Forget Me Not (The Ceruleans: Book 2)

The Ceruleans: Book II

Forget Me Not

By Megan Tayte

Copyright 2015 Megan Tayte

All rights reserved. No part
of this book may be reproduced, distributed, transmitted or stored in an
information retrieval system in any form or by any means (other than for
purposes of review), without the express permission of the author given in
writing. The right of Megan Tayte to be identified as the author of this work
has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents
Act 1988.

To contact the author, visit
www.megantayte.com.

For Kathleen, never
forgotten.

FORGET ME NOT

‘While I thought that
I was learning how to live, I have been learning how to die.’ – Leonardo da
Vinci

Beneath the very bluest of heavens, a sea of black, broken
only by velvety green grass and the greying granite of grave markers. On the
sweet September air, beyond the distant rhythm of waves meeting beach, the
rustle of a tissue, the swish of a suit jacket and the minister’s gentle but
arresting oratory:

‘In sure and certain hope of the resurrection to eternal
life through our Lord Jesus Christ, we commend to Almighty God
our brother Bert, and we commit his body to the ground:
earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust.’

Somewhere behind, I heard a stifled sob. Next to me, a girl
swayed slightly under the weight of her grief and shifted a little closer. To
my other side, a boy stood tall and tortured, rigid but for his long fingers
entwined with mine, stroking mine.

It was a funeral, and we who stood at the graveside, we who
were left behind, were meant to be sad. I was sad. But not for the old man
whose remains lay in the simple elm coffin being lowered into the ground. Nor
for myself, who’d watched him die and been unable to save him.

I was sad for my companions. For the girl, who was beautiful
and courageous and already so damaged. For the boy, who would do anything to
save me – had already saved me – and whose heart belonged to me. I was sad that
they would be back here all too soon.

For me.          

*

‘Hey, Scarlett. Miniature Battenberg? Fondant fancy? Chelsea
bun? Lemon drizzle muffin? Slice of fruit cake?’

The spread laid out before me on delicate china plates was
any sweet toother’s fantasy. But the mouth-watering wake buffet wasn’t what
drew my attention. That was focused firmly on the boy towering behind the
dining room table in this seaside bungalow – dark, messy hair, glowing cheeks and
eyes blue enough to drown in.

I smiled at Luke – my Luke, my gentle giant of a boyfriend.
‘Which did you make?’

‘All of them,’ he smiled. Then he added loudly for the
benefit of two elderly ladies flanking him, ‘Mrs Hobbs and Mrs Bennet did the
savouries. Which, of course, are
delicious
.’

I quickly added a limp egg sandwich and a handful of
cocktail sausages to my plate, but hovered indecisively over the dessert
selection. Luke was an amazing cook – had dreamed of having his own restaurant,
in fact, once – and to choose only
one
cake…

He saw the furrow in my brow and leaned over to whisper, ‘I
kept two of each kind for us, for later.’

I beamed at him. ‘I knew there was a reason I loved you.’

His eyes lit up. The L word was new for us, and still we got
a thrill from saying it and hearing it.

Behind me an elderly gent was elbowing me eagerly in his
haste to get hold of the deepest-filled vol-au-vent, and after grabbing a
muffin I yielded, giving Luke a ‘see you later’ smile and stepping away from
the table. I threaded my way through the crowded room to where my best friend,
Cara – Luke’s sister – was waiting for me on the sofa.

‘There’s more margarine than ham in this sandwich,’ she
hissed at me as I sat down. ‘And I think Mrs Bennet got muddled between Piccalilli
and lemon curd.’

‘Easy mistake. Both yellow,’ I conceded. I bit into a
sausage and promptly regretted it. The middle was ice-cold. ‘Well, at least
there are cakes,’ I muttered as I tried to work out how to discreetly spit out
the sausage. I finally settled for a cough-the-frozen-centre-into-a-napkin
manoeuvre.

‘Bert lived for cake,’ said Cara. ‘He’d have loved this.’

