Above the Vaulted Sky - Page 20

I don’t know how long I have until the police call to inform my parents I’ve died. I don’t want to be around to watch. The reality of seeing my parents upset and not being able to do a thing to comfort them and tell them that their son has lived on in some way, would be too much to bear.

So I sit with them. Watch them watch films they’ve seen a thousand times. They watch the film they saw on their first date nearly twenty years ago. It just appears on TV and their day is brightened. They sit and chat, my mum’s blonde hair falling over my dad’s dressing gowned lap. It is a happy moment and I understand what Benjamin was talking about. I know now that I would never mind a single spirit sharing any one of my happy moments.

In this new place, where simple existence and standing up straight can be scary, it’s important to stop and remember what it was like to be human.

Because it’s tempting to visit all my favourite memories, to see me at my happiest. But that’s the easy way out. I have a new world to explore, with people I’ve loved and lost. My grandparents are here somewhere. Out in the world, hand in hand. And Penny is too, and I know she’s the same as me. If I would go and see my parents first of all, then that’s where I’ll find her.

I stand up just as the phone starts ringing. The landline in the hall we never use anymore. Mum stands and walks past me, straightening her top. I know who’s on the other end of the phone.

I follow her and watch her pick it up. I can’t listen, I can’t, I can’t.

‘Hello,’ she says, still laughing at a joke Dad just told.

The voice on the other end is indistinct, but his tone, official and calm, tells me enough.

I watch her face fall. I have to comfort her, I have to. I raise my hand, three inches from her shoulder. But I know the discomfort I will give her.

‘Jude!’ she almost screams.

I panic. I retract my hand as she runs back to the living room. I run in the opposite direction. I plough headlong towards the door and pass through it without even meaning to.

            I hear her before I leave; the cry of unexplainable sadness that escapes her. It stays with me. I know it will always stay with me.