IMMAGINARIO Read online

  “Yeah course Dad, thank you, I can cover that part obviously.” I looked over at my Mother, “Mum, I promise I’ll pay you back when I have the spare cash. I know you don’t like Dad working much now. I appreciate it, really.”

  “No, it’s fine, don’t worry about it. We’re just pleased you decided to come. Imogen will be happy too.”

  “Oh Crap, Immy!” I’d completely forgotten to call her back. After I’d tried to Skype her the other day and she hadn’t answered, I’d seen a text from her later that day saying ‘You Ok? Been worried sick! Text me ASAP.’

  “What’s wrong?” Mum asked, “Is your sister alright? I haven’t spoken to her for a few days.”

  I put my hand on my forehead and grimaced, “Yeah, she’s fine don’t worry. It’s just something I need to clear up with her that’s all. I meant to talk to her sooner and forgot. Shit.”

  “Darling, can you please not swear at the dinner table? It’s very unladylike.” Mum's chastising tone irked me slightly, I was twenty-nine not twelve. Dad smoothed it over by rolling his eyes at me and winking before stuffing another roast potato in his mouth and patting his large belly.

  It turned out to quite a non-eventful and pleasant family lunch for once. Dad and I cleared the table and I told them both to go sit down and relax while I washed the dishes. I could hear Dad getting back into the game, there must only be another few minutes left. He’d missed most the second half through dinner- I wondered what the score was. Mum came through to the kitchen with her empty cup,

  “Your Father’s getting wound up now, It's 1:1.” She tutted and gave a little shake of her head.

  “Oh dear. He’ll not be happy if United lose then.”

  “No, I’ll never hear the end of it. How are you doing love?”

  “Almost finished.”

  “Lovely, thank you dear. Don’t bother drying them, I prefer to let them air dry, it’s more hygienic. Tut! Just listen at him! Does he really think shouting at them will make a difference?” Her words, although intended to scold, were coloured with affection. Half the time, when I listened to them bicker with each other, I couldn’t tell if they were purposeful jibes or it had just become habit after so many years of marriage. I supposed one just settled into a routine after the honeymoon period and you just got so used to each other’s company. I knew they loved each other, they still held hands walking down the street and Dad still surprised Mum with the occasional bunch of flowers. She called him an old romantic, I guess I got that trait from him. Mum was a bit more pragmatic, something that I seemed to lack.

  “I’ve just got the roasting tin to wash now, I left it to soak for a while.”

  “Well, when you’ve done that I’ll serve up the trifle, Dad’s been on a diet and he’s done ever so well. I thought I’d let him have a little treat.”

  I grinned, “Oh I’m sure he’ll appreciate that.” She was going to kill him when she found out about his secret sweet stash!

  “OH FOR GODS SAKE!” We heard Dad yell from the lounge.

  “Whoops, I don’t think it’s going quite how he wanted it to.” I made a face and Mum laughed. She made her way back to him and I reached for the roasting pan. Just as I started scrubbing, the sound of something breaking reached my ears. Then a high pitched yelp and a clattering, like something big had fallen over.

  “Hey! Is everything alright?” I shouted, “Dad hasn’t thrown his beer at the referee has he?” I laughed to myself, drying my hands on the towel, I started towards the front of the house to see what had happened. My guess was dad had gotten over excited and had knocked over the side table or something. Then I heard my mother begin to scream.

  “Naomi! Call an ambulance! Naomi!”

  My heart lurched. “WHAT? Mum, what’s happened?” I was running now.

  “Charles? Charles? Oh dear god no! Charles, love, wake up.”

  I made it to the front room and found my Mother on her knees, shaking the unmoving body of my Father. He lay face down on the floor, the side table and its contents were sprawled across the rug. The bottle of Speckled Hen had smashed and I could smell the beer. The pale liquid spread across the floor in a pool of froth next to my father’s unresponsive corpse, like blood gushing from a wound. My Mother was trying to turn him over but he was a too heavy. All I could do was stare at him. His lifeless eyes were open and I was looking directly into them. I pulled out my phone and called the emergency services, my actions and speech mechanical. I was numb.

