Flowers for the Dead (21 page)

But it was the future that had really paralysed him.

Keeping Daisy safe. Feeding her properly. Keeping her the happy child she was. Giving Daisy advice on life and love, with no one to temper his views. Mike was scared he wasn’t up to the job. That was his overwhelming feeling as he dragged so hard on that first cigarette that stars had almost danced in front of his eyes and caused a massive coughing fit. It was terror, abject terror that he was going to mess his daughter up.

Of course the fear had never gone. But by the time he had stubbed out that first cigarette he had managed to talk himself down enough to function. Mike had no choice but to get on with life. Not simply because he owed it to Mags and Daisy to do this, but because he wanted to do it. He adored his little girl, and would do his very best to be both parents in one. He would not be perfect, he knew, but it would be his best.

So now he and Daisy sing to
Frozen
together. They dance around the room like she and Mags had done. They play together, and he prides himself on knowing the names of all the games better than he knows the streets of Colchester, a town he was born and bred in.

The problem is that one stupid moment of selfish smoking had kicked his nicotine addiction into overdrive. All the cravings he had not felt when he had quit smoking for Mags seemed now to come at him with a vengeance every time he felt stressed or fearful of the future. Every time he found himself in a potentially dangerous situation at work, he would shake afterwards thinking of how close his daughter had come to being an orphan. Every time he looked at a dead body, part of him imagined himself there, and his daughter left alone. Those were the moments he would reach for the cigarette packet, fingers trembling so hard that the flame on his lighter quaked and shivered.

Mike thinks all this then takes a last drag on his cigarette before mashing the end into the station wall to put it out. He keeps hold of it though, in his cupped hand. He really hates smokers who assume that their fag ends don’t count as litter, or that they somehow magically disappear once they are chucked on the floor. He takes it with him as he heads inside to question the machete-wielding, skunk-growing idiots he has just arrested.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

~ Dahlia ~

Dignity

FIFTEEN YEARS AGO

The amount of time the average person wasted on sleep amazed Adam. It was 3am and he was at his computer, wide awake. Tapping away, clicking on links, working on his plan.

There was little else to occupy the sixteen-year-old’s mind, given that he no longer went to school. Adam, though exceptionally intelligent, had never shone in formal education. Lessons did not suit him. He had never made friends either, though nor had he been picked on. Even the most determined of bullies had given him up as a bad job, growing bored of never getting a reaction. It was like picking on a blank piece of paper. The move seemed the perfect chance to turn his back on academia, and his mother had backed him – he assumed because it gave her more opportunity to keep an eye on him.

Adam was never idle though. Tap, tap, tap, click, click, click, he worked away on his plan. The memory of being caught by Mr Nixon that time, remembering his public shame, imagining the punishment his mother would mete out if she caught him…it all pushed him to think of every conceivable angle before he acted.

Before he actually firmed his ideas up he needed to set certain things in motion, he had quickly realised. So currently he was on Nigella Lawson’s website, noting down a recipe for a tasty but simple sausage casserole.

By mid-afternoon Adam was cooking up a storm, having studied the recipe with his usual attention to detail. He grabbed wine from the wine rack; his mother considered herself a lady who lunched these days, so they always had good stuff in. Set the table in the dining room, getting everything just right. No flowers, though, as he could not bring himself to lie that blatantly.

When his parents returned from a day of watching cricket at nearby Edgbaston, the teenager presented them with the surprise.

His dad laughed in delight. “Well done, Son. What’s all this in aid of?”

Sara eyed him in the same way an eagle might eye a rabbit that has pulled out a big stick – mildly wary, but not threatened.

Adam looked down. “I w-wanted to do something nice for you both. You’ve had such a hard time, losing Gran.”

A moment passed between them all. His father’s head hung sadly; Sara’s too. It was she who broke the spell, brushing away an imaginary piece of fluff from her sleeve and the conversation with it.

“Well, let’s sit,” she said, removing her jacket to reveal a royal blue Karen Millen dress, which clung to her slender body. Karen Millen had become Sara’s favourite shop to buy cheap everyday clothes.

All three of them sat together and took their first mouthfuls, each making pleased noises at the taste. Adam knew his dad really loved the idea of the family all sitting down together for meals, it was something he often spoke of, and loathed it when Adam sneaked up to his room. By doing the meal, the teen had definitely scored Brownie points.

