‘Have I been here before?’
‘Yes, Nan,’ Chloe says.
She doesn’t argue.
Chloe walks slowly behind her, keeping hold of her at the elbow; the disease that started somewhere in her brain has worked its way into the tips of her toes, making it easier for her to fall these days.
‘Are you sure I’ve been here before?’
‘Yes, Nan.’
‘And who do we know here?’
‘Mum, Nan.’
‘My mum?’
‘No, mine, Nan.’
‘Oh, sorry to hear that, dear. Was she nice?’
Chloe guides her left up a winding path. She obeys without question, past lines and lines of neutral mottled headstones, each engraved with names and dates to sum up the soul lying beneath. Chloe has never found graveyards creepy, not like some kids. She remembers late-night dares that she was certain would reward her with friendships she wouldn’t otherwise be entitled to. She’d hear them laugh, their hurried footsteps fleeing as she wandered inside the darkness. Too humiliated to leave, she’d sit down among the stones to read them, fantasising about the people who kept her company that night, and all the ones that followed. Chloe preferred these ghosts to the living – they weren’t anywhere near so cruel. You knew where you were with dead people.
At the top of the path Chloe and Nan turn right and walk across the wet grass until they stand in front of a shiny black headstone: Stella Hudson. Who fell asleep . . .
The pair of them are silent for a moment.
‘Stella Hudson,’ Nan says with a sigh.
Chloe puts an arm around Nan and pulls her closer. She knows what to do, she has watched people in cemeteries for as long as she can remember.
‘Was she one of my old neighbours?’ Nan asks.
Chloe thinks for a second of explaining, while Nan stands looking puzzled at the grave. Instead, she tells her yes, and crouches down closer to the earth, closer to Stella.
‘Oh look, someone’s left some flowers here,’ Nan says.
Cellophane wraps the pink carnations they brought last weekend in an untidy hug, the petals curling, browning at the edges. Chloe pulls them from the vase at the foot of the stone; their slimy stems follow.
‘I know,’ Nan says, her eyes brightening with a new idea, ‘we can put these daffodils in there.’
Chloe takes them from her and peers into the vase, picking out a few dead leaves, and one long, thin slug. She fishes the creature out, examining its shiny back in the palm of her hand, before discarding it onto the grave next door.
‘Oh, there’s no water left,’ Chloe says, picking up the vase.
Nan tuts slowly.
Chloe stands up and looks round. ‘Listen, stay here, I’m going to find a tap.’
She walks away without thinking, then quickly retraces her steps back to Nan. She zips up Nan’s parka, securing it under her chin, and pulls the hood up over her white hair.
‘Stay here, OK?’ Chloe tells her. ‘I won’t be a minute.’
Nan nods.
Chloe hurries back the way they came, turns right, and takes another gravel path winding past more headstones. A wooden sign marks the Garden of Remembrance; she follows it, and sees on the other side of the garden a squat log-panelled hut. Inside there is a tap.
She fills the vase quickly, then makes her way out towards the path back to Nan. Only as she does, she spots a memorial stone. She stops and stares, then bends down for a closer look. She pulls her coat sleeve up over her hand and wipes it across the small black marble stone. It is a memorial for a little girl.
‘Not a nice job, is it?’ a voice behind her interrupts.
She turns to see a man in his seventies, wearing a flat cap and wiping at his rheumy blue eyes with a white handkerchief. He points at the plaque. ‘But we’ve got to remember them somehow, ent we? The only way we know how.’
Chloe nods. She looks up towards the path where she had left Nan.
‘Irene usually does this for our Katy – our granddaughter, like – but winter’s got her bad this year, terrible chest infection, so I said I’d come up here today, just check on the babby. We don’t get up as often as we’d like – perhaps why we haven’t met before. It makes you feel bad, dun’it, when you can’t come as often? Still, you never forget, you always carry them in here.’ He pats his chest, and coughs a little as he does. He glances at her vase then. ‘Be careful you don’t put too much water in there, otherwise the birds come and get a drink and, well, it makes the plaque messy, like, them doing their business and all, if you know what I mean.’
Chloe tips a little water away onto the grass. She is about to hurry back to Nan when he starts talking again.
‘Relative, is she? Daughter?’
Chloe doesn’t reply.
He bends forward, squinting a little, and takes a closer look at the stone. ‘Oh, 1979, must make you . . . a sister?’
‘Oh, I . . .’ She looks down at the daffodils in her hand and realizes how he came to this conclusion.
‘Ah, well, she’ll be glad to have you looking out for her, that’s what big sisters are for, ent they?’ He smiles and wipes at his eyes once more with the handkerchief. ‘You want to get some plants in here, you could spread out a bit—’
‘Oh, I’m not—’
‘Oh, don’t worry about having green fingers.’ He lifts his hands in protest as Chloe shuffles from foot to foot. ‘There ent much you need to know. First of all, take a look at the soil.’ He picks up some and rubs it between his fingertips; his fingers are a reddish purple, the years having hardened them against the cold. ‘The type of plants that will grow and thrive all depend on the soil at your feet. You want to think, is it gritty, sandy, or does it form a solid mass – like clay?’
Chloe shuffles on
