Sunflowers in February Page 8

  Mum and Dad don’t seem to talk about me much either, and this is the main thing that I really struggle with. It’s as if my memory causes them too much pain. My bedroom is kept like a shrine, complete with the pretty blue urn containing my ashes, which is now placed on the dressing table, where Mum sits and cries a lot, but as soon as she comes out the door is shut. I’m rapidly becoming a painful secret, as if, to them, I am like misery, held inside Pandora’s Box. I need to feel less lonely than I do right now. I need to be part of my family still, even if it’s only by eavesdropping.

  Ben gets angry with Mum and Dad quite easily, which I hate to see. He was always so laid back and likeable before, but now my beautiful brother seems to be morphing into someone with an attitude. He never seems to pull me to him when he’s out of the house any more, as if once he’s away from home, he’s replacing me in some way. When I get pulled to Beth at school, or occasionally Nathan, Ben is always missing from the group. At the beginning I’d find myself beside him quite frequently when something was going on that involved me. Like, this one time, when he overheard two boys from the year below in the library talking about me.

  ‘I heard that they’re going to keep her ashes in their house,’ one boy had said. ‘I think they’re going to put them on the shelf while they watch telly.’

  The other boy had laughed. ‘No. I heard that they’re going to put her in the kitchen … but if they get it wrong, they’ll think she’s a jar of herbs. They might end up eating her.’ Then they both laughed, doubled up and red in the face, until one of them found himself on the floor of the library with blood coming from his nose.

  Fortunately I’m still on the dressing table, in my own bedroom … well away from the condiments.

  The invisible boundary between life and death has just touched shoulders!

  If I had breath, I would be holding it right now. I’m so scared that I’m going to ruin this fragile moment, where my brother appears to be looking into my world.

  Because I no longer need to sleep, I’ve spent many nights in Ben’s room, waiting in the shadows until my voyeuristic daytime existence could begin again, and now, suddenly in the middle of the night, Ben is sitting up and looking at me!!!

  I can see two of him, one sitting up and one still asleep with his head on the pillow.

  ‘Ben?’ I ask, hardly believing what I am seeing, and taking a small step forward.

  ‘I’ve missed you,’ he says casually, as if I’ve simply been away on a camping trip.

  I rush at him, like exploding popcorn, jumping excitedly up and down. ‘BEN. I’m here. I’ve been here … all the time. The whole lonely, awful time.’

  ‘Have you?’ he answers quietly, and those two words have got to be the most anticlimactic words I have ever heard. He is too calm, like he’s on automatic pilot or something.

  ‘Jeez, Ben, aren’t you pleased to see me? You’ve found me …! I’ve waited weeks for this moment and you’re acting like it’s no big deal.’

  ‘I’m only dreaming,’ he murmurs. ‘You are only a dream.’

  ‘I’m so NOT a dream, Ben. It’s really me and you’d better believe it.’

  I reach my hand out very slowly towards him. Can I actually touch him? I’m almost too scared to try, for fear of ruining the moment. In all this time I’ve been unable to touch or feel anything and yet here he is in front of me looking into my eyes with the most awful sadness. So touchably close.

  Are you OK?’ I ask him as my fingers reach out for his, but just as he lies back down on the bed he utters one single word: ‘No’.

  ‘Ben!!!’ I call out, grabbing for his hand, but it’s too late, he’s gone inside his sleeping body again, and my fingers grasp at nothing.

  ‘Shit!’ I yell. ‘Shit, shit, shit.’ My one chance at communicating from this vacuum, and I’ve missed it. ‘Come and find me again,’ I plead, staring hard at his face, and I can only hope with all my heart that he heard me.

  I watch him closely for the rest of the night, just willing him to sit up again and talk to me. I find myself jumping eagerly forward with each movement he makes in his sleep, but the night rolls slowly on and my brother has nothing more to offer me than a brief snore and a loud fart from under the duvet.

  When his alarm goes off, he wakes abruptly and looks around his bedroom as if now he’s conscious he may be looking for me again.

  ‘Still here,’ I sigh patiently.

