The Memory Game

by Sant, Sharon

  She turns to me. ‘I said I’d tell her and I will.’

  ‘What’s wrong with you, you little freak?’ Mum shouts. ‘Stop talking to thin air.’

  ‘David’s here,’ Bethany says, her voice beginning to crack. ‘He wants me to tell you that he doesn’t blame you for how he died, he doesn’t want you to carry on being sad… he wants you to stop hurting yourself.’

  ‘What did you say?’ Roger steps forwards.

  ‘She doesn’t have to cut herself. David hates it; it’s making him miserable,’

  ‘You little bitch!’ Mum spits. ‘How dare you make up such vile lies.’

  ‘I’m not lying,’ Bethany begins to sob. ‘Tell them, David, tell them I’m not lying.’

  I try to think of something, something that only me and Mum would know. ‘When I was four I asked Santa for a dog, even though I’m allergic to them, tell her that.’

  ‘He says when he was four he asked Santa for a dog.’

  ‘Get out,’ Roger says, opening the door.

  Mum’s eyes fill with tears. Her fingers creep beneath her cardigan sleeves and I see her scratch at her arms.

  ‘Tell her I used to sleep with one of her jumpers when she wouldn’t let me in her bed.’

  ‘When he was little he… he used to sleep with one of your jumpers…’

  Roger pulls Bethany’s elbow and begins to drag her to the door and I go too, like we’re joined by elastic.

  ‘I didn’t mean what I said about the baby!’ I shout. ‘I was angry that night but I didn’t mean it.’

  ‘He didn’t mean what he said about the baby…’ Bethany squeaks as she fights back her tears and Roger shoves her out over the doorstep. She opens her mouth to speak again but the door is slammed shut.

  Bethany slides down it and puts her face in her hands. Her shoulders are shaking as she quietly sobs on the doorstep.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I say.

  She draws a deep breath and swallows her tears as she looks at me. The snow is falling faster now, the flakes like feathers against the ochre sky, and the garden disappearing under it.

  ‘They’ll tell my dad, won’t they?’ she whispers.

  ‘No, no they won’t.’

  ‘I’ll be in so much trouble.’

  ‘You won’t, it’ll be ok,’ I say, though I really don’t believe it myself.

  ‘I can’t do anything more for you,’ she says, pulling herself up to her feet. ‘I have to go home now. Don’t follow me, please.’

  She pulls her flimsy coat tight, wedges the hat back on her head and starts to trudge down the path.

  ‘Can I come tomorrow?’ I call after her.

  She looks at me. ‘I don’t think so,’ she says quietly. She turns back to the path without another word, and walks away.

  From inside the house, I can hear the muffled sound of Mum sobbing. Roger’s voice is strong and calm and I can tell that he’s trying to soothe her, even though I can’t hear what he’s saying. I think about going back in. It’s not something I’m strong enough to face, though. Without Bethany, I have no purpose again; already I can feel myself fading.

  Raven’s low roof is heavy with a glittering blanket of snow. I let myself in and wander down her dark hallway, through the beaded curtain and into the living room where she’s sitting in her armchair bent over some cards spread across a stained coffee table. What’s the point in this stupid rule I set myself about not going into people’s houses when I’m no more noticeable than the spiders under their floorboards? If I’m about to disappear from existence, what does it matter?

  Raven is humming to herself; her voice is rich and strong and I think she must be a pretty good singer. There’s a small fire in the grate throwing flickering shadows over her face. She turns over a card and frowns before laying it across one that is already turned. They look like playing cards, but they have other pictures on them. I suppose they must be tarots or something, but I’ve never seen any up close before. I look over her shoulder, but whatever it is she’s seeing in them means nothing to me.

  I take a seat on the floor in front of her. Strangely, since my mum told Bethany that Raven came clean about not being able to hear me, I have more faith that she is for real. I wonder if the fault is with me; perhaps I’m not talking to her properly. Is there a right way to do it? I close my eyes and try to concentrate, but everything is muddled up in my head and all I can think about is what just happened in the hallway of my house.

  I open my eyes again. ‘I wish you could hear me,’ I say to Raven.

