There was a tremor in his voice as he spoke. A tear on one cheek. His serious grown-up face went a little wobbly as December watched. His moustache trembled and sparkled. She tried to listen to his words, but they didn’t quite make sense. Who was he talking about? He hadn’t said anyone’s name.
She was sat next to Toby, who was still picking his nose. She didn’t normally sit next to Toby.
A stone was sinking inside her.
Somewhere near the front of the hall she could hear crying.
It wasn’t Mr Dedman, but some of the little kids.
‘We’ve sent a text out to your parents,’ the head went on. ‘I know some of you might want to be with your families today instead of here. But I want you to know that we are your family too. The whole school is here for you, and if anyone wants to talk, please remember we are here to listen. You can talk to any of us.’
‘Please, Mr Dedman,’ someone said. It was a child’s voice.
December looked around to see who had spoken, whose hand was in the air, and discovered it was her.
‘Yes, Ember?’
‘You’ve … you’ve not said her name, Mr Dedman. You’ve not said who it is.’
‘Oh.’ He looked down at his hands, coughed, looked at the wall and then at December. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘Happiness Browne. It was Happiness who had the accident.’
There were more tears and gasps around her. A chattering sprang up, quiet, subdued, strangled, nervous, scared, and it wasn’t hushed by the teachers sitting at the edge of the hall.
The stone that had been
sinking
inside her
hit
bottom.
Mud puffed up.
She couldn’t move.
It was
too
heavy.
‘Oh,’
she said.
She had a quiet lunch with her dad.
He’d come and picked her up from school when he’d got the message.
‘Do you want to stay?’ he’d asked.
She’d shook her head. School echoed with Happiness. It was too sad.
That afternoon, Penny came round to see them.
She brought cake.
She didn’t know what to say.
They sat and watched television for a bit, December curled up against her dad.
The man on the screen was learning to tap dance, but wasn’t very good at it.
The cake sat on the coffee table uneaten.
After a bit, Harry said, ‘Not a good day, is it? I bumped into your Uncle Graham at the shops this morning. Betty got hit by a car last night.’
‘Oh no,’ said Penny, ‘that’s awful.’
Graham was December’s mum’s brother. He lived nearby but they didn’t see each other all that often. Betty was his dog.
She was one of those dogs that’s mostly shoulders and dribble. December had never much liked her.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said anyway.
‘Oh, pet, it’s not your fault,’ said Penny, getting up. ‘Shall I make us some more tea?’
And so the grey day went on.
It rained in the early evening, but had stopped by the time she went upstairs.
Her dad sat on the floor by her bed and read her the report he’d been writing for work until she fell asleep. She liked it when he did that.
Soon she was snoring.
December’s dreams were jumbled and distant. She had the feeling her mother had been in them, which was unusual.
She woke in the middle of the night, in the pitch dark, and heard the rain thrumming on the windows. There was a storm raging out there. She felt worried for the fishermen out at sea. She liked fish. And then, in among the thudding sting of the raindrops, she heard Happiness knocking on the glass.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
She lay there, filled with worry.
And then, later, she woke up again and it was morning. The light was shining through her curtains, which were never thick enough, never heavy enough, to the keep the day at bay.
When she opened them and looked out, the pavements were dry, not a puddle in sight.
December was quiet at breakfast.
Her dad didn’t ask her what was wrong. He didn’t need to.
Penny was there. She’d stayed the night, which she did every now and then.
Toast crunched slowly round the table.
Her dad walked her to school, leaving Penny to guard the house.
‘You gonna be OK, kid?’ he asked.
‘Can’t I stay home?’ she said. ‘I don’t feel very well. I’m scared. Like butterflies.’
‘I know,’ he said. ‘But you’ve gotta go. You need to go to school, and you’ll be with your friends. They probably feel like you do. Don’t you think?’
She kicked a dandelion that was growing out of the pavement, snapping its head off with a satisfying snick.
‘Dunno,’ she said. ‘I think I just want to go back to bed. I didn’t sleep well.’
‘Darling,’ her dad said, ‘Happiness wouldn’t want that, would she? She’d want you to go to school. She’d want you to be with your friends, to be with her friends.’
‘But, Harry,’ December said, ‘it doesn’t matter what she wants. She’s not here, is she? And anyway, she liked sleeping. It was one of her most favourite hobbies.’
‘Of course it matters,’ her dad said, squeezing her hand. ‘Of course it matters what she wants, or what she wanted. And, well … sometimes you have to guess. You have to guess, now that they’re not here to tell you. You have to work it out yourself, and you do your best to do right by them.’ He paused to cough a little cough. ‘Ember, my love, you just try your best to do what they would have wanted.’
‘You’re squeezing my hand,’ she said. ‘You’re hurting.’
He let go.
‘Sorry,’ he said.
