This Last Kiss by Madeleine Reiss

Author:Madeleine Reiss
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bonnier Publishing Fiction

June 2010

Rora woke in the night and lay for a while wondering what it was she had heard. She thought at first it might be her father calling out for her or that a book had fallen from his bed, but when she went up to check he was sleeping soundly. In Ursula’s room the bed was empty, the sheet thrown off onto the floor. Rora felt a clutch of panic.

‘Ursula where are you?’

She wasn’t in the bathroom, nor had she gone downstairs to the kitchen to get a drink. Rora ran back upstairs to check in case Ursula was there after all and had perhaps decided to creep into a corner – there had been times she had decided on a whim that she wanted to sleep on the floor wrapped in a duvet, but the room was still empty.

Rora had just about given in to sheer panic when she heard footsteps on the attic floor, which was directly above Ursula’s bedroom. She went out onto the landing and saw that the previously locked door was wide open. Heart in mouth, she went up the stairs, trying not to remember what she had last seen up there, and turned on the light. Ursula was standing still in the middle of the room.

‘Ursula! What are you doing here?’ she asked, astonished. ‘How did you get in?’

Ursula didn’t reply and as Rora crouched down beside her she seemed to look beyond her mother at a spot somewhere in the middle distance. Her face was slack but absorbed and Rora could see that she was fast asleep. She led Ursula carefully back to bed and tucked her in. Ursula made a small noise of acquiescence and then put her arms around her mother’s neck and held her for a moment. Afterwards Rora went back up to the attic and stood where Ursula had stood moments before. After all her dread of coming back to this place, now that she was standing there she saw there had been nothing to fear after all. It was just an empty room. Nothing of Sandi had been left behind in the plaster or in the cracks between the floorboards. What remained had been taken along in Rora’s heart and in the hearts of those who had known and loved her.

Rora heard Frank’s voice calling for her from his bedroom. It seemed no one was sleeping restfully tonight.

‘What’s going on?’ he asked when she went in. ‘I heard voices.’

‘I found Ursula in the attic,’ she said. ‘I think she was sleepwalking.

‘Sandi used to do that from time to time,’ said Frank.

‘Did she?’ said Rora. ‘I don’t remember that.’

‘I once found her sitting on the sill by an open window,’ said Frank. ‘Frightened the life out of me.’

If Ursula was like Sandi in this particular habit, what else might she have inherited from her grandmother? Rora thought of the way Sandi had lain helplessly on her bed, unable to banish the monster that held her by the throat in its terrible grip.

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