Let Me Lie(34)

And yet I have the strangest feeling …

Who says ghosts don’t exist?

Doctors? Psychiatrists?

Mark?

Maybe it’s possible to summon the dead. Maybe it’s possible they return of their own accord. Maybe – just maybe – my mother has a message for me.

I share none of this with Mark. But I stare out of the window as we drive to the station, willing myself to see ghosts, to see some sort of sign.

If Mum’s trying to tell me what really happened the day she died, I’m listening.





SEVENTEEN


I’ve been here too long. The longer I stay, the more likely it is that someone will see me.

But I have to do this now – it could be my only chance.

Mark straps the baby into the back of the car, and Anna slides into the adjacent seat. Mark closes the car door. He stands for a second with his palms flat on the roof of the car. Like that, he’s concealed from Anna, but I can see the anxiety on his face. Is he worried about Anna? The baby? Or something else?

He walks back to the side of the house, where Robert is lingering, pretending to move some pots about. I feel panic building inside me, even though he can’t touch me, can’t even see me. The two men talk in low tones through the railings, and I wonder if Anna can hear the same snippets I do.

‘… still grieving … very difficult … a touch of postnatal depression …’

I wait.

They drive away. Robert abandons his plant pots and goes back inside.

And then it’s time.

A single breath later I’m through the locked door and standing in the hall. Instantly I’m overwhelmed with sensation, assaulted by memories I never imagined would have lingered.

Painting the skirting boards, kneeling awkwardly over my growing bump. Piling duvets on the stairs for a pint-sized Anna to sledge down, you egging her on, me with my fingers over my eyes.

Playing happy families. Hiding how we really felt.

How easily life changes. How easily happiness disintegrates.

The drinking. The shouting. The fights.

I kept it from Anna. I could at least do that for her.

I check myself. The time for being maudlin is long gone; too late now to dwell on the past.

I move quickly and silently through the house, my touch feather-light. I leave no mess, no prints. No trace. I want to see the papers Anna put to one side. My diary. The photographs that only tell a story when you know the way it ends. I look for the key that will tell everyone why I had to die.

I find nothing.

In the study, I work my way efficiently through the drawers. I ignore the stab of nostalgia that pierces deeper with each trinket and notebook I pick up. You can’t take it with you, that’s what they say. I remember an old school project of Anna’s on the ‘grave goods’ selected by ancient Egyptians, designed to smooth the deceased’s passage to the afterlife. Anna spent weeks on a painting of a sarcophagus, surrounded by carefully drawn images of her own precious belongings. Her iPod. Salt and vinegar crisps – six packets. Portraits she’d drawn of you and me. A favourite scarf, in case she got cold. I smile at the memory and consider what I would have taken, had it been possible; what would have made my afterlife more bearable.

There is no key. Not in any of the bags dotted about downstairs, or in the drawer of the dresser in the hall where everything accumulates when it doesn’t have a home.

What has Anna done with it?





EIGHTEEN


MURRAY


‘I found my mother’s diary from last year.’ Anna handed him a thick A4 diary. ‘I thought it might help piece together her movements.’ They were sitting in the kitchenette behind the front desk at Lower Meads police station, where Murray had first spoken to Anna Johnson. Anna’s partner, Mark, was with her, and together they had reported one of the strangest occurrences Murray had ever been asked to investigate.

Mark Hemmings had thick dark hair and glasses that were currently pushed up on his forehead. He was sitting back in his chair with one ankle on the knee of his other leg. His right arm rested on the back of Anna’s chair.

Anna Johnson took up half the space of her partner. She sat on the edge of her seat, leaning forwards with her legs crossed and her hands clasped together as though she were in church.

There were various leaflets and business cards filed within the pages of the diary, and as Murray opened the front cover, a photograph fell out.

Anna reached for it. ‘Sorry, I put it there so it didn’t get creased. I was going to get it framed.’

‘Your mother?’

‘There, in the yellow dress. And that’s her friend Alicia. She died of an asthma attack when she was thirty-three. Her daughter Laura is Mum’s goddaughter.’

Murray remembered the pocket notebook entry from the attending officer. Laura Barnes. Goddaughter. The women – girls, really – in the photo were laughing outside a pub, their arms entangled so they looked like extensions of each other. In the background of the photo was a table of young men, one of whom was looking across at Alicia and Caroline admiringly. Murray could make out a wagon and horses on the swinging sign outside the building behind them.

‘Funny place for a holiday – about as far as you can get from the sea – but Mum said they had the best time.’

‘Lovely photo. You never met Anna’s parents, Mr Hemmings?’