I catch sight of myself in the mirror again. Once upon a time, I would have taken a photo of Ben like this and made it go viral, but now this vision in the mirror is just a pathetic reminder of what I am doing … to the both of us.
I return to Ben’s bedroom, and thankfully I sleep, leaving traces of make-up and sadness all over his pillow.
Six o’clock came and went over two hours ago and Mum, curled on the sofa, has been getting more fidgety and cross with each passing minute.
Dad is late home today and she’s been unable to get hold of him. I wonder if it is like the day I didn’t go to school, or whether the shock of a sudden death in the family makes you think the grim reaper could be round any corner, waiting to take your loved ones away from you at any moment. Poor Mum, there are so many stains on her once-perfect life.
When Dad eventually comes in, she pushes her phone aside angrily and gives the television her full interest as if she’s been casually watching a programme all evening, and hasn’t the slightest interest in what time he’s come home.
Before I died, my dad was always so dependable and funny, and my mum was fairly chilled, but my death seems to have eaten away at the best parts of all of my family, leaving festering wounds too easily opened. He forgot to tell Mum he was running late tonight and he hasn’t even noticed that she’s pretending not to care.
We can hear him getting his dinner out of the microwave, which he then brings into the living room to eat off his lap while Mum concentrates rigidly at the screen, saying nothing. Dad searches my eyes for evidence of Lily … I am here, but then he completely forgets to say hello to Mum. I believe that she feels lonelier now that he’s in the room than before he came home.
Although I am so tired from the strain of another school day and of trying to be Ben, I’m so glad that, at least with him, I can relax and be Lily.
A crime programme comes on and Mum reaches for the remote. It’s like a televisual conspiracy every day, with programmes sneaking in scenes about dead people, or pathologists, or funerals, which pop up on the screen like a cruel, mocking joke. Mum flicks the TV over to a comedy and laughter instantly fills the room but her face doesn’t change its fixed defiant expression, and the space around her is invisibly spiky.
We continue to just stare at the television, letting it pretend for us that our lives are normal.
As soon as the credits mercifully roll at the end of the programme, Mum withdraws almost unnoticed out of the room. We can hear her in the kitchen for a few minutes, crockery banging, water running, the general sounds of clearing up, then silently and alone she goes upstairs to bed. It’s only 21.35, but she’s already given up on the day.
We both sit looking at the ceiling, listening to Mum shedding the day, and when it all goes quiet I leave my armchair to join Dad on the sofa. ‘Where were you?’ I ask him. ‘Why were you so long?’
‘In the office. I lost track of time … I’ve been trying to come up with a solution.’ He immediately looks aghast. ‘I … I didn’t mean …’
My relief at sharing my burden is instantly swapped for the bruising feeling of deceit that he has been trying to think of a way to make me leave.
‘A solution? I don’t want a solution! This is between me and Ben. He’s letting me live. He’ll come back!’
Do I believe what I have just said?
Dad bows his head as if the entire weight of the world has just landed on his shoulders, and I can hear him loudly swallowing as if he is trying not to cry.
‘I’m sorry, Ben … er … Lily, but you have to be shown how to … leave again.’ He focuses on the green in my eyes. ‘You can’t stay. It isn’t fair to Ben.’
‘I didn’t tell you so that you could get rid of me.’ My heart is racing and tears are threatening to cascade down my face. ‘What are you going to do? Get the church round with flowing gowns and a huge cross to order me out of my brother’s body … as if I’m the devil?’ I hardly give him time to answer. ‘I’m not going to rotate my head and shout rude things like in The Exorcist you know. Ben can come back any time he likes.’ There is total silence in the room apart from the ticking of the clock on the shelf.
‘Can he?’ Dad asks. ‘It’s been several days.’
‘He’s only got to find me in the night … like I did with him … It’s easy.’
Why hasn’t he found me in the night? Why can’t I feel Ben any more?
