Human Remains (26 page)

I’d been in this country for years but I never quite thought of it as home. I came here to escape the civil war that was raging, the stories we heard about the soldiers attacking towns and villages to the north, the things they were doing. I took all the money we had saved up and I bought transport for my elderly parents and me. First we went on a ship to Sicily, landing the day before Christmas Eve. The place was chaos. Others were trying to head north into mainland Europe, catching lifts from lorry drivers, or stowing away in transport containers when they could access them.

My parents were not able to do that. My mother was sick already at that time, coughing blood and very weak. My father had very bad arthritis and found it difficult to walk. We still had money and it felt dangerous for me to have it, so I bought airline tickets for us all and two days into the New Year we landed in London.

The airport closed after we landed, due to bad weather. We were taken to an asylum centre somewhere outside of the city. My mother was taken to hospital and she died the next day. She had pneumonia and they were too late giving her the drugs which might have helped her live.

My father tried to carry on without her, but could not. He died within the month, a ‘myocardial infarction’, according to the death certificate. But really he had no reason to live without her. He had no will left, no strength. And so he left me, too.

That is the story of how I came to be in this country. At home, I was a primary school teacher and a well qualified member of society. Here, I was nothing. I earned money waiting at tables in London, helping in the kitchen. I worked for a while in one of the London hotels. Anything I could to pay the rent on the bedsit I shared with three other girls from Eastern Europe, all of them refugees like me from the civil wars and ethnic cleansing. They all had stories to tell about things they had seen, what they had been through to get out. All three of them had suffered more than I had.

I saved up what I could and eventually I had enough money to do a course that qualified me to be a teaching assistant in the UK. I looked for work up and down the country and eventually I got a job at a primary school in Briarstone.

I had never heard of Briarstone before, even though it was nearer to London than most of the other jobs I applied for. The school was a small one, friendly, and the staff were kind – but I had nothing in common with any of them. They did not know me and there was no point in telling them what had happened to me in the last few years.

I don’t know what started the problem. I was at the school for a long time. I saw the children progress from tiny little children in reception class to the verge of puberty, and then all their younger siblings as they grew up too.

I think it might be that I had been tired for so long, fought for so long to just keep going. I found myself finally at the end, and I was so tired I closed my eyes every night and it was a struggle to open them again the next morning. I think if I had ever found someone, a friend, or a lover – someone to be with, a reason to be happy – then perhaps I would have stayed alive. There was just nothing left. No strength, no courage, no energy. And in cases like that, the only solution is to lie quietly and wait.

there was no act of violence perpetrated against me no Act of Violence no actofviolence no Act. No violence they said they would come for me one day and they did they told me what to say when to say it what to do when to do it

it was not violence it did not hurt

it was a choice I made a choice my own free will my own destiny the distance between us like spaces like the void in my heart the voices in my heart the depths of my soul the depths of my despair

you can take this away this pain this grief you can take it from me and make it disappear

make me disappear

peace at peace in pieces

my choice my decision my desecration my will my bones my soul my path that I have chosen I did it my way and you can take nothing from me now you can take nothing

I slept well. That was the first thing that crossed my mind when I woke up. The cat was calling me from the bottom of the stairs, and I was wide awake instantly, sitting up on the side of the bed looking at the weak sunshine lighting up the branches of the tree in my back garden. I’d slept well, and for a change I felt positive, ready to face things. Ready to do whatever needed to be done.

It was nearly eight o’clock. I got dressed quickly and went down to feed Lucy, who trotted happily in front of me to the kitchen, tail raised in a neat question mark.

By nine, I was back in the shopping centre car park. It was a much nicer day. Overhead, a bright blue sky was spotted with freshly laundered white cotton clouds, and the rain in the night had made everything look glossy. The little angel that dangled from my rear-view mirror sparkled and danced.

