The Flask

She comes to tuck me in like I’m some baby myself. As she fusses about me, I realise that I will always be her baby in a way that my brothers will not. Si is the twins’ father, but not mine. So Gran has no blood relationship with the twins. Gran and the babies – they aren’t joined at all.

In the last chink of light, before Gran shuts my door, I check the flask. In its whorls, its worlds, there are a couple of bright seed fish swimming.

After that, I sleep.

The following morning, the phone rings at 7.36. Nobody rings our house that early.

I arrive in the kitchen to hear Gran say, “Yes, of course I’ll tell her, Si.”

She puts down the phone. I wait for her to give me the news.

“Morning, Jess,” she says. “Breakfast’s up.” From the oven she takes a steaming plate of bacon and egg and tomatoes and fried bread. The smell of it makes me want to retch.

“What did he say?” I ask. “What’s happened?”

“Your mum’s fine,” says Gran.

“And the babies?”

“They’re fine too.” But there is something too bright and too quick about the way she says it.

I look at her. “What?”

“What what?” she repeats.

“What did Si say? What did he want you to tell me?”

Gran wipes her hands on her apron. “Your stepfather,” she says, “wanted you to know that your mother and your brothers are fine.”

I stare at her and I keep on staring. I want the truth.

“Clem…” Gran says finally, lips pressed tight.

“Yes?”

“He took a little dip in the night… but he’s absolutely fine now.”

A little dip.

I can’t imagine Si using these words. Si would use precise medical terms.

“What kind of ‘dip’?”

“Oh, I don’t know, Jessica. Nobody said it would be plain sailing. The important thing is that he’s OK now.”

“And when exactly?” I ask.

“When what?” says Gran.

“When did Clem take this little dip?”

“Does it matter?”

I think of that great sobbing howl.

“Yes. It does matter.”

“Look, Jess, I know things have been difficult in this house over the last few months. And I know you didn’t sleep very well last night. So I’m going to ignore your tone of voice. But you have to trust me and Si and the doctors. And you have to eat your breakfast.”

I sit down. I try my bacon, toy with my egg. In the right-hand pocket of my trousers I can feel the weight of the flask. Calm this morning, colourless. But opalescent on the day the twins were born, its cork bursting from its throat, and then black and howling the night that Clem took a dip.

“Do you ever think,” I ask Gran, “that things are more…” I want to use the word joined, the word that’s been stuck in my head for weeks, but I choose to say connected. “Do you think things are more connected than they might appear?”

Gran is eating toast. “I’m not sure I understand you, Jess.”

“That there are more things on earth than can be explained by – well, science?”

“Are we talking God?” asks Gran.

“No!” Actually, I think we’re talking Si; I’m talking about whether there is more in the universe than can be explained by my stepfather.

“Ghosts?” she hazards.

Ghosts. That makes a patter in my heart. When did the flask come into my life? After Aunt Edie died. And where did it come from? Aunt Edie’s desk. Ghosts are spirits without bodies. Like the thing in the flask. And they arrive after people die…

“Jessica?”

“No, no!” I don’t want a ghost. A ghost is scary.

Scarier than the howls?

Besides – a ghost doesn’t make any sense. Not the ghost of Aunt Edie. I’d know that ghost, surely. And it – she – would know me. We’d chat, wouldn’t we? Hi Jess, it’s me, Aunt Edie, just came to see how you were getting on with your piano playing. And in any case, ghosts don’t exist, do they? Pug and his Mrs Nerg wouldn’t have anything to do with ghosts. Si wouldn’t have anything to do with ghosts. But is a ghost any more extraordinary than a disembodied something connected to the twins?

My mind is going round in circles. I blame Zoe. If Zoe and I were on speaking terms I wouldn’t be having to share all this with Gran.

“What do you mean then?” Gran asks.

“I was just thinking… last night – I couldn’t sleep, you couldn’t sleep and Clem – he wasn’t well. Maybe we somehow… sensed that?”

“Nice idea,” says Gran. “But a bit far-fetched. It’s just worry, I’m afraid. Keeps people awake all the time.” She gets up to reboil the kettle. “And knowing too much. Sometimes the less you know, the better.”

I say nothing. I don’t like the dig at Si. He told you the babies could die, didn’t he? Sometimes the less you know the better. I’m allowed to have a dig at him, but she isn’t. Why is that?

“You’ve always been a sensitive child, Jessica,” Gran continues. “And sometimes that’s a good thing.” She pauses. “And sometimes it’s a curse.”

“A curse?”

“You imagine things that simply aren’t there.”