I watched him go, struck by how doddery he seemed all of a sudden. He’d lost his vim and, wrapped up with Annika, I’d hardly noticed it last night. Could dead things die? I hoped not. He’d been a constant presence from the day I moved in, a mud-hook in a shifting tide.
The hallway tiles felt chilly against my bare feet, cold and hard as packed snow. The wine had summoned no sleep last night. Charlie had been at it again, and the elongated hand, too, reaching and scraping and tearing for me. My bedroom door actually bulged inwards, yielding to some uncanny pressure; and out on the landing the boy’s cycle grew frenzied, the laughter short, the fall sure, as if his ghost was consciously flinging itself through the railing to escape whatever else lurked out there with him. I curled my toes and shivered at the thought of the impact.
That Sunday, I skipped the memorial garden and browsed the charity shops instead, looking for a rug. I brought a faded oval rose-patterned one home (along with a few daffodil bulbs for the garden) and placed it in the hallway. Luckily, I’m not one for looks because the colours clashed something awful. I visited the memorial garden the following week but by then the damage was done; the spell broken. Guilt dogged my heels for a while. It’s only a stone marker, I told myself. She can’t expect me to stare at it every week. She’d feel sorry for Charlie too, and do what she could to provide a cosier floor, a softer landing — or at least the illusion of one.
Claire Dockett had lived in my house since the early noughties. The stain in my bedroom marked where she’d lain, seeping, until the neighbours missed her, and was still livid as the day she died. Odd, then, that it took her so long to pay me a visit. I’d replaced the linoleum in the utility room; the garden had thawed. Her snowdrops had wilted, supplanted by my daffs, by the time she shuffled into the sitting room in late February.
She sat on the sofa with a groan, in a spot I’d never used and now never would. The tabby, curled up asleep on my feet, hissed. I poked him quiet with my toes. The Doors were playing on the turntable. Mum always hated them. Keeping my eye on Claire, I stretched out and lowered the volume.
Hello, I said.
She tilted her head, cataracts shining. I heard her mumble something. Mum had mumbled a lot, too. Like kindness, patience was never one of my virtues. Once, I lost my temper trying to make sense of her slurred speech. I never forgave myself for the things I spat in frustration. I recalled the memory now, with Claire, as a reminder to hold my tongue.
But Claire didn’t want conversation. She’d been alone much longer than I, and liked to haunt her home the same way in which she’d lived: unassumingly, with handicrafts and a cup of hot malt. Something placid playing on the radio. Not quite Jim Morrison perhaps, but we managed. I noticed her hands plucking at her shawl, pining for an occupation, so I gave her Mum’s knitting needles. God knows I hadn’t used them. She clacked away quite happily with those once or twice a week, at peace with her own mind. That was her lesson to impart, I think. How to sit back and enjoy life’s little comforts and indulgences. Warm pyjamas at the end of a long day. A square of chocolate after dinner. A completed puzzle. The gradual reclaiming of agency that builds to bigger things like lunch away from your desk, a solo day-trip, and searching for nearby nursing vacancies. Even the tabby graduated from my feet to my lap. I suppose you deserve a name if you’re planning to stick around, I muttered. When he kneaded my thighs with his pin-needle claws, I cried with relief at the pain.
I was moved most of all by the sense that Claire was giving me back the evenings I’d lost with Mum — the two of us together, alone. A second chance at making that elusive transition from mother-and-daughter to … I don’t know. Friends? Companions? A shot at knowing her as something besides a mother, anyway.
Hey, I said to Claire one weekend, these must be yours.
I’d found a few old Polaroids in her box of things. I liked to go through it occasionally, lying on my belly flipping through snaps, my new log-burner warming my feet; winter was reluctant to loosen its hold, that spring. She turned her head towards my voice. Here’s you on holiday, I said, flipping the photograph over. Someone had written the date on the back. 1974, Eastbourne, I said — Remember that? There had been a postcard too, I was sure … I rifled deeper until I found it. The front boasted a garish painting of the prom with white buildings on the right and sea on the left, and tourists eating ice cream at the railings. Every peep of skin was ivory; everyone wore bright block colours. On the flipside was a brisk salutation, a thank-you-for-coming-to-stay, an anecdote. Just enough to fill the space provided without sacrificing neatness.
Signed, Aunt Patricia.
If this postcard was referencing the same holiday in the Polaroids, that placed it seven years after Charlie’s death. I wagged the postcard, deep in thought. The dates made sense, the address was right — this must be the spinster Annika told me about, the one accused of murdering Charlie. So, a young Claire had kept in touch with her disgraced aunt, had she? I wondered what the Bryants had thought about that.
Do you miss her? I asked Claire gently. Patricia?
Claire never usually reacted to anything. This time, her nostrils flared. The clacking of needles stopped. The house darkened. Pressure, as if I was sinking into deep water.
From the corner of my eye, I saw a body hit the