  Ben gets up quickly instead of moving at his normal low gear, and he’s dressed and downstairs in record time. I look over his shoulder as he taps at the screen of his tablet while slurping cereal noisily into his mouth. ‘Can you see dead people in your dreams?’ he types.

  ‘Yes, you can,’ I confirm. ‘And yes, you did!’

  He scrolls through everything that is listed beneath. Sites that tell him he can, sites that tell him he can’t, sites that explain that seeing dead people in your dreams is just a reflection of your own ‘need’ to see people you love, and so on. He scans the headings in front of him, swiping and scrolling in and out of web pages, exploring everything including ‘out-of-body experiences’ and ‘astral projection’. We read out loud together, because, even as the dead one, I also don’t have a clue how we managed to meet in the night.

  ‘Astral projection is an out-of-body experience achieved during lucid dreaming … That’s it!’ we both say at exactly the same time.

  ‘A visitation appears because either the departed needs guidance from the loved one, who is dreaming to reassure them of their death, or the dreamer is in need of guidance or comfort from the one who has departed.’

  Well, I don’t need reassurance of my death because I’m absolutely sure that was me in the ditch, me in the morgue, me in the funeral parlour and me in the pinboard coffin. But … hey, I’m a visitation! Get me!

  We both stare at the screen, neither of us knowing for sure which one of us is the cause of … my visitation, until Mum shouts through the door, making us both jump.

  ‘Ben? What are you doing? You’ve missed the school bus.’ She sighs loudly with annoyance, turning quickly and calling over her shoulder: ‘I’ll just have to take you. Get in the car.’

  Ben downs a glass of blackcurrant juice so quickly that he’s able to burp ‘Thanks, Mum’ impressively loudly at her. We both laugh.

  When Ben goes to school, I can’t normally go with him; I have only been pulled to him on a handful of occasions, like when he punched that kid in the library, or when the flowers got taken down from the school railings, or my seat got taken in English by Ada, a girl with berserk ginger hair and an attitude problem. Mum is still the stronger person at the other end of the Lily tug-of-war rope, but now I’m in the car with both of them, watching through the window with envy at all the kids who are making their way towards the school gates … having a normal day … doing normal things.

  ‘Oh, there’s Beth!’ I call out and I continue to point to various other people I know. When Mum pulls up outside and Ben gets out of the car, this time I try really hard to go with him, but he’s gone, shaking off any residue of family sadness and leaving it on the front seat of Mum’s car.

  ‘And there’s Nathan,’ I add, sighing as she drives past him, and we both wave, mouthing ‘Hi, Nathan’ through the closed car windows. He waves briefly at Mum but he no longer looks as chilled as he always used to.

  Your mother did this to you. Your mother did this to us!

  The night before, Nathan had been standing in the kitchen looking at the clock as the minutes ticked slowly towards six o’clock. ‘Dad?’ he said down the receiver of the phone, ‘we have to do something about Mum. It’s gone on too long. Something is really, really wrong. Not only is there no dinner … again … but she’s properly drunk this time … like absolutely shit-faced drunk.’

  His dad’s voice came hopefully down the phone. ‘Perhaps they had some … do … at work?’

  ‘So you think she’s been partying on down with a bunch of geriatrics, who’ve been raving in t
heir incontinence pants at the care home?’ Nathan asked, listening to his dad’s telltale silence in reply. ‘You know she’s drinking at home, Dad … like, a lot … I’ve seen the empties.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Nate. I really can’t talk right now …’ his dad said, ignoring his son’s reason for phoning. ‘Some shit has just hit the fan at work. I’m sure your mum’s fine … a bit run down or something. Do you want me to bring you back a takeaway?’ Nathan shook his head, feeling weary and dejected.

  ‘Nah, don’t worry, I’ll nuke something.’ He ended the call without saying goodbye, and rummaged in their big American fridge freezer to find something he could eat. Finally settling on microwave chips and a choc ice he pushed the packaging in the recycling bin … on top of the packaging for yesterday’s pizza, which was on top of the packaging for chicken Kiev from the day before that, and when the microwave pinged he took his food to the sitting room, ignoring yet again the house rule to eat at the table. They hadn’t eaten all together at the table since the day he found out Lily had died.

