‘And what is that supposed to mean?’
‘You know very well.’
We stood around in a pack and watched Aunt Charlotte and Mirabelle.
‘If you are referring—’
‘You know exactly what I’m referring to. Your insistence on being my sister’s personal limpet. On drowning her with your constant presence. If George were here today . . .’
A sharp tension seemed to vibrate in my ears with a thin, shrill note as if the room was suddenly filled with static. His name fell like darkness. Even the Angels, busy cleaning, seemed to understand the unspeakable that had been spoken and stopped. George. His name always seemed so alien to me. He was Dad — never George. His name seemed to jar whenever I saw it written down on documents or heard it spoken by officials, which there seems to be a storm of when your father is dead. There is never really room on the form to explain — Name of Mother — Pandora; Name of Father — I always hesitated, unsure whether to put George (dead) or nothing as if he didn’t exist anymore. Speaking or writing his name made him a different person. It was as if he were a complete stranger with a whole other life I never knew. I suppose that is the same for many fathers and their small girls. We can’t know the adult life they lead and still hold them in such complete perfection. Once the light goes out on their saintliness, they become human, real and imperfect. The man called George was imperfect in a way that Dad never was.
I closed my eyes and heard the rook’s brittle laughter again. My dad’s voice was there, as always. ‘I can’t see her . . .’
I swayed and fell back into the chair.
‘Ursula.’ It was Mother’s voice.
I opened my eyes quickly, but she wasn’t looking concerned. She was irritated. She was only ever annoyed at my perceived weakness.
Less leaned over me. ‘What a display.’ She was looking at me, but her words were directed at the rest of the room. She let the smile leak out slowly over her face. ‘Have you ever considered a career in amateur dramatics?’ She laughed and looked around for approval.
‘Perhaps a walk might clear everyone’s heads.’ Mother drew out her chair and rose with a contrived grace that she so rarely possessed. She left the room slowly, presumably so she didn’t throw up. I waited for her to look back at me, check on me, but she didn’t.
Mirabelle and Aunt Charlotte sat in perfect disgust with one another for a few more minutes, like children trying to out stare one another.
‘Maybe we’ll discuss the book later,’ Bridget said quietly.
I left them to their recriminations and tea.
As I stood in the hall and leaned my back against the wall, I waited for my anger to subside. I tried not to let Less get to me. But sometimes I can feel it building inside me and I can’t stop it. I just can’t seal up the cracks and stem the flow of all that bitterness I feel.
* * *
It was strange how much more isolated we felt when we went outside. The warm, almost cosy environment of the house had somehow served to cosset us from the extremes of the outside world. We hadn’t really appreciated the enormity of our situation until we were firmly against it. Less had chosen to stay in the house, seeking solace and mindfulness in the bathroom for the rest of the morning instead. Mirabelle had decided hell would freeze over before she offered assistance to that bitch Charlotte, and Bridget had retired to read to Mr Bojangles. So it was just the three of us, Aunt Charlotte, Mother and I, who set off on our intrepid expedition.
Charlotte was wearing every item of thick, country clothing she owned, which gave the overall impression of an extra from Last of the Summer Wine being hunted on the moors. Mother was quiet, which is always disconcerting. She didn’t seem to be engaged with our journey or its purpose. She was just there. I suspect sometimes she misses Dad enormously. Perhaps the mention of his name still took its toll. Even though she had found him annoying, unstylish and witless, she must have really missed him when he was gone — like old pyjamas. I’d always assumed she took an unseemly short amount of time to recover from his death but then maybe she never recovered at all. We can’t all be as melodramatic as you, Ursula, she’d always say.
Outside, the statues and pots were fleeced with snow — nudes and gods draped in ice. By the door, a pair of goddesses stood petrified and semi-naked.
‘She wouldn’t make much of a hunter without any—’
‘For Christ’s sake, shut up, Charlotte,’ Mother said, sharply.
Aunt Charlotte blustered on ahead, rambling on about her field sports group and stomping out each step, as if laying some sort of trail.
The fierce cold filled our faces. It was hard to open our eyes wide enough to let in any more than a slip of light. Stinging sharp gales buffeted us, our bodies curling over against the cold. It was a leaden sky that hung low as if it threatened to crush us. The wind shivered through to my core.
‘This is madness!’ Mother shouted.
Rule 8: Remember, there is a fragile line between life and death. One wrong step and you will no longer exist.
A BODY IN THE SNOW
That was when we saw the first body. The mess of garish scarves and matted hair against the drifts of snow was such a desolate, stark image. It was crudely obvious what we were looking at.
‘The fortune teller!’ Aunt Charlotte said in disbelief. She was rammed so deep beneath the fallen tree that the brutality of her death was clear. It only took a moment for that image of her poor, twisted body to scorch itself into our minds. We would never forget that scene.
No one forgets their first dead person. Mine, of course, had been Dad.
When I found him, what remained of his life seemed so precious, so delicate, that I handled him with the greatest care and sensitive touch. As the life eased out of his body, his head grew heavier in my lap, not lighter. But I still held him, even though it was futile, as if he were a glass shell of himself, more cherished than ever. Even when all that remained was a slack mask of the face he once wore, empty of every thought and emotion he’d ever had, I held him as I would a newborn who had all its life ahead. No such honour had been accorded this woman.
I wiped the tears away quickly and as I looked into that desolate makeshift grave, I felt sick. I should have felt ashamed for the way I viewed those pitiful remains, but I didn’t. I just felt revulsion at what that poor old soul had been brought to through no fault of her own.
She lay at a crippled, unnatural angle, her head pushed face down and sideways, her legs flared out. Strands of black hair were drawn out mermaid-like across the snow. Without death’s hands on it, the picture might have been somewhere near beautiful. But it was very far from that. We waded towards her through the thick drifts of snow, her faded chiffon scarves catching in the wind and rising up like hands against the iron sky. My mind snagged on random snapshots of my dad dying and laid those images over this abomination. With each step, I took slow, careful breaths and wiped away each tell-tale tear as it fell.
Humanity had abandoned this woman’s killer and led them to this terrible deed. This was a perfectly merciless act.
The three of us stood round the body and the silent snow drifted down like feathers, as if there was some delicacy to this brutal scene. We didn’t know what to do. There were no words. We looked to each other, but none of us could speak. The air froze in our mouths and we looked at the remains of a life that lay between us. We had stood like this once before and that image returned now, overwhelming everything. I watched the line of a tear course down my mother’s cheek and Aunt Charlotte pulled us in towards her. She smelled of home and lost moments that would never return. So much loss can erase parts of you.