Flowers for the Dead

by Barbara Copperthwaite

  SIXTEEN YEARS AGO

  The sun had brought everyone out in droves and was now making its slow journey towards the horizon. Those lucky enough to have had the day to themselves were still hanging back, loath to be back inside yet. Workers who had spent the day casting envious glances outside from their windows had scurried home, thrown off their sweaty, stiff clothing and chucked on something skimpier to show off their pallid limbs, before rushing outside to catch the last of the summer day.

  Lisa Brookman had been inside most of the day helping her parents at the corner shop they owned, and when she was finally free she had quickly flung off her shapeless polyester uniform and pulled on shorts and a t-shirt. The sixteen-year-old grabbed her bicycle, hesitating only to look woefully at the safety helmet before cramming it down over her waist-length blonde hair, which she tied back in a low ponytail. She hardly ever used her bike so she was not confident enough to risk not wearing it, despite the fantasy that played over and over tantalisingly in her mind of riding along and feeling a refreshing breeze rippling through her hair.

  Within fifteen minutes the teen had reached her destination. The bike wobbled slightly beneath her as it hit a hummock in the grass but she quickly brought it under control as she gazed around happily at the grassy field she was riding across. Here was short grass cut to create pathways for bikers and dog walkers, there was long meadow grass left to its own devices until later in the year when it would finally be cut and managed. In the towering, shoulder-height blades danced tiny orange butterflies that looked like rays of sunshine sparkling on water. Lisa could not keep the satisfied smile from her face, feeling as though somehow the sun was in her too, carried at her solar plexus, warming her and bursting forth in happiness. What a beautiful day!

  Coming to a stop, she hopped awkwardly off the bike, not having perfected the elegant swoop of the leg that more practiced cyclists had. Abandoning her cycle by the side of the path, she plonked herself down and let the sun warm and relax her as she looked around.

  An elderly man wandered past with an even older dog waddling arthritically behind him.

  “Lovely day,” he smiled.

  ‘Gorgeous!’ she grinned back. Lisa didn’t much like chitchat with strangers but today she was so happy that she responded in kind rather than with her usual suspicion.

  “On yer bike then, eh?” he added, nodding towards it. She gave another smile to confirm. “I used to cycle a lot when I was younger. Dodgy knees,” he added as explanation.

  His Labrador finally caught up with him, panting in the heat. “Right, come on then, you,” the man told him, then continued on, nodding goodbye to Lisa.

  Legs out in front of her, Lisa leaned back on her hands and let her head loll back to maximise catching the sun. Closing her eyes, she breathed in deep then exhaled long and slow. Suddenly she felt cooler; had the sun gone in? She looked up to see the outline of someone standing over her, their silhouette black against the bright sun.

  Shading her eyes with one hand she squinted up at the man. Correction, teenager. Now she could see him properly she could tell he was probably around about her age. Hmm, he looked quite good-looking actually, although his mirrored sunglasses were a bit old school for her liking; she never really trusted people who hid their eyes like that, it made her wonder what they were gazing at. Although his shoulders were not particularly broad his body made a very pronounced inverted triangle thanks to his slim hips. It was a fit body, his arms quite impressively muscular.

  He shifted slightly, giving her a better view of him. There was hardly a pimple on his face either, and he had quite a soft, feminine mouth beneath his perfectly straight nose and strong cheekbones. Kissable lips, she decided.

  Shame about the geeky clothes…

  “Lovely day,” he said, giving Lisa a smile that was almost as radiant as the sun. Not the most original line in the world, considering the old guy had used it; it was tempting to roll her eyes. What the heck, this lad was handsome enough for her to let it slide.

  “Gorgeous!” she grinned back with a sense of déjà vu.

  He gazed past her, up over the tall grass she was sat beside and a few seconds went by. Lisa started to feel awkward, and played with her necklace, which displayed her name in cursive writing. Began wishing he would move on if he had nothing else to say. At the very least he could move to one side so that his shadow no longer fell across her, blocking out the sun. She decided she was not interested enough in him to do the chatting up herself.

