August 3

Kelly is standing in the hall, glorious in her make-up and elegant in her work suit, best shoes on. She’s checking the curls of her hair are neat and clean. Susan thinks her Mum needs a new bag. Her old black leather briefcase is covered in scuffs and some of the stitching has worked loose. Mum’s overfilled it as usual with her briefs. Susan still thinks it’s funny that Mum takes her briefs to work, because briefs means underwear too and maybe the briefcase is stuffed full of underwear. It would be hilarious if it exploded in a meeting and Mum’s underwear flew all over the room and ended up hanging off the faces of the crusty old male lawyers Mum works with. Mum won’t change the briefcase. She said it was a gift from Grandad when she graduated.

Susan rubs the sleep from her eyes.

“You OK, love?” Mum says.

“Big meeting today?” Susan says. It’s seven thirty in the morning and Mum doesn’t normally go to work this early.

“Oh, you were listening again,” Mum says. “I’m glad you’re paying attention.”

“Don’t be a sneak, you said.”

“Big difference between the two, Susie.”

“What time will you be back?” Susan says. “It’s movie night and you promised you’d be here this week.”

“I’ll try, love,” Mum says, frowning. “I’ll try. I know that’s what I said last week.”

“And the week before that. And the one before that.”

“I’m sorry. I’ll make it up to you. You know how important my work is.”

Susan knows. Mum is a lawyer. A few times a year, Susan joins Mum in the office at the law firm. Mum’s workplace is an alien place to Susan. Big leather-bound books - long, confusing legal texts full of long, confusing words - dominate the shelves in offices with huge shiny wooden desks and expensive-looking chairs. Many of them have similar sounding titles, stuff about human rights. Every now and again, Susan joins Mum in meeting new clients. People from all over the world. Africans and Asians, all of them needing Mum’s help to fight against injustice.

“Are you proud of your mother?” a big woman said to her one time after a meeting. She was wearing an amazing dress, bright colours and dazzling patterns, and a wonderful headdress.

“Yeah, I guess,” Susan replied.

“Don’t guess, be proud,” the woman said. “She’s helping us reclaim what was stolen from us long ago. Before we met her, nobody helped us. She is a hero.”

“What did you lose?” Susan said.

“The treasures of my people, given by the Gods.”

Susan hugs her Mum when she crosses the hall. She wants to be like her one day, tall, beautiful, elegant and heroic.

“See you tonight, sweetie,” Mum says. “Will! I’m leaving!”

Dad shuffles into the hall in his pyjamas clutching a mug of coffee, hair all over the place. He places it on the hall table and kisses Mum on the lips. Yuck. Coffee-morning-breath kiss.

“Have a good day,” Dad says. Mum smiles and winks.

“I will,” she says, opening the front door. Mum looks at Susan. “I’ll be here. I promise!”

“Bye, Mum,” Susan says.

The door closes behind her. Susan wonders what she’ll have for breakfast.

“Can I have bacon?” she says.

August 11

Maybe it should be written on her tombstone, Susan thinks. ‘I broke my promise and didn’t come home’. She didn’t come home and Susan hates that the last memory she has of her mother is of a promise she’ll never fulfill. She has so many memories of that evening. Dad was acting weird. So many exceptional events, like Dad burning the bolognese sauce and him refusing to let Susan watch TV. The way he made her stay in her bedroom and every time she left it, he came out of his office and yelled at her. That never happened. Dad was the calm one, it was Mum who did the yelling when Susan was bad. Susan had a nasty temper just like Mum, too. Susan hated fighting with Mum because all that happened was lots of angry shouting which went nowhere. Sometimes Mum said things which made Susan explode, sometimes the other way round. When they fought, Susan had to resist the urge to use her Talent to chuck a chair or a table at Mum. Now and again, Susan felt like she could chuck Mum out of the window.

As she stands in front of the open grave, Susan wishes she could have one last chance to fight with her mother. She wishes she’d been able to be cross at Mum for missing movie night again, and give her a big hug and forgive her. Susan hasn’t felt right since that night. Her stomach is wound up tight like a ball of rubber bands. It started that night after dinner and she didn’t know whether it was because of the horrible red sauce fighting back inside, or if it was because Mum wasn’t home like she promised, or because Dad was acting like something terrible had happened.

It was at about eight p.m. on the 3rd when Susan Sensed a car, two cars, pull up outside. One of them had a little hat on. Susan looked into the street from her window. A Police car and a smart, fancy car like the one Mum drove a few times a week. It was even the same colour. Martina got out of it. Martina worked with Mum and was her best friend. Susan liked Martina despite her smell of cigarette smoke, with her short blonde hair and a face that went all wrinkly when she laughed, not that there’d been much laughing since Mum died. She’d often come over with her husband on Saturday nights and sat in the living room with Mum and Dad drinking wine and laughing too loud. Susan hadn’t been allowed to join in but they’d probably been telling those stupid grown-up jokes that neither she nor her friends understood. Two Police officers stepped out of their car, a man and a woman, and the three of them made their way through the gate and up to the front door.

