Nine Perfect Strangers

She is a little girl staring at her mother’s stomach wishing she could make a baby grow in there so that she can have a brother or sister but the wishing doesn’t work, wishing never works, and when she grows up she will never have an only child, a lonely only.

She is opening the door of her son’s bedroom because she’s going to do a load of washing and she may as well scrape up some of the layer of clothes on his floor and her whole body resists what she is seeing and she thinks, I’m doing a load of washing, don’t do this, Zach, I want to do laundry, I want to keep this life, please, please let me keep this life, but she hears herself screaming because she knows it’s too late, there is nothing to be done, the life of one second ago is gone.

She is at her son’s funeral and her daughter is delivering a eulogy, and afterwards people keep touching Heather, so much touching, everyone wants to paw at her, it is repulsive, and they are all saying, Oh, you must be so proud, Zoe spoke so beautifully, as if it’s fucking school speech night not her son’s funeral, and can’t you see my daughter is alone now, how can she live without her brother, she never even existed without him, and who cares if she spoke beautifully, she can’t even stand, her father is holding her upright, my daughter can’t even walk.

She is watching Zoe take her first steps at only eleven months, and Zach, who has never even considered such a thing, is shocked, he can hardly believe it, he is sitting on the carpet with his little plump legs stuck out in front of him and he is looking up at his sister with big astonished eyes and you can see he is thinking, What is she DOING? and she and Napoleon are laughing so hard, and maybe wishes do come true because this is family, this is what she never had, never knew, never dreamed, this is a moment so perfect and funny and this is her life now, just a string of perfect, funny moments one after the other, like a string of beads that will go on forever.

Except that it won’t.

She is alone in Zach’s bedroom crying, and she thinks that Napoleon and Zoe are somewhere in the house crying too, all alone crying in separate rooms, and she thinks families are probably meant to grieve together but they aren’t doing it right, and to distract herself she goes through Zach’s drawers for the hundredth time, even though she knows there is nothing to find, no note, no explanation, she knows exactly what she will find – except that this time, she does find something.

She was back.

Napoleon still rocked and sobbed.

Had she been gone for a second or an hour or a year? She didn’t know.

‘How are the Marconi family feeling right now?’ Masha sat in front of them. ‘Could this perhaps be a good opportunity for a family therapy session about your loss?’

Masha had multiple arms and multiple legs but Heather refused to acknowledge her multiple limbs because it was not real, people simply did not have that many limbs. Heather had never once delivered a baby with that many limbs. She was not falling for it.

‘When you say it’s your fault, Napoleon, are you referring to Zach?’ asked Masha, all faux concern.

Heather heard herself hiss, ‘Jesus fucking Christ.’

Heather was a snake with a long forked tongue that could whip from her mouth and pierce Masha’s skin, shooting venom through her veins, poisoning her, the same way Masha had poisoned Heather’s family. ‘Don’t you dare talk about our son! You know nothing about our son.’

‘My fault, my fault, my fault.’ Napoleon banged his head against the wall. He was in danger of concussing himself.

Heather gathered up all her mental strength to focus her mind and crawled around to face Napoleon on her hands and knees. She grabbed his head between her hands. She could feel his ears against her palms, the warmth of his stubbled skin.

‘Listen to me,’ she said in the loud, carrying voice she used to cut through the screams of a woman in labour.

Napoleon’s eyes rolled about, bulging and veined with blood, like a frightened horse.

‘I pressed snooze on my alarm,’ he said. He repeated it over and over. ‘I pressed snooze on my alarm. I pressed snooze on my alarm.’

‘I know you did,’ said Heather. ‘You’ve told me so many times, darling, but it wouldn’t have made a difference.’

‘It wasn’t your fault, Dad,’ said Zoe, her lonely only, and it seemed to Heather that she spoke very much like a zombie, not a university student, and that her young, beautiful mind was already fried like an egg, sizzled to a crisp. ‘It was my fault.’

‘Good,’ said Masha. The Poisoner. ‘This is so good! You are all speaking from your hearts.’

Heather turned and screamed in her face. ‘Fuck off!’

A pellet of Heather’s spittle flew in a slow arc from her mouth and hit the target of Masha’s eye.

Masha smiled. She wiped her eye. ‘Excellent. Release all that rage, Heather. Let it all out.’ She stood, and her multiple limbs drifted about her like an octopus’s tentacles. ‘I will be back momentarily.’

Heather turned back to her family. ‘Listen,’ she said. ‘Listen to me.’

Napoleon and Zoe made eye contact with her. They were all three in a temporary air pocket of clarity. It wouldn’t last. Heather had to speak fast. She opened her mouth and began to tug an endless tapeworm from deep down in her throat, and it was making her gag and vomit, but there was relief in it too, because at last she was wrenching it free from her body.

chapter forty-one

Zoe

The walls no longer breathed. The colours were fading. Zoe felt like she was sobering up. It was like that feeling at the end of a party when you walked out of a stuffy room into the night air and your mind cleared.