Short Story

A Girl Named Alice

Once Mum had died, there was nothing else to live for.

We fell apart without her; Dad, Lexi and I. Mum had always been the one holding us together, like glue sliding between us, always filling in all the gaps. She looked after us, cared for us, made us who we were.

So after she went, we just crumbled.

Dad would sit at the dining room table and just stare at the family photo we had from two years ago. He would stare until his eyes were blurry with tears, until Mum’s beautiful face was drenched, and smudged so far you could barely make out it was her anymore.

Lexi would sit in the sitting room, telly remote in hand, flicking through the channels. Always flicking, never stopping.

I would wander. I couldn’t bear to stay in one place for more than a few minuets, and since Mum had gone, nobody gave a damn about anyone else anymore, so I was free to walk the streets of London, always alone, until the early hours of the morning.

Once, when I got home, everyone was still up.

“Go up to bed, Lexi.” I had said, speaking to my sister for the first time in weeks. She looked up at me really slowly, her face blotchy with tears.

“Why?” She whispered. Her eyes were wide and searching. She wanted me to take her in her arms and tell her exactly what there was to live for. For me to pick her and tuck her into bed like our Mum used to.

But I had no answers. So I just carried on walking.

Carried on drifting. Carried on searching.

That was before Alice came.

After she arrived, it was like everything was suddenly on fire. Every thing was illuminated in a blinding light and suddenly there was a reason to get up in the morning, to go to school. She dragged me back from somewhere dark and dangerous, where not even I had been able to find me.

For so long, for so many years, I had been unbearably alone- and then Alice came.

Once, she gave me a daisy. She pulled it from where it was sitting behind her ear, and pressed it into my hand, curling my fingers down over it. In that moment, I could so easily have crushed that daisy, tore it apart like death had torn my family-

But I didn’t.

And all because of Alice.

She taught me how to love, how to smile…she sewed me back together again, day by day, month by month, year by year…

One day I came home and, on impulse- I made dinner. When dad and Lexi came in- they both just looked at me, just stood in the doorway to my mother’s kitchen and looked at me. And then they smiled.

And for the first time in years, we talked. We talked about school, about our lives, our dreams, our past, present and futures. And we talked about Mum.

And all because of a girl named Alice.

I still visit her grave sometimes. I still walk across that grass covered cemetery, and wonder what life would have been like if she had never died. If she had watched, looked both ways before she crossed the road…

It almost seems impossible that somebody as angelic and unreal as Alice could die in such a trivial, common accident…. it seems impossible that someone like her could die at all.

Sometimes, when I wake up very early in the morning, it takes me a moment to remember she’s dead, and I get a few precious seconds of peace of mind.

And then it all comes rushing back.

Every week, I bring her favourite kind of flowers to her grave, and set them down on top of the mounds of earth that cover her, tracing the delicate words on her grave stone.

And then I look up at the bright blue sky, watch the clouds rolling across, feel the sun on my face- and thank God that there was once a girl named Alice.