People stop noticing her. She becomes ghost-like. She doesn’t mind. After all, this is all her fault.
* * *
A month after the funeral, Ella is sitting on the low wall at one edge of the playground, her back against the wire fence. She’s examining her own shadow. The December sun is not shining, exactly, but the clouds today are paper-thin. As she watches, another shadow draws near and intersects with her own, creating a patch between them that is darker than either on its own.
‘Hello, Eleanor.’
She looks up and sees a halo of auburn curls surrounding a serious face. If Ella were to say that Robert Mauchlen looks angelic it would not be entirely complimentary. He looks like one of those Old Testament angels she’s seen in church, who the Almighty has given an especially onerous task – casting out Satan, evicting Adam and Eve, sweeping over Egypt to take the souls of first-born children. More than the average nine-year-old boy, Robert looks like he has something on his mind.
Ella has been expecting this moment. Hoping for it, even. She wants Robert to tell her off. She wants him to shout at her. She wants him to blame her for Rene. Even as fear curdles in her belly, she’s anticipating the relief of punishment. Robert just stands there, as though he’s about to say something. But the words never come. Then his hand shoots out and he places something in her lap. He sits next to her.
Ella can feel her heart pounding. The object in her lap is wrapped in brown paper. She assumes it’s something disgusting. Dog poo, perhaps. Or insects – a collection of earwigs and centipedes. She resists the urge to shrug the parcel onto the ground and pinches the corner between thumb and forefinger. The brown paper opens almost like a flower.
Sitting in the middle is the biggest block of tablet that Ella has ever seen. Of all the sweets that Ella and Rene most treasured – soor plooms, sherbet straws, Berwick cockles – tablet was the most precious. Mrs Mauchlen makes it herself, with a tin of condensed milk and a huge bag of sugar, stirring the pan until her arm aches and the mixture solidifies into something crumbly at the edges, fudgy in the centre. Ella’s mum always gets it wrong, overcooking the mix so it sets hard as toffee.
Ella breaks a piece off and pops it in her mouth. The sugar coats the roof of her mouth, makes the back of her throat tickle, and she finally believes it’s real. She quickly wraps up the precious stuff and shoves it in her cardigan before anybody notices what she’s got. She tries to think of something to say to Robert. He asks a question instead.
‘What do you like to do?’ Robert asks.
Before, Ella would have said that she likes playing with Rene.
‘I like listening to the radio.’
‘Oh?’ Robert’s eyebrows rise. ‘What do you like to listen to?’
Ella thinks. Actually, she doesn’t like the radio that much any more. She doesn’t like the comedians and the storytellers that were always her favourites. They all seem like they’re trying to distract her from how she feels, and she doesn’t want to be distracted.
‘I like the music,’ she says, at last. This is true. Music doesn’t distract her. Music lets her feel what she’s feeling more strongly. To Ella’s surprise, Robert is nodding.
‘Me too.’
‘You do?’
‘I’d like to be a musician, when I grow up.’
‘Don’t you want to do something with books? You could be a librarian. Or, um … the man who delivers books to the library.’
‘Hm.’ Robert sounds sceptical. ‘Maybe. But it would be fun to play music.’
‘Fun?’
‘Aye. Else why would they call it “play”?’
This is the most insightful thing Ella has heard anyone around her age say, by such a large degree, that it strikes her as mystical. She has never thought a job could be like playing before. It seems like a secret hidden in plain sight. For a minute they are silent. Ella feels she shouldn’t waste this opportunity.
‘D’you think it gets easier?’ she asks, very quietly.
Robert runs a hand through his curls, breathes in and out. He looks so adult to Ella, he might as well be one of the teachers.
‘People keep saying that … But I don’t know. Maybe they’re just saying it so that we don’t give up.’
‘Give up what?’
‘On being normal, I guess.’
‘Oh.’ Ella can’t say anything more. She couldn’t have expressed the feeling she has had for the last few weeks better than Robert just has.
‘You’re clever,’ she says at last. When she looks over at him, Robert is blushing furiously. He clears his throat.
‘I should go.’
‘Okay.’
He gets up to leave and walks away without looking back.
‘Thank you!’ Ella blurts out.
Robert turns. ‘What for?’
Ella frowns, realizing she isn’t sure. It just seemed like the right thing to say. Her whole being wants to say thank you to Robert for something bigger and more important than she can understand.
‘For the tablet, of course,’ she says, remembering the little parcel in her cardigan.
Robert hesitates for a second, nods tightly, and disappears into the crowd.
I WAKE FROM THE DREAM.
Or I wake from the memory.
Or I return to the present.
I’m not sure which and it doesn’t really matter. For a moment, I feel nothing. Then there’s pain, spreading like ink on blotting paper. I remember I’m not seven but eighty-seven years old. My back hurts. My arse hurts. My wrists and ankles really hurt. I open my eyes and find that I’m not in my cabin. It must be sometime in the day; I’ve had a siesta in the saloon. Reflections of sunlight ripple over the wooden ceiling. That’s strange …
I turn my head to look and my eyes widen. I’m lying on the floor. The floor is covered in water, newspapers and novels strewn around. The guitar is a little way away. The storm comes back to me. A little way from me, in the bouncy chair, I see a small, crumpled body.
I jump up.
Well, my mind jumps up. My body doesn’t follow. I try again. Like a choked engine, my body stays on the floor. Pain stalls me. I have pills for my back which I could take. But they’re all the way downstairs,
