The Other Me by Saskia Sarginson Page B

tinsel wound around a plastic tree. It’s freezing. I shiver and hug myself. The wooden saints gathered in a group on the sideboard regard me with blind eyes, hands raised in blessing. My father slumps opposite me, looking older and greyer. He seems to have shrunk. His shirt is loose around his neck and his jacket sleeves hang below his wrists.
    He clears his throat. ‘She was knocked down by a car. Near the house, crossing our street. She died in hospital later that day. Her injuries… were… they couldn’t save her.’
    His voice is weary. It doesn’t make any sense to me. I am unable to imagine my mother dashing in front of a car. I remember her telling me over and over to wait on the kerb, look right and left, and right again.
    ‘What happened…?’ I stare towards the kitchen, thinking she will appear in the doorway. She doesn’t come. She will never come again. No. That’s impossible. ‘The driver… have they been prosecuted?’
    Dad shakes his head. ‘It wasn’t his fault. He wasn’t drunk or speeding. She… she just walked in front of him.’
    ‘When?’ I whisper, hanging my head.
    ‘A week ago,’ he says. ‘I tried to reach you at university. But I had no number for you. I waited by the phone, but you didn’t call.’ He puts his hand over his eyes. ‘I sent a note to the address you left and that got no response either.’
    I can’t look at him. Shame creeps through me, rolls like a suffocating fog through my limbs, filling my mouth, pressing behind my eyes. I can hardly breathe. I try to recall the last time I saw her. But I can’t snatch any comfort from a memory. I see her face when I left, remember the way she’d touched my dyed hair. Patient. Resigned. ‘Your beautiful gold.’ She’d hugged me close. ‘Look after yourself, cariad. Come back to me soon.’
    But I didn’t come back to her. I’d let her down. I’d lied and I’d abandoned her.
    ‘The funeral at the chapel was…’ His voice thickens and he stops. ‘People loved your mother. Everyone came.’
    ‘Are her ashes buried there?’
    He stands up and looks out through the open door into the kitchen and the garden beyond. ‘No. There’s a plaque. But she’s buried here.’
    I glance up, startled. ‘Here?’
    ‘In the garden. Under the apple tree,’ he says. ‘I put her ashes in the Chinese urn.’
    The urn is no longer on the mantelpiece. My heart beats faster. ‘Is that… OK? Is it allowed?’
    ‘It’s what she would have wanted. She loved that tree.’ He rubs his nose. ‘It’s what I want. To have her close to me.’
    I think of my father decanting the granules and grains from whatever container the crematorium would have given him into the porcelain mouth. Did he use a spoon, or his hands? Had there been spillages?
    I cross the frosty garden towards the apple tree. It leans slightly to one side; roots protrude through the grass like rheumatoid knuckles, ancient fingers tapping their way into the light. There is a darker patch of naked earth between the roots, recently turned. I lean against the cold trunk and stare down. I can’t take it in. My mother: nothing but handfuls of ashes in an urn below my feet. A thrush sits on a higher branch and looks at me reproachfully. The bird table is empty.
    I go back into the house and fetch some water in a small bowl. There is only the mouldy heel of a loaf in the bread bin; crumbling it inside my fingers, I walk back to the bird table and leave my offerings. Wings flutter above me, a flash of yellow beak. A curtain twitches at an upstairs window next door. Mrs Perkins watching from behind a fall of lace.
    I curl my nostrils in the cold, dim house. The kitchen smells of rubbish. The bin needs emptying. My father is sitting in the living room. His hands rest on his knees and he stares into space as if he’s in chapel and the preacher is in mid-flow.
    I move around him, putting on lights. Reaching into the under-stairs cupboard, I locate the heating dial and turn,