Flowers for the Dead (4 page)

Mrs Guest smiled amiably. Then silence. This was the way it always was around Adam’s mummy, he had noticed. She intimidated people. He thought perhaps it was because she was so pretty. Her glossy blonde hair was in a sharp, sleek bob that was long enough to fall below the chin, very blunt cut, with a fringe straight across too. It looked harsh but suited her, and went with the smart red lipstick she liked to wear: she loved strong colours and bold geometric shapes.

She adjusted her peacock blue top as the silence stretched on. “Your eldest is in the church choir, isn’t he? Good voices must run in your family,” she smiled, trying again.

Sara always remembered thoughtful details about people. She volunteered to take part in things too, from fundraising baking sessions to story reading at the school once a month. No matter what she did, though, Adam’s mother did not make friends. Mrs Guest was clearly not going to be the exception to the rule. 

Adam stayed quiet too. He sat on Sara’s lap, staring straight ahead like a marionette rather than a real live boy, only moving once the nativity play was over and the applause had faded.

“Come on,” said Sara, holding out her hand. The boy clung to it gladly, as if all his dreams had come true.

“Say goodbye,” she added. Adam smiled and opened his mouth. “Come on, speak up,” Sara encouraged.

Adam’s eyes grew large as he realised both his mother and Mrs Guest were staring at him, waiting. His mouth gaped.

“Bye,” he squeaked.

“Can you say it a little louder? We didn’t quite hear that,” his mum said.

He did. Eventually.

“Bye bye, Adam,” Mrs Guest smiled. She watched them for a moment as they disappeared outside and crossed the road. It was starting to rain, and she noticed Sara stop to pull her own hood up before seeing to her son.

CHAPTER FOUR

White Hyacinth

~ I’ll Pray For You ~

PRESENT DAY

Aunt Linda is standing on the doorstep, a big smile slapped on her face, holding aloft a bag of food fresh from the supermarket down the road.

“Ta-da! Brought you a present,” she says over-brightly, kissing her niece on the cheek then bustling past without waiting to be invited in.

Laura screws up her face in frustration but doesn’t say anything. She hates arguing with her mum’s sister, because she is so like her mum; same eyes, same voice, auburn hair only a shade darker. The mannerisms are particularly painful for Laura to see.

“So…what are you up to today? Any plans? Seeing your boyfriend?” asks her aunt, with her head now stuck in the fridge, putting the food away.

“No plans except watching telly. And I’ve split with Ryan.”

Her aunt’s head appears round the fridge door. “Well, that’s a shame. He seemed like a nice young man…”

“We had nothing in common.”

“Oh? He’d just qualified as a junior schoolteacher, hadn’t he? Wasn’t that enough to start with? Thought he might get you thinking along those lines again. You have to take time with people, get to know them… Let them in a bit, Laura. You mustn’t be afraid of letting someone love you.”

“Okay, okay! You have to stop!” Laura puts out a hand to illustrate. “Just…stop with the advice. With buying groceries. With tidying up. With trying to be my mum! I’m fine as I am.”

Aunt Linda seems to turn stiff and brittle at those words. “You’re fine?” she asks.

She closes the fridge door slowly and deliberately, then looks at Laura as if she has never seen her before.

“You’re fine?” she repeats incredulously. “Have you looked in the mirror recently, Laura? Have you bothered to take stock of your life? Four years ago you were a bright, bubbly girl who had a wonderful life ahead of her. You wrote all the time, too; when was the last time you wrote anything? You were training to be a nursery nurse, and you’d have been bloody good at it – you’re a natural with kids.

“But then… I know what happened was terrible. It doesn’t get much worse, and for you to witness it… But you should be glad to be alive.”

Oh, sod off!
Laura wants to scream.

“Coming so close to death has given me such a positive attitude towards life. Seize the day!” she mocks angrily. “And if I can’t live for myself I should be living for others; it’s my debt, because there but for the grace of God, eh?”

“Well, you should be making an effort.”

“Making the effort?” snarls Laura. She stands with her fists balled, body trembling, voice growing louder by the word.

