The Last Winter of Dani Lancing: A Novel (6 page)

She pulls out into the street once more, and immediately feels the car slipping as the wheels slur away from her.

“Steer into the spin, not away.” She remembers that from some TV show or something. “I am an excellent driver, dammit,” she says through gritted teeth.

She gains some control and pulls away again, creeping forward at about two miles an hour. “I have planned this meticulously. I have driven this route; I know it like the back of my hand,” her voice is level but intense. “I have change for the parking meter in a Ziploc bag and I have his blood. I am not letting this fucking weather stop me.”

She winds slowly through the streets. Everywhere there are cars skidded, crashed and abandoned. Some have run into other cars, some into brick walls. She thinks once or twice that she sees heads slumped against windows as drivers sleep in their cars. There will be many, many war stories for people to tell their loved ones when day breaks. In the distance sirens and car alarms wail like babies. Instead of forty minutes it takes two hours to drive the distance to the lab. While she drives the snow falls around her.

She remembers the first time her parents took her into Central London—maybe she was six—to see the Christmas lights shining all the way down Oxford Street. Someone famous turned them on, a singer. She can’t remember his name all these years later, but she does recall how magical it all was.

“I declare these lights …” Flick—from nothing to great beauty, all in a split second. After that, her parents took her for dinner somewhere swanky, or at least to her it felt like a palace. They ordered her spaghetti—it was the first time she’d ever had pasta and it seemed so exotic. Then the biggest treat—the London Palladium to see
Peter Pan
. When the pirates were on she remembers squirming in her mother’s arms and watching through her fingers, ready to close them tight when it all got too scary. But more than anything she remembers Tinker Bell. She can still feel the tears of her six-year-old self as they run down her cheeks when the fairy drinks poison.

“Save her, Peter!” six-year-old Patricia screams, along with about two thousand other girls.

“We can all save her,” Peter Pan shouts, “if you believe in fairies.”

“I believe, I believe!” Patricia screams, everyone screams and the air is full of fairies, dancing, flying … just like the snowflakes.

Patty brakes, softly at first until she feels the wheels skid and glide. Then she pumps her foot hard. The wheels bite, the car slows and slides until the curb stops it with a little jerk. She looks at her watch. It’s 7:38 a.m. She’s parked directly opposite the main entrance to the testing labs. On previous trips at this time, even before the doors were opened, there were lights on inside, preparation for the day ahead. Now, however, inside it’s black—no glimmer of light.
Snow still falls, a fresh blanket to cover the ground. She doubts the Tube will run, maybe some buses. But will any of the lab staff make it to work?

“I need to breathe,” she thinks and slips out of the car into the icy air. On one of her reconnaissance trips she had gone to an all-night cafe for a mug of tea. It was very close by, so she turns to head for it. As she walks away from the car she feels a slight tug—his blood seems to call her.

Saturday, December 18, 2010

Jim stands by the phone, which sits on the arm of a chair in the living room. He looks at his watch. Almost 9 a.m. He was brought up never to phone anyone before 9 a.m. or after 8 p.m.—that was just how it was.

“What about a movie?” Dani calls from another room.

Jim looks out through the windows as the snow still swirls in the gray light—banked up against the garden fence and the door.

“I can’t see any cinemas being open today. Maybe tonight,” he calls back.

“What about a soup kitchen?”

“To help the homeless?”

“No, I thought you might need some soup, old man,” she says with a smile as she walks in. “I know how hard those dang-fangled ring pulls are to open.”

“You cheeky—”

The phone rings. Jim grabs at it.

“Patty?” He turns his back on Dani.

There is only the sound of someone breathing.

“Patty?” Jim’s desperation oozes into his voice. “Patty?”

“No. No, it isn’t Patty, Jim. It’s Tom. Tom Bevans.”

“Tom?”

“Tom,” Dani echoes his name, though Jim cannot hear her anymore.

“Long time, Jim.” His voice seems to come from far away.

“Has something happened to Patty?”

“Dad.” Dani tries to get his attention, but her voice is suddenly so small. She feels giddy—unreal, like she weighs nothing, is nothing. She starts to feel a little scared.

“No, no, that isn’t why I’m calling.”

“Then why? I don’t underst—”

“We need to talk about Dani. About what happened.”

