There was an epic amount of scrubbing. When you let the housework slide for a century it makes quite a lot of mess, it turns out. But we’ll skip over the finer details as you’ve probably got better things to do than read about eighteen months of house-cleaning. I’ll spare you that. I might be dead, but I’m not a monster!
For a time, I kept half an eye on the front door. For Mum and Dad and Birdie. In case. ‘You didn’t think we’d just leave you behind, did you?’ they’d say.
But once six months had passed, and still no sign – that was when I knew.
Dad could be pretty slapdash with time management, but even he would have managed to get back up the hill within that time without getting distracted. It was time to face facts. If they hadn’t come back in one hundred and two years plus six months, then they were never coming back.
After the Cleaning Crew did their thing, they sent in the Restoration and Rebuild Gang.
That’s when I would have given anything to go back to the cleaning phase. Because when you’re dead and a bunch of people you don’t know rebuild your house, it’s confusing and sad. You never know where to go. There aren’t any spaces to call your own. There’s always someone, somewhere, talking about joists.
Sometimes I’d be able to hang out in my bedroom all by myself, but there were months when that too was full of builders and restorers, and my only option was to hide myself away in dank, uncomfortable places. Even that came with considerable risk. I got stuck inside the airing cupboard for a month. It was like a nightmarish version of hide-and-seek.
For ages, I racked my brain to understand why they were doing it at all. Why clean and rebuild a cottage that wasn’t theirs? Why not concentrate on their own homes? How could it possibly benefit them? The answer I came up with eventually was pure kindness. That was who they were. The ones who do noble things because of the richness within their hearts. When they weren’t doing up dead people’s houses, they were probably rescuing kittens.
And do you want to know something crazy? They did everything in the dark. They installed these special shutters behind the curtains to keep out all but the weakest light, and they worked in the gloom, like bats. Perhaps that was just how they did things.
Or maybe the past needs to be dimly lit to be seen at all.
The worst bit about the Great Clean-up was when they threw things away. They did try to restore as much as they could, I’ll give them that. But a lot of our stuff was beyond saving.
Duvet covers, the rug I’d got for my bedroom, my favourite stripy blanket, most of our books and all of Birdie’s teddies went. Mum and Dad’s clothes that hadn’t been put away. Even the homemade Christmas decorations, abandoned on the tree for a century, were shoved unceremoniously into bags and thrown out of the door. The tree, now nothing more than a bald twig the height of an ice-cream stick, also ended up in the skip.
Once or twice I tried to stop them. I’d stand in the doorway, try to block their way, hold my hands out and beg to be allowed to keep them. I’d even make a grab for the bags myself.
But – at best – my fingers would slide off them. At worst, whoever was trying to get past me would walk straight through me, and I’d stand there and shudder for a while, trying to get the taste of them out of my mouth. In the end I just waved them on.
My only consolation during these bleak moments was that it wouldn’t last for ever. One day they would all leave, and my home would be mine again, and in the peace and quiet I could finally work out what I was for. Why I was still around, and what I needed to do so I could be reunited with Mum and Dad and Birdie.
And if anyone’s thinking how lovely that sounds – a spot of soul-searching, and wondering about existence, and our place in it, before we finally pass on through to the great death gateway in the sky – then why not come and have a go yourself, then tell me how lovely it is, all right?
ONE MORNING, THEY all seemed even more excited than usual. And not in that weird way that sometimes went on, when they found crusty old possessions of ours and went into inexplicable raptures that veered on the embarrassing.
This glee was more understandable. The whole house was full of happiness, like the night before Christmas. And while before they’d looked very much like they were in the middle of doing, now their faces shone with the satisfaction of having done. Instead of bringing out their tools, they were putting them away. Everything they did had an air of finality about it, a sense of a job being wound up.
Perhaps they were …
… leaving?
The joy hit me all at once. I wandered around the cottage to check. Yes, they were very definitely packing up.
Happiness seeped into me, the kind you get when those boring relatives you think will never leave say, over breakfast, ‘Better get back and water the hydrangeas, I suppose.’
My bliss intensified when I realised just how nice they’d made the place. The cottage felt more watertight and cleaner than it had ever been during my lifetime. There was even a brand-new welcome mat on the front step. Perhaps it wouldn’t be so bad, staying here by myself, for a while.
Why, the restoration crew had even cleaned up that photograph of us, the one of us on the hay bales at the wedding. But there was something not quite right about it. It was in the wrong spot.
Instead of being in its usual place
