Chosen (4 page)

N
o one else in the crematorium. Dodie and Rod sit halfway back with Jake between them.

‘Are we a full complement?' the official asks.

Jake begins ‘The Wheels on the Bus' and the official raises his eyebrows, clearly expecting Dodie to hush him up but why should she? Who cares? The cheaply varnished coffin gleams, the tape of organ music crackles. The coffin looks too small and Dodie gets a vision of the legs, the poor, stiff toes, and she forces her mind away and onto Jake who fidgets and kicks his little trainers against the back of the chair in front. At last, the facile words are spoken, the Dralon curtains open and the coffin glides away.

‘S'gone,' Jake says, pointing, and Dodie starts to laugh. She fights it at first, but it defeats her, the giggle building beneath her breastbone and growing into a yelp, a belly laugh, doubling her over, charging through her and up and out in awful blurts and gasps that turn to sobs and spurting tears. Part of her hovers above, detached and fascinated:
Hysterical
, she thinks, rather impressed;
I am literally hysterical
.

‘OK. OK.' Rod puts his arm around her. ‘It's all OK.' Dodie looks up. The Dralon has fallen back into its respectful folds. She looks down at her hands, the fingernails painted black this morning in honour of the occasion. Jake is staring at her, eyes round, one finger in his mouth, riveted.
The official comes forward with a box of tissues tastefully covered in Dralon. Everything makes her laugh now. Dralon will mean death for evermore.

It's time to leave. People are fidgeting about outside.
Next please
, Dodie thinks, and bleats again, hiding her ugly grin inside the tissues.

‘Better out than in,' the official reassures Rod as he ushers them into the sunshine.

There's a park near the crematorium with swings and ducks and they stop the car. It's freakishly mild for late November. Their black clothes seem all wrong amid the rusty tumble of the leaves. Dodie takes the pins from her hair and lets it fall, warm and friendly, to her shoulders.

They buy sandwiches and drinks from a kiosk, find a bench by the pond to sit and picnic among the greedy ducks. There are coots and moorhens as well as mallards and some pretty chestnut-coloured ducks with painted eyes.

‘Dut, dut!' Jake shouts.

‘What does a duck say?' Rod asks him.

‘Quat, quat, quat.'

‘Sorry about that,' Dodie says, calm now but bruised under her ribs by the exertion of emotion.

‘Better out than in,' Rod says, and she laughs again and that makes Jake laugh. ‘Quat! Quat!' he clowns, thinking he's the joke.

Dodie peels open her sandwich and takes a bite – chilly, tasteless, egg mayonnaise. She breaks a bit off for Jake to ram into his mouth.

‘It's kind of worse' – Dodie watches a pigeon pecking at something on the edge of the pond – ‘that there was no, you know,
love.
' Something shadowy happens to her heart when she says this but it's the truth, and truth is what you're supposed to tell, isn't it? Tell the truth and shame the devil. ‘I mean, if I'd loved her and she'd loved me at least . . . well, at least it would be a proper sort of mourning. A
normal
sort of mourning. Instead of . . . instead of . . . well, relief, I guess, but still it does hurt.' She screws her fist against her heart. ‘It really,
really
hurts.'

‘I think she
did
love you.'

Dodie gulps and shuts her eyes, picturing Stella's white hand reaching through the rain.

‘People have funny ways . . . And you
did
love her,' Rod says. ‘I know you did.'

‘Did I?' Fallen leaves stick on the glossy surface of the pond as if enamelled there.
‘Fuck!
' she says, suddenly.

‘What?'

‘Sorry, but I left the gas fire on. We'll have to go back.'

‘Fut!' says Jake.

‘At Stella's. I left the gas fire on!'

Rod pulls a face, looks at his watch, his eyes flickering away somewhere.

‘Unless you've got plans?' Dodie says, an edge coming into her voice. ‘Oh, I'm sorry if we're keeping you.'

‘No sweat.' Rod pushes the buggy back towards the car. Dodie throws the rest of her sandwich to the ducks, watches the frenzied pecking, the floating flecks of greasy chopped-up egg white. Should you give eggs to birds? Isn't it like cannibalism?

‘Anyway, where were you going?' Dodie asks, catching him up.

