Dead Lovely (18 page)

A group had assembled at Greensleaves for Guy Fawkes night, which was to double as an opening for the park. Netty, Isla, the resident’s association treasurer and her four children and several other families from Wilkinson Court stood around the bench in the park. Isla held a blanket over an object the size of a chair with a huge smile on her face.

At the other end of the park, a makeshift Guy stood tall, as yet unharmed by the rising flames of the bonfire beneath it.

Cartoon-shop Jim squatted to the left of the bonfire, waiting for the signal to light the fireworks – Mike’s arrival.

Netty had just checked her watch when the gun went off, and she jumped along with the rest of the crowd. They looked to Jim, assuming he had started
the fireworks early. He shook his head. There was a moment’s silence.

Everything stood still in Greensleaves:

Isla, holding the blanket over the object,
desperate
to undertake her important duty in the opening ceremony.

Netty, her speech ready.

The little black labrador, his tail wagging, eyes fixed to the front door of his master’s house, his tongue out.

Jim, all set to light the fireworks.

And everyone else, hands poised to clap.

They all looked up as the glass of Mike’s window shattered. And after the body landed with a thump they ran towards it. When they reached him they stood in a semi-circle and beheld a mouth that was
uncharacteristically
smirky, eyes that were uncharacteristically hateful, and legs that were uncharacteristically akimbo. In his hand, Mike clutched his silver camera.

Isla had screamed when she heard the body land. She had dropped the blanket, which she was
supposed
to remove under different circumstances, when Netty finished her glowing speech. Instead, she ran to the thud and the blanket twirled in the wind to reveal, to no-one, a glorious shiny black granite plaque, smack bang in the middle of Greensleaves, that read:
TETHERTON PARK.

The puppy, who Mike had never bothered to name, yelped with grief at the loss of his beloved.

And as the Guy at the top of the bonfire finally burst into flames behind them, the residents of Wilkinson Court watched the pup, wishing they could yelp too.

In South Ayrshire, a lonesome moonlit deckchair sat incongruously on a plot of land. A gust of wind caused it to wobble slightly and a second gust tipped it over.

I was not the hero of this story either. I did not save the day and I did not get there just in the nick of time.

In the police car, I shut my eyes and prayed – or was I begging? Let Robbie be okay. Let Robbie be okay. Let nothing have happened to him. Please.

When we arrived at Wilkinson Court, Mike had been dead for ten minutes. We parked beside a new park that was illuminated by a huge bonfire. Local kids were watching the goings on from the top of a wooden pirate ship.

Mike was lying on the street. I didn’t see his face.

I’m glad.

I ran past the gasping/nattering/tearful onlookers, and up to the small flat in the attic.

It was just a flat. Clean, bright. An everyday flat.

I opened the door to the bedroom. Robbie was
sleeping comfortably on the bed, not hot or in pain. He had a blanket over him and he looked content.

I kissed him on the cheek and passed him to Chas before looking around the room. Glass was shattered on the floor and the en suite door was shut. It gave me the shivers.

‘Sarah!’ I said. ‘Sarah!’

There was no noise.

I opened the door to the en suite and, when my eyes adjusted to the gloom, I could see the gun on the floor, and I could see that Sarah’s face was calm.

I sat down on the tiles with her, the thick blood coating us both, enveloping us in its red warmth, and I hugged her.

As I looked into her eyes I saw the golden girl Mum had written about – we were ‘the golden girls with blue umbrellas, laughing, dancing, in the rain’. I saw the girl in the garden, changing Tiny Tears with precision and purpose. I saw the girl at Central Station keeping watch for me, always keeping watch, and the girl saying ‘I do’ at the altar with a huge, beautiful grin.

And I saw the girl who was never properly loved by anyone, not even by me, in the end.

‘Is Robbie all right?’ she whispered into my ear.

‘He’s fine,’ I whispered back, holding her as tightly as I could while she slipped away.

A few weeks after we moved into Mum and Dad’s, I dreamt that a huge pot of sauce was simmering away on a cosy little cooker in an everyday kitchen.

As I moved closer to the bolognese, I could see a man’s back. He was stirring the pot, gently
stirring
away, dispersing that wonderful smell through the room. A feeling came over me as I walked towards the stirrer and hugged him. I didn’t
recognise
it, had never felt it before. And it took me ages to identify it. It was peace, swimming over me. I felt peace.

It was Chas, stirring the sauce, and the feeling that swept through me was so strong and so new that it woke me up.

He woke too, and held me as I soaked in the bolognese feeling that would be mine now forever.

A therapist helped me with an action plan. There were big things and little things, and it was the little things I found the hardest.

Watching Robbie cuddle Tiny Tears.

Posting a letter to Kyle’s parents. That was hard.

Visiting Sarah’s grave; that, too.

And getting rid of the jewellery box. I threw it out the same day Robbie stood up by himself for a full ten seconds by holding onto the coffee table with his four new teeth. Chas spotted me at the wheelie bin as he walked home from the corner shop with two litres of semi-skimmed milk and four croissants.

Now I’m sitting here in the darkness of Mum’s ‘creative room’ trying to put Robbie to sleep and he’s not complying. I put my face in my hands with exasperation and when I lift up my head I see that Robbie has grabbed my fingers and is holding onto them tightly. At the same time, he is looking me in the eye and laughing. Without even thinking about it, I grab his hand, look him straight in the eye, and laugh right back.

Helen FitzGerald is one of thirteen children and grew up in Victoria, Australia. She now lives in Glasgow with her husband and two children. Helen has worked as a parole officer and social worker for over ten years. Her first novel,
Dead Lovely
, was published in 2007 and
My
Last Confession
was published in 2009.