Sunflowers in February Page 6

  ‘My daughter,’ Mum had answered, and she walked quickly away as the girl called out. ‘I’m sure she’ll look lovely in it.’

  I do look rather lovely in it … all things considered. The dress is long, and slender, with spaghetti straps, in a dark shimmery green, which would so have picked out the matching flecks of green in my eyes and made me look exotic. Mum had bought it because she had promised she would, so that I could look beautiful for my final day.

  The green of my eyes is long gone, stolen by the milky cloud that appeared on the first day. It is mercifully hidden by my eyelids, now closed and tinged with the fleshy pink of make-up cleverly applied by the guy that makes dead people look not so dead. It’s not how I would do it, but I suppose it’s not too bad.

  Standing over me, Mum pulls out a box from her bag and carefully lifts the lid, revealing a beautiful Chinese silk scarf, hand-painted with a spray of pink flowers. Buried in the folds of time is the fragile scent of her own mother, and she lifts it to her face, breathing in all the memories it holds. Combining these delicate traces of who we both were, she lays the scarf across my cold shoulders.

  She takes a moment to look at me, dressed, painted and fully embalmed, then places her old St Christopher necklace inside the gaps of my stiff cold fingers. ‘The patron saint of travellers, love,’ she whispers, ‘for your journey.’ She jumps a little at the icy coldness of my marble-hard skin as she kisses me lovingly for the last time on my forehead. Tears fall out of her watery eyes and land in my hair.

  ‘What is my journey, Mum?’ I ask her. ‘I don’t know where I’m supposed to go.’

  My parents are standing right beside me, sending me off on my way, and they can’t hear me asking for their help. Will I always be caught in this lonely gap between life and death, or will my cremation force me through into the next life?

  ‘Sleeping beauty,’ Dad says, breaking into the silence. He’s looking intently at my carefully made-up face with its delicate rouge on each cheek, faking the flush of my youth and my life. I can see the muscle in his jaw flexing again.

  He used to call me that when I was a little girl. He would come into my room to say goodnight and I would pretend to be asleep, my black hair fanned out on the pillow and my eyes tight shut, trying to look my most beautiful. He would kiss me on the cheek and I’d miraculously wake up and laugh. Then he’d hug me and tell me I was his princess, but that I really had to go to sleep, so I would wake up just as beautiful in the morning.

  I think we are both remembering this right now.

  He leans down and kisses my icy cheek, his eyes closing as if making a wish. Then they both leave the room knowing that even their love cannot break this spell.

  I’m in Nathan’s house but Nathan isn’t here.

  Nathan’s mum is sitting at their dining-room table hunched over the local newspaper. Why on earth would she be pulling me to her? She’s talking to herself, but her hand is covering her mouth as if she’s trying to keep the words that she’s saying inside.

  ‘I thought it was an animal. I didn’t know. I didn’t know. I didn’t know.’

  I lean over to see what she is staring at and there, printed in the newspaper, is a photograph of me staring back at her happily through grainy black-print eyes. I read the text beneath my photograph, which is telling her, in detail, how Lily Richardson was fatally hit by a vehicle that failed to stop on King’s Lane.

  It’s not a huge piece, but it does say that police still want to speak to anyone who may have information about any vehicle that may have been in that area around 17.30 on that Saturday. The article shows a map of the local area and a horrible accusing red arrow pointing to where the body, my body, was found.

  ‘Oh shit!’ she groans with a kind of angry desperation. ‘I’m sorry.’ And I suddenly realise with an awful clarity … that my boyfriend’s mother was the person who killed me.

  ‘Oh my God … it was you!’ I accuse, barely able to believe what I’m learning. ‘What will Nathan think when he finds out you knocked his own girlfriend down … then drove away?’ I ask her, my voice sounding incredulous and desperate, but of course she can’t hear me.

