Ness had never met Ember’s mum. The girls had met years after she'd died.
Maybe Ness wanted to give them some time together, some space. Maybe she was just being polite.
‘Mum,’ said Ember, ‘this is my best friend, Happiness Browne.’
Her mum turned slowly, leant out and peered round the corner of the armchair.
‘Both dead,’ she sighed, looking from one girl to the other.
‘Oh.
Both lost.’
A pause.
‘Em, how did it happen? You’re so young still. How did you come here so soon? How … ?’
Ember looked down at herself.
She was dead. She’d nearly forgotten, for the moment.
It was almost enough to make you laugh.
‘No,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘I didn’t die. No. You see, I’m not really dead. It’s a mistake, a misunderstanding.’
But she was dead.
She explained, as much as she could, what had happened. Ness. Betty. Uncle Graham. Ms Todd.
‘And now that cat's helped us,’ Ember said. ‘The cat’s brought everyone here. And I’ve got to get Ness out the back door before Uncle Graham finds a way in. She’s got to go back.’
Her mum stood, tall and desperate, and stepped over to Ness and said, ‘Thank you, little one.’
Ness shrank under the words, kind as they seemed to Ember.
And her mum reached down and turned the door handle, which crumbled as she touched it.
The door swung open, just as the front room window exploded in a shower of flying glass, and something huge and solid and real fell to the carpet, shining and shouting with light.
Uncle Graham had got in.
‘Ness! Run!’ Ember shouted.
Her uncle grabbed her arm.
The burning was intense, there where his fingers touched.
He didn’t hold her hard, but just the warmth of his blood, the heat of the life in him, tormented her.
Thoughts swirled in her, caught in a flood, confused, confusing thoughts that muddled and bumped together, jostling, making no sense: maybe she could distract her uncle long enough for Ness to get home; or maybe she could distract him long enough for her mum to get home (wouldn’t Harry be happy to see her again?); or she could fight free and run home herself, pushing everyone else aside; or she could stay and spend the rest of her dead-life wandering the ghost world, exploring; or she could be with her mum; or her mum could save her, somehow; or Harry could save her; or she could wake up and find that this was all a dream;
or … oh, Ness!
Her eyes were blurry, not filled with tears, because tears wouldn’t come, but with panic and pain.
She sank to her knees.
His burning fingers held her.
‘Get away from the door, you,’ he was saying. ‘Out of the way.’
He was talking to Ness, she thought.
And then there was a whoosh, like a cold wind, that cut through Ember, right to her bones, and he let go of her. His fingers let her slip.
A wind whispered, ‘She’s mine!’
Ember fell to the floor, crumpled, clutching her arm in her cool, numb hand.
Uncle Graham yelled.
He was flapping wildly, like Hollie Adams did in the playground when a bee got too close to her.
Ember looked up and he was wrapped in a ghost, tangled in the seaweed tendrils of her mum’s dress, of her arms, her sleeves, her hair. Wreathing and roiling and wrapping. A shipwrecked figurehead refusing to let go.
The light had slowed down.
They were struggling and he was losing, his efforts growing weaker with each moment, with each movement.
Ember couldn’t see her mother’s face – she had her back to her – but she was afraid of it, all the same.
Gunpowder.
Oh, she understood Ness’s fear of the long-dead woman. She was awful, wilful, unforgiving. A pit going down and down, bottomless. Oh! Poor Uncle Graham!
And she shivered with the knowledge of what it was like to touch the living. How Uncle Graham’s life, how his blood and breath and heat, burned, scorched … how it hurt. Oh! Her poor mother!
Ice, becoming slush.
And then her mum stepped back, drifted back, let go. Opened her arms and stepped back, and her uncle staggered against the wall, dazed, lost, ashen and gasping for breath.
Pale as a ghost.
He was confusion, forgetfulness, fear.
He pushed himself away from the wall, not looking at anyone, not seeing anyone, not hearing anything but the thud of his heart. And as he pushed he touched Ness, pushed her against the wall under his hand, and she slid away as he fell through the open doorway into the hall …
And then he was gone, vanished off down the passage, to the kitchen, to the garden, to the …
And her mum shrank down, just a woman again, drifting gently with the current; her hair flowing, her eyes looking away.
And Ness continued sliding along the wall, her eyes clear and wide and staring.
‘Deck,’ she said in a calm, faraway whisper, ‘there’s something wrong. Something wrong here … I don’t feel … I don’t feel anything …’
And then she fell to the floor, but like someone sitting down after climbing a long flight of stairs, not like someone collapsing, and she looked up at Ember one final time, her eyes almost brown, and flashing, and then she looked away, distracted, and crumpled, faded, sifted into a girl-shaped heap of dust.
And then the heap itself faded, shrank, blew away, grain by grain, on a wind that Ember didn’t feel, on a wind that moved nothing else in the room, that blew from nowhere to nowhere.
‘No,’ she said, gasping.
‘No!’
And then her mother was beside her, in front of her, staring into her eyes.
‘Em, dear,’ she said in a whisper, ‘it’s just us now.’
Ember was struggling.