I felt none of it. I felt nothing but the instinctive need to carry on, to put one foot in front of the other, to carry on completing one task at a time, one day at a time, until it all came to some sort of end. I felt so tired, all of a sudden. So completely drained.

My mobile phone rang just as I was locking the car. It was Andy Frost. He hesitated after the initial condolences.

‘Just – just wanted to say, take as long as you need. I’d like to keep in touch, to check you’re OK. And if there’s anything we can do…’

I tried to listen, tried to pay attention, but I kept thinking that I had something important to do and this phone conversation was keeping me from it. ‘I suppose I should come back to work,’ I said, hoping that would shut him up.

‘No, you should take more time, really. At least a fortnight. It’s all down as compassionate leave, you don’t need to worry.’

‘Alright,’ I said.

‘It’s fine, Annabel,’ he went on. ‘We can manage. We need you to come back when you’re ready, not before.’

I bit my lip. They’d replaced me, I thought. Drafted in one of the other analysts, maybe even Kate, to do all the work. It was
my
job! They wouldn’t have had a clue where to start with it if it hadn’t been for my spreadsheet. Well, let them get on with it. It wasn’t my problem, now, was it?

‘Sure,’ I said.

‘So you don’t need to worry about a thing. We’re working our way through it, don’t worry.’

‘You don’t need me,’ I said. It was a statement of fact.

‘Annabel, we’ll be fine. Much as I like to think we can wrap something like this up overnight, it will still be here when you’re ready to come back. Alright?’

I hung up and something strange happened. I stood still and waited, and after a few moments I felt calm, the resentment and feeling of frustration draining away. I had this idea that I should be more upset, more concerned about the phone call, but already I could barely remember what he’d been saying. I was too tired to focus on it. And then even thinking about it felt like an exhausting effort.

There was something that I had to do. As I walked towards the shopping precinct and the office of the funeral director, a rainbow sparkled bright against the grey concrete buildings. It felt like a sign, something positive, something to cling to.

I rang work early and told them I was taking the morning off, and then I went to the precinct as planned, to meet the new one. She was easier than I thought she would be – acquiescent, and ripe, changed greatly since I’d seen her in the supermarket on Tuesday evening. Bereavement, of course. Often it’s that. While I was waiting for her I called in at the Co-op, bought a copy of the paper and some milk.

She was waiting for me outside the funeral director’s. I thought she’d said she had an appointment but if this was true she’d forgotten all about it. It was an annoyance because I’d been hoping for some time to myself to read the newspaper – but that would have to wait. She told me where she lived and I followed her there, leaving the groceries behind in the car. We talked for a while in her kitchen. The cat was outside, calling and scratching at the door, and for a moment I thought she was going to open it and let the infernal thing in. I told her that there was nothing but silence and peace. Nothing else to concern her. It seemed to do the trick because the cat was ignored. In the end I think it gave up, because when we went upstairs the noise stopped.

I left her an hour or so later and came back home with the shopping. There will be more such conversations ahead of us both before she is ready, but they can wait for now.

I’m shivering with excitement when I open the paper.

There’s less information than I thought there would be. Yes, they’ve found Dana and Eileen, as I knew they would. Yes, they’ve very sensibly realised that there is more linking the people concerned than depression and a lack of neighbourly concern. But what are they doing about it? Very little, it seems.

But would the
Briarstone Chronicle
be kept up to date with the details of the investigation? It is probably unlikely. I wonder if I’ve done a very foolish thing, by letting them in on my activities.

By the time I get to work I’ve worked myself up into a spiral of nervous tension that I can barely contain. I sit at my desk and log on to the computer without speaking to anyone, hoping that spreadsheets and accounting software will gradually calm me down again.