  “Mum, they’re on their way.” kneeling beside her sobbing frame as she still attempted to rouse my Dad. “Here, move out the way Mum!” I settled by my father’s side and tried desperately to revive him, putting to use all I could remember of CPR. I alternated breath with chest compressions how I thought it should be performed but nothing seemed to be working. He was gone, I knew it but I didn’t have it in me to tell Mum. So I carried on, hoping I could at least give him a chance while waiting for the paramedics. Mum sat next to me on the floor and just cried his name. Her cries resonated inside my head and all I wanted to do was shut out the noise. I held back an irrational impulse to shout at her to be quiet, some disjointed part of me told me that would be insensitive- this was her husband she was entitled to be hysterical. By the same token- this was my father... so why wasn't I?

  The ambulance arrived a few minutes later and the paramedic, after making his routine assessments and briefly trying to revive Dad, pronounced him dead and called the coroner. The paramedic and his colleague placed my Dad’s body in a body bag and lifted him onto a trolley while we waited for the coroner to arrive.

  Mum’s sobs had gradually subsided and she was now sat on a chair in the dining room with a cup of tea, not drinking it. The paramedic came through to talk to us,

  “Coroner’s here Mrs Douglas.” He said to Mum. She just nodded and got up to follow him.

  “Do you want me to deal with it?” I asked her,

  “No.” was all the reply she gave. Then she paused at the door and said “Call Imogen?”

  Oh Jesus! My sister. “Of course, Mum.” It would be around 6am her time. She should be home. This was not a call I was looking forward to.

  I rang from the landline. Every ring sounded too loud, it made me cringe.

  “Mum? Why are you ringing so early? What’s up?” Came Imogen’s voice down the line.

  “Immy, it’s me.”

  “Naomi? Why are you at Mum’s? Oh my God, what the hell happened the other night? I’ve been so worried about you! I was freaking out but then since no one rang or text me to tell me you were attacked or abducted I guessed it must’ve been a new boyfriend you forgot to tell me about. Bloody hell sis, you kept that one quiet, and there you were telling me you had no happy ending? I bet that went down well with him eh? So, what’s his name?”

  “What?” I was stunned. I completely forgot the purpose of my call. So Imogen had seen him too? I thought back to her mad gesturing during our last Skype session. The sound and picture had gotten distorted and I thought she’d been trying to tell me something. When I had seen Joe’s reflection it had crossed my mind afterwards that perhaps Immy had seen him but that was before I’d spoken to Dr Blanchard, when I had thought he was real. Now Immy was telling me she had seen him? How was that possible? I heard my sister speaking but wasn’t listening, was I imagining this conversation? Had the shock of Dad’s death caused me to experience another attack of crazy? Dad’s death. Dad was dead. Shit.

  “Dad died, Immy.” I blurted out. My sister fell silent mid conversation. “He had a heart attack. I’m… I’m here now. I was here when he…when it happened.”

  “Oh my God, what? No, not Daddy, no!” Her wracking sobs faded into the background and I heard a male voice in their place,

  “Hello? Naomi? This is Fletcher, Imogen’s partner. Can you tell me what happened? She’s too upset to talk.”

  “Oh…hi, Fletcher.” This was an awkward time to be having my first conversation with him. “Um, our Dad had a massive heart attack
just after dinner. He um…he didn’t make it. Listen is Immy OK? I can hear her crying. I’m sorry, Mum asked me to tell Imogen, I don’t know what she wants to do? Will she be able to come home for his…funeral?”

  That last word came out as a strangled sob. Funeral. It seemed so final. Especially when my Dad still lay on a trolley in the other room.

  “I’m so sorry, Naomi. Please pass my condolences to your Mother? Imogen is devastated. I’ll make sure she gets home to be with you both, don’t worry.”

  “Thank you Fletcher. I appreciate that. Tell her I’ll look after Mum and I love her please?”

  “Yeah, of course. I’m going to see to her now. We’ll call tomorrow, I’m sure once she’s calmed down a bit she’ll want to talk.”

