After the Eclipse

by Fran Dorricott

  “Are you okay?” Marion asked, sitting on the coffee table opposite me. She looked tired, too. Her hair was a mess, dark circles forming under her eyes.

  “Not really,” I said quietly. “It’s been a long few days.”

  Marion sighed, drinking from her own cup and then resting her elbows on her knees.

  “Cassie, I really think you need to cut yourself some slack. Take a break. After what’s happened you ought to be with your gran instead of running around trying to do my job for me.” She winced, realising even as she said it that she was being harsh. “That’s not what I mean… But do you understand where I’m coming from?”

  “Grace Butler is still out there,” I said, suddenly more awake. Gran’s accident didn’t have to be for nothing. “She’s still out there and I can still help her. And when I was at the school there was—”

  “Cassie…”

  “And I talked to Roger Upton—”

  “Cassie,” Marion cut me off again. “I know that you want to help, but I just… I think you’re putting a lot of effort into something that isn’t going to pay off.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I just mean that… With Grace, I think you’re barking up the wrong tree. Okay? There’re a lot of leads we’re following right now, and I do think we’re getting somewhere. It’s not worth you putting your life – your gran – on hold.”

  “Marion, you’re speaking in riddles.”

  “Cassie, in cases like this – we start with the family.”

  “That’s why Roger—”

  “Roger and Adelaide Upton aren’t Grace’s only family. She has a biological father, and her dad’s in the – look, promise you won’t write any of this? I can’t go on record yet.”

  “He’s in the what, Marion?”

  “In the wind,” she said. “He’s self-employed, works from home a lot which explains why nobody batted an eyelid when they didn’t hear from him for a couple of days over the weekend. We left messages and heard nothing back so we sent a team round to check out his house. He wasn’t there. He’s got an assistant and she’s not heard from him since last week, and apparently there’s been some contention about him jetting off on holiday in the past without letting anybody know, especially when he has a low workload. We’ve checked and he’s not left the country but he’s got his car…”

  I gripped my trembling cup tighter. I thought of the way my dad had been treated when Olive was taken. It couldn’t be Grace’s father. Could it?

  I remembered my dad’s face when he told me he was leaving. His eyes had been bloodshot, his brow creased. Stubble on his chin. He was truly heartbroken – but whether it was because Olive was gone, or whether it was because he knew he was about to walk away from the family he’d spent so long building, I hadn’t known.

  “It won’t be for long,” he’d said. Lied. “I’m just going to stay in a hotel until all of this blows over.”

  The morning light had lit up his wrinkles like scars and I’d known, right then, that he wasn’t coming back. I also knew it wasn’t because of the police inquiry. It would have happened anyway. He hugged me, bone-deep and long, and I breathed in the scent of books and aftershave, knowing that soon it would all be different.

  “Why?” I’d asked. Tears made everything blurry.

  “You and Mum are better off without me.”

  “No we’re not. You can’t have a family with just two people.”

  Dad held me at arm’s length, looking at me so intently it hurt. All the while it felt like my heart was breaking, the world collapsing under its own weight.

  “We’re still a family, Cass. I’m still your dad.”

  He was wrong. Dads didn’t just leave when it got hard. Dads didn’t move in with other women. They didn’t pretend that everything was okay when it wasn’t. The eclipse still hung over us, even then, the darkness invading everything – every look, every conversation.

  I pictured the eclipse as I said what I’d wanted to say since I found out about her. About Carol. I bared my teeth at him in a disgusted snarl.

  “You stopped being my dad the day you chose screwing her over looking after us.”

  He hadn’t even argued.

  “I…” I pulled myself back to the present. Marion was watching me carefully. “Do you really think Grace’s father has something to do with it?” I asked.

  Marion ignored the question.

  “I think you need to take some time and get yourself together,” she said. “I can see how you’re linking this to Olive and I know you’ve been asking questions, and that’s all fine if it’s for your writing or whatever, but I really don’t think…” She took a deep breath. “I think you’re taking it too far, Cass. You’re too invested. And I know what you’re like.”

