In spite of a determination not to, Lynn had begun to look forward to Emily’s visits. Aside from the brief debacle with Vera, it had been many years since there’d been another person in the house. Visitors of course - though it had been months since she’d agreed to see any of her friends, with their highlighted hair and Blackberries and reasons to keep up. There were her sons, but even they sat with her formally, being entertained. Emily was different. She might disappear upstairs for hours to change the bed and dust and vacuum, while Lynn watched television or if she had the energy selected a favourite book to read a chapter or two from, and they sometimes didn’t see each other at all; but she could hear the vacuum going, or the quick shuffling of Emily’s feet, and it was company, a witness to her existence.
She and Philip had spent whole days this way: he in the study turning pages that created a tranquil rustle, or tending young plants in the garden shed, while she was in the kitchen baking, or pottering about the house tidying the details of their lives. No words but reassurance. No dialogue but a promise of eternity… It was nice to hear a second pair of footsteps cross the wooden floors again and hands other than hers open cupboards, and exert a presence in her life.
Emily had been coming now for a month, three times a week. She knew where all the cleaning products were kept and exactly how Lynn liked the house to be ordered. She had learned the times and doses of Lynn’s medication. She pretended not to notice when Lynn was feeling sick, but silently placed an empty bin near her chair. And she no longer had to be asked to bring the tea in at a quarter to eleven, but carried it on a tray with a slice of lemon on the side and two digestive biscuits for each of them. And sat in the chair that used to be Philip’s.
“Don’t you get bored of the same biscuits?” Emily asked one Wednesday.
They had been sipping their respective teas with the radio on, a countdown of all-time great jazz tracks. Emily didn’t know any of them, but nodded solemnly each time Lynn pronounced the title during the opening bars. This question was the first time she had spoken all morning, and Lynn had the sense that she’d been working up to it. Despite the fleeting boldness of her first day, she was quiet this one, not like Vera with her excessive chatter. But John called her ‘the angel’: “The angel’s cleaned that ghastly vase”; “The angel’s made a delicious soup”; “Will you take some brandy in your tea, Angel?” And Emily seemed slowly to be warming to his mischief, unable sometimes to hide a smile. And just beginning to ask questions of her own.
“If I had money like you, I would buy all different ones,” Emily ventured again.
“What biscuits did you have in Rwanda?” Lynn asked. She’d been trying to get Emily to talk about Rwanda for days. Perhaps because of a not-yet-dead academic curiosity. Perhaps because the girl’s existence somehow latched Lynn to the present. Perhaps because she had noticed that her tiny silver elephant was missing. Each time however, Emily found something to tidy away, or a light to turn off, or else she switched on the vacuum. Now, cornered by tea and jazz tunes, she touched her hand to her fringe and smoothed it down, but said nothing. “You shouldn’t cover it,” Lynn told her.
Emily said nothing, but glanced up in surprise.
“It makes you unusual.” Beautiful, she had meant to say. To Lynn, Emily resembled an African princess, or how she imagined one, full of exotic mystery. Her youth didn’t grate on her as she’d thought it would, as Vera’s did. Her otherness was more salient than ghostly taunts of girlhood. And aside from the scar her dark skin was flawless, her neck long and slender, her lips curled backwards as if in a state of perpetual restraint. Admittedly there was a small gap between her front teeth, and the fact of her constant fidgeting, but on the rare occasions that Emily sat still and smiled, the deep scar over her left brow extended the almond shape of her eye into a pool that rippled outwards. “Beautiful,” Lynn conceded.
Emily blushed and lowered her head. “We had ones like these. And Afterwards, they gave us special protein biscuits.”
“Afterwards?”
Emily stood up. “Do you need something else Mrs Hunter?”
“I used to bake biscuits,” Lynn told her.
“My mother made muffins,” said Emily.
There was a short pause. “We would need ingredients.”
Emily hovered by the door. The radio presenter’s smooth voice cued in another jazz tune. Lynn shifted in her seat to test her side. It hurt, but not as badly as some days.
“It’s not raining,” she considered.
*****************
As they rounded the corner of St Ann’s Terrace and into St John’s Wood High Street, Emily offered her arm to Lynn, who again refused it. The rain had stayed away, but the pavement was smattered with fallen leaves, trodden down by wet shoes and conspiring to form a thin, slippery coat of brown. Emily walked slowly and purposefully, unaware of passers-by who might be watching, heavy with the responsibility of Lynn. If the woman fell, she would be blamed for it. Even if Lynn had refused her help. Even if Emily had no way of accounting for uncleared paths. Even though Emily too felt unsteady and short of breath. In a court of fowls the cockroach never wins his case. Emily offered Lynn her arm, and was again flapped away.