“I—” Jim’s head pounds.

“Did Patty tell you I saw her?” Tom asks.

“You’ve seen Patty, when?”

“She told me she’d tell you.”

“Tell me what?”

Tom pauses, annoyed—unsure how to proceed. “Dani’s case is being looked at again, potential new evidence but—”

“What are you talking about?”

“That can wait, something else has happened and I need to see y—”

“Dad.” Her voice is so tiny, but Jim hears the fear in it. He turns.

“Oh my God.” He drops the phone.

“Help me, Dad,” she pleads.

His twenty-one-year-old daughter looks as if she has aged a thousand years in seconds.

“I need a hug.” She stretches out her arms.

“You know I can’t.”

“I need you to hold me, Dad.”

“I want to but—”

“I’m begging, Dad.”

“Dani.”

She moves to him, but he pulls away.

“Dad,” she says, with such hurt, and turns her back on him.

“Jim … Jim …” the phone is calling from the floor. Tom desperate to know what has happened. Jim puts the phone back on its cradle and then pulls the little clip out of the socket so the phone is dead. He looks for his daughter—she is gone.

“Dani?”

No reply.

He finds her standing in the garden, her head down. He walks out to join her, bracing himself against the intensity of the wind.

“Come back inside, darling.”

She looks up at him. Her face pale and beautiful again.

“I need someone to hold me—to feel something.” She lifts her arms for snowflakes to fall on them; she longs to feel the bite of cold as the crystals strike and melt.

“I want to feel life again.”

“I’m sorry” is all a father can say to his daughter.

The snowflakes drift through her to strike the ground. They cannot touch her.

“Dani—”

“What is wrong with me, Dad?”

“Nothing, Dani. There’s nothing wrong with you,” he tells his dead daughter.

She looks at the ground, sees his footprints alone in the snow.

Tuesday, February 14, 1989

Jim hears them enter the street and walks outside to meet them. He watches the horse-drawn carriage arrive. Black and sleek, the horses shake their heads and flick their tails. The youngest of the funeral directors has a pocket of carrots and Polo mints to keep them in line.

“Say goodbye in style,” the funeral arranger had said, as if there was something to celebrate. So Jim had booked horses. As a girl Dani had loved them; they’d gone to Devon when she was six and she’d ridden a big brown carthorse. She squealed with delight the whole time. So why not get horses? Because he hadn’t thought about the size of them, the smell of them, the rank deposit one of them would make outside the house while they wait. There is no “style” in saying goodbye to Dani.

The funeral director’s mouth moves, but Jim hears nothing. He feels sick, but there’s nothing in there to come out. For the last few days, all he’s taken into his body has been a little water, a few cups of tea and a bottle and a half of cheap Scotch. At six that morning it was just dry heaves.

His back hurts. He spent last night in Dani’s bed. He’d never realized how soft the mattress was. It had seemed a good idea that evening, even though Jacks had warned him. He thought it would be time to say goodbye. Instead he had lain awake all night, hearing her voice, sensing her every time sleep seemed about to claim him. He misses her. He misses his daughter so very much.

The funeral director repeats his words. “It’s time, Mr. Lancing,” he says, waving his plump hands.

Jim goes back into the house. Patricia’s still on the sofa, slumped even further against Tom. She’s so heavily sedated she doesn’t know up from down. Maybe that made it a little easier now, but what would they pay for all this in the end?

In the kitchen Jacks and Ed, their oldest friends, finish the washing up. They’d been there last night. Jacks had slept next to Patty and Ed was on the couch. Thank Christ for friends.

For a second, just for a second, he wishes his mum was there, that she could hold his head in her arms and coo to him like she did when he was a boy. But there’s no one to coo. She’s dead and gone as well. His life has always been about women, his women: Dani, Patty, his mum and long ago his gran—Nanny Lily. He’d always been a mother’s boy; Patty had often taunted him with that but … he liked it. And she did too, really. Patty wasn’t interested in machismo. But as much as he misses his mum, he knows that she’s lucky to be gone. His mum had been mad about Dani and she had adored her gran. If he believed … but he didn’t. He could fantasize about his daughter being greeted into paradise by his mum but that was all it was, fantasy.