  Since Lily had gone, the world as he knew it had scattered, like harsh breath on a dandelion clock, leaving shattered fragments around him where his girlfriend and his family had once been.

  The numbers tick over to 06.12.

  Just as the first glimmer of morning spreads across the sky and I’m about to give up on the hours I’ve spent willing Ben to come and find me again, he sits up in bed in exactly the same way as he did a few nights ago, leaving his body sleeping. This time he swings his legs over the side of the bed and stands up.

  ‘It’s happening again.’ he says, uttering the words slowly. ‘This is totally weird.’

  ‘Yes, it totally is, Ben. And you’re not dreaming.’

  I walk over to him slowly, reaching my hand out to see if this time I can actually touch him. He carefully reaches his hand out at the same time, as if he thinks I’m just a visual bubble that might pop.

  Our hands touch!

  He curls his fingers round my own and it is like nothing I can describe. I could never in all my fifteen years have imagined that a simple touch could mean so many things. His hand on mine is everything that being lonely isn’t, and I never want him to let go. I’ve waited weeks for a moment like this and here it is at last, the two of us sharing his dream.

  ‘I’ve missed you,’ he says softly, as if he still can’t believe it, and I suddenly fling my arms round his neck, more pleased to see him than I’ve ever been, and almost too desperate for his company to speak.

  ‘It’s really you, isn’t it?’ he asks eventually, while I nod my head furiously into his neck. ‘Awesome! This is actually real!’

  ‘If you mean, is being trapped in a nightmare between heaven and earth real? Then yes, it’s real. I am really here. I have been here all the time. I see everything!’ I step back to look him in the eyes, laughing with relief. ‘I even went to my own funeral, Ben. I watched it all!’

  Ben looks down at me as if trying to compute such a bizarre idea.

  ‘Nice speech by the way. Thanks for the potty photo.’ I nudge him on the shoulder.

  ‘That’s OK.’ He smiles in the way I know so well. ‘Thought I might put it on YouTube. I do a special line in dead sister speeches … Sorry,’ he adds, ‘can’t think of a nicer word for dead.’

  ‘Dearly departed?’ I suggest.

  ‘Brown bread?’ He grins.

  ‘Someone who has bitten the dust.’ I laugh.

  ‘Or bitten the big one.’ He laughs too.

  ‘Come to a sticky end.’

  ‘Counting worms.’

  ‘Kicked the bucket.’

  ‘Fallen off the perch.’

  ‘Snuffed it.’

  But his smile fades to a frown. ‘So … have you come to say goodbye …? Because –’ he struggles with what to say next – ‘apparently, according to the Net, I have to tell you that it’s OK … to … you know, to go, Lily.’

  ‘Trying to get rid of me already? Nice! Even if I wanted to, I don’t know how to go, Ben,’ I answer. ‘It would appear it’s not that simple.’

  ‘The Net says that the dearly departed often hang around for some reason –’

  ‘I don’t know what the reason is then,’ I interrupt. ‘I don’t have a clue why I’m still here. Maybe this is what it is like to die, but I don’t really know because I’ve never … snuffed it before.’

  ‘Perhaps you’ve got some kind of … I don’t know … unfinished business or something …’

  But I snort a bitter laugh loudly back at him.

  ‘Thanks, Einstein, I’m fifteen. My whole life was an unfinished business.’

  ‘Oh … Yeah, I get your point,’ he says, an embarrassed smile sliding across his face, and he hugs me again. This is how we started our lives: twins, alone, squashed against each other’s limbs, separated from the world only by the thin wall of our mother’s womb. Now here we are again, separated only by the thin veil that divides the living from the dead. But he doesn’t seem to be able to stay long, doing this astral-projection thing, or whatever it is, and the pull of tiredness from his living body washes over him again. ‘I don’t want you to go. I’m so tired, Lily … I’m sorry … I don’t think I can stay.’

  ‘Noooo, Ben, don’t go. You’ve got to stay … I’m so alone,’ I beg him, holding tightly to his arm as he makes his way back to the bed.