Before they left the house, Lynn had made a fuss of Emily fetching the particular pair of shoes that matched her outfit. Under her wool coat she was wearing a simple navy dress with black tights, but she would not accept the brown flats that Emily first selected, nor the black loafers, which she laughed at, but demanded the navy heels with the rounded toe. They were sensible heels, well made, only an inch and not stilettos, but Emily wished that Lynn had not increased the distance from which it was possible for her to fall. “One never knows who one might bump into,” Lynn had said with a glittering smile while buttoning her coat and checking her make-up in the hall mirror as though off to a party, and it had amused Emily, these ageless quirks; but now, even without supporting the weight of her, Emily could feel the effort the walk had become. She did not tell Lynn, but inside her bag were the loafers.
“Here we are,” Lynn announced, relief rubbing not quite imperceptibly at the boldness of her declaration, and frustration mingling with it as she felt the heaviness of the convenience store door. Just then, a young mother pushed out of it, a pram and nanny in tow, forcing Lynn to sidestep to the left. Emily noticed her wince as she did so and unexpectedly she felt a pang of protectiveness. She took a step closer, but then Lynn gathered herself and tutted at the mother loudly. “I never had help with my two,” she told Emily.
They bought flour, vanilla extract, eggs and crushed almonds. There was butter and sugar already in the cupboard and neither of them were eager to increase the weight of the shopping bag with unnecessary goods. Emily’s hands had been hurting that week, burning, perhaps from the cold. At the last minute, Lynn slipped in a bar of chocolate, a dark Green & Black’s in navy wrapping.
“It’s organic,” said Lynn. “John thinks organic food’s going to cure me. Of course it’s absurd but we might as well humour him.” Emily carried the basket to the cash register, smiling at the thought of John who arrived sometimes, unannounced, in a whirlwind of hair and aftershave and harmless chatter, and often brought fresh fruit and vegetables, and seeds, and other things he had read were good for beating cancer. Lynn took out her purse, passing a card to the cashier, who she said good morning to, and deftly entered her pin number into the card machine.
The girl behind the counter did not respond to Lynn’s greeting and was treating the interaction as a mundane obligation of her life. But there was a fleck of animation in Lynn that Emily had not seen before, a whisper of vivacity she had uncharacteristically on this shopping trip decided to share. And it rallied her.
“Good morning,” Emily repeated to the cashier, pointedly. And surprised, Lynn looked at her, and chortled with such devilishness that Emily couldn’t help but abruptly join in. Loudly. And for a long time. Emily couldn’t remember the last time she had made anybody laugh, or laughed herself. The cashier shook her head and pursed her lips into a sneer. Delighted, Lynn laughed harder. It made Emily think of chopping vegetables with her mother.
Back outside however, the clouds had cleared and the sun had muscled its way onto the blue canvas, making Emily squint and abandon her fleeting feeling of elevation. The light danced around her causing her head to swim. A migraine had been threatening all day, and Lynn’s questions that morning had already unsteadied her. She reached for the wall.
“We’ll whip these up in no time,” said Lynn, perhaps noticing and letting the door to the shop swing shut. “You look like you need feeding up. Here. To tide us over.” She dug with an exaggerated flourish into the shopping bag on Emily’s arm and, with the whisper of exuberance still dancing around her face, pulled out the chocolate, breaking off a piece for herself and then offering it to Emily. But Emily had lost her appetite recently. She nibbled at Lynn’s biscuits, but often couldn’t stomach anything else. Suddenly she felt sick.
“Can we just walk please?” she said to Lynn tentatively, refusing the extended chocolate bar.
Lynn did not reply but she threw the chocolate back into the bag and quickly began walking in a different direction to the way they’d come, her playfulness immediately dissipating.
“Where are you going?” asked Emily.
“Home of course. This way is quicker. It’s almost one isn’t it? You’ll want to be finishing.”
Her voice betrayed hurt, and perhaps embarrassment, and Emily felt sorry for it, but Lynn was not to be argued with. She was never to be argued with. Besides, Emily could not deny that she wanted to get home, to be alone and shut out the dizzying light.