My teeth find their way to pin my bottom lip down and my hands reach up in my Lily way to carefully wipe my eyes as they spill with tears. Dad puts his arms round me tightly for several minutes until he eventually clears his throat. ‘I never thought I would hear myself say this, but we need some advice from someone who knows about this stuff, like one of those mediums … Mystic Meg or Septic Peg, or something. We just need to find one that isn’t a rip-off con artist.’
I don’t want to own up about One Shoe Sue. What if she has the power to banish me from Ben?
‘What about that strange woman … you know, the mother of that boy in your class? The one with the limp?’
My heart sinks; this is going to move forward whether I want it to or not, I guess. ‘One Shoe Sue?… She was at my funeral … she knew I was there.’
He looks surprised. ‘You were there?’
‘Yes, but not in Ben’s body. I’ve told you. I was around you all the time. Kind of floating. Thank you for saying I was like a sunflower.’ I smile at him and squeeze his arm.
‘She might have been guessing, I suppose?’ he suggests, going back to One Shoe Sue. ‘After all, it’s not the most stunning feat of psychic ability to sense the departed at their own funeral.’
‘She turned her head just as I walked past her, and she told her husband that I was there. She couldn’t see me, but she knew I was standing beside her.’
Considering Dad has spent his whole life believing that anything to do with the afterlife is a massive pile of horse shit, he’s holding up quite well. ‘Well … if you really think that Voodoo Sue, or One Shoe Sue or whoever she is, is the real deal, then we should at least go and see her. Perhaps she can actually talk to people like you …’ He pats my knee and gives me a sad smile. ‘People like you,’ he repeats for lack of any better description.
I tell him about the wisps of smoke that were hanging around in the crematorium, and that Mum had one around her and he even had one around him. ‘I guess they were all ghosts of people we knew, who came back because my funeral made people think about them.’
‘Perhaps the one around me was my mum?’ he says, and I realise that deep within his disbelief there must have been a desperate longing all this time.
I tuck my knees and feet onto the couch, curl my spine over and lean my forehead on his shoulder. Almost foetal. My hands are holding his arm but one hand slides down until it is inside his warm fingers.
We fall silent for a while and find ourselves pretending to stare at the images of current news events on the television, the voices of the presenters just a noise in the background of our heads. ‘Dad?’ I ask him eventually, breaking the silence.
‘Mmm?’ he answers.
‘Don’t make me go too soon,’ I say, unable to tell him that I need to stay long enough to reach summer. I need to see at least something of the world.
He turns to me but I can’t see him clearly; my eyes are full of tears again and my throat hurts.
James stayed slumped on the sofa, long after his son … who it would appear was also his daughter caught within the body of his son, had gone to bed.
Listening to the deep voice of Ben speaking the words of Lily had been so confusing, an impossible situation. His brain had tumbled over and over again since Sunday night, whirling with the madness of it all and from trying to keep that madness all to himself.
Contacting Sue was probably his only lifeline, even though he’d always struggled to believe that there was such a thing as a real psychic. Lily believed that Sue had definitely sensed her at the funeral. It was worth a try, because o
therwise he was at a total loss.
He so badly wanted to tell Amelia what was going on, but until he had some answers he also needed to protect her, because Lily coming back through Ben would pick at the fragile scab that was forming over her grief. They were both struggling with it so much; one day they would almost be OK and the next they were back in the bowels of despair. It seemed disloyal to try to enjoy life in the same way they had before, but he had faith. The heart of his family had been broken, and it was a very long way from being mended, but he loved them and time would be a healer. He believed that.
For now he was more worried about why Lily had returned and where the hell Ben was. Although he felt a traitor to his daughter, his son must have his life back. Ben could not be a vessel for her soul any longer.
I feel naked again.
I’m walking through the school, feeling exposed, like I did on my first day back here as Ben. Having told Dad that it is really me in here, I felt his eyes on me this morning when I was getting my breakfast, taking Ben’s skin away to reveal me underneath. The initial relief I felt at telling him has morphed into something else, like when you believe that it’s almost OK doing something wrong as long as no one knows about it.
I’m finding it easier to act like Ben as each day goes on and I make less Lilyish mistakes than I did in the beginning, but now Dad knows about me I feel condemned and somehow dirty.
Even being with Beth is different after the party. She obviously fancies Ben now, which feels like I’m deceiving her in a worse way. I can’t even convince myself that I’m just a friend to her, because she not only sees Ben … but she also wants Ben.
And Nathan? He is dying inside as surely as his mother is, and although I know the secret of his misery, there is nothing I can do about it.
And Ben doesn’t appear in the night, so even if I could bring myself to step back into that awful lonely place, he isn’t there to swap with anyway.
On the way home I find myself outside Nathan’s house. He’s stayed after school for a sports thing so he’s not here, and I don’t know why I’m here either, but I am. Their house makes me feel sad. It could have all been so different if that day in February had never happened. I could be making plans to go there tonight and sit with my boyfriend while his mum cooked us something lovely to eat. We could hold hands on the sofa and kiss on the doorstep and make plans for the prom and for summer. I wonder what part of her thinks that it’s OK to let my family spend the rest of their lives never getting justice for my death by not confessing. Why does she think that it’s OK to be here, making everyone’s lives miserable, including Nathan’s, when she should be in prison? No one would believe me, but they would believe her. She is the only key to giving everyone involved in this nightmare some peace.
When Dad comes home the next day, thankfully on time, he looks at me, winking in a way that is not really a cheery wink but more of a knowing one.
After dinner, we go into the living room again and wait for Mum to go to bed, the same as last night
When finally she says goodnight and disappears upstairs, I get up and close the door, then sit down next to him to hear what he has to say.
‘I’ve managed to contact Sue. I went into work early so that I could spare the time to go and see her during the day … She’s a strange old thing.’
‘But what did she say about me?’ I ask, wondering what her reaction would have been to hearing that Dad had his very own spiritual possession going on in his house.
‘I didn’t tell her exactly what is going on with you, but she said to go to her house on Thursday after school.’
‘Do you think she’ll make me … move on there and then?’ I ask, my fear spiralling about the fact that Thursday isn’t very far away and I’m not prepared to leave yet.
‘I don’t know,’ he says honestly, looking into the mossy flecks of my Lily eyes. ‘I think we just need to see what she says first.’
My breath catches and swells in my throat. ‘Tomorrow is Wednesday … that’s only two more days to go …’
He doesn’t understand my panic, or he’s ignoring it. ‘Yes. She couldn’t see us any earlier, and we need answers as soon as possible, for both you and Ben.’
We fall into silence while the blue light of the television screen flickers around the room.
‘Dad …?’ I say eventually and he turns to look at me, and I think he expects me to be crying again but I’m not. He doesn’t expect me to say what I say. ‘I don’t think I should leave too quickly … You and Mum … you’re going down separate paths.’
He puts the television onto mute and takes a breath. ‘You mean since you left?’
I nod. ‘Yes … maybe that is why I’m here … you know, to help.’
He exhales before he talks, as if he isn’t sure exactly what he is going to say. ‘It’s not that we’re going along different paths from each other, Lily, just that we’re going along difficult paths. That’s all.’
‘No! You’re not like you were … before.’ His face is sad as he looks at me and I reach over to give him a hug. ‘Me not being here … has pulled you all apart, so maybe … I’m here to put you together again.’
His big shoulders hunch and his expression is one that I can’t quite determine. He reaches for my hand and strokes it. ‘Lily, I don’t think that’s why you’re here. Yes, our paths are … difficult, but that is normal. Any change, like a death in the family, will always blow everyone apart for a while, but –’ he pauses as if trying to find the most delicate way of saying what he wants to say – ‘time does heal, Lily. We are a bit self-absorbed at the moment … all of us … that’s all … but we’re strong. We will be OK.’
An unexpected stab of hurt gets me right between the ribs. He wasn’t supposed to say … that! They will be OK? But they can’t be OK … if I’m not with them.
I recall how my parents sang to the music in the car on the way home from the beach, and the time when Dad swooped Mum off her feet in the kitchen.
