Laura Cassidy: Angel Kiss

‘Mum, you know I think horoscopes are a load of rubbish,’ I reminded her.

‘Read it anyway – it’s a bit of fun. Go on…’ she said, poking me on the shoulder.

‘Fine.’ I put on my best mystical voice. ‘ Love is on the horizon, and a long-term union may materialize in the near future. A certain someone could revolutionize important aspects of your life.’

Mum smiled to herself and I rolled my eyes.

‘I’ll read yours,’ she said, snatching the magazine before I could object. ‘ A testing time awaits you. Events force you to examine your fundamental beliefs and to question your path in life. How dramatic! A testing time awaits you, Jacki!’

‘Yeah, me and all the other Capricorns on the planet.’

‘You’re so sceptical,’ said Mum in exasperation.

‘I don’t see a problem with that,’ I said, adjusting my pillow. ‘Have you got any other magazines?’

‘No. But I do have this.’ She threw a copy of the local newspaper on to my lap.

I flicked through the pages, spotting some people I recognized from the village in the ‘Out and about’ section. There were photos from an eighteenth birthday party, and it looked like the birthday girl had been snapped mid-sentence, because her face was weirdly scrunched up. It reminded me of the photo of Hannah and me that Sophie had put online a few months ago. We’d been laughing at something, and hadn’t realized there was a camera around. As a result we both looked deranged and very unattractive. Sophie was terrible for not censoring her photos and just putting anything up. At least the paper would be in everyone’s recycling bin next week but those photos were online forever. There were a few planning notices at the back of the paper and then a list of anniversaries. My eyes were drawn to the last one.

CULLEN – Birthday remembrance of our dear daughter Beth Cullen, late of Miner’s Way, Avarna, whose birthday occurs on 16 July. Always remembered by your loving family.

I wondered if she was related to Jim Cullen, the man who’d just died. Avarna was a small village so it was possible. The notice didn’t say when the daughter had died but if it was the same family then they’d been through a double tragedy.

Later that evening, Mum put on her long grey cardigan and stepped into her pink wellingtons. ‘I’m just going out to the house for a minute,’ she said.

‘I’ll come with you,’ I offered.

Mum took the torch with her as the evening light was fading and the electricity wasn’t connected in the house. I closed the caravan door and followed Mum up the front garden. When we’d first visited the house, the garden had been my favourite part. The house had been shabby and rundown but the garden was overgrown and beautiful. It was full of wild flowers and reminded me of the gardens in Jane Austen adaptations that my mum and I used to watch on TV when I was little. Right now it was in a bit of a mess because of all the work that was going on, but the house was coming along nicely. The new windows and doors had been fitted, the gable had been painted and the broken roof tiles had been replaced. I couldn’t wait until everything was finished and we could move in. I had convinced myself that once we moved into the house my recurring nightmare would stop and things would start to fall into place. At the moment we were in a kind of limbo. The caravan was a capsule, suspending us between our old life and our new one.

There was a quarter of an acre of barren ground at the rear of the house, surrounded by a rotting wooden fence and an overgrown hedge. It was full of building materials and rubbish and I tried to imagine it with nice paving and potted plants. On a bright day you could see the beautiful mountains in the distance and I was sure it would be a nice place to sit once it was cleaned up.

We went in through the back door. Mum tidied up some plates and cutlery that the builders had left. The kitchen units had all been ripped out and the space they once occupied was now a blank grey canvas. The linoleum had been taken away and the wooden floorboards were being restored to their original glory. Mum was excited about our new kitchen arriving in a couple of days.

‘Jacki,’ she said, ‘remember you have to pick out a colour for your room.’

‘I think I’ll go for purple,’ I said as we stood in the centre of my new bedroom with Mum shining the torch against the bare wall in front of us. As an only child I was used to having space to myself, but this was amazing. Or maybe it seemed huge because it was completely empty. I began to imagine where my bed would go. I’d definitely like it to face the bay window that looked out on to the front garden.

My new room had been Alf’s old living room and a marble fireplace still stood against one wall.

‘I thought it would be a shame to rip this out. Maybe you could keep it, put candles in it or something,’ said Mum, resting her hand on one of the cream marble corners. ‘It’s obviously as old as the house, but strange… it looks almost new.’ Mum was right. Like everything else in this house the fireplace was covered in dirt and dust from a lifetime of neglect. It was clear that housework had not been one of Alf’s priorities. But this fireplace looked like it had never been used.

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I’ll keep it.’

I loved my new room. I’d already bought some stuff for it, including a multicoloured plastic chandelier, a zebra-print noticeboard and a black and white framed photo of Bob Dylan. The chandelier lay in the corner, waiting to be installed. And I’d need to get a big wardrobe for all my clothes. I looked around the room trying to decide where that would go… One of my favourite pastimes was rooting through charity shops, so I’d accumulated a lot of stuff over the years. I loved owning stuff that other people didn’t have, instead of just buying everything in the high street. Of course I loved shopping there too – I didn’t say no to any kind of shopping! But I always found such great stuff in unexpected places. My top five finds so far had been a rare Thin Lizzy T-shirt, an old typewriter that someone had painted pink, an 80s tartan miniskirt, a vintage microphone and a gorgeous black lace dress. You had to root around to find the really good stuff, so I was proud of my unearthed treasures.

Mum walked around the room, smiling. Unlike me, she was particularly excited about her new life, her fresh start. Dad’s death had been very hard for her. Up until last Christmas all of my dad’s clothes had still hung in his half of the wardrobe, untouched for six years. Then one night Mum bundled them all into black plastic bags. They lay at the foot of her bed for three days before she carried them out to the car and took them to a charity shop on the other side of the city. I was sort of glad to see them go. I knew Mum still loved my dad very much, but I didn’t think it was healthy to be living in a bedroom with all his stuff untouched, as if he was going to walk in and climb into bed any second. He was never going to do that. It was heartbreaking. But it was true.

‘Wait till Des sees this!’ said Mum, lifting up the chandelier so that it dangled in front of our faces. ‘He’ll think we’ve gone mad.’

I ran my fingers across the plastic droplets of the chandelier, collecting grey dust on my fingertip.

I tried to smile, and then walked back towards the door so she wouldn’t see the tears in my eyes. Excited as I was about the new house, moving on was clearly going to be more painful than I’d anticipated.

When I woke up the next morning I felt as if I had scalded the inside of my skull. My head throbbed horribly from the moment I opened my eyelids and saw the cream ceiling of the caravan. But I was glad to be awake when being asleep these days meant having to endure the strange nightmare. I scrunched up my eyes and fiercely massaged the bridge of my nose. It felt like a tight rubber band was digging into the sides of my skull and at intervals someone was pulling it back and letting it snap against my temples.