Welcome to my writing world. Sit back with a hot drink and enjoy a few minutes somewhere other than where you are now.
⏱️ Read time: ~5 mins
🏷️ Genre: Psychological Thriller
💢 Content warning: Parental death
The loss of her parents is the catalyst for Lucy to return to her old house and revive the memories of a childhood event that is far from over.
Chapter 1
The hired funeral car was peaceful and immaculate. Unlike the slow outward journey, the return home was at a steady pace, through country lanes and then pretty urban streets where people carried on their lives obliviously. Lucy sat in the back row of the Mercedes limousine next to her cousin Alex. He had done his best to hide the tears during the service. Lucy had cried openly at losing her mother.
The few remaining relatives she had were heading to her parents’ house. Her childhood home that was now devoid of her childhood because both of her parents were dead. Her father had passed away almost three years earlier. Lucy had sensed the blackness in her mother’s life after her father died. Her parents had met at sixteen, married at eighteen and had her soon after, but due to complications after the birth, Lucy had remained an only child.
They had always been a tight family unit, but the last three years had seen it disintegrate. It had pained Lucy that her mother could no longer enjoy life with her and only seemed to focus on the life she had lost with her husband. She’d always thought she was the most important thing in her mother’s life, so to discover that her father somehow held a place above her had been difficult to adjust to. She’d struggled with frustration and a feeling of rejection, trying to encourage her mother to live in the present. They had done lunches, shopping trips and even a weekend away, but something was always missing. Her mother had been so sad. And now she was gone too. Lucy felt like she had a hole where her chest should have been. It brought back the grief from her father’s death all over again, and that made it even worse.
The car pulled up outside her parents’ house. A neat, semi-detached property among many others on a wide street. The driver got out, walked around the car and opened the door for her. He was the same man that she had met at the funeral home, and she was grateful for his presence. Without her parents she felt slightly lost. He spoke to her briefly about arranging collection of the ashes, and then shook her hand warmly and left.
Lucy let herself into the house, her cousin following behind. He’d said nothing since the service started and went straight to the fridge for a beer. Lucy welcomed the few others into the house that had attended. Another cousin and his mother, from her father’s side. A couple of her mother’s friends, a few of their neighbours. She realised that she didn’t really want any of them there. There was a mixture of relief and misery that the funeral was over, and she wanted to be alone. She laid out some sandwiches and offered teas and coffees to everyone.
For the next couple of hours she chatted amicably, until they started to drift away. Their normal lives called them back to normal living, her mother’s death already moving into the past. No one outstayed their welcome and for that Lucy was grateful. Her cousin was the last to leave and gave her a great bear hug at the door. He wobbled slightly from all the beer he’d drunk and told her to keep in touch. He waved from the rear window of his taxi and Lucy put in the effort to raise a smile for him.
When she’d waved him off she closed the front door and sighed a huge sigh, letting out all the tightness and formality. Her shoulders dropped and she felt the tears swilling around in her eyes. A couple of them escaped down her cheeks and she wiped them away. There had been so much crying already.
She kicked off her shoes by the door and walked softly to the kitchen. She poured herself a glass of wine and put two sandwiches on a plate. She carried them through to the lounge and sat down, legs stretched out on the cushions, her back to the arm of the sofa. The house was quiet; the only noise the faint ticking of the clock on the living room wall and the slow approach and departure of an occasional car passing through her street. It was early on Friday night, so elsewhere people were getting ready to go out, full of excitement, meeting with friends and lovers. Celebrating the end of a week, rather than sitting at home and mourning the end of a life.
Lucy thought about her father. He had hated doctors and refused to visit them for all but the most serious of problems. And it had turned out to be a most serious problem when he was finally diagnosed with lung cancer. It had metastasised to his liver, and he was already very ill when the doctors discovered what was wrong. Finding out about the disease seemed to feed the cancer and he deteriorated rapidly. Lucy thought back to his last weeks and how frail and unwell he looked. He lost weight and became a bony, elderly version of the man she remembered from her childhood. It was awful for her and her mother. In his last days he seemed to shrink and sicken measurably in each 24-hour period until his body could not fight any longer. More tears made their way down Lucy’s face, dripping onto the top of her dress and blurring her vision so the sandwich she was trying to eat became a beige triangle in her hand.
She put it down and allowed herself a few sobs. Deep, heaving breaths in, catching in her throat. She blew the air out of her lungs, trying to calm herself down. Her mother’s death had brought all the sadness and horror of watching him die to the forefront of her consciousness. It wasn’t that she had forgotten it, just that she’d learned to live without thinking about it all the time. Until her Mum had died, she tended to think of him mostly as he had always been. Big smile, busy hands, but always happy to stop what he was doing and engage in a bit of a philosophical chat.
Lucy wondered, not for the first time in her life, if it would all be easier if she hadn’t been an only child. Maybe she’d have a sister here now to talk and share feelings with. Or a brother who could hug her and make her feel like her family hadn’t completely disappeared. Her imaginary siblings were invariably wonderful people whom she got along with brilliantly. She felt their absence when relationships ended, career paths changed, or life left her feeling lonely and isolated and a call home wasn’t the right thing because it would make her parents worry.
After a couple of hours of mindless background television, Lucy made her way upstairs. She had decided to stay for the weekend and make a start on clearing out the house. She went into her old bedroom, which now looked like a functional guest room as she had long since moved all of her things out. It was where she’d always stayed at Christmas. She flicked on the lamp on the bedside table. It made her feel small again, being in that room. It was comforting.
But being back home was also full of less comforting memories. Thoughts of her old best friend Emma surfaced. She remembered laying awake at night for a long time after it happened. She pushed the thoughts away, and mercifully the wine and emotional exhaustion pushed her quickly towards sleep. She drifted off, certain that emptying the house and getting it sold as soon as possible was all she needed to do. There was nothing for her here any more.
