Dead Letters Anthology (35 page)

Anything she had to send to the Belfast MRC made her feel defeated; that she was an undertaker because she couldn’t be anything else. It always felt like failure, but she’d learned to live with it. Sometimes there was simply nothing to be done.

Change was the only constant, yes, but it didn’t mean she had to like it. Since the restructure, though, she still spent a chunk of her day in the same building, swiping in with the same keycard in the same slot as she had for ten years, so much was different. The biggest, and worst, of those adjustments was Mr Burstock, brought in two months ago to replace Mrs Arrowsmith, the old supervisor, hired to rationalise things.

Eva was fairly sure rationalising things didn’t include his coming to her desk twice a day, sometimes more, to lean over so close his chest touched the back of her head and shifted the soft brown curls about. It didn’t include touching her hand or shoulder or knee every chance he got (when they were alone, always alone). It certainly didn’t include asking her to come for a drink at the end of each day. She told him, every time, that she didn’t drink, which was true. When he persisted she said she had to be home on time to relieve the carer who looked after her infirm mother.

It didn’t stop him asking.

It wasn’t quite a lie. It wouldn’t have been three years ago when Beth was still alive, but no one who worked with her knew that her mother had died. The crotchety old woman remained Eva’s go-to excuse when she wanted to get out of anything social with her work colleagues.

She was, as far as they were concerned, a solitary little mouse; lived with her mother, did her job well, troubled no one, although she could be a little obdurate on the matter of dead letters. They were uninterested in her, thought they had her pegged. No one knew how stubborn she’d had to be in order to remain at work when Beth became bedridden, bitching and moaning about the carer, demanding to know why Eva wasn’t looking after her.

Beth had had every expectation, based on long history, that Eva would give in to her. Eva hadn’t gone to university but found a job instead. She’d not accepted Teddy’s invitation to the final year prom, but stayed safely home. She’d cut her hair short as instructed so it wouldn’t get caught in the vacuum cleaner filter. Eva had crumbled in every battle of wills – except this one. She’d firmly refused to give up work, defiantly hiring a home nurse who took Beth’s insults and complaints with a smile and an extra five pounds an hour.

It had been a matter of intense pride to Eva that she’d held her ground. She kept her job, got out of the house just enough to stay sane, to not put a pillow over her mother’s face while the bitter old woman slept – at least not until the very end. It meant she got to stay with the poor dead letters, the failures, the missives and parcels that were never quite good enough. The things she understood, the things with which she felt a kinship.

It gave her the chance to be among people without being one of them. Pretty Alice on the front desk who flirted with Scott, the delivery driver, while her fiancé, Huw, was out back unloading the trucks, hefting the heavier things into piles and stacks that Megan and Toby and Lou would sort through later. They’d bring the smaller items to Eva’s hidey hole, give her a smile, ask ‘All right, Evie?’ and she’d nod and never say,
I hate being called Evie, that’s what my father called me when he did terrible things.
She thought it, she felt it, but she didn’t say it. And that had been enough for a long time, until change came.

She looked at the flexi-box on the bench and began to flick through the top layer of its contents: a padded bag with no postage; a mid-sized parcel with the address label half gone; a plain C6 envelope marred by disapproving red lettering. NOT KNOWN AT THIS ADDRESS on the front. RETURN TO SENDER on the back. In black (but equally disapproving) POSTAGE UNPAID, with lines drawn through the address: Jonathan Oaks, 12 Lodge Lane, Seaton, Branscombe, Devon EX12 ???!!

Not helpful
, thought Eva, pursing her lips,
but not too hard to fix.
She turned it over and a small wad of tightly folded pages fell out through the slit in the top. Filofax inserts, held together with a black paper clip; a tiny blue Post-it read:
Jon – found this in a junk shop Filofax. You’re into this kind of found shit, no? LOL. Kind of creepy, sad. Love, Steph oxox.
Little red-brown dots spattered the back page.

Honestly, how hard was it to finish a string of numbers? Eva was about to grab the postcodes reference list when she was distracted by a noise from out the front. Voices, two, yelling. The female louder and angrier than the male. It was irresistible, and she padded along to stand just back from the doorway so she could watch but remain inconspicuous in the dim corridor.

