The emotions and sensations that were missing from my time in limbo stir inside me. These feelings that made up who I was, feelings that helped me decide what was wrong or right, good or bad, lovely or nasty. Although I need these physical reminders in the living world in order to make the right decisions, in limbo they were not necessary. I remember that kind of knowing and the kind of peace that I felt. In a way it was lovely and I try to hold on to that thought.
When all the pieces of my mind feel as though they are in order as much as they will ever be, I go downstairs. Mum is finishing off the trimmings of a savoury pie; there is music and she is singing and it feels like home. I give her a hug and she smiles at me. ‘Hello, dear,’ she says absentmindedly and carries the pie over to the oven. I find Dad in the lounge, catching up on the day’s newspaper and I sit next to him, leaning my head on his shoulder as I reach for his hand. We sit like that for a few minutes and Dad asks me if I’m OK, but I can’t answer. I swallow the saliva that is building in my mouth and the sound of it is noisy in the room, yet I still don’t move. Dad folds the paper clumsily with one hand, and places it on the wooden coffee table beside him, squeezing my fingers between his large warm hands.
‘You’re leaving, aren’t you?’ he says, already knowing the answer. ‘Is it time?’ The words come softly out of his mouth.
I nod and the movement of it shakes tears over the edge of my eyes and sends them down my cheek.
Mum comes bustling into the room with a smile on her face, a question on her lips and a tea towel in her hand. She stops short and her smile drops, as the tea towel falls to the floor, and she knows too. She comes towards us and sits down until the three of us are squashed on our familiar soft sofa, my left hand in Dad’s and my right hand in Mum’s. We must sit like that for a long time and no one says a word, and no one moves until the timer from the kitchen rings loudly to tell us that the pie is ready.
At dinner, we sit quietly and united round the table. The food is delicious, but we eat very little of it. A cherry-red candle flickers in the centre of the table, and our eyes focus on it through the meal. This time I haven’t shuffled the seat to the middle to disguise the space. This time I sit in my own seat and leave Ben’s vacant, so that the chairs round our table show that we are a family of four and always will be, whether we’re in the same room or not.
‘I have forgiven Nathan’s mum,’ I say quietly into the silence, and this time they say nothing in return. I hand them the letter she wrote to them. ‘Tomorrow she will tell the police and they can sort it out from there. You will get your justice … And now I can go …’
And finally they understand what I needed to do to leave.
Mum excuses herself for a moment and we hear her blowing her nose in the downstairs toilet. When she comes back to the table only the bravery of a mother shows on her face.
It’s Saturday. My second-to-last day.
In my own room with the clear light of a blue sky coming through the window and a soft breeze promising a warm day that feels delicious on my skin, I look at Ben’s phone and there is a line of replies, each saying ‘OK.’ Matthew, Beth and Nathan have made a last-minute agreement to meet me here at 09.30, for an early sixteenth birthday present to myself. I put on my own soft and cosy dressing gown and go downstairs.
Mum and Dad are up and dressed and bacon is on the grill. I breathe in that familiar smell and there is nothing like it. Morning in our house is really quite nice; it is such a shame I didn’t enjoy it more when I was Lily. I try to make a mental note of every sight and smell and taste and touch, because I know that by tomorrow it will all be just a memory. I pour myself some juice and sit at the table watching them both, and I love them.
*
We are going to a theme park, my hurriedly decided early birthday present to myself, courtesy of Dad’s wallet. As I will no longer be around on our sixteenth birthday I have decided to bring mine forward. Today shall be all about the thrill of speed and fun that belongs to the joy of living and not the fear of dying. Four teenagers spending the whole day on thrill-seeking rides; perfect.
For Beth, I can see a glow in her golden eyes that tells me she is having fun and that there is a bright future for her. I know she will be OK.
With Matthew I can see that as the day unfolds he’s amazed at the relationship Ben seems to have with his parents, and I hope that he takes a little bit of today home with him to his own mum and dad. I hug both of them openly in front of Ben’s mates and I hope Ben does the same when he’s back. But when you know that this is your last day everything is different. The expression about living each day as if it is your last could never be truer.
I persuade Nathan to sit next to me on the rollercoaster and as we climb in and wait for everyone to take their seats, I grab my chance. ‘You know Lily loved you, right?’ and he looks hard at me.
‘We were only together for seven weeks but I loved her too. She was a beautiful girl and for a while she was mine.’ My heart skips a massive beat with joy. ‘If she was still here we would have been going out for …’
‘Fifteen weeks today!’ we say at exactly the same time, and I know I have the widest grin all over my face.
He looks at me with total confusion. ‘Why have you been counting?’ he asks me.
‘Oh, just good at maths … I know you asked her out on New Year’s Day, that’s all.’
And as the rollercoaster jolts and begins its slow climb, I suddenly realise that for Nathan it must be time to stop counting.
‘Are you going to take Daisy to the prom?’ The words push their way round the lump forming in my throat.
‘I don’t know. I keep changing my mind.’ Tiny spikes of jealousy play a sword fight with my bravery.
‘You should … Lily won’t mind …’ The lump, now the size of a melon, prevents me from saying anything else.
