“Of course,” he said, his face saying the opposite. “Shall we go in?”
The mourners had left space on the front row. They sat listening as the priest began to talk about a woman she didn’t recognize, a good woman, a kind woman who would be missed by the entire community.
She wondered if she would cry. Some of the others were crying. Alan was wracked with uncontrollable sobs. She looked at him, thinking again about the differences between the two of them. A couple of tutors at college had suggested she might be autistic. Unemotional, analytical, obsessive about her interests, few friends. Seeing his emotions tearing through him and observing them coldly, she felt more detached from humanity than ever.
How much grief was one supposed to feel? What was the right amount? If she threw herself on the floor and cursed God for taking Julia away would that make her a better or worse person in the eyes of everyone there?
There wasn’t the sense of release she had expected from being there. It was as if her subconscious thought this might all be a test, that Julia still might rise up and point in her direction, tell her to get to Keighley to fetch twenty Marlboro and one of her gossip magazines.
When the coffin was carried out at the end of the service she found herself crying. She wasn’t even sure why. Alan gave her a look as he went by. It was hard to tell whether it was approval or disgust. Either way she found herself crying harder.
The wake was held at Julia’s house. She walked there alone, taking her time, falling behind the others, waiting for the crying to stop. She thought how mad she must look to the day-trippers who were walking down Main Street. “I just really love Wuthering Heights,” she said to one couple who wouldn’t stop staring at her as she cried. She tapped her heart. “Gets me right here.”
She giggled through her tears before continuing downhill, leaving their bewildered faces behind. At the bottom of the street there was a house that stood apart from the terraced cottages. Her childhood home.
She stopped outside and gave herself a pep talk. You’re an adult. She’s definitely dead. She can’t hurt you anymore. She can’t lock you in your room. She can’t even keep you out of the parlor anymore. If you want to go in there with muddy boots on and smear filth all along the sofa she can’t do anything about it.
She’d often fantasised as a child about doing that, going in the forbidden room. She always told herself one day she’d be brave enough to do it. To stand up to her in the most pointless way by getting mud on the parlor carpet.
Now she could do it, she didn’t want to. She just wanted to get it over with. Say goodbye to Alan, maybe for the last time. Then go back to her life. Medieval history. A lot less complicated than real life. For one thing, everyone was already dead. For another, people would find it pretty hard to yell at her from inside the pages of a textbook. The past was safe. Everyone in it was long dead.
A couple of people in black suits were smoking outside the front door, talking to each other in low voices. She passed between them and then inside. Alan was standing in the parlor, glass of whisky in his right hand. “She always loved this room,” he told an approving gaggle of mourners. “It was her favorite space. Just like her, gentle and warm.”
She walked past, heading upstairs to her old bedroom. Pushing the door open, she wasn’t surprised to find it crammed with damp cardboard that had an overwhelming smell of must and mildew.
The smell of her childhood. Damp boxes. The room had been filled with boxes when she was there. Julia had just shoved some aside to fit a bed in. That was all she got. A bed and a single thin blanket. No pillow. No sheet. Just the blanket.
In fact, there was the blanket, still in the corner, buried underneath a mountain of stuff.
She casually looked into a couple of the boxes. Alistair MacClean novels, camping equipment that had never been used (all still with tags on), VHS videos with peeling labels. The writing had been crossed out multiple times. She’d recorded so many programs, never getting round to watching any of them.
She shoved some boxes aside so she could perch on the edge of the bed, feeling herself suffocating, needing to take a breath. As she sat down the precarious tower of stuff next to her creaked and then began to fall, landing with a thud on the floor, spilling contents everywhere. The room didn’t look much different than before.
Alan appeared a few seconds later, leaning in the doorway. “What was that noise?”
“Some of the boxes fell over.”
“Oh.” He looked as if he was trying to decide what to say. “She used this room as storage after you went.”
“She used it for storage when I was here.”
“Look at that.”Alan was pointing at something the other side of her.
One of the boxes had come to rest upside down, the contents sticking out onto the floor. Rachel looked, noticing a flash of the same tartan she’d seen just that morning. “What is that?”
“Oh my God,” he said, kneeling down and pulling a tartan blanket. Out of the box “I remember this. Mom left it for me.”
“What?” Rachel said, picking up an envelope from next to the box. “As in our Mom?”
“It was on the doorstep. I was about seven, you would have been what, five? Julia said we could see it after school but when we got back she said she’d made a mistake, that it had gone back to the sender. She never told me she’d kept it. I knew it had come from Mom. I could just tell. What’s that?”
Rachel had the envelope open. “It’s a letter, to the two of us.”
“Who from?”
“It’s from Mom.” Her voice almost broke but she managed to read the letter aloud. “Dear Alan and Rachel. One day you’ll understand why it had to be this way. Please forgive me.” She had to stop, tears blurring her eyes.
Alan snatched the letter from her, reading the rest while she looked over his shoulder. “The blanket is yours Alan. Rachel, the key is from the loch.” He paused. “Of course it’s from a lock. It’s a key. Duh!”
