Better Left Buried (3 page)

Oh god. I guess no one told him what happened. I tuck the letter into the pocket of my jeans, and pour Mum's tea.

I force myself to go up to Max's bedroom. I hate coming in here. I hate even walking past on the way to the bathroom. My brother's room feels like a black hole in the heart of the house, sucking all the light, all the joy from our lives.

Like a memorial. Or a dirge, playing on a loop in the background.

I open the door to a rush of memories. And pain. There it all is. His books, his old laptop, that giant King Kong poster on the wall, the Warhammer figurines he used to play with. On the windowsill his collection of Rubik's cubes in different sizes, every one neatly solved. Everything in here a stabbing reminder, and somehow a reproach. Max – unbelievably – has gone, but his things remain. Abandoned. As if we've all turned our backs on him.

I close my eyes for a moment, pressing all the feelings down, and drag my attention to the books on the shelf. There's dozens of them, all the ones he used for his exams at school, and plenty more. Half my memories of my brother have a book in them.

I read each title carefully, comparing it with the list on the letter. Pick out a couple and throw them onto the bed. My heart contracts as I touch them. Max probably handled these that last week he was home; after all, he was holed up in here most of that time, only coming down for meals, leaving us wondering what was wrong. Had his final exams gone badly? Had he fallen out with someone?

“Just leave me alone, Sarah.”

I'd opened the door to ask if he wanted anything from the shops. He was sitting in the chair, staring out the window as he said it.

“Leave me alone,” he repeated.

So I did. I left him alone and the next day he'd gone. Without a word to anyone. We rang, left messages, but didn't worry much when he didn't return our calls – Max was always slack about stuff like that. We assumed he'd gone back to London, was busy finishing up at university.

But ten days later the police were standing on our doorstep.

Max had been found in our summer house in Sweden. His heart had stopped. That was all they could tell us. No one knew why. Nothing revealed at the post mortem, though we're still waiting for the inquest.

His heart just stopped. Dead.

A swoop of nausea. A picture in my mind, imagined, of my brother, lying naked on a cold, metal mortuary table.

Leave me alone, Sarah
.

I shake away the image. Remember why I'm here. Check the list and scrutinize the bookshelves again, but I can't see any more. I go through the desk and the drawers, but there's no sign of them. They must be in the garage, in the boxes that came back from Max's room in London – no one's had the courage to deal with them since Dad dumped them in there several weeks ago.

“Sarah?” Mum's voice calls from the bathroom. “Are there any clean towels?”

I doubt it,
I think, making a mental note to grab the pyjamas she was wearing and shove them in the wash. Hard to believe only a few weeks can reverse everything. That my lovely, busy, capable mother, who held down a full-time job running a local building society and yet still managed to make sure Max and I never went short of anything, can now barely run a bath without my help.

Her whole life undone by what no one can undo.

“I'll look,” I call back, wondering how much more of this I can take. Supporting her now is the least I can do, but sometimes it feels like I'm treading water, desperately trying to stay afloat while hidden currents drag me down.

As I turn to leave, I glimpse the back garden out of the window, the sprawling branches of the crab apple tree obscuring the end of the lawn. The flowers in the borders seem to glow in the warm evening light, not yet showing signs of their neglect, but the grass is now so long it's leaning over in places, flattened by the recent rain and wind.

An ache wells inside me. I always wanted this bedroom. Sometimes, when I was smaller and Max was out, I'd sneak in here and lie on his bed and stare across the garden to the ivy covering the back wall, wishing he would vanish so I could have it for myself.

And now I could, I realize, with a hot pang of guilt and sorrow. Max has gone and there's nothing to stop me moving in here any time I like. Dad wouldn't mind, and I doubt Mum has the strength to object.

Only now, of course, I no longer want to.

Max. I whisper his name under my breath and feel something bitter breaking through. None of this was his fault, I know that, but it doesn't help. No matter how much I miss my brother, I can't stop myself blaming him for leaving me stranded here. For the chaos his death has brought into our lives.