  Raven doesn’t look up from her cards; instead, she takes another one from the pack and turns it, poring over it.

  ‘I don’t know what to do,’ I tell her. ‘None of this makes any sense.’

  Raven looks up and for a moment I think maybe she’s heard me, but she stares straight through me and reaches for a steaming mug to take a sip.

  ‘I can’t understand why I’m still here. If it’s not for my mum and not for Bethany, then why? And why can only Bethany see me? She’s right – it should be Ingrid seeing me, not her, it was Ingrid that I was crazy about. And even if I’m supposed to be here to protect Bethany, I can’t do anything anyway. So why leave me here? I’m pointless, just an annoying shadow.’

  Raven leans back in her chair and cradles her mug, closing her eyes.

  ‘I tried to tell mum I was sorry for what I said about the baby. I never meant that I wanted her baby to die, even if it is half Roger’s. I would never mean that. And now Bethany doesn’t want me around either. What am I going to do if I don’t have her?’

  Raven’s eyes are still closed. I wonder if she’s falling asleep.

  ‘Please, please, Raven. I just want to know what I’m supposed to do…’

  She doesn’t even glance up at me; she just sits there with her eyes closed. Through the tiny window behind her the sky is dotted with fat snowflakes, falling faster than before. Bethany never did tell me how that sort of snow feels.

  I lie against Dad’s gravestone, hugging myself, even though I’m not cold. I know he’s not there, but that doesn’t stop me from hoping.

  ‘Why did you have to leave us? Why did you have to go and climb in that stupid machine and get stuck? Mum would have had your baby, not Roger’s… there’d have been no Roger and we’d have been a happy family: me, you, Mum, my baby brother…’

  I rub my sleeve over my eyes and gaze up at the dots of snow, spiralling down to earth. I look across at the church. The tree is up outside now, only strung with simple white fairy lights, but it looks sort of magical all the same. Slices of yellow light shine from the church windows and it looks like there is a fair crowd in there. Just then, the muffled sound of the organ striking up reaches me, and then layers of voices breaking into song. I cock my head and recognise the first strains of Silent Night. There’s nothing special about the way it’s being sung, in fact, there are bum notes and bad timings all over the place, but they’re all singing it as if they have this shared joy for the words and the meaning, and it has me listening, captivated. We were never a religious family, but Mum took me to so many of these services when I was a little kid. It was like a part of our Christmas traditions, when you went to the carol service, you knew that Christmas was close. I always said I hated them when she made me go, but I didn’t. Part of me wants to go in and sit amongst them now, sing along and pretend that they know I’m there. But I don’t think I will go in. Maybe it’s no place for the dead.

  Yarrow Lane is disappearing under a crust of white. My feet make no marks in the fresh snowfall as I find the place where my blood is still in the earth. I came back here one night after Bethany and I had visited that first time, and someone had left flowers to mark the spot. No more appeared though, and those ones had gradually wilted every time I came back. Now they’re buried under the drift; all that’s left is the heart that Bethany carved on the tree with my name in it. I sit down on the roots and turn my face to the sky, longing to feel the cold wetness on it. I have to remember
.

  Looking at the ground again I can see tiny paw prints. My foxes? Animals are pretty much the only friends I have now, but even the foxes seem to be absent tonight. Maybe I’ll go and talk to George, the horse. But that would mean going to Bethany’s house and I’m not sure I can look up at her window, knowing she’s in there and doesn’t want me around.

  What if I left the village? Would I disappear as soon as I reached beyond the boundary, just disintegrate? What if I didn’t? What if I just kept walking and didn’t stop, what would happen then? Maybe I’d just fade quietly away.

  I get up and start to walk, down the lane, away from everything I know. Maybe I’ll keep walking until I get to the very top of Scotland. Then where? Would I be able to walk over the sea? Would I be able to keep going forever? What if I wander around for the whole of eternity and nobody else but Bethany ever sees me? The idea makes me feel empty, like my soul has been scooped out and thrown into the ditch along with those last traces of my body. Maybe I don’t want to go – not like this anyway. First, I should say goodbye.

