Thicker Than Water

’

He didn’t answer, so I went on.

‘After Katie died . . .’

The words just hung crds. .there. Whatever I’d been about to say drained out of my head like oil from a cracked sump. Nothing came to replace them.

‘After Katie died?’ Matt repeated, prompting me. ‘Go on, Felix. What happened after Katie died?’

Why had I started this? What had been the point of the joke? I filled my glass from the whisky bottle, discovering in the process that it was still full from the last time. The pungent liquid ran down my fingers and spattered on the ground.

‘After Katie died . . . ?’

I couldn’t look at him, so I stared at the brimming glass: at the shivers and ripples chasing themselves across the meniscus. ‘I killed her again.’

‘What does that even mean, Felix?’ Matt’s voice was still mild, but I felt the tension underneath the words.

‘Her ghost. Her . . . spirit came back. She came into my room.’

‘You imagined she did. Your grief—’

‘No, Matt. Katie. Katie herself. You know I can see things that you can’t.’

‘I know you’ve convinced yourself that you can.

’ The tightness was right there on the surface now. Matt had known about my death-sense ever since we were kids, but we’d never discussed it since he took holy orders. It was the elephant we danced arabesques around every time we talked.

‘And I made her go away by . . . singing,’ I went on. ‘By chanting. I think she just wanted to talk. I think she was scared, and she wanted to be where she belonged, with the family. But I sent her away. And she never came back.

’

The silence stretched.

‘Go to her grave,’ Matt suggested at last. ‘Pray for her. Pray that she found her way to Heaven, and pray for her forgiveness.’

I turned the over-full glass in my hands and more whisky oozed over the rim of it to trickle down the sides of the glass like sweat or tears.

‘Do you hear me, Felix?’

‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘I hear you.’

He smacked glass and bottle out of my hands. The glass shattered, the bottle didn’t: it just skittered away across the floor, coughing up booze like a docker at chucking-out time.

‘Then say the Act of Contrition,’ he suggested."

"I started in. ‘Deus meus, ex toto corde paenitet—’ But it had been too long and I didn’t remember the words. Matt recited them for me and I parroted along, finding my feet again at ‘adiuvante gratia tua.’ It was just words, and I didn’t believe there was anybody listening.

tua=""1em"" width=""1em"" align=""justify"">But there was, of course. There was Matt.