Sunflowers in February

by Phyllida Shrimpton

  From up here I can see the main road, which sweeps across in a big arc towards the town, showing the route I should have taken by bus that day. And, drawing thin lines around the bare fields below me, are the country lanes where Nathan’s mum and I made our fateful choices to take a shortcut.

  I sit on a bench hugging my arms to my chest, either to keep warm or hold myself together, I’m not sure which, with the memory of the child I used to be still playing around me. The cold eventually makes its way inside my coat with its vice-like grip, until, shoving the hands that don’t belong to me inside my pockets, I have to leave the top of the world.

  Slowly pushing open the heavy wooden door of the church as if I’m not allowed to be here, I look around inside, not really sure what to expect, as I normally reserve church visits for special events only. But now, however, I can smell ancient history, and I realise that the unexplained feeling I always get in religious places, which makes me feel as if I ought to leave my personality outside on the steps, like shoes outside a temple, is actually peace. And peace comes now, greeting me at the door and draping its comforting cloak round my shoulders.

  It is really quite nice!

  The walls are white and the ceiling is high, with arches that reach into the middle and point skywards. A plaque on the wall says that this church was first built in the thirteenth century and I don’t even know when that was, except it was a really long time ago, and that people have been praying for their souls, right here, for hundreds of years.

  I run my hands along the pews and try to imagine the children who once sat here, who became adults, who became old people, and then died, laying their bodies forever outside under big crumbling stones until their children, and their children’s children, repeated the process century after century. The lives and the loves and the dreams of all those people hang in the air within this building.

  I should be crowded out by dead people everywhere but I’m not.

  Where are all the dead people now?

  The stained-glass windows throw their colours inside, telling stories I vaguely remember from the Bible. I am not at all sure where I fit into their promise of eternal life because when I was in limbo I wasn’t wearing a halo or gliding around with a serene expression, but I’m pretty sure that taking over Ben’s life is not a holy thing to do so I’ve probably lost my chance to get a halo now anyway.

  Despite myself, I slip to my knees between the pews and shut my eyes tight, something I haven’t done since I was a child. ‘Are you there?’ I whisper urgently into the age-old air, as if the church is going to be my spiritual telephone to the other side. I wait, while time holds its breath and the squawk of a bird outside ruins the silence. I don’t know if I am talking to God or Ben, or basically anyone on the other side, but I try again. ‘Tell me what to do!’

  The bird squawks again, and I open my eyes only to see dust motes hanging loosely in the air. I wonder if God and Ben and all the dead people are answering me, but I can’t hear them. Are they all on the other side of silence, like when I was in limbo and no one heard me?

  I sit for a while longer looking for any possible signs that someone is there. A light brush against my hand or my cheek, as I had seen others feel when I was near them. I also search the corners of my eyes for a wisp of smoke, like at the crematorium, but no … there is nothing.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I say, apologising to Ben, ‘but I don’t care. I got to hug mum and dad one more time.’

  The heavy door of the church is being pushed open, and I can hear people talking. I feel as if whoever is coming in will be able to detect my sin with their religious antennae, and I have never moved so quickly in my life. Two old ladies appear in bright-coloured jackets and patterned scarves, carrying a change of flowers for the displays, chatting and laughing with each other, and I try to glide past them without confrontation.

  ‘Are you OK, dear?’ one of them asks me with what I detect to be a mixture of concern and suspicion on her face. A teenage boy in church on a school day? I can see their point.

  ‘I haven’t taken anything,’ I tell them, and guiltily hold my hands out, but I realise that ironically I look like the picture of Jesus shining out from the stained-glass directly in front of me. We face each other, Jesus and me, holding our hands out to each other, and I leave knowing that I have taken something. I have taken my brother.

  *

  For lack of anything else to do my feet and my morbid curiosity force me towards King’s Lane.

