The Memory Game by Sharon Sant Page A

dad.’
    ‘I know,’ she
says. ‘That’s not going to help either.’
    I wonder what
she means by that but it doesn’t seem the time to ask.
    ‘It would help
if you could remember this list,’ she says. ‘We’d be much faster if I didn’t
have to keep stopping to look at it.’
    ‘Sorry,’ I
shrug. ‘It’s just gone out of my head.  I do remember that it gets easier
once you’ve been on the bit with the new houses – you dump loads of papers
there and your bag’s lighter,’ I explain, almost as an apology.
    ‘It’s the long
way around, though, this road,’ she says.
    ‘Yeah, but –’
    ‘There has to be
a quicker way.’
    ‘There isn’t.’
    ‘There is.’
    ‘Where?’
    ‘Yarrow Lane’s
quicker.’
    ‘It’s too
dangerous.’
    ‘This is
stupid,’ she says dropping the bag to the floor. ‘This bag weighs a ton, the
sooner I can empty it the better.  Let’s go the quickest way.’
    No!’ I almost shout
at her. ‘I’m not taking you there,’ I say, trying to get my voice under control
again.
    ‘If you don’t, I
can still figure it out myself eventually, so you might as well.’
    We stare at each
other in silence.  I can see that she’s not going to budge and I finally
have to give in. ‘Right, ok. But we are going to be careful.’
    ‘Nothing is
going to happen to me there. I’ll look out for cars and all that talk of it
being haunted is just stupid. Ok?’
    I nod. ‘Ok then.
    ‘Thank you,’ she
says, pulling the bag back onto her shoulder.  She looks a bit like a
sapling holding the weight of a vulture the way the bag is bending her to one
side.  We start to walk again.
    ‘This is a lot
of work just for me,’ I say. ‘I don’t understand why you’d want to do it.’
    She glances at
me quickly and then turns to face ahead once more before she answers. ‘I’ve got
nothing else to do. Same as you said before, it’s not like I can go hang out
with anyone else, is it?’
    ‘But,’ I say,
‘if this woman does figure out why I’m still here and she knows how to sort it,
then I suppose I’ll go… wherever it is I’m supposed to go.’
    We’re both quiet
as soon as I’ve said this; you can almost see the question mark hanging in the
air.
    ‘We’ll just have to see what happens,’ she says eventually.
    The moon disappears behind a bank
of cloud so that the only light is the white streak of Bethany’s
torch. Yarrow Lane is deserted and silent, the same as always. Almost always.
    ‘Can you show
me where it happened?’ she asks quietly.
    I look at her.
‘You want to see where I died?’
    ‘Yes. Can I?’
    ‘What for? Isn’t that a bit creepy?’
    She shrugs. ‘I
don’t know. It just feels important.’
     I walk
ahead and look for the place.  ‘Here…’ I call Bethany
over.  She comes over and stands next to me. We look down at the ditch together.
    ‘This is it,
then?’ she asks.  Her voice is quiet but it still seems to echo through
the trees.  ‘This is where you died?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘There’s nothing
here,’ she says, ‘where are all the flowers? You always see flowers where there
are road accidents.’
    ‘I don’t know,’
I say. ‘I suppose people have forgotten me by now.’
    ‘I don’t think
so,’ she says, ‘it wasn’t all that long ago. What about your mum? She would leave some.’
    ‘I think it
would make her cry too much to come here. I’m glad she doesn’t.’
    She’s quiet for
a moment. Then she says, ‘I feel like I should do something to mark the spot.’
    ‘It doesn’t need
marking, I know it,’ I say. ‘It’s like there’s a part of me still in the soil
and it draws me to the right place without me even having to try.’
    There’s a
movement in the shadows, just out of the reach of the torchlight. Bethany
sweeps the grass with the beam and we see the fox with her cubs dive out of
sight. ‘They must live nearby,’ I say. ‘They’re always here when I come.’
    Bethany
turns the light back to the ditch as