  “OK, yeah. Talk tomorrow. Bye.” I hung up only to hear my mother’s renewed cries replace my sisters. I went back through to the lounge where the coroner was rubbing my Mother’s arm sympathetically as the paramedics wheeled my Father’s body out of the house. He handed her some papers and followed the body out, leaving Mum and me alone. We both watched through the window as the ambulance drove away, taking Dad’s body to the morgue. I would need to contact a funeral parlour tomorrow and begin arrangements. Where would I even begin? I had no idea and couldn’t think about it now. Mum was in a state, she looked on the verge of collapse herself.

  “What do you need? What do you want to do?” I asked her.

  “I think I just want to lie down, love. I’m exhausted.”

  “Do you need me to stay over?”

  “Would you?” She looked so small and vulnerable, I hardly recognised her.

  “I’ll make up the spare bed. You go lie down. Shout me if you need me OK?”

  She nodded once and dragged her weary self-up the stairs. It was an effort just watching her. It was then that I noticed the mess, the table Dad had knocked over and the broken beer bottle still lay on the floor. I righted the table and got the dustpan and brush from the pantry. The rug reeked of stale beer. I would hate that smell forever. A newspaper rested on the arm of his chair, open at the crossword he’d half completed. The sight of his handwriting pulled at my heart so hard I felt it like a physical blow.

  “Oh Dad.” Clutching the paper to my chest I finally felt the tears fall. My Daddy was gone. The only man I could ever rely on had been taken from me. I had never felt pain like it. I crawled into his armchair, hugging my knees as my heart broke and grief washed over me in one giant wave. I never made it to the spare room, sheer exhaustion claimed me in the end. I cried until there was no fight left in me. As the moon and the stars peeked through cloud, my world seemed darker than ever. I would never forget the day that Death came to dinner.

  Chapter Six

  Joe

  I was starting to feel like a stranger in my own life. It was another dream about her. This one was strange. It wasn’t the dream that was out of focus, it was me. I could see her, the one called Naomi but it was distorted, as if I were looking through a dirty window and the sound was muffled. Her sobs still reached my ears though. She appeared to be curled up on a chair, it was dark but it didn’t feel or look like the room I’d seen her in before. The sound of her cries tugged at my heart like nothing I had known. I felt drawn to this woman and the immediate need to comfort her overwhelmed me. I never remembered my other dreams…at least I don’t think I did, only the ones about her. I had that same feeling as before, I remembered my life but it didn’t feel like reality. The need to be here, with her, was stronger every time this happened. Each time I found myself experiencing these bizarre episodes, it felt more and more real. Then why did this one feel wrong?

  I reached out to comfort her but my arms turned to smoke. There was little or no solidity to them and when I started moving, swirling transparent colours replaced what should have been flesh and bone. I tried to touch my hands together but one went straight through the other. When I looked at my feet they weren’t even on the floor, I was floating.

  “Naomi?” I said. I heard the voice in my head but it came out of my mouth like the rush of an autumn breeze, a wordless whisper of sound.

  She continued to cry, her heart-wrenching sobs echoing all around me, fading in and out. I struggled to correlate the sound with where she sat, it was disconnected and disjointed. I didn’t understand this dream at all, it really was the strangest thing I had ever experienced.

  “Naomi, please? Can you hear me?” The attempt at speech resulted in the same incoherent gush of air as before. The frustration of not being able to communicate made me feel utterly useless. Maybe if I moved closer to her she would hear me? I was clearly supposed to interact with this woman because I dreamed about her all the time now. For what purpose, I had no idea but I knew I needed to speak with her, I wanted to speak with her. I wanted to know about her and why she was in my head.

  So how was I to do this? I had no ‘feet’ to speak of, just a vague smoky outline that swirled about a foot off the floor. I had to find a way of moving towards her. Perhaps if I concentrated my mind instead of trying to move normally it might work. I closed my eyes and focused on moving my body forward. When I opened my eyes, instead of being closer to her, I was further away.