  When I get home Roger is just letting himself in the front door so I follow him in. A smell wafts out to greet me. I screw my eyes tight and try to remember what it is. It’s soft and light, kind of fluffy… baby lotion, maybe? Mum used to use baby lotion all the time, when I was little. It reminds me of being hugged on her knee, gathered up in her arms while she stroked my hair, and I suddenly have this heavy ache in my heart.

  ‘Where have you been?’ Mum asks as she meets Roger in the hallway. ‘You didn’t go to see him, did you?’

  Roger shakes the snow off his coat and hangs it over the radiator. ‘He was in the pub, where I thought he’d be.’

  ‘Please tell me you didn’t say anything.’

  ‘Of course I did; what was the point in me going otherwise?’

  Mum starts to wring her hands. ‘I wish you hadn’t.’

  ‘I’m not having the likes of that little freak upsetting you.’ He puts a hand on Mum’s belly. ‘You don’t need that right now.’

  ‘I don’t think she meant any harm, though.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter what she meant or didn’t mean – you can’t go around saying things like that to grieving families, it’s just not right. Someone needs to tell her.’

  ‘But how did she know about the baby?’ Mum asks quietly. ‘The more I think about it the more I wonder if she was telling the truth.’

  ‘Don’t be silly,’ he says, taking Mum’s elbow and guiding her to the living room, ‘David could have told her that before…’ I think he’s going to say before he died, but he sees Mum’s face and stops himself.

  ‘But that was the argument we had just before he left for his paper round. We didn’t tell him I was pregnant before then. How could he have told anyone?’

  Roger shrugs. ‘Perhaps he saw her when he was out delivering.’

  ‘She hardly knew him at school, she said so. Why would he stop to tell a girl he hardly knows about something like that?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Maybe she’s telling the truth –’

  ‘She’s not! That’s a ridiculous idea. And you can’t keep blaming yourself for the way you reacted on David’s last night. I know he’s dead but it doesn’t change the fact that it was a vicious thing to say. He knew how much it had hurt you to lose the baby before… to say that was plain evil.’

  ‘He was just upset,’ Mum says taking a seat on the sofa. ‘It was a shock; I didn’t handle telling him well.’

  ‘Lisa… he was fifteen, not five. Old enough to accept that things change and that people can’t always be the centre of the universe.’

  ‘But he was the centre of mine. For a long time, anyway. It must have been hard for him.’

  ‘He certainly made it hard for me,’ Roger grunts as he goes into the kitchen and fills the kettle. I go and sit next to Mum on the sofa. She peels back her sleeve and scratches at her scars. Then she seems to shake herself and covers them up again. Her hand moves to her belly and she strokes it.

  ‘What do you think he’ll do to her?’ Mum says as Roger comes back in.

  He shrugs. ‘Willis?’ Mum nods. ‘Probably give her a good talking to, just like she needs,’ he says. ‘She’s a sandwich short of a picnic anyway, just like her old man.’

  ‘That’s not fair,’ I say to Roger. ‘You don’t know her.’ I leap up from the sofa and pace the room. My thoughts are whirling like a tornado.

  ‘But what if it’s true what they say about him?’ Mum asks Roger.

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘About how his wife died…’

  ‘It’s gossip, nothing more.’ Roger sits next to Mum and pulls her hand into his. ‘Stop worrying about everyone else. You need to start worrying about yourself and that little fella you’re carrying.’

  She looks up into his eyes. ‘But if he’s capable of that…’

  ‘The police cleared him, Lisa. Nothing was ever proved.’

  ‘But the girl… she had a mark on her cheek.’

  Roger sighs and lets go of her hand. ‘That was from the cold or something. I don’t know. Whatever is going on in their house is none of our business.’

  ‘It will be if we’ve made things worse.’

  ‘For God’s sake, Lisa, just leave it!’ Roger jumps up and stalks into the kitchen.

  I stare at Mum, trying to make sense of what they’ve just said. What did the police clear Bethany’s dad of? I never heard anything about it at school. Whatever it was, it was the sort of thing that adults discussed in hushed tones when they thought the kids weren’t about. And Bethany has never said anything to me.

  The idea hits me like a smack in the face: this is it; this is why I’m here. I have to warn her, I have to keep her safe.

