Voices in Stone - Emily Diamand Page 0,53

beside me, but with no life in front of her. All her wonderful potential ended in a full stop.” Cally drew back her hand, and paused for another long moment. “I’m glad she was there in the mortuary, looking after you. Because seeing her that way, it hurt so much, and yet I finally… understood. I’d been marking every milestone she’d missed – vaccinations, birthdays, the day she should have started school. But she’s not doing any of those things, not anywhere, and I realised that…” A tear wound its way from her eye. “I have to let her go. I have to accept that three precious years was all I got.”

Isis sat motionless, fast heartbeats whirling blood and thoughts around her head. All this time she’d thought that Cally seeing Angel would heal their family, bring them back together again, but in a few sentences Cally had set that on its head. And her mum was right, in a way Isis couldn’t quite face, because Angel was stuck, a perpetual three-year-old. Isis had a sudden vision of herself as an old woman, with a ghost-baby Angel still drifting around.

Angel herself seemed unconcerned however. She climbed in between the front seats, and placed a small, invisible hand on her mother’s face. Cally shivered, but didn’t move, and Angel leaned to whisper into Cally’s ear, something Isis couldn’t hear. Then Angel clambered back again, the gear stick passing straight through her body.

Isis stared questioningly at her, but Angel only looked smug. “Mummy got a little fish,” she said, sitting in the back seat.

Cally smiled to herself, lost in thoughts Isis couldn’t reach. Then she shook her head a little, and turned to Isis.

“Promise me, no more trying to impress people with seances?”

“I wasn’t—” She stopped. What had any of them been doing, if not trying to impress? Isis, Jess, Mandeville; all of them, for their own different reasons.

“Promise?” asked Cally. Isis could see the pain etched on her mum’s face, and yet she still couldn’t bring herself to nod. Cally folded her arms, and set her face to the front. “We’ll wait then. We aren’t leaving the car until you do.”

Isis glanced at Angel while they sat in their stand-off. Cally was right. Angel was exactly as she had been the day she died. She’d never get older or grow up, never do any of the things Cally had wanted for her.

So why was she still here? Mandeville had hinted once that Angel had stayed to protect Isis…

Angel grinned. “Look, I can do a roly-poly!” She curled herself into a crab shape and tumbled along the back seat.

A strange protector.

“Mummy got a little fish,” repeated Angel, sitting up in her crab position. “He see me any time I want. He do roly-polies too.” Angel rolled back along the seat.

What was she talking about? Isis frowned, but Angel only put her finger to her lips. “It Mummy’s secret,” and she began her song about fishes again. “Little fishy swimming round…”

“I’m waiting,” said Cally, arms folded, not looking at Isis. “Do you promise?”

Isis pressed her hands against her eyes. There wasn’t a way out. When she told the truth, people wouldn’t or couldn’t believe. But if she said she’d made everything up, she seemed like the worst kind of attention-seeker. Why had she let Jess drag her further and further into doing seances? Why had she listened to Mandeville’s threats and wheedling?

“I know seeing Angel in the hospital must have been a shock for you,” said Cally.

“It wasn’t a shock.”

“But I don’t want you getting involved with things you don’t understand Isis. Even just pretending. And we have other things to focus on now.” She twisted in her seat. “Do you remember I was very tired in the summer?”

Isis shook her head. Behind them Angel carried on with her song. “Mummy’s little fishy, swimming up and down…”

“I thought at first it was just stress,” said Cally, “but then I realised that I’d… And, well, then that night happened before I got a chance to say, and afterwards I wasn’t even speaking to Gil so I didn’t know how to—”

“Just tell me!”

Cally looked at her. “I’m pregnant.”

“… and down and up, inside Mummy’s tummy.”

Chapter Twenty-one

Gray

At least thirty kids were crammed into the welfare office, using every chair and sitting all over the floor.

Jayden and Gav had insisted on going there; they were both freaking out that they were going to die. Gav had his sleeve rolled up and was pointing at what he claimed