A Dark Matter Episode 47

Hannah released herself from Dorothy’s embrace and straightened her collar, put her tissue away. Thomas raised his hand and Dorothy saw a piece of typed paper. His look confirmed what it was.

“The results,” she said.

“I was about to call you anyway.” “And?”

“It’s not a match,” Thomas said, handing the paper over. “There’s no DNA connection between Jim and the Lawrence girl.”

Dorothy stared at the paper. Technical phrases, a line graph, some numbers, it might as well be hieroglyphs.

Hannah looked from Dorothy to Thomas. “What does that mean?”

Thomas deferred to Dorothy. He always let her speak, such a small thing but an important one.

The paper quivered in her hand.

“I don’t know,” she said.

JENNY

They leaned against the wall, body language like teenagers after a nervous first date. She was reminded of that, being walked home from pubs by boys while still at school, snogging their faces off out of sight of the house.

Not that she would have cared what Dorothy and Jim thought back then, grunge nihilist that she was.

Stumbling through the door in the early hours, sometimes staggering into the viewing rooms to chat to one of the bodies about the meaning of life, once or twice going through to the workshop and climbing into an empty coffin just to see what it was like. And once, really hammered, climbing on to a tray of the body fridge and sliding herself in.

She was drunk enough now, energised by the booze and the familiarity of easy conversation with her ex-husband. It was painful being reminded of the best friend she’d lost when they split. Husbands and lovers come and go, but she and Craig were friends back then, comfortable knowledge built up between them, and he threw that away.

She tried to remind herself of that as he stood here smiling. It was his fault. But she found herself softening as they shared a joke about a slouching emo kid passing by, then an elderly man in red cords, beige jacket and fedora.

“This is me,” she said, angling her head towards the house over the wall. “It is,” he said, swaying a little. She wondered how drunk he was.

Wood pigeons cooed at each other in the pine tree looming over the wall, flapping wings as they flitted from branch to branch, one following the other as they moved in a coy dance.

“Will you get in trouble?” she said. He frowned. “From who?” “Fiona.”

“For what?”

Jenny splayed her hands out. “For getting drunk with your ex-wife.”

Craig smiled and shook his head. “She’ll understand.”

Jenny raised her eyebrows. “Must be a change for you, having a nice doormat to get back to.”

He gave her a look as if to say, come on. “That’s not fair.”

“Hey, I don’t know anything about your current marriage and I want to keep it that way.”

“Fine by me.”

The wood pigeons flew out of the tree and on to the wall above them, one strutting after the other, the female flapping, edging away in small bursts, keeping a short distance between herself and the male bird.

Schrödinger appeared at the end of the wall having leapt up from the other side. He hunkered down and began stalking the birds, but they spotted him and fluttered into the top of the tree, making the uppermost branches sway. Schrödinger skulked along the wall then disappeared back into the garden.

“That your cat?”

“Mum’s. It’s called Schrödinger, Hannah’s idea.”

“She’s some girl.”

“She is.”

Jenny closed her eyes for a moment longer than a blink, felt her head spin.“i’d better go inside,” she said eventually. “Find out how the dead are doing.”

Craig leaned his weight into the wall. “Are you really a funeral director now?” “Someone has to help Mum.” “You’re a good daughter.” “I don’t know about that.”

“And a really good mum.”

Jenny laughed. “How drunk are you?” Craig shifted his weight from one foot to the other, that old nervous energy still trilling through his muscles. “I’m just trying to imagine you as one of the coffin bearers. Have you been working out?”

He reached out and pretended to squeeze her bicep. She thought about coffins, then her dad on the funeral pyre, his flesh melting away and his body fluids evaporating, the meat of him dissolving into ash and dust and blown away. She felt a knot in her belly then she was crying, covering her face with her hands, ashamed.

“Hey,” Craig said.

Dizzy

He wrapped his arms around her and she pushed into his shoulder, could smell the scent he still wore after all these years, and the familiar smell of his sweat underneath.

The combination made her dizzy as she sobbed and imagined her tears falling on stony ground, being evaporated by sunshine into the clouds to mingle with her dad’s atoms, combined forever in the water cycle, keeping plants and animals alive, keeping ocean currents flowing, passing through the bodies of whales and sharks and giant squids.

She lifted her head away from his shoulder, eyes still closed, and felt the stubble of his chin and his lips against hers, and she pressed against him, suddenly years younger, and he kissed her back.

She pushed her tongue into his mouth and leaned her body into his and tasted her own tears which had slipped down her cheek and she was 20 years old and had her whole life ahead of her and she was kissing a boy and her dad was still alive and she had nothing to worry about, not a care in the world and everyone she loved would live forever.

Hey, I don’t know anything about your current marriage and I want to keep it that way

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