He fought the urge to bolt and run in order to get out of making conversation. Instead, he worked through a mental list of questions he had already prepared for the occasion, forcing the words out. He was delighted to discover that if he asked the right questions all he had to do was sit and pretend to listen to the answers, while his parents wittered on.

Over the following months Adam made it a habit to cook for all of them when his father was around. They thought it was a new hobby of his, and something of a breakthrough because it was a sociable hobby at that.

The first time he presented Sara with a meal for just the two of them, complete with candles and soft music, she glared at him in suspicion.

“Why are you doing this?”

“I want to do something that really shows how much I love you,” he replied. This lie came surprisingly easily to him, he felt no glimmer of guilt, and for the first time he realised that he must take after his mother, if only a little.

They sat opposite each other, their images reflected back in the high sheen of the antique mahogany table – this thanks to the backbreaking work of the cleaner, Sara’s latest luxury. Silence grew, becoming unbearable. Adam slowly and deliberately picked up his knife and fork, and took a mouthful of food. Sara watched him as if she expected the meal to be poisoned.

Sara took a bite herself. For a second Adam saw nothing wrong with the scene, then suddenly she was foaming at the mouth. Jaw locked together in a rictus, her eyes bulging from her head in pain as her whole body went into spasm

He managed to hide his smile by dabbing at his mouth with a napkin, and banished the hallucination he so wished was real.

In truth, he had considered poisoning his mother, but only briefly. The chances of being caught were so high it was not worth the gamble, and he had dismissed it almost the second he had started looking into it. There was little point in getting rid of Sara if it meant Adam wound up languishing in jail.

Sara’s suspicions melted away slowly as time passed. The more Adam cooked, the more she not only relaxed but positively preened. The mother clearly believed that her son was now so deeply in her thrall that he would never consider rebellion, and that he had been reduced to wooing her to keep her happy. Whenever Adam’s innards squirmed at the thought of having to be nice to her, he reminded himself of that: that she thought he was under her control.

He was surprised by how much easier his life became by taking action rather than simply being pliant. Sara still wanted him to do things to her, but not so often, seeming to enjoy him paying her compliments just as much. Advice from his gran on how to treat a lady started to spring to mind. It stuck in his craw, but he reminded himself it was for the greater good as he showered his mother with little gifts and thoughtful actions, as though if she were his first love.

He gave her chocolates and she lit up. “Oh, you’re trying to make me fat,” she giggled. It made Adam feel queasy.

On another day he presented her with some yellow carnations from a corner shop, the message of distain rather amusing him. Sara had looked pathetically pleased.

A few weeks later he bought her a teddy bear in a muted blue, and a little fake patch sewn on, holding up a sign reading ‘I love you’. Vomit inducing, but he had been allowed to spend the whole following day alone in the private park as a reward.

Their days passed in an increasingly cordial truce. “The thicker the layer of cheese, the easier she finds it to swallow,” he muttered to himself in amazement one day. His stutter started to improve too, now that he was taking control of his life.

The anniversary of Ada’s death – then Lisa’s - came and went. So much time had passed that Sara no longer questioned Adam’s affectionate gestures. He was meek, mild, pathetic, and pleasantly eager to please, as she had known he would be, and so had been bending her mind to other, more important matters. She was absorbed with slowly but surely eradicating all traces of Ada and completely renovating the house.

Once the stuffed animals had gone, she had initially simply rearranged the antique furniture, throwing out most of their own as no longer being “fit for purpose”. The finely crocheted antimacassars, the beautifully embroidered tablecloths and cushions, the tapestries, all the lovely things that Ada had made, were unceremoniously removed and shoved into boxes in the attic.

Most of the house had fallen into disuse as Ada had grown older; she had mainly lived in a handful of rooms in the two years before her death. So Sara had dedicated herself to throwing open every room, hiring people to help her clear them out and clean them up.

Ada’s high-backed Windsor chair and one of the sofas had been banished to a sitting room that was never used, on the other side of the house to the lounge. Sara had shared with Adam her eventual dream of painting the ugly, original dark wood panelling in the room a brilliant white and turning it into a cinema room, with a massive plasma television and state of the art speakers everywhere, along with huge, acid coloured beanbags dotted around the floor to lie on.

In Adam’s opinion, his mother was living proof that money could not buy style, but he hid his shivers of revulsion behind smiles of approval. He was definitely becoming more practised in the art of deception.

