The back door is open and inside someone screams. I don’t want to be anywhere near whatever made that noise, but my feet are already carrying me in through the door. The air is thick as I move through the kitchen and into the hall.
A woman is kneeling on the floor, an old telephone at her side. The cord is wrapped around her arm and the handset rests against her knee where she dropped it.
It’s Nanny Bet. She’s about the same age as Mum is now.
She’s pale and trembling, wide eyes staring blankly. I approach her. A voice is coming from the receiver.
‘My poet.’ The voice again, lower this time and softer than before, like a breeze blowing through dry leaves. The shadow-woman is there, kneeling by Nanny Bet. Darkness billows to fill the hallway.
Then I am alone again. Voices come from the living room and Nanny Bet is sitting on the sofa. She’s the same age, but her skin is grey. Her hair hangs lank and greasy around her face. A shadow sits beside her. Nanny Bet stares unblinking and I follow her gaze and see Granda Frank.
He died long before I was born, and this is like a photo come to life. He looks so like Dad. His hair is messy and he’s unshaven. He punches the arm of the chair. ‘I’m sorry, Betty. I’m so sorry.’
Nanny Bet points at the stairs where a young Dad is clutching the bannisters.
‘He sees the visions now, Frank. He’s eight years old and he sees death everywhere because she died in your fucking fight.’
‘My fight? It’sourfight, Betty.’
Her lip curls. ‘What have you done to us? What’re we supposed to do now?’
My granda buries his face in his hands.
‘The duty.’ The shadow-woman rises from the sofa and the darkness sweeps over me, erasing the ghosts of Nanny Bet and Granda Frank. They’re replaced by Dad, a few years older, maybe thirteen or fourteen.
He opens the living-room door and calls up the stairs. ‘Daddy, Mummy says come down for dinner.’
No reply.
‘Daddy! Your chips will get cold!’
‘He’s probably sleeping,’ Nanny Bet calls out from the kitchen. ‘Go wake him, son.’
Dad tuts and walks up the stairs. I watch Nanny Bet come into the room, rubbing her temple.
‘Mummy!’ Dad’s voice is shrill.
Nanny Bet runs up the stairs and I follow.
Dad is standing outside what is now the spare room. The room I sleep in. But here it has posters on the wall of some eighties band I don’t know the name of, a dressing table and a yellow bedspread. An empty vodka bottle lies on the floor.
Brigid’s room?
Before I turn my head, I see the outline of a man’s feet turning slowly in mid-air.
‘The price.’
The shadow-woman leans forward, towering over me, and again my eyes are dazzled by a burst of light.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
‘And now you know.’
The words pull me from the vision and I find myself sitting on a garden chair, bound to it by writhing bands of shadow. Meg stands in front of me, almost unrecognisable. Her hair is streaked with blood, her chin squared, cheekbones sharper.
Nanny Bet is bound to a chair opposite me, struggling against the same dark binds.
I close my eyes and I think of Brigid. My aunt. My dad’s sister. A gravestone with a ‘B’ on it beside Granda Frank’s.