I nodded. ‘But he’d have turned off this weird pan-pipe
music and put
Murder She Wrote
on in the background.’

In unison, we began humming the theme tune, until giggles
took over. A prim old lady in the corner gave us a scandalised look, but we
ignored her. It was good to laugh. Bert had certainly thought so.

Oh, Bert. I missed him – the cheeky, cheery old guy I’d met
just two months before when I’d come to this sleepy coastal village of
Twycombe. It had been apparent on that very first day, when he’d given me a
summer job walking his dog, Chester, that he was seriously ill; but though he’d
little choice but to sit in his bungalow and wait for God, he’d done so with
such dignity and humour. I’d done what I could to keep him company in his last
weeks. Along the way we’d watched a lot of TV whodunits, ingested a lot of cake
and laughed so often that my lasting memory of Bert was the craggy smile lines
around his eyes.

But then I’d walked into this very room and witnessed the
very last smile of Bert in this world. And that moment marked not just the end
of the life of a dear and loving man. It marked the end of my life as I’d known
it.

Beside me, Cara sniffed. ‘I’d known him since I was a little
girl,’ she said. ‘It won’t be the same without him.’

‘I know.’ The glaze on my muffin stickied my fingers as I
toyed with it, appetite gone.

‘Scarlett?’

I looked up, into bluebell eyes awash with tears.

‘Do you think Bert’s looking down on us now?’

‘Yes,’ I said quietly. ‘I think so.’

‘So you believe… you believe in heaven?’

I nodded.

Cara relaxed a little beside me then. She took a bite of her
bun and chewed it slowly.

I got it: why my opinion mattered that much. Cara and Luke
were alone in the world, orphaned by a horrific car crash. I was the only
person in their lives who understood the pain of their loss. Because five
months ago, I’d lost someone close to me too: my sister, Sienna.

‘They’re probably all up there now.’ Cara gestured
heavenward with her bun. ‘Mum, Dad, your sister and Bert. Dressed in their
Sunday best and having a big party. Smiling down at us being all gloomy,
saying, “Chin up. We’ve not gone far.”’

Not my sister,
I wanted to say.
She’s not up
there. She was taken. And I have to find her.
But of course I couldn’t say
that, so I smiled and said, ‘I’m sure you’re right.’

*

Later, when the mourners had purged their memory banks of
Bert tales, and the brandy was depleted and all that remained of the buffet was
a forlorn Scotch egg, I sat on the bench in the front garden with Luke. At our
feet lay Bert’s Old English Sheepdog, usually uncontainable in his
joie de
vivre
, but today listless and pining.

‘Poor Chester,’ said Luke.

‘What’ll happen to him now?’ I asked, combing my fingers
through his shaggy fur.

‘I asked Bert’s son. He doesn’t want him – not practical
with his life in London, and with a baby coming. He was talking about taking
him to a shelter for re-homing.’

‘No! I’ll take him.’

‘I said the same thing, and he agreed. I thought, perhaps –
joint custody?’

‘So we’re getting a dog together?’

‘We’re getting a dog together.’

He smiled.

I smiled.

But they were sad smiles.

The breeze picked up and blew strands of long blond hair
across my face, and Luke reached up to smooth them back. He let his hand linger
on my cheek for a moment, stroking lightly downwards.

‘How are you holding up?’ he asked soberly. ‘Are you okay?’

I stared past him, at the slice of ocean just visible over
the rooftops, loath to lie but unable to find any other choice.

An unequivocal ‘no’ was the truthful answer. I was very far
from okay.

Because this was the bench on which I’d sat after Luke found
me slumped before a lifeless old man and a grief-stricken dog.

Because my shock that day had not been, as Luke thought, due
to seeing a man die and being powerless to stop it. In fact, I had discovered,
I was not powerless – miraculously, terrifyingly, I had some kind of power to
heal.

