‘Oh, and by the way, when Ben couldn’t find his football shirt the other day, the one signed by David Beckham, I took it ages ago and sold it on eBay. He will go ballistic!’
‘Yes, he will go ballistic,’ they both say together.
‘I guess he knows now … don’t you, Ben?’ Mum adds, looking at my chest as if Ben is inside, reclining in an internal armchair and watching the action.
‘I guess he does,’ I answer, and sit beside her to hug her, hoping that she won’t question me any more about Ben.
She wearily leans against the body of her son to be comforted by the soul of her daughter, and Dad joins in for the all-American hug. For those few minutes our heartbeats are in time with each other.
‘But what do we do now?’ she asks us both, cheeks stained with drying tears, eyes bloodshot and fingers stroking my back.
Dad and I tell her how we’ve just been to see One Shoe Sue and what she told us about me needing to be ready to leave.
‘But I’m here now,’ I say, omitting the fact that as time goes by I’m becoming less and less willing to leave.
Mum looks at Dad and he looks back at her, and they share a secret look that I can’t read, but I choose to let it go.
‘I’m here now,’ I repeat silently to myself.
Nathan’s dad and Nathan cleared the glass and the empty bottle of wine away, and dabbed a cloth at the red stain on the sofa. Nathan fetched a blanket and wrapped it round his once glamorous and sparkling mother.
There was a ladder in her tights and her glorious auburn hair was being drowned by the tide of mousy brown, silver-flecked roots. Her make-up had smudged as if she had rubbed her eyes and the fact that something had gone very wrong with her was obvious to both of them.
The figurehead on the Peterson ship was a mess.
The sweet smell of hot chocolate floats up from our mugs and for a short while there is a beautiful sense of belief.
Belief that the essence of my family and who we are will never change, whether we can be seen or not. But then Mum clears her throat and I can see that her lips are dancing with emotion. ‘I would have come to get you …’ I know instantly that she’s referring to the shopping trip again, to her claim that she wouldn’t drive me home if I spent all my money.
I reach over and squeeze her hand quickly. ‘I know that, but I was a big girl and I thought I knew what I was doing … It was not your fault, and besides, I shouldn’t have lied.’ Mum doesn’t let go of my hand.
‘And the bloody driver’s got away scot-free,’ Dad pipes up again. He can’t help himself. ‘She knows, you know,’ he says, staring at Mum, while tipping his head in my direction, and I groan. ‘She knows who did it, but she won’t tell.’
I roll my eyes heavenwards and prepare to say the same things I said to Ben in the night and to go through the same battle that I’ve just had with Dad at Sue’s house. ‘Did you have to mention it now, Dad?’ I’m annoyed with him for bringing it up again. ‘You know it’s not that simple. The police are hardly likely to believe me … or you. And we certainly can’t tell them I’ve returned from the dead to put the blame on someone. There isn’t a shred of evidence to prove it.’
‘Their car. The police will take his car in and examine it. They have ways …’ Mum looks hopeful. ‘It won’t matter how we know, as long as he’s found –’
‘There isn’t any evidence on the car,’ I interrupt. ‘There isn’t a single mark.’
‘You’ve seen it?’ Mum asks. ‘Do … do we know him?’
I think quickly, anxious not to have Dad running madly amongst everyone we know blaming their husbands and sons. I lie. ‘You don’t know him. Like I said, it’s complicated … The police won’t be able to solve the case unless he confesses.’
I run my fingers across my lips, like pulling a zip. ‘I can’t say anything yet. But as soon as I can, I will.’
Dad glances at the clock on the wall. ‘We’re going round in circles now; it’s very late.’ And he stands up, nudging at Mum to do the same, and sharing that same secret look that they had earlier.
‘Can I sleep in my own room?’ I ask them. ‘Would you find it a bit freaky?’
Dad smiles ruefully. ‘Yes. It would be very freaky, but I expect you’ll do it anyway.’ And within ten minutes I find myself squeezed, slightly uncomfortably but happily familiar, into my own pyjamas, snuggling under my own duvet, and looking at the shapes of my own room. Taking my phone I go on the Internet and search ‘purple hyacinths’ and their meanings.
