The Afterwards

by A. F. Harrold

  The woman let go of her arm, turned to face Ember’s dad, and smiled.

  ‘I spotted her wandering near the park,’ she said. ‘I brought her home for you.’

  ‘Who are you?’

  ‘Ms Todd. I work for Social Services.’ She handed Harry a card that she produced from the air. ‘I’m at the school for the next few days, in case any children need to talk about what happened. I’m there to listen. To support. You know.’

  She smiled and leant her head to one side.

  ‘Oh, of course.’

  Harry looked at the card. Read it. Seemed to be satisfied with what it said.

  Ember said nothing, looking from one grown-up to the other.

  She was trying to decide if this story was better than the real one. Which would get her into more trouble?

  Her heart skipped strangely inside her chest. Happiness was in her head.

  ‘It’s perfectly natural that some of the children are upset, want to seek out a little solitude, a little time of their own. This one wandered. I thought it safest I brought her home.’

  ‘Thank you, Ms Todd,’ Harry said. ‘But that’s the wrong house.’

  Ms Todd laughed and said, ‘I see that now. I guess we’re all a bit absent-minded today, aren’t we?’

  That evening, after Ember had had a bath and once she was sat up in bed, her dad came and sat on the floor beside her.

  ‘You know you can talk to me,’ he said. ‘You can talk to me about anything. Anything that’s on your mind.’

  She nodded.

  ‘And you know I’m not mad, I’m not angry, but I was just so worried when you didn’t come home. December, darling, don’t ever do that to me again. Promise me? Penny was so worried. You know that she loves you too, don’t you?’

  She nodded.

  Of course she knew that.

  When December woke she lay in bed, making a list of new things she knew, or thought she knew.

  She traced them out on the ceiling.

  Firstly, the dead sort of don’t die. There’s a place where they live on for a bit. It’s boring and grey and silent and she didn’t want to go back there.

  Secondly, her mum’s brother, Uncle Graham, had made some sort of ‘deal’ with that Ms Todd person to get Betty back from that place. It seemed like he’d swapped Ember for Betty. A live girl for a dead dog.

  Thirdly, Ms Todd said that she’d changed her mind about the deal. Ms Todd had brought her back from that black and white world just by touching her arm. She clearly wasn’t a normal grown-up.

  Fourthly, last night Harry had told her that even Uncle Graham had been out looking for her. But Uncle Graham had known full well where she was when she was missing.

  Fifthly, she’d not told Harry and Penny that Uncle Graham had swapped her, in the world of the dead, for his dog. Partly because they wouldn’t have believed her, but also because there’d’ve been all sorts of fuss. She hadn’t exactly gone off with a stranger, but still …

  Sixthly (or fifth-and-a-halfly), she hadn’t needed to get her uncle in trouble because she wanted to talk to him. She wanted him to tell her how he’d made this ‘deal’ with Ms Todd.

  And seventhly, and every-other-numberthly, Happiness was still there, in that other place, and Ember missed her, wanted her back. The world was too quiet without her.

  She went to school as usual.

  Harry walked with her, but she didn’t listen to what he was saying because she was making plans in her head. There were so many things she wanted to do and they all rolled around inside her like kittens in a washing machine. Every now and then she’d see a little face pressed up against the glass and it made sense, but mostly it was just a jumble.

  ‘You promise me?’ her dad said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Have you been listening to a word I’ve been saying?’

  ‘I was thinking.’

  ‘Just like your mum,’ he said. ‘Off in your own world.’

  He ruffled her hair.

  They were at the school gates.

  ‘I said,’ he said, ‘“Make sure you come straight home after school.” That’s all. Or do you want me to come and pick you up? Or Penny could?’

  She thought for a moment.

  ‘I’ll be fine,’ she said. ‘Straight home after school. I promise.’

  ‘I love you, Ember,’ he said and kissed the top of her head.

  ‘Harry!’ she said, feeling shocked and looking round to check whether anyone had seen.

  She ran off through the gates and up the path to the playground.

  School went ahead.

  They learnt some more about Vikings.

  They were making a longboat to go on the wall.

  She spent the class before break making shields out of tin foil and paper and glue, to go on the side of the ship, but she was thinking about other things as she cut and shaped and stuck.

  She was buzzing with secrets. There was no one she could talk to, though, no one she could tell. Her classmates would think her bonkers. Even Vincent, who’d once seen a ghost, would look at her weirdly, and her teachers would think she was just upset and confused because of … because of what had happened. Oh! She needed Happiness there. She was the only one who would’ve understood, who would’ve been as excited as Ember.

  At break they were all let out on to the playground. The field was too wet still, after the recent rain, and they weren’t allowed on it.

  Nevertheless, when Amanda was knocked over by a football she was trying to head and everyone rushed round her on the tarmac, Ember slipped past the side of the school building and on to the field.

  It wasn’t very muddy at all.

  Her heart was banging against her ribs, like a bird trying to escape a cat.

  She’d never done anything like this before.