‘But …
Ness …
she …’
The words didn’t work.
Dust on the wind, said her mother’s eyes, which were her eyes.
A pause …
then …
her mum reached down, blouse rippling like kelp, and embraced her.
Held her tight.
Held her there.
Held her forever.
And December’s tearless eyes wept for Happiness.
Days passed like a dream, held in those arms, lowered, hunched, crouched together on the living-room floor.
At one point Betty waddled into the room.
She looked around, greyness looking at greyness, and sadly waddled over to the pair of them.
Her master had gone.
She’d been left alone again, and being still a dog at heart, alone was the one thing she couldn’t bear. Anything but that. Anything but alone.
Without asking, without seeming to think anything was strange, Betty waddled forward and slumped with a crumph beside them, leaning hard and heavy and cold against Ember’s side, and then she laid that big head of hers on the girl’s lap.
Her mum gently, idly, stroked the dog’s face.
‘Such a pretty one,’ she whispered. ‘Good old Gray.’
And so, then they were three.
And then, after a while, they were two again, as the dog’s dust was lifted up on an unfelt wind.
And Ember thought, She wasn’t such a bad dog, as she wiped ghostly dribble off her trousers. She was mostly made of love.
And endless time passed by.
What was left?
Ness was gone and Betty was gone and Uncle Graham had left them all.
He’d run off, out the house, through the garden and back to the real world.
She could feel it.
She’d come here to save Ness, but with Ness gone she could have saved herself. And that had been the cat’s plan all along, after all: leave Uncle Graham here and let dead December flee back to the light. But the chance had passed by. The chanc
e had gone.
Her mum was humming, a tune she had never heard before.
‘He could have saved you,’ Ember whispered eventually.
‘What?’ said her mum.
‘Uncle Graham,’ she said. ‘He brought me here to get his dog back. To rescue Betty. He made a deal with someone … with that Ms Todd, I think … that let him swap a living person for a dead one.’
Her mum said nothing.
‘He could have done it back then, though, couldn’t he? He could have saved you. I would’ve. You know I would’ve if I could’ve. I’d’ve been here in a flash, or Harry would’ve …’
‘Em, darling,’ her mum said. ‘You were tiny. There was nothing you could do. Nor Harry. And don’t blame Gray either. Without him, I’d not ever have seen you again. We wouldn’t be together now, would we?’
Rustling leaves. A breeze in autumn. Falling leaves.
‘I waited,’ her mum said. ‘For so long. I held on. Dreaming, perhaps. Days or years or minutes or hours. Time is strange. Look how big you got … How did that happen?’ She leant back and brushed a strand of hair away from Ember’s eyes, stroked her cheek. ‘When did you get so big? Oh.’
Ember felt like she was falling asleep, was warm in bed, although it was cold.
The black and white world around her was dimming, growing fainter. Just a room now. Just them.
She smiled.
‘We are together,’ her mum said.
‘Yes,’ whispered Ember.
For years she had wondered if she’d have anything to say to her mum were she ever to meet her. She’d imagined her like a movie star, like someone you know off the telly, who you recognise, who seems so familiar, but who you don’t really know at all. Who doesn’t know you. She’d expected to be tongue-tied and embarrassed. But it wasn’t like that. Not like that at all.
There were things she wanted to tell her mum, about her and Harry, and about school and about holidays, and about Ness, and about moving house, and about Tilda and Porkpie, and about what was happening in her favourite shows on TV, and about what had happened in the soaps her mum had liked in all the years since she’d stopped watching them.
There was so much to say, and she didn’t need to say any of it.
Not a word.
She just wanted to sit quiet and safe in that embrace.
They could be quiet together, and that was a gift.
‘We’ve all the time in the world,’ her mum said, reading her mind.
It made sense.
Ember felt so sleepy.
Her eyes were closing.
Neither hot nor cold now.
Just dim. Fuzzy.
She’d had her life, hadn’t she? She’d been happy. She’d been loved. She’d lived enough, hadn’t she? It hadn’t been bad.
‘Stay with me,’ her mum whispered. ‘You belong with me. You were always mine.’
Her voice was barely a breath.
‘Stay here.’
She began humming that tune again.
Ember slept, or sort of slept, deep in her mother’s arms for the first time in what might have been centuries.
And that long night went on.
Eventually, suddenly, the sun rose in December’s dream, a startling dawn, too early, filled with birdsong and summer haze. It washed away sleep, comfort, forgetting.
‘Get away from her,’ said a voice from out of the light.
Ember knew that voice.
She stumbled closer to wakefulness.
Despite the light, despite the summeriness, she felt cold, weighed down.
‘Leave her be,’ said the voice. ‘She is not yours.’
She knew the voice.
She was treading water, struggling to get her head into the air.
There was a hiss and flash of claws and fire and December was thrown up on to the riverbank, and she found she was in the front room, lying on the rug that covered the floorboards, staring at its grey pattern.
The cat was stood between her and her mother, its light spilling out, filling their faces.
She covered her eyes, blinked hard and saw her mother high above her.
‘No. Em,’ she said, ‘we are together again. At last, it’s us.’