  It is quite a walk from here and I ask myself constantly what on earth I am doing, and why I am doing it, but I won’t allow myself to change my route. As I get nearer, I feel the swell of my nerves fill me up inside until I step off the pavement, which edges the busy road out of town, exactly as I did nearly a month ago. As I follow my own footsteps, I imagine a scenario where, on that day, I had actually carried on walking along the safety of the pavement, taking longer, but making it home in one piece.

  Why didn’t I do that?

  Ben’s words from my funeral, now trapped in the fibres of my fluffy jumper under his pillow, replay again in my mind. ‘Silly bitch,’ he’d said. And he was right.

  My feet trudge towards the corner of King’s Lane, and I can hear the ground beneath my feet change to the crunch of mud and gravel as I make my way down the track. A large stone gets stuck in the tread of Ben’s shoes so I lift my foot and pick out the stone with my finger just as a car in the distance becomes audible.

  The final memory of me as living, breathing Lily starts ramping up inside my head, and, as the car gets nearer, my imagination starts kicking in.

  What if the car turns into King’s Lane? What if I can transport myself back into that single moment in time just before I got run over? What if I can change the course of events? If I can die, watch the world from limbo for several weeks, then get inside my brother’s body so that I can be alive again … then surely anything’s possible!

  The sound of the car engine changes. It is slowing down. It is turning in.

  I step off the road onto the grassy verge and wait, hands balled into fists, eyes tight shut and my face screwed up into an I’m gonna make this happen expression. The noise of the car is nearer: it is slowing down, it is turning, it is behind me …

  The car will reach me, and I will step aside, and it will be 15th February again, and I will still be alive.

  The car goes past me, the driver honking its horn loudly because I’m standing in the road, then roars down the lane as I step aside. I open my eyes, like you do when you’re told to open your eyes for a surprise present. The rear-view of an old black estate car vanishes round a bend further down the lane, and I look down … at my boy’s hands and my boy’s body. Disappointment fills my chest and I find myself standing completely still for a long time on the edge of that lane, while my heart hurts with the most indescribable pain.

  The flowers that lined the road when Nathan’s mum placed her pathetic flowerpot apology are still here. It reminds me of a tree near Beth’s house, where there’s a permanent bunch of artificial flowers tied to it, dusty and fading in the sunlight, but every year on a certain day there is a real bunch placed alongside it, vibrant and sad and full of ‘if only’s.

  This horrible muddy out-in-the-middle-of-nowhere place is still covered in flowers; dead, dying, they are all still here, but someone is adding fresh ones. They all have messages attached to them, many of which are now just a watery stain on the paper where the rain has washed the words away. Some have been laminated, preserved and written to me as if I would actually read them, which, ironically, I am doing. They make me cry, which I wasn’t able to do in limbo, but crying is an emotion that hurts. It hurts your throat, it hurts your heart, and I don’t like it.

  ‘Who is still bringing flowers?’ I say out loud, embarrassed that this place is still being remembered as the place where Lily Richardson died because she spent her money on earrings. ‘This needs to stop! I am not in this ditch any more. I have not been hanging
around this stupid place.’ I kick one of the floral displays angrily and its dying petals scatter amongst the damp grass.

  The large terracotta pot left by Nathan’s mum has false pride of place, and I bend to examine the flowers, a rose bush with yellow blooms forced into life in a winter hothouse, yet prematurely rotting from overnight chill. ‘They don’t make up for anything,’ I shout furiously, plucking at the ragged petals in my fingers, before smashing the pot into pieces in the ditch where I was found.

  Just as I turn away to leave, I hear the engine of another car on the main road, indicating as if to turn in to King’s Lane. This time I don’t bother with my pathetic game of ‘what if’s, but as I turn round I see the blinking indicators of a shiny blue Morris Minor that has slowed down in order to turn, and which now suddenly revs its engine, flicking off the indicators and continuing on.

  The driver has obviously had an abrupt change of mind.

