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47
October 31, 6:30 a.m.
low tide
It feels like I’m falling.
“What did you say?” I ask Trixie, but she turns her back on me and starts to get changed. She takes off the pink pajamas, neatly folding the cotton fabric before placing them beneath her pillow. I watch as she calmly dresses in a pink cotton shirt and pink dungarees instead.
“Why don’t you sit down on the bed?” she suggests. “You sometimes faint when you remember that you’re dead. I’ve seen you do it a few times now.”
I am dreaming. That’s what thismustbe… a nightmare. Nothing else makes sense. Which means I just have to wake up.
Wake up. Wake up. Wake up.
“You’re not dreaming, Daisy. You’ve been dead for years,” Trixie says, as though she can read my mind. I do sit down on the bed, but only because it feels like I’m falling again.
“I can’t be dead. I have a job. The old people’s home…” I whisper.
“So you always tell me. But how much do they pay you these days?” Trixie asks.
“They don’tpayme… I volunteer there. I—”
“Youvisitthe care home. You don’t volunteer. None of the staff have ever heard of you. And most of the residents have never seen you. You go there because it’s one of the few places you do occasionally feelseen.People seem to see you just before they die—like Rose did a few minutes ago—and you like comforting the residents when they’re scared and alone at the end. It’s sweet really, but it’s not a job. It’s just something you do to convince yourself you’re still alive.” She sighs and looks genuinely sad. “I do love you, Aunty Daisy, and I hate seeing you so upset. Try to remember that night, after the Halloween beach party in 1988.”
My train of thought has derailed. The child has lost her mind.
“What are you talking about?”
“Pleasetry to remember. Concentrate,” she says, sounding impatient. “You were on the rocks, you saw my mum and Conor doing something they shouldn’t have been doing—although if they hadn’t, I guess I wouldn’t exist. Then what happened?”
I remember exactly what happened after that. I ran.
Conor and Lily were both pulling on their clothes and yelling at me, but my heart was thudding so loud in my ears, I couldn’t hear what they were shouting. All I knew was that I never wanted to see either of them ever again.
People should be more careful what they wish for.
I ran along the beach in the dark until I ran straight into Rose. She was holding a bottle of wine, and I noticed it was almost empty.
“There you are!” she said. “I was getting worried, I’ve beenlooking everywhere for you! We all need to leave soon, or the tide will be too far in to cross the causeway. Where did you go?”
“She was with me,” said Conor, out of breath from trying to catch up.
I stared at him, then at Rose. Then at Lily, who had also been running. She was still only wearing a towel over her underwear after swimming in the sea, and her lipstick was a little smudged. The look she gave me made me want to run again.
“I didn’t see anything,” I blurted out.
Rose frowned. “Whatdidn’tyou see, Daisy?”
I could feel my cheeks start to burn. The cheap wine I’d been drinking made my head feel fuzzy. I didn’t knowwhatto say. So I opted to tell the truth.
“I just saw Conor and Lily having sex behind the rocks.”
For a moment, nobody said anything. Then Rose laughed.
“Daisy, you are a terrible liar,” she said.
She didn’t believe me.