“Of course you should have told me how late it was,” Lynn admonished.
And Emily nodded, her head and stomach pumping as she followed Lynn dutifully through a series of winding streets that eventually spewed them out in front of a church.
With a domed top.
And the sun reflecting off it.
And outside, a man holding a lead.
And shouting.
And dogs barking.
“Emily,” said Lynn.
But it was too late. The eggs had smashed on the floor, and Emily was running.
*****************
Lynn’s navy shoes were splattered with egg yolk. The man with the dogs pulled them to attention and moved on. There were no taxis on this road. It had been many weeks since she’d been to the shops on her own. Pain was stabbing through her side. In her handbag was a mobile phone, but she did not want to disturb her sons. Emily was gone. A slight flutter of panic crept across Lynn’s chest. “Poise,” she instructed herself.
*****************
The pounding in Emily’s head hammered harder and harder until she could hear no other sound than the fierce, insistent thumping. The thud of her feet on paving stones jarred and rattled, adding to the clatter, but she couldn’t stop for fear that the noise would catch her. Slicing through the air. Knocking her down. Even with Lynn and ordinary shopping bags. Even here amongst the greyness and the coldness and the friendly unfriendliness that was not, after all, enough.
She was out of breath. A gate swung on its hinges ahead of her and Emily pushed through. The place was wooded and dark, part park, part graveyard. Crouching low next to a swing set, she loosened the scarf around her neck and clutched her legs, burying her face into her knees and rubbing her throbbing scar against them. It was the dome that had done it, the dome of the church, just like the one she’d run to once. And the noise: shouting, barking. Her throat stiffened and contracted. She was suffocating, she was sure of it.
No, she was cold, she told herself. She was in London where it was cold and she was cold, and the air was cold, and she could breathe it.
But her throat was hot, burning. And suddenly she was spiralling backwards, too far, past the memories she controlled and so carefully rationed, past the recollections it was possible to sort and restrain, past, Before. And she was there again. In Rwanda.
They’d seen the men coming. Their small, wooden house sat on top of a hill, just in front of the graveyard where they sometimes played hide-and-seek amongst the trees and bushes, so it was easy to spot visitors across the fields as they approached. These visitors came wielding machetes and masus. One near the front carried a spear. He held it in front of him as though he was an old tribal warrior and shouted a chant the others quickly took up: Hutu Power, Hutu Power. All of them wore the colours – yellow, green, blue – threatening colours suddenly, detached from the flowers and the grass and the sky. Green is for grass… they were taught at school. No longer. Different lessons were needed now.
Rukundo had seen them first. They hadn’t been to school that morning and instead had been loitering around the front of the house pretending to be doing something other than looking and waiting. For days it had been too dangerous to risk the streets. Gangs of Hutu Power supporters were gathering and chanting and stopping you if they knew you were a Tutsi, or if you looked too tall, or if they felt like it. Sometimes you escaped with words only. But the feeling was of something worse to come, like a pot of water slowly simmering, the boiling point as uncertain as it was inevitable. The only thing to do was watch, and stand as far away as possible from the heating pan.
They kept to themselves. Not even Jean sought her out as he once had, and they restricted their movements close to the house and to each other. Gahiji had left a week earlier. He had friends crossing over to Uganda to join the rebel army and he wanted to be part of the resistance. There, in numbers, with weapons, they could do something he said. Cassien – always brave, or rash, or in awe of Gahiji – had wanted to go with him but Papa refused and Emily slapped him for even suggesting such a dangerous thing. At least in Rwanda they were together, and had friends, and a home, and could be careful and survive. Still, her parents had kissed Gahiji goodbye and not stopped him, and ignored her screaming and then her tears, which fell first for herself and then more urgently for Gahiji’s benefit as he resolutely packed up his paltry possessions, trying to avoid her pleading eyes; Emily had learnt at a young age of her eldest brother’s weakness for them. When she was very little, she’d utilised this tool keenly. If their mother scolded her, even if she deserved it, like the time she broke Gahiji’s new belt by misusing it as a skipping rope, her biggest brother was always the first to come to her rescue. The last time had been only a few months earlier after Jean had ruined everything with a kiss.
She and Gahiji had been walking home from church a little ahead of the others when she let it slip out. She hadn’t meant to tell anyone, or anyone else (Jean had already seen to it that enough people knew his version of events), but Gahiji had asked why he hadn’t seen Jean around for a while and without meaning to, Emily had told him.