Because I hadn’t seen Bert die, I’d seen his soul pass
peacefully into a light, watched over by a boy – at least until then I’d
thought he was a boy. Just a boy who’d been my sister’s friend and had spent a
summer trying to be mine.

Because soon after, I’d almost lost Luke too, when he’d
nearly drowned trying to save me from death-by-rocks in the ocean. I’d healed
Luke then, but would have died myself if the boy with the healing hands hadn’t
at last appeared and pulled me back from the brink.

Because on the day I turned eighteen, the-boy-who-wasn’t-just-a-boy
had come to me and told me five things:

That he was something like an angel, but not an angel; he
called it
Cerulean
.

That I, too, was this thing called Cerulean.

That he was here for me, to take me away, to another life
beyond this one
.

That my sister, my sister whose suicide I’d spent months
trying to come to terms with, had been ‘taken by someone bad’.

That the time was coming when I would go with this Cerulean,
Jude, because it was the only way to save my sister. I would choose him.
I
would choose death.

What was Jude? What was I? Where was Sienna? Who was this
someone bad? Go where? Save Sienna from what? There were enough questions in my
head to fuel a lifetime of insomnia.

Laid out like that, I reflected, really it was a wonder I’d
even managed to get out of bed this morning, let alone put on a black dress and
attend a funeral service and then make polite conversation with old Mrs Hobbs
over a whiffy egg sandwich.

‘Earth to Scarlett.’

I blinked. ‘Yes?’

‘Are you okay?’

‘Sure, I’m okay. It’s just…’

‘Sad.’

I nodded.

He put his hand over mine. It was warm and reassuringly
rough.

‘You heading home now?’

‘Yes,’ I said. A lie, one of many I’d told him recently:
I’m
fine… I’m not too tired… I don’t have a headache… We have a long, fun year
ahead of us.

‘I’ll come by later then, with Chester. Say seven?’

‘Great.’

He moved forward to brush his lips on mine, but I leaned
away.

‘Luke?’

‘What?’

‘Don’t forget the cakes.’

He laughed, and I kissed him then, a lingering kiss that
made the blood sing in my veins. Then I left him to load a sister, a dog and a
crateful of cake stands into his van. I left him, because that was the right,
the normal, thing to do. But every step I took away from him hurt, and not only
because of the pinching heels I wore.

Ask yourself this: if you knew, if you categorically,
without-a-shadow-of-a-doubt knew that there was life after death, how would it
change you? If you knew there was no final farewell, merely
au revoir
.
If you knew those you’d loved and lost existed someplace. If you knew that when
the time came, it wasn’t eternal black nothingness you faced, but another
place, beyond the blue. If you knew
you
, the essence of you, wasn’t
mortal after all, but immortal...

Would you let go of the fear at the very core of your being,
the fear of losing and of being lost? Would you laugh more, love more,
live
more? Would you stand at the graveside of a loved one and say forever instead
of never?

Yes, yes, yes.

But what of death itself? Still, you’d hear the ticking
clock echoing in your every heartbeat. Still, you’d want more – another moment,
another hour, another day, another year. You may no longer fear death, but
still you’d wish it away, to defer the moment of separation from those you
loved.

Had you a wish, it would be this:
Please, let me stay
just a little longer
.

I know this. I know this because it was my wish.

Twycombe village was deathly quiet. Earlier this afternoon,
when I’d met Cara and Luke at the village square before the funeral service,
there had been clusters of people all around – black-suited residents talking
in groups, waiting for the chime on the clock tower of St Mary’s church that
would signal one o’clock: time to bury their dead. Now, though, the mourners
were at home, casting off black attire and sorrow, leaving the square empty.
The hush was a little eerie, but a relief after the clamour and claustrophobia
of the afternoon.