She didn’t ask him what all that was about. She thought she understood, thought she understood why it sounded as if he cared so much. He wasn’t talking about Happiness any more; he was talking about her mum.
‘I’m sorry too,’ she said quietly.
He never talked like that normally. He usually smiled and laughed when he talked about her mum, telling December how much fun she was, how smart, how funny. He always stopped talking before it got sad, or before he got sad, although that didn’t stop December from sort of missing this woman she hardly remembered, this woman she’d hardly met.
Sometimes she looked at the photo of the three of them which sat on the mantelpiece and filled that familiar grinning stranger with all the stories her dad had told her, and, yes, it was a shame she wasn’t there to tuck her in at night or to wash her hair or to mend the slow puncture her bike kept getting, but it wasn’t the end of the world. Her mum wasn’t there in the same way a character off the telly isn’t there: you might feel you know them, you might know loads about them, you might think you probably love them even, but you don’t expect them to turn up to tea one day, and if they did you probably wouldn’t know what to say to them anyway.
Happiness was different though. She should be there. Every day.
And now she wasn’t.
School was odd.
The day went by as days do, but quietly. Everyone was quiet. The teachers, the kids, the dinner ladies. It was a bit like being on an old ship lost at sea, becalmed and bobbing.
Eventually the final bell went and it was home time.
Her dad wasn’t waiting for her at the gates, but that was quite normal. She and Ness walked home together usually. It was only a couple of streets, after all.
Today, however, she’d secretly hoped Harry would be there. She didn’t fancy walking by herself.
She knew that if she’d asked him, he’d’ve been there, but she hadn’t asked.
She pulled her bag higher up on her shoulder, and, taking a deep breath, walked out of the playground and into the road, heading for home.
‘Yo, Amber,’ a voice said, just as she turn
ed the first corner. ‘Where’re you off to?’
Walking towards her was a man, short and stubbly, with a blonde ponytail. He was wearing a leather jacket and dark glasses and smelt faintly of dust and cigarettes.
It was her mum’s brother, Uncle Graham. In ten years, he’d never once got her name right.
He rode a motorbike that took blood samples or donor hearts or other special things between hospitals, but he didn’t have his bike with him this afternoon.
‘Soz I’m late, mate,’ he said. ‘I wasn’t sure what time you got out. Back in my day we were at school right up till it got dark.’ He laughed, a little yapping sort of laugh that was always a surprise when she heard it come out of him. ‘Your dad sent me. Him and Whatsername’ve gone off for the afternoon.’
December didn’t say anything. She just listened, holding the strap of her bag tightly between her fingers and thumb. The fabric was a nice sort of rough.
‘He said they’ll be back about six. You can come have tea at my place. Keep me out of trouble, eh?’ He laughed again.
It wasn’t like her dad to go off without telling her, but she couldn’t very well argue with Graham. He was her uncle and she’d been round his house before, although not very often. He only lived a few roads away from her school, but in the opposite direction to home.
Besides, she didn’t have a door key, so it was either go round Uncle Graham’s or sit on her front step until her dad came home.
She looked up at the clouds.
They were grey, and some of them looked grumpy.
‘OK,’ she said. ‘But it’s Ember, not Amber.’
‘Course it is,’ laughed her uncle, slapping her on the back. ‘Course it is.’
As they walked he kept up a stream of chatter, which filled the air around them.
It reminded her of walking with Ness, except he talked less about crisps and more about TV shows she’d never seen.
December watched telly in Uncle Graham’s front room while he
pottered around the house doing other things. He’d made her
squash and a surprisingly good tuna sandwich.
She sat on the settee with her feet tucked up underneath her. She leant her head on a cushion.
It was hard to concentrate on the programme, because her mind was elsewhere. It was as if there was something she’d forgotten to do, that she’d promised someone she’d do … something important. But she checked through and counted off on her fingers and there wasn’t anything. Not really. It was just … just Happiness, she guessed.
She hadn’t cried yet.
That had surprised her.
She’d’ve wanted people to cry for her if she died.
So maybe, she thought, that meant that Happiness wasn’t dead.
That Mr Dedman had got it wrong in assembly and had meant to say another girl’s name instead and Ness had just gone off on holiday without telling anyone.
She looked at the dog basket that was on the floor by the gas fire. The blanket was dirty and dangled half out. A rubber bone lay in the very centre of the basket, not saying anything.
‘You ’K, Amber?’ Graham said, poking his head round the door.
He had a mug in his hand that he was drying with a tea towel.
He gave her a smile that she recognised, not because it was his smile, but from the photo of her mum at home. They had the same smile.
‘D’ya want more squash or ’nother biscuit or something?’ he said. ‘Give it half an hour and I’ll walk you home.’
‘Biscuit, please,’ she said.
He went away and came back with a packet of custard creams.
‘Take a couple,’ he said.
Half an hour later she put her shoes on.
A phone rang.