  Although Marion’s voice was filled with warmth, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was being reprimanded. Told off like a stupid kid. This wasn’t me just being reckless or making stuff up. I wasn’t taking it too far.

  I wasn’t taking it far enough.

  “You can’t tell me it isn’t a connection you made yourself,” I said. “Grace. Olive. The eclipse.”

  Marion shook her head. “I won’t deny that the eclipse had me spooked. I still can’t shake it, like every time I blink it’s right there, in my eyes…” She rubbed her face, as though trying to scrub away the image. “But timing isn’t everything – and Olive was taken during the eclipse. So it doesn’t even match up. I have new leads to follow so can you give me some time to prove it to you?”

  I could see how hard Marion was trying. Especially when she didn’t believe herself a hundred per cent. I looked at her and tried to nod. Really tried. But I couldn’t get my body to lie.

  I was in too deep already. There was Darren Walker outside the school, Roger Upton’s history, and I couldn’t stop wondering about Cordy Jones. And then there was the mood ring, the one Grace was wearing that looked so much like Olive’s, and the anonymous text messages on top of all that… I had too many open leads, too much inside my head to just drop it. I knew that made me awful, plotting and scheming and thinking while Gran was in hospital, but I couldn’t stop it. I couldn’t have her hurting for nothing.

  I had been unable to stop since I’d opened the Olive Diary. Like Pandora with her box, I couldn’t close it now. Olive’s ghost was back, insistent; I needed to ask the questions, no matter what answers I might find.

  “Okay,” I promised. My tongue didn’t betray my lie. “I’ll try. Now can we just watch some shit TV until I’m ready to go home and fall asleep?”

  * * *

  I typed up some of my thoughts about my meeting with Roger Upton before bed in the hopes I might be able to sleep better without my mind whirring. I couldn’t face turning any of this into a proper article. Something just didn’t sit right with me although I knew, as I’d told him, that it would probably come out eventually. But I hoped that by sifting through my thoughts I might be able to push back the dreams for one night. I thought of the pills Doctor White had prescribed, sitting in the cabinet just down the hall, but I made myself ignore them. They weren’t mine to take.

  I hoped I would be too exhausted to dream.

  I was wrong.

  The darkness was heavy, smothering me like a blanket. It pulled tight around my skin, making it hard to breathe. I was sweating, tossing and turning and fighting. The walls were silver-grey, hostile and sterile. Mum gripped my hand as we walked. My blood thrummed in my ears, memories haunting me. I’d had variations on this dream before.

  “I don’t want to do this,” I said, voice hoarse.

  Mum tightened her grip on my hand and marched on. I had no choice but to follow. Gone were any of the soft edges I remembered in her face; now she was all hard lines, her strong grip making me wince.

  Eventually we came to a room. We didn’t go in. A man hovered at the edge of my vision, his clothes dark. I realised where we were and felt my whole body go numb with terror. My heart beat loud in my ears; my f
ace was already wet with tears. Mum gripped my hand harder. I felt my knuckles crack.

  “Mum, it hurts—”

  “Are you ready?”

  There was a voice. Disembodied. And then the dark wall in front of us came to life; not a wall, but a window. A sheet of glass bigger than the span of my arms. I could feel my heartbeat double in speed. Triple. I thought I might die. I held my breath until my lungs screamed for air, and gripped my mother’s hand right back.

  “Do you see? Is it her?” Mum’s voice shook.

  I realised my eyes were closed. I forced them open.

  In the room there was a table. On the table was a girl. I felt the bile rising inside me before I could stop it, but I swallowed it down. I wouldn’t let this beat me. It couldn’t be true. Wasn’t true. The body was too long. Too pale. The hair too bright, the eyes – all wrong.

  Mum started to cry. Horrible, vicious sobs that ripped through her. Through me. She pulled away, took her hand from mine. I clung to her sleeve but she pushed me off. The darkness started to swallow her, as if in slow motion. Mum, wait. She didn’t wait. Distance between us growing, she began to blur through my tears.