‘It’s a clue, isn’t it?’ I say out loud to Ben, finally understanding what happened at Sue’s. ‘One of your cryptic specials. Like the honey-bee clue and all the other stuff you’ve ever done.’
I scroll through the answers online and come across one that I think fits.
‘The purple hyacinth … it means … I’m sorry, please forgive me.’
Ben was trying to tell Sue that he forgives me for using his body. That’s it! Ben is giving me time, because he forgives me.
As tiredness gets the better of me, I ignore myself in my urn and turn the light off, feeling confident that Ben won’t come and get me tonight.
I am most definitely not ready.
After only a few minutes, Mum creeps out of their bedroom and into mine. She doesn’t turn the light on. ‘Shhhh,’ she whispers into the darkness before I can speak. ‘Don’t say anything. I came to kiss you goodnight … like when you were a little girl.’ She kneels by my bed and leans over me, burying her face in my hair, breathes in really slowly as if absorbing the very essence of me deep into her soul, then she kisses me on the forehead and creeps out. ‘I love you,’ she murmurs, as she briefly hesitates by the open doorway, before withdrawing to her own room. I guess with the light off it was easier for her to know that I am Lily.
James and Amelia undressed for bed in silence, clicking the door shut behind them before freely sharing the same furtive glances they hoped their child or children couldn’t see.
Climbing into bed, they met in the middle and clung on to each other as if the bed beneath them was not enough to support the weight of their concerns.
‘I … I don’t know where to begin …’ Amelia said, her breath warm against her husband’s chest. ‘I don’t know if this is fantastic or awful. I can’t process the idea that Lily can talk to us through Ben. And I don’t understand how they can both be in his body at the same time. If you ask me, Ben seemed … absent.’
Her husband sighed into the dark and tried to arrange his words as carefully as possible. ‘I think Ben is stepping aside … you know, to let Lily do this.’
‘Like a medium who allows someone who’s passed over to talk through them?’ Amelia rationalised.
‘Exactly,’ James confirmed, relieved that she thought it could be as simple as that.
‘So what do we do now, James? How do we save them both?’ she asked.
‘By helping Lily move on,’ he replied. ‘Sue said she’ll know when she’s ready, and I don’t know how she will but we need to do our best to show her the way, as soon as possible.’
‘To show her how to leave us … again,’ Amelia echoed sadly.
‘They can’t share the same body, Ames; Ben needs his life back.’
‘At least we know now … at least we know there is something more …’ whispered Amelia, ‘even if she won’t tell us who did it yet.’
They both fell silent, contemplating everything that was happening to their family, until sleep thankfully overtook them both.
The clock’s red numbers shine 09.50. I have overslept.
I can already hear the sounds of morning coming from downstairs. The coffee machine makes its rumbling death rattle, and I can hear the clinks of cutlery on china. When I enter the kitchen, Mum’s at the sink in her faded blue dressing gown, the colour of ragged forget-me-nots at the end of their time, and Dad is next to her in his favourite blue T-shirt with the slogan ‘My idea of a balanced life is a beer in each hand’ printed on the front
. This T-shirt used to stretch slightly over his stomach, but this morning I notice how the letters stay in shape, and the material hangs in folds where the telltale pounds, which used to cling to his belly, have slipped away over the last few weeks. His jeans fit better as well, as if at first glance he’s somehow become younger from the neck downwards, but in order to compensate, the years have now crept up to his face.
They both look different from yesterday. I can’t rationalise it because it isn’t happy and it isn’t sad. I suppose it must be the promise of something intangible that will replace the absolute certainty that was, until yesterday, their previously bleak lives. The skin on their faces looks as if it has shrunk a little in the night. It now nearly fits.
They both look up at the same time and I notice identically startled expressions, which they instantly try to hide. I don’t know what they were expecting this morning, but I don’t suppose it was to see their son, wearing my cute PJs and my pink dressing gown, and I can see how difficult it is for them to translate this vision in front of them.