Across the other side of the office, Garth is breathing through his nose. When we moved into this office from the ground floor, a year ago in December, I ended up with the desk directly opposite Garth’s. He invariably smelt bad, musty, and he made constant noises: he couldn’t even breathe quietly. If he wasn’t breathing he was snorting or humming or chuckling to himself or muttering or tapping his front teeth with his pen or running his hand compulsively through his greasy, thinning hair or rasping his finger against the stubble on his cheek or licking his lips or clearing his throat, or leaning back in his chair so that his shirt would tug free of his belt and show me a small patch of hairy white belly.

I lasted a day and a half. I went to see Martha and told her I needed to be near a window as I was claustrophobic. They couldn’t persuade Alan to swap desks, so they moved me to a tight space beside the photocopier which had a small window behind it, looking out over the car park. It suits me. I am away from all of them. And although I can still see them and listen to their mindless conversations, I can get on with my work in peace without the discordant percussion of Garth’s bodily functions.

This is fine, whilst Garth is in rude good health. If he is unwell, though, as he is today, the noise levels increase to the extent that I can hear him again, across the whole office space separating us. And his odour crosses the room like mustard gas across the trenches. The noises: phlegm, mucus, nose-blowing, the excavation of his nose with his handkerchief; and then the sighs, the moans, the wheezing.

I search through my bag for my iPod, which will at least muffle the sounds of Garth’s latest malady, but to my dismay find that I’ve left it at home.

In the end, I resort to speaking to him. ‘Garth,’ I say.

He doesn’t hear me, as at that very moment he takes out his handkerchief and blows his nose, a wet rumble like a pair of waders being thrown from the roof of a multi-storey car park.

‘Garth!’

‘What? Can’t hear very well,’ he calls across from the other side of the room. ‘My ears are all blocked up.’

‘Would you mind keeping the noise down?’ I say loudly, trying to keep the tone of my voice pleasant.

‘Sorry, mate. Will do.’

I wince at the familiarity.

‘Leave him alone,’ Martha says, looking up from her computer screen. ‘He’s not a well man.’

And then her phone rings before she can say more or I can provide a response, and I’m forced to listen to her chatting away to one of her cronies in Accounts, laughing and joking as though they are at a bar rather than in a professional working environment. Why are they all so incessantly LOUD?

I stare at the spreadsheet but cannot tune them out, and now Garth has started on a productive coughing fit that makes me feel decidedly unwell. I can almost see the germs crossing the room towards me. I stand up, slamming my pen down upon the desk, and go to the kitchen. None of them notices.

In the kitchen, having disinfected the surfaces, filled the kettle with fresh water and washed my hands, I stand at the table waiting for it to boil. Someone has left a copy of the
Briarstone Chronicle
behind, again, and despite the ache of worry that still lingers in my chest I find myself reading the article over.

Twenty-six, it says. Have there really been so many? But then, there will have been some I had nothing at all to do with, and the newspaper and the police wouldn’t have been able to tell the difference.

Looking at the pictures, I remember the ones I’ve known… how delicious the sensation of leaving them behind to transform: the earthy, the filthy disgusting specimens of humanity hovering between the misery of life and the emptiness of death. After I leave them, they have the moment of transition and then everything is good, pure; no decisions remaining for them; everything that follows is as Nature dictates. Their transformations follow immutable laws of decay, rules they cannot deviate from. It has a beauty and a simplicity to it that would have been exactly the same five hundred years ago. Unchanging as the course of the earth. The unnatural processes of the modern world, finally overtaken by the natural, as glorious and unstoppable as life itself.

I was lying on my bed looking up at the patterns of the light dancing on the ceiling. It felt as if I had been asleep and had woken up, but I couldn’t remember waking up. The sun was bright outside and it was reflecting off something and shining up into my room. It must be daytime. It must be the afternoon, maybe.

I looked at the clock by my bed and registered that it said 12.05. I must have been tired and decided to take a nap, but I had only vague recollection of coming home. This morning I had been… somewhere… in the car. I parked the car, and I saw a rainbow. I remembered that bit, definitely. Frosty had phoned me. I spoke to him and I was in the car park and I was looking at the rainbow. And then… where did I go?