A Dark Matter Episode 46

There was nothing left of Erin Underwood. Dorothy wanted to bundle her emaciated body in her arms and hug her, but she feared the bones might break under the pressure. Leukaemia, surgery, chemo and radiotherapy had left the teenager a human husk, hairless and with skin like rice paper, shrunken into herself like a voodoo doll.

They were in the mortuary at the ERI. Really Erin should’ve been in a hospice or at home for the last stretch, but sometimes there wasn’t time, sometimes people just gave up in front of your eyes.

There were big banks of body fridges here, a phalanx of gurneys laid out like dead soldiers on a battlefield, post-mortem tables and toolkits, plus all the paperwork that went with the NHS.

Archie was sorting that paperwork and swapping small talk with the young mortuary worker in his overalls, tall and skinny with a goofball smile and wild, curly hair. Dorothy imagined this kid in the pub tonight, talking about what he did at work.

It was hard for anyone in this industry to socialise outside of it. It often didn’t go down well when people found out what you did for a living. They either presumed you were morbid or they had their own creepy questions about how it all worked.

Affable

Or they recoiled from conversation completely, refusing to think about mortality. She tried to imagine this affable lad dropping it into conversation as he chatted up someone at the bar.

Jim hadn’t been working in the funeral business when she met him – he was a young lad himself, carefree and enjoying life, only to get sucked into working with the dead after his father had died. But he hadn’t resented it, had found his calling, and so had Dorothy, although she wondered about that now.

She’d allowed her life to be subsumed by her husband’s. Such a common story for her generation, but what do you do once that’s gone? Disconnected from Jim’s influence and with everything she was discovering, she wondered whether she was ever cut out for this in the first place.

What if she’d got together with Isaac instead, who now worked as a movie producer, or Adrian who retired recently from his hotshot legal firm. Or if she hadn’t allowed Jim to talk her back to Scotland, if she’d stayed in a duplex in Pismo Beach with divorced Lenny, surfing in the mornings and barbecues in the evenings.

There were an infinite number of pathways your life could take. How do any of us really know what to do with our lives? And how, after 70 years, do we know whether it was all a waste of time?

She looked at Erin’s face, framed by the body bag. How little time we have. These were the hardest ones, teenagers and kids, the death of potential, the death of possibility.

Erin was younger than Hannah, would never go to university or get a job, never find a husband or wife or go travelling or sleep with a hundred men or women, she would never just sit in a quiet room with a book, staring at the sunlight coming through the window for a moment and realise how lucky she was to be alive.

Dorothy swallowed hard and zipped up the body bag just as her phone rang. She pulled it out. Thomas, the DNA results. “Hi,” she said, her voice catching. “Hello Dorothy, I tried calling Jenny first but she didn’t answer.”

“Jenny?” Dorothy was confused. “What’s this about?”

Thomas cleared his throat. “I’m afraid I have Hannah here, she’s being detained on possible assault charges.”

Dorothy put a hand out to steady herself and touched the chilled arm of Erin Underwood through the body bag, so thin it felt like a twig ready to snap.

Disgraceful

She paced around the reception of St Leonard’s Police Station feeling Jim’s bone in her cardigan pocket, pushing her thumb against the point like it was a tattooing tool.

She imagined inking her body with elaborate Maori shapes and curls, testaments to ancestors, a link to the dead. But what if your dead didn’t deserve their stories told, what if they were disgraceful?

The door to the business part of the station swung open and Thomas held it with a spread palm as Hannah ducked out.

“Thanks,” she said, then spotted Dorothy and came in for a hug.

She smelt of sweat and adrenaline, mingled with her shampoo, apples and something sharper. “Where’s Mum?” she said, stepping back.

Dorothy shook her head. “She’s not answering her phone.”

Thomas stood behind Hannah, waiting to engage.

“What’s the story?” Dorothy said to him. Thomas nodded to Hannah as if to say it was her story to tell. “I was stupid,” she said, shaking her head.

Dorothy rubbed her arm. “I guessed that.”

That brought a smile.

“I went to Longhorn’s house and waited while the police spoke to him. They didn’t arrest him and I kind of flipped. I hit his wife.”

A warning

How little time we have. These were the hardest ones, teenagers and kids, the death of potential

She swallowed and tears came, her shoulders shaking as she wiped at her nose with a tissue. “I don’t know who I am at the moment,” she said between breaths.

Dorothy hugged her again. It was painful seeing her granddaughter like this, it scratched at her heart.

“I’ve spoken to the Longhorns and squared it away,” Thomas said. “Hannah’s only getting a warning this time, but she needs to stay away from them.”

“Of course,” Dorothy said.

“I’m sorry,” Hannah said. Dorothy held her. “It’s stress. This is a hard time for everyone.”

She looked at Thomas. “What did the officers say?”

Thomas shook his head. “There’s just no evidence. The pictures don’t count because of how Hannah got them. They have good cause to say Hannah is pestering them, and they say that’s what Melanie was doing too.”

“It doesn’t seem likely,” Dorothy said. “I know,” Thomas said. “But until we have more to go on, that’s all we can do.”

More tomorrow.

A Dark Matter by Doug Johnstone is published by Orenda Books, as is Black Hearts, his latest in the same series. www.orendabooks.co.uk