  ‘I’ll come back,’ he reassures me. ‘I’ll learn how to do it properly … I’ll get better at it … I promise.’

  ‘Don’t leave me here,’ I plead, stepping between him and the bed and trying to push him away from it. He shrugs his arm and his hand releases its grip from mine, and then … I don’t know why I did it, or even how, but I did it anyway.

  Like when we were born, I beat him to it. I just lie down inside his sleeping body before he does.

  Ben has gone.

  And I have arrived.

  Now here I am. Breathing in. Breathing out. Being.

  I’m alive!

  The feeling of linen on skin, and the coolness of air on my face, is amazing.

  Ben’s body, my body, reacts instantly in a physical way to the wrestling match of conscience taking place in my head. I can feel his heart banging wildly in reaction to the adrenalin that has been released. His skin … my skin, feels cold and yet sweaty, and my fingers are trembling. These sensations confuse me. One minute they feel like the most intense excitement and the next like the deepest ugliest guilt and I can’t distinguish between the two.

  I realise immediately that my ability to feel emotion has returned and I lie for some time with a whole range of emotions accosting me. This was not planned. I’ve just won the ultimate sibling battle. A split-second selfish act, leaving me totally unprepared for the mixture of joy, at being part of the real world, and the fear of what I have done to Ben.

  I am not sure where Ben is but I imagine he’s in the same kind of limbo that I have been in for the last few weeks.

  ‘Ben? Are you there?’ I call out, searching the shadows of the room. He doesn’t answer, but I’m not surprised. I’m awake, so I probably won’t find him again until I go back to sleep and do the weird not-asleep, not-awake thing.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I tell him out loud, hoping that he’s watching and listening, in the same way I have been all these weeks. But my words are small and hardly make up for what I have just done to my brother.

  I pull the duvet comfortingly round me and by doing so I can smell the scent of deodorant and sweat that the heat of my body releases from the cotton and I breathe deeply through my nose, taking in the familiar odour of my brother. I study my hands by the red light of the alarm clock. Larger than mine, better nails. I feel my hair and how short it is compared to my own, which always got messy on the pillow and tickled my face. I feel a tiny bit of stubble on the end of my chin. I run my tongue over teeth, which are ever so slightly different from my own. One of Ben’s incisor teeth is turned sideways; I can feel it with my tongue, angled and different.


  I move a hand, feeling the fluffy wool of the jumper that Ben has slept with since my funeral, and there, amongst the fibres, is the fading scent of me.

  What have I done?

  It takes over half an hour for the racing beats of my heart, or rather Ben’s heart, to slow down and follow a relatively normal steady pattern, while real life waits temptingly on the other side of the duvet.

  I have to leave the safety of the bed and, although I toy with the idea of pretending to be ill and going back to sleep so I can let Ben swap back, in truth, I don’t want to. And in my new ‘not my body’ heart I know I’m absolutely not going to. This is a chance to live for a day, and sorry, Ben, I’m bloody well going to take it.

  The day has started for living people and I, it would appear, am one of those.

  I swing my hairy legs out of bed and sit up at the same time. The air is cool and it makes me shiver. I move my feet from side to side on the carpet, the sensation of wool making its way to my brain through my feet and I wiggle my toes, inspecting the hair on each one, my new stomach recoiling slightly. I’ve got the feet of a hobbit. My toenails are surprisingly large and not that clean and I’m very glad that they’re as far away from me as possible. I look around the room and manage to avoid the mirror. I can’t look at him. Not just yet.

  Still trembling I stand up, taller than I am used to. I am wearing navy shorts and a grey T-shirt and my arms are hairy. The adrenalin pumping rapidly around my body is making me feel a bit faint so I sit down again, feeling the plump duvet under me and the need to bow my head towards my knees until the dizzy feeling leaves.

  My mouth is dry, and I suddenly really need a glass of cold water, but I can’t go downstairs yet in case I bump into Mum or Dad. I have no idea how to be Ben; right now, I’m too wrapped up with being Lily inside Ben.