‘Is that your twin thing?’ he asks. ‘The I know my twin without words thing?’
The top of the ride is looming, which means I have to ditch that melon and speak before it’s too late. ‘Yeah, it’s the twin thing. I also know that when you get home your mum will have some news for you.’
‘Whoa, that’s cryptic, man.’ He balks at the mention of his mother. The rollercoaster creeps upwards and I don’t have much time.
‘I’m serious, Nate. Promise me that whatever she tells you, you’ll stand by her, for Lily’s sake … Family is the most important thing … trust me.’ He looks confused and the knot in his forehead asks what the hell Lily has got to do with his mother. ‘The person who was driving the car that day …? Lily has forgiven them …’ Nathan continues staring at me, but nervously now with an I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about look, as the carts keep shifting upwards, but I tap my nose knowingly. ‘It’s the twin thing … you HAVE to promise!’ The rollercoaster has now reached a point where we feel as if we are almost vertical, our bodies pressed into our seats and our stomachs balancing on our spines.
‘I’ll believe it if I get a sign from her to tell me she’s OK,’ he says, looking down at the park way below us. ‘I asked her for a sign and I got nothing. You say you know what she wants but why is she always telling you and never me any of this stuff?’
I look ahead at the sky. In a few seconds we will be hurtling down and around, twisting and turning, and I anticipate the huge rush that we’re about to experience.
‘You just need to believe in her, Nathan,’ I yell at him right before we drop. ‘BELIEVE.’
*
The rest of the day is full. We laugh, and scream, and eat candyfloss, and hot dogs. Mum and Dad turn shades of green or pink depending on the ride, and we all laugh at them, deeply admiring them for not joining the other older people on the benches, viewing the young living their lives and never being sure at what point they had stopped wanting to join in.
When it’s finally over, I look at my friends who still have all of their tomorrows and the seed of resentment that grew shoots and became a plant withers a
nd recedes. I don’t resent them for what they have; I just wish I could have it too. I say my goodbyes, hugging Beth and whispering in her ear, ‘Keep laughing.’ Then I punch Matthew on the shoulder, as I know Ben would, but mainly because he thinks I’m leaning in to hug him too, so he hops back exclaiming, ‘Off the cloth, man!’ in case I’m going to get all mushy with him.
‘You’re a good mate,’ I say and watch him squirm at the compliment.
‘Whoa, that’s intense, man,’ he answers with what my female instincts detect as a hint of gratitude not to mention relief. And, finally, in an effort not to kiss Nathan, I hug him as the next best thing, and being so much more relaxed than Matthew he lets me. ‘Promise me you’ll do what I said?’ I remind him, and he nods his agreement, but this time I make him actually say the words.
‘Promise,’ he answers before we shake on it.
‘You’re acting like you’re leaving us,’ Beth laughs, and I turn quickly away so that none of them hear me say, ‘I am.’
Sleep did not happen for Nathan that night.
He’d walked home from Ben’s house wondering what he’d been going on about on the rollercoaster. It was so confusing.
And when, later that evening, his mother had told him and his dad that she had been behind the wheel on the day Lily had died, Ben’s urgent words to promise to stand by her had been more than difficult to keep hold of.
How had Ben known? Had his mother told him first? Why would Ben and his family protect her, and how had they managed to stop themselves going to the police, or even coming round and tearing his family limb from limb themselves?
Ben had insisted that for Lily’s sake, whatever happened, he must keep his promise, but as his mother was escorted to a waiting police car, Nathan and his father struggled to believe that the family as they knew it would ever be the same.
As Nathan lay on his bed churning over the events of the day with words and images going round and round in his head, a splash of colour caught his eye, starkly bold against the cloth of the jacket he had worn earlier. His heart accelerating rapidly, he sat up and reached over to where his jacket was hooked on the back of his door. A prickle began on his skin and worked its way up his whole body until it played with the hair on the back of his neck. There, just peeking out of the pocket was a spray of pink. He pinched the end of it and pulled until a feather uncurled in his hand in all its bright-pink glory. ‘No one knew,’ he whispered to the space in the room, staring at what he held in the palm of his hand. ‘No one knew!’ he shouted, louder this time, as if the volume would help him know it was true. Then he sat back down on his bed and stared at his pink gift, his very own personal sign, until finally he understood that, in time, it would all be OK.
‘I believe!’ he shouted out to the air above his head, and without realising it he gently let go of the girlfriend he used to have. Life would move on. Never quite the same, but it would eventually repair itself.
‘Thank you,’ he sighed. ‘I’ll never forget you, Lily Richardson.’
As the hands of the clock slide inevitably past twelve into a new and final day, we all make our way up the stairs. I want to spend the remainder of the night in my own room for the very last time, around the things that I once believed had defined me. The photos, the diary, the tickets to concerts, souvenirs from various places, jewellery, make-up and posters. These things are pieces of the fifteen-year-old girl’s life that I once had. I touch them and hold them to me and remember how I came to have each one.
