Human Remains

wavering.
    ‘You know you’re right,’ I said, keeping my voice even, keeping the eye contact with her. ‘You need to do the right thing at the right time.’
    ‘I need to know it will work,’ she said.
    ‘It will work. You can make that choice. If you decide it, it will be. You need to know this.’
    A few minutes later she took me to her flat, which was a few streets away. We walked past a pub which was so full of people that some had spilled out onto the street, plastic pint glasses in hand, all focused on the big screens inside. The progress of the game – whatever it was – could be determined by the collective whoops and sighs. As we got to her front door I heard yells of delight from various properties and even, possibly, from the pub.
    We had not spoken since she had stood up slowly from the park bench and started walking, but still she stood aside to let me into her flat. She was utterly defeated by life. Complicit with me in every possible way. I helped her to find the path she had already, unconsciously chosen. I helped her to bring her miserable existence to an end, simply by giving her the permission she felt she needed to do it. I helped her to transform.

Annabel
     
     
    They discharged me, in the end. They hadn’t managed to get to the bottom of what had happened to me but since I was clearly recovering they said I could go, as long as I stayed with a friend to begin with. There was talk of a referral for therapy, regular outpatient appointments. I had a letter to give to my GP.
    Sam came to collect me and drove me to his house in Keats Road. I remembered looking up at the house from my car, the day my mum was in the hospital and I was giving him a lift home. It felt as if a lifetime had passed since then.
    I didn’t speak at all. He tried to ask me questions but when I didn’t answer I think he gave up. I was afraid of everything, scared of the medicated numbness in my head which meant I couldn’t think straight, couldn’t focus. The hospital was a bad place but in a way the outside world was worse.
I shouldn’t be here
, I kept thinking.
I’m supposed to be dead. Am I a ghost now? Is this what it feels like
?
    Sam lived with his dad, Brian, a former serviceman who spent most of his time at the Legion drinking with his friends, and Brian’s wife, Irene. She was everything my mum hadn’t been: bright, vivacious, full of life. She’d been Sam’s mum’s carer, once upon a time. They both welcomed me into their home without question, offering up their small spare room – Irene apologising for it just as I expressed my profound gratitude that I’d been let out of the hospital thanks to them.
    Sam showed me the room upstairs, a single bed with a floral bedspread on it and a soft toy on the pillow.
    ‘I’ll leave you to settle in,’ he said. ‘Would you like a cup of tea?’
    ‘Maybe later,’ I said. ‘I’d like to sleep.’
    He left the door open when he went downstairs. I pulled it to and lay down on the bed and closed my eyes.
     
     
    The next day Frosty phoned to ask if I was up to talking to someone. Sam had gone to work, leaving Irene with me. Without him I felt a bit lost, cut adrift.
    ‘I guess so,’ I said. ‘I don’t know anything.’
    He came round with a female officer I’d not met before, whose name I forgot the minute she introduced herself. We sat in the living room. Irene made the tea and put a tray with home-made apple cake on the table in front of us, all the while talking about the weather and the roadworks in the town centre and the line-up for this year’s
Strictly Come Dancing
. When she finally went and left us with just the ringing in our ears, it felt as if we’d all gone deaf.
    ‘You’re looking well, Annabel,’ Frosty said then. ‘How are you feeling?’
    ‘Fine,’ I said automatically.
    ‘You don’t need to worry,’ the young woman said. She was smiling at me. ‘Anything you can remember at this stage is useful.’
    ‘I don’t remember anything,’ I said.
    ‘Sam told us you said there was a man. An angel. Do you remember that?’
    I thought about it, closed my eyes. I wanted to help them. I wanted to remember.
    ‘He was just ordinary. Just a normal man. But he said things that made me feel calm. He was kind.’
    ‘Did he go home with you?’
    ‘No,’ I said. ‘I drove home. There was a rainbow.’
    I wanted to add about the rainbow being a sign from my mum, a sign that I could trust him, that she’d sent him to take care