  I reach Bethany’s house so fast I feel like I’ve flown, but even as I get to the front door I know it wasn’t fast enough. The crash of breaking china reaches my ears. I push through the front door and run the length of the house to find Bethany on the floor in the kitchen, shards of crockery at her feet. Her dad is standing over her, fists clenched. He’s skinny, a whip of a man, and if I had substance I know I could take him down. But I don’t and I can’t do anything and the thought makes the rage boil inside me. Bethany stares up at me, shaking her head in the tiniest movement.

  ‘I will not have the likes of Roger Smith laughing at me behind my back,’ Bethany’s dad growls. ‘What the hell were you thinking?’

  ‘I didn’t mean, I don’t know…’ Her voice trails off into nothing.

  ‘You’d better come up with a damn good explanation, lady.’

  I can smell something on him. I can’t remember what it is but it smells sleazy, unclean. He sways slightly and his words are drawn out as if he can’t quite recall how to speak. Bethany scrambles back towards the wall, trying to get away from him, but he steps forwards and she’s suddenly cornered.

  ‘You have to run, Beth, you have to get out,’ I shout.

  She doesn’t look at me. Her wide eyes are trained on her dad. She’s waiting, she knows what’s coming. I can’t believe that she’s just going to sit there and take it.

  ‘Listen to me.’ I say, trying to stay calm, ‘you’re in big trouble if you stay here this time. This is what I’m here for – I’m here to warn you.’

  Her dad lunges for her and she crawls out of his reach, slicing her hand on a piece of china. Her blood smudges across the tiles as she scoots away. He whirls around to find her.

  ‘Get back here, I haven’t finished with you yet!’ he roars.

  She stumbles to her feet and heads for the kitchen door, tearing out into the hallway. He lumbers after her, swearing as he collides with the doorframe. Red handprints trail the wall of the stairs as she runs up them.

  ‘What are you doing? Get outside!’ I shout after her.

  I overtake her dad and chase her upstairs, but somehow he catches up and grabs her leg. She squeals and tries to kick him away.

  ‘You litt
le bitch,’ he snarls as he wrenches her back. She falls on her front and I try to catch her but her chin hits the step with a sickening crack. ‘I’ll teach you to go round folks’ houses and tell them a load of cock and bull.’ He starts to pull her down the stairs.

  ‘Get off her!’ I shout. Bethany’s eyes are half closed; her leg twitches feebly but she can’t seem to fight him off. ‘Beth, wake up!’ She looks in my direction but I don’t think she’s really seeing me. Her mouth is bleeding; it looks bad but I can’t tell. ‘Why aren’t you fighting back?’

  She seems to focus on me now. ‘Because it’s easier not to,’ she whispers. Her arms drag limp over the stairs above her as she’s jolted down the steps, one at a time.

  ‘Think you can get away from me!’ Bethany’s dad roars.

  ‘No!’ I shout. ‘Beth, get out!’

  She’s in reach now and Bethany’s dad flips her round and smacks the back of his hand across her face. She whimpers but doesn’t try to escape as he does it again.

  ‘Please… Beth, run…’ My rage turns to despair as I see her give up. I’m her guardian angel – I’m supposed to save her and I can’t even do that right. I lean down and put my lips close to her ear. ‘Please, Beth. If you can’t do it for yourself, do it for me.’

  He lifts his hand to strike again and she shields her face with her arms. Instead he grabs her hair and pulls her up while she screams and scrapes at his hands, trying to prise open his grip. He doesn’t let go, but swings her round and tosses her down the remaining few stairs and she lands in an awkward heap at the bottom. I leap down the steps to her.

  ‘Beth, are you ok?’ She looks up at me and nods in a tiny movement but she’s clutching at her chest and gulping at air, like she can’t get enough. ‘What’s the matter?’ She doesn’t reply but I don’t know whether that’s because she can’t or daren’t.

  Her dad is down the stairs now and standing over her. ‘I’m still waiting for an explanation.’

  Bethany turns her wide eyes to me, and then back to him. Whatever she tells him won’t make any difference to the trouble she’s in now and we both know that. ‘I’m sorry, Dad,’ she wheezes. ‘It was a stupid bet, that’s all.’