Having shoved everything in sight into a large shoulder bag, Adele waited till the taxi had

pulled away from her street till she dared to frantically search through it. Finding keys

first, they went into an inside pocket so she couldn’t lose them. Not that she ever had. The

one thing Adele did lose frequently and was just about to discover she had failed to pack,

was her address book. The consequence of this was that she couldn’t contact anyone

while she was away and no one would know where she was going. Being unable to cancel

dinner plans for that night dawned on her. This thought lingered and pushed all others

from her mind consequently doubling the already long journey.

She was travelling to the cottage her and her sister Lillie had grown up in under the care

of their eccentric aunt. Previously Adele had many reservations in returning again.

Though this was forgotten as soon as she thought of the dinner she was missing with

a now empty chair and a gossiping party.

When she arrived at the cottage, night had turned its once flaxen roof grey. Adele did not

wish to stay long enough to see it any different. Though it now seemed to her even in

sunlight everything would still lack the colour it once had. Lillie was dead. The last time

they had been here together Lillie’s screams radiated effortlessly though the silent

countryside. Nine years ago Adele had handed her over to unfamiliar nurses,

relinquishing the care of her sister and without pain or looking back left in a taxi for

home.

“What could I do that someone else couldn’t be paid do for her?” Adele had once

reasoned to her guests. “she’s a shred of her former self, any appeal she has to me is gone,

it’s artificial to pretend otherwise”

This night a nurse met Adele at the road. They stood four feet from one another. An

adequate distance for strangers but as the nurse spoke she halved it. Despite this the

whites of her eyes were still not visible to Adele. Nor any other feature distinguishable,

Though Adele mused that if they were anything like her breath they were certainly

distinguishable. After she explained several unfamiliar necessities the nurse gestured

toward the house. Her comic silhouette almost a copy of the bare yew tree in the

garden Adele was now walking toward. They both waited at the door, Adele expecting

the nurse to produce a key. Time passed stilly between them. It was not long before this

became unnatural. The still silence ended as Adele turned sharply to the nurse.

Unperturbed she looked to a flower basket. Adele was tired and though unimpressed by

this she reached for it without thinking and dove her hand in with the hope of finding a

key. Instead her hand plunged into damp old soil; at the bottom of which was they key.

Feeling the putrid mud under her nails Adele’s opinion of the nurse deflated immensely.

Once the door was open the nurse murmured a disinterested and swift farewell, waddled

from the house, down the path into darkness.

An hour later Adele was in what her aunt had once