Dad was sitting in his office with his head in his hands. He looked up sharply when the doorbell rang. Susan jumped when he looked up towards her like he could see her through the ceiling. He got up and went to the door, letting Martina and the Police officers in after a short conversation.

She can barely remember the conversation she had with Dad, at least not without crying, after the Police officers left. She can hardly stand to recall the ashen face of the Policewoman leaving the house or the pain in the Policeman’s eyes that he was keeping from his face. Martina looked like she’d aged ten years. Her Dad was a mess, eyes red from crying and chest wracked with sobs. Susan thinks she screamed when Dad told her what had happened. Everything else that night is blurry, but she thinks Dad hugged her until the screaming stopped and she’d soaked his shirt with her tears. She thinks Martina helped put her to bed.

One of her friends at school is too clever for his own good and obsessed with science. He’s told her about these crazy science experiments when physicists put a cat in a box and nobody can tell if the cat is dead or alive until they open the box. You had to open the box to find out, so opening the box could kill the cat. Stroddinger’s cat, or something like that. Susan wants this to be true about her Mum. Maybe if Dad hadn’t opened the door that night, Mum could have been Stroddinger’s Mum, not alive and not dead, just not home. Dad killed her when he let the Police in. It’s a stupid thought, but a tiny part of her believes in it and is mad at Dad, just like the tiny part that is mad at Mum for dying, for being in that stupid building when that stupid man burned it down.

She doesn’t know why they’re going to bury such a big coffin. Mum wasn’t a very big lady and there’s barely anything in there, a jumble of bones wrapped up in a cloth. The funeral directors ease the casket into position as though it were made of tissue paper.

“Dad?” she says.

Dad turns and gazes down at her, his eyes as red today as they’ve been for the last eight days.

“Is Mum in there?”

Dad gulps like a goldfish.

“Susan, I…” Dad crouches down and looks into her eyes. His eyes are just a little dull under the wetness. Susan has watched him toss and turn in bed all night long last night and all the nights before, the same way she had.

“Is she in there?”

“Susan.” Dad is almost whispering, so soft is his voice. “She’s gone, Susie.”

“I know, Dad. But the coffin isn’t empty, right?”

“She’s in there, love.”

“How could they tell?”

Dad gulps and fresh tears build up at the corners of his eyes.

Despite the best efforts of her Dad, Susan watched the horrors of that day unfold in the news the next morning and all the following week. Some phrases she’d heard had the power of nightmare. She’d watched a paramedic say ‘burned beyond recognition’ in an interview and this man became a nightly apparition, intruding into a dream where Mum comes home and the paramedic appears and says the words and then it’s not Mum, it’s a walking pile of cinders and Susan wakes up shrieking fit to shake the house and wake the neighbours.

“It’s her, love. They did tests,” he says, wiping his eyes.

A crowd has gathered around the grave. People of all ages and colours, dressed in a rainbow of fabric. Dad told Susan to wear her any dress she wanted, as long it was one that Mum had loved. Susan picked one she’d chosen with Mum for her last birthday party, bright red satin, shiny and rustling with a butterfly brooch. Aren’t funerals supposed to be dark, depressing things? Uncle Alan’s funeral two years back was all black suits and dresses and old people with hard faces talking quietly in corners, in some way she didn’t understand glad that Uncle was dead, glad that he was ‘free of it at’ last, and they never told her what ‘it’ was. Today, everyone was sad and crying in the church, but then she lost count of the number of people who came over and talked to her. They all said the same things, from the obvious ‘we’re so sorry for you, Susan’, to the unexpected, ‘your Mum was a fighter, she never gave up on our case, even when we wanted to’. Susan heard those words or variations of them over and over. She can’t stop thinking how little she knew her mother and how they all had done things with Mum, important, difficult things.

The vicar starts speaking again, and the coffin starts its journey into the grave. Someone is singing, an African song Mum had loved. One day, she’ll be like Mum, she’ll do what Mum did, but better. It wasn’t fair. None of this is fair, Susan thinks, a sob catching in her throat and tears flowing from her eyes.

After the coffin reaches its destination and Dad has encouraged her to throw a handful of dry soil on top, just like everyone else, she’s trailing behind him as they walk through the cemetery. Susan can’t find a way to stop crying or think of a reason to do so. Martina sees her crying and takes her hand.

“Susan,” Martina says.

“What,” Susan says.

“It. Was my fault.”

“You didn’t start the fire, Martina.”

“That doesn’t matter. It was my fault because I sent your Mum to the meeting in that building.”

Susan says nothing, nods, keeps walking.

“It’s OK if you hate me. I know I can’t ever make it up to you, but whenever you need me, no matter what, I will help you. I promise -”

“Don’t promise!” Susan snaps and she doesn’t care if Martina feels bad. “People never keep promises. Mum didn’t keep her promises.”

“You come to me,” Martina’s voice is low and urgent. “Whatever it is. Call me. Come and see me. I will help.”

“Okay,” Susan says.