So, they aren’t falling apart without me …? They are … healing!
Her door was once a shiny bottle green.
I can tell because in patches it’s still shiny. The majority of the door, however, is covered by a dull sheen that is beginning to crack and fade. There is no glass in the door, just a little peephole to scrutinise unwanted visitors. There’s black gathering in the corners of the porch and it’s difficult to tell if it’s mould or dirt, but by contrast there’s a thriving array of lovingly tended pot plants, mostly green herbs and ferns, but there are also some daffodils and primroses, exposing their sweet, colourful faces to spring. Petals and leaves reach skywards from metal or terracotta pots of different sizes; a chimney pot billows an evergreen plant aptly labelled ‘angel eyes’, and a cracked floral teapot pours ivy from its spout. It all looks so pretty and very Mother Earth.
It’s a bit dispiriting trying to slow down time when it won’t listen. We are at One Shoe Sue’s house and it is as if the minutes and hours since I first told Dad who I really was have slipped away in the blink of an eye.
Dad is straightening his shoulders in a bid to feel braver than he does. I try to settle the swarm of nerves in the pit of my stomach as I hear someone approaching the faded door. One Shoe Sue opens it, and stands framed by the opening like a picture. ‘Thomas isn’t here.’ She smiles kindly to reassure me that her son from my school is out. ‘I’m always confidential.’
Her hair is very long for her age and coloured a strawberry blonde, held back by a fat flowery headband. Her clothes are flowy, slightly hippy. Two shoes poke out from beneath her multicoloured skirt.
She welcomes us in, turning and limping noticeably down the narrow hallway into a kitchen. There’s an old-fashioned dark green kettle on her hob, which is beginning to whistle. I can hear the sounds of sport coming from the television in the next room and, through the gap in the door, I can see Ted squashed into their old brown sofa, his face turned to the screen.
The kitchen is big and
warm and very green with a coffee table in the corner and a green two-seater sofa beside it. Sue tells us to make ourselves comfortable, while lifting off a fat stripy cat with an emerald velvet collar, several magazines and a random black sock from the jade-coloured cushions, which are dotted with tiny yellow flowers. She offers us a hot drink.
‘Only herbal or soft drinks I’m afraid,’ she says with a smile. ‘Caffeine isn’t good for anxiety levels.’ She looks briefly at us both with her blue eyes that have light shining out of them, a light that makes me feel comforted.
‘I’ll have forest fruit please,’ says Dad, after looking through her little basket full of flavoured tea sachets.
‘I’ll have the same,’ I say and she turns to get four cups down from an old-fashioned dresser. She gives Ted a drink, then returns from the lounge, quietly closing the door behind her with a click. She has already placed a large glass jug containing water, ice and some sliced lemon on the table along with three tumblers. Sue picks up the mugs of steaming herbal tea, and places them on the coffee table before sitting down on the single armchair, which she has moved closer to the sofa and to us.
Dad looks around, studying the room. There is nothing particularly ‘hocus-pocus’ about Sue’s house. It feels lived in and comfortable. My own eyes travel along the windowsill and its array of clutter, a photo of Thomas squinting at the camera, glass ornaments of various shapes and sizes, a flower vase. ‘It’s very … green …’ I comment, ‘your kitchen.’
Her wide mouth smiles again. ‘Oh, thank you,’ she says, although I was unaware I was paying a compliment. ‘Green is the colour of birth and renewal,’ her wide mouth informs us. ‘It is also a great balancer, creating an equilibrium between the head and the heart.’ Dad and I find ourselves scanning the room once again to see if we can get the equilibrium. We both nod, as if we know exactly what she’s talking about, but neither of us do.
She continues to smile at us both, particularly at me. Her eyes hold the reflections of the yellow flames of three candles, all green of course, and scented with honeysuckle, which are on the coffee table in front of us. Neither Dad nor I can find much of a smile to return; we’re too busy wondering how this session is going to progress. ‘Is there anything you’d like to ask me or would you like to just start?’
Sunflowers in February Page 21