Mum pushes orange juice towards me, the expensive kind, bits clinging to the tall glass, promising the freshness of Mediterranean landscapes. The toaster releases its springs, sending the golden slices upwards until their crusty edges poke out, and Mum puts them on a plate and hands me a knife and some peanut butter, finally understanding why I was eating the dreaded spread the other day. Dad pours them both a coffee and they sit down opposite me, nursing their mugs, ignoring their toast, and trying to pretend that this situation is in any way normal.
The late night with its jumbled and bizarre discussion hangs noisily in the air.
‘I guess you’re not expecting me to go to school today then?’ I ask, surprised that they let me sleep in, and that neither of them have got ready for the day either.
‘We thought we could have a sort of … snow day?’ Mum replies.
‘Abandon the normal and seize the exceptional,’ Dad adds.
‘You mean bunk off … in real English,’ I tell them.
The unseasonal snow only lasted one day, and the ever-changing spring weather is now casting alternate splashes of sun and shade on everything outside the window.
‘Sounds cool.’ I smile at them and notice how they share that look again.
Mum clears her throat. ‘When did you know … that … that you weren’t …?’
‘Alive any more?’ I say it for her. ‘To be honest, the first thing that worried me was that my new Converse shoes were ruined.’ I laugh at this and watch them try to laugh too, because they know that this is so Lily. ‘I cottoned on quite quickly … I couldn’t touch anything … feel anything.’ I omit to tell them about the actual moment I saw my own body in the ditch.
As I talk, I try to figure out the expressions on their faces. I really don’t know if I have ever seen such a look. It is as if their eyes show the pain of loss, a flicker of hope and the pure amazement of a brain trying to reason that there is massively more to life than it has always understood.
‘And after you got over the shoes?’ Dad asks.
‘Well, I suppose it was almost like normal, except without all the workings of a live body. I didn’t feel fear, or anger any more. It was like a kind of … peace. Imagine you’re standing completely alone in a beautiful place.’ I give them a moment to think of somewhere nice. ‘You can’t, in reality, see it, smell it, taste it, feel it or hear it, other than in your mind; you just know that it’s lovely.’ I take a bite of peanut butter and toast and talk thickly through it. ‘That is a bit of what it’s like to view the world from limbo.’
Dad leaves his chair and turns to make more of his never-ending supply of coffee. The scent of the ground beans reaches my nose, the clink and the chink of the cups, and the machine, choking and gurgling, sounds so … normal. Mum picks up her empty cup and waves it at him. It happily occurs to me that no cigarettes have touched the lips of my mother since she said she would stop; the scent of her has returned and I am so glad. Dad rejoins us at the table with another two steaming mugs, a notebook and a pen, and places his glasses on his nose.
‘We’ve come up with an idea, Lily,’ he says confidently, obviously relieved to have an element of control over the situation. I notice how Mum nods her agreement, even though he hasn’t said what it is yet. ‘One Shoe Sue said that the reason you’re here is because you aren’t ready to leave. I can only think that it’s because you haven’t done enough yet, being only fifteen. I think that you should write down all the things that you would like to do … you know … before –’ his newfound confidence falters and threatens to snuff itself out completely – ‘er, the most,’ he finishes.
We all know what he means but only I can voice it.
‘You want me to write a bucket list?’ I reply, but he pulls a wry smile and takes a deep breath.
‘Well … technically it’s an after bucket list.’
We all giggle a bit at how daft that sounds, then look silently at the blank lines of the notebook, line after line, which offer the opportunity for me to do a thousand and more things.
Dad coughs, and his cheeks flush a little. ‘The only trouble is –’ he looks embarrassed – ‘is that I can’t afford to … you know … send you to the Moon, so to speak.’ He looks at me with apology but I do know. His ten-year-old car in the drive and his obsession with websites promising to compare and compete with other companies for the cheapest deals has told me that.