  I know Nathan’s mum quite well and she’s always been really nice. She’s pretty glamorous too, with her designer sunglasses and that old-fashioned car. And here I am, standing beside her, and I’m dead … because of her. My dad’s threat – ‘I’m going to kill the bastard that did it’ – echoes in my head. I too had kind of imagined the driver to be a man, who didn’t care enough about his crime to come forward. Instead, the ‘bastard’ is Nathan’s mum and she is the one not coming forward … hiding like a coward. I stand motionless by the highly polished table and stare at her for a long time.

  All around the room are photographs with smiling faces. Nathan and his dad fishing, Nathan and his mum and dad on holiday, his mum and dad’s wedding day, pictures of Nathan growing up, the very cute thing that was Nathan as a baby. There are even photos of children from Belarus, affected by the Chernobyl disaster, who the Petersons had hosted in previous summers, Nathan’s mum’s arms protectively round their skinny little shoulders.

  The perfect, caring, loving family.

  All the happiness of Nathan’s family is now frozen in those photographs, the beautiful smiles hiding an ugly secret.

  ‘It’s not fair,’ I almost spit at her. ‘You’re alive …’

  When Nathan turned sixteen his mum and dad were at his party. Most kids would want their parents out of the way but Nathan’s mum and dad were cool. Nathan’s mum was probably the only mum on the planet who could get away with actually joining in. She’d mingled amongst us, enviably wearing a black dress that made her tiny size eight look better than most of the girls at the party. She had tossed her auburn hair that fell halfway down her back and made most of the boys in the room fall a little bit in love with her, before saying something funny to Nathan that no one could hear, and he’d laughed out loud before kissing her on the cheek and joining me where I stood with his friends. She’d watched him for a moment with nothing but the purest love and adoration in her eyes.

  I remember how she’d run her hand down my long hair at the party, and caught a carefully made dark curl in the palm of her hand. ‘Beautiful! You are beautiful,’ she’d said. I remember how I had modestly tried to tell her she was talking rubbish, but she’d replied with a gentle telling-off: ‘Never throw a compliment back at the giver, Lily. You should graciously accept their praise and enjoy how it makes you feel. It is a gift.’ I’d thanked her, because she had, indeed, made me believe that I looked beautiful.

  Now it’s as if the vision in front of me is an effigy – a wretched and repulsive representation of the woman she used to be. I watch her take another drink, huge stinging gulps that contort her face and make her shiver as if she is forcing them down like medicine.

  ‘When my dad finds out it was you, he’ll rip your head off and put in on a spike in the middle of town so that everyone can hate you too.’ I push away her flattering words from the party as if that kind person no longer existed. ‘Until then … I hope you’re so consumed by guilt that your insides are sucked dry until there is nothing left of you except your rotting conscience.’

  Then I catch sight of Nathan’s recent school photo, his handsome smiling face looking at me from its wooden frame. If his mother’s awful secret is found out, Nathan’s own life will be ruined. He would forever be the son of the woman who killed his girlfriend.

  ‘But it’s still not fair,’ I tell him. ‘Your mother has got her life and she has got you – both of which I’ll never be able to have.’

  Her mobile phone flashes into life to the tune of The Muppet Show, its amusing tones so totally inappropriate for the moment. I peer at it over her shoulder, to see who’s texted.

  Morag: ‘Don’t forget lunch again this Saturday. I’m going to be wearing my drinking pants, so can you drive me? LOL!’

  Nathan’s mum and I stare at the screen, until I say, on behalf of bot
h of us. ‘I think you’ll find there is no LOLling’ going on here, Morag.’

  Nathan’s mum’s finger hovers over her phone as she tries to think of something to say. She types and deletes several times until she finally she manages to send ‘I won’t be going. There’s been an accident. Nathan’s girlfriend Lily was hit by a car and she died.’ Before replacing the phone on the table and wiping her hot hands shakily on the legs of her trousers. Within seconds, her phone lights up, vibrating on the polished table and chiming its ringtone at the same time, but she leaves it where it is, staring at it, until Morag’s name eventually disappears from the screen and the telltale beep of a voicemail notification comes through.

