“How short?”
“A second, two.”
“Hang ups?”
“Looks like. Every single one of them.”
“When was the last call?”
“The day she died.”
“Shit. Okay.” Tom pushed himself up, leaning heavily on the kitchen table. Staring at his reflection in the window. He looked old. “Look, let me track down this Hannah one. I’ll try and see her tomorrow.”
“You sure?”
“Yeah. If you get anything else…”
“Yeah, I’ll call you. Even though I shouldn’t.” A long pause, and Tom can tell he’s thinking about something, wondering how to phrase it. “Everything all right? With Cecilia?”
“It’s fine. No worries.” Tom rubbed his hand across his eyes, sighing heavily. “You know how it is.”
“Yeah…look, I know we’re blokes, but if you need to talk…”
“You’ll laugh your arse off at me?”
“Damn right, you skinny fucker. No, I’m serious. And if you, you know, ever needed a place to stay…”
Black bags lined up against the front door that swings in the breeze as his father loads the plastic remnants of their family into the boot of his Nissan. Eight year old Tom watching him, face pressed against the bedroom window. Air creaking with the sound of his mother’s sobs. Then his father stops, rubbing his hands over his face, and if it were anyone else, Tom would have thought that he was crying, but this was his father, and he doesn’t cry. Looking up. Tom pulling back from the glass, so fast that he jars his neck, pain racing up into the back of his skull.
“Thanks, mate. But I’m okay.”
“You sure?”
Tom glanced around the kitchen that he fitted and the toys that he bought, knowing that he will never leave, no matter what it costs him, because he cannot be his father and he cannot breathe without his son. So he’ll stay, and he’ll absorb the costs like a blow to the body, because then his son will never have to press his nose to a pane of glass, watch his father walk away.
“Yeah. Thanks though.”
“Well, look, offer’s there.”
“Yeah, whatever. You love me, I know.”
“Ah, bite me.”
“You wish.”
“Speak to you tomorrow, mate.”
“All Right, cheers Dan.”
Tom let the phone slip from his ear. The reflected him looked at him and shrugged. You look like shit, mate.
Then there was something. A dart of movement, caught out of the corner of his eye.
His heart suddenly racing.
Tom crossed his kitchen in three quick steps, pulling at the back door. Unlocked. Out into the snow, into the empty garden. Nothing. A bat wheeling overhead. Thick silence. Shuffling through the snow in his slippers, crossing the patio toward the kitchen window. No rustling. No voices. Just paranoia taking hold now after all that they had been through. He was about to turn, go back into the house, when he saw the two perfect footprints that lay beneath his kitchen window.
Chapter 34
Freya – Friday, 23rd March – 11.03am
The minister leaned on the podium, sausage fat fingers curling around the red wood. Freya watched a solitary bead of sweat work its way beneath his bristle stiff hair, down his forehead, along the grooves that ran by the side of his nose, past his lip, watched it dangle there for a moment before it let go, landing on the lectern in front of him. She imagined that she could hear the splash.
“…the souls of the righteous are in the hands of God…”
“I don’t want to go, Frey. I can’t do it.” Her mother had leaned against her. Sunlight bright in the spare bedroom.
“It’s okay, Mum. We can do this.” Freya had helped her from her bed, slipping listless arms into a black silk blouse, the dark trousers that she wears for work.
“I just, I miss him so much, Frey.”
“I know, Mum.”
“He loved me, Freya.” Her mother had sat back on her bed, legs folding beneath her. Had allowed Freya to slip on her shoes. Her mother hadn’t looked at her, gazing off into middle distance.
“I know, Mum.”
“No…I know…I know what you think about your father. But he loved me. He told me. And everything was going to be okay. It was all…It was all going to be okay, now.”
There were colours, a kaleidoscope scattered across the tiled floor, purples and reds and a dark bitter orange, sunlight through stained glass. It smelled of polish, damp clothes, the creeping sweetness of roses. Her mother’s eyes were closed. She was crying, softly, quietly. There was an empty space beside her where Richard should have been. Freya wondered if it was deliberate, if her grandmother had sat a little way off, thinking that he would change his mind. Or if it was just the way of families when one member was missing. You leave a space. She wondered about her father, whether a space would remain for him, how long it would take those of them remaining to grow into the vacuum.
