61

I’m dead.

You’d think a person would know something like that when it happened, but apparently not.

Things make sense now. Well, sort of sense. The past week going by in a blur, the accident that wasn’t really an accident, the people going crazy whenever they saw me. How they screamed and died.

Because I’m dead.

I watch them from the shadows, white-suited forensics technicians like you see on the telly. There’s plenty of them, traipsing across the bedroom and into the bathroom where Alan Lewis lies. He’s dead, too, nothing more than meat going soggy in the warm water. There’s nothing left of him here, so why am I still around?

Everything changed when he said my name, the man in the tweed suit. Nobody was supposed to know that. And yet somehow he did. Was that what kept me here? The fact I was unnamed? But I wasn’t the only one without a name.

Maddy. I remember now. She found me, never gave up looking. I’d given up. I’d lost all hope of ever finding her, ever having a life. But she found me.

And then we died. And it was all my fault.

Somehow I’m downstairs now, watching the technicians come and go. The detective’s there, looking a bit shaken up. I guess meeting a dead person might have that effect on you. It didn’t go well for that security guard, after all. Not for the fat man in the bath either. I’m just glad he was there to save the young constable. She didn’t deserve that.

The detective rubs at his face, says something to the older woman standing in front of him, and then looks over in my direction. No one else can see me; I’m dead, after all. And yet somehow he can.

‘Dan?’

The voice is distant, quiet. It doesn’t come from any of the people milling about this hall. I look around, see the shadows begin to wash away, the walls dissolve into whiteness.

‘Dan? Are you there?’

It’s an adult voice, laden with years of hardship, but I can hear the child still in it. All around me is nothing, as if I am falling through warm clouds, weightless, not a care in the world.

‘Maddy?’

I’m spiralling down into the light, and now she is with me, in front of me, arms held wide. I’ve not seen her in fifteen years or more, but she’s exactly how I imagined she would be. Pale blonde hair wafting in an unfelt breeze, and a long red scarf wrapped around her neck.

She smiles, and nothing else matters any more.