Mr Burstock, monolithic in his grey suit and highly polished shoes, was turning a wonderful shade of red, even his scalp under the close-shaved black stubble. But the woman who was yelling at him: oh! Thin, thinner even than Alice, dressed in black jeans and a black tee-shirt under a battered red leather jacket, her skin so pale it had almost a blue translucence. Her hair, long and oil-slick ebony, drank in light and held on to it. Her mouth was a crimson slash, narrowed in anger, and her eyes dark as dark could be. She was beautiful and frightening all at once, and Eva could barely breathe for the sight of her.

‘I’m telling you,’ said the woman in jagged tones, ‘it was sent to my brother, Jonathan Oaks. It’s not arrived, so it should have come
here
.’

‘Well, where is he?’ asked Mr Burstock.

‘He’s sick. He sent me.’

‘Where’s your ID then? Show me proof of who you are. Where’s your brother’s authority letter, then?’

The woman remained silent.

‘I thought not,’ rumbled Mr Burstock, his petty satisfaction at sanctioned unhelpfulness evident. ‘You’ll not be going through Royal Mail property like it’s a jumble sale table. Off with you.’

The woman could have been anywhere between nineteen and forty for she had a way, as if she carried a shell around her, to hide as many truths as she could. She lifted one hand and pointed a long, thin crooked finger at the supervisor. That was all she did but the gesture said everything it needed to.

Eva gasped and though Burstock didn’t seem to hear, the woman did. She flicked her gaze to where Eva hid, sought her, caught her in the shadows. Stared at her for long moments, then backed away, never once changing the direction of the accusing digit from Mr Burstock’s fat red face, not until she backed out the front door and walked off.

Eva remained, hands clasped to chest, feeling the thud of her heart as if it was trying to follow the girl, the woman. As if… as if… as if…

Then Mr Burstock began to turn and Eva skipped away from the threshold, down the corridor, and into the little room. She picked up the letter meant for Jonathan Oaks and stuffed the Filofax pages inside. Hearing the thud of Mr Burstock’s footsteps she slipped the envelope into the pocket of her cardigan. Eva took a deep breath and focused on the other items in the tub, waiting for her supervisor to arrive for his morning visit.

* * *

On her way home, Eva felt herself watched.

Don’t be silly
, she thought,
that’s just guilt.
Low-level guilt; it was easy to distinguish from the real thing. The letter still in her pocket seemed to be burning a hole against her hip.
You nicked Royal Mail property.

As she headed towards the train station the sensation grew too strong and she looked over her shoulder. In the late afternoon sunshine a silhouetted figure drifted behind her, not too close, but not too far. It made her heart pause, then the figure passed into the shadow thrown by the off-licence, the bright corona dissipating, and resolved itself into a woman wearing black and red, with a wave of hair floating behind her.

Eva faced forward, quickened her step, and heard the other’s pace pick up too. Not enough to say
I’m taking you seriously
, but rather teasing, tormenting, warning
I can catch you any time I fucking well please.
She could make it to the station, but what if no one was around? It happened sometimes, admittedly not often, but still. On her right, a pub appeared, the same pub she’d walked past every day for ten years, the same pub Mr Burstock asked her to meet him in, the same pub she’d never set foot in before.

She pushed the door open and stepped into the Hart and Hounds. It was ill-lit and smelled like beer, but her shoes didn’t adhere to the wooden floor and the seat she chose was neither damp nor sticky. The woman behind the bar smiled, a bleach-blonde spider in a web of glass and metal and mirrors.

‘What can I get you, love?’

‘Gin and tonic, please,’ said Eva, though she’d never had one in her life. Her mother used to talk about Great-Aunt Agatha who went to clubs and drank such things and, inevitably according to Beth, did things with the men there that got her into trouble. Eva repeated, as if to make sure her mother, wherever she was, heard: ‘Gin and tonic.’

She paid and stared at the clear liquid, fascinated by the way the ice bobbed against the wedge of lime, shifted and shuffled by the tiny bubbles making their way to pop on the surface. The barmaid wandered off to attend to the two old chaps at the other end of the bar who looked like regular fixtures. Eva sensed as much as saw someone sit beside her. It took long moments to turn her head and meet those dark, dark eyes, take note of the sheen on those red, red lips.

