We both drove her to school the next day, in Sarah’s car.
You will tell me, Sarah said as Jenny walked towards the monumental steps with her coloured schoolbag bobbing on her shoulder, what is going on and if it doesn’t make sense, I’ll book the next flight home.
I don’t know what’s going on, I said.
You never lied to me before, she said.
And I’m not lying now.
You took our daughter to meet that girl.
I didn’t.
How else would she know her name?
She has imaginary friends, I said. Could you explain that?
This is different, Jonathan, she said. There’s something in our house, in our family that wasn’t there before.
Like those cufflinks, I said, and immediately regretted it.
Fuck you, she said, fuck you, fuck you, fuck you. Maybe the next time we talk should be with that therapist. And maybe you should walk from here.
* * *
I did, and it was a relief to walk. I walked through the crumbling suburbs beyond the grand boulevards to the for-lorn end of the river where it ran off into those small canals. I called Istvan on the way and he picked me up by an empty skatepark and drove me to the morgue, where the body of Petra was lying in the small room that she couldn’t leave
The parents, if they were hers, were already waiting underneath the old glassy sign. Istvan wrote in the book and we descended again, with the pretty lab assistant with the rubber gloves, in the industrial lift down to the chilling depths where the refrigerators hummed
The mother wept quietly when she saw the row of metal handles and the father wiped his eyes when the tray was pulled out. That is the way grief happens, I remember thinking, quietly and without much fuss.
Petra, the mother whispered, when the body was revealed. It was unchanged and looked like it always would be. The small fringe of hoarfrost round the eyelids.
Ask her how can she be sure, I said to Istvan and he repeated the question.
Mladez, she said, or something like it. She walked forwards and pulled the sad frozen dress to reveal the knee. There was a birthmark there, and I wondered how I had never noticed it before.
Unde, she said.
Dove, said Istvan. Dove, they used to call it.
I could distinguish something like the blur of wings and a tiny birdlike body. For some reason I felt the tears now, flowing down my face. And for some reason I was embarrassed and I turned away.
The lab assistant snapped her gloves softly. Out of discomfort, I supposed. We were all of us, suddenly, uninvited guests at a funeral.
We should give them some . . . how do you say?
Space? I said to Istvan.
Yes, he said, almost proudly. For moment of closure.
Outside, we stood by the discoloured strips of industrial plastic that covered the ambulance bay.
Will there be an autopsy now?
Only if they request it.
He took off his jacket and folded it with two meaty hands. I saw the sweat marks underneath the armpits and had to remind myself that it was hot.
What about bill? he asked.
Don’t bill them, I said.
We have many expenses. Phone, petrol, time.
Put them all against me, I said.
For what reason? he asked. They are clients, like any other.
For reasons of closure, I told him.
And I realised I needed whatever that inadequate word meant, desperately. I needed the credits to roll and the commercials to begin.
Her parents walked out, blinking in the bright summer air, like two bewildered penguins. They stood then on the cracked cement path and moved from one patch of weed to the other and I realised that, like most of the lost souls I had seen wandering here, they weren’t sure where to go.
How did they get here? I asked Istvan.
By train, I suppose. And then by foot.
Will you give them a lift?
What about you?
I can walk, I told him.
So I watched him walk over to them. I saw rather than heard the conversation, the nodding, the bowing, the clutching of hands, and after he had helped them into the back and the car had sputtered off, I saw the lab assistant emerging through the strips of plastic to smoke a cigarette.
She gestured the packet towards me, mutely, in her plastic-covered hand and I took one, for lack of something else to do.
Is sad, she said.
Yes, I nodded.
But we never know the story. We don’t need to know the story. We deal with cadaver, organ, cause of death. Is bad to know the story.
Is it?
Yes, she said. Better to stay uninvolved.
Can I see her again? I asked.
The corpse?
She smiled bitterly and blew smoke out of her delicious mouth.
You knew her?
I shook my head. And it was true; how could I have known her?
I was hired to find her.
Like policeman? she questioned. Detective?
She walked me back through the strips of plastic into the empty ambulance bay and down a set of grey stairs. She snapped her gloves once more and smiled at me before she pulled open the great steel doors.
Is most irregular, she said.
Perhaps, I said. But I just need five minutes.
Tray number eleven, she said. You can open yourself?
I heard the doors close softly behind me as I walked forwards. She was giving me privacy, and I wasn’t sure I welcomed it. But I pulled back the handle on the tray and saw the coloured sandals again, the stiff dress edged up above the knee where the birthmark I had never known about was evident. Unde.
And now it looked nothing like a dove. Just a smudge, slightly darker than the rest of the skin. I reached out a finger and touched it and for some reason was surprised by the cold, dead feel.
I pulled the tray back further and saw the hands, clasped above the stomach. The frozen cleavage above the dress, and the face, with the hair stiff and forever parted. The eyes closed with the white hoarfrost on the lids and lashes. I bent down and put my lips to the edge of hers. They felt like cold, abandoned plastic.
Let me go, I whispered.
Though it felt absurd, because there was nothing here that could clutch. There was nothing that could hear, there was nothing that could answer.
Then I heard a polite cough behind me.
Must go now, she said.
I must, I agreed. I raised my head and pushed the tray back into place. I heard the metallic scrape for the second time.
You find what you want? Clues?
There are no clues, I told her. Just a girl who threw herself in the river.
And there are too many of those, she said.
She jerked her head towards the corridor outside. She seemed to find my presence there amusing.
Surely one is too many, I said.
Yes, she said. I must remind myself never to do it.