Flowers for the Dead Read online

  She yelled that last because the seatbelt had finally undone. Marcus collapsed, and though Laura tried to catch him, he fell into a heap, his elbow and knee smacking into her face, making stars dance in front of her eyes. She grabbed him anyway and started pulling.

  His hair is a mess. He’s taken so long over his hair. He wanted it to be perfect, didn’t even want to wear a hat, and now it’s a bloody, matted mess, and…there are big clots underneath it. It’s brain, it’s brains.

  With an effort, she shoved the thoughts away. Put her hands under her brother’s armpits and heaved with all her might, veins standing out with the effort. He moved. Not by much, but he definitely moved.

  She could not use her strength properly in her current position. She pulled again. He was almost at the window. Right, if she wriggled out, she should be able to brace her feet against the wreckage and pull him through the window.

  She scrambled out, turned around just as there was a loud crackling noise. The whole front of the car was ablaze now, the heat searing. Her parents, she had to get them out too!

  Laura was screaming. Screaming at the operator who was telling her to be calm.

  “How can I be bloody calm? They’re going to die!” she shrieked.

  In her panic she stumbled backwards. There was a deafening noise. And once again she was flying, flying, flying…

  ***

  Laura wakes with a jolt. It is no surprise, she has had this nightmare, woken at that precise point too many times. For a second though, her sleep-addled brain cannot work out where she is; her bedroom looks different. Two seconds tick by before she works out it is only because she is on the floor still. With a grunt, she shifts, forcing herself to sit upright. She raises a hand to rub at her stiff neck and discovers a photograph sticking to it, which she peels off her flesh.

  So, she has had the dream again. She has relived that bloody accident time and time again in her sleep, sometimes hating it, sometimes loving it because for a few sweet moments at the start, it is as if her family is alive again. Her mind has always skittered away from the aftermath of the accident though. Now, she forces herself to remember waking in hospital.

  Her Aunt Linda had been by her side. One look at her face had told Laura everything she needed to know. Her family was dead. Laura was kept in overnight for observation because she had concussion, but the next day she was deemed well enough to be released.

  People had told her it was a miracle that she had survived. As if she was some kind of chosen one. As if she must have deserved the miracle when her parents and brother had not.

  The truth, she knew, was that if she had not frozen, they might all have survived. She could have pulled them out in time. Or she could have called for help earlier to douse the flames.

  At the joint inquest, experts agreed it was just one of those terrible things. That her father, Seamus, fifty, had done nothing wrong but had simply hit some black ice and the whole incident was a tragic accident.

  The car had hit the hedge side on and bounced off it, flipping over and landing upside down in a field, burying itself in frozen earth as hard as iron, and the front of the car smashing into a tree. Seamus had braced himself for impact, straightening his arms against the steering wheel and sitting up straighter. The impact had shuddered up his arms, shattering all the bones, and when the car flipped onto its roof and was caved in, it smashed into his head, creating catastrophic injuries and snapping his neck. The only comfort was that it had been instant.

  Her mum, Jackie, forty-eight, had died on impact, too, from multiple injuries that included a ripped aorta, like Princess Diana.

  Experts agreed Marcus would have died of his injuries too. Laura remembered the groan though, and knew he had survived the crash. It was her lack of action that had killed him, she was certain.

  The whole thing was her fault – they had only been going out at all because she loved bonfire night and fireworks so much.

  Yet Laura was the one who had walked away with barely a scratch. The only mark she bore was a scar down the back of her thumb, which was shaped like an exclamation mark. Accident experts at the inquest said that her hunkering down to shield herself from the shattering glass had saved her life. Because she had been low down, the roof had not hit her when it caved in. That white van man had saved her life when he had smashed into her a handful of weeks before.

  Laura had wished he had not. She had longed to be with her family.

  Ever since, she had been in a limbo. Not wanting to die but not wanting to live either, sitting on the fence and not caring if something blew her over to death so that she can be with her loved ones and the guilt could end.

  She had given up on her studies to become a nursery nurse. What was the point? In fact, she had told herself there was no point to anything. Making plans was a waste of time when everything could be taken from you in a split second.

  She pulls down the long-sleeve of her favourite forest green t-shirt, her last present from Marcus, and uses it to dab at her damp face. Gives a shuddering sigh, then forces herself to stand and shakily walk to the bed, where she sinks down again.

  After the accident she had sold the family home she had inherited, unable to stay there with all the memories, and bought herself a little flat. The only thing she had not put into storage was the bed, which had been her 18th birthday present from her parents. She had felt so grown up asking for this glorious thing, which she had fallen in love with when they were at an antiques fair one day.

  It was the only thing from her life before. Everything else she had bought from Ikea in the space of just three trips – it wasn’t like she was particularly bothered about the décor, this was merely somewhere for her to escape from the rest of the world.

  Now though, she knows she must slowly start to rebuild her life. To live instead of exist. Briefly she wonders if she has the strength, but then she looks once more at that photograph and nods grimly. She will do it. She has to.

