lorna was thinking
about Suzie; how she’d gallop her horse through waves, how she could jump around for hours and call it dancing. It took her some moments to force her mind back to the wrinkled old man and his beads. ‘Why am I here, God?’

  ‘I brought you to Heaven,’ said God, ‘so that you can make that choice.’

  * * *

  In a room full of TVs, Lorna saw her life being played out in fuzzy black-and-white. On one TV, she was lying on a beach. On another, she was walking down an Edinburgh street. Each reflected a part of her life: small fragments caught on camera, meaning nothing. Only if you fitted the fragments together did they make some kind of sense. She saw her father on one screen and saw him again on the bridge of a riverboat. Her mum was sitting on a picnic rug, spreading jam onto bread. Suzie was holding up a toilet roll, a puppy frolicking at her feet, and making it seem important. In another, was the inside of a shop and Mike’s bulk filling an aisle; in another, a soldier with an assault rifle. Her life had been a blank canvas, now it was daubed with everything that had happened.

  She’d chosen to be a lawyer, but could have chosen to do something else. Mr Sullivan had probably been right. She could have chosen Austin; instead, she had rejected him twice. She could have resisted Joe’s attentions, and avoided all unpleasantness. But she hadn’t. Her mistakes had all been the result of choice, with Suzie’s injury now the worst of them. Lorna’s eyes were brimming over.

  ‘Irene, you told me that I was dead. You said that I couldn’t go back, remember? You said that the dead can’t talk to the living.’

  Irene shrugged without apology. ‘You are, sweetie, a temporal phenomenon. You are dead in one place and alive in another.’

  ‘But you said that my ashes had been scattered.’

  ‘Time is relative, Lorna. God is merely asking you to choose in which place you’d prefer to be dead.’

  ‘Or alive,’ said Lorna, a catch in her throat. Her returned memories, ephemeral yet vivid, had opened new horizons. She now felt dormant wings stir against her spine and, if only she could just open her eyes, she could rejoin the real world and try to make things right again.