J.S. Lark - After You Fell

My next amused sound escapes.

The woman on the laptop glances at me.

‘Have you had a letter from the donor’s family yet?’ She’s asked me the question three times before. It makes me smile because she keeps asking, despite denying that she would want to know.

‘No.’ I have seen them.

‘There’s still time.’

Another vibration ripples through my hand. I hold the phone away, looking at the screen. It’s a news headline from the paper that ran Louise’s story and published her obituary. I put the phone back to my ear.

‘… getting together,’ Chloe is saying.

‘Sorry, I didn’t hear.’

‘When are we getting together for our first night out? We can go out for a meal and fatten you up some more.’

It would be the first time we have been out properly in over two years. ‘Okay. When’s good for you?’

‘Next week. Thursday? But shall I come over for lunch tomorrow so you can tell me more about the job you went for?’

‘All right, Thursday. And you are welcome to come for lunch.’ Although I have no idea what I can say about the job.

‘Okay. See you tomorrow, then.’

‘Yes, see you then.’

She ends the call.

I look through the window and smile into the distance.

A crackling announcement from the tannoy system says the train is approaching Didcot.

The man diagonally across from me takes his earphones out. I still can’t work the song out. He stands up and pulls a bag down from the overheard luggage rack, flashing a line of skinny waist and the top of his red designer underwear.

I look down at my phone and touch it to open the news story.

The parents of the woman who fell from a Swindon car park are calling for witnesses .

I touch the link as the train slows.

Louise’s parents have been on a local radio station asking for people to come forward if they saw Louise on the day she died.

The train draws into the station. The music player walks away.

I open Facebook on my phone and look at Robert Dowling’s account. His profile image is a picture of him and his wife. They must have been leaving to do that interview when I saw them. They still care about their daughter. She’s dead and they will not let her go. They’re the parents I dreamed of as a child.

An empty sensation swells inside me, just below my ribs, deep in my stomach. A space for love, that was supposed to have been filled by my parents. It is parent-shaped. Neither Simon nor Dan ever filled that gap. My parents left it empty. Instead of having love to warm me like a radiator, exuding a sense of safety from the inside out, there is a cold vacuum in me. A black hole, pulling at everything, dragging my consciousness back to the things I have missed out on because they went away.

At times in my life that black hole eats me alive.

If I had parents like Louise’s how different would my life have been?

My thumb slides over the screen on my phone, scrolling through happy family pictures.

There are lots of pictures of the blond children.

Why did Louise fall from that car park?

The friend button stares at me in the way Robert Dowling did through the car’s windscreen. I touch it to send a request. I want to help them.

‘How did the interview go?’ Simon hands me a pile of knives and forks.

This time of the evening, when Simon has just walked through the door, the house has the activity of a trout pond at feeding time, there is such a rush to get the tea on the table.

‘I like doing the cutlery.’ Liam grasps the sharp ends and pulls the knives and forks out of my hand.

‘Careful, you’ll cut yourself,’ Mim warns.

‘I can carry the plates.’ Kevin bounces over to take them from Mim. Then braces them on his forearms, to carry them safely.

‘Thank you,’ Mim acknowledges as the pile of china wobbles.

‘The interview, Helen …’ Simon pushes at me.

I glance over with no excuse left to avoid the conversation. ‘It went all right.’

‘I’m not sure you’re ready to go back to work, though. I think you should wait.’ He’s running cold water to fill a plastic jug to put on the table. ‘You don’t need to worry about getting back to work. There’s no hurry.’

I turn to the cupboard to fetch plastic cups for the children. He couldn’t have said anything better. ‘I’m not worried. If I get a job I wouldn’t start until January, for the spring term.’

‘Good. We like you staying here.’

The boys are climbing onto their chairs. They lift their knives and forks upright in an impatient gesture. I reach over and put down their cups. Simon walks around to fill their cups.

‘But I am excited about getting back to work.’ Just busy doing something else. ‘This just wasn’t the right job.’

Simon sits down as I turn to get three glasses.

Mim puts a dish full of steaming cottage pie on the table as I put down our glasses for Simon to fill.

Mim and Simon share a look that communicates something.

The smell of the cheese that has melted into the mashed potato stirs my appetite.

When I sit down, an image of the children from Robert Dowling’s Facebook posts comes into my head. An image of them sitting around a table. It is one of Louise’s memories. She can’t make me hear her words, but she sometimes succeeds in making me see her past.

What’s the conversation at their dinner table tonight? They must all miss Louise, and I know she misses them.

Her sadness pulls at me like the flow of an outgoing tide that drags all the sand out from around my feet, sucking at my legs and trying to pull me out with the tide. I am no-longer hungry.

Emotions and visions are connecting me to Louise with a slowly firming knot – like a lace being pulled as I walk, gradually tightening an accidental knot that’s formed itself in the place where a bow has been. If I want to untie it, I’ll struggle now.

Mim passes Simon the spoon to dish up.

‘Hold up your plate, Helen,’ he says.

I lift the plate so he can fill it. ‘Stop. That’s enough.’

He’s not looking at me but telling Mim about his day at work. I put my plate down. The serving spoon falls against the rim of the pot as she tells him something about her day too. There is nothing to be said about my day. I fill up my fork and blow on the steaming meat and potato to cool it.

I force myself to eat four mouthfuls, then set the knife and fork to rest on the edge of the plate and push the plate away by a couple of centimetres. ‘I’m not hungry tonight. I think I’m going to go to bed.’

Simon looks from Mim to me. ‘Did you do too much today? It was—’

‘I’m fine. I promise. Just tired. Everyone gets tired occasionally.’

A slight frown creases his forehead, making several rows of long thin lines. He looks about ten years younger than he is until the moment he frowns and those wrinkles show.

I take my plate away and scrape the leftovers into the bin. It’s a waste. The lid of the pedal bin falls with a sharp ring. When I turn around Simon is looking at me. I smile, widely, probably overdoing the happy show, walk over, bend down and wrap my arms around his neck. The movement makes the scar on my chest pull but it doesn’t hurt much. ‘I love you,’ I say quietly against his ear; they are words that are just for his ears. He pats my shoulder as I pull away.

‘Goodnight,’ I say to Mim.

I walk around the table and kiss Liam on the top of his head, then Kevin on the top of his head.

My laptop is in the living room. I stop to pick it up so I can take it upstairs. I’m going to bed to look up Robert Dowling’s interview. It will be on the iPlayer Radio.

‘Simon …’ Mim’s voice reaches from the kitchen behind me, with a tone of warning; the tone that comes before the boys get a ‘ten seconds to do something’ countdown.