After the Fall by Charity Norman

was also plenty of bird mess, especially on the windowsills. I guessed the creature had been imprisoned in here for a while before it died. At the far end I found sacks of fertiliser and sheep dip, which explained the plastic smell.
    ‘Perhaps Sacha might like this as a bolt hole,’ I wondered. ‘She can bring her friends—if she makes any.’ I held up two crossed fingers.
    ‘Yes! I can already imagine a sofa and a stereo. And when your boys are older they will smuggle in their girlfriends.’
    ‘Not until I’ve vetted them,’ I said primly.
    As we left I stooped to look at the dead bird beside the door. It was completely desiccated. I could see an empty eye socket.
    Jean picked up the sad bundle between finger and thumb and tossed it deep into the undergrowth. ‘A mynah, I think. Excellent mimics. Maybe flew in the chimney. See, the doors of the stove are open? And once he came down, there was no way out.’
    ‘A mynah?’
    ‘They’re vermin, really. Not native birds.’ Jean seemed to think this made the death less sad.
    ‘I’m not a native bird either.’ I pictured the frantic creature hurling itself against the mildewed windows. I wondered how long it had suffered. ‘I’ll put a net over that chimney,’ I said firmly. ‘No more death traps.’

Nine
     
    It was no way to behave at a funeral.
    I blame the gleefully grieving mourners, with their hand-clasping and platitudes. They packed the pews. They swamped the graveyard with black umbrellas, a flock of dour ravens. Sacha stood close beside me in a black dress I’d found in Oxfam, staring with fascinated eyes at the awful, polished shape of Grandma’s coffin. She was six years old, and she’d scarcely known my mother.
    Poor old Vincent Vale had put on a grand spread for the love of his life, and held the after-burial do—what is it, a party? a wake? Rabbit’s Big Bash?—in the function room of his historic pub. It smelled of old velvet and canapés. Good venue for a wedding. I was wearing a funereal smile, peddling sandwiches from a tray. It was a shield, because if anyone else grabbed my hands, wrinkled their eyes and told me I shouldn’t blame myself, I’d knee them where it hurt. In that particular context, the words ‘don’t blame yourself’ translated very precisely as ‘this is all your fault, you spawn of the devil’.
    Mum’s younger sister was holding court, her neat figure set off by a polka-dot dress, flour-white hair caught in a black ribbon. This was mildly unsettling, because Patricia was the spitting image of my mother—right down to the patent court shoes and tea-rose-scented skin. She looked indecently composed; no hint of a rent garment.
    ‘I’m a murderer,’ I sighed, sinking into a chair beside her.
    Patricia took a sandwich from my tray. ‘She wouldn’t blame you, would she?’
    ‘Oh, of course she would, Aunt Trish. She’s always blamed me for everything! She wasn’t at death’s door. It wasn’t cancer that did for her, it was my tonsillitis.’
    ‘Hmm. Never big on forgiveness, my sister. She changed her will more times than she did her knickers.’
    ‘It was supposed to be our big reconciliation,’ I complained. ‘I dropped everything to get to the hospital for her birthday. How was I to know it’d kill her?’
    ‘Think she’ll haunt you?’
    ‘Well, she always has. I don’t see why being dead should change anything.’
    The words weren’t out of my mouth before Mum took a pot shot. Her sarcasm blasted right through my head; she might have been hovering above the chair.
    Trust you!
    ‘Mum,’ I argued silently. ‘Be fair. You could have gone anytime.’
    Stupid girl. You and your Judas kiss.
    I was about to defend myself when Flora—garden centre—touched my shoulder.
    ‘Your dad wants to go home now,’ she said, and I nodded. Dad had never stopped adoring his ex-wife with a quiet passion. It was the one bit of irrationality he’d ever displayed. ‘I’ll go with him,’ said Flora.