  Nathan’s mum, sunglasses on, even on this dull day, hiding the eyes that saw me, drives away as fast as her ancient car will take her.

  It’s like Groundhog Day. How coincidental that we should meet in the same place again, and like last time she still can’t see me.

  In that moment I make a decision.

  Gardening gloves and some little secateurs rested on the passenger seat of Nathan’s mum’s car. She made a regular pilgrimage to this place whenever she felt brave enough to come. Her panic over being back where it all happened was a constant inner battle. But the rose bush needed tending to. To let the flowers die would be like pretending it no longer mattered.

  But it did matter. It would always matter.

  She’d searched the papers and the news releases every week with no small amount of trepidation, but had noticed with a fragile relief that public interest in the case was beginning to die down. The police were unable to provide any further information at this point in time, and, as a result, the press had nothing new to report. For a while it had seemed as if everyone in the area had been talking about nothing else but the madman who had run Lily Richardson over and failed to stop, but then interest had eventually moved on to other things, as inevitably it would.

  Each day she woke hoping that she would be able to breathe a little easier, but instead as each morning arrived it was as if she was suffocated that little bit more by the ever-increasing guilt inside her.

  She clicked the indicator on at the approach to King’s Lane and checked her rear-view mirror and the road ahead before beginning to turn right, but her body flinched violently and her lungs involuntarily drew a sharp breath as she saw the figure of a boy beside the road. Yanking the steering wheel down to the left, she swerved the car back onto the main road and changed up the gears as quickly as her shaking limbs would allow.

  The boy grew smaller in her rear-view mirror as she drove away, but his gaze remained fixed on her car.

  The eyes of that poor girl’s brother followed her home.

  Knocking on the door of Nathan’s house makes my heart thump.

  His house is big and detached, with a perfectly manicured front garden surrounded by a low stone wall, now aged with time and history. The front door to the house is made of wood and has a heavy knocker on the edge of it with a beautiful rectangular stained-glass panel in the centre made of greens and yellows. The total effect is very stylish. Just like Nathan’s mum. But now its perfection hides a secret … Just like Nathan’s mum.

  The blue Morris Minor is parked at a rushed angle in front of the garage and its pristine paintwork shows not a single sign of damage. There is tray of plants on the passenger seat, some gardening gloves and a trowel. So you absolve yourself with flowers and think that’s OK?

  She looks awful, and jolts physically when she sees that the person on her doorstep is the boy in her rear-view mirror. I can see she is panicking and I imagine her heart is possibly thumping more than mine. I suppose I was expecting to see her looking like she always looks, glamorous and unaffected, but it takes only two seconds to notice that this is only a shade of the woman who used to be Nathan’s mum. I was certainly not prepared to see her like this and the curl of surprise that forms inside me manages to morph into a spiky kind of satisfaction. She looks like shit!

  There is a brown and silver tide creeping along her roots, sharply contrasting with the rest of her dyed-auburn hair. She is wearing a very large sweatshirt that somehow makes her look incredibly small and I realise that in Ben’s stronger body I could easily hurt her.

  ‘I’m Lily’s brother.’ The words come slowly and satisfyingly out of my mouth, leaving the remaining silence to continue my accusation.

  ‘Ben?’ she greets me in a strangled voice that comes out an octave above her own. She can’t see me behind his eyes and a range of scenarios play out in front of me. Should I tell her that I am Lily and watch her turn into the lead victim of a horror movie? But this is real life, and although it would freak her out to hear me say those words it would not prove anything to the outside world.

  No, I need to leave her dangling on this wire for a good while longer.

  ‘Nathan isn’t back from school yet.’ She swallows, hoping that this might make me go away.

  Her words cut into my thoughts and remind me sharply that Nathan is the one that would be hurt by me handling this clumsily.

  As his mum stands in front of me, I can see that her rational mind is telling her that I couldn’t possibly know who killed Lily, yet the hand that claws at her throat is giving her guilt away, and the skin on her face looks as if it has just become too big for her skull. She continues to hold the door partly in front of her like a shield.

