C. Williams - Flowers for the Dead

And then I climb the wooden staircase, the carpet soft under my feet. The stairs still creak in all the right places as I ascend to the first floor, to the two bedrooms and the bathroom. Here, the furniture under the sheets is all of dark wood. It was my grandma’s, and so are the doors. The house still looks so much like it did back then. It even smells like back then, because everywhere, on every available surface, sit Mum’s dried flowers.

Stopping at the top of the stairs, one hand on the bannister, my yellow socks on the blue carpet, I stand and stare. At the door leading to my parents’ bedroom. The room where it happened. I stand and stare and breathe.

Involuntarily, I turn back around. I have to go into town. I need to get some more groceries before the locksmith comes over. Besides, I should also begin investigating. Find out who is still here. Find out where to start.

I collect the sheets I dropped and leave them in the mud room, before I check the cupboards in the kitchen, making a quick shopping list. Then I grab my coat from the mud room and rush back outside. With the grey, bright light in my eyes, I drive back to the main road, allowing it to take me back into the village. The fog has lifted, and I find the short-stay parking lot up on the High Street without any trouble.

I kill the engine, looking through the windshield at the village where I used to play. The narrow stone bridge across the brook is right in front of me. Even sitting inside the car, I can hear the sound of the water rushing down across the stones and into the valley. It used to be our favourite place, this bridge and the brook. It is surrounded by cottages and houses with names, RIVER VIEW and BLYTHE’S COTTAGE and THE OLD DAIRY.

And on the High Street goes, across the bridge up to Cobblestone Snicket, which looks like a house but really is only a façade leading to an old, narrow snicket, an alley with a cute café and an antique shop. Its façade’s been repainted, blue and red now instead of green and yellow. Other than that, it hasn’t changed. Not even the High Street seems to have changed, the small houses of grey stones or white plaster turning grey, the shops and the pub and red parasols packed up for the cold season, sitting amidst gnarled alder trees and bare rowans. I remember my father made jelly from the rowan berries in our garden and put it on the table when we ate game, its taste bitter and tangy.

I realise I missed that taste. I missed the alder trees and the rowans and bright red parasols.

Sitting in the car, I have trouble tearing myself away from the view. Now that I am here, where do I start? Originally, my plan had been to return to the house first, get my bearings, unpack my bags. Go into the bedroom I haven’t entered in nineteen years, see if it would help me remember anything like the nightshade did. But the village is as good a place to start.

Determined, I take a notebook out of the glovebox, a pretty one from Paperchase, and dig into my old handbag, the red leather faded to a pale pink, in search of a pen. I chance upon the USB key in the shape of an astronaut that I bought seven years ago, as well as two dangerously dry chrysanthemums I nicked from the neighbour’s balcony, and an old bright-red lipstick, before I finally find a pen at the very bottom of the bag. Crouching over, I prop the notebook up against the steering wheel and think.

This is where I grew up. This is where I rang the doorbells playing knock, knock, ginger, all up and down the High Street. Everybody knew. Everybody could have done it.

But not everybody was at the crime scene that night. When I came back to my parents’ house, I was not alone. The police were already there, Detective Inspector Walker. He had been called in by my best friends, Anna Bohacz and Teoman Dündar, who had found me. And I have a blurry memory of Jacob Mason’s face, my ex-boyfriend. Quickly, I jot down their names:

Detective Inspector Walker

Anna Bohacz

Teoman Dündar

Jacob Mason

I hesitate as I write Jacob’s name. What was he doing there? We had been friends as children and dated as teenagers, but we had not been on speaking terms for a while at that point.

Tapping the pen against the steering wheel, I keep thinking. Of course, there is also Miss Luca – the school therapist. She wasn’t at the scene, but we went to see her afterwards. We all did, separately of course. Anna, Teo, Jay and me.

I add her name to the list. Then I stare at the pen, the red plastic, a freebie from the London Planetarium. Wasn’t there someone else? There is a shadow at the back of my mind, but whenever I reach for it, it recedes, like a whisper just loud enough that you can hear it, but too quiet to understand what is being said.

Graham would know; I should ask him. There are places I could try visiting, too, retracing my steps of that night: the party at Jacob’s house; the way home from the village through the woods; my parents’ bedroom.

I shiver as I think of the bedroom. As I remember the searing pain, the scent of lavender, of sweat and blood. My parents’ sheets, damp under my bare skin. My dress, torn all the way up to my breastbone.

I can feel my skin go clammy. Quickly, I add a list of places to the piece of paper, my hand shaking so badly I nearly scrawl the letters all over the page.

Detective Inspector Walker

Anna Bohacz

Teoman Dündar

Jacob Mason

Miss Luca, school therapist

Jacob’s house (party)

way home (woods?)

bedroom

*

I’m shaky as I get out of the car. I will have to speak with them. With whoever’s still here. And if there is one person who’ll know, it is Kaitlin Parker.

I walk out of the parking lot, across the bridge and up the High Street, listening to the rush of the water as I hope that Kaitlin’s copy shop’s still there, the one where I interned when we had to get some work experience. Kaitlin was our village gossip. She used to know about all comings and goings in this place. She always wanted to get out of here, but she wouldn’t be the first not to make it.

As I walk, I realise I had forgotten how many flowers there are in the village. They grow in everyone’s front garden, in every window box, even just on the side of the road: roses climbing up the walls of shops and cottages, bushes of marsh orchids growing in front of the Old Dairy, yellow hay rattle and white bogbean peppering the riverbank. Someone must be nursing them, otherwise they would not be in bloom still so late in the year.

I have just passed the bank where I opened my first account when I see it: the copy shop. As I approach, I realise that they have a new sign, bit more modern, but it is still Kaitlin behind the counter – Kaitlin and Anvi.

For a moment, I stop and watch them through the window. It comes as a shock. Kaitlin has grown so fat. Her face is still the same, but it seems distorted, like it has been pushed out into all directions, like dough that’s been rolled out.

Then I see my own self reflected at me in the window and hurry inside.

‘Ey up,’ Kaitlin calls out the moment I walk in. Recognition shoots through me at the familiar greeting, the phrase I have not heard in years. ‘What can I do for you to—’

She doesn’t finish the sentence. I see her small eyes widen as she takes me in. Within moments, her expression turns from naturally friendly to flabbergasted. ‘Hellfire, is that … Linn?’

‘Hello, Kaitlin,’ I say, a little embarrassed. A grin spreads out over her face.

‘Is it really you?’ she says as she comes around the counter. She wears felt. Her brown hair has thinned out. She still blinks far too often, looking at me with her bright-green eyes. ‘Is it really? I can’t believe it. I really can’t. Think I gotta sit down.’ Instead, she grips the counter, staring me up and down unabashedly. ‘Wow! Sorry, I just … Never thought we’d see you again! Now that your parents, God rest their souls …’