  She ran, half tiptoeing, half skipping, across the grass, until she reached the row of trees that split the field in two.

  She leant her back against the first one she came to, the school out of sight behind her, and tried to get her breath back.

  Oh gosh.

  Was she really doing this?

  She could imagine the trouble she’d be in when everyone went in from break and they realised that she wasn’t there.

  She’d never done anything like this before.

  Miss Short would go crazy. She’d probably phone Harry, and he’d go crazy too.

  But later, when they all saw what she’d done (if she did what she hoped to do), then all the trouble in the world, and more, would be worth it.

  With her heart still flapping wildly, but her breathing a little more under control, she ran across the field to where the chain-link fence was loose and slipped under it, out into the street.

  From there it was only five minutes’ walk, past the newsagent’s and past the bakery (the window filled with doughnuts and pastries and coconut slices), past the buses and parked cars and the people out walking dogs or pushing shopping trolleys or talking to the postman (they looked at her as she went by, but she ignored them, trying to look like a girl who had been allowed out of school for a special reason, and not like a truant), to Uncle Graham’s house.

  She’d never done anything like this before.

  His motorbike was parked on the street.

  The pannier in which he carried organs from hospital to hospital glowed.

  The whole world glowed. So alive.

  She rang the doorbell.

  Inside there was silence, and then thunking and a crash, and then footsteps, and then the door opened a crack.

  ‘Yes?’

  A sliver of Uncle Graham’s face appeared in between the door and the frame.

  The eye she could see was red and veiny, as if he had been up too late.

  It took him a moment to recognise her.

  ‘You?’ he said.

  He turned pale, missed a breath and stepped backwards.

  The door swung open a little wider.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘You’re �
� You can’t be …’

  She was sure that Harry had phoned him the evening before to say that she’d come home, but maybe Uncle Graham hadn’t been listening properly, or maybe he’d somehow forgotten.

  He was slowly swaying as he stood there, at the foot of the stairs, staring at her as if he had been punched a knockout blow by a huge boxer.

  She pushed the door open and stepped into the hall.

  A purpose was in her heart.

  She wasn’t afraid and she wasn’t uncertain.

  He stepped back.

  ‘Tell me how to do it,’ she said.

  ‘What? Do what?’

  He held on to the newel post as he spoke, but his eyes were shuffling their feet nervously, as if really he was scared, cornered, confused. He seemed smaller than she’d ever seen him before, even though he was the same size as ever.

  ‘Bring her back.’

  His mouth hung open and he didn’t say anything for a moment.

  ‘How did you … ?’ he asked eventually.

  ‘Never you mind,’ she said. ‘If you don’t show me how to bring Happiness back from the dead, then I’ll tell Harry what you did.’

  ‘You what?’

  ‘You heard. I’ll tell him you brought me back here after school and that you knew where I was all along … You knew where I was when they were all looking for me.’

  She didn’t mention the other thing he’d done, the worse thing, the thing no one would believe, but she saw it fly across his face anyway.

  He stepped backwards, half staggering as if he wanted to put more space between them.

  ‘Oh,’ he said.

  And suddenly he began crying.

  Little sobs that caught in his throat.

  He wiped his nose on his arm.

  The hair glistened like a snail trail.

  Seeing him like this was the first thing that wobbled Ember’s resolve. She hadn’t expected him to cry. She’d just expected him to help.

  This man who raced round the country on his motorbike, saving lives, delivering the heart or the kidneys in the nick of time for the operation that would give someone a second chance … she hadn’t expected him to break down. He was a grown-up. Grown-ups weren’t supposed to cry.

  He slumped down on to the stairs, and sat on the bottom step looking past her and weeping.

  She went into the front room to look for a box of tissues or a hankie or something to give to him, but she didn’t find a box of tissues.

  She stopped in the doorway.

  There, beside the gas fire, was Betty’s dog basket, and in it was Betty, and she wasn’t moving.

  She was in colour now, like a real live dog, but she wasn’t moving.

  Ember tiptoed closer.

  It didn’t look like the dog was breathing. The ribcage wasn’t going up and down or anything.

  ‘Amber, don’t …’

  Her not-quite-name rippled out of the hallway between sniffs and snurfs, and lingered in the front room like a raised hand.

  Looking back she could see Graham on the stairs, through the banisters. He was looking at her, looking at Betty.

  She turned back.

  Betty was dead. Dead again.

  He’d brought her back from wherever that place was, from the black and white world, from the underworld, the afterworld, only for her to die again.

  But then she thought about Ms Todd, big and bright and brutal, and of how she had said the deal was off. How she had brought Ember back when Ember should have been left there. He’d swapped her life for Betty’s, hadn’t he? That had been what he’d done, hadn’t it?

  So when she came back, the re-alived Betty must’ve died again. Was that how it had worked? (She saw a see-saw in her mind, one end raised up in the world of the living, one dipped down in the world of the dead. A set of scales having to balance one side with the other.)

  She’d never liked Betty, but knowing that she’d snatched away the dog’s new life made her feel like a cheat for a moment, made her feel like it was she who’d done something wrong.

