Remember that wrongs are sometimes right.
And if you fear you’re all alone,
You’ll always have me and a place to call home.
Hush, little baby, don’t you cry,
Sometimes we live, sometimes we die.’
I find myself looking at Rose in the present. If she feels me staring at her, she doesn’t show it. Instead she continues to watch her younger self on the screen. Conor and Lily are staring at her now too. Rose was always changing the words of nursery rhymes when we were growing up – swapping the real lyrics for something a shade darker. Not unlike the poems in Nana’s children’s books. Or the chalk poem written on the kitchen wall tonight.
‘Who is that?’ asks Trixie, and we all look back at the television, just in time to see fourteen-year-old Conor perform his part in the play. She’s right to wonder; he is almost unrecognizable from the man he grew into. Teenage Conor stands on the upturned boat and raps about the freedom of the press, dressed as the Karate Kid – one of our favourite films that year. He tries to balance on one leg, whilst doing a rather comical impression of the crane kick.
Then it is my turn. My first and – because of what happened – last speaking role in the Darker family play. Nine-year-old me looks terrified as she steps onto the old blue boat, and stares out at the audience of four adults and several toys. I clench my fists and squeeze my eyes closed, as I try to overcome my stage fright and remember the lines that my sisters had written for me. I remember that the Gizmo costume was very itchy, and made me want to sneeze. I caught Nana’s eye, and she smiled at me. You can do it, she mouthed. Her belief in me outweighed my inability to believe in myself.
‘Daughters are like gremlins, and there are three rules you mustn’t break,’ I say.
‘One: keep them out of bright light . . .’
Conor and Lily shine torches at me, and Rose throws a white sheet over my head, which was always part of the plan. The sheet had holes cut into it, so that I could still see.
‘Two: never feed them after midnight,’ I say.
Lily throws an egg at me, which was not what we had rehearsed, but everyone laughed so I carried on.
‘Three: do not get them wet . . .’
Lily throws a bucket of cold water over me, which was also not part of the plan, and I struggle to remember my final line. I watch myself spin around, revealing a scary hand-drawn face on the back of the white sheet I was beneath.
‘Or they’ll turn into ghosts!’
There is a slight pause before all of Nana’s clocks start to ring and ding and chime in the past. It must have been midday when we gave our little performance, because they seem to go on forever. She had a new one that year that looked like an owl. Its eyes turned as it ticked, as though it was watching us.
When the clocks stop, Rose – the ghostbuster – aims her cardboard proton pack in my direction, shooting a hidden can of squirty cream. When the show is over, we all hold hands and take a bow. I watch as our mother congratulates us and hands me a towel – so even she knew I was going to get wet – then I disappear inside the house.
The static camera picks up some of what the adults are saying, but I have to lean a little closer to the TV in order to hear. Conor’s dad and our dad seem to be fighting for Nancy’s attention. Bradley Kennedy was completely in love with my mother by then, and anyone who saw them together knew she felt the same way. My dad – who’d had more girlfriends than any of us could keep track of – didn’t seem to like my mother having a ‘friend’ of her own, even though they’d been divorced for years.
‘I have to leave first thing, my orchestra is playing in Paris next week,’ Dad boasted.
‘That sounds wonderful,’ Mr Kennedy replied, sounding genuinely pleased that my dad was leaving.
‘Bradley has written a book about grief and gardening,’ Nancy said to my dad, as though it was some sort of competition.
Dad shrugged. ‘Sounds . . . delightful.’
‘I think so. Nana is going to put him in touch with her agent,’ my mother replied. ‘I’ve read it, and the writing is beautiful. The book deserves to get noticed,’ she added, beaming with pride as though she had written it herself. But the smiles didn’t last for long.
There is a scream from inside Seaglass on the TV, which makes everyone here, then and now, jump. The scream belonged to Lily. She had just found me lying on the floor at the bottom of the stairs, still dressed as Gizmo the gremlin, and I wasn’t breathing.
Twenty-eight