Twenty-five years earlier
When Auntie Rach arrives to stay with us, the flat becomes instantly cramped. She’s almost as wide as she’s tall, with a shelf-like chest and a frizz of hairsprayed curls. She hands out sorrowful hugs and I let myself lean into the doughy comfort of her body. Becca does the same, but only for a second: clings to her mum, then pulls away as if remembering they fell out before all of this happened. I sometimes wonder how Becca copes with the constant roller coaster of war and peace between her and Auntie Rach. Not to be speaking to my mum, to have her ringing up her sister to moan about what a “nightmare” I am, I wouldn’t be able to stand it like Becca does.
Auntie Rach insists on sharing Mum’s bed with her, saying she shouldn’t be alone. Imagining Mum teetering on the edge while her sister takes all the room would normally make me laugh, but I doubt I’m ever going to find anything funny again. I wonder whether Mum sleeps in pajamas, hides her skin, whether Auntie Rach will spot the bruises. I wonder who has the side of the bed that used to be his.
As far as I can see, Mum still hasn’t cried for Nick. She stares at his things lying around the flat, picks them up and examines them, like pieces of moon rock that have somehow found their way in.
The cause of his death hasn’t been confirmed. The first stages of the postmortem were inconclusive, so now there’ll be a toxicology report. Auntie Rach tells us this one morning, after a phone call from the coroner’s office or maybe the police: I’m losing track of all the people involved. I’ve never heard of a toxicology report but I can guess what one is. I shoot my eyes toward Becca: She’s staring into space, unblinking.
I want to ask exactly what they’ll test for. Exactly how it works. But I press my lips shut, my pulse hopping.
Auntie Rach lays a palm on Mum’s shoulder. “It could take four to six weeks.”
Mum sinks her head into her hands. “What about the funeral?”
“Once they’ve collected all the samples they need, they’ll release his body back to the family. Apparently it’s the analysis that takes the time. We should be able to have a funeral.”
The family. Since Nick’s death I’ve realized he didn’t exist in a vacuum, didn’t appear out of nowhere just to make our lives a misery. He has a dad and a brother who live somewhere down south. Mum murmurs on the phone to them, awkward and unsure because she doesn’t even know them; they’re having contact only because they were all connected to someone who’s dead. I try to listen in, try to guess whether his dad’s crying, whether his family loved him. Once I hear a raised voice at the other end, and afterward I catch Mum whispering to Auntie Rach, “They want answers.”
At the moment I get most of my information from eavesdropping. I hoover up overheard fragments, one-sided phone calls. Neighbors pop round with steamed-up Tupperware boxes of food, and I lurk in the background, wondering what they’d think if they knew even half the truth. The police ask us questions about the weeks leading up to Nick’s death: Had he been ill or acting oddly? To my relief, Mum mostly keeps me out of it. My legs go soft each time I see the flash of a uniform through the peephole in our door.
About a week after his death, the word antidepressants starts cropping up in the hushed conversations Mum and Auntie Rach have when they think Becca and I are asleep. At first I wonder if Mum’s started taking them: I check the bathroom cabinet but there’s only a gnawed red toothbrush and a bar of dusty white soap. The next night, I hear them discussing it again and I manage to grasp the thread this time. I scurry over to Becca and shake her.
Her eyes fly open. We’re both on a knife edge at the moment. Always waiting. Some days I can convince myself no one will ever know what we did. Other days a confession prickles like ground-up glass on my tongue.
Becca snaps into a sitting position. “What is it?”
“Nick was taking antidepressants. The police found them in his house.”
She frowns. “What?”
“Maybe it was a reaction to them,” I whisper, “not to . . . to what we . . .”
Becca is silent. I can hear her breath coming in little bursts.
“Don’t you think?” I ask.
“Maybe.” She draws up her knees, hooks her arms around them. “It’s possible.”
I shuffle back to bed but can’t escape my thoughts. I wish there was somebody I could talk to, somebody who knows about medicine and postmortems and inquests. Who would answer my questions and never tell a soul that I asked.
Soon Auntie Rach has to go back to work, so she and Becca prepare to head back to Derby.
Tears fill my eyes as I press my face against my aunt’s big shoulder and smell the mousse in her crispy perm. Without Becca I’ll feel totally alone, but perhaps I’ll be able to think for myself. Maybe things will be clearer. We hug loosely, her body skinny and cool compared to her mum’s, and she squeezes my wrist, like a signal of solidarity.
Then it’s just Mum and me, like it always used to be. Except I still feel echoes of Nick. I still jump at tall shadows, hear the jangle of his keys, catch phantom drifts of frying bacon in the air.
We rarely mention his name, which is weird in itself. But he’s still around.
One Friday evening, Mum comes into my room. It’s stripped of Becca’s things now: I can pad right across my carpet without having to stretch over her sleeping bag, and my books have resurfaced from beneath her heaps of fashion magazines. Her meds no longer sit on the bedside table; they haven’t been there since the day after Nick died, when Becca whisked them away as if getting them out of sight would solve everything.
Mum stands on the spot where Becca slept for almost three weeks. Spreads her arms as if suddenly noticing all the extra space.
Releasing a breath, she says, “I’ve arranged for you to have Monday off school.”
“Monday?”
“Nick’s funeral.”
An uncomfortable silence falls. I think she’s going to walk away, but she lingers near the door. “I’m nervous,” she says eventually.
“About the funeral?”
“I don’t know why. Maybe the thought of all those people. And I still feel so . . . I mean, funerals are supposed to give closure, aren’t they? But we won’t really have that. Not until we know why it happened.”
I blurt: “What’s the toxicology report for?”
“To test for anything he might’ve had in his system. The doctors think he had some kind of reaction.”
“Like an allergic reaction?”
She plucks at her cardigan. “Possibly.”
“Could it be . . .” I know I should stop but I can’t. “. . . his antidepressants?”
“How do you know about those?”
“I heard you and Auntie Rach.”
There’s a pinched look to her face. The blue disks under her eyes resemble bruises, making me wonder if the real ones on her body are still there, whether they’re fading now, faster than the memories.
“They’re not sure,” she says quietly. “The analysis takes a while when they don’t really know what they’re testing for.”
It’s one of the longest conversations we’ve had since he died. Part of me wants to keep it going—I’ve missed her and I don’t want her to leave. Another part fears that if we keep talking, I’ll tell her everything.
She moves to go.
“Was he in pain?”
I didn’t mean to say it.
Mum stalls. “What?”
“When he got sick.” My voice is almost a whisper. “Did he seem like he was in a lot of pain?” I don’t even know what answer I want to hear.
Mum lifts a chunk of her hair and studies it. Thin threads come away in her fingers. “Oh, love . . . it’s all a blur.”