Despite her attempts to normalise their interaction over the past months, Jean’s mix-matched, swagger-filled eyes had remained full of that unnerving intensity, green and grey darting out at her in equally unsettling measures, and lately he’d started winking at her again. “You look like you’ve got a twitch when you do that,” Emily had said to him this time, reaching for the cigarette they were sharing behind the schoolhouse, she still 12, he recently 14. Jean made a sarcastic face at her and took the cigarette out of her mouth.
“Well you look like a boy when you smoke,” he retaliated, blowing an inexpert cloud towards her.
Emily grinned. Such teasing was familiar territory, safe ground. She waved her hands through the puff. “Don’t. My mum will smell it.”
“She’ll smell it on your breath anyway,” Jean laughed defiantly, taking a final drag before stamping out the stub. “Here, smell mine.” Pinching her nose between her finger and thumb as though she could already smell the stench, Emily leaned in only slightly and conveyed the verdict with an exaggerated grimace, but Jean rolled his eyes, clamped a hand either side of her face and pulled it to within an inch of his. “You have to come closer,” he told her. “Smell it properly.” Now he opened his mouth a little and exhaled. His breath was warm and the heat of it did something funny to her stomach, something strange, as though she was about to jump from a high branch, or sit a test. And suddenly, although she wanted to lean back, the toxic air seemed to root her to the spot, while at the same time filling her with a keen, supernatural alertness that made her notice things like the early stubble on the top of Jean’s lip, the single bead of sweat on his temple, the slight quiver of his jaw. She wondered if he still had that pure patch of white on his back. And then, too late, she realised that he was going to kiss her.
Emily was unprepared for the force of his lips on hers, the immediate, demanding searching of his tongue, not exactly horrible but disconcerting, alarming. Emily’s face contorted. She was almost 13, but she didn’t think of boys this way yet, not even Jean, who should have known this about her. When finally he let go, she pushed him hard.
“You stupid boy! What do you think you’re doing?” she screamed, kicking the dirt between them and disturbing the cigarette stub. “Why do you keep ruining things? You stupid boy! You’re pathetic!”
He took a step back, tripping over his heel but said nothing, and for a moment the two of them stood silent beneath the dark cloth of her indictment. She wanted him to apologise, or tease her, or somehow unmake the minutes, but he merely looked from her to the wall behind her as though, without her to whisper the answers, he was desperately searching for them in space.
“Well?” she demanded again after long seconds had passed, because one of them had to speak eventually. But after opening and closing his mouth three times, Jean still offered no words to reply or reproach or justify. Instead, a second bead of sweat adorning his temple, he forced out an absurdly loud laugh, then turned his back to her, and silently, with a feeble attempt at swagger, walked away. “Good! Go!” she shouted at him determinedly through the echo of his bravado. But as she watched him depart, Emily felt her fury quite unexpectedly evaporate, and gradually, as his silhouette grew smaller and smaller against the dying sun and the hills and the grass, it was replaced by a bewildering feeling of regret, and sadness, and loss. It was the first of many times that she felt the aching, pain-wrapped frustration of what might have been. But all she knew then was that she had to speak to him, and soon, if only to figure out why there was suddenly such a wrenching in her gut.
The next morning, a mass of cream-clothed students was as usual gathered outside the schoolhouse. She’d left early without Cassien to go via Jean’s house, but he’d already left when she arrived, or at least his mother had said he wasn’t there. He wasn’t waiting for her by the gate, or on the path, or by the edge of the grass where sometimes he and Cassien kicked a football. Standing on her tiptoes amongst the throng, Emily searched for him, an urgency filtering subconsciously through her, but she couldn’t see him. Instead, one of the girls she’d never liked and she and Jean had privately ridiculed, sidled triumphantly up to her.
“You’re so sweet,” she crowed, laughing loudly for the benefit of the others, who Emily now realised had been looking at her and were all listening. “To think that you tried to kiss Jean. But of course he wouldn’t kiss you. He said he could never fancy a Tutsi.”
When Gahiji heard this, he doubled back past the church, found Jean halfway to the lake, threatened him with a fist and made him apologise right in front of the girls he was walking with and winking at. Gahiji always put things right. He always protected her. He always stemmed her tears.