  ‘Go away and leave me alone. You’re the one who kept pouring the wine regardless of who wanted one.’ She accuses, under her breath. Nathan’s mum grabs the phone, typing ‘It’s in the weekly. Check it out.’ Morag obviously has a copy of the weekly in her house because minutes later a text appears: ‘OMG I’m really sorry. If there’s anything I can do? I hope they find him xxx’ It’s almost like everyone assumes that reckless hit-and-run drivers are going to be men. Not a middle-class woman, a mother … someone who everybody likes … someone who was drinking wine that day by all accounts!

  She runs her fingers over the arrow on the photograph as if it’s pointing directly at her, then pours herself another large drink and downs it in one.

  I find myself being sucked out of this beautiful house with its ugly secret and the last thing I see is a large vase of flowers that are dying, their once-vibrant blooms curling and brown at the edges.

  Ben is sitting on the edge of his bed wearing a crumpled-looking school uniform and staring at nothing on the carpet. I greet him, using the hour and a half I had over him in age. ‘Hi, little brother. You will never guess who killed me … not in a million …’ Ben suddenly shivers by way of an answer. ‘It’s only Nathan’s mum!’

  His reaction is a disappointing … nothing. ‘And she’s hiding behind a large bottle of alcohol like a beautiful coward … and no one knows it’s her!’ I add, but Ben suddenly gets up and pushes himself through me as he goes to check if the window is properly shut.

  ‘What is it?’ Can you feel me around you?’ I ask, changing the subject, as he turns back round. ‘Do I make you feel cold or something?’ He sits back on the edge of the bed and I experiment by hugging him with my invisible arms to see what happens. Another shiver causes him to flop back on the pillows and pull the duvet over himself.

  Wow! I guess he can feel me; he just doesn’t know he can.

  But almost before the duvet has settled round my brother I find myself leaving him and turning up with Mum, as if I’m the ball in an afterlife pinball machine.

  The kiss that Amelia gave Lily at the funeral parlour still lingered on her lips.

  She stood in her daughter’s bedroom and felt as if she had been holding her breath for a very long time, but somewhere deep inside herself she knew the funeral of her daughter would be the beginning of something new. It wasn’t the kind of new that promises a better life but a kind of anticipation at what might be at the other end of the tunnel she was in.

  In the middle of the night when demons come out to play it frightened her that Lily had been so icy cold and hard, but during the safety of the day she was glad that her daughter could go on her way with a mother’s kiss goodbye.

  She hoped the day she dreaded most might quite possibly be the day that would release her from the image of Lily in that room, like marble and so alone.

  The day is icy and grey and far too quiet.

  No conversation, no television, no music. Just the sounds of showers running, shirts rustling, toilets flushing and the kettle boiling. The day of my funeral is here.

  Both granddads are staying over and they’ve been given my parents’ room and Ben’s room; my family had, in turn, ‘made do’ in the lounge. I guess no one wanted to sleep in my bed for fear of crushing the space that is still the ‘essence’ of me. Granddad Colin is tall like Dad, but half his weight. Shadows have appeared on his face and he seems so much older than the last time I saw him, at Christmas. Granddad Peter has always looked a little like my mum, with his round face and easy smile, except for the goatee that as a child I was fascinated by, but today his goatee draws a white circle round his sad lips, which are slack and open like two raw wet chipolatas, and either his suit has grown or he has shrunk inside it. Both granddads move quietly around the house putting their shaky warm hands on any passing shoulder.

  Ben goes to my room, gently closing the door behind him. He leans against the door and sucks in the air that I once had breathed, then moving to my wardrobe he takes a jumper from a hanger and holds it up to his face. ‘It won’t suit you,’ I joke with him, but in amongst the fluffy wool he buries his brotherly words of love.

  ‘You silly bitch.’

  ‘Thanks. I can’t argue with that though,’ I answer, following him to his room where he places my jumper carefully under his pillow.

  I’m convinced my funeral will be the catalyst that will force me wherever I should be going, but I really can’t bear to leave, even if this kind of existence is worse. Even if it’s just a halfway house with none of the benefits of either living or dying. Even if I have to watch everyone I know do all the things I should be doing, and how inevitably they will gradually push me to the back of their minds, living their lives, growing old, I don’t want to go.

