Flowers for the Dead. C. K. Williams
hugging his jacket to his body against the cold.
Do I really look so bad?
My feet won’t stop shaking even as I speed across the bridge and out of the village. My stomach is filled with dread now, heavy, sticky dread. It is a relief to turn onto the dirt road leading up to the hollow, far away from that man who stole Jay’s name, his voice, even his eyes. The voice that used to tell me about paintings we saw in Manchester, paintings and sculptures and weird things that I didn’t think of as art. The eyes that would shine when he painted rainbows onto the concrete of the parking lot, or brim with tears that he wouldn’t let spill as I walked away from him.
I shiver. Driving past the Kenzies’, I glance down their drive. The upper curtains are drawn. I keep driving, stretching my prickling hands. And what was he talking about, anyway? I’d kissed Anna once. Twice, maybe. We’d been stupid. Fooling around. That was all. I run a hand over my mouth.
I know I will have to go back to see Jay once more to ask him about that night. But definitely in a public place. Much more public than his front door, at least. I do not think he would have seriously hurt me, but what do I know about Jacob Mason? I haven’t seen him in nineteen years.
Maybe Oliver would know. They used to be mates, Oliver and Jay, both of them on the swimming team. After it’d no longer been the four of us. Best mates even, I think.
But I cannot ask Oliver. I can’t ask him anything ever again.
The thought makes me choke up.
Turning into the hollow and driving down towards the house, I try to calm down, breathing as regularly as possible. Nobody in sight, not even a cat. It would have been nice to have a cat. Our neighbours, on the second flat where Oliver and I lived, they had one. She used to stop by at ours a lot, that beautiful cat, black body and white paws. We moved out shortly after she died.
Unloading the bags from the boot, mouth twitching, I think about the cat and how she used to love the treats I’d bake specifically for her. I was the only one who could feed her straight from the palm of my hand. I do my best to think of the cat and not of Oliver. About how he could help me if he was here. About how we would be playing karaoke tonight, if it was a regular Sunday. About the karaoke machine he had organised for our wedding. It came as such a surprise to me, me, who had dedicated almost a year to planning this wedding, sitting on the couch in the evenings as we watched TV and making our own confetti.
It was a fairly small affair, in that comfy pub in Shoreditch. It was one of my good phases, where I felt relatively stable. Relatively alive. And we didn’t need a crowd. All we needed was to sing ‘One Way or Another’ and ‘Every Breath You Take’ together and dance like silly people having a stroke. Or ‘Build Me Up Buttercup’. There were buttercups in the decorations and in my bouquet. Like our fish. The one I accidentally killed.
I lick my lips, shifting the grocery bags around. The wood creaks under my feet as I walk up the stairs to the porch. A bird is rustling through the bushes somewhere, or a rabbit. The chimes are singing in the gentle breeze.
I freeze.
Then I turn to the side.
There they are. Moving gently in the cold wind, three silver pipes on worn strings.
The chimes are back.
And even as I listen to their sounds, standing rooted to the cold white ground, I hear another sound: the engine of a car.
It’s coming towards me.
THE NEIGHBOUR
This time, when I hear her car passing along the road, I get up. When it comes into sight, I am already at the sitting-room window, peeking out through the white curtains, my desk and work abandoned.
As she drives past, I stand there, biting my lip. I know I must finish this translation by tomorrow. It is tiring, translating a government document, but it pays well. And they want their deadlines kept. It is too lucrative keeping them happy not to. At least until I hear back from the ESA.
So I turn back to the desk with a sigh. The concert is still playing over the stereo (I still use a stereo; why not? It works. Who has time to put all their CDs onto their computer, anyway?), the Swedish Radio Choir performing the Verdi Requiem. It calms me, and I try and sing along and wonder whether I could still sing properly, if I joined another choir. If I could remember the lullaby my grandmother sang to me the few times I saw her, not nearly often enough to understand why she was so gentle when she sang yet so brutal when she spoke.
I have just sat down again when I hear it:
Another car. As if following the first. As if following her.
Immediately, I am back at the window. Furrowing my brow, I stare outside. There. Up the hill it comes, a dark-green Jeep, the tyres all muddy. It almost disappears between the trees, between the evergreen of the pines and the slim trunks of the birches.
They might have turned down this road by accident. They might reverse once they have realised their mistake.
I open the window and listen to the Jeep’s engine. It continues along the road. I hear it slow down. Brake.
But it does not stop. It does not turn back. Even as the engine quietens, I hear the gravel churn. Hear it turn into her driveway.
Glancing back at my computer, I hesitate. Then I slink into the hallway. Put on my boots, pull my jacket on top of my threadbare dress and reach for the rifle by the coat rack.
Then I am out of the door.
LINN
It is a muddy Jeep coming down my driveway. I’m alone on the steps of the front porch. The handles of the shopping bags are cutting into my skin. The chimes are singing. For a moment, I think about running.
Somebody returned the chimes. Were they already here when I left for the supermarket in the morning? It’s hard to remember. Maybe I overlooked them. I could have.
The Jeep comes to a stop on the side of the driveway. The soles of my feet are curling in on themselves, pain shooting up my calves.
I see the door open. Two legs swing out. They are thin, well dressed in a pair of Paul Smith trousers and shiny riding boots. A body emerges from the car. It’s a woman in a fine suit, wearing pearl earrings and a tasteful necklace, hair freshly cut, large sunglasses sitting on top of her head. She looks incredibly put together. Like a first lady. Like a prime minister. Only her face seems very thin.
That’s how I recognise her. ‘Miss Luca?’ I say.
Her voice is exactly as I remember it, full of professional concern even when exchanging the most casual of greetings as she walks up to me. ‘Ey up, Ms Wilson!’
Her lipstick is bright in the hollow. I remember clearly that she never used to wear makeup. Even as a teenager, I admired that about her. Now, her face is perfectly painted. The tone of her lipstick. Her foundation, clearly expensive, so carefully applied. My last name is Dawson now, but I don’t correct her. ‘So it is you! When Kaitlin told me you were in town, I simply could not believe it.’
She comes to a halt in front of me. Her eyes are running all over my body, just like Kaitlin’s and Anvi’s. She is much better at hiding her shock, but it is obvious that she is just as surprised as the two of them to see me standing in front of her. When she looks at me like that, it feels like my body is taking up more space than it should.
‘I hope you don’t mind my dropping by unannounced like this. I found your note when I came home, and I was just on my way to go for a walk in the woods anyway,’ she explains. ‘So I thought: why don’t you stop by her house and see for yourself, Antonia. See about this note. See if what Kaitlin says is actually true. To be fair, though, I have never diagnosed her with mythomania.’
We both laugh at her joke, awkwardly. ‘It is me,’ I say, shifting the grocery bags