The Grieving Stones (2 page)

When Alice woke up she knew she wasn’t alone in the house.

Passing headlights traced a herringbone pattern against the closed curtains, the beams barely penetrating the room. The shadows twitched, seeming to edge slyly backwards and retreat into the corners. She blinked at the gloom, trying to re-establish her boundaries within the familiar space, and for a moment it all seemed so strange, so alien to her eyes. Then, as reality reasserted itself and her environment once again grew familiar, she took a deep breath and waited for a sound.

Nothing. The house was quiet – just the usual late-night lullaby of pipes gurgling behind the walls, the boiler sighing, the thermostat clicking softly as it switched on or off.

Moving slowly, Alice shifted her legs out from under the duvet and lowered her feet to the floor. She sat there for a moment, listening, waiting, all too aware that she was almost naked. She only ever wore a pair of knickers for bed; she usually overheated if she put on much more than underwear.

After a moment, she stood and walked across the room to the door. The carpet felt soft and comforting underfoot. Raising her hand, she took down her dressing gown from the hook on the back of the door and slipped it on. The door was ajar. She could not remember if she’d shut it tight when she went to bed. She usually did, but not always. She couldn’t be sure.

Another car passed by on the street outside, its engine loud and erratic. She turned around, and in the brief moment when the curtains shone like a cinema screen, she glimpsed a tall, thin shape at the side of the window.

Someone was standing there.

Alice froze. She had no idea what to do. Usually, if she saw this kind of scene in a movie, she would shout at the screen, telling the potential victim to get the hell out of there. Run, just run, and keep on running. But her hands refused to move towards the door handle. Her feet were stuck to the carpet, her gaze locked onto the spot where she had seen the figure.

This is it, she thought. This is how I leave the world: at night, standing in my own bedroom, and at the hands of a stranger.

But…

“No,” she whispered.

It was not a denial of what might happen, but part of a sudden realisation that bloomed inside her as if she were being filled with a living warmth. There was no intruder; no-one had broken into her home to stand there and watch her sleep.

Alice felt a stab of relief. But it didn’t completely vanquish the fear she had felt, when she’d been more uncertain.

Defiantly, she walked back across the room to the window, reached out, and opened one side of the curtains, letting in some ambient street-light. The figure was revealed: it was an antique coat stand with a baseball cap hanging from one of its hooks. It was a long-ago impulse buy. She’d had nowhere else to put the coat stand, so she had left it here, a temporary home, until a better location suggested itself. Then she’d forgotten it was there; the hanger had blended in with the rest of the room.

The baseball cap had belonged to her late husband. It was one of the items she’d missed when she cleared out Tony’s stuff after the funeral. She remembered putting it on the hat stand, until she could bring herself to throw it away. That moment had never come.

She waited for the heaviness in her heart to lessen. The sensation never really went away, but it increased whenever she thought of him. The loss: the terrible sense that something had been removed from her body – from
inside
her body. An organ removed. A bone extracted.

She glanced again at the coat stand.

A smile tried to cross her face but it died before it was fully formed, like the memories of happiness she often tried to summon. How could she have forgotten about that cap, and why had she been so convinced that she was not alone? Would this feeling of being watched all the time ever leave her, or was it simply something she was going to have to grow accustomed to, a by-product of Tony’s death? Was it, in fact, the way things would be for the rest of her life?

Alice closed the curtains and climbed into bed.

No matter how hard she tried, she could not get back to sleep. Then, an hour before her alarm was due to go off, she slipped into a light doze, thinking of a tall, thin man standing at the side of her bed, his baseball cap tipped at a jaunty angle, his features sharp and unforgiving. The man raised his hands and covered his eyes. “I can still see you,” he said. “I can always see you.”

When the alarm went off, she felt like screaming.

But that was nothing new – in the mornings, she
always
felt like screaming.

CHAPTER TWO

“Goodnight, everyone, and please drive safely in all that rain.” Clive Munroe’s voice was calm and reassuring, as it always was when the group broke up for the evening. He watched as the people started to leave, the lenses of his outdated John Lennon spectacles flaring in the thin light as he tilted his head when he reached up to scratch his greying goatee beard.

Alice stood and gathered up her things – her coat and handbag – from the floor at her feet. She paused to put on her coat smiling at familiar faces as the people walked quickly across the church hall towards the exit, their feet clomping on the old bare boards. The open doors let in a chill; the sound of the rain out there was not exactly welcoming. Alice felt cold even though she wasn’t standing directly in the draught.

“Alice… could you spare a moment?” Clive was heading in her direction from the front of the hall, his unruly brown hair sticking out like forked lightning, his smile big and open. He was a handsome man. She’d noticed this, of course, but it meant little to her. Things like that – the way men looked, or smelled, or acted – might not mean much to her for a long time to come.

“Yes. Of course.” She finished putting on her coat as she watched Clive approach, feeling a strange pang of something she could only describe as regret. She didn’t understand her reaction, and let it slide by, but knew that she might have to examine it at a later date. It was like an emotional echo of a chance not taken, or a door not opened.

“Sorry to keep you.”

“That’s okay,” she said. “I’ve nothing to rush home for. Not these days.”

The attempt at humour fell flat. His smile became awkward, but just for a second. “I’ll keep this brief. I’m not sure if you’ve heard this mentioned, but I’m running a special therapy session over the weekend. It’s invite-only, I’m afraid. There’s only enough space for five of us. So, this is your official invite.”