On the day of his leaving for Uganda however, Gahiji only hugged Emily tightly, tilted his head, and promised to see her soon. Both of them knew they were words spoken for comfort rather than truth, but she clung to them anyway. Desperately. Rukundo ran shouting into the kitchen. “They’re coming. Men are coming. The Interahamwe.” Cassien and Simeon fell through the door behind him and Mama dropped the vegetables she was preparing: carrots and sweet potatoes that had been piling up in neat circles now tumbling across the floor, one slice of carrot rolling underneath the stove where it would never be found. Emily scooped the new baby out of her cot. Mary, a sister at last, had arrived four months earlier. Their father appeared behind them with a useless stick in his hand.
“We leave now,” he told them.
Out of the back door they hurried across the graveyard, their mother without the time to tie Mary to her back, bundling her in her arms, Emily chasing as close to Cassien’s heels as she could. Rukundo and Simeon were far ahead, dodging through the trees they’d climbed together, but their father hung back, making sure they were all still running ahead of him. Once, Emily fell, but only for a moment. Then she was on her feet again, her hand gripped within her father’s, her feet somehow moving.
By the time they reached the church, it was clear they were not the only families fleeing. Hundreds of other Tutsis were already crowding through the doors, the priests ushering them in like shepherds, the angels and saviours they’d always purported to be. Emily clung to her father’s hand and mentally apologised to God for ever having complained about saying her rosary. Here He was, answering her, finally, loudly, when it mattered. Just as Mama had promised. Guiltily, Emily turned towards her mother, anticipating her pride at having been proved so conclusively right; but she caught the tail of a look that she had never seen before on her mother’s face, a gaze not of triumph, but something between sadness and disbelief, between dreaming and reality, her eyes fixed not on the priests but on the streams of frightened people.
Mary began to scream. Dragging her eyes away from her mother, Emily let go of her father’s hand and stuck her little finger in Mary’s mouth. The girl’s tiny body was swaddled closely in a white blanket Emily had helped her mother to bleach in the sun, but her delicate lips escaped the folds and sucked furiously for a few seconds until, calmed by Emily’s familiar touch, amidst the jostling, wailing crowds, she hunched her neck down into the blanket and slipped off to sleep.
“She loves you,” observed their mother, all at once waking from her trancelike state. “And I love you my daughter,” she added suddenly, starkly, with an urgent tenderness that was far more terrifying than everything else.
Emily clung harder to the swing set and let out a sob. Her body shook. She shouldn’t have loosened her scarf. The cold air had crept underneath it and was controlling her, her muscles contracting involuntarily while her teeth chattered a rhythmic beat that paralysed her to the spot where she was crouched. She had to move. She had to get back to her flat, to a state she could manage. She had to close the door to the memories that were flooding her, forget Rwanda, forget Mary, not think about what came next.
But what came next was smoke-swaddled, seeping through cracks. Hot. Suffocating. Blurred by intensity. She remembered a petrified mob snaking into the church like Noah’s Ark, in orderly channels of two or three, fear moving them to tidy regulation, to cling to what they knew, which was hierarchy and authority and chains of command. Rwanda. Emily and her family had joined the last of the convoy. In the distance, voices were beginning to ring out, exuberant voices, raised, intoxicated, chanting, baying, advancing.
Doors. She remembered doors closing and the priests standing in front of them, the hush of nearly two hundred people filling the church with the loudest prayer she had ever heard, spoken to God through sweat and silent tears and the sound of hearts racing. Now and then somebody coughed or a baby cried out, but its short infant gasps lasted only a few moments before somebody put a hand over its mouth, risking suffocation, usually the mother. Emily had again slipped her own finger into Mary’s mouth so that she stayed silent. She could still feel the wetness of her lips, the heat of her sleeping body.
Wood hit wood as clubs met the solid church door. Glass shattered. People began to scream. Some of the women fell upon the priests who were Hutus but also representatives of God: save us, help us. They pleaded. They kissed the priests’ hands. And the priests smiled consolingly. Emily remembered that clearly. Their smiles. They nodded reassuringly, and Emily had loved them for it. They patted their flock. They blessed them, sanctified them. They stood in front of the heavy, protective doors.
And then, they opened them.
In their robes that identified them as priests.
With words that called out: not us, we are Hutus.
God’s servants.
Pastors.
Friends.
From the back of the room, behind the altar where their father had hidden them, Emily crouched and watched as armed men rushed the building and the priests stepped helpfully aside. Smoothly. As if by prearrangement.