  Then she was gone and I could still smell the sharp, expensive tang of her perfume. It was the last time I saw her alive, the last time I touched her while she was warm and strong.

  The next memory came no matter how hard I tried to wake up.

  The house muted and still. The door unlocked. I trailed down the empty hall.

  “Mum?” In my hand I clutched the papers, the ones that said I’d provisionally been accepted to university. I thought if I could show her – that there still might be a chance for us to have a future, that I wasn’t as stupid or reckless as it always seemed. There might be a life for us – for me – away from the body in the morgue, the teenage body that was more like mine than Olive’s. Away from all the hurt there might be something fresh to look forward to.

  The house was cold. I’d been drinking – just a bit, just to gather the nerve to tell Mum about the uni place that was waiting for me if I got the right grades. But it would mean leaving her alone if I wanted to go. I’d spent the evening with friends in the safe, anonymous shadow of an empty park; I’d almost calmed myself into believing that things might be okay. I could taste cheap vodka and expensively bad weed on my tongue as I flicked on light after light, spilling yellow across the black in the house.

  “Mum?”

  In the kitchen there were candles burning. Burning so low they were almost out. They were on the table, red and green Christmas candles decorated with wax wreaths at the base. The wreaths were melting too.

  It wasn’t Christmas. It was late spring. The table was set with our fine china, the knives blindingly silver. I blinked in confusion.

  Only then I saw her, and I knew. She wore her best dress and her smart shoes, polished to a high shine. Her feet were twelve inches off the ground.

  I screamed. Screamed and screamed. The darkness invaded as the candles extinguished. One… Two… Three… Black air hit me as I stumbled out, and then I was back in the hallway – in that sterile place that wasn’t home, staring at a wall of dark, mirrored glass.

  I dried my tears, swallowed to ease my sore throat.

  “No,” I said to the darkness. “That isn’t Olive.”

  14

  Thursday, 19 March 2015

  ONE DAY UNTIL THE eclipse.

  I woke up with the thought burning inside me. I struggled upright in bed, suddenly seized by the feeling that if I didn’t find her before the eclipse, then we never would. I knew it was stupid but the eclipse and Olive had become so connected in my mind that I couldn’t separate them.

  I caught sight of the few framed articles that lived on the wall opposite the bed. They’d been there when I moved in, relics from Grandad’s studio. My face beamed out from next to the bylines, the text of the features as familiar as my own thoughts from the time I’d spent writing them.

  I had built my career on the grief and confusion of families like my own. Those who had lost children – even those who had found them again – still couldn’t hide their new scars. The experience had changed them. Like it had changed my dad, who was now emotionally distant – and Mum, who hadn’t been able to beat her grief into submission. Who had eventually chosen death over sadness and alcohol and a lifetime of regret.

  It had changed me, too.

  But I knew, staring at those articles, that I wasn’t going crazy. If there was a connection here then I was going to find it.

  I dragged myself out of bed, a new determination washing through me. I rang the hospital to check in, then showered and made a quick coffee, which I drank in scalding gulps. I grabbed my hoodie from the hook on the wall where I’d hung it the night before. As I pulled it on I noticed a scrap of paper in the pocket. I’ll speak to you later x. At first I didn’t recognise the handwriting, but the little kiss in the bottom corner made my heart gallop and a flush creep across my cheeks. Marion must have slipped it in before I left her house.

  * * *

  They were only just serving breakfast as I arrived at the hospital – eggs on toast, more than a little limp. Gran didn’t seem to notice. Eggs were her favourite.

  “Hello,” she said brightly. She smiled. Even if she wasn’t lucid, I’d take happy any day. I smiled back, glad that she was okay. It could have been much worse.

  I thought of the text messages again and a familiar trill of guilt made my smile falter. But I pushed it down. At least Gran would be safer here than at home. I wanted her home but I was grateful that it meant she would be out of harm’s way, at least for a little while.

