Chapter 14
Things That Have Bloody Annoyed Me This Afternoon:
Driver who wouldn’t stop badly singing songs from the radio all the way home. I’m not an expert on Prince songs but I’m fairly sure the lyric isn’t ‘I just want to extradite your kids’.
My sticky fingers after eating a pain au raisin.
When my sleeves rolled up my arms when I was putting my coat on.
My period.
My dad, AJ Thompson. For being bloody perfect. And bloody dead.
Freddie insisted on paying for a car to take me directly home, rather than letting me make my way back across London towards Paddington, and by this point in the day I didn’t have the energy to argue.
I was so confused about everything. About Claudia–Mum, about Rhiannon–Mum, about the money Freddie had saved me from the proceeds of his books and about the Bad Seed who had followed me all the way there.
The same one who’d been living at the back of my school for months and watching me.
The same one who’d been there to kill Kieran Andrews so I didn’t have to.
As Freddie posted me safely in the back seat of the car with the final two books in his Sweetpea series on my lap, he patted the top one and said, ‘If that guy is who I think he is, you’ll find him in there.’
‘Who do you think he is?’ I asked.
‘His name’s River.’
‘Who?’
But he shut the door and we sped into the four o’clock traffic before he could answer.
I didn’t get far with Book Four. There was no sign of anyone called River by the point I stopped reading so I rested my head against my bunched-up jumper and forced myself to sleep.
I didn’t read it at all on the journey back either – I just wanted to sit and stare through the window, to breathe, to think, to just be.
All the money coming from the house. All the money Freddie had specifically saved to ‘set me up’.
What would I do with it all? Give some away to cancer and animal charities, obviously, but the rest of it?
Why would I want a huge house like Mum bought for just me and her?
Why would I need ‘things’ – gold stuff and jewellery, and all that crap I didn’t care about?
I only wanted one thing – a family. A mum, a dad, a brother.
And I already had those, apparently. Just nowhere near me.
Heather was furious when I got back. It was the usual: blah blah blah nearly called the police blah blah blah didn’t know whether to go out searching ditches for your body blah blah blah. I let her blow out her bags before I said, ‘Can I go home now, please?’
‘What?’ she spat, standing in her hallway, hands on hips.
‘The Australians are coming tomorrow so I should probably go to the house and make up beds and get everything ready, shouldn’t I?’
‘Well, yes, you should, but …’
‘Right then. Let’s go.’
‘It’s gone ten o’clock at night, Ivy.’
‘So? Are the roads closed or something?’
She didn’t argue after that. It took me five minutes to pack my things, and another five to pack Maddox’s, and then the family helped load it all into the car and she drove me to my house as requested in total silence.
Without any lights on, it looked like a haunted house as we swung in from the drive but at least the paps had gone away.
As soon as I got inside, I felt better. Maddox hopped around as usual and the smells I knew so well – the lime-scented candles and eucalyptus reed diffusers dotted around the place and the furniture polish and my mum’s perfume – came wafting at me in all the rooms like subtle reassurances all was well.
Heather popped outside to retrieve everything and lock the car, returning with a small vanity case.
‘What’s that?’ I asked.
‘I’m staying with you. To help settle in the Australians.’
She didn’t say any more than that and I didn’t argue. I wanted to tell her I was glad but the words wouldn’t come out.
The fourth book in the Sweetpea series was calling to me again so once I’d done my ablutions I delved back in.
Maddox hopped in briefly to nibble the wallpaper under my dressing table and he jumped up beside me on the bed so we could cuddle in and I could inhale his fluffy, hay-scented back.
He never usually did that – he usually stayed on the floor or stretched out just behind a door like a draft excluder – but it was nice to feel his big warm body beside me as I read. I must have dozed off.
Cute rabbit, came a voice.
I opened my eyes. The book had fallen off the bed and landed on the carpet. Maddox was still there but my bedside light was off even though I couldn’t remember turning it off. A hint of moonlight entered through the curtains, and I saw the outline of someone sitting at my dressing table.
‘What?’ I croaked.
I had a rabbit once. I called him Maddox.
‘That’s what my rabbit’s called.’
The shape’s head nodded.
‘Who are you?’
Who do you think I am?
I sat up on the bed and Maddox hopped down and scurried out through the crack in the door. ‘I don’t know.’
I saw you at the beach. I was on my board.
