by Faye Bird
“But I haven’t been anywhere,” said Jamie, smiling.
“I know,” I said, “but still, I missed you.”
sunday
33
I MUST HAVE SLEPT that night. I’d gone to bed after Jamie left and I must have slept because I remember waking up.
I’d woken and stayed in bed staring at the ceiling, watching the clock turn through the hours—1 a.m., 2 a.m., 3 a.m.—and then it was 7 a.m., so I must have slept some more. And I woke then because my heart was racing and I was wet through. The sheets were cold underneath me, my pajamas damp. I ran my hand across my chest and wiped off hundreds of tiny beads of sweat.
“I saw you!” she said. “I saw you!”
Panic gripped me, as it had then. Frances. She’d seen me. I’d been seen. I felt sick with them knowing what I did.
I swallowed.
And still, I didn’t remember.
Why didn’t I remember?
I needed her to tell me. To say it. Because not remembering, and feeling this way, not sleeping this way, the guilt and the shame, it was like some parasite was eating me from the inside out.
Today was Sunday.
I would go and see Frances.
And I would ask her to tell me what she’d seen.
I’d ask her to tell me it all.
Because she had seen.
She must have seen it all.
* * *
I banged on Frances’s door.
There was no answer.
I waited a few moments, and I knocked again.
Nothing.
I walked into the front garden and I looked through the windows into the sitting room. There were things out on the coffee table—signs of life; she was home. I decided I would wait.
I turned back and walked to the front door and stood in the porch.
I had stood in the porch the night Catherine died. My feet so wet and muddy from the river, my throat so taut and dry it hurt. The police were standing at Frances’s gate by the front wall, and I was meant to have gone inside the house. Mum was coming. The police were going to ask us both some questions. They wanted me in the house, away from all the chaos outside. That’s what one of them said. “Can we take her in here, just until my colleagues arrive? She can go home with the mother for questioning after that.” I’d stood in the porch looking for Mum, willing her to come, and suddenly Frances was there. She was towering over me in the doorway—shouting at me—
“I saw you! I saw you!”
I could see Mum in the street now, talking, crying, arguing with Dad. He went to stroke her arm and she pushed him away. I wanted to call for my mum, but I couldn’t. Because Frances was standing over me, blocking me from sight, boxing me in toward the front door. I wanted to get away, to get to my mum, but I couldn’t, and all the time Frances was saying over and over—
“She’s dead! She’s dead! She’s gone! Because of you! How could you? We trusted you, and she’s gone.”
And then a policewoman came and started to talk to Frances. She took her away from me and into the hall. I was relieved. But Frances was still shouting, and I made myself block out her words, her anger. I just kept looking for Mum … until I was shoved … Frances came past me in the porch and walked quickly, urgently, out of the house, through the front garden and into the street toward Mum and Dad.
I felt a tightening in my chest. Air was slowly seeping out of me like a deflating balloon. I gasped and gasped … I tried to catch my breath … I willed for it to come through my panic and then I heard a sound, behind me—
“Ana?”
I turned toward the voice.
It was the same voice.
Frances.
I was present again.
She was standing at the front door.
I pulled in a breath. My body pulsed with the need for it, the satisfaction of gaining it.
“Come in,” Frances said, and she beckoned me into the house.
I took myself into the sitting room and sat down. My legs were shaking.
“What is it, Ana?” Frances said. “You’re shaking.”
“I need you to tell me,” I said.
“Tell you what?”
“What I did. How it happened. How I killed her.”
Frances didn’t speak.
Suddenly I knew I couldn’t do this without Mum. I had to have my mum.
“Have they agreed to come here, Mum and Dad?” I said. “I want to be here when they come.”
“You need to be, Ana,” Frances said. “I’m glad that you see that now.”
I didn’t speak.
“You know I’m not doing any of this for you, Ana,” she said. “This has never been about you. I’m doing this for Catherine. Only Catherine.”
Hearing Catherine’s name in that moment hit me like a physical blow. I could feel my heart racing again, and my body began to twitch involuntarily.
“You came to me—you wanted to know about Catherine,” Frances went on. “You wanted to talk. I said I would talk to you—but that is all—that is all I will ever do for you—”
“I know I killed her!” I screamed. “But why don’t I remember what I did?”
“You didn’t remember the house you were born in, Ana. You needed to come to me. That’s why you are here.” Frances was so calm.
“No!” I said. “I’m here because I saw you … at the hospital … and when I saw you … the memories … they came back to me … more of them … I mean, I’d always known I was Emma—that I had been Emma … always. I’m used to it now—or I was—until I saw you two weeks ago and I started to remember things I’d never remembered before, and feel things I’d never felt before. Dreadful things. Things that keep me awake at night because I feel so bad about what I’ve done. You will never know, Frances, how bad I feel—and I wish I could explain it, so you’d know. But I can’t … words can never be enough … or say enough … and I can’t pull out my feelings and show them to you—to prove what I say is true—that I’m sorry … I’m so sorry for what I did. Please—just tell me what happened—so I can remember what I did—so I can know the truth—there is no one else—I have no one else I can ask—”
“Ah, the truth!” Frances said. “That can be an elusive thing, don’t you think?”