The tips of a tattoo peeped from the neck of the woman’s tee-shirt and Eva wondered about the design even as her hand itched to pull at the fabric and see what lay beneath. She made a fist, then two, and laid one on either side of her glass.

‘Hello, hen,’ said the woman. ‘I’m Lucy.’

‘I saw you.’

‘I know you did, that’s why I followed you.’ She leaned in. ‘What’s your name?’

‘Eva.’ It was out before she could stop herself.

‘I’m hoping you might help me, Eva.’ Lucy said the name beautifully, in a grown-up way that rolled shivers through Eva; she didn’t shorten it or make it sound like a little girl’s silly nickname.

‘I can’t. It’s against the rules,’ Eva poured out in a high voice that attracted the attention of the barmaid, who called, ‘All right, love?’

Eva nodded quickly, not wanting to cause a scene. And she had to admit she wasn’t entirely sure whether her nerves came of fear or arousal. Other women had interested her, yes, but never enough to risk doing something about it. But this one… Eva wondered if her drink had been spiked, then remembered she’d watched it being made, and she’d not taken even a sip yet. But she was giddy, dizzy at this woman’s proximity, her smell that was lavender and sweat.

‘I’m looking for a letter—’

‘I know.’ The envelope, still in her pocket, felt much heavier than it should. But she wasn’t going to surrender it; she had the same feeling as when she’d refused to give up her job, as when she refused to meet Mr Burstock for a drink. It was sheer stubbornness, she knew, sheer bloody-mindedness, but she clung to it.

‘And as I said to that man made of seven varieties of shit, it’s
mine
.’

‘You said it was your brother’s. Jonathan Oaks in Branscombe, Devon. I heard you.’

Lucy smiled like a cat who sees a mouse out in the open, too far from its hole. ‘Ah, but I didn’t say where he lived.’

‘You must have.’ A tremble rippled her tone.

‘You’ve seen it then. You know my name’s in it. I’ve done all sorts of things to get it back, and will continue to do so. It’s
mine
.’ Lucy slipped off the stool, rested her hand on Eva’s arm, leaned in. ‘Bring it to me. Or else.’

‘I could take it to the police.’ Eva’s voice rose again, panicked, and Lucy’s teeth showed. The barmaid began to walk back towards them.

With their faces so close, their breath mingling, Eva saw, or thought she did, a flicker in the other woman’s eyes: uncertainty, hope, surprise, desire, then the gaze was hooded so quickly she couldn’t be sure. Lucy ran thin, soft fingers down Eva’s cheek, tapped her under the chin. ‘You won’t though, will you, hen?’

* * *

When she’d stopped trembling, when she’d four gin and tonics under her belt, when she’d slipped out the door just as Mr Burstock thundered in, when she’d tottered to the station and managed to get the right line, when she’d made it up the stairs to the two-bedroom flat she’d shared with her mother for too many years, when she’d locked herself inside, then and only then did she manage a deep, ragged sigh. She’d been panting, sharp and shallow gasps that didn’t get enough oxygen in and made her light-headed.
Perhaps it had as much to do with the alcohol as anything else
, she thought and gave a hiccup that became a burp, and she had to run to the bathroom.

At last her stomach stopped heaving, and she felt able to stand. Eva made a pot of tea and took it over to the sofa. She curled in her favourite spot, and took the envelope from her pocket, tipping out the contents.

The dates ran from August 1 to September 18; the handwriting was neat and assured, entirely different from that on the small blue Post-it, which looked childish by comparison. She read the entries, all the strange little pauses in a person’s life, the events, the reminders, the things that were important to them if to no one else.

A letter from Lucy.

Mark 8pm

A letter from Lucy.

A shopping list.

A movie date with Kev.

Letter from Lucy. Photos!

Kensal Green. Amanda – lunch.

A white scrap of paper Scotch-taped in, something about street photography.

Visiting Lucy!

Then almost two weeks of blank pages until Friday 13: an unhappy face and
OVER
underscored three times.

‘Oh, Liar-Lucy! It’s not yours at all. Why would you make diary entries about meeting yourself?’ Eva said aloud. She pondered the writer, imagined she could feel her or his excitement in the Lucy notations, the anticipation. Everything else in there was unimportant, but Lucy, oh Lucy was a beacon, someone invested with the hope of another’s heart.