Rosie's ironic smile and easy laugh in a constant mad kaleidoscope he couldn't waken from.
The year after that, he'd visited her grave in the Western Cemetery in St. Andrews, right on the edge of the town. He'd waited till dusk to avoid anyone spotting his face. He'd parked his anonymous clapped-out Ford Escort as near to the gate as he could manage, pulled a tweed cap low over his eyes, turned up his coat collar and skulked into the damp gloom. The problem was, he didn't know exactly where Rosie was buried. He'd only ever seen the pictures of the funeral that the local paper had splashed all over the front page, and all that told him was that it was somewhere up toward the back of the graveyard.
He stole head down among the gravestones, feeling like a freak, wishing he'd brought a torch and then realizing there was no better way to draw attention to himself. A little light leaked in from the streetlamps as they came on, just enough to read most of the inscriptions. Alex had been on the point of giving up when he'd finally come upon it, in a secluded corner right against the wall.
It was a simple black granite block. The letters were incised in gold and still looked as fresh as the day they'd been cut. At first, Alex took refuge in his role as an artist, dealing with what was before him as a purely aesthetic object. In those terms, it satisfied. But he couldn't hide for long from the import of the words he'd been trying to see only as shapes in the stone. "Rosemary Margaret Duff. Born 25 May 1959. Cruelly snatched from us 16 December 1978. A loving daughter and sister lost to us forever. May she rest in peace." Alex remembered the police had set up a collection to pay for the headstone. They must have done well, to afford so lengthy a message, he thought, still trying to avoid engaging with what those words connected to.
The other element it was impossible to ignore was the assortment of floral tributes carefully placed at the foot of the stone. There must have been a dozen bunches and sprays of flowers, several in the squat urns that florists sold for the purpose. The overflow lay on the grass, a potent reminder of how many hearts Rosie Duff still inhabited.
Alex unbuttoned his overcoat and took out the single white rose he'd brought with him. He'd crouched down to place it unobtrusively with the others when he nearly pissed himself. The hand on his shoulder came out of nowhere. The wet grass had absorbed the footsteps and he'd been too engrossed in his own thoughts for his animal instincts to have warned him.
Alex spun round and away from the hand, slipping on the grass and sprawling on his back in a nauseating mimicry of that December night three years before. He cringed, expecting a kick or a blow as whoever had disturbed him realized who he was. He was completely unprepared for a concerned inquiry from a familiar voice addressing him by a nickname only ever used by his closest circle.
"Hey, Gilly, you OK?" Sigmund Malkiewicz extended a hand to help Alex to his feet. "I didn't mean to give you a fright."
"Christ, Ziggy, what else did you think you were going to do, creeping up on me in a dark graveyard?" Alex protested, scrambling upright under his own steam.
"Sorry." He indicated the rose with a jerk of his head. "Nice touch. I could never think what might be appropriate."
"You've been here before?" Alex brushed himself down and turned to face his oldest friend. Ziggy looked ghostly in the dim light, his pale skin seeming to glow from within.
He nodded. "Only on the anniversaries. Never saw you before, though."
Alex shrugged. "My first time. Anything to try and make it go away, you know?"
"I don't think I'll ever manage that."
"Me neither." Without another word, they turned and walked back toward the entrance, each locked into his own bad memories. By unspoken agreement, once they'd left university, they'd avoided speaking about the event that had changed their lives so profoundly. The shadow was always there; but these days it remained unacknowledged between them. Perhaps it had been the avoidance of those conversations without resolution that had allowed their friendship to survive as strongly as it had. They didn't manage to see each other so often now that Ziggy was living the hellish schedule of