  “You’re enjoying the sun then?” he added. His voice was soft, but calming rather than girlie.

  “Yep.” Her whole torso bobbed up and down in an exaggerated nod.

  “L-Lisa is a very p-pretty name.” Ah, he stammered, so that was the reason why the conversation was a little stunted. She looked at him again, softening, chiding herself for being so quick to write him off. He was, after all, handsome, and seemed nice enough. What harm would it do to give the guy a break?

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  ~ Red Carnation ~

  Pure Love

  Adam forced himself to look confident as he chatted to Lisa. He had been studying his mother’s lies for years, and tried to mimic her ease. Ada’s death ten days before had given him the shove he needed to try to join the real world. In a few days’ time he would be attending her funeral, and he did not want to feel this pain, he wanted to feel normal for once. He wanted to replace the love he had lost.

  This thought was what had driven him outside for the last few days, wandering aimlessly around Gosbecks Archaeological Park in Colchester. He could not be inside, trapped with his parents, his mother barely concealing her glee from his grieving father at the prospect of inheriting the large house and even larger fortune. But instead of despairing, Adam was desperately trying to use his overwhelming feelings for good. He had decided to try talking to people, to make friends, to start a new life. He knew his gran would approve of the decision too – so much of her talk in those last days together had been of seizing the day, finding love, having no regrets.

  As he had walked he had spotted Lisa immediately. Her golden hair sparkling in the sunshine had made him think of Rapunzel, and she seemed to almost glow with a magical aura of many colours. Just like Gran had. It had taken all his courage to speak, but he was pleased with how things were going.

  By the end of the conversation, during which he only felt tongue-tied once and managed to hide it well, he thought, he found the courage to ask to meet the next day.

  “All right,” Lisa shrugged.

  It was the best shrug in the world, sending glitter cascading from her shoulders, and bursts of red, blue, and yellow into the air. He wanted to ask her about them, but when he blinked they disappeared and he could not be sure if they had been real or imagined.

  Adam’s plan to seize the day and make a fresh start of his life was working. He could not believe his luck that he had a date the very next day with a beautiful girl.

  That night he spent hours choosing his outfit, finally going for grey jeans and a grey marl t-shirt which showed off those hard-earned muscles from the exercise drills he had been given by his father. With underwear and socks the exact same shade as his t-shirt, his outfit was complete.

  He barely slept because he was so excited. Even better, the floorboard outside his room did not squeak and his mother left him alone. It was a sign, he was sure: he really could take charge of his life and turn it around.

  By morning he was positively bouncing. Dressing quickly, he then perfected his hair. It was the kind of messy that took hours to get right, shorter on the sides and back, and quite long on the top and brushed upwards. He stared at himself in the mirror and told himself he looked fine. Good, even. He knew that at five feet eleven inches he was disappointingly smaller than his dad, but he heard his gran’s words encouraging him.

  My perfect boy, so kind, so handsome.

  For once they drowned out his mother’s words. Bad boy. Dirty boy.

  When he r
an downstairs Sara picked up on his buoyant mood immediately.

  “What’s wrong with you?”

  Adam shrugged and looked at the floor, hiding his delight behind his usual wall of silence.

  “I’m, ummm, going for a walk,” he muttered.

  She stared at him again, painful seconds ticking by. Finally she nodded.

  “Just make sure you’re not back late.” She glanced at the clock. “It’s 6pm now, I want you back at 10pm at the latest.”

  Adam scurried out, pausing only to look at himself one last time as he put his Ray Ban sunglasses on.

  By the time he got to the park his stomach was doing an impression of a washing machine on spin cycle. He felt sick, but happy. He arrived in good time, despite having made a slight detour to a florist: he had remembered his gran saying that a gentleman always brought flowers to a date, so he had bought Lisa a red carnation, which he knew meant pure love.

  He waited by the entrance. Time passed. The sickness got worse. He was wilting in the heat. Perhaps she wasn’t coming. Then he saw her! He waved eagerly and almost burst with happiness when she lifted a hand in reply, and her aura sparkled back into being.