“…no torment will ever touch them…”
They had been standing in the hallway, sunlight filtering through the swirling stained glass of the front door.
Dressed in their funeral black. Looked like they were all dead too, a collection of ghosts, waiting. That was when she had realised that Richard was missing.
“I’ll go get him.” Freya had turned, running quickly up the stairs. “Rich? Kiddo?” Three quick taps on his bedroom door. Silence. “Richard? We’re ready to go.” Fingers falling to the handle, twisting it. Then the door falling open, and he’s standing there, a loose fitting t-shirt, jeans that have scuffed at the bottom. Letting her eyes fall down to his bare feet. Then looking up, trying not to be impatient, because what right does she have, honestly? “Rich, it’s time for the memorial. We need to leave. You want to get dressed? I can iron a shirt for you really quickly…”
“I’m not going.” He hadn’t looked at her, had studied the tips of his toes. His voice was so small, like it was his first day at school.
“Rich.” She wanted to hug him, wrap him in her arms, tell him it’s okay, but how could she tell him that when she knew damn well that it wouldn’t be. “Honey, I’ll be with you. We can do this together.”
But that was the wrong thing to say, and now not only was he not looking at her but he had turned away, and there were tears spilling over his cheeks. Shaking his head, whispering almost. “I’m sorry, Frey.”
“In the eyes of the foolish they seem to have died, and their departure was thought to be a disaster.”
There was a sound, towards the front of the church, not crying, keening. An animal caught in a trap. A woman leaning forward, folded in two with grief. A man beside her, his arm around her shoulders, face pulled into a silent scream.
“…and their going from us to be their destruction; but they are at peace…”
Freya didn’t know how long she had sat on the floor of her parents’ room, cradling the photo. Wondering who the hell this woman was. Then she had heard floorboards creak, had felt a flush of panic, stuffing the lockbox back into the drawer of her father’s bedside cabinet. The picture she kept. Had slipped it into her handbag. Didn’t know how many times she had looked at it. Enough to memorise the wave in her hair, her father’s bright smile. One she had never seen on him before.
But then, that shouldn’t be a surprise, should it? Seemed like she had known almost nothing about her father, and what he was or wasn’t capable of.
“For though in the sight of others they were punished, their hope is full of immortality.”
The minister bowed his head, his lips still moving. Then a deep bellow of sound and he glanced back at the organist, dropped his head again, a slow shuffle along the aisle towards the flung open doors. He passed, arthritic and painful, a waft of cinnamon. The crowd turned, trudging, and Freya followed, arm wrapped tight around her mother. Passing airline officials in their black suits and their stiff upper lips. A hand on her shoulder, her grandfather’s face tight. Her grandmother beside him, tears staining her cheeks.
The dark aisle gave way to a bright sky. Patches of crisp snow, broken by hopeful grass shoots. Gravestones testifying to the long forgotten dead. Flowers had been left against the outer wall of the church, reds and greens and orange and yellow vivid against grey stone, white snow. The cellophane caught the low winter sunlight, blinding them.
“Freya?” Her grandfather’s voice was low, almost lost in the crunch of footsteps on gravel.
She glanced back over her shoulder.
“I thought he wasn’t coming?”
“Who?”
Her grandfather nodded towards the graveyard, beneath the widespread arms of the draping yew, to where Richard stood. He wore jeans, the same ones he’d worn earlier, had thrown on a jacket that was far too cold for the wind that had sprung up. Wasn’t looking at them. Freya tracked his gaze, towards the wrought iron-gate, and for a second her breath caught in her throat. Chestnut hair falling to her shoulders, tousled into a rough curl. Her arm held awkward in a sling. And for one perfect moment it was crystal clear. The woman her father was sleeping with was an air hostess. She was with him on the plane. She survived. It felt almost like a breath of relief. The throng of questions queueing up, waiting to be asked. But then Freya looked again. The woman was taller, older. It wasn’t her. A quick breath out, a moment to steady her heart beat. Then looking back at Richard, still staring at the woman with the chestnut hair, oblivious to his gaze.
