Dead Girl Walking (3 page)

‘Cassie? Are you in?’

I hold my breath.

‘Cassie, it’s Gail – your gran’s carer. She’s worried you haven’t called…’ A pause. ‘I know you’re in…’ another pause. ‘Look, I don’t want to interfere, I just want to be able to tell your gran you’re ok. And if you need a bit of company… well, I may not be who you want, but you have my number. Call me, even if I’m not on shift…’

I clutch the box, my heart thudding madly. Gail: soft around the edges, caring, sympathetic, warm. The sort of person everyone turns to when they’re down. The sort of woman who makes people feel loved. Part of me wants to yank open the door and fall, sobbing, into her arms. But there’s that maggot of guilt, eating away at me. Nobody should care about me.

Eventually, the letterbox clatters shut. Before I know it, I’ve dumped the cornflake box and run to the door.

She turns at the gate. She looks almost surprised to see me. But maybe this is part of the rehabilitation I have promised myself. Maybe this is the first second of that first minute of the brand new day. One day at a time, Gran says. How about I start with one conversation at a time?

‘You want to come in?’ I ask, feeling awkward and weird making the offer.

Her smile is warm and genuine. It’s kind of infectious and I smile too. Smiling is not a thing I do often these days, and it’s a genuine novelty but it feels nice.

‘I’d love to,’ she says. ‘I won’t stay long,’ she adds as she makes her way back up the short path and follows me inside. ‘Unless you want me to, of course.’

I wonder how Gail makes it so easy. She always knows the right thing to say without being awkward or sounding like she’s forcing it. When she tells me she wants to stay if I want her to, I believe her. Not like when other people say it. People used to visit all the time, in the aftermath of the accident and my – well, I don’t know what to call it really… reawakening sounds like a good word, I guess. But those people, I knew they didn’t want to be there. They’d glance at the clock constantly, talk about shit that didn’t mean anything – their eyes said they wanted to be anywhere but with me. Even my closest friends were like that, all those years of friendship and fond memories wiped out by a single catastrophic event. I didn’t just lose my family that day, I lost everyone, including the girl I used to be. Not Gail though. I always know where I am with Gail and she genuinely doesn’t seem afraid of me. She doesn’t call as often as she did right after the accident, but perhaps I’ve made everyone believe I don’t need anyone to call on me.

‘I haven’t got any milk, I’m afraid.’

Gail tuts in a motherly sort of way and then laughs lightly. ‘See, I was right to call. It looks as though I need to get one of our helpers in here to do your shopping as well as for all the old ladies in the neighbourhood.’

‘I wouldn’t go that far. I just need to get off my backside and go out for some. I was going to when you knocked.’

She raises her eyebrows. ‘No you weren’t.’

‘How do you know?’ I gesture for her to take a seat at the kitchen table.

‘Because I was nineteen once…’ her eyes flick to the worktop as she sits down. ‘That and the fact you’re obviously eating cornflakes without any.’

I can’t help but smile again. ‘There’s no fooling you, is there?’

‘Not when you’ve cared for as many people as I have over the years. I’ve seen it all, heard every excuse.’

‘Did you always want to look after people?’ I sit down across from her.

She laughs. ‘That’s a bit out of the blue. What makes you ask?’

I shrug. ‘I don’t know. I mean, did you always feel a sense of purpose, like there was one single thing you were meant to do with your life… like caring for people?’

‘I never really thought about it much.’ She pushes a stray lock of her blonde bob behind an ear. ‘I sort of fell into it, I suppose. But once I realised I liked helping people and I was good at it, I didn’t want to do anything else. Twenty years of doing it has gone by in the blink of an eye, and I’ve seen a lot of nice people come and go.’ She smiles and looks into the distance as if she’s running her gaze along a line up of familiar faces. ‘Some of them not so nice too. But I was happy to help them all. It’s not a career for everyone,’ she adds, looking at me meaningfully. ‘It’s tough and sometimes not very rewarding. Nothing tests the patience quite like being slapped around the head with a slipper by a ninety-year-old lady.’

I laugh and it’s genuine. The sound is odd in the air of my lonely house, but it’s nice too. ‘I know. I wasn’t thinking about it, if that’s what you mean. I suppose it must be nice, that’s all, knowing what you’re on the Earth for.’