“Me?” She was caught off-guard, hadn’t expected this. She knew about Clive’s private group sessions – everyone did – but she had never been invited to one in the past. If she were honest, she hadn’t thought Clive paid much attention to her during the weekly meetings. She always sat at the back of the room and rarely spoke up during the often heated discussions.

“Yes, you… I think this could help you. I’ve noticed that you don’t get involved much in the group talks, and you tend to drift on the periphery, hiding.” Alice couldn’t help but think that he was reading her thoughts. “Perhaps this might help to bring you closer to the rest of us.” He smiled again, shrugged. His goatee twitched. “You don’t have to come, of course. It’s just that I think the trip might be beneficial. Here…” he thrust an A4-size sheet of paper into her hand. “This will give you more details. You don’t have to decide immediately. Just let me know before Thursday night. You have my number, or you can text or email me.”

She folded up the paper without looking at it, flattening the creases with her fingers. “Thank you. I will – I’ll think about it.”

Clive placed a hand on her arm. “I wouldn’t invite you if I didn’t think it would help. You know that, don’t you?”

She felt herself go rigid, a block of ice. She sometimes found this happening when men touched her, even if it was just someone brushing up against her in the street. She wasn’t ready for that kind of contact. Clive seemed to pick up on this, and he took his hand away, but casually, as if he’d always been going to move it at that exact moment. He possessed a great deal of empathy. It was what made him such a good counsellor.

“Just let me know, yeah?” His eyes sparkled when he smiled. He had a nice face, a face you could trust. Eyes that saw right inside you, if only you’d let them.

“I will,” said Alice, and she turned away, walked to the doors, and stepped outside into the cold, driving rain.

*

The journey home was slow. Traffic was heavy, despite the late hour. The therapy sessions always ran from 8p.m. until 9:30p.m. Usually, this meant that the rush hour was over and the roads were quiet, but tonight the weather seemed to be causing problems. According to the local radio news, there’d been an accident on the ring road, which had meant a lane closure and backed-up vehicles for several miles. Alice sighed and switched off the radio, selecting a CD of mellow music to help calm her nerves.

As she sat in an unmoving queue of traffic, she remembered the piece of paper Clive had given her. She fished it out of her coat pocket and unfolded it, still keeping her eyes on the road. Carefully, she held up the sheet against the steering wheel, and once she was certain the traffic wasn’t going to lurch forward suddenly, she quickly scanned the single-spaced print, wishing that her reading glasses weren’t in her handbag on the back seat. The light from outside was just about good enough for her to read the invite.

Dear Alice,

Please consider this an invitation to this month’s Special Therapy Session, Friday through till Monday.

I have the use of a large house in Ullswater, and as well as the usual therapeutic classes and group talks, the plan is to clean the place up a bit. The house is in a liveable condition, of course, with all the usual utilities, but things were left in disarray when renovation work stopped suddenly a couple of years ago.

There will be no charge for the long weekend – all I ask is that you help out with the work, which involves clearing out a lot of rubbish and abandoned items prior to the house being put on the market early next year. Obviously, I see this manual labour as being an integral part of the therapy programme, and we can draw up a roster if necessary so that everyone takes on an equal amount of work but no one has to do anything they are incapable of or uncomfortable with.

I hope to see you this weekend. Please let me know by Thursday evening at the latest if you’d like to attend. I hope you will.

Yours Sincerely,

Clive

Lights flared against the windscreen, making the glass opaque. Alice put down the sheet of paper on the passenger seat and tried to make out what was happening on the road ahead. The lights in front were moving slowly forward, so she let off the handbrake, lifted one foot from the clutch and let the other one drop gently onto the accelerator to apply some pressure. The car inched forward. Brake lights flashed directly ahead of her, and she slammed her foot down on the brake pedal. The traffic was motionless again.

“Great,” she said, thinking that a weekend in the Lake District might not be such a bad thing, if only to get away from all this for a couple of days. She might even get something out of the trip, some kind of insight she was unable to grasp through the more formal group sessions.

She killed the CD and tuned the car radio to a local channel. The news reports gave her more details about the delays: as well as the problem on the ring road, there had been a collision on the slip road to the motorway. Multiple vehicles involved; at least one fatality. Blood and broken bones.

I can still see you. I can always see you.

Her mouth went dry. Her eyes felt gritty. She blinked the sensation away and tried to focus on the traffic. Reaching out an unsteady hand, she pressed the button to find another channel. Cheesy pop music blared from the speakers.

Eventually, after a long delay, the traffic began to move again. When she passed the scene of the incident, Alice kept her gaze locked straight ahead. She had no desire to see the wreckage. The sight of blood didn’t exactly make her queasy, it was more the fact that a life might have been snuffed out, and someone who should be living and breathing could be lying dead. She put her foot down and left the accident behind.
If only
, she thought…
if only it could always be this easy to turn my back on things.

Back at the apartment, she made a cup of tea and sat in front of the television. She knew that she should try to eat something, but her appetite was non-existent. Hunger rarely bothered her these days. In fact, most of her natural desires – hunger, thirst, libido – had withered and blown away since Tony’s death. It was as if he’d taken the most vital parts of her with him, and there was no sign of them coming back. His death had left a huge gap, and when she looked inside there was nothing there, not even any decent memories.

Just a cold dark place into which he’d fallen.

She switched off the television and sat in silence, wishing that she had someone to talk to. Perhaps she should reconsider her negative views of house pets and get a cat – at least there would be some signs of life in the house other than her own. The sound of padding feet, a plaintive meow at feeding time, something to sit in her lap while she stroked it, might be nice.