Jessie Keane: Stay Dead

‘Got to spoil my best girl, haven’t I,’ he said gruffly, shoving the gift into her hands. ‘Don’t tell the other kids, they’ll all be wanting stuff, and that’s just for you, because you’re special.’

Dolly was delighted and flattered. She felt important, because Mum was away and she was in charge of the house, even if she was a lousy cook and an even worse cleaner. She tucked the chocolates away in a recess of the wardrobe in her and Sarah’s room, and ate them whenever the others weren’t around.

Dad loved her, she thought as she ate the chocolates; she was special. She bunked off big school – no one cared, anyway – and spent more time in the house, trying to hold back the tide of mess and failing. But she was appreciated, she was loved. Missing her mum, she liked that.

When Mum came home, looking like one of the zombies in those comics Dick loved so much, Dolly was relegated to second place, and Dad didn’t pay her much attention at all. So Dolly began to look forward to Mum going away, because when she did, there was Dad with gifts for his special girl: a tortoiseshell comb, a music box with a twirling ballerina inside, more chocolates.

And when Mum wasn’t there, when the other kids weren’t around, he cuddled her. She liked that, at first.

‘Come and sit on my lap, Doll,’ he’d say, and she would, to be enfolded in a hug scented with Old Holborn and beer-breath, the unwashed bristly skin of his chin nuzzling into her neck. It was lovely, comforting somehow.

The cuddling became tickling, and play-fighting, and one day down in the sitting room Sam was laughing and Dolly was giggling wildly and they rolled on the grubby carpet, her and her dad, and his hand came to rest on the small barely formed nubbin of her breast. It stayed there, rubbing, and Dolly’s giggles faded in her shock and confusion as she felt her nipple harden.

‘They’re getting bigger,’ he said, and she didn’t know where to look or what to say, she was that embarrassed. It felt nice, the pressure of his hand there. Nice, and somehow very wrong. Shameful. ‘Now look what you’ve done,’ he said, and took her hand and placed it over his trousers. She felt something hard there, and jerked her hand away and sat up.

‘You know the facts of life, don’t you, Doll?’ he asked, sitting there on the floor staring at her. ‘You started your bleeds yet?’

Dolly didn’t know what to say. Was he telling her she was going to bleed from somewhere, like a nosebleed maybe? Was that somehow connected to what men and women did, how they had babies? The thought made her shudder.

Dad put his hand on her shoulder, slid it up to caress her cheek.

‘You know what men and women do together, don’t you, Doll?’

She wanted him to shut up. This was horrible. She thought of the angels in the stained-glass window of the little church, the beauty in them, the goodness. This wasn’t good. This was awful and evil. She knew it somehow, deep in her soul.

‘You know the man puts his thing in the lady?’ he said, and he was whispering now, leaning closer, his breath tickling her ear.

Dolly said nothing. She was frozen there, rigid with disgust and disbelief that her dad was saying these shocking things to her. She wanted to stand up, to run, but she was afraid he’d stop her if she moved. Or touch her again in that bad way.

‘He puts his thing right in her, and it feels good,’ he said, and he was touching her hand, grasping it, bringing it back to that strange hardness at his crotch. Cringing, Dolly tried to pull her hand free, but she couldn’t. ‘You’re my best girl,’ he said, and his voice caught as if he was breathless. ‘There. You see? It’s going to be so good for us.’

So, after Lucy’s birthday tea, Dolly almost ran away. As far as the rec, anyway. But Dad brought her home again, and when she got home there was Mum sitting in her chair at the kitchen table – and Dolly thought that, while Mum was here, she was safe. Dad wouldn’t try to do the man-and-woman thing with her, not while Mum was here.

Prospect, Barbados, June 1994

Annie Carter dreamed of him again on the night it all kicked off. Constantine Barolli – the godfather. Him of the all-American tan and the armour-piercing blue eyes, the startling white hair, the sharp suits. It was as if he was there, he was so real. Smiling at her, telling her he loved her.

Once, long ago, Constantine could make anything right. Could make her feel enfolded, protected in the safe cocoon of his love. She turned over in the bed, her eyes opening to blackness, the last insubstantial filaments of the dream floating away into the air around her. Her and Constantine, walking on the beach at Montauk on Long Island, the millionaires’ playground, hand in hand. She could feel his strong grip on hers, could see the sun on his hair, the crinkling of the lines around his eyes… but it was fading, fading… and then it was gone. He was gone.

Coming back to full wakefulness, Annie felt the cool blast of the aircon and she shivered, blinking, pulling the sheet over her body. She awoke to blackness, to an empty room, an empty bed. No Max. And now, as the dream ebbed away, as she came back to herself, she thought, No Constantine either .

Annie sat up, pushed her hair out of her eyes, clutched at her temples. Jesus, these dreams. Recently she’d had them over and over again. She was with Constantine – Constantine as he had been so long ago – they were happy, as they had been all those years ago. It was all so real, disturbingly real, and strange – and then she woke up and felt bereft, abandoned, as cold reality crept back in.

And now Max was gone too.

Annie hauled herself up in the bed, reached over, her eyes becoming accustomed to the darkness so that she could see outlines, discern dim shapes. She groped for and found the glass of water on the bedside table, took a sip, and tried not to think about all of it.

But she did.

She couldn’t help it. How could she not think about it?

Twenty-three years ago, it happened. Constantine had been her second husband. Way back then – believing Max to be dead following a gangland hit – she had married Constantine, and was pregnant with his child when it happened. The explosion. And after that? The dreams.

Ah God, those dreams!

At first they had not been sweet, happy dreams like those she was experiencing now. They had been hideous dreams, waking nightmares in which Constantine appeared before her in the night, wrecked, smouldering, dead and yet not dead, holding out his ruined arms to her. Those dreams had been terrifying. She had wondered if she was losing her mind.

Annie flicked on the bedside light. Light flooded the room and drove back the shadows. Nothing sinister here, she reassured herself, looking around and sternly getting a grip on her wayward imagination. There was no mouldering remnant of a man she had once loved, come back to haunt her.

And Max? What about him?

Annie frowned, her guts tightening with tension. Max was off in Europe on business. He’d taken off a week ago, without any real explanation. What business, he had refused to discuss with her, even though she had asked. He had just said he had stuff to do, and left.

Max was a law unto himself. He never explained, never apologized, never kept her in the loop. He had things to do, that was all he’d said, and he’d just… gone.

Leaving her here, alone.

Which was OK. She was fine on her own, usually. But not this time.