‘You could start with your gran if you want to show a bit of compassion,’ she says pointedly.

‘She doesn’t need compassion, she needs a gag,’ I reply darkly and she laughs.

‘She is one on her own, God love her. She’s always been one of my favourites, though. And she is only mouthy because she loves you and worries about you. You can’t blame her for that.’

‘I’m big enough to look after myself now.’

‘You’re never too big for a granny to stop caring about you. Especially after all that happened last year with the car crash.’ Gail says this sentence simply, no muttering or code, no sign language or weirdness. Her ease and frankness is something I never fail to find refreshing. ‘She did get quite upset too when she saw the news report earlier today about that girl who was murdered. I think it probably chimed with her because the girl was the same age as you.’

‘What girl?’ I ask, more out of courtesy than because I’m all that interested.

‘Haven’t you seen the news? Another murder…’ Gail says this like we live in some utopia where violence never happens. The fact is we live in a town like any other in twenty-first century Britain. You only have to pick up the local paper on any day to see a photo of someone with a mashed face staring back at you.

‘I haven’t.’

‘Well, you ought to be careful. And you should be keeping in touch with your gran.’

‘Murders are usually committed by someone the victim knows. I expect it was someone she’d dumped by text or something equally unflattering.’

‘I don’t know…’ Gail replies airily. ‘The police don’t seem to be thinking along those lines at all.’

‘Well, I don’t go wandering up and down dodgy alleyways and waste ground when it’s dark, so I hardly think Gran needs to worry that I’ll be next on our local serial killer’s hit list.’ I say.

‘Probably not,’ she agrees, ‘but she’s allowed to worry about you. Perhaps she wouldn’t worry quite so much if she could see for herself you’re ok from time to time. For all she knows I could be reporting back to her that everything is ok when I really have you tied to a rocking chair in my attic.’

I pull at a piece of loose cotton on the sleeve of my sweatshirt. ‘I know. I keep meaning to visit but I’ve just had some stuff to do.’

I look up to see that she is wearing a disbelieving frown.

‘Ok,’ I admit. ‘I haven’t felt up to talking much lately.’

‘As you’re talking to me now, I can tell her that you’re feeling better and you’re going to pop over soon?’

‘Yes, I suppose I should,’ I sigh, ‘her wrath will only be worse the longer I leave it.’

Gail grins. ‘In that case, rather you than me, girl.’

Helen watches as I enter the room with a faint look of disbelief.

‘You didn’t think I’d come back,’ I say as I shrug off my coat.

‘I didn’t,’ she replies. ‘But I’m glad to be wrong.’

I sit down in the armchair opposite her. ‘I had nothing better to do.’

She nods and opens her notebook. ‘How did you manage the journey here?’

It was one of the days when it takes every ounce of strength I possess to force myself through my front door. But I don’t tell her that. ‘I walked it.’

‘It’s a long walk.’

‘I like walking.’

‘Ok. How’s your week been?’

I shrug. ‘The same.’

‘The same meaning bad?’

‘Lonely,’ I say. I don’t even know why that word comes out; it just does, like I have no control over it.

‘Would it help to have company?’

I shake my head. ‘I don’t know if it would. Even when I have company I feel lonely… inside… you know?’

She nods.

‘Company doesn’t change anything,’ I add, as if it really needs saying again. The grief is like a cancer inside me that I can’t cut out no matter what I do.

She doesn’t reply straight away and her expression is so serene it borders on absolute detachment. ‘How about I make us a drink? Tea, coffee?’

Now that she says it I realise that my mouth is dry. ‘Tea would be good. No sugar.’

At the corner of the room there’s a Formica-topped table with a kettle and a tiny table-top fridge. She goes over and flicks the kettle on, then reaches into a cupboard for a couple of mugs. She doesn’t speak and as the silence becomes unbearable I wonder whether this is part of the therapy.

Eventually, she returns with two steaming mugs and offers me one. The contents are dark and stewed with not enough milk but it’s hot and the mug warms my tingling hands.

She puts hers down on a table nearby and looks at me, waiting. I sip my drink and look out of the window.

‘You have a grandmother,’ she says finally, glancing at her notes.

I nod.

‘Could you move in with her?’

‘She’s in a home.’

‘And there’s no one else?’

‘Nobody I’m all that bothered about.’

She pauses. ‘Tell me what your typical day consists of.’

‘Nothing.’

‘You must do something. You’re here today. Tell me what you did before you got here.’

‘I woke up -’

‘What time?’

‘Dunno. Maybe about nine. Sat in the living room for a bit. Had something to eat. Sat around a bit more. Walked here.’

‘Have you seen any of your friends since the accident?’

‘I freak them out.’

‘Have they been in touch?’

‘There were loads of phone calls in the beginning.’ I think about the calls I get now. Only one person, and his calls aren’t welcome.

‘Have they stopped ringing because you wouldn’t answer them?’

‘Probably.’

‘Why?’

‘I don’t know. I suppose because I’m screwed up. I feel…’ I frown, reaching for the right words. ‘I feel kind of explosive. And it was worse in the beginning when everyone tried to be nice to me. When my friends were with me I think I scared them, because I could blow at any time and they wouldn’t know how to deal with the fallout. Does that make sense?’

Helen makes a few hasty notes on her pad. ‘Could you elaborate on that? Were you angry… violent?’

‘No… just monumentally screwed up, an emotional bomb. People had no idea what to say to me because what I had been through was so far from their own frame of reference that if I went off they didn’t know how to deflect the blast. And then the
visits just sort of tailed off. I don’t blame them. It must have been torture sitting with me when I was like that.’

‘Do you miss them?’

‘A little. I suppose I miss the normality of those relationships before everything changed. It’s just another reminder of everything I’ve lost.’

‘The fact that you are here at all tells me you want to do something to fix things, though. If you think about it that way, it must be some comfort.’

‘I don’t deserve comfort.’

‘Is that really what you think?’

‘Aren’t you supposed to tell me the answer to that?’ I put my cup down on the floor next to my chair.

Helen smiles slightly. ‘No. I’m here to facilitate your working it out for yourself. Do you think it’s your fault that only you survived?’

I shrug. ‘It was survival, but not in the normal sense of the word. I didn’t survive, so much as come back. I suppose that makes me some sort of zombie.’

‘But why do you think it was you? Why not your sister?’

The way she says it makes me wince. Why me? Why not Tish? Am I being rewarded? Or punished?

‘I don’t know why it was me. Some act of random chance? It must be, because if there had been any design in it Tish would have been a better and more worthy survivor than me.’

‘What makes you say that?’

I shrug. It’s all I can do. I have no reply that she’d make any sense of. Hell, half the time I don’t make sense to me.

‘Would it help to talk about the actual accident?’

I close my eyes. It’s the same every time – the crash through the eyes of those who didn’t survive it. Touching Tish in the mortuary was an accident. But then it was like I couldn’t stop myself from searching for Mum and Dad and touching them too. Every time like an electric shock ripping through me and then came the images, the sensations, the fear. I see flashes of red as the car screeches into ours, the car rolling over and over – the world beyond the windscreen spinning, glass showering over me in brittle chunks – I hear myself screaming through Tish’s ears, the final impact as the car halts in the ditch, the coldness invading me, the feeling of the blood
leaving my veins, the final breath departing. Even after death I can still hear faint echoes of the world as I withdraw into the abyss.

My palms are sweating and my fingers aching where I grip the chair. I have no idea how long I’ve been missing from reality. I look up at Helen and she’s staring at me with this really intense look.

‘No. It wouldn’t help,’ I say in response to a question that feels like it was asked years ago.

She looks troubled. ‘Would you like some water?’

I shake my head. ‘I have my tea.’

‘Flashback?’ she asks with a shrewd look.

‘Yeah. I get them.’

Her attention goes to her notes for a moment. ‘There’s a lot going on here. Maybe you want to see someone more qualified than me?’

‘Maybe I want sectioning?’ I reply, the bitterness dripping from every syllable. ‘Or just experimenting on? I’m sure I’d be able to tell medical science something if they were allowed to dissect me.’

‘I’ll refer you on –’

‘No!’ I say quickly. ‘No, I want to come here.’

‘Then we need to get past this barrier you’re putting up. Until you lower it I can’t help you.’

‘I know. It’s hard to talk about.’