Hearts in the Hard Ground

café. I didn’t ask her to call in sick to stay with me. She loved that job, though it killed her feet, and as good as she’d been with Marley, Claire and Charlie, she must have been glad to disappear for a while into a world where the biggest concern was whether they had enough clean cups. My permanent offer from the office had never materialised so I had nowhere to be; I watched her go from the doorstep, and when the beat of her loafers on the pavement faded, I turned to look up the dark, shifting stairs.

Did you hear that? This is my house.

The darkness that was Patricia, impervious to the sunlight streaming in through the front door, slyly retreated. I watched her slink all the way up into the loft hatch. So that’s where she’d rooted herself like a snail, her shell’s nub: at the highest point of the house. I brushed my brow, tucking my hair behind my ear. I had to face her, or this place would never be mine.

I grasped the bannister and hauled myself up, fighting the pressure pushing me down. Static blocked my ears, my skin fizzled. The stairs grew feverishly hot underfoot. Finally, I stood beneath the hatch. There was a cord to pull on, but the ladder was rusted and refused to extend. I cleared my vanity — chucking the mirror on my bed and disturbing the cat; Sorry, Puss — and dragged it onto the landing. It took my weight, just, though I had to brace one foot upon the railing in order to pull the ladder down. It was a rickety thing, that railing. A cheap replacement for the one Charlie fell through over fifty years ago. It didn’t take much to imagine it breaking, or for my sweaty sole to slip … I’d install another, I promised the house as I climbed the ladder. I’d install a hardwood railing, strong as bone.

I’d never been in the loft before. When you have barely enough stuff to fill the rooms you use day to day, there’s no need for one. Mine had a proper floor and a grubby dormer window overlooking the back. Annika had warned me about the junk left up here, boxes and furniture the estate agent hadn’t bothered to clear, but I hadn’t expected to see a bedframe and nightstand. This was a garret. Houses like mine had employed maids once, and this was where they must have slept. This was where Patricia had slept, hidden out of the way as if she were staff, not family.

She slid alongside me suddenly, a gelid creature. I grabbed a beam to steady myself. The wood was worn smooth as skin.

How can you be here? I asked. You left.

Deaths, she told me, aren’t the only things that accumulate in old houses. Did you never question why the boy replays his end yet the crone does not? Quiet moments impress themselves upon a house as well as hideous ones. So do years passed in solitude, years in which you’re expected to come running like a dog when the bell chimes. You survive on the goodwill of family who resent having to keep you, and the charge you’re told you’re meant to love often spits in your face, calls you names.

Oh, the names Mum called me…

Did you push him?

Patricia was formless but I sensed her grin, too wide, too sharp. Of course. The little shit had it coming. Why the shocked face — you think you did any better?

Cast her out, Annika had urged, but you can’t cast out a part of yourself. I tipped my head back and let tears trickle out the corners of my eyes. The beams met above my head like a vaulted ceiling.

There was a moment, I breathed. There was a moment when the last scrap of Mum was gone and we could do nothing but wait. I sat beside her for days. No sleep, only coffee — too much coffee. Mum had always been proud. Self-sufficient. She would have hated this. She would have said you wouldn’t put a dog through it. It would be kinder if…

I asked her. I stroked her hand and actually asked my mum if she wanted me to end it.

I’ve gone over that moment so many times. It’s a scab I have to pick. In most versions, she doesn’t respond; she’s barely conscious. In others, she gives my finger a little squeeze. There’s a cushion behind me, or on the foot of the bed, or propping her head up. Wherever I find it, I crush it to me like a ratty teddy. Sometimes it’s corduroy. No, she deserves better — it’s pleated satin, or mink. Lately, it’s been embroidered with roses. Only once did I imagine pressing it onto her face, only for a second before my mind jerked away, disgusted with itself. But that’s the image that stays, the phosphene that dances on the inside of my eyelids. And like the quiet moments and the hideous moments, given enough time, it might as well be real.

I begged, asked, demanded that she leave, but Patricia wouldn’t be banished so easily. The small hours were her most spiteful, once she knew my secret. She taunted me, almost drove me mad. After a few years, I learned to withstand her barbs. Annika re-applied for university and we cleared out the loft to make room for her studies; only when Patricia’s room was no longer hers did the pain finally begin to fade.

So did Claire. Losing her stung as much as losing Marley, but even the good times must be forgotten in the end.

I plotted flowerbeds in the garden with sticks and twine, filling my hands with the smell of rich loam. I chose begonias, busy Lizzies and cosmos. In summer, my house of dead things burst with life. In between weeding and watering, I would sit back on my haunches to let the sun warm my face and imagine a split