Chapter Eight

      Dear Lily

      I’ve so many emotions flying around, I don’t know what to do with myself. I’m telling myself, I’m always like this when I’ve been back to Kilterdale, and this time was so much more poignant – for obvious reasons – but I’m sitting here, writing this on the train, crying my eyes out. God knows what the other passengers think of me.

      It was so good to see your dad! It was wonderful. I felt like how I used to feel, before I lost Mum, and we lost you and I somehow lost myself. I felt like I was THAT girl I used to be, who I never thought I’d find again, and this horrible emptiness, which I realized is always with me, wasn’t there any more.

      And yet, I was so reckless, Lily. I can’t believe how reckless I was. What was I thinking of?! What if I am pregnant? My God. I would never ever forgive myself.

      *

      As soon as I reached civilization at Euston Station the next day, I went to Boots and got the morning-after pill. I couldn’t believe what I’d done. It was like I’d been under a spell, lawless for a moment. I decided to put down what happened to anxiety at being back in Kilterdale and total excitement at seeing Joe again, and resolved to get on with normal life as best I could.

      I was still anxious about the ashes, however. Despite Dad searching high and low, he hadn’t been able to find them, and I could tell he’d begun to panic himself. Denise was making a good show of acting concerned but I wasn’t buying it. She was acting shifty, if you ask me, staring out of the kitchen window as Dad and I ransacked the place, as if she knew something we didn’t.

      It made me feel a bittersweet camaraderie with Leah, who would definitely hold Denise up as prime suspect. Sweet because I treasured any chance to feel bonded with my eldest sister these days, I suppose, and bitter because it took losing our mother’s ashes and suspecting our stepmother had taken them, to do it.

      Growing up, Leah and I had the classic big sister/little sister relationship: we hated and loved one another with equal fury. We knew one another better than anyone else. Then Mum got diagnosed with cancer in January 1995 and died in October 1996 and it felt like I lost not just Mum, but my big sister too. Not only did Leah behave outrageously at the funeral (turning up, just as they’d closed the curtain on the coffin, with her boyfriend at the time, who’d never even met our mother, and was wearing a back-to-front baseball cap – small detail, but I’ve never forgotten it), but she then proceeded to get off her head at the wake, shout at Denise and then leave to go back to university two days later, leaving me and Niamh to pick up the pieces. Our relationship has never really recovered from that. Sometimes, I wonder if I’d even see her much at all if it wasn’t for her kids, who I adore. I feel like sometimes she uses them as a barricade; an excuse for not being able to do anything. She seems so angry all the time and, yet, I don’t know what about. But I keep making the effort because, essentially, I miss her.

      I call her as I’m walking home from the Tube. I’m thinking, perhaps the whereabouts of the ashes is something we can bond over, at least.

      She picks up after two rings,

      ‘So, can you believe it, Lee, they’ve lost our mother’s ashes?’ I said. ‘They’re still not on the mantelpiece. I reckon Denise is behind it.’

      ‘Oh, really?’ She was driving, and on the hands-free, but still, she sounded distracted, unfussed. ‘Could we chat about this later? I’m trying to get home at the mo, kids going mad in the back …’

      I couldn’t hear any kids, which was odd. Also, it wasn’t like Leah not to be outraged with Denise, which is her default setting at the best of times. ‘I’m seeing you soon, aren’t I? We can talk about it then.’ Then she said she had to go.

      Nobody talks about how Leah had a massive go at Denise in front of everyone at the funeral. It made no sense at all. Denise and mum were friends from the badminton club, so she had every right to be there. Nothing was going on between her and Dad at that point, and yet Leah just laid into her, shouting, ‘Jump in your own grave so fast, would you?’ God, it was like a scene from Eastenders and Leah and Dad have never really talked since, and us three girls don’t talk about Mum much either, because of what happened, which I find really sad.

      I arrived home, having made Leah, before she hung up, promise on her life that we’d discuss the ashes when I next went round. Then I made myself some soup and settled down to watch re-runs of some seventies sitcom … I felt calmer now the hangover had subsided and I was back in my own space. I felt like what had happened in Kilterdale was a dream; that it had happened to somebody else, in another life.

      Then, the next day, Joe sent me an email: distinctly flirtatious and with a photo of me that made me actually gasp. I knew I couldn’t do this with Joe. I had to nip it in the bud.

      4 April 2013

      From: [email protected]

      To: [email protected]

      Dear Joe, thanks for your email. I particularly enjoyed the picture of me wielding the bottle of JD and Miss No Knickers – just how one should behave at a funeral.

      I’ve been thinking of you often. I found those days following my mum’s funeral really tough, so I hope you’re taking it easy and being extra nice to yourself. Did you manage to watch a good horror? I recommend it. I found it to be a bit of escapism, if any escapism is possible at the moment.

      Joe, I want to apologize. As wonderful as it was to see you, I shouldn’t have got so carried away and drunk. (It was your mother’s funeral, for God’s sake!) You’ve no doubt got all sorts of emotions going on at the moment and me just unleashing myself on you like that can’t have helped. So, I’m sorry. I hope you can forgive me. We can never talk of this again, and be friends. It’s so great to be back in touch. Call me any time. R xxx

      ‘Right, Kingy, do you want to come in?’

      Just as I often thank the lord for London and its ability to swallow me up and allow me to disappear, so I am thankful for my job. After my eventful weekend, I didn’t have a chance to stew in a pit of self-loathing, because immediately I got to work, Jeremy called me into his office.

      He wanted to talk to me about Grace Bird, a forty-one-year-old woman about to be discharged from hospital, who had specifically requested me as her CPN. I felt rather special, especially since, apparently, she’d based her decision on watching me with other patients at Kingfisher House Psychiatric Unit, where she’d spent the last two months. I also knew this irked Jeremy, because Jeremy is the sort of man who can even make providing mental-health services a competition.

      He gestured to the only spare seat in his office, one of those low chairs, the colour of Dijon mustard, with wooden arm rests mental-health services are full of them – and shut the door. ‘So, shall we talk Grace Bird?’ he said. The office smelt of a mixture of the egg sandwich he was eating and TCP. He gargled with it every morning, with his door wide open. ‘How are we feeling about meeting her?’

      I felt like Clarice Starling in The Silence of the Lambs, being prepped before meeting Hannibal Lecter, the way he was going on. This wasn’t the first time he’d had a word with me about the infamous Grace.

      ‘Um, fine, I think,’ I said. Grace had schizophrenia, and a history of hearing persecutory voices. ‘I’ve read Grace’s case notes and chatted to people. I’m looking forward to meeting her. I think we’ll get on.’

      Jeremy nodded and excavated a bit of egg sandwich from his back molar.

      ‘You know, she has got a challenging background, although nothing out of the ordinary: