they’re both shaking with laughter, along with the ceiling and the kitchen walls. Hundreds of faces in hundreds of photographs regard them curiously. “I don’t see what’s so funny about being dead.” Vita turns to her friend. “Indeed,” Dora agrees, “it rather puts a cramp in one’s ambitions.”
All of a sudden, a sharp ringing, insistent and shrill, sounds through the silent house. Alba glances up at the clock. It’s half past two. The noise will wake everyone. Alba leaps up from the table, dashes to the end of the hallway and picks up the phone.
“Hello?” she hisses into the receiver, “hello?”
“Is that you, Alba?” a voice echoes down the line. “Al, it’s me.”
Alba almost drops the phone. “Lotte?”
Successive waves of panic sweep along Alba’s spine, her hands start to shake. In the few seconds of silence that follow, fear-soaked questions flood Alba’s mind: How does her sister know? Will she tell the whole family? What will everyone say? How can she face them? Will they even want to see her again? And then she wonders how the hell Charlotte knew where to find her, how she got this number, a number even Alba didn’t know? But in the next second, all those questions are forgotten.
“Alba, listen,” Charlotte says. “Mother is dead.”
Chapter Five
My m-m-um.” Alba stumbles over the word, hardly getting it out. “My mum, I don’t, I can’t . . . I have to go home.” This awful fact falls on top of the unbearable one, crushing Alba’s chest until she’s taking little gasps of air, barely able to breathe.
“Oh, love.” Stella looks at Alba, broken again so quickly, her whole world crashing down upon her. But with a gift of foresight such as only the dead and clairvoyant possess, Stella knows Alba must be allowed to feel her grief, must dive headlong into despair, before she can emerge again, her spirit deeper and richer than before. She knows that if she lifts Alba’s pain now, it’ll only postpone her healing. So she can do nothing, except stay so Alba is not alone.
“She’s dead,” Alba says softly. “She killed herself. She finally did it.” She sits in the kitchen doorway and leans her head against the wall. It softens in response, gently holding her.
Stella knows there are no words to say. Nothing will do, or fit, or make anything better at all. The only thing to be done is something she can’t do. She wishes with every fiber of her non-beating heart, that she could hold Alba in her arms now.
“Will you come with me?”
Alba looks up at Stella, who gently shakes her head. “I can’t.”
“Why, why not?”
“I’m sorry, I can’t leave the house, the kitchen . . .”
“Yes, but, are you sure?” Alba feels tears stinging her eyes. “Have you tried?”
Stella nods. “I’m sorry.”
“I can’t go alone,” Alba chokes, “I just can’t . . . ‘
“I know you’re scared,” Stella says softly, “I understand and I’m sorry.”
“No, you don’t.” Alba’s voice is sharp now. “You don’t have any idea, any idea at all. They’re awful. They hate me. They’ve always hated me.”
Quietly Alba begins to cry. Not for the loss of her mother, which hasn’t sunk in yet, but for the fact that she has to face them. And that the one friend she wishes could hold her, can’t.
—
Alba catches the earliest morning train to London, makes the connection to Aldershot and waits outside the station for her sister. Biting her fingernails and rubbing her red eyes, Alba absently observes the chattering commuters swirling around her, their conversations a rainbow of colors. When Charlotte finally screeches along the road Alba sees flashes of silver lightning snapping from her tires just before the car turns the corner.
“Ouch!” Alba glances down at her raw thumb she just bit and tastes blood on her lip.
When Charlotte gets out of the car, they don’t hug. For a tiny, fleeting moment Alba thinks they might, but instead her sister just reaches out a delicate bejeweled and manicured hand to take the small bag Alba grips in hers.
“Is this all you have?” Charlotte is carelessly dressed with the utmost care. Every piece of her outfit has been meticulously put together, precisely planned for maximum effect. And all of it, from the ivory silk shirt to the sky blue jeans and scuffed brown suede boots, cost more than Alba’s entire wardrobe, indeed probably more than all her worldly possessions. This was true even when they were children. As a teenager Charlotte would have her black hair