  ***

  Adam is waiting outside Oasis in Covent Garden. It’s one of his favourite places. He loves the anonymity of London, so different from his home in Birmingham, where people meet your eye, say hello and then, even worse, insist on engaging you in conversation. He likes that in London people avoid eye contact, and that everyone is hiding behind headphones so it is clear they do not want to speak.

  Covent Garden is a popular place for friends to meet up, though, and that is why Adam is there. He likes to stand at this spot, opposite the exit of the Tube station, watching everyone. Their eager faces as they scan the crowd for pals, the way their faces light up when they spot them, the hugging, the way people’s voices sound so eager, so animated, so full of life. They are happy.

  He wants someone to look at him like that, and this way he gets a tiny sliver of the action by proxy.

  Everyone assumes he is waiting too, and they are right, in a way he is. No one realises how long he has been lingering though, do not see how he can be there all day sometimes, because they move on so quickly. But not him, he carries on searching the crowd, looking, waiting, for that one person he will recognise instantly.

  They won’t recognise him, of course, because he is a stranger – at the moment he is a stranger. But all it takes is for someone to be stood up, that sadness to envelope them, and that is when he will choose them. He doesn’t like it if they get huffy and angry. He could never be with someone like that; they deserve to be stood up or treated badly if they have no manners. No, he waits for the ones who hang their head, who are enveloped in a cloud of sadness; he can see their shoulders drop as they finally give up looking at the crowds hopefully, checking their watch every couple of minutes. The way they walk away, trying desperately not to show their sadness, putting on a brave front while pretending that they have not been stood up at all.

  Poor souls, they are so unhappy - and that is why he chooses them. Because they deserve his friendship, they need someone to look out for them. He just wants to make them happy. No matter what it ta
kes.

  Of course, there are times when he follows someone who is impossible to help purely for geographic reasons. He has taken a shine to women who have been on holiday from abroad, which is frustrating, but he knows he has to let them go. But more often than not he chooses British women. The really lovely thing about Covent Garden is that people come from all over the country, so he never knows where he might end up.

  He once fell for a girl from Inverness, and had to spend hours travelling to see her. Irene had been her name. The instant he thinks of her, lisiathus flowers spring to mind. Adam cannot look at lisianthus without thinking of her soft-as-petals skin; the warm brown tendrils around her neck when her hair was pulled into a ponytail, just as the flowers’ buds twisted delicately; or how she had betrayed him with another man, as the flower had warned him she would. The flower stood for ‘out-going’, and Irene certainly had been.

  He feels her soul stir restlessly inside him now, apologising and feeling ashamed of herself, and he takes a moment to soothe her before continuing to look around.

  The sheer volume of people passing through Covent Garden greatly increases his chances of finding the love of his life, but there are other practical reasons why he likes to go there. Reasons Adam does not like to admit to himself but knows it is only sensible to take into consideration. The sad fact is his track record with women is very bad so far. They tend to hurt him and let him down badly. No matter what lovely things he does for them they seem unappreciative. Often, they showed a bewildering inability to be happy. When that happens he is always forced to act, to put his own needs aside, and to put the woman out of her misery.

  But he has to think about himself a little, and the fact that he was never seen with any of his loves, that there was nothing connecting them in any way, meant that the police would never be able to track him down and arrest him for murder. It is unromantic to have to think in such a way at the start of a romance, but his broken heart has taught him to look after himself as well as the needs of others.

  Murder. Such an ugly word, and so untrue. He is helping these women, like a noble physician would.

  He smiles to himself, turns up the music on his headphones, and watches the crowds slide past his sunglasses as he hunts.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  ~ Enchanter’s Nightshade ~

  Fascination

  TWENTY-FIVE YEARS AGO

  Almost the second Adam stepped outside into the glorious June sunshine, he heard a loud, repetitive call immediately above his head and looked up. Ada put a hand on the child’s shoulder and looked too, pointing.

  “See there, under the roof, where it meets at a point?” she asked. Adam nodded. “That’s a nest of sparrows. They’re what are making the noise. If you look carefully, you might just see the young peeking over the edge and looking down at us.”

  At that very moment a face appeared, tweeting madly. Adam grinned in delight, and hugged his gran.

  The sky was a brilliant blue, the bright green of the leaves standing out against it. The grass below was peppered with clover flowers, daisies and buttercups bursting forth. The odd butterfly flitted past, adding more splashes of colour.

  Adam loved his gran’s garden. She lived in Moseley, a suburb of Birmingham, a long way away from his home in Colchester. It took three whole hours to get there; was so far that he would fall asleep on the journey, and still have time for lots of games of I-Spy and reading his favourite books.

  Ada’s garden was big. Big enough to fit his own garden inside it twelve times or more. He could lose himself in the little walled garden on one side, or sit in one of the bank of greenhouses that sat at the bottom of the garden. They lay immediately before the special exit from the garden into private parkland Gran shared with a handful of other houses. Adam could climb up the big trees, or make hidey-holes in the spaces under bushes because he knew all the right places to push through the foliage.