And for condemning me to spend the rest of mine being very careful what I wish for.

“I said NO!”

My eyes leap to the woman in front of me, my heart skipping in alarm. But her irritation is aimed at the small boy hanging on to the sleeve of her jacket, grizzling, his face crumpled and peevish.

I pick up the packet of chocolate biscuits and scan them, twisting the wrapper several times before the reader catches the barcode.

“Thomas, pack it in! I said you can have one when we get home.”

The boy starts crying in earnest as his mother stuffs her shopping into bags with quick, jerky movements, her eyes hollow with exhaustion. As she pauses to slot her credit card into the machine, I let my eyes roam to the clock above the flower stand.

Half past two. One whole hour to go till break time.

To think I was actually excited at getting a summer job in the supermarket. My first proper job, if you don't count Dad paying me to help paint the spare bedroom.

But now every minute I spend here is a painful reminder of what might await me if I flunk my audition. I'm not clever like Max…like Max was. I'm not university material. Without my music, my singing, I could be stuck doing this – or something like this – for the rest of my life.

Which would be okay if it was my choice. If I enjoyed it. But it's not, and I don't. All I ever wanted to do was sing. It's the only thing I know how to do well. Max got the brains; all I have is my voice.

The next customer, an older woman in a fuschia-pink coat, is already piling her shopping on the conveyor belt in precarious heaps. It jerks forward, and several bags of frozen peas start to avalanche. I jump up, grabbing them just before they hit the floor. As I sit back down I glimpse someone halfway up the newspaper aisle, over by the magazines.

A chill runs through me. I leap to my feet again, straining to see past the other customers.

There. A brief flash of dark hair by the greetings-card display. Black leather jacket, indigo denim jeans.

My breath dies in my throat. It's him. The guy I bumped into a week ago. I'm sure of it.

The pink-coat lady looks at me quizzically. “Is everything okay?”

“Excuse me!” I mutter. I slip out from behind the till and walk quickly up to the intersection by the cards, glancing around me.

No sign of him. What the hell?

“Sarah!” I turn to see Mrs Lucas, the supervisor, eyes widened into a furious question.

I spin about again, looking right along the aisles.

Nothing.

“Sarah!” Mrs Lucas's voice rises half an octave. I scarper back to my till, cheeks burning. “Sorry,” I blurt. “I thought I saw someone drop their wallet.”

Mrs Lucas frowns, staring up towards the card racks. Purses her lips and says nothing.

“I'm sorry,” I repeat to the pink-coat lady, pulling out a wodge of plastic carriers. Notice my hand trembling as I try to separate them.

“You look as if you've seen a ghost,” she says, her face crinkling into a kind expression.

I gaze at her helplessly, but she's already turned her attention back to her shopping. I grab the next item off the conveyor belt, trying surreptitiously to watch the checkouts and the exit as I work.

Still nothing. It's like he's completely vanished.

Or wasn't there at all,
I think, as I help load the bags into the trolley. What was it Lizzie said before?

You probably just imagined it…Got things out of proportion.

She's right,
I tell myself, feeling foolish. Max's death is obviously affecting me in ways I never realized. Making me paranoid. In that bereavement leaflet the doctor gave Mum, it said it was common to see the person that died for months, even years afterwards. Imagining you've glimpsed them in the street, that sort of thing.

It hasn't happened to me, though I kind of want it to. I'd like to see my brother again, even if it does mean I'm going a little bit crazy. When you miss someone that much, it's a trade-off you're happy to make.

But no Max. Nothing. Just an empty bedroom, and a mother who's fallen into a chasm of grief. A father who's barely coping himself.

Instead I'm seeing other kinds of ghosts. Inventing stuff where nothing's going on.

Going more than a little bit crazy.

I get up at six the next day, determined to put in an hour or two of practice before work. But it's hard to sing when you're shivering. The shed is cold this early in the morning, dark clouds looming outside the window in mockery of summer. The mess of plant pots and garden tools, the half-used packets of seed and dried-out compost, all make my skin feel itchy and crawly.