‘Run, girl,’ the cat said calmly, firmly, simply. ‘Go home. People are waiting for you. Your supper’s waiting and it’s still hot. Run, now.’
Ember backed away. She saw her mother for what she was, for what she had become: a ghost, long-lost herself, deep underwater.
The cat hissed.
‘Too long,’ it said, looking at the dead woman.
‘Far too long.’
Ember climbed to her feet. Sense climbed into her head.
She wasn’t meant to be dead.
This was her last chance to run. She took a step towards the door, but there was a knot she couldn’t untie.
‘I can’t,’ she said, surprising herself. ‘You don’t understand, cat. That’s my mum.’
‘And she’s dead, girl,’ the cat said, not turning away from the woman. ‘And you don’t have to be. Look to the living. Look to the living now. It’s not your time to be here.’
She was torn in pieces.
‘Run.’
She didn’t.
‘I heard what you were thinking, girl. The word you wanted was “sacrifice”, and you would’ve done it. I can see you. I can see into you. I know you better than you know. You would’ve done it for her, now I will do it for you.’
‘What?’
‘I will stay,’ the cat said. ‘I am alive. You are dead. That is the deal. I will stay; you will go.’
Ember’s heart gave a sudden single, surging beat.
‘Do not even think to argue.’
Blood heaved in her.
Hope heaved.
‘Do not linger.’
She didn’t want to stay here.
She didn’t want to be dead any more.
‘Em,’ her mother said, leaning down beside her. ‘Stay.’
She laid a hand on Ember’s shoulder.
For such a grey and washed-out dead woman, the grip was astonishingly strong, astonishingly tight, astonishingly cold.
Dust and electricity and ice.
Love, turned to an anchor, turned to seaweed, turned to bindweed.
Ember couldn’t move.
She tugged, but it was no good.
‘Oh,’ she said, feeling suddenly, finally, endlessly, defeated.
She looked at the cat.
‘It has to be you,’ the cat said. ‘I cannot do this.’
Ember tried to wriggle free, tried to shake her mother off, but the arms came around her, embraced her, surrounded her.
‘Em,’ said a whisper in her ear. ‘Don’t leave me. Don’t leave me again.’
Each word was a knife.
‘No,’ said Ember.
Instinctively she gulped worthless air into empty lungs, like someone about to be dragged under.
‘I’ve been waiting,’ her mother whispered. ‘You made me wait so long. So long.’
‘No,’ Ember whispered.
‘You can’t … you can’t leave me. Don’t leave me. Not again.’
The arms wrapped round her like smoke, fogging her and choking her. Drowning her. Pulling her. Down, down, down.
She struggled and pushed back helplessly.
Her heart gave another thump; another jolt of blood surged in her veins, burning her insides with life.
And then …
‘No!’ she shouted. ‘No!’ She twisted and turned in the icy embrace. ‘It wasn’t me,’ she gasped. ‘It wasn’t me who left you. It wasn’t me. I didn’t go away. Mum! It wasn’t me who left.’
And with that final shout, that expulsion of truth, of heart, of honesty, tears came to her dry eyes and a breeze came up from nowhere and a tickling crossed her arms and face and she collapsed forwards, no longer held up, no longer pinned down. A shadow lifted, a memory flew away, a forgetfulness fell.
And then …
&n
bsp; dust
… it was just her and the cat in the front room.
She sat there for a long time as the cat paced and sat and paced and washed.
In time she stood up. Exhausted. Emptied out.
The cat watched as she went to the kitchen.
‘Harry’s probably waiting,’ she said to the room.
The cat nodded. Walked behind her.
In the garden it trotted in front of her, dug in a flowerbed, turned and looked at her.
‘I don’t expect to see you for a long time,’ it said.
‘What will you do?’ she said.
‘This and that,’ said the cat. ‘Sleep, maybe.’
‘But this place,’ she said.
The cat looked around.
‘All places are alike to me,’ it said. ‘Here or there, it doesn’t much matter. The quiet will be nice.’
She had reached the gate and turned the handle.
The alley was filled with colour.
‘Ms Todd?’ she said.
The cat said nothing, but it filled in the hole it had made and jumped up on to the fence.
The last Ember saw of it was a flash of colour vanishing into next door’s garden like a sunset.
Oh, she thought. I didn’t say thank you.
She let the gate click shut behind her.
She hurried to the first corner and walked round it, past the bins to the next corner.
She was without Happiness, but somehow that was all right.
It was all wrong, of course, but also it was all right.
As she turned the third corner, her heart started beating again, and didn’t stop.
Ember ran through the night.
It was almost eleven o’clock (her watch had caught up with the real world as soon as she’d returned).
She got home just after Harry and Penny.
She hid behind a parked car and watched them unlock the door and let themselves in.
As soon as the door was shut she scampered across, lifted the letterbox flap and peered through.
Harry had gone into the front room and Penny was heading off down the hall through the kitchen to the bathroom at the back.
As soon as she was out of sight, Ember slipped the spare key into the door and, with tiptoeing movements, opened it slowly.
The Afterwards Page 9