C. Williams - Flowers for the Dead

But I cannot ask Oliver. I can’t ask him anything ever again.

The thought makes me choke up.

Turning into the hollow and driving down towards the house, I try to calm down, breathing as regularly as possible. Nobody in sight, not even a cat. It would have been nice to have a cat. Our neighbours, on the second flat where Oliver and I lived, they had one. She used to stop by at ours a lot, that beautiful cat, black body and white paws. We moved out shortly after she died.

Unloading the bags from the boot, mouth twitching, I think about the cat and how she used to love the treats I’d bake specifically for her. I was the only one who could feed her straight from the palm of my hand. I do my best to think of the cat and not of Oliver. About how he could help me if he was here. About how we would be playing karaoke tonight, if it was a regular Sunday. About the karaoke machine he had organised for our wedding. It came as such a surprise to me, me , who had dedicated almost a year to planning this wedding, sitting on the couch in the evenings as we watched TV and making our own confetti.

It was a fairly small affair, in that comfy pub in Shoreditch. It was one of my good phases, where I felt relatively stable. Relatively alive. And we didn’t need a crowd. All we needed was to sing ‘One Way or Another’ and ‘Every Breath You Take’ together and dance like silly people having a stroke. Or ‘Build Me Up Buttercup’. There were buttercups in the decorations and in my bouquet. Like our fish. The one I accidentally killed.

I lick my lips, shifting the grocery bags around. The wood creaks under my feet as I walk up the stairs to the porch. A bird is rustling through the bushes somewhere, or a rabbit. The chimes are singing in the gentle breeze.

I freeze.

Then I turn to the side.

There they are. Moving gently in the cold wind, three silver pipes on worn strings.

The chimes are back.

And even as I listen to their sounds, standing rooted to the cold white ground, I hear another sound: the engine of a car.

It’s coming towards me.

This time, when I hear her car passing along the road, I get up. When it comes into sight, I am already at the sitting-room window, peeking out through the white curtains, my desk and work abandoned.

As she drives past, I stand there, biting my lip. I know I must finish this translation by tomorrow. It is tiring, translating a government document, but it pays well. And they want their deadlines kept. It is too lucrative keeping them happy not to. At least until I hear back from the ESA.

So I turn back to the desk with a sigh. The concert is still playing over the stereo (I still use a stereo; why not? It works. Who has time to put all their CDs onto their computer, anyway?), the Swedish Radio Choir performing the Verdi Requiem . It calms me, and I try and sing along and wonder whether I could still sing properly, if I joined another choir. If I could remember the lullaby my grandmother sang to me the few times I saw her, not nearly often enough to understand why she was so gentle when she sang yet so brutal when she spoke.

I have just sat down again when I hear it:

Another car. As if following the first. As if following her.

Immediately, I am back at the window. Furrowing my brow, I stare outside. There. Up the hill it comes, a dark-green Jeep, the tyres all muddy. It almost disappears between the trees, between the evergreen of the pines and the slim trunks of the birches.

They might have turned down this road by accident. They might reverse once they have realised their mistake.

I open the window and listen to the Jeep’s engine. It continues along the road. I hear it slow down. Brake.

But it does not stop. It does not turn back. Even as the engine quietens, I hear the gravel churn. Hear it turn into her driveway.

Glancing back at my computer, I hesitate. Then I slink into the hallway. Put on my boots, pull my jacket on top of my threadbare dress and reach for the rifle by the coat rack.

Then I am out of the door.

It is a muddy Jeep coming down my driveway. I’m alone on the steps of the front porch. The handles of the shopping bags are cutting into my skin. The chimes are singing. For a moment, I think about running.

Somebody returned the chimes. Were they already here when I left for the supermarket in the morning? It’s hard to remember. Maybe I overlooked them. I could have.

The Jeep comes to a stop on the side of the driveway. The soles of my feet are curling in on themselves, pain shooting up my calves.

I see the door open. Two legs swing out. They are thin, well dressed in a pair of Paul Smith trousers and shiny riding boots. A body emerges from the car. It’s a woman in a fine suit, wearing pearl earrings and a tasteful necklace, hair freshly cut, large sunglasses sitting on top of her head. She looks incredibly put together. Like a first lady. Like a prime minister. Only her face seems very thin.

That’s how I recognise her. ‘Miss Luca?’ I say.

Her voice is exactly as I remember it, full of professional concern even when exchanging the most casual of greetings as she walks up to me. ‘Ey up, Ms Wilson!’

Her lipstick is bright in the hollow. I remember clearly that she never used to wear makeup. Even as a teenager, I admired that about her. Now, her face is perfectly painted. The tone of her lipstick. Her foundation, clearly expensive, so carefully applied. My last name is Dawson now, but I don’t correct her. ‘So it is you! When Kaitlin told me you were in town, I simply could not believe it.’

She comes to a halt in front of me. Her eyes are running all over my body, just like Kaitlin’s and Anvi’s. She is much better at hiding her shock, but it is obvious that she is just as surprised as the two of them to see me standing in front of her. When she looks at me like that, it feels like my body is taking up more space than it should.

‘I hope you don’t mind my dropping by unannounced like this. I found your note when I came home, and I was just on my way to go for a walk in the woods anyway,’ she explains. ‘So I thought: why don’t you stop by her house and see for yourself, Antonia. See about this note. See if what Kaitlin says is actually true. To be fair, though, I have never diagnosed her with mythomania.’

We both laugh at her joke, awkwardly. ‘It is me,’ I say, shifting the grocery bags around. ‘In the flesh.’

‘So it is,’ she says, still staring at my face. ‘I could not quite believe it, you know. It really is so unexpected. And your note, too.’

I guess I should have been prepared for this. They cannot have expected ever to see me again. ‘I hope you don’t mind.’

‘Not at all,’ Miss Luca hurries to say. ‘I come by here a lot, to go out with the dog, you know.’ She points at the Jeep. I don’t see a dog. ‘Your parents were always so friendly. We had tea together sometimes, when I came back from my walks. I am so sorry for your loss. We all miss them very greatly. We were sad not to see you at the funeral.’

She is looking at me with that smile and that probing expression of hers. Making me as speechless as I was all those years ago, when I went to see her after that night, just for a few sessions. There wasn’t any time for more: Oliver and I moved away almost instantly. I had to get out of here, and he already had a place at university to train as a nurse.

Miss Luca’s eyes are still just as sharp as back then. As if her mind is going a hundred miles a minute behind the disbelieving expression she is trying to hide under a friendly smile. ‘How have you been, then?’ she prompts. ‘I cannot believe you are back, really, Ms Wilson. It is such a pleasure to see you again!’