  “Aaahh! Porco dio! - Goddamnit!” This was annoying. I was torn between wanting to comfort her and wanting to just wake up and be done with this seemingly pointless escapade.

  Naomi shifted around in the chair so her face was more visible. Just like before I was overwhelmed with a feeling of recognition, of knowing more of her than I could immediately comprehend. Scouring my memories, trying to place where I knew her from, I studied her beautiful, tear stained face. Her heavily lashed lids were closed, salty droplets clung to them like morning dew. I ached to kiss her sorrow away, If only I could make her see me.

  I wondered what had happened to make her so upset. The last time I’d seen her she had acted as if I were imaginary, which seemed bizarre because it was clearly the other way around, she was in my dream. I watched her and waited, unable to do anything else.

  Her sobs subsided gradually and her breathing became shallow and regular, she had fallen asleep. Without knowing how, I found myself inching closer, it was like she breathed me in, and every inhalation drew me further forward. The fascination with this strangely familiar woman was intoxicating. Just as an artist knows his muse, I found that I knew every line and gentle curve of her face. Distorted as the scene before me was, if I closed my eyes, a perfect picture of her etched itself in my mind with consummate clarity. How could this be?

  “Daddy…” she whimpered, “…don’t go...”

  She was crying over her Father then? Whatever had happened, it must have been recent, and her grief was new and raw. Glancing around the shadowy room, I noticed picture frames hanging above an obscure looking fireplace. The faces of the people in the frames drifted in and out of focus but I could discern a family portrait of four people. Two of the four were young women, the other an older couple. One of the women had the same colouring as Naomi, and although her features were indistinct, I knew it was her. Other things littered the mantelpiece; a china plate, a small vase and what appeared to be a document propped up behind it. It was unreadable at first but as I concentrated my gaze a few words stood out, ‘Charles Henry Douglas,’ her father? ‘Time of death…’ so, it was grief that caused her suffering. I understood now, I remembered the loss of my own father when I was very young. It seemed but a vague memory at this moment, I presumed because it was so long ago, and that I had been a child, I maybe wouldn’t have understood what had happened. I tried to picture my father’s face in my mind but all that came to me was a fuzzy silhouette of a man, nothing recognisable. It saddened me that I couldn’t recall what my father looked like. How could I empathise with Naomi in her grief, if I couldn’t find the source of my own? Why did it matter so much to me that I wanted to share in her sorrow?

  Looking back upon her face, I puzzled it over. There was no denying there was a connection of some sort but I had ye
t to discover what it could be and what the reason for all of this was. Perhaps I could gain more clues from my surroundings? The thought had no sooner occurred to me when I felt that familiar blackness looming, its stealthy approach meant this was ending. A multitude of protests readied on my tongue but I never got the chance to utter them. The scene before me became murkier, colours drained into greys and a final whisper reached me through the fog- her swansong,

  “Stay…”

  And then I was gone.

  Chapter Seven

  There Were Never Such Devoted Sisters

  Fletcher had made good on his promise and made sure Imogen got home in time for our dad’s funeral. Not only that but he’d made sure she could stay for a month to help Mum and I sort out all the official, legal procedures we needed to go through, registering his death, informing the life insurance company and sorting through Dads things. This last part had surprised me as it had only been three weeks since he’d gone. I thought Mum would have wanted to hold onto it all for a while at least.

  “What about this jacket Mum?” I asked her, holding it up.

  “Charity bag love, it’s a good jacket, I’m sure someone will be glad of it.” I folded it carefully and briefly touched the tweed fabric to my face, it smelled of him. My throat closed as grief threatened to engulf me but I swallowed it down, determined to stay strong for my mother. I gave the jacket a loving stroke before placing it gently in the black bin liner my mum was using for the donations. Bags of my father’s belongings started to pile up around the room, a lifetime of memories wrapped up and burrowed away in cheap black plastic. It didn’t seem right. Mum sat rummaging through an old wooden box full of knick-knacks. She had something clasped tightly in her hand.

  “What’s that you have?” I sat down next to her on the bed and she passed me the object. “Dad’s watch?”