Fear The Silence: Three can keep a secret... If two of them are dead by Robert Bryndza

Author:Robert Bryndza [Bryndza, Robert]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781914547133
Publisher: Raven Street Publishing
Published: 2023-07-05T16:00:00+00:00

31

I closed my eyes tight. I hadn’t eaten or slept properly in days . . . I’d experienced intense emotions . . . I’d sunk a lot of whisky. It was possible to hallucinate and manifest all kinds of things when your mental state was impaired. Including my dead mother.

I turned and opened my eyes. The bathroom was empty. When I turned back and looked in the mirror, Mum was still there.

‘You all right, Maggie-May?’ she said.

I turned and looked behind me at the empty bathroom and then back at the mirror.

In the reflection she sat on the edge of the bath with her cigarette, wearing the emerald-green dress she’d worn at my wedding to Will. It had a faint gold braiding around the sleeves and hem, and it matched her gold jewellery and contrasted with her tanned skin. Her dark hair hung loose past her shoulders. She took a puff of her cigarette and blew the smoke in my direction. It showed in the mirror but not in front of me. I closed my eyes. I couldn’t lose it now.

‘You’re not real,’ I said, keeping my eyes shut. I could smell the smoke from her cigarette. Marlboro 100s—the extra-long ones. I could also smell her perfume, Ma Griffe. ‘She’s not real,’ I repeated, gripping the edge of the sink.

‘Hey. Who are you calling she? She is—’

‘The cat’s mother,’ I finished in unison with her. I opened my eyes again. She stood, adjusted her dress, and came over to me. Her heels scraped on the bathroom floor. She placed her hand on my shoulder and I felt her hand. A real, warm hand.

‘I thought you might need rallying, Mags,’ she said. She took another drag and creased her mouth, blowing the smoke up.

‘I’m having a visual, tactile, and olfactory hallucination.’

‘What the bloody hell does “olfactory” mean?’ said Mum.

‘It means smelling something. I can smell your smoke.’

‘I’m allowed to smoke. There are no non-smoking signs, I checked with the concierge.’

‘You’re not real, so the smoke isn’t real. What do you mean, “the concierge”?’

Mum smiled and took another puff. She walked back to the roll-top bath, ran her fingers over the porcelain, and then looked up at the marble walls. ‘The nice young chap downstairs with the tight trousers. This bathroom. It’s the spit of Albany House.’

I followed her gaze. I’d always wanted to replicate the bathrooms in Albany House in Chiswick, West London, where Will and I had held our wedding reception. It had thirty-six bedrooms, and the honeymoon suite had a beautiful bathroom just like this.

‘Yes. When Will built this house, he took inspiration from the bathrooms at Albany House,’ I said.

‘Took inspiration, did he? Sounds like posh talk for “copied.”’

I looked at myself in the mirror. Had the information in the flask tipped me over the edge. Flipped a switch in my brain to madness?

‘It’s all right, Maggie-May. I’m just a projection from the past.’

‘’Course you are.’

Mum looked down at her dress and adjusted the gold wrap, which had slipped off her shoulder.

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