“Are you stupid?! Every single one of us lives every second on a knife-edge. Any moment one tiny, seemingly innocuous thing could happen that brings our little story to an end. Bloodily. How the hell am I supposed to ‘make the effort’ knowing that?

“You might as well give up now, Aunt Linda, because we’re all doomed. All you can do is keep your head down and pray nothing happens to snuff you out in the next thirty seconds.”

She wants her words to make Aunt Linda reel. She wants to hurt her, to slap those rose-tinted glasses off her aunt’s face. Instead she looks at Laura like she is a silly little girl.

“You didn’t die that night but you might as well have done,” Aunt Linda says calmly. “You’ve given up on your studies, you’ve given up on your appearance, friends, life. Your parents would be ashamed of you if they could see you now.”

The words hit so hard that Laura gasps.

People have tended to tiptoe around her since That Night. It is one of the things that makes her furious, but she realises now that she has also been relying on it. Knowing that no one will tackle her for her bad behaviour because they don’t want to upset her further has been useful, and she has taken full advantage. To say that her parents would be ashamed of her…that’s below the belt. They wouldn’t be. Would they?

She looks at herself through other people’s eyes. Long, wild hair, no make up, lived-in clothes. Drifting through life without touching anyone or letting anyone touch her, unable to let people get close to her in case something scary happens to them. Shutting her emotions down in order not to deal with the anger and bitterness and guilt that makes her want to smash the world or herself. No, her parents would not be proud of any of that.

The knowledge makes her long legs go weak and she folds onto the kitchen floor. Looks up at her aunt, but can barely see through the tears that have gathered.

Aunt Linda sits down beside her, silent.

“I constantly wonder why I walked away without a scratch, when everyone else was killed. Why me? I don’t deserve to be here,” Laura admits quietly.

“But you are here. That’s the only fact that matters. You have to find a way of moving on from this.” A heavy sigh. “I know I’m not your mother, and never can replace her, but I do love you, and I am here for you.

“But you know what else? I can’t do this for you – only you can make the decision to live again rather than merely exist.”

The clock on the wall ticks off the silent seconds.

“Would Mum and Dad really be ashamed of me?” Laura finally asks in a small voice.

Another big, sad sigh. “If you carry on the way you are, yes. You know what your dad was like about wasted potential.” As a teacher it was something he saw a lot of and did his best to stop.

More silence, broken only by Laura sniffing. The older woman nudges her niece. “You always were a stubborn little thing. Remember how you always had to have the last word in an argument, even with your father. We’d hear you chuntering away to yourself up the stairs, having the last word. Why don’t you put that strength to good use: make up your mind to turn your life around. Please.”

“I’ll try. I will try.”

“Would you ever consider talking to a counsellor?”

Laura feels her face screwing up and quickly tries to smooth it again. “Umm, well, it’s an idea… It’s not very ‘me’ but…”

“No, you’re right. I knew it before I said it.” Her aunt nods crisply. “But I think you need to get this out of your system once and for all so that you can start putting it behind you. What about writing it down; keeping a diary?”

“Maybe?” Laura catches the expression on her aunt’s face. “No, I mean, yes, I’ll do it. I’ll try.”

The pair share a slightly damp hug, then pull apart.

“This lino is cold,” Aunt Linda announces. “Why don’t we go sit on the sofa instead? And I’ll make us a nice cup of tea first – if you don’t mind.”

Laura laughs shakily and agrees, wiping tears from her face. Her aunt bustles around the kitchen, and soon the pair are chatting about Uncle Kieran’s latest project. A DIY enthusiast, he has decided to build a boat. Both women agree they definitely won’t be going anywhere near it.

It is late by the time Aunt Linda gives Laura a bone-cracking hug goodbye. The pair have talked, laughed and cried together. It is the first time Laura has really communicated with anyone for years, and it is a strange mixture of vulnerability and pleasure she feels at having let her brittle guard down a little.

When she goes back into her lounge she notices something on her table. At some point her aunt had put out a notepad and pen without the younger woman noticing.
The sneaky…!

The eye-rolling is automatic, but Laura forces herself to pick them up and make herself comfortable. No time like the present, she decides, and starts to write, slowly at first, then with gathering speed as writing muscles she has not flexed for years loosen up.