I flip back to the beginning of the score, prop it up on Dad's old potting bench, and press play on my iPod dock. The sound of Mrs Perry's Schubert piano accompaniment fills the tiny space. A little tinny, but it's clear enough and I start again, this time sensing my mind and body loosen as I sink into the music, letting it pull me in until everything else drops away and there's just the swoop and soar of my voice above the piano.

I'm just reaching the end of the song when there's a knock on the shed door. I switch off the music, turn to see Dad standing there with a cup of tea.

“Morning,” he says, putting it down on the bench in front of me. “Sorry to interrupt.”

I shake my head. “I'm nearly finished.”

“I heard you from the kitchen.” He walks up and puts an arm round my shoulder, pulling me towards him so he can kiss the top of my forehead. “Lovely. Really haunting.”

I smile.

“Sad,” he says. “Your music always seems so melancholy these days. Lovely, but sad.”

I look up at him in surprise. I guess he's right. I hadn't realized how much I'd been drawn to these pieces, their solemn, evocative beauty. Somehow, since Max died, I can't face anything more upbeat, more cheerful.

Dad releases me, examining the jumble inside the shed with a resigned expression. “I really should clear this place up. But why are you in here?”

“I needed to get in some practice, but didn't want to wake you.”

A slight shift in Dad's posture. “I was awake anyway.”

I don't ask why. I don't need to. Dad's maintained a flawlessly brave front since Max's death, but the dark shadows under his eyes reveal how much it has taken its toll. Not only the daily strain of coping with Mum and holding everything together. Dad had to fly to Sweden to deal with it all, returning home looking like he'd been to hell and back and barely survived the trip. And Dad had to clear Max's flat, since Rob, my brother's best friend and flatmate, wasn't around; didn't even bother to show up to the funeral, come to that.

“So,” Dad says in a tone I know he's forcing into cheery. “Feeling confident?”

I pull a face. “Not exactly.”

“When's the audition again?”

“Four weeks.”

“You'll knock 'em out. They're bound to give you a scholarship. You've got the voice of an angel.”

I smile, but don't answer. If only it were that easy. The more I practise, the more I discover how much I still need to do. Everything that's happened in the last couple of months has thrown me right off track; I'm always struggling to catch up.

“You're on the eight o'clock shift, aren't you?” Dad glances at his watch, then holds it up so I can see the dial.

I grimace at the time. “Yeah.”

He goes to leave. Pauses. “I nearly forgot, could you pick up a prescription from the chemist? Mum was going to go, but she's got a headache.”

“I'm on a double shift,” I say. “But I'll call in at lunchtime.”

Dad raises an eyebrow. I know he wasn't keen on me taking this job so soon after everything. I'm sure he'd prefer me to stay at home with Mum, though he's never actually said so.

God knows I'm tempted to chuck it in every moment I'm there, but with Mum on indefinite sick leave, our finances are stretched to the limit. More than that, my brother's death has left such a hole in our lives; if I abandon my plans I'm scared I'll fall right in.

Like Mum.

“What's it for?” I ask. “The prescription.”

“Just her antidepressants. And some more sleeping pills.”

Again? I'm sure she had a new lot only a week or so ago. Didn't I read somewhere about sleeping pills being bad for you? Addictive?

Dad gives me a look that says everything. A look with a kind of despair in it, and I know we're both thinking the same thing. Is Mum ever going to recover from this?

As Dad shuts the shed door behind him, I pack up my music, trying to remember the stages of bereavement in that leaflet. Denial, depression, acceptance – something like that. Mum seemed to skip denial, sinking straight into depression with no sign of ever surfacing.

I'm beginning to think she needs more than another packet of pills.

I jog all the way to the bus stop. It starts to rain as I turn the corner of Guildford Rise – big fat raindrops, the kind you only get in summer. At the top of the road, the bus is already approaching. I up my pace to a sprint, reaching the stop just as it pulls in.