Let Me Lie(37)

I pause, my fingers resting lightly on the door handle. Surely being seen by a dog isn’t the same as being seen by humans? Rita whines again. She knows I’m here – walking away would be cruel.

A quick hello and then I’ll leave. Where’s the harm in that? She can’t tell anyone she’s seen a ghost.

The door is barely open an inch when it’s forced open by a barrel of fur moving so fast it tumbles over itself and twice rolls along the tiled floor before standing again.

Rita!

She jumps backwards, her hackles up and her tail wagging as though she doesn’t know how she should be feeling. She barks once. Twice. Jumps forward and then back. I remember her growling at shadows in the hedgerows on our evening walks, and wonder what she saw then that I dismissed as nothing.

I drop to my knees and hold out a hand. She knows my smell, but my appearance is confusing her.

‘Good girl, Rita.’

The sob in my voice catches me unawares. Rita’s ears prick up in recognition, and the ridge of bristling fur along her spine subsides. Her tail is a blur, taking her back end with it. Another whine.

‘Yes, it’s me, Rita. There’s a good girl. Come on.’

She needs no further invitation. Satisfied that, contrary to first impressions, her mistress is indeed in her kitchen, she throws herself at me, licking furiously at my face and leaning so heavily against me I have to put out a hand to steady myself.

I sit with her, my quest forgotten as I bury my face in her fur. I feel the advent of tears and I swallow hard and refuse to let them fall. When Rita arrived from Cyprus she’d been in a rescue centre for eight months. She was affectionate and gentle, but had such acute separation anxiety that even leaving the room was an ordeal. The first time we went out she howled so loudly we could still hear her at the end of the street, and I had to turn back and leave you to go on alone.

Gradually Rita realised she was here for keeps. That if we went out we’d be back with treats for being such a brave girl. She still greeted us on our return with excitement and relief, but the howling ceased, and she settled into a calm and happy dog.

Guilt seeps through me as I imagine how she must have felt the day I didn’t come home. Did she wait by the front door? Run the length of the hall and back, whining to see me? Did Anna stroke her? Reassure her I’d be back soon? All the while wondering herself what had happened. Worrying as much as Rita. More.

Rita suddenly sits up, nose in the air and ears alert. I freeze. She’s heard something. Sure enough, a second later, I hear it too. The crunch of gravel. Voices.

A key in the lock.





TWENTY


ANNA


Mark insists on coming with us into the house, instead of dropping us at the kerb.

‘So, you are worried?’ I say, as he carries Ella’s car seat indoors. ‘Now that you know it wasn’t a fox that left that rabbit.’ There’s a chill in the hall, and I turn up the thermostat until I hear the heating kick in.

‘He actually said they couldn’t be certain either way.’

‘Without photos, you mean?’

‘Without forensics.’ He gives me a look and I bite back a further retort. Bickering won’t help. ‘But yes, I’m worried,’ he says, and his tone is serious. I feel childishly vindicated, but Mark isn’t done. ‘I’m worried about you.’ He shuts the front door. ‘What you said at the police station … about feeling your mother’s presence …’ He doesn’t finish, and I don’t help him out. ‘It’s a perfectly normal part of the grieving process, but it could be a sign you’re not coping. And then there’s Ella, and all the hormones involved in becoming a mother …’

I wait for several beats. ‘You think I’m going mad.’

‘No. I don’t think that.’

‘What if I like feeling as though Mum’s still here?’

Mark nods thoughtfully and rubs a forefinger across his lips, his thumb beneath his chin. His listening face. It makes me feel like a patient, not a partner. A case study, not the mother of his child.

‘What if I want to see ghosts? Sorry – what if I want to have post-bereavement hallucinatory experiences?’ The correction is sarcastic, and I see hurt in Mark’s eyes, but I’m past the point where I can calm myself down.

‘I’ll see you later.’ He doesn’t kiss me goodbye and I don’t blame him. He shuts the door and I hear the jangle of his keys as he double-locks it behind him. I wonder fleetingly if he thinks he’s keeping the danger out, or shutting it in.

‘Your mother is an idiot, Ella,’ I tell her. She blinks at me. Why did I have to be so unpleasant? Mark’s worried, that’s all. Personally and professionally. Wasn’t it precisely his compassion that attracted me to him? Now I’m seeing that same trait as a flaw.

I shiver. Bend down to feel the radiator. It’s warming up but it’s still so cold in here. I laugh out loud – all the ghostly clichés are coming out now – but it’s unconvincing, even to me, because it isn’t just the temperature that makes me feel as though someone else is in the room.

It’s my mother’s perfume.

Addict, by Dior. Vanilla and jasmine. So faint I think I’m imagining it. I am imagining it. Because even as I stand at the foot of the stairs, my eyes closed, I realise that I can’t smell it at all.