It wasn’t hers because she didn’t have one, even though she’d asked her dad for one a hundred times. ‘Maybe next birthday,’ he’d said each time.
Graham ran past, springing up the stairs, his mobile buzzing in his hand.
‘Yeah?’ he said as he reached the landing. ‘Oh really? … Oh no … Of course, of course … I’ll let you know if I see …’
He was moving about upstairs as he talked, his voice fading in and out of earshot.
Ember went into the kitchen to pick up her school bag and when she came back into the hall, Graham was just coming down.
A dog lead made of shiny silver chain hung from a hook by the front door.
The house smelt of Betty, even though she wasn’t there.
She guessed the house next door to hers would smell of Happiness, even though she didn’t smell.
‘Out the back,’ Graham said. ‘We’ll go out the back. It’s quicker that way.’
They went through into the kitchen and out the back door.
He locked it behind them.
The garden was just a long square of earth, with sprigs of grass and weeds poking up here and there, and with a washing line crossing it diagonally.
‘I keep meaning to do something with it,’ he said. ‘Our mum always had it beautiful, but Betty won’t be doing with flowers. She’s a digger. Always digging for gold.’
He gave a chuckle and shook his head.
At the end of the garden was a gate that led them out into an alley.
Graham pulled a bit of paper from his pocket. It was scrunched up and he unfolded it sort of flat and moved it around like it was a map he was trying to find north on.
‘This way,’ he said, pushing past a wheelie bin.
It was odd, Ember thought, that he needed a map to get out of the alley, but she didn’t say anything, not knowing what to say.
He was her mum’s brother, and he had just made her a very decent tuna sandwich, so he deserved the ‘benefit of the doubt’.
They reached a place where the alley met another one, crossing it like a T-junction.
‘This way,’ Graham said, turning left.
She followed.
After another twenty metres they met another alley, another T-junction.
He turned left again.
Again she followed.
Overhead, clouds drifted slowly by and she could hear a pair of pigeons cooing to one another.
Another T-junction.
Left again.
Now Ember was sure there was something odd going on. If they’d turned left and then left and then left again they should be almost back where they began. That was geometry.
‘Are you sure this is the right way?’ she asked.
Graham, who was a few metres ahead of her, turned and looked at her and said, ‘Oh yes. This is it. It’s a short cut. We’re almost there. Not far now.’
Something about what he said and how he’d said it, a series of answers that tripped over each other as he’d spoken, made the hair on the back of her neck stand up.
He sounded odd. Nervous.
They went round another corner.
Should I run? she thought, and as she thought it she noticed something in the shadows.
Sat on top of a dustbin (not a wheelie bin, but one of those old-fashioned, round metal ones you see in old telly programmes) was a cat. She could hardly make it out in the gloom. It was a rough dark shape in the shadows, but she saw the flicker of its odd-coloured eyes as it slowly blinked at her. One was red; one was blue.
‘C’mon,’ Graham said, turning left yet again and heading up another alley.
Not really seeing what other option she had, Ember followed and as she turned the corner she looked again at the cat and it shook its head, tattered ears and all, as if to say, ‘Don’t go that way.’
But then it jumped down from the bin and padded off in the opposite direction.
Graham was ahead of her, just ten metres away and he was opening a gate on one side of the alley. A gate into one of the gardens.
He looked at his piece of paper before he did so and sighed deeply.
It was an odd thing to see, that sigh, though Ember couldn’t really say why.
She walked up to him.
‘Are we back at your house?’ she asked.
Turning four corners would’ve brought them round in a circle (well, a square), back to where they started. But she wasn’t sure how many corners they’d gone round. The memory seemed muddy.
Uncle Graham didn’t say anything but walked through the gate into the garden.
Looking through the gate she noticed something wrong. Something strange and wrong.
Ember had seen enough old films on the telly to know what the world looked like in black and white.
And she’d seen enough of the world to know that it was only black and white in old films.
Graham’s garden (and it was his garden, it had the same saggy washing line across it, though the lawn looked more grassy and flowerbeds filled with flowers lined the sides) was now in black and white.
She looked at the alley around her, at the tarmac at her feet, at the wheelie bin over the way. Colour. It was all colour. Normal. Only the garden and the house beyond it were black and white. Through that gate. Not normal.
Grey and grey and grey.
‘What’s happened?’ she said.
‘Quickly,’ said Graham urgently. ‘Come in here, I’ve got something to show you. It’s important.’
She stepped through the gate.
She held her hands up in front of her face. They were still the same colour as they’d always been. So was Graham. It was just the world. (Even the sky above her was grey now, where it had been blue moments before.)
Graham unlocked the back door.
There was a noise inside. A snorting, chomping, ugly noise.
Ember took a step back, but it was just Betty, just Graham’s dog, Betty, bursting out of the door in an explosion of slobber and shoulders and joy.
The Afterwards Page 2