A Dark Matter Episode 48

After too long, Jenny pulled away and stepped back. She looked at her feet. “That was a mistake.” She couldn’t look straight at him, like he was the sun low in the sky.

“Sure.”

“I should go.”

“Yeah.”

She nodded to herself, still tasting him on her lips, the echoes of his touch on her back, tear stains on her cheeks. She turned and went inside to see how the dead were doing.

Hannah

“Babes, you’re crazy,” Indy said. Hannah rubbed the back of her neck then ran a finger along the reception desk.

“I lost it,” she said. “He has to know something about Mel but the police don’t seem bothered.”

Indy came from behind the desk and hugged her. She felt Indy’s body against her own, smelled her perfume and the scent of lilies on the desk. Why do people associate cut flowers with funerals? They die a few days after, just to rub it in, the fact that nothing lasts forever. Memento mori and all that.

She saw the catalogue on Indy’s desk for memorial jewellery, lockets and pendants holding a pinch of your loved one’s ashes round your neck. But what if you lost the necklace? She’d heard of people getting the deceased’s ashes tattooed into their skin and she liked that, making them a part of you.

She pulled away from Indy’s embrace and looked at her tattoos, beautiful Hindu designs up her arms, snaking down and around her hands. She wanted to be a part of that one day, embedded in her lover’s skin forever. But nothing was forever except the elemental particles.

All that “made of stardust” stuff was true but meaningless. Better to think of it the other way – that future stars and planets would be made from you. Maybe one day some of her atoms would be part of a meteor that crashed into the home planet of an advanced civilisation, wiping them out.

“I’m worried about you,” Indy said. “There’s no need to be.”

“I think it’s great you’re trying to find Mel, but you have to stay sane in the process. You know you can get obsessive about stuff.”

Hannah frowned, but that was true. She was the intense one in their couple. It was funny how relationships worked. You both start out as the exciting, spontaneous ones, but once the façades begin to drop you fall into more natural behaviour, like particles in a collider experiment, unable to act any way other than how the laws of physics dictate. So Hannah became the organised and obsessive one, and Indy became the laid-back one, the emotional supporter.

They heard a clatter from the direction of the workshop, something large hitting the floor.

“Archie’s gone home, hasn’t he?” Hannah said.

Indy nodded. “And Dorothy’s upstairs.” They shared a look then headed through the back, Hannah pushing the door open. She saw her mum’s rear in the air, Jenny bending over and trying to pick up a coffin lid from the ground.

“Mum?” Hannah said.

Jenny righted herself with the lid in front of her like a shield. “Sorry, I bumped into this a tiny bit.”

Indy went over and touched the edge of the lid where the wood had split. “This is useless now,” she said.

“It was an accident,” Jenny said. “What were you doing?” Hannah said. Jenny looked around for an answer, then down at the lidless coffin on the workbench. She put a hand in and touched the lining as if stroking a cat. “Nothing, just thinking.”

“And mucking about with the coffins,” Indy said, taking the lid and resting it against the wall. Jenny went wide-eyed with sarcasm. “Sorry.”

“Are you drunk?” Hannah said, stepping closer. Jenny rubbed at her forehead. “I’ve had a couple.”

“Is that why you didn’t answer your phone?”

“What do you mean?”

Jenny fumbled her phone out of her pocket, took a second to key in the passcode, then raised her eyebrows. “Sorry.”

“Hannah was arrested,” Indy said with a smile.

“What?”

“I wasn’t,” Hannah said. “I was detained then given a warning, it’s not the same thing.”

“She hit Peter Longhorn’s wife in the face.”

Hannah gave Indy a stare. “It wasn’t like that.”

Jenny shook her head as if trying to dislodge something. “What am I missing?”

Hannah sighed. “It doesn’t matter, we’ll catch you up when you’re sober. Who were you drinking with?”

Jenny pulled at her earlobe. “The Hook woman. She doesn’t believe her husband is an artist.

“She thinks he’s up to something and wants to keep paying us to follow him.”

Indy went to the back door, which Jenny had left open, and locked it. “People are weird.”

Jenny lifted a finger. “That is so true.” She turned to Hannah. “I’m sorry I didn’t get your calls.”

Confused

Hannah rubbed her hands together. She wondered how Emilia Longhorn’s face felt. “Probably just as well, in this state.” Jenny pushed herself away from the workbench and the coffin. “I’m not in any state.”

“OK, whatever,” Hannah said. “You know, maybe Gran was right about you, Mum.”

Jenny looked confused. “What about me?”

“You always need to be messing yourself up.”

“I’m not messing myself up.” “Han,” Indy said.

Jenny took an unsteady step forwards, waving a hand. “No, let’s hear it. Let’s hear what the prodigal daughter has to say about her drunken mum.”

Hannah shook her head. “Forget it.” “What?”

“I said forget it,” Hannah said. “There’s no point talking to you like this.”

Why do people associate cut flowers with funerals? They die a few days after, just to rub it in – nothing lasts forever

More tomorrow.

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