Then it was blurry again, and not blurry enough. There were machetes and masus. Blood was quickly everywhere. By their feet or hair, women were dragged outside. The door opened and closed and with every beam of sunlight there was another scream.
Then darkness. The men had fallen back and from the outside they heard the doors being locked. They were trapped, but at least the men were gone. Resting her eyes on her mother, Emily gave thanks. Now however, the screaming began in earnest. In the absence of light it resounded deeper than before, as though the pain was collective and had ripped through skin to the soul. It came in gush after agonising gush, fuelled not only by the freshness of terror but the stale, lingering devastation of loss: loved ones dead or soon to be, outside in the hands of killers; limbs missing; holes gaping through flaccid flesh; shredded skin spattering a bloodied, holy floor; skulls cracked like watermelons; humanity lost, vanished into a dark, domed void.
Outside, the men camped. They drank beer. Sporadically they took turns with Tutsi girls who no longer screamed, by now half-dead anyway, either from fast wounds or from the slow, deliberate end that in rhythm with the men above them pumped three toxic letters through their veins. H. I. V. H. I. V. A weapon of war more durable than gunshots. Inside, those alive cowered, locked in by keys safe in the pockets of priests. Some searched frantically for family. Some who’d escaped death by hiding under the bodies of those already struck down, dared not move nor answer even familiar calls. Above them the bodies turned cold.
During the night, the surviving adults spoke in hushed tones. They talked politics – the plane crash of the President, the broadcasts of Radio Mille Collines, the organisation and arming of the local Hutu Power gangs – whispered words that at the time meant little to Emily, only that this was why she was there, resting her head on Cassien’s shoulder, clutching the hand of her mother who sang gently into her ear and smoothed her hair with shaking fingers. Few people slept. By dawn, the room stank. Children moaned for water. Adults gave up answering. Everyone waited.
It was many hours before the drunk hunters raised themselves, but when they did, the morning air seemed to fill them with a new bloodlust. Through the windows those inside watched as the priests obligingly unlocked the doors once more and the Interahamwe were upon them again. To her horror, Emily recognised some of them. In the frenzy of the day before she had noticed only their weapons and not their faces, but now she saw that they were local people, and she couldn’t look away. A number of the boys were young and had been at school with Gahiji, some even with Simeon and Rukundo. She knew their names. “Inyenzi,” the men and boys taunted, waving their weapons like trophies, or school badges. “Dirty cockroaches. Now we will cut you down to size.”
Blurry but not enough.
A routine developed. Not even the children were spared. “They want to wipe us out altogether,” Emily heard a friend of her father’s whisper. “All Tutsis. They cannot risk leaving the children.” Emily clutched Mary tighter. From behind the altar, she and her family stayed silent as hour by hour the men returned. It felt complicit to do nothing, to say nothing, not even to scream. But what could they do? By evening, as many had been killed as remained.
Words echoed around the hall and inside her head. As transient as lasting. Departed yet enduring.
“We have to do something,” Emily’s father implored them through the darkness. “We have to fight.”
“With what?” came the whispered responses. “Bare hands against machete and rifle and spear? Our small number against all of them? We will all die.”
“We will die anyway,” Emily heard her father reply, to which she covered her ears and pinched Cassien so he would pinch her back and allow her to feel a pain with which she could cope.
Then suddenly, there was no argument left to be had. The Interahamwe had a new idea and all at once through the windows came hurtling balls of fire. There was no more time. They would die now.
“Fire!” shrieked everyone. “They’re burning us alive!” Terrified people jumped up, abandoning their hiding places, pushing off the weight of dead bodies. Emily’s father caught her hand and motioned for them all to stay down, but crazed and already coughing from the smoke, whole groups began to storm the front of the church, shoulders dropped ready to pummel against the bolted doors. Emily peeked out from behind the altar and willed them on, but her prayers were unnecessary. As soon as their shoulders hit the doors, they flew easily open. Emily turned to her father, puzzled, but the eyes of the stampeding crowd were glazed with triumph, euphoria, and hope. Hope’s clarity blinding them. Propelling them forwards. They ran gasping into the fresh air, straight onto the sharp edges of waiting machetes.
The laughter outside was nearly as loud as the crying within. But the flames were the loudest of all. They crackled and roared and shrieked around the church while Emily and her family crouched closer to the floor behind the altar and coughed.
“We must escape,” her father shouted to them, his voice muted by the screams and the smoke that made him splutter. “Not through the front door. We’re going out the back.”