I’d been astonished by the turnout for Bert’s funeral. I
grew up in a cavernous and cold mansion whose nearest neighbours were a mile
away and should you attempt to ‘pop round’ to borrow a cup of sugar would most
likely panic that someone had got through the security gates and send the
butler for the shotgun. But clearly in Twycombe when a resident died, all came
out to pay their respects. In this small, isolated village, people mattered.
Myself included, it would seem. Though I had lived here just a couple of months
and some distance from the village itself – in my grandparents’ windswept
cottage on the west cliff of the bay – so many people had spoken kindly to me
at Bert’s wake, as though I was one of them. It was overwhelming, and it was
painful. Because now that I’d found a home and people who cared, there was so
much more to lose.

Beyond the lawn of the village green, the rolling waves
called to me. Often at this time each evening I would be out on them, riding
them, revelling in the rush of the surging surf and the salty air. I spotted a
couple of surfers, guys I’d grown close to over the summer. I itched to kick
off my shoes and strip off my scratchy dress and leave behind all vestiges of
the sombre mood of the day to join them out there, where the very epitome of
being
alive
was to be found somewhere between ocean and sky. But that
would have to wait until tomorrow.

St Mary’s waited patiently for me across the green, a quiet,
cool sanctuary. As I unlatched the gate, the stained glass window of the clock
tower cried out for attention. I knew the depiction well: an angel holding a
baby within a starburst of light. I’d seen it a hundred times or more – my
grandparents had brought me to this church for Sunday service every summer of
my childhood. But I’d never before noticed the angel’s expression. He didn’t
look serene, I thought. He looked pained. But what had angels to cry about?

The graveyard was deserted, and as I walked around the edge
of the building I trailed my hand along the cold, coarse stone of the wall,
finding solace in its solidity. For almost two hundred years this church had
stood firm against the elements, faithful and unwavering, its spire pointing
ever heavenwards. Even the trees around, tall and broad, were as resolute as
sentries, sheltering the many generations in eternal slumber beneath.

Bert’s grave was around the back of the church, at the
opposite end of the graveyard to my grandparents’, in an area by the rear wall
newly designated for burials. Already the grave was filled and concealed
beneath rectangles of turf. A corner was standing up, giving a glimpse of the
rich brown earth beneath, and I crouched down and pushed it back. The grass was
damp beneath my hand. I kept my hand there and closed my eyes.

In the past weeks, I had become a master of concealing my
feelings. Today, standing with the other mourners at Bert’s graveside, among
people who’d known the man for a lifetime against my two months, there had been
no space for the words I wished to say for him –
to
him, because I was
sure his soul was close by. So I said them now, alone, reciting Anne Brontë’s
timeless verse:

‘Farewell to thee! But not farewell

To all my fondest thoughts of thee;

Within my heart they still shall dwell

And they shall cheer and comfort me.’

Lighter now, calmer, I stood and stepped back to make my way
along the path to home, to Luke.

Afterwards, it would always seem that the first I knew of
the stone brick falling on me was the thunderous crash it made as it hit the
ground at my feet, cracking the concrete path. Given the jagged graze down my
arm, it must have hit me first, but the pain didn’t register then, not until
later. After I’d jumped back. After I’d flung my head up to look at the clock
tower, vacant and silent. After I’d collapsed shakily onto a nearby bench and
calculated that just an inch or so to the side and I’d have been brained.

Then, once pain permeated the fog in my mind and I saw my
arm streaked with red, then I couldn’t get my breath.

Death. Death was coming for me.

*

‘Goodness me – whatever…? Scarlett? Are you all right,
dear?’

I looked up to see a portly, pink-cheeked elderly fellow
puffing up the path towards me. It was Reverend Helmsley. He surveyed the
chunks of brick at my feet in alarm.

‘I heard a crash. Whatever happened?’

Gathering my scattered wits, I managed: ‘Stone. From the
tower, I guess. It fell down.’

The reverend sank onto the bench beside me, his palm flat
against his labouring chest. ‘Oh dear Lord. You might have been killed!’

I winced at the words, but managed a smile. ‘Really, I’m
fine. Just a graze.’

