She let herself in to a hallway ticking with silence and dust, a few letters and a slippery pile of junk mail skittering away as she pushed the door open. It was late morning but the gloomy September sky and the tall trees outside meant that the place was busy with shadows. She hurriedly flicked on all the light switches she could see, blinking at a chintzy lampshade that leapt into pastel life.
The living room was tidy, and dusty. There were no dirty cups, no half-read books propped on the sofa. There was an old red coat slung over the back of a chair, its thick wool pilling at the sleeves. The kitchen was in a similar state; everything cleaned and put away. Her mother had, Heather noticed, even turned the page over on the calendar to show September, despite knowing she wouldn’t be seeing the rest of the month.
“What was the point, Mum?” She tapped her fingers against the slick pages, noting that there was nothing written in the little boxes, no notes saying: “cancel milk/kill self.”
Heather stomped up the stairs, her footfalls muffled by the thick carpet. The main bedroom was as tidy as the rest of the little house. Her mother’s dressing table was clean and neat, glass jars of cold cream and bottles of perfume in rows like soldiers, while a pair of brushes lay next to an old-fashioned hand mirror. Heather sat down and looked at the brushes. Here, her mum had been less careful, less fastidious. There were strands of hair caught in the bristles, wisps of blonde and the occasional streak of wiry gray.
Organic material, thought Heather. For some reason the phrase seemed to settle in her chest, heavy and poisonous. You left behind organic material, Mum. Did you mean to?
The only thing out of place on the dressing table was a screwed-up ball of slightly yellowed paper, covered in a close-set typeface. In an effort to distract herself from the hairbrushes, Heather picked it up and smoothed it out, half expecting to see a page from one of her own articles—her mother might not have been in touch very often but Heather was sure she still kept a critical eye on her daughter’s career—but she quickly saw that it was a page from a book, possibly quite an old one, judging from the texture of the paper and the font. There was an old, woodcut illustration that at first she couldn’t get her head around—it seemed to show what looked like a goat, or possibly a lamb, standing over another animal. A dog, perhaps? The dog’s belly had been cut open, and smaller goats were pushing rocks inside the suspiciously clean opening. Heather’s eyes skipped to the text, which informed her that when the wolf woke up, he was thirsty, and he went to the river to drink …
It was a page from a book of fairy tales, but what her mother was doing with it, she had no idea. Colleen had never liked the older, gorier tales; story time when Heather had been little had involved a strict diet of happy ponies and girls at boarding school. The page made her feel uncomfortable: the strange picture, the way it had been crumpled up and left on the table. Did her mother even mean for her to see it?
“Who knows what you were thinking, right? You must have been … you must have been out of your mind, I don’t know …”
Suddenly, the room seemed very warm and close, the silence too loud. Heather stood up, a little shakily, crashing hard enough into the dressing table that a bottle of perfume fell over—the stopper tumbled from the bottle, startling her further.
“Shit.”
The scent filled the room, flowery and thick. It made her think of the morgue, and specifically of the waiting room, which had featured several tasteful flower arrangements, as though that could distract you from what you were about to see. She shook her head. It was important not to fixate on it, that’s what her housemate Terry had said. Don’t think about the smell, don’t think about the wind whipping along isolated cliffs, and definitely don’t think about the particular effect that a very long drop will have on the organic material of a body …
“Shit. I need some air.”
Heather shoved the crumpled paper into a drawer where she couldn’t see it and headed back downstairs. She was on her way to the backdoor when the doorbell rang out through the house.
Instantly, the sick, tight feeling in her chest was replaced by anger. It would be someone selling something, or collecting for a charity, or chattering about god. Or it would be Mr. Bloody Ramsey. She swept to the door, already savoring the look on this interloper’s face when she said can’t you see I’m grieving, how dare you, and was startled to find a tall, well-dressed older woman on her doorstep. She didn’t have a clipboard or a donation box, but she did have a covered casserole dish in her hands and an expression of sympathy.
“Er, can I help you?”
“Heather? But of course it is.” The woman smiled, and Heather found her anger fizzling into nothing. She had very short gray hair, cut into a style that would be quite unflattering on most people, but she had strikingly good cheek bones and a long, handsome face. Heather could not guess her age; she was clearly old, older than her mother, but her skin was largely unlined and her bright eyes were clear and sharp. Mary Poppins, thought Heather wonderingly. She reminds me of Mary Poppins. “I’m Lillian, from up the road, dear. I just wanted to pop in and make sure