‘That was you.’
Yeah, he said. I could see his face more clearly then. He stood up and walked towards the window where he was illuminated even more by the full moon. You should go to Australia, you know. Freddie was right.
‘I don’t want to go.’
Why not? You don’t even know the place.
‘It’s full of spiders and snakes and those things with beaks. And you get, like, tarantulas hiding in your door handles and snakes in your boots.’
He laughed. Not all the time. Anyway, I thought you liked animals?
‘I don’t really want to get bitten by one when I’m chucking on an Ugg.’
He laughed again and his curls shivered on his head. He stepped closer towards the bed and he was completely clear to me then. My God, you’re more beautiful than I could have ever imagined, he said. He looked as though he might cry.
That’s when I started crying. I sat up to see him closer. He looked just the way he did in my gold ivy frame on my bedside table. The man with the surfboard and the caramel curls and droplets of water on his skin and a smile that lit up the photo even more than the sun did.
Ahh, don’t cry, honeybun, he said, reaching out but stopping at the last second. I was gonna give you a hug but I can’t touch you.
‘Why not?’ I sniffed.
Cos I’m dead, Ivy. I’m not really here.
‘Why are you in my room then? Why come back to me in my dream?’
Cos I wanted to see my little girl. My beautiful little girl … with her mother’s temper.
I couldn’t believe how clear he looked. Like he was standing right there.
I could see the dimples his trainers were making in my carpet, the scuffs on the white bits, the friendship bracelets falling down his wrist, the light hairs on his arms. He didn’t look dead.
He didn’t even look injured. He sat down on the edge of the bed and I could hear the rustle of the bed clothes; see the imprint in the duvet.
He was there, I swear to God he was there.
I reached out but it was like my arm wasn’t long enough. I felt nothing.
‘You don’t have a scratch on you.’
I know.
‘Did it hurt? When she … killed you?’
Smarted a bit, yeah.
‘Do you ever stop smiling?’
He shrugged, scratching his eyebrow as a dozen or more friendship bracelets skittered down the length of his tanned arm.
‘You’ve got a lot of friends?’ I noted.
I did have, yeah. They all came to the funeral, except Dobbo, the prick. Couldn’t get the time off work. He’s marrying a millionairess. I guess he’s got bigger fish to fry.
‘And you loved surfing?’
Yeah, couldn’t get enough of it.
‘And you liked travelling?’
Totally. Everything you’ve heard is true. I’m a thoroughly decent bloke. You won’t find anyone with a bad word to say about me. He winked.
‘Then why did she kill you?’
Cos she’s a serial killer, Ivy. There’s no rhyme or reason to her.
His hand was on top of the duvet – I put my hand next to it. We’ve got the same thumbs, he noted with delight. I then tried to put my hand on top of his but it went right through. I grabbed again but the same thing happened. I grasped the duvet cover instead.
I’m not really here, Ivy.
‘Will you stay? Please? Just until I figure everything out? Be like my shadow or something. Your mum’s coming here tomorrow, and your stepdad and stepsister. You want to see them, right?’
They wouldn’t understand. But I knew you would.
‘Tell me what to do, like you did at the beach, like you did in football. That was you, right, telling me not to go, telling me to save myself?’
Yeah.
‘I need you.’
You’re stronger than you think.
‘Please.’
I love you, honeybun. Don’t ever forget that, okay?
‘I love you too, Dad,’ I said, once more grabbing out to reach him but it was like my torso was strapped to the headboard – I couldn’t get to him. ‘Daddy, come back. Dad! Please, don’t leave me!’
I’ll never leave you. I’m part of you, remember that.
‘DADDY!’
I woke up with my sheet coiled up around my back and I wriggled myself out of it until I was standing beside the bed.
The stool at the dressing table was empty.
The window too and now the sun was streaming in.
I looked for a sign of his footprints in the carpet, his print on the bed, anything – but there was nothing.
There was a sweet smell I recognised though, a new smell.
Like … warm bananas and toast. Maybe the last remnants of Chloe’s conditioner on my pillow.
It was lingering, but it wasn’t at all unpleasant.
‘IVY!’ came Heather’s shrill cry from downstairs. I checked the clock on my phone – what the fuck was she yelling for at 8:00 a.m.? ‘Come down, please.’
‘What is it?’ I called back.
‘The Australians are here.’