His eye flew to the arm I was examining, and a fresh wave of
horror gripped him. ‘Your arm! You’re hurt! Quick, come inside with me. I’ve a
large bottle of antiseptic in the vestry that’ll help…’

Frankly, a large bottle of antiseptic sounded like something
that would
hurt
, not help. But with the reverend placing surprisingly
strong hands on my elbows and lifting me up, there was little to do but move
obediently. As he ushered me along the path and through a side door, he kept up
a constant stream of exclamations:

‘A brick!’

‘The tower!’

‘Such a crash!’

‘Your arm!’

‘Could have been killed!’

Thankfully, the cool and quiet of the vestry seemed to calm
him a little, and having seated me on a chair he busied himself laying out the
contents of a large first-aid box on the old wooden table in the middle of the
room.

‘I don’t understand it,’ he said as he worked. ‘Only last
month I had the tower assessed, because I thought some of the crenellations
were loose, and the mason said everything was shipshape. I’m terribly sorry,
Scarlett. I don’t know what can have happened. I’ll call the mason back out first
thing tomorrow.’

‘It’s all right,’ I assured him. ‘Really. Just one of those
things.’

I had no doubt it was true. But it was deeply distressing to
realise that Death wanted me badly enough that even a house of God would
crumble for his need.

The reverend was at my side now, sitting heavily on the
chair beside me and dabbing gently at my arm with gauze soaked in antiseptic. I
flinched and swallowed the curse on my lips – it really,
really
stung.

‘Sorry, sorry,’ he said. ‘Nearly done. There. In days gone by
I’d have bandaged you up, but I believe the guidance now is to leave the wound
to air; heals faster that way.’

I took a look at the graze. It was broad and long, sweeping
from bicep down to forearm, and the raw skin glistened even in the dim light of
the vestry. ‘Thank you, Reverend.’

‘Not at all. Not at all. Now tell me, Scarlett – how are
you?’

His hand had stopped fretting with gauze and come to rest on
mine. When I looked at him I saw his eyes were watery with age but warm with
compassion.

‘I’m fine, honestly. As I said, it’s just a –’

‘No, that’s not what I mean, dear. How are you in yourself,
after everything that’s happened? The death of someone we love has a profound
effect on us, after all, and dear Bert was the second person in a matter of
months.’

‘Oh. That. I’m okay. I mean, sad, obviously, but not…
falling apart.’

The lie was hard to force out in this place, sitting next to
a stack of Bibles.

‘Hmm.’ The concern on the reverend’s face was unmistakable.
‘Scarlett, while we have this opportunity to talk, are there any questions
you’d like to ask me?’

I wished it were as simple as that. I wished I could go back
to childhood, to Sunday school, where the big questions could be answered so
simply:

Why did God make me?

Because He loves you.

Why did God make slimy slugs?

Because He loves them too.

Where is God?

He is everywhere.

Why did God shove a bunch of animals into a boat when it
rained?

That was Noah, dear. And he did that to save them.

How can God be the Father when I already have a father?

He is the Father of all fathers.

Where did my hamster Scallywag
go when it died?

Heaven.

But the questions pulling me apart now – What am I? Where is
my sister? Must I die? Why? When? – these were beyond the reach of this
kind-hearted reverend and the Church to which he had dedicated his life.

I shook my head.

‘All right, dear. But just remember that my door is always
open for you if you need reassurance, or comfort, or spiritual guidance.’

I thanked him, but I knew I wouldn’t be back here. The
answers I sought lay elsewhere. They clamoured for my attention, like sinners
desperate for salvation. Tomorrow I would let them be heard. But for today,
just for today, I wanted a little more time. To pretend the summer was not
drawing to a close. To be nothing more than a regular eighteen-year-old girl
with a lifetime ahead in which to live and laugh and love.

As I walked away from the church, to the beach and the cliff
path that would lead me home, the big hand of St Mary’s clock shuddered onto
the twelve. With each dong that announced six o’clock I walked a little faster,
away from the bell that would too soon ring my death knell.