I looked at Dad’s old photos of his working days, presenting papers at conferences in Zurich. Photos of him with other earnest-looking men in suits. Dad mostly studied and wrote academic papers but sometimes, if called upon in an emergency by Mum, he might attend to a local patient in Carricksheedy or beyond.
He studied the human mind. He told me that my mind worked perfectly but that I was emotionally disconnected. I was his life’s work, he said. I asked him if he could reconnect the emotions and he said that all he and Mum could do was love me and hope that, one day, I would learn to love them back. I cared about them. I didn’t want any harm to come to them. I didn’t like to see them upset. I thought that was love. I kept asking Dad, but he said I shouldn’t worry, that whatever I felt was enough, but I don’t think he understood me. I got anxious sometimes, if there were too many people around, or if I didn’t know answers to questions, or if a noise was too loud. I thought I could recognize love from books and TV, but I remember watching Titanic one Christmas Day and thinking that Jack would have died anyway because he was a third-class passenger and a man, and Rose would most likely have survived because she was rich and it was ‘women and children first’， so what was the point of adding in the love story that wasn’t even factually true. Dad was sobbing.
I didn’t like hugging, or to be touched. But I never stopped wondering about love. Was that my emotional disconnection? I should have asked Dad when he was alive.
Five days after Dad died, a knock on the door came from Ger McCarthy, a neighbour who leased a field behind our barn. I was used to him coming and going up the lane. He was a man of few words and, as Dad used to say, he was ‘a great man for asking no questions and making no small talk’。
‘Sally,’ he said, ‘there’s a wild smell out of that barn of yours. My cattle are all accounted for, but I’m after thinking that a sheep strayed in and got caught in there and died or something. Would you like me to take a look, or is your dad up to it?’
I assured him I could deal with it. He went on his way, whistling tunelessly, his overalls splattered with mud.
When I got out to the barn, the smell from the incinerator barrel made me gag. I wrapped my scarf around my mouth and opened the door. It hadn’t burned properly. I could see the full shape of the body. There was an oily substance around the bottom of the barrel. Flies and maggots swarmed around it. I set the fire going again with rolled-up newspapers from the house and logs from the barn.
I felt disappointed with myself. Dad should have been more specific with his instructions. We burned organic matter regularly. Corpses were organic matter, weren’t they? Maybe crematoriums were hotter. I would look it up in the encyclopaedia later. I poured in the rest of the petrol to get the fire started, hoping that a second burning would do the job. I pulled at my hair to calm myself.
I went to the post office to collect my benefits, and Mrs Sullivan tried to give me Dad’s pension too. I pushed the cash back towards her and she looked at me quizzically and shouted, ‘Your dad will be needing his pension.’
‘He won’t,’ I said, ‘because he died.’ Her eyebrows went up and her mouth opened.
‘Oh my God! You can speak. I never knew. Now, what did you say?’ and I had to repeat that I wouldn’t be needing Dad’s pension any more because he was dead.
She looked behind me at the butcher’s wife. ‘She can speak,’ she said, and the butcher’s wife said, ‘I’m amazed!’
‘I am so sorry,’ Mrs Sullivan continued to shout, and the butcher’s wife reached out and put her hand on my elbow. I flinched and shrugged off her touch.
‘When is the funeral?’ she said. ‘I never saw it on the death notices.’
‘There’s no funeral,’ I said. ‘I cremated him myself.’
‘What do you mean?’ said Mrs Butcher and I told her that I had put him in the incinerator because he had told me to put him out with the bins when he died.
There was a silence, and I was turning to leave when Mrs Butcher said, with a tremor in her voice, ‘How did you know he was dead?’ And then Mrs Sullivan said to Mrs Butcher, ‘I don’t know who to call. The guards or a doctor?’
I turned back to her and said, ‘It’s too late for a doctor, he’s dead. Why would you call the guards?’
‘Sally, when somebody dies, the authorities have to be notified.’
‘But it’s none of their business,’ I protested. They were making me confused.
When I got home, I played the piano for a while. Then I went into the kitchen and made a cup of tea. I took the tea into Dad’s office. The phone began to ring and I turned it off. I looked at the envelope on his laptop with ‘Sally’ written on the front, and ‘to be opened after my death’ in Dad’s shaky handwriting. It didn’t say how long after his death I should open it, and I wondered if it might contain a birthday card. My birthday wasn’t for another nine days, so I was going to wait until then. I would be forty-three years old. I felt like it was going to be a good year.
It was a large envelope and, when I picked it up, I could feel that it was thick and that it contained many pages. Maybe it wasn’t a birthday card. I put it into the pocket of my skirt. I would read it after Murder She Wrote and Judge Judy. I settled myself into the living room on the sofa I used to share with Mum. I looked at Dad’s empty armchair and thought about him for a few minutes.
I was soon distracted by the goings-on in Cabot Cove. This time Jessica Fletcher’s gardener had been up to no good with the rich lawyer’s widow and she killed him when he refused to leave his wife. As usual, Jessica outsmarted the Sheriff in solving the crime. During one of the ad breaks in Judge Judy, I heard a knock on the front door.
I was shocked. Who could it be? Perhaps Dad had ordered something on his computer, though that was unlikely because he hadn’t used it for about a month before he died. I turned up the television loud as the knocking continued. It stopped and I had to rewind the TV because Judge Judy had started again and I’d missed a bit. Then a head appeared at the window to my left. I screamed. But it was only Angela.
4
Dr Angela Caffrey had been Mum’s business partner and took over the practice after Mum died. I had visited the practice many times over the years. I didn’t mind Angela touching me or examining me, because she always explained clearly what was going to happen. And she always made me better. Dad liked her and so did I.
‘Sally! Are you all right? Mrs Sullivan told me Tom has died, is that right?’
I stood awkwardly at the door to Dad’s study in the hall. In the past, Dad always invited Angela into the sitting room and offered her tea, but I didn’t want her to stay long. Angela had other ideas.
‘Shall we go through to the kitchen, and you can tell me all about it?’
I led her down the steps to the kitchen.
‘Oh, you have the place spotless, your mum would be so proud. You know, I haven’t been here for ages.’ She pulled out Dad’s chair from the table and sat down on it. I stood with my back to the range.
‘So, Sally, did your father die?’
‘Yes.’
‘Oh, poor Tom! Was he ill for a long time?’