  That little ugly seed of resentment that buried itself inside me at Beth’s house, is taking root. When this day is over everyone will wake up in their new lives without Lily Richardson. They will still eat and watch TV, they will still go to school or work, and they will still laugh and go out with their friends. They will still live.

  I try to remember if I know of anyone else who has died and right now, I can only think of Gran, Dad’s mum. If there was anyone else, then I have forgotten them and it’s a sad thought that soon, the best I can hope for is to be a recollection dragged from the back of people’s minds. I hadn’t thought of Gran in a really long while, but I did love her very much and for a long time I had missed her hugs, her smile, her smell of lavender, until one day the memory of her had simply faded away.

  But she had left something of herself behind. In her will she gave me her most precious silver ornaments: tiny bells, bags and boxes, with intricate engravings and minute detail, all in shiny hallmarked silver, wrapped in pink tissue and placed inside a little old-fashioned chocolate box.

  I suddenly want to dig out that box right now. To feel the pink tissue rustle against my fingers and imagine Gran beside me telling me how she came by each one. Over time, I added my own treasures to this box, each with a story behind them, but I can’t help wondering who will love them now? Who will appreciate each trinket and recall the fragments of our lives still clinging to each one?

  ‘Where are you now, Gran? Why can’t I see you?’ I ask her as I walk through the house turning slowly round, looking to see if she might have miraculously appeared because I’m thinking of her.

  Dad walks right through me to open the front door and the cold February air catches hold of his breath turning it to ice. I walk out down the path to where Uncle Roger and Aunty Ruth are already in the street waiting with a small group of neighbours. Aunty Ruth is wearing a huge fascinator and its long black feathers keep poking Roger in the ear and the eye.

  ‘For God’s sake, it’s not a bloody wedding, Ruth,’ he hisses at her as she pulls out a compact and applies bright-red lipstick to her doughy face.

  The dark and sombre colours of everyone’s clothes are blending together, except Mabel from No. 44 who, as ever, is wearing her pink polka-dot raincoat and carrying her knitting bag. Mabel makes me smile.

  Then all heads turn at the same time as the funeral director appears, perfectly Dickensian, round the corner of the street. He takes his steps slowly as if allowing the enormity of the situation to reach the bereaved in tiny stages. No one notices his face, this ma
n who this morning probably watched breakfast TV while eating his crunchy nut cereal and chatting to his wife and kids. This man who might have texted his friends about a pint in the pub, or a game of squash later, or sung tunelessly to the radio while driving to work. All everyone can see is the charcoal grey of his clothes and the tall old-fashioned hat that is dipped over his brow.

  The almost silent arrival of the hearse with its cargo of yellow flowers and dead girl causes hands to cover mouths and tissues to be fumbled with. I can hardly believe that I’m in there, and not in school in my English class, which is exactly where I should be on a Friday morning, doodling in a textbook and waiting for the weekend to begin.

  My family emerge from the house, and the sight of that lone man walking slowly along the middle of our road makes my mum stumble. This man is bringing her daughter to her but he will take her away again and it isn’t right. Her pain is almost too much to watch, but there is nothing I can do.

  Suddenly a single dark-blue car appears at the other end of our road, bringing with it a vision so daringly opposite from the official funeral procession that it makes us all smile.

  Clattering with age and a dodgy exhaust, but bright as a summer’s day, the car containing Ben’s best friend, Matthew, and Matthew’s older brother, Jason, brings a heroic and wonderful gift to my funeral. The car is completely covered in artificial sunflowers. They are tied to the aerial and wedged into the windows and door frames, wrapped round the bumpers and taped to the hubcaps. It is beautiful, like a motorised bouquet. I see Ben laugh and give them the thumbs up and everybody relaxes a little because of it. I clap my hands together and lean down to the driver’s window, as Jason unwinds it. ‘Thank you, guys, this is really great,’ I say just as Jason reaches his hand out of the window and chucks his fag butt straight through my chest. He gives a kind wink and a thumbs up back to Ben and joins the line of cars ready to head down the street.