The morning mist hung thick over the fields, dissipating the low, late autumn sun into a heavy haze of golds and oranges. It lurked in hollows and piled up against the gentle rolls of the land, obscuring the scenery to mere hints of occasional hedge or tree as I drove to work from the out-lying village of Layer into Colchester.

This section of lane was perfectly straight, and I drove along confidently despite the conditions, with my music turned up loud as I sang along. I glanced into my rear view mirror and quickly back again because the light was blinding behind me. Boy, was I glad I wasn’t travelling that way! The sun was still so low that it would have felt as if I was driving right into it in that direction, and the mist seemed to make it even more dazzling, creating a solid block of blinding light.

That’s when I saw the white van appear. It was travelling towards me in the opposite direction, going straight and true…and slightly over the centre. I tried to move over but there was little room on this narrow country lane. Closer it got, closer. It was going to hit me.

Heart racing, I beeped my horn, but it didn’t move over. The driver probably did not even realise he was on my side of the road because he could not see properly.

Everything happened at once. The white wall of van flying by. A bang, a shattering sound, glass raining over me. Gasping, I pulled over in time to see the van disappear into the mist.

I looked down at my hands and felt like they belonged to someone else as I watched blood blossoming from myriad pinprick injuries. Glittering shards of glass dusted my flesh, my coat, the steering wheel; they seemed to be everywhere. And more blood. There was a lot of blood for such tiny injuries.

Suddenly I noticed those hands I was gazing at were now shaking.

Breathing hard but brain on autopilot, I turned off the radio, leaving a scarlet smear on the button. Put the gear stick into neutral, and turned the engine off. Almost fell from the car. Only then did I burst into tears by the side of the road.

The van had smashed into my wing mirror hard enough to tear it off and send it shattering through the driver’s side window. Unbelievably, though, that was the only damage. No scrape down the side of the car, no serious injuries on my part. Only a broken wing mirror, broken side window, and a few little cuts to my hand.

I had called my dad, Seamus, in tears, and he had immediately called the police, then fetched me. Had sorted everything for me and got the car fixed within days. Typical Dad, he always looked after me.

“You were so lucky,” he kept telling me. “It could have been so much worse.”

I kept grumbling back that I didn’t feel very lucky.

No, she had not felt lucky at all at the time, Laura remembers. She lays her pen down, unable to see through the tears that are now coming faster than the memories. She wraps herself in a hug, wishing it were her father’s arms she could feel, wishing that she could go back in time and stop the tragedy hurtling towards her that far overshadowed this silly crash.

Neither she nor her father had had any idea at the time that this random accident would save Laura just weeks later. The difference between life and death had been a knife-edge of coincidence.

***

Loneliness eats at Adam’s core, a werewolf ripping him apart and gnawing on his bones. He can feel the teeth, hear the lips smacking. Red Riding Hood lost and needing to be saved.

No, no, he is the huntsman, strong and coming to the rescue.

Only he does not feel strong, he does not feel like he is coming to the rescue. Why can’t someone save him? Even with Julie crooning words of comfort inside him, as she has for the last six months, he cannot find respite.

He rubs his head. It hurts. Everything hurts. His face is wet with tears.

Huntsman. He needs to go hunting.

***

TWENTY-FIVE YEARS EARLIER

Adam was not much of a talker. At the tender age of six he had already learned there was little point because no one listened. Instead he would sit quietly, trying to keep as still as possible so that people didn’t notice him. The only movement would be his fingers picking at a scrape on his knee, elbow, knuckles…

His parents often despaired about how clumsy he was, telling him he should look where he was going then he would not fall over so much. Adam did not argue with them, he simply nodded and made himself even more still.

He was never tempted to tell the truth: that he hadn’t fallen over, that his mummy had got some sandpaper and scrubbed at his tender flesh with it. He deserved it for being a bad boy, and it never would have happened if he had been good. From drinking his orange juice fast enough, to keeping his room tidy, to not looking at his mummy in the right way, he was never good enough. Adam was bad to the bone.