‘One.’
Mississippi.
‘Two.’
Mississippi.
‘Three.’
Mississippi.
When they swung me the third time, I could hear my heartbeat in my ears. It was louder than Conor counting, louder than my sisters crying, and louder than the cold dark sea crashing on those rocks beneath me. Looking back, I wonder if the fear I felt produced so much adrenaline that it restarted my heart.
Just as they let me go, I opened my eyes.
I was flying again, and I smiled at Rose, Lily and Conor. Because I was alive, and everything was going to be okay. But they did not smile when they saw my eyes open. They stared back in horror as I disappeared over the cliff, and fell down, down, down into the icy-cold black sea.
Forty-eight
31 October 6:40 a.m.
low tide
Everyone you know is both good and bad, it’s part of being human.
Nana used to say that, and I think she was right.
‘Are you okay?’ Trixie asks. ‘I can see you’re lost in those thoughts I know you’d rather forget. But everything will be all right now, you’ll see.’
I don’t know how to respond to that, but I am not okay. I have been hoaxed by my own memories on more than one occasion, but I have never felt this lost to myself. I feel like I just watched a scene from my past, performed with a new backdrop. It looked out of place, left there by someone else, so that the memory seemed all wrong. I’ve tried so hard to exchange it, to give it back. I don’t want to remember what really happened that night. But then I have always found fiction more attractive than real life.
‘They killed me. Rose, Lily and Conor killed me,’ I whisper.
‘Yes. We’ve had this conversation many, many times. But for reasons I don’t understand, you always forget,’ says Trixie.
There are surreal moments after any tragedy when you forget what has happened. The mind often tries to delete files it can’t process. When you remember, it’s as though whatever caused that grief happens to you all over again. And I feel as though I am falling. But I never really forget, I just choose not to remember.
‘If I died that night, why am I still here?’ I ask. ‘How can you see and hear me?’
‘I’m not an expert in the afterlife, but I’m guessing this has something to do with it.’
I look up and see that Trixie has undone the top few buttons of her shirt. I stare at the pink scar down the middle of her chest, almost exactly like my own.
‘I was born with a broken heart too,’ Trixie says with tears in her eyes. ‘They think it might be hereditary, but nobody knew about mine until I was ten. I was at school when it happened. Mrs Milton, my bully of a PE teacher, made us do cross-country on a really hot day. Around the school field and through the woods. After the first lap, I said I didn’t feel well. I tried to tell her that my chest hurt and it felt like I couldn’t breathe. But Mrs Milton is one of those women who only sees what she wants to see, and only hears what she wants to hear. She made me keep going even when I said I felt a bit broken. I didn’t want to let anyone down, so I kept running. I collapsed beneath a huge oak tree, and it was a few minutes before one of the other girls found me. They thought I’d fainted from the heat, but then my heart stopped. The next thing I remember is waking up in the hospital two days later with this scar down my chest, and seeing you sitting at the end of my bed, watching over me. I died that day in the woods, and I think that’s why I can see you. I was only dead for a couple of minutes before an ambulance arrived, but that’s when I saw you for the first time. I’ve been able to see and hear you ever since.’
It still feels as though I am falling, again and again, and nobody is ever going to catch me.
‘Can anyone else see me?’ I ask.
‘No. Except Poppins the dog! She can see and hear you too. I bet she ran out to greet you when you arrived at Seaglass yesterday! People seem to see you just before they die. Like the residents in the care home you visit – I know how much you like to comfort them in their last few moments – but there have been other instances. You visited the hospital once, and sat talking to a little girl who had been in a car accident. Her parents were killed in the crash, she was in a critical condition, and you stayed with her until it was time for her to . . . leave. But seeing children die made you too sad, so maybe that’s why you only visit the elderly these days. We both know that Rose saw you downstairs, briefly, just before she . . . passed away.’ Something like remorse makes itself at home on Trixie’s face. ‘I told my mum when I first started seeing you, and she got super cross about it. She didn’t believe me and said she never wanted to hear me say your name again. That’s why she tipped the Scrabble board on the floor last night, because she was scared that I was playing with you. Sometimes if she heard me talking to you, I would pretend that you were an imaginary friend. She was more comfortable with that than the idea of me talking to her dead sister. The one she threw off a cliff.’