Chapter 35
Cecilia – Friday, 23rd March – 11.15am
“…the souls of the righteous are in the hand of God…”
Cecilia stared down at her hands, the nails chipped, bitten like when she was twelve. Hadn’t wanted to come. Hadn’t answered when Tom had knocked on the spare room door, first at seven, then again at eight. Had closed her eyes, squeezing them shut. Didn’t want to go. Didn’t want to see. The mountains and the snow and the people with their grief ravaged faces. Better to stay here, with her eyes closed. Better to pretend that it had never happened.
She couldn’t breathe. People stuffed together, a sea of black. Could feel the gazes, grazing her face, her arm, back up to her face, knowing that they know. Couldn’t decide if it was sympathy or judgement that she saw. Wanting to say, I saved people, I got people off the plane, as if that alone will pardon her from the iniquitous crime of surviving. Scanning the faces. Waiting for that tickle of familiarity, someone to look at her with recognition and relief. To say to others, look that’s her, that’s that stewardess, the one who saved us. But there is just grief and horror.
“…no torment will ever touch them…”
It had been a little after 8.30 when the door opened. She hadn’t opened her eyes. Had kept her back towards the door.
“Cecilia.” Tom had spoken from the door, voice low. “The memorial.”
She hadn’t moved. Hadn’t murmured.
“I think that we should go. It’s important.”
Why couldn’t he just shut up? She squeezed her eyes closed, pressing her lips together.
“Cecilia? If we leave soon, we’ll make it.” A waiting silence. “I know you’d rather not. But…I think that maybe it would do you good. I don’t think…we can’t just pretend that it didn’t happen.”
Flames and falling and a tearing pain that penetrates deep into her. A grey figure on black. The look on the ultrasound technician’s face, lip curling into disgust. She had pushed herself up from the bed, not because she wanted to. She had moved because there were too many things now, and all of a sudden she couldn’t remember how to forget.
“In the eyes of the foolish they seem to have died, and their departure was thought to be a disaster…”
They had arrived late. They were already singing. She had wanted to cry with the absurdity of it all. Had wedged themselves in, standing backs pressed against the door. Studied her shoes. Black Armani boots with a narrow heel. Scuffed, stained with mud and slush. Didn’t want to look up and see speckles of the familiar in a sea of unfamiliarity. Vicki’s fiance Jason, his hair wild, tie crooked, because Vicki wasn’t there to straighten it. Looking like he could barely stand, leaning heavily on a woman she took to be his mother. Two rows in front a middle-aged woman, familiar for some reason that Cecilia couldn’t put her finger on. Then it occured to her, Oliver’s wife. She had seen her once, picking him up from a late flight when his car was in the garage. She had been attractive, could be more so if she made more of an effort. But now she looked like death. She was leaning heavily on a young woman. Their daughter. Dimly remembered Oliver making some fleeting mention of a daughter, a psychology student, or something like that. There was a son too, younger. Cecilia watched the family, looked for a boy that would fit. But then, perhaps he was younger than she remembered him being, too young to come to something like this. She looked anyway, anything so she didn’t have to listen to the minister and his droning tones and the low keening grief.
But there was just an elderly couple, their gazes darting sideways to the mother and daughter, the main players in the tragedy.
“… and their going from us to be their destruction; but they are at peace.”
Cecilia had dressed in the spare room, her room as she now thought it, running a brush through her hair, knew it needed washing, rolling itself into the curls that she had spent so long trying to fight. Had pulled on black trousers, a black blouse. Studying herself in the mirror, thinking that she looked sick, like a cancer patient. Swiping foundation and bronzer and mascara, still little but the ghost of herself. Hadn’t noticed that Ben wasn’t there. Hadn’t even occurred to her to ask. Too swamped in the memory of the tablet she had taken to get rid of the foetus, the pain gripping her stomach, the blood as she flushed the life out of her, and then, from somewhere older, the memory of hands, smelling of grease, wrapping themselves around her neck.
“For though in the sight of others they were punished, their hope is full of immortality.”
It was getting warmer in the church, seemed like all of the air had been sucked out. Looking up at her husband,
Chapter 36
Tom – Sunday, 25th March – 6.01pm
“You’re the policeman? Libby’s dad said you’d be calling me. He said you needed to talk me?”