  Even in winter he could squirrel himself away indoors because the house had so many rooms. It was a wonderland of concealment for him.

  Best of all, though, was the fact he did not actually feel the need to hide much when he was with Gran. His mum and dad would go into Birmingham city centre to shop or see the sights, or watch cricket at the nearby Edgbaston grounds, leaving him behind. That was the best time in the world, when it was just he and his gran. In winter she would read to him, but when the weather was nice she liked to do gardening. Adam would sit beside her like a faithful hound as she pruned and dug, always talking to him in a gentle voice, explaining everything.

  “We just need to do a little weeding today,” she decided now. “Would you like to help?”

  He nodded, and she handed him a trowel. Then she knelt on her special gardening cushion and grasped a green shot with her thick-gloved hand.

  “This is a stinging nettle starting to come through,” she said. “If you see these you must carefully dig out every little bit of root, otherwise they are very clever, and will pop back up again.

  “They survive the winter underground, storing up food in their roots. Then in spring, up they pop – even the tiniest bit of root left in the soil will mean a whole new plant can grow. So you must be careful and patient when digging up the roots; yanking them out won’t do.”

  Adam nodded. “Like this?” he asked, and tenderly dug into the ground, slowly shaking free roots.

  “Perfect. Well done! You’re a good boy, Adam.”

  He basked in the glow of the compliment.

  Side by side they worked in companionable silence after that. That was another thing Adam loved about his gran: she never teased him for not speaking. And when he did say something she actually listened and responded in kind. In front of most people, Adam felt his words bottling up in his throat. His brain became a confusion of feelings that he could not get out, and that made his head buzz painfully. It wasn’t like that with Gran. She understood him without his having to say a word. Being with her was the only time he ever really felt peace.

  After just over half an hour, Ada sat up with a grimace. “My back,” she gasped. “I’ll have to stop now.”

  Adam dutifully stood, held out his hands, and helped the delicate old lady to her feet again, knowing she would be stiff after being on her knees for so long.

  “Thank you. You’re growing up to be a real gentleman,” she smiled approvingly as she straightened up, leaning on him slightly.

  “I can carry on gardening,” he offered. “I’ll do over there, by the fence.” He pointed to a patch of long nettles and weeds, but Ada shook her head.

  “That’s very kind of you, thank you, Adam. I always leave that patch though, even though it drives me wild not to have a completely tidy garden.”

  Adam tilted his head, trying to understand. “Why do you leave them if you don’t like them?” he asked.

  “Weeds are bad for gardening, but good for nature – lots of insects, butterflies and birds rely on them. Always be kind to nature, live and let live, and put others’ needs before your own.”

  Ada was always saying things like that. “Put other’s needs before your own.” “Make someone happy and you will make yourself happy too.” And her particular favourite was: “Nothing bad can happen to you when you’re here, because the whole house is protected by a force field of love.” Those words were like a warm embrace to Adam – because they were true. His mother never did anything to him when he was at Granny’s.

  It was Ada who had gently drummed into her son and now her grandson how to be a gentleman. Adam knew that ladies always went first, that he must open doors for them, and walk on the outside of the pavement nearest traffic in order to protect them. Such manners were important to Ada, and Adam enjoyed learning from her because she was a gentle teacher who always seemed so enthusiastic and encouraging of him.

  Ada practised what she preached too. Her manners were impeccable; and this, Adam suspected, was the reason why his gran put up with his mother. He might only be six, but he had already grasped that the t
wo women did not get on. Sometimes he would catch a glimpse between the pair of them that bordered on dislike; then there had been that row where Mother had ordered Ada from the house.

  They put up with one another. Barely. Even when Sara was being nice there was a knife hidden beneath the words, and Adam could tell his gran noticed their cutting edge. She loved to praise the old woman’s home while surreptitiously criticising it. “What a cosy little room! If this place were mine I’d knock down that wall and really open up this room,” she would say. Or: “What interesting stuffed animals. Have you ever thought of asking a museum if they’d take them off your hands?”

  Adam had not liked the stuffed animals and birds much either when he was really little, but now he was a big boy and over the years he had learned all about them from Ada. He loved them.

  “My father’s father – that’s your great, great grandfather – he was interested in nature and went travelling,” Ada would tell him. “He brought these specimens back and preserved them himself. In those days travelling was more difficult, and it took months to get to some far-flung places. Imagine that, Adam, travelling for months to reach exotic places with all kinds of weird and wonderful creatures.

  “So he captured as many as he could, killed them and stuffed them so that he could show people all the wonders he had seen himself. That way he could keep them with him forever and enjoy them for years and years to come.

  “Even when he got very old and could no longer travel far, he was able to look at those animals and birds, and relive his past in his imagination.”

  Then both she and Adam would look at the glossy feathers of a bird of paradise, or the incredible body of the duck-billed platypus, and see beauty rather than death.

  Thinking about them now, as Adam pulled a deckchair out for his granny, a sudden question occurred to him and, unusual though it was for him, he blurted it out.