Everything continued quietly, pleasantly. And at every opportunity Adam sat at his computer, tapping away, clicking on links, working on his plan.

Sara and Graeme did not realise this was the lull before the storm.

***

PRESENT

Laura looks in her purse before leaving work and is delighted to discover two £20 notes. But also slightly confused. She could have sworn they were not there the day before. Thanks to all that cash, she decides to do a big shop for food, as she had been about to run out.

Fresh fruit and veg, bread, tins of beans, a nice bottle of wine, ooh, some cheese… They all go into her trolley. But her mind is on other things.

This is not the first time she has discovered money. What she initially put down to good fortune and bad memory, she is now starting to be very worried about. Why is she so forgetful lately? She seems to be suffering from massive lapses in memory.

Fear shivers through her. She is scared that, just as she is fighting back from the brink and getting her life back on track, she is being pushed over the edge by the strain of everything she has been through. She may be going mad.

Handing over the troubling cash at the checkout, she trudges home with bulging carrier bags, still lost in thought.

Perhaps she should talk to her aunt about it, she thinks as she arrives home. By the time she has put the shopping away, she has dismissed the thought. After all her aunt’s patience over the years, she does not want to disappoint her now. She doesn’t want Aunt Linda thinking that she isn’t making the effort, and is instead making excuses so that she can return to her bad old habits of moping and crying.

Happy with the decision she has made, she sits on the sofa and writes a birthday card for Uncle Kieran. Pops it in her bag so that she will remember to buy a stamp and post it the next day.

In the morning it is gone.

Laura searches everywhere, even under the sofa cushions and behind the curtains, but there is no sign of the birthday card. Where the hell is it? She distinctly remembers buying it, writing it, putting it in her bag.

She did do that, didn’t she? It wasn’t her imagination?

No, no, she was certain.

Fairly certain.

The card is nowhere to be seen. She will have to buy a new one and post it immediately. Grabbing her bag, she rushes off to work, and does just that during her lunch hour.

Two days later she gets a call from Uncle Kieran. He is chuckling down the phone at her, thanking her for sending two cards.

“Memory playing up?” he jokes.

She laughs with him. But when she puts the phone down she is shaking. She hadn’t posted both cards. Had she?

Oh, she is losing her mind just as she thought she was finally getting it back from grief.

Galvanised by fear for her sanity, Laura goes to see her aunt that very night. She tells her everything.

“This wasn’t the first thing that’s happened,” she explains. “I’ll go to do the ironing and realise it’s been done. I’ll think I’ve run out of food when I haven’t. Sometimes in the mornings I’ll find I’ve put toothpaste on my brush and laid it out ready and waiting for myself – but I have no recollection of doing any of these things. Sometimes the flat seems tidier too. It’s…freaky.”

Her aunt listens with a concerned look on her face, and takes Laura’s hand at the end of it.

“Laura, you have been under a massive strain these last few years. What you’ve been through is unimaginable. I know that things have improved on the surface since we had that big conversation three months back, but, well, I can see that making such an effort is a big strain on you too. Perhaps some counselling might help?”

“So you agree, I’m losing the plot.”

“I think things may have been brought to a head by the effort you’re making to move on from the accident.” Aunt Laura squeezes her hand reassuringly. “Don’t fret, you’re doing great. You’re the most sane person I know, despite everything you have been through.”

She hesitates for a moment before continuing. “Counselling might be a solution though. I’ve got a theory…I think you’re doing these things in your sleep.”

A smirk flashes across Laura’s lips but her aunt presses on. “Listen, when people are stressed out they do weird stuff, including sleep walking. I remember your mum going through a sleep-walking phase when she was doing the exams for her degree.”

“Really!”

“Uh-huh.  We shared a room, and I’d wake up to find her standing staring at me. Once she was even hurling her dressing gown round her head like a lasso – scared me witless, I can tell you.”

Huh, sleepwalking makes sort of sense. A lot of things did seem to happen in the night.

“But sometimes it’s during the day…” Laura muses out loud.

“If you’re not getting proper sleep you’re bound to be a bit forgetful,” Aunt Linda soothes. “Anyway, let’s get onto a more cheerful subject: what time shall we expect you here on Christmas Day? You’re welcome to stay here Christmas Eve, that way you can wake up with us and spend the whole day together.”