Amy had forgotten what sleep was. After another night staring into darkness, she rose before dawn and went down to the kitchen. Alan had not lived in this house since he’d started at university, yet she had always felt his presence. Until now.
The house that had once been a home, now seemed to Amy to be a grave. Dark, cold and empty of life. Instead of conjuring up her beloved son’s face, all she saw was the lifeless figure on the cold slab in the mortuary.
Looking down at Alan’s body, she’d wanted to gather him in her arms as she had done when he was a child. To kiss the top of his head and promise him that everything would be all right, because she would make it so.
The police officer had allowed her a few moments alone with her dead son, but by then Amy knew she was staring at an empty shell. Alan had gone. Where, Amy had no idea.
Now she no longer said a prayer before the sleep that never came. Prayers and pleas for nineteen years had not kept her son safe. All the love and care she had bestowed on him, all her hopes and dreams for him, had come to nothing. And nothingness was now all her life consisted of.
She filled the kettle and set it to boil. Her body carried out everyday functions as though she were outside, looking on. What she saw was the empty shell of a middle-aged woman she didn’t recognize. A woman who was merely putting in time until she too died and joined her son.
But would she join him? What if she took that step only to discover that death did not bring peace, but the continual and everlasting torment of his absence. Amy’s brain agonized over such thoughts when it functioned at all. For the most part, grief took over. It consumed her, pouring her into a bottomless pit of despair and tears.
She did not even have a funeral to organize. The shell of her once-beautiful son hadn’t been released for burial. It was being dissected and examined. Having been mutilated once by a madman, it was being mutilated again. Although she knew that Alan no longer inhabited that mound of cold flesh, Amy recoiled at the thought of his precious body being defiled.
Doreen called three times a day. Amy listened in silence to her friend’s offers of help and company. She couldn’t shake off the idea that if Doreen had not persuaded her to visit that church, then none of this would have happened.
Doreen’s voice betrayed her own distress. They had been friends for thirty years, yet Amy doubted whether she could ever look on her friend again without remembering that moment in the church when Doreen had raised Amy’s hand in the air. It seemed to Amy that Alan’s life had ended then, as had her own.
Seated at the table, she registered that the kettle had boiled. She rose and made a pot of tea, recalling with a sharp pain how she’d chastised Alan when he wouldn’t take the time to brew the tea in the teapot, but just dunked a teabag in a mug of hot water.
The memory of her irritation with him, the dripping teabag marking the floor and the top of the bin as he disposed of it, stabbed her heart with regret. Why had she thought that mattered? Why had she moaned at him about it? Her mothering now seemed petty and restrictive, instead of full of care and concern.
She had been a bad mother. It must be her fault Alan was dead.
These thoughts whirled through her brain, along with ways she might have prevented Alan going out that Sunday. If only she had not gone to that church. They would have walked Barney together. Alan would have cut the grass and they would have sat together in the sunshine, the scent of new-mown grass in the air, she with a cup of tea, Alan with the cold beer she’d bought for him. Amy could see them now, Barney lying panting beside Alan’s chair, her son’s big hand ruffling the dog’s ear.
The loss of Barney had been dwarfed by the greater loss of her son, but picturing the scene now brought the dog’s death into sharp focus. They’d got Barney when Alan was five. He and the dog became inseparable. Amy knew how much Alan missed Barney when he moved out, but he would never have taken the dog because he knew that losing them both at the same time would have distressed her too much. So he’d come home every Sunday to walk his dog and give Amy time with ‘both her boys’.
Sometime during the morning she’d washed and dressed. If she ate anything, she had no memory of it. She felt no hunger, except the gnawing hunger of loss. She sat at the window, watching and waiting, as she had that Sunday night. Still willing his tall figure to appear, Barney bounding at his side. Seeing her there, he would wave and smile, and Barney would bark.
Eventually someone did appear to open her gate and walk up the path. A man, shorter than Alan and with no dog at his side. Amy registered the shiny red cheeks, the plump body, the nervous manner.
It was her nemesis. The man who had pronounced her son dead.
The ring of the doorbell startled her, although she’d expected it. Her flailing hand knocked over the mug and cold tea spread across the table. Reaching the edge, it dripped onto the floor. Amy sat rigid as the bell rang again.
He had seen her at the window, she was sure of it. A third ring suggested he was in no mood to go away. When she still didn’t respond, he rapped on the door, then shouted through the letterbox.
‘Mrs MacKenzie. I have a message for you from Alan.’
He was sitting at her kitchen table. She had not offered him tea. It seemed to Amy that it was enough that she gave him house room.
When she’d finally opened the door, he’d appeared startled, then suddenly at a loss. Once again, Amy had felt a stab of pity for him. She wondered what drove him to do these things, whether he was mentally ill, or simply deluded.
Despite his obvious embarrassment, there was an underlying determination in his manner. Whatever he’d come to say was important enough to face her disgust, even her wrath.
Amy decided she would hear him out, then ask him to leave.
‘Mrs MacKenzie,’ he began, ‘I know you are an unbeliever and I respect that. But when someone in the spirit world asks for my help, I cannot refuse.’ He waited for a moment. ‘Alan was most insistent that I come here, although he knew how you would react to my visit.’
Amy was aghast at this man who talked about her son as though he were alive. She opened her mouth to protest, then shut it again. If she allowed her anger to spill over, God knows what she would say or do.
‘Messages from the spirit world are not always easy to interpret,’ he said apologetically. ‘Particularly in the case of a sudden and,’ his voice dropped to a whisper, ‘violent death.’
As Amy’s anger bubbled over, she rose from the table and said in an ice-cold voice, ‘I’d like you to get out now.’
He flinched as though she had hit him. For a moment Amy saw the boy Alan in the hurt, childlike expression. She stepped away from him, her anger turning to alarm.
‘Get out of my house.’ Her voice rose in fear.
‘You must understand that Alan cannot rest until we help him.’ His voice was insistent.
‘Stop it,’ she cried, tears running down her face. ‘My son is dead.’
‘Dead, but not yet at peace.’
Amy thought of the cold grey body on the slab and covered her face with her hands. It was as she had thought. In death, there was no peace.
He was suddenly beside her, urging her back to her seat. She slumped there, broken, her anger gone.
‘Will you hear what I have to say?’
She looked up at the shiny cheeks, the eager eyes.
‘For Alan’s sake, at least?’
All the fight had left her body. I have nothing to lose, Amy thought, because I have already lost everything.