Her words do nothing to blunt my anger, instead they sharpen it into a more dangerous shape, one which will leave a mark. But I bite my tongue, as always, keen to keep the peace. My sisters won’t talk to me because of what happened with Conor a few years ago. It seems so unfair, given all the things they did when I was a child. But saying how I really feel about it all now isn’t going to help fix what got broken then, and there are bigger things to worry about.
Why would someone want us to watch that home movie?
I look at my sisters tonight and see us all exactly the same way we were then. They might be taller, older, have a few more wrinkles, but we are all just children masquerading as the adults we thought we should become. My personality is very similar now to what it was when I was a child. I’m still shy, and quiet, and happiest at home. Rose and Lily haven’t changed very much either; none of us have, not really. There are pockets of sadness in all of our lives, and mine are deep. The diagnosis of my broken heart felt like a death sentence, and five is awfully young to find out that you won’t live forever.
They say that your life flashes before your eyes when you die, so you should make it a life worth watching. But, as someone who has died several times, I don’t think that is true. For me, every time my heart stopped beating, it felt like a delayed train journey through the cruellest moments of my life. The memories didn’t flash, they were slow and painful. It was like travelling through time and space to somewhere dark and cold, to relive my worst mistakes in technicolour misery. Sometimes I could still hear people around me, when my heart stopped. I swear I heard doctors or nurses saying that I was dead on more than one occasion. My parents didn’t believe me back then, but neurologists have since confirmed that the human brain is still active for a period of time after death, and I promise you that it is true. Dead people can hear you, so be careful what you say. I hope it wasn’t too awful for Nana. Or my dad. I hope neither of them heard something they shouldn’t have.
We take death almost as for granted as life. We think we know what to expect because we’ve read a chapter of a book or watched a scene in a film. We no longer seem capable of separating fiction from facts. There is so much that we don’t know we don’t know. It scares me. When you’ve died as often as I have, it’s hard not to become a little preoccupied with it all, and seeing other people take their good health for granted makes me so angry. None of them understand what it’s like for me. How could they? I’m grateful to still be here, but death has been part of my life for so long, I worry about it all of the time. Our future is just our past in the making.
‘I don’t get it,’ says Conor. ‘Who left this tape on the kitchen table with the words WATCH ME stuck to the front? It must have been one of us, so who was it?’
Nobody answers him.
Lily lights another cigarette before tossing the match and a log on the fire, which crackles, and spits and choreographs a hundred eerie shadows to dance across the room. Then she takes a long drag before slowly blowing smoke from her pink lips.
‘Do you ever think about anyone except yourself?’ Rose says, staring at her.
‘What does that mean?’ Lily asks, sitting up and staring back.
‘Rose,’ says Nancy, trying to prevent storm damage when the rest of us can see that the roof has already blown right off. The home movie has brought back some unhappy memories for everyone. Maybe that’s why someone thought we should watch it. When Lily loses her temper, she’s the only one who can find it again, but it’s unlike Rose to lose control of her emotions.
‘Honestly, you are the most selfish and spoilt person I’ve ever had the misfortune to know. I’d actually forgotten how cruel you used to be to Daisy when we were kids. The poem in the kitchen, and everything Dad said about you last night is true,’ Rose continues, while we all wait for Lily to react. I fully expect her next words to be soaked in sarcasm, her preferred form of self-defence. I confess I do enjoy it more than I should when my older sisters squabble. It always felt like them against me when we were younger, and them against one another is much more fun. All families have their own private routines and secret language, and all families know how to hurt each other.
‘I don’t care what Dad thought about me, and I don’t care what you think either. Why don’t you get a life and stop judging mine,’ Lily says.
‘I’d gladly not watch the car crash that is your life any longer, it’s embarrassing. Maybe with Nana and Dad gone, we don’t need to keep playing happy families. Perhaps we can all just go our own separate ways for good when the tide goes out?’