At the back of my wardrobe, slightly battered now, is the old chocolate box, the picket fence now cream, and the colours of the garden faded. I find that I’m holding my breath as I lift the lid. There, hidden delightfully amid the crushed pink tissue, are the little silver memories of my gran, dulled now with age.
Taking the ancient silver cleaning cloth, I return the little treasures to their former glory and feel sorrow that I won’t have a child of my own to pass the memories on to. Tearing a sheet off my notebook that has a winking smiley face at the top of each page, I write a letter to the children that Ben will one day have. In my own handwriting I ask them to look after my things because they contain a love that has spanned decades and generations, then I fold it carefully, kissing the folded paper square, before tucking it inside the box.
This is really it, the absolute end of my life.
I don’t want to go.
I reach for my urn and place my hand upon the remains of what I used to be. The mourning for myself that I’ve held inside since I came back through Ben’s body finally comes out. A whirling range of emotions spin inside me, scraping and grazing their way through me, hurting yet healing at the same time.
I stay up all night, ‘number three,’ and as the anger, and hurt, and rage, and fear gradually works its way out, and as the sky changes from black to navy to pewter and finally to the light blue-grey of a brand-new day I know that I too must accept.
I take the little box to Ben’s room, take my clothes from the drawers, the last picture off my wall and ornaments off my shelves, and place them in neat piles against the wall. I don’t want Mum sitting in here any more, keeping my room as a shrine, trying to avoid getting rid of my stuff as if that would somehow mean she was getting rid of me. Keeping it all just as it was on the day I left … hurts her.
These things are not me.
I am me.
I am Lily.
Amelia and James listened to the sounds of anger coming from Lily’s bedroom and it was all they could do to stop themselves from going in there and joining in. They had a lifetime ahead of them to adjust to losing their beautiful girl, but Lily had only one night. Amelia had begged Sue if it was possible to give her own body to Lily and let her daughter live for longer, but of course that’s not how life should work. Lily could not live in anyone’s body; she had to be shown how to move on. Amelia knew this to be true, but a good mother would lay down her own life for her child if at all possible, and Amelia was a good mother.
They knew they had been given a true gift. Lily had to leave them, but this time she would not have to do it alone.
The soft music from Lily’s flute that had floated through the air and into their very core would haunt them – in a beautiful way – for the rest of their lives. It was the moment they had both known that what was once lost had been found.
Tomorrow they would help their daughter to find her way to move on.
Tomorrow, thankfully, they would help their son find his way back.
Tonight they would lie tight within each other’s arms and know that their family, whether near or very far away, would always love each other, in fact, love each other more than life itself.
Knowing that this last day will all end in a few short hours makes me feel as if I am somehow slowly disappearing even before the moment that I actually have to go.
Sue has promised that, this time, I’ll find my way out of here without floating around forever on my own, and I’m really hoping she’s right, because the temptation to keep coming back will be too much, and I’m sure that Ben will get fed up with me gate-crashing his life all the time.
‘Ben!’ I say out loud. ‘I don’t know what you’ve been doing these past few weeks, but you’d better be ready to jump back in.’
The deep breath that I take before I leave my dismantled bedroom this morning is just enough, though barely, for me to convince my parents I am most definitely, without a doubt … ready!
I should win an Oscar.
A cursory attempt at breakfast is made then left. Hot cups of tea go cold, and the day trickles past in agonising suspense, an atmosphere of anticipation growing, like in a dentist’s waiting room.
When the knock finally comes at the door we all jump and my heart thumps with the adrenalin that is released into my system by fear, and it feels as if the very ground beneath me is shaking. Sue comes limping heavily into the house, wafting the air around her with the scent of lavender and calmness, as far removed from the Grim Reaper as you
can get. She is more like a beacon, as if her very insides are alight with her surety that what is about to happen is a natural and good thing. Her warm hands touch each of us as she passes, busily making her way to the lounge as if she’s as comfortable as she would be in her own house.
Mum hovers in the doorway, anxiously out of her depth.
‘Would you like a drink, One … I mean … Sue?’
‘No, thank you, dear. We should just get on. Ben will be waiting,’ Sue answers, as if Mum is holding up a game of rounders. I’m about to be caught out and Ben is waiting to bat.
While our hearts do loops in our chests, Sue talks to us in a tone that’s almost musical, and which is lighter than her meaning, cleverly disguising the horrific outcome of not doing exactly what she says.
‘Now that you’re ready to leave, Ben will be waiting for you. At the same time, you must look for the wisps that you described at the funeral … They will be people who have gone before and they will be coming to help you over. When they reach out for you, reach back, don’t be afraid. And don’t forget, dear, that you must let Ben back into his body as quickly as possible because his body cannot survive for long without its soul.’ I guiltily find myself entertaining the idea that I would rather spend eternity in limbo with Ben than without him, but Mum interrupts this temptingly unfair idea.
‘What are you saying?’ she asks. Her face is a stricken shade of puce.
‘It’s fine, Mum,’ I say convincingly, as if anything about this could be fine. ‘He’ll be right back, annoying the pants off both of you before you know it.’
Sue brings three chairs round to the sofa, and she sits on one, asking Mum and Dad to have the others, but me to lie on the sofa. She really isn’t wasting any time.
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