“There is no door at the back,” Mama yelled, spluttering too, her face frantic and unlike herself. “There’s nowhere to go.”
“We’ll make a door,” said Papa.
Quickly, he, Simeon and Rukundo crawled to the back wall and began hammering at it with the single club they had between them, with a candlestick found overturned on the floor, with their hands. Their gestures became weaker and more desperate as they gasped for air, but finally, slowly, bricks began to budge. Cassien added his bare foot to the effort. Again and again Mama threw the whole force of her body against the loosening wall. Finally, they broke through. The hole was small but large enough for them to squeeze into. Mama went first, then Emily who jumped easily into the grass like she was dismounting from a tree and to whom Mary was hurriedly passed. The boys followed one by one and finally Papa appeared. They crouched in the grass, dotted with yellow flowers. The sounds of desolation hit them through thuds and screams and the exhilarated whoops of those inflicting it. Behind them, the church continued to burn. The smell of charred human flesh pervaded the air and Emily had the sensation of being in biblical times, the church some kind of living, animal organ being offered as a sacrifice to a vengeful god. She stared up at the building. The huge dome was lit by the glittering light of the fire within. Smoke-swaddled.
Cassien grabbed her hand. They ran in a zigzag close to the ground. Her heart pounded harder and harder until it felt as though it had risen through her body and into her head, where it was determined to drown out the terrible noises with its own thumping, vital presence. When they paused before dashing through an open clearing, her father turned and whispered something to her, stretching out his arms, but through the beat of her heart Emily could not hear him. Instead, she followed him into the clearing, fixed her eyes on Cassien’s heels, clutched Mary tighter and kept running. The world dashed by, muted, until eventually they stopped in a thick area of bush where the trees provided temporary sanctuary and now her father spoke again, his face livid with anxiety. Still she couldn’t hear him and so didn’t answer. The world thumped. He spoke again, more urgently. Her heart pounded. Her ears buzzed. Slowly he came towards her. He reached for her face, stroking her cheek gently, brushing her hair out of her eye, saying something else, but everything seemed jumbled. His words reached her only as an incomprehensible hum and now she noticed that the others were turned towards her too. She sensed that she knew why but couldn’t place it. They were looking and she was crying. She felt the tears streaming down her face. She saw her mother cover her eyes and Simeon’s face fall. But it was only when Cassien lifted Mary from her arms, that she knew or could acknowledge that the baby, who had been quiet throughout the screams of the fire, and silent as she ran through the undergrowth, was no longer sucking on the finger she’d placed out of habit into her soft, still-warm mouth, and was not breathing, and didn’t have a racing heart of her own.
Emily clutched her hands to her chest. The warmth of her woollen jumper alerted her to the burning iciness of her hands, but inside she felt hot, as though her insides had been shaken. She rubbed her face against the cold post of the swing set, the ropes clattering against it in the wind. Somewhere nearby, a small group of teenagers kicked their way past tombstones through the fallen leaves, brown and red layers over the soil, a protective mantle, a barrier to soften the way between life and death. Suddenly their flippancy maddened her, their disregard for nature’s helpful tempers that she had never had. No cushions. No graves. No stones to carry some of the burden of memory. She scowled and they stared at her as they passed, but didn’t understand. Not that she could either. The whole thing lay beyond the scope of her imagination, beyond humanity. Still pounding, she rested her head against the earth and dug her hands into the hard ground until the soil had worked its way deep beneath her fingernails and her knuckles had begun to bleed. The pain made her feel better; it rooted her to a time more manageable than the one in her mind and she scraped her hands harder against the dirt, contemplating how deeply she would have to cut herself before the bleeding would be unstoppable and complete. She pressed down harder, harder, deeper.
A hand that felt like Cassien’s crept onto her shoulder. “She’s dead,” Emily mumbled, disoriented, still pushing into the hard earth. Until all at once she noticed that Lynn’s navy shoes were in front of her. And it was Lynn’s hand on her shoulder. Steady. Steadying.
“Emily,” the woman soothed. Behind her was a young man she had recruited to carry the shopping, staring inquisitively. “Stand up slowly Emily. Careful.”
Emily stood up, snapping back into focus and attempting to hide her reddened hands. “I’m fine,” she whispered. “I’m fine.”
The man looked sceptical, and too curious.