  “Hi,” he smiled shyly. “Oh, umm, for you,” he added, presenting the flower.

  “Oh, right, a carnation…thanks,” smirked Lisa.

  Adam was oblivious. When they reached the chalked outline of where a Roman theatre and temple had stood, he so dazzled her with his knowledge that she was dumbstruck, barely said a word. The pair moved on to talking about life in Colchester, and she seemed really interested when she discovered his dad was high up in the Military Police.

  “It sounds loads more impressive than being a squaddie, I suppose,” she said.

  But mainly he asked lots of questions about her. He wanted to know everything, from her favourite colour, to the music she listened to, from the films she liked best, to the books she read. She only ever read fashion and gossip magazines, which threw Adam for a while, but he soon recovered.

  As they talked, they wandered through the park. At some point Lisa’s grip on the carnation loosened and it fell to the ground, unnoticed, pure love trampled underfoot.

  On they wandered, out onto a bridal path that wound around fields, until it came to the nearby entrance to the Roman River Valley and surrounding woods.

  Adam had chosen this place because he loved it. It was one of his favourite places to come when things got too much in the house. It was not the same as his gran’s orderly garden – and at that thought his heart tightened – but he loved it nonetheless. A river babbled through the wood, which, depending on the time of year, was bursting with snowdrops, wood anemones, bluebells, or soft green ferns.

  Finally, he sat down in a pool of sunlight, and Lisa joined him amongst the long grasses. It was a pretty spot, a little away from the park, at the start of some woodland. They sat on a little rise, their backs to the trees, looking out at the open countryside ahead of them instead. A path meandered past them, and a seven-minute walk away, round several twists, was the park and people. But here it was quiet and they were hidden.

  Something tickled the end of Adam’s nose and he wiped at it, suddenly aware. Embarrassed, he realised it had been a drop of sweat threatening to fall. His hands were clammy despite the heat but he put his arm around Lisa anyway, clasping just a little too eagerly. Her long hair made him think of Rapunzel. She was his fairy tale girl, and he wanted everything to be perfect, so he fought hard to overcome his nerves. His breath was coming that little bit faster through parted lips, and his hand started to rub up and down Lisa’s bare arm at a slightly frantic pace.

  “May I kiss you?” Adam asked ardently.

  He was already starting to lean toward her but Lisa turned her head and coughed.

  “Sorry! Umm, I’m not… Look, I have to… Actually, I’ve got back with my ex. I’m sorry. I wanted to tell you face to face, I don’t think it’s right doing that kind of thing by text.”

  She gave him a quick pitying smile while squirming to duck out from under his arm. For a second Adam froze, dumbstruck. This was not how it was supposed to go. She was meant to fall in love with him, the way he had fallen instantly in love with her. Like in the stories. He gripped her arm tighter, fingers digging into her soft flesh.

  “Adam! Stop it!” Lisa snapped, yanking free.

  He could not let her go, not now, not like this. She had to stay so they could talk, so she could understand him. It was now or never, he had to act fast. On impulse, Adam lurched forward, planting his lips over hers. That would seal their love, just like Snow White, Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty….

  Her mouth felt warm and tender, giving beneath his fervour. Her hands scrabbled at his chest and pushed but he had heard enough talk in the boys’ toilets at school to know that when girls said no they often meant yes. Spurred on, his arms wrapped around her as he put all his bodyweight into pushing her on to the ground.

  A muffled yell, then pain.

  Adam pulled back, stunned at the taste of blood filling his mouth. She had bitten him. Her eyes were huge, her chest heaving in panic beneath him. Her hand drew back and she slapped him hard across the face.

  “Let me go!” she yelled, legs kicking and body bucking beneath him as she pushed against his chest with her delicate little hands.

  Why was she being like this? He didn’t want to hurt her, he wanted to love her. He had to make her understand…he also had to shut her up, quickly, because someone might hear her and misunderstand this scene.