‘To get my visa sorted,' he says. They walk in silence. The subject of his trip hasn't been raised since that night. A lad, thumbs hooked in the belt loops of his baggy trousers, zigzags his skateboard between them.

Rod unlocks the car. ‘I can look in the shed,' he says, to change the subject. He's always longed to get in there, see if there are any tools.

‘They'll be rusty.' Dodie struggles to force a wriggling Jake into his seat. ‘Not been used since' – she gets the strap done up and climbs into the front seat – ‘well, since Dad was there, I guess.'

Dad
. It seems so odd to say it; it makes her lurch inside. She does up her own seat belt. Clunk click.

‘I'm an orphan,' she says. ‘Do you realize that?'

‘Everyone is eventually,' Rod points out, ‘and
that's
if everything goes to plan.'

‘Cheerful. Anyway, it's all right for you, you've still got a mum. You ought to go and see her.
We
should. Even if . . . well, she's still Jake's granny.'

‘Can you move your bag?' he says. She shifts it away from the gear stick and he starts the car.

‘What a horrible word,' she says, gnawing at her nail, scratch ing through the black varnish. She picks a flake off her lip and flicks it away. ‘
Or
phan. Like
aw
ful, div
or
ce, ab
or
tion.'

‘Shut up.' Rod grimaces as he noses out of the car park and into the flow of traffic.

Torture
, she thinks. She flips down the sun-visor and peers at herself in the mirror.
Corpse
. She's tear-smudged and flushed, hair all over the place. She runs her fingers through the dark tangles. ‘Think I should get it cut?'

‘No.'

‘Let's go to Inverness – we could maybe get a cheap flight. Jake should get to know his only granny.'

Rod makes a vague noise in his throat and changes gear. Dodie looks out at the sunny streetful of windows, gardens. A trampoline taking up the whole of someone's front lawn. A dog trotting purposefully along.

‘I wish Seth . . .' Her voice hollows out. ‘I wish he was
here
.' Rod puts his hand out and squeezes her knee. ‘If I could even get him on the phone. Fancy him not knowing about Mum.'

The sun is smeary through the dirty windscreen and she shuts her eyes.
Seth
. She longs for him in odd places, the spaces between her ribs and shoulder blades, the small of her back, are these where love is located? For years Seth was the love of her life – the focus. If it weren't for him, she sometimes wondered, where would she have learned to love? Where would he, if not for her? Precious little came from Stella, precious little of anything at all.

The first Dodie knew of Seth was more than sixteen years ago when she'd heard Stella vomiting. She'd crept to the bathroom door and called, ‘Are you OK?' but there was no answer and the bathroom door stayed locked. A few months later she'd noticed, as Stella turned away from the sink, a
new bulk round her middle. Nothing was ever said. And then one day when she returned from school, Aunt Regina and Kathy were there. It was a sunny afternoon and there were roses on the draining board and the incongruously friendly smell of baking cake.

‘You've got a little brother!' Aunt Regina said. She was a frail old lady by then, about half the size of the big square Kathy, who never said much, but lurked threateningly in doorways.

‘Can I see him?' Dodie asked, after she'd hugged Aunt Regina and been praised for having grown.

‘Course you can.'

They'd gone upstairs where Stella lay back against her pillows, her face strained and sweaty-looking.

‘Don't disturb him,' she said.

Dodie leaned over the tiny tucked-up shape in the Moses basket. His head was fluffed with black and he had the most perfect little nose, very definite, and eyebrows like tiny rows of feather-stitching. As soon as she saw him she adored him. She wasn't like that even with Jake – some of Stella's darkness had got into her by then. But with Seth there was no complication; she'd been simply, immediately, swept away with love.

‘Can I hold him?' she said.

‘He
is
stirring,' Aunt Regina said. Stella shrugged and turned her face to the wall while Dodie picked him up and held him to her chest, breathing in the yeasty, newborn smell. And after that, she gave him all the love he needed. He would reach for Dodie before Stella and, rather than minding, this seemed to give Stella a grim sort of satisfaction. Though it made her too tired to work properly at school, Dodie would be the one to get up and change the nappies, give him his bottle; and even after she was sixteen and had left home, she'd made sure to take Seth out every weekend, to give him treats and fun.

