Say You're Sorry(40)

Because Mum and Dad row all the time.

Because I’m ugly.

Because I’m not a vampire.

Because my room’s a mess.





My handwriting is getting smaller and smaller, as though I’m shrinking. The real reason is that I’m running out of pages so I try not to waste the margins or the white spaces, filling them with words to pass the time. I have one page left after this one. Every word has to count.

Filling hours. Wasting days. Tash cut up our magazines and made a collage on the wall, sticking photographs and words together to form these weird worlds where people have dog heads and bikini bodies. It’s really clever because if you stand at the far side of the room you can see that all the random images and letters form a bigger picture—a portrait of a girl. Tash said it was of me, but I’m not that pretty and nobody will ever paint a picture of me.

You’re probably thinking I have low self-esteem. My mother taught me to lower my expectations. She was a debutante and a model at motor shows, but she talks as though she was the muse to Yves Saint Laurent and Versace.

And she makes out that her family was wealthy and upper class, but I know she came from Brighton where Gran and Granddad had a bed and breakfast on the seafront and they sent her to the local grammar school.

I don’t know what my dad sees in Mum—apart from her looks, of course—but beauty is only skin deep and short-lived and in the eye of the beholder. I know my clichés. In their wedding photographs, my mother looks like Natalie Portman and Daddy looks like Natalie Portman’s father, walking her down the aisle.

I don’t have his patience or his sense of duty when it comes to loving Mum. “Anything for a quiet life,” he used to say. I can give you more clichés: don’t rock the boat or make waves or upset the apple cart.

Mum was always going off to health spas because she needed to recharge. Daddy didn’t seem to mind because he could relax for a week. When she came home she’d throw these lavish parties, filling the house with freeloaders and hangers-on, who would eat our food and drink our booze, while she played lady of the manor.

I used to dream about leaving home. I wanted to go somewhere where I could lose myself. Bingham isn’t big enough to get lost in. It’s boring. Dullsville. It’s like going to a relative’s house when you know in advance where you’re going to eat and refuel and what songs you’re going to sing and what color cordial makes you throw up. And when you arrive, someone is going to pinch your cheek and tell you how much you’ve grown.

I don’t know why I’m writing stuff like this down. I don’t imagine anyone will ever find my notebooks or read them. And if they do, I don’t know if they’ll be young and sad. That’s the sort of reader who will understand me: young and sad and lonely.





15




The main doors of the church are shut, but I find a smaller door at the side of the south transept. Dr. Leece’s wife told me that I’d find him here. Stepping inside, I let my eyes adjust before searching along the high-backed pews, looking for movement or a silhouetted head.

From somewhere above me, an organ strikes up in a blast of music that vibrates the air and shakes dust from the beams. Following the sound, I climb the stairs to the choir loft. John Leece is sitting with his back to me at an organ keyboard, facing a wall of pipes and plugs. Working his feet and hands, he produces deep resonant chords that fill every corner of the church.

As the final notes fade, he folds the sheet music. I clear my throat and he turns, blinking, his eyes floating behind thick lenses.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t hear you,” he says.

“I was enjoying the music.”

“I play here every Sunday,” he says, packing away his things.

“That piece didn’t sound very religious.”

He glances at me guiltily.

“I’m sure God won’t mind me rocking it up occasionally. How did you find me?”

“Your wife.”

Dr. Leece looks at his hands, closing his eyes for a second.

“You’ve come to ask me about the post-mortem?”

“Yes.”

“Are you a Christian, Professor?”

“I’m not really anything.”

“I was an altar boy. I even thought about becoming a priest, but I became a doctor instead.”

The pathologist is staring at his hands, turning them over as though studying them for the first time.

“I have done more than four hundred post-mortems, but nothing like the one yesterday. Every body presents a new challenge. It’s like reading a road map of broken bones, scars and diseases, but you expect there to be certainties; things you know are true.”