  Spreading himself over her, he pinned her body down and pressed a hand over her mouth. Still she moved beneath him, fighting desperately against his weight. Rolling, kneeing, kicking, raking him with her fingernails, never giving up, always moving. The friction of Lisa against him…it felt good. He was horrified to realise that he was hard. She would definitely get the wrong idea, he panicked. She would think he was dirty, that this was the only reason he had wanted to be alone with her.

  “Quiet,” he begged. “Lisa, please, quiet.”

  His one hand was clamped over her mouth while the other grabbed both her wrists and held them over her head so she could no longer claw him.

  This was not right, it could not be right. He had to do something. But he was all confusion now, did not know what to do for the best. Knew if he let go of her mouth she would scream, and if someone saw them like this he would be in big trouble. Bigger than when he had been accused of being a Peeping Tom. And then there was her movement beneath him. It felt so sweet, so wonderful, so utterly different from when he was with mother. It was all consuming and he didn’t want it to stop.

  With a groan of uncertainty over what he was doing, his hand slid from Lisa’s mouth down to her throat. He felt her draw in as big a breath as she could manage, crushed as she was under his weight, and he gave in to instinct. No longer thinking, simply acting, his hand clenched at her throat to cut off the scream, and his mouth locked over hers to muffle any sound that did come out.

  Her heart hammered against his chest so that he did not know where her heartbeat ended and his began. But it grew wilder, more frantic, fluttering like a trapped bird’s wings. He looked deep into her eyes as he suffocated her with his mouth and hands.

  The life faded from her eyes, the bird’s wings of her heart came to rest. With a spasm he was helpless to stop, he tore at her dress and buried himself inside her, losing himself completely. Only came to himself when he was utterly spent. He lay still, staring in horror into Lisa’s open eyes, which seemed locked on to his own. Her pretty aura had disappeared.

  “What have I done?” he whispered.

  He was disgusting, he was no better than his mother – worse, in fact. This was all because he had been overwhelmed by dirty, nasty, evil sex. Everything to do with it was horrific. His mother, Mrs Nixon, now Lisa, every time sex had entered his life it had destroyed him.

  The best love was pure love, like the stories his gran used to read to him.

  How long Ada
m stayed holding Lisa and whispering apologies he could not tell, but it was long enough for the girl’s corpse to start feeling cold and him to become uncomfortable.

  “I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I never meant this to happen. But-but I hope you realise it was your fault. You gave me no choice, Lisa. You hurt me, you…”

  All his plans to push himself to make friends, to find love, to take his gran’s advice and improve his life, lay dead at his feet. It was devastating. He swallowed down the anger and instead patted Lisa’s cheek – and stared at his hand in amazement, moving it back and forth in front of his eyes. It sparkled, like Lisa had done, leaving a trail of glitter that hung in the air behind it for a heartbeat before disappearing. What did it mean? How had it happened? He had no idea. It was as if part of her was now inside him.

  Guilt overwhelmed him and he planted a gentle kiss on her lips, still so soft. “I forgive you,” he whispered.

  He dragged her lifeless body under some bushes that surrounded a cherry tree, then looked around, panting, ashamed. No, no, he’d done nothing wrong, it had been her fault. She had led him on, and if she had just shut up, if she had just given him a chance…

  With a sad sigh, he looked down at her. It seemed such a shame to leave her here, but what choice did he have. At least here she would be covered up, safe and sound, and it was a pretty view. That gave him comfort. Even though she had forced him to do something terrible, he was big enough to forgive her and still want the best for her.

  If only he could take something with him though, to remind him of her forever. He looked at those luscious full lips of hers and longed to kiss them again. Once more, just once more would not hurt. They were stone cold now; it was not the same, but it was better than nothing. If only he could have taken them with him as a memento, but that wasn’t possible. Instead, he would have to cover the body up and leave her to rot out here.

  Surely there was something he could keep. Of course, her necklace: it had her name on it. It was swiftly removed and popped into his jeans pocket, then he got to work hiding her. There was a handy hole beneath the root system of the tree, and with some effort he managed to shove most of her inside there, and dragged some other branches over so that she was completely hidden.