  ‘Can I come in? Maybe wait for him?’ I ask, still unsure how I’m going to let this play out. Everything I want to say to her is trapped inside me, fizzing violently, as if my head is a cork holding it all at bay, and if I don’t say something soon I’m going to explode.

  ‘It’s not convenient right now … I … I’m sorry,’ she says, but just as she is closing the door and the moment is slipping away from me, I blurt out.

  ‘I know what you did.’

  One brief second in time. One error of judgement and the ugliness of that moment will spread across so many people, like black oil in a beautiful sea. For the single second that our eyes meet through the crack in the door, before she slams it shut, I see a kaleidoscope of fear and regret and pain.

  And it makes me feel good.

  I turn round at the sound of gravel crunching behind me to see Nathan coming up the drive. I have to physically restrain myself from leaping into his arms, unable to prevent a smile of pure joy making its way across my entire face. I look into his frothy blue eyes. ‘Nate?’ I almost squawk and I bounce a little on the balls of my feet with barely contained pleasure.

  ‘All right, Ben?’ he asks, more of a question than a hello, obviously more than a little confused why Ben is so happy to see him.

  ‘Don’t you dare try to kiss him,’ I imagine Ben growling in my ear.

  ‘Yes, thanks,’ I say, grinning and immediately try to force my face into a more appropriate expression, desperately trying to keep my lips to myself and to think of a reason for Ben being at his house. ‘Thought I’d come to see how you’re doing.’ But in an overly tactile way my hand involuntarily finds its way onto his arm, causing him to look down at it with one eyebrow raised. ‘Oh, sorry,’ I apologise quickly, but his gaze has already shifted to the glass panel in his front door where his mum’s head is visible where she is slumped behind the coloured-glass panel.

  ‘I don’t think your mum is very well,’ I add, knowing regretfully that Nathan is no longer interested in talking to me.

  ‘What the …?’ he mutters as he rushes to open the door without saying goodbye, leaving me standing kissing my fingers where they’d touched his sleeve.

  I leave the picture-postcard facade of the Peterson house with its ugly truth and broken heart and make my way slowly home.

  Nathan’s mum had shut the door and sunk to the
floor, her back to the wall, and her head leaning against the thick stained-glass panel. The coir on the welcome mat prickled her skin and snagged her tights, but she couldn’t move. She could hear Nathan and Ben talking outside and the taste of bile found its way into her mouth.

  He couldn’t possibly know.

  When Nathan put his key in the lock she moved, but only to the stairs, where she put her head to her knees to stop the imminent threat of vomiting on the carpet.

  Nathan dropped his school bag and crouched down in front of his mother. ‘Mum?’ He waited to see if she would reply but the only thing she offered him was the top of her head with its greying tide. ‘Are you ill?’

  She answered with her outstretched hand, which he took in his own larger hand. So Ben hasn’t said anything to him, she realised with relief. My beautiful son won’t despise me … yet.

  ‘I love you, Nate,’ was all she could answer.

  Long after Nathan had taken her shoes off, helped her upstairs and made her a cup of tea, his mum had lain curled up in bed, staring at the wall and trying to undo the few awful minutes that changed her life for good.

  Why hadn’t she put her hand over her glass to stop Morag topping it up? Why the hell hadn’t she just drunk coffee? Why hadn’t she at least driven the normal route home?

  She knew with absolute regret that if her husband and her son ever found out it was her who killed Lily, the love that her family had for each other would be extinguished.

  Letting myself back in to our house I can hear Mum running down the stairs. As the door closes behind me, I manage the beginnings of a greeting, just before she pushes her hands on my shoulders … hard! It makes me lose my balance and fall against the door with a thud, banging the back of my head. She is hitting me with closed fists that are hammering at my arms and against my chest. Her teeth are clenched, and her face is twisted into an expression that I can only describe as bloody furious.