  She laid a hand on the dog’s side.

  It was cold.

  It wasn’t breathing.

  It felt like the threadbare stuffed fox that the kids dared each other to touch whenever there was a school trip to the town museum.

  But then the head swung up and looked at her with milky white eyes and the jaw lolled open, hanging down from the head like that of a broken puppet, and a noise like a gurgling bark, a woof lost underwater and far away, crumpled out of the mouth and fell to the carpet.

  December leapt back as Betty staggered to her feet, unsteady and leaning, and then slumped into her basket, grumpling and gurgling.

  Drool drippled on to the tartan blanket, and then she was still again.

  Ember felt sick but was pinned in place.

  She didn’t want to turn round, didn’t want to look away from Betty, in case she moved again. But she could feel Graham’s eyes watching her from behind. They tickled like cold and long-nailed fingers.

  ‘She was fine,’ he said. ‘Fine when we came back. Just like ever, Amber. She was perfect again. And then … something changed.’ He paused. Sums added up in his head. Gears crunched sand and dust as they rolled together. Then he spoke again. ‘You,’ he said. ‘You’ve come back. She said …’ But he trailed off again and never said what she’d said, or who the ‘she’ who’d said it had been.

  Betty hadn’t moved since that strange, lolling lunge, so December dared to turn her back.

  Graham was on the second from bottom step of the stairs, wiping his nose on one arm, drying his cheeks with the other, and staring at her through the doorway.

  He was no longer the slumped-in-sorrow ex-dog owner he’d been a minute before; now he had become something else. He had become, she saw, a man who’d found someone to blame.

  What had seemed like a good idea at the time, a crazy but overwhelming idea, now felt like a mistake.

  She would do anything to bring Ness back, of course she would, but asking Uncle Graham how he’d done it had not been the right move. Why did she ever imagine he would help her? He’d been willing to leave her there for the sake of an ugly old dog. Why would he suddenly help? He didn’t even know her right name.

  And now he was starting to get up, to heave himself up.

  He was bigger than she was, and now he hated her. A black spark had sprung up in his chest. The dog he had worked some magic to save, she had taken from him. She didn’t think he would forgive her.

  A dark fire in his brain, twisting like a worm.

  Her only hope was to dodge him, to outrun him.

  As she thought this she was surprised to find that she was already darting past him down the hallway.

  He was between her and the front door, so she was heading to the back.

  Into the kitchen.

  She skirted the big wooden table and slammed into the back door, rattling the handle.

  It turned easily, but the door was locked.

  She looked around for a key.

  It wasn’t in the keyhole. It wasn’t on the side. It wasn’t on the table.

  ‘Amber!’

  He wasn’t rushing.

  He knew she was trapped.

  He walked slowly along the passage.

  She could feel his eyes on her.

  There was a scrabbling sound too, and a thin whining, as if something else were coming towards her as well.

  And then … there it was!

  Hanging on a hook to one side, near the top of the back door, was the key that would let her out.

  It was beyond her reach, and even when she jumped for it her fingertips only just brushed it, barely nudged it, set it wobbling.

  Gasping, she tugged a chair out from under the table and climbed up on it, putting a hand on the work surface beside her to keep her balance.

  She hooked the key down, but paused as she felt what her other hand was touching.

  It was a sheet of paper, folded and folded aga
in.

  It was cold to the touch, in just the way paper never usually was.

  ‘Amber, we need to talk,’ Graham said as he stepped into the kitchen.

  ‘No,’ she said simply, without listening to herself.

  She risked turning her back on him just long enough to get the key in the keyhole.

  Her hands were shaking and it took go after go to do, but then, at last, it was in.

  As she turned it, she glanced over her shoulder.

  Graham was looking away from her. Looking down and behind him.

  In the dark of the hallway, back there, Betty was staggering after her master, short and dribbly and whimpering.

  The lock clicked and she pulled the door open.

  She knocked the chair over on her way out and slammed the door behind her.

  She ran through the scrubby little garden and yanked open the back gate.

  Out into the alley and off to the right.

  She risked pausing for a second, leant on her knees and took several deep breaths.

  She was surprised to find that she still had the key in her hand. She shoved it in her pocket.

  Oh! Why had she left school? Why had she run away? She was going to be in so much trouble.

  She heard the back door opening, and although she couldn’t make out the words, she heard Graham shouting for her.

  She ran.

  Down the alley and left at the junction.

  The more corners she could put between them, the happier she’d be.

  Another junction and left again.

  And on, and again.

  And then she slowed down.

  There weren’t supposed to be any junctions in the alley. Not in the real alley. It ran straight out to the road.

  The folded sheet of paper in her hand shivered.

  She looked down at it, surprised.

  She didn’t remember picking it up.

  It was most odd.

  She unfolded it.

  Before it had felt cold to the touch, and it felt colder now.

  It was a map. Or, at least, sort of.

  There was an odd square spiral shape in the middle and writing she couldn’t read round the outside.