  “Morning,” I said.

  I settled down on the small chair that was beside Gran’s bed, and I helped to cut up her breakfast so she could dig in. There was a television mounted on one wall that I’d sorted for her last night, subtitled into silence. I couldn’t help watching it. A banner circling the bottom of the screen admitted that the police had still given no new updates in the Grace Butler case.

  In several shots there were people out on the streets, in the fields, searching for her. I thought I recognised a few of them, Earl from the café, that curly-haired teacher I’d seen outside the school, Ady, even Doctor White in one of the shots with his back to the camera. Bishop’s Green had somehow never felt so small and yet so full of unknowns.

  I felt a sudden, overwhelming loss. I missed my mum. Or, I missed her as she’d been in the early days, not the distant work-obsessed alcoholic she’d become.

  It was funny, I supposed, how I’d probably turned out just like her. My one saving grace, I’d often joked with Henry, was that I wasn’t homophobic.

  The next news story was about the eclipse. I glanced away quickly, but still managed to find the black and white crescent burning into my vision even when I stared at the lino on the floor.

  When I looked back up they were playing repeat footage from the press conference that had been held yesterday. Adelaide and Roger up on a podium, their faces wrinkled with concern. My exclusive interview was gone. I focused on Roger’s face but found that I couldn’t get a gut feeling on him any more. Was it possible that he’d just made a mistake all those years ago? The thought made me sick but his concern for his stepdaughter certainly didn’t seem fake.

  I was startled out of my reverie when Gran reached out and touched my hand.

  “She won’t come home like that,” she said, so quietly I thought I’d misheard her. But I could see from her face that I hadn’t. I’d heard her perfectly.

  I swallowed hard, blinking away the tears that formed. I thought of my dreams, of Olive’s face as she shouted my name. Crying wouldn’t do any good. I poured Gran a cup of water and refused to look at her.

  “No,” I admitted, “she won’t.”

  * * *

  When I got home there was a car I didn’t recognise parked outside the house. It looked out of place, its shiny white bonnet and elegant black wheels making my Fiesta look like
a hipster’s dream.

  As I got out of my car, I realised that I recognised the driver, and I was filled with unexpected excitement. A rush of warmth and good feeling filled the void that had settled in my heart when I’d left Gran in that hospital. I hadn’t thought he’d make good on his promise – and not in a shiny new set of wheels.

  “Heno!”

  He looked the same as he always did. Lean body hidden in jeans and a tweed jacket that was slightly too big for him, his white hair cropped tight at the sides and longer on top.

  “Morning, darling,” he said.

  “What are you doing here? I know you said you’d come but I didn’t think you would.”

  “That’s really no way to greet your knight in shining armour,” he said, smirking. I couldn’t believe he’d driven all this way, to holiday here.

  “Sorry,” I said, my own lips curling into a grin.

  “I told you I was coming to visit. You owe me dinner, remember? Anyway, it’s all right, this town is making heathens of the both of us. You know I saw five posters on my way here, that ghastly eclipse staring at me wherever I go.” He narrowed his gaze. “Are you holding up okay? I got your text about your gran. How’s she doing?”

  I didn’t want to lie, so I just shrugged. I wasn’t going to tell him that I saw eclipses every time I blinked, that sickle-slice of moon cutting the darkness whenever I closed my eyes, that I was terrified about when Gran came home in case she was in danger again.

  “That number you asked me to trace,” Henry said when he saw I wasn’t going to answer. “It’s a burner. Pay-as-you-go type thing. Sorry.” He tilted his head, watching me. Waiting.

  I shrugged off his curiosity. “Do you want to come in for a cup of tea?” I asked.

  Awkwardly I glanced towards my home. Henry followed my gaze, taking in the small house with its old-fashioned lace curtains and unkempt garden. It was a million miles away from the flat I’d shared with Helen in central London, all decked out in chrome polish and brand-new appliances. I could see the amusement dripping off him, but he didn’t say anything.