But still she’d wanted them to carry on, had even shouted, ‘Don’t stop!’
Horror.
My mother is dead.
She can’t be. She was right there in the room with me. She was coming home.
Tamzin thought about the house without Valerie in it, not just as it had been the past few months, waiting for her to return. But forever. The same house she’d grown up in. But different.
Growing up with Valerie had been like being a living doll. Natalia and Alice were tomboys who were always building tree houses that were too high for Tamzin or jumping brooks too wide for her to clear.
So Tamzin had hung out with Valerie. She could still hear her mother’s proud laugh. ‘You should hear my baby fuss about her hair. Everything has to be just so for my pretty princess.’
But that had been then, not now. In the last couple of years, when the pretty princess had been wandering the grey caves of depression, Valerie had done exactly what Tamzin wanted everyone to do. Leave her to find her own way out.
Her gaze fell on the shelf above her computer. Empty. At some time since coming home from the hospital her CDs had been whisked away. James, probably, or one of her sisters, had – as they thought – removed temptation from her path.
Slowly, she straightened her legs, waiting out a storm of pins and needles. Sliding to the edge of the bed she rose, feeling the familiar whiz in her head that told her she hadn’t eaten recently. Opening the wardrobe doors she found her old brown suede coat and felt in the big square pocket at the front. The pocket was just the right size for the CD case. And if it wasn’t there she knew where there were others. Taped beneath the wardrobe, slotted behind the chest of drawers. They waited, like best friends, to be needed.
Back on the bed she drew the quilt around herself and carefully prised the CD case apart with her fingertips, discarding the dark grey inner and the paper inserts with the retouched photos of a moody-looking band. Her counsellor had known that most people like her had a favourite instrument – scissors, knives, shards of plastic. Tamzin had denied she had one, because she liked to keep bits of herself private. What was that phrase?Knowledge is power.
Delicately separating the clear plastic parts she chose the front and began to flex it between her hands, forcing it into a curve with her two thumbs.
It snapped almost immediately with a satisfying crack. It always made her jump, that bit. But she liked it.
She selected the biggest piece. It had broken on the angle to leave a long, knife-sharp diagonal edge. She pulled up her left sleeve and set the broken edge of the plastic against the soft white underside of her arm just below the elbow. Drew the clear plastic slowly across the skin. She winced. The first stroke always sent a strange sensation up the back of her neck. She waited for the beads of blood to appear. Grow.
And then came the burning that made her gasp and curl her toes. The throbbing would come later, so tender that she’d feel shadows glide over the wound. But at least she would feel something. Know that she was still here.
James had dealt with the formalities surrounding the deaths of each of his parents but that hadn’t prepared him for doing the same for Valerie.
An untimely death, he discovered, meant a lot of new stuff to deal with. There would be a post mortem and Valerie had been moved to the mortuary at the district hospital.
Two of his daughters were distraught and one had, quite obviously, retreated into her grey caves. His father-in-law had aged ten years overnight to become a silent old man.
Harold’s doctor had attended him at James’s house and pronounced himself concerned. Harold didn’t have much medication with him and the doctor left a prescription but there was nowhere in Webber’s Cross to fill it. James had to wait for a phone call from the mortician. Arrangements could only be pencilled in until James had a death certificate and the funeral director had a body.
Valerie’s body. The words made him feel sick. Once Valerie’s body had been something that filled him with desire. Now it was the name used to describe the husk left chilling in a drawer.
‘I don’t mind driving to the pharmacy in Wisbech,’ Natalia offered. ‘But I haven’t got my car because I came here in yours last night.’ She swallowed. ‘I suppose I could take Mum’s …’
Valerie’s car waited in the clean expanse of the garage and it was almost an obscenity that such a piece of machinery should stand unused. He’d given it a run periodically while she lay injured but it took too much driving for his taste. And it was so much Val’s car ...
‘Mum’s car isn’t insured for you and neither is mine. There’s Tamzin’s –’
‘For God’s sake, Dad!’ Natalia exploded. ‘Now is not the time to obsess about details. Who gives a crap about insurance, today?’
James kept his voice neutral. ‘I don’t see that you getting prosecuted for driving without insurance will make any of us feel better.’
‘I’ve been driving nine years and never been asked for my insurance details. How many years have you been driving? And have you ever been asked for yours?’
‘It doesn’t matter,’ offered Harold, trying to sound firm. ‘I’m absolutely fine.’
‘It does matter,’ declared Natalia and James, simultaneously.
‘Couldn’t she drive Tamzin’s car on her own car insurance?’ suggested Alice.
‘Oh, I expect that only covers me third party or some other bloody fusspot thing,’ declared Natalia, before James could say that it was insured for any driver, because he’d seen to it.