Once, when Seth was about two, there'd been a rare flicker from Stella, a moment approaching closeness. Seth had said something sweet and funny and Stella had smiled
and met her eyes. They'd been sipping tea on the back doorstep while Seth played with a toy tractor. It was almost companionable, almost normal, and Dodie had dared to ask Stella who Seth's father was, and instead of telling her to mind her own business, Stella muttered: ‘No one you know. Besides he's dead.'

Dodie was almost afraid to breathe. It was like spotting a rare shy creature in a wood. Stella flicked her a glance, scared-looking – with those strange pale eyes. She'd wrapped her hair so tightly round her fingertip it had gone dark with trapped blood.

‘How?' Dodie had whispered.

‘Car crash.'

‘When?'

Stella's face dragged down then, the thin lips bending like an iron bar, a fierce brightness skinning over her eyes. ‘What's the use of raking it all up?' she'd said, and got up and gone inside. That was the closest they'd ever got to intimacy; the only time Stella came close to opening up to her. Dodie had almost been able to smell her grief for this mystery man – maybe American? – who must have snuck in during the night. Did he die immediately or did he live to see Seth? Had he ever visited? Sent money? Maybe he'd been married? Maybe, maybe, maybe.

A wave of pity for Stella threatens to swamp her:
two
men killed in accidents – no wonder she was so screwed up.

She opens her eyes as they round the corner into Lexicon Avenue, past the letterbox, past the laburnum. She blows her nose, looks round at Jake – fast asleep. Rod can switch off the fire, no need for her to go in there again. Not today. Enough today.

A huge glass of wine, soon as she gets home. And once Jake's in bed she will get systematically off her face. It you can't get legless the day your mother goes up in smoke . . .

‘Hey!' Rod stops the car and switches off the engine. An estate agent's sign has appeared in the front garden. Bannerman's.
FOR SALE
.

‘What?' she says. They sit dumbly, staring at the sign. ‘It wasn't here this morning,' she says. ‘We couldn't have missed it, could we?' She gets out of the car. Someone has chopped off some privet to make it possible to display the sign. The smell of severed twigs is bitter in the sunshine.

‘Must be a mistake,' Rod says. ‘Some wanker's put it in the wrong garden. I'll ring them.' He gets out his phone.

‘I'll turn the fire off,' she says. She puts the key in the lock – but it won't work. She tries again. It
won't
. She holds the key up and squints at it. Definitely the right one. She frowns at the door. There are new scratches in the paint. She tries again.

‘The lock's been changed,' she calls, but Rod is standing with his back to her beside the car, talking into his phone. She goes round the back, avoiding the pebbledash. The back-door lock has been changed too. She looks through the window. Someone else has been in and turned the fire off. She folds down onto the back doorstep. Someone's been here since this morning and done this. The sun is hot. The jungly garden is prowled by feral cats; a pair of yellow eyes glare out between the stalks of a rampant bamboo.

Rod comes and stands looking down at her, scratching his head.

‘There's no mistake,' he says. ‘Someone's put it up for sale.'

‘Who?'

‘The lassie didn't know.' He sits down beside her and rolls himself a cigarette. He breathes in and then out on a plume of smoke. ‘Said you need to speak to the lawyer. Mr Riddle.'

‘But I don't know –'

‘She gave me the number, you have to ring.'

‘Better go, Jake might wake up,' she says, but they continue to sit there. She can see three cats now: young, ginger-striped, a half-grown litter.

‘When are you leaving?' She looks at her black knees. A spot of grease fallen from her sandwich, the usual smudges from Jake's fingers.

‘Flight's Monday,' he says. There's a long silence into which a magpie interjects its rattle. ‘Do you want me to change it?'

I want you not to go
.

‘I mean, will you be OK?' he says. He, too, is looking at his knees. He sucks at his cigarette and a slant of sunshine reveals the smoke as hazy yellow, carcinogenic.

‘I'll have to be, won't I?'

‘S'pose I
could
try the airline,' he says, grudgingly, ‘see if I can put if off a couple
more
weeks, but it'll cost.' He stands up and grinds out his cigarette. ‘Right,' he says, ‘we'll go to Bannerman's now and get this sorted.'