I look at them both and smile indulgently. ‘I like it!’ I say bravely, even though I totally get what is really behind his idea, and what it means. If I do enough, I’ll feel as if I have lived enough, and then I should go. Then I silently add, I’m not going until I’ve done some travelling in the summer. ‘I’ll put down everything that I would love to do, expensive or not.’ I flick the blank pages. ‘We can still dream. Besides … it doesn’t matter if I don’t do half of it, you two or Ben can finish it for me … when … if you can. It will be my legacy.’ I give them my ‘brave’ smile. The reality of me putting dreams on paper that will never get fulfilled is horribly painful, but I refuse to put a price label on my hopes and wishes. A dark and silent part of me, however, wonders, if my after bucket list is very long, perhaps it will mean I won’t have to leave for a really long time.
I begin immediately because it’s quite nice to dream. Chewing my nails and thinking hard, twiddling the pen in my fingers, my eyes are searching around the room, as if for ideas hidden in corners or behind ornaments, but really my eyes can only see buildings, and beaches, and horses, and ships, and a host of sensations that the world has to offer past our own front door. My inner mind swirls with colour, and water, and mountains; the fabric of landscapes and far-flung places.
‘Number one – travel the world.’ I don’t look up at my parents. I don’t want to see it mirrored in their eyes that they believe this would never happen for me. If I was doing a real bucket list instead of an after bucket list, I would stop at number one. For me, there is nothing I want more. My second entry on the list raises their eyebrows. ‘Number two – get a tattoo.’ I talk in a slow sing-songy way, as I write each word. I look up and remind them that it is my after bucket list, and that the moral ethics of each item is not open for discussion.
Mum touches Dad’s arm and I hear her say ‘Look, James … Lily’s handwriting,’ as the blue pen releases its ink in my rounded and neat style.
As my enthusiasm and ability to think of things grows, so does the list. ‘Number three – stay up all night. Number four – dine out in a really expensive restaurant. Number five – learn to ride a horse, and ride it along a beach. Is that one or two items? Never mind. Number six – learn to ski.’ I stress to them both that these things are most definitely not an order of preference. ‘Seven – go in a hot-air balloon; eight – go Zorb balling; nine – learn to scuba dive …’ I wonder how many people die without ever doing the things that would make them really feel as if they’d lived. I look at my parents. ‘Have you ever done
any of these things?’
They look at each other as if asking themselves the same question.
‘Not many, although we’ve been skiing and we both used to stay up all night when we were younger, at parties or nightclubs.’ I look at them from a different angle and it makes me smile, my parents partying all night, that’s cool.
‘Number ten – learn to drive; eleven – bungee jump; twelve – get drunk.’
‘You got drunk, at the party,’ Dad reminds me.
‘Oh yes.’ I snigger, and put a little tick by number twelve.
‘I got so drunk once that my friends had to wheel me to the taxi rank in a shopping trolley,’ Mum pipes up, and I laugh at the image; it’s easy to forget your parents were ever young.
‘Dad?’
‘Er … yes. I got on the wrong train home from London after a heavy night out and ended up in Wales. I was twenty-two!’ he added in his own defence. I laugh and tut as if I’m totally disgusted, but secretly I’m enjoying it. I continue. Scribbling and thinking, thinking and scribbling.
‘Number thirteen – put gum on the Seattle Gum Wall.’ Again their eyebrows shoot up. They haven’t heard of the Seattle Gum Wall. ‘It’s a wall … in Seattle obviously, with a million bits of chewed gum stuck to it. They tried to clean it but everyone’s sticking their gum back on. I look at their astonished faces. ‘It’s art!’ I add.
The list grows. I put everything down that I once thought would be part of my memories to share with my grandchildren as a little old lady.
When, after what seems like a very long time, and a very long list, I sigh and add, ‘Fall in love, have sex, and have children. Not necessarily in that order.’ They share a glance. ‘Don’t panic,’ I reassure them – I don’t have to put it in words that this isn’t possible – ‘but,’ I add, pleased with myself for thinking of this, ‘you two did meet, fall in love and have children. And for that I would like to thank you. Just for the record, I’m glad that I am … was Lily Richardson, even if it wasn’t for long.’ I drop the pen and reach out to squeeze their hands. It is a sad fact that several weeks ago, I wouldn’t have thought to hold their hands this easily. Now I want to hold on forever.
Sunflowers in February Page 24