“Well I know that,” said Lynn loudly, for his benefit. “Of course you’re fine. Good gracious girl. But I’m quite tired of waiting for you. You’ll arrive at nine tomorrow,” she told her. “I think five mornings a week will do better. I’ll call your supervisor. Now, see me to the road.”
Lynn held out her arm, and Emily took it, both of them ever so slightly leaning inwards as they inched out of the park. Lynn nodded sharply to the man behind them, who with a look of confusion, but obediently, followed the strange pairing with the eggless shopping.
Hours later, Emily climbed the foul smelling stairs to her fifth floor flat. Her hands were sore and stiff from the cold. Blood had dried in raised clots over her knuckles and cracked painfully as she dug into her bag for her keys. On an ordinary day she would have been holding them at the ready, but she seemed to be running in slow motion. As she fumbled, the door next to hers opened and a man stepped out. Without meaning to, Emily glanced up at him, and as she did so she couldn’t help but notice that the dark-skinned man was excessively handsome, his face angular and puerile, angelic, his frame slight but coated in black, masculine, wiry hair. He wore white trainers that poked out from beneath a pair of navy jeans, and a grey hooded sweatshirt that framed a head of dark hair far sleeker than her own. Embarrassed, Emily looked quickly away but the man had already caught her eye and smiled warmly.
“Sister,” he said, extending his hand. “So you’re my quiet neighbour. Hello.”
Hesitantly, Emily took the man’s hand, his fingers thin and delicate, easily broken, and briefly she allowed herself to look again at his striking face before turning back towards the door. She hated her meekness. It was not who she was, or who she used to be, Before. But it was better to be quiet and unnoticed. She turned the key.
“Sister, you’re bleeding,” the man said, pointing to her hands.
“It’s just a scratch,” muttered Emily, pushing unsuccessfully against her stiff door.
“I’m Omar,” the man persisted. “It’s good to meet you.”
Emily nodded. The door jerked open and she started to step inside but Omar stuck his hand in front of her.
“What’s your name?” he grinned, leaning in to her flat and glancing quickly around.
“Um, Emily.”
“I like to know my neighbours, you know?”
Neighbour. The word made her shudder.
Omar shifted his body so that all of his weight rested on his forearm, which had now taken the place of his hand on her door frame. “Hey, you should stop having fights with brick walls you know.” He grinned again, his teeth shining like those in the pages of magazines or on billboards, his smile lingering and then raising into an amused question mark as she silently looked on. “You take care Emily,” he laughed and was about to leave when suddenly, Emily felt an urge to correct him.
“It’s Emilienne.”
“Sister. Nice to know you.”
Omar removed his arm and stepped backwards. For as long as she could Emily returned his smile, but then abruptly she bent her head, closed her door and sank onto the floor in front of it. Reaching up, she locked the latch from the inside and slipped the key into her pocket where it would remain, safe, in her possession, until she was ready to face the world again. On the other side she heard Omar moving, his footsteps retreating, slowly at first, then faster, skipping down the stairs two at a time.
That night, Emily’s dreams were vivid. They were filled with faces she knew: kindly, smiling, doting, laughing, friends, neighbours, teachers, priests. Then she saw the same faces again, distorted and strange, frightening in their mystifying mix of familiarity and evil. They floated above her dark and heavy, like shape-shifting rain clouds, then descended slowly until they surrounded her in a dense, disorientating fog that began to choke her. In her dream, she swiped at the smoky air, she gasped and fought and clung to life; but this was the easiest part of survival. These instinctual acts, this brawl over basic necessities, like air, these impulses that enabled her to subsist, this was not really living. It was existing. What came next was far harder, and a battle that began afresh every time she woke up.
She woke up.
The phone rang. The phone was ringing.
Few people had her number so Emily wasn’t used to the sound and it jolted her from sleep with a start. Was she supposed to be somewhere? She didn’t know how long she’d been asleep. One night? Two? Her body ached and her head throbbed. She lay back onto her pillow and closed her eyes. Without conjuring him, Omar’s face drifted inquisitively in front of her. Then Lynn’s, perplexed as she ran away.
The phone rang again.
She opened her eyes and strained to keep them that way. The animated buzzing seemed incongruous in the drab flat, lit by a lacklustre daylight that barely pushed through the paltry window.
The phone rang again.
With great effort, Emily pulled herself up to sitting and perched on the side of the bed staring at the ringing instrument, just out of her reach on the other side of the room.