“No!” I said. “No!” But I was no longer sure what I was saying back to her, or what she was saying to me. Her words were slow and jumbled; it felt as if I was slipping slowly into sleep. I leaned forward to try to listen—harder, better.
“I would say that what you remember, and what you feel, are two very different things, aren’t they, Ana?”
“What?”
“You say you don’t remember what you did, but you know how bad you felt when you did it—because you know what you did—you know.”
“I don’t remember!” I said.
“I never got to speak to you after that day—the day she died. They didn’t let me see you,” Frances said.
“If I did it, if I pushed her, if I dragged her in there, why don’t I remember?” I said, and as I said the words I could feel my pulse speeding up, pounding in my neck, my wrists, my groin, at every pressure point, like a drum roll gaining speed; my head began to throb. I needed to stand up again. I wanted to stand up.
I walked toward the fireplace.
I held on to the mantelpiece.
Dad’s mug was still there from yesterday; his half-drunk cup of tea sat with a thin film across the top of it, the milk cloudy where it had soured and a dirty ring clinging to the inside of the mug.
I couldn’t take my eyes off it.
Frances hadn’t touched it. She hadn’t moved it. She had left his mug in the place where he had last been.
I closed my eyes.
And I saw Mum coming toward me.
I was sitting in the corner at the party, just as she’d left me. “I’ve been back to Frances’s and I’ve seen Dad. I’ve told him you’re here, with me,” she said, and her voice wavered as she spoke.
An
d I saw Dad and Frances again, on the stairs.
Dad kissing Frances.
“Where is Catherine, Emma? Do you know where Catherine is?” Mum said.
I shook my head.
“Because she’s not at Frances’s. Dad says you two were playing together, out on the Green. Is that right?”
I nodded.
“So where is she, Emma? It’s very important that you tell me. It’s dark outside. She’s only six. We need to find her.”
I nodded again.
“Will you show me where you were playing?”
I nodded, and I bit my lip and I tasted blood but I sucked it away so Mum wouldn’t see.
And she took my hand and she walked me out of the house and into the darkness on the Green and I was scared. Because now they would know. They would all know what I had done.
I opened my eyes.
I looked up at Frances and again at the mug on the mantelpiece. Dad’s mug.
“You still love him,” I said. “You still love Dad.”
“I was only nineteen years old when I married Al,” she said, looking straight ahead of her, her gaze fixed on a point out the window. “Our fathers worked together. He lived three streets away. It wasn’t an arranged marriage, as such—not like you’d understand an arranged marriage today—but it felt like one.”
“Why are you telling me this?” I said. I didn’t move. I traced the patterns over and over on the carpet and I counted in my head as I did it, to try to keep myself focused, to try to keep myself in the room.
“When Catherine was born, everything changed for me. I loved her. And everything was better in the world. When you know what it is to love a person, unconditionally, that’s how it makes you feel, don’t you think?”
I nodded.
I knew that was how Rachel felt about me.
“You see, I loved Catherine, and I loved Richard,” she said. “I never loved Al, not really. Perhaps that’s why we never had a child.”
I felt a sickness building up inside me.
I wanted to cry, but I couldn’t. Instead I counted. I kept counting, in my head, waiting for the tears to come. But they wouldn’t. And I couldn’t swallow and I couldn’t breathe. I was drowning in a pool of saltwater sorrow—it was filling my neck, my throat, and cracking as it crystallized in my ears.
“When I saw Catherine’s body after she’d been pulled out of the water,” Frances said, “I saw a darkness like I had never known before. This is what it feels like to be blind, I thought, but to have known the gift of sight. You see, it pressed against my eyes, and there was nothing but black, black, black … blackest black.” Her voice was rising now, growing louder with every word. “After you experience that, life is forever torn. My love for Catherine was swallowed by loss long ago,” she said. “But Richard—he could still remind me of what it was to love. And in him, there will always be something of Catherine.”
I held on to the mantelpiece and my eyes began to go again. I was weak.
I could feel my feet so wet from the river. My shoes caked in thick black mud. I wanted to stamp my feet and make the mud fall off. I wanted to get it off me. But I couldn’t. It was stuck.
Mum was coming toward the house now. It was so dark, but it was her. I could see by her walk, her outline. She had left Dad behind her in the street and she was walking toward me. At last.
“Mum!” I screamed out to her, and the policewoman put one hand on my shoulder, to stop me from going to her, and Frances was almost at Mum now in the street.
“Emma!” shouted Mum, and Frances tried to grab Mum’s arm, to try and stop her, to talk to her, and Mum pulled her arm away. “Get off me!” Mum screamed. “Don’t touch me!” And she kept walking toward me.
And I knew then that Mum knew. She knew what I knew—about Dad and Frances. And I ran. Because I didn’t want to talk to her about what I’d seen or what I’d done. I couldn’t. So I ran. I pulled myself away from the policewoman and I ran into the house and into the sitting room, and the policewoman let me go in, she didn’t follow, because that was where I was meant to be: in the house, with Mum.
I had to hide. I had to find a place in the house where no one could find me. I ran into the sitting room. I could hear Dad outside shouting for Mum, and for Frances, and they were all coming now, following me into the house. They were all coming for me. I stood in front of the fireplace, unsure which way to go. I’d done something so bad, so very bad, and all I wanted to do was hide but I couldn’t move. The voices outside were getting nearer: Mum, Frances, Dad, the police—
“Get out!” Frances shouted as she walked into the room.
Mum stood looking at me.
“Both of you! Get out of my house! Just get out!” Frances was screaming now. I could hear Dad’s footsteps as he came through the front door. He was calling for Mum. He’d be here, in the room, any second.
I was sobbing now.
I could hardly breathe.
“Emma, come here,” Mum said, reaching her hand out toward me. “Come to me.”
“Get her out, Amanda!” said Frances. “Get her out! Now!”
Dad was in the doorway.
He stood still.
“Richard! Do something!” screamed Frances, turning to Dad. “Take Emma! Get her out! I don’t want to see her! I can’t look at her!”
“I didn’t mean to do it,” I sobbed. “I didn’t mean to—”
“Amanda, you should take her,” Dad said, looking at Mum. He was slow, calm.
“And leave you here? With Frances?” Mum said.
“I need him here, Amanda,” Frances said. “He needs to be here with me tonight.”
I shook my head to stop myself from passing out, and I opened my eyes.
The memory was so strong it was moving me, physically; I felt sick, and I was shaking. I didn’t want to feel this way. I tried to bring myself back into the moment. Had I momentarily fallen out of consciousness? I couldn’t tell. I was shaking. I couldn’t stop myself shaking. It felt like there was nothing to grasp on to anymore.
I looked at Frances’s face—her old, worn face.
“What are you saying, Frances?” I said. “I don’t understand what you are saying. What do you mean, in him there will always be something of Catherine?”
I could hear Mum screaming now. “We need him, Frances!”
That night—the memory—with me again.
“Look at her! At Emma! Look at her, Richard!” Mum said. “She doesn’t know what’s going on! She’s just a child. She doesn’t understand. She’s scared. I’m scared. Richard, you need to be with us. With me and with Emma—with us.”
I remember I gagged.
I gagged again—now.
“What I’m saying, Ana,” Frances said, “is that Catherine was our child—mine and Richard’s. She was your sister. I told you, the night that she died. You needed to know. You had a right to know. She was your sister.”
I fell to the floor.
I felt my legs go, and I opened my mouth to cry out, but I knew I was going to hit the floor and there was nothing I could do about it.
I heard the hollow thud of my head hitting the iron grate in the fireplace, and a strike of pain shot through me like an electric current.
The last thing I saw was the fire stand flying into the center of the room; the poker and bellows and the shovel, midair, making a cacophony of sound as they went. And Frances. Immobile. Watching me fall.
34
I AM FLOATING. I am sitting on a shard of ice and I am floating on an endless sea. The sea is like a glass pool. It reflects only the whiteness all around, and it cannot be cracked or broken. There is stillness everywhere. I am cold and wet. My skin, my clothes, all of me aches with the cold. And the sun is bright, but I can feel no heat. There is just white light. And now … now there is the sound of breathing. Behind me. It’s gentle at first. It brings me warmth … a heavy warmth. And it closes in on me … I need that warmth, but I know it’s not good.
It’s my polar
bear.
I know it is.
He’s back.
And I don’t want to turn around because he will be close, closer than I want him to be, and I don’t know whether he is my friend anymore.
Maybe if I don’t turn around to face him, he’ll leave. But he doesn’t leave, and I know, from the shape of his shadow, that he is on his hind legs, getting ready to take me … Still I can feel the warmth of his breath. I look up. So I can see him one last time. And it is him. And as he leans his face down toward me I think about how I knew it was him. How I knew him. How I knew his breath, and now, his long body and his strong open jaw as he comes toward me. And I know what he will do to me and I am glad. Because when he takes me I will be dispersed, and in that there may be more than just some momentary peace. In that there may be a forever peace.
35
I CAME TO EXACTLY where I had landed when I fell. Frances was still in her chair. I could feel a dampness on my face. I reached up. There was a wet flannel on my forehead. Pain was throbbing above my ear. I moved my hand from the flannel to my head—my hair was warm and wet and sticky. Blood. I pulled my legs up toward me and used them to steady myself into a sitting position. Frances was now gazing out the window.
“Please,” I said. I started to cry. “It hurts…” I wanted her to help me. For someone to help me. So I could stand up. So I could go.
“I’m sure it does,” she said, sitting utterly still.
“I need to go,” I said, trying to push myself up so I could get to my feet. My head was pounding out a bass beat in my ears and my legs were shaking, but I was determined to get my bag and get out of the house.
“I’d ask someone to look at that, if I were you,” Frances said.
“Yes,” I said, still crying.
She followed me to the front door.
“I will see you tomorrow morning,” she said. “Amanda and Richard are coming at ten.”
“I have school,” I said.
“I’m sure you can miss one day. It’s important. You said you wanted to come.”
I turned and left.
I walked up the front path and reached into my bag for my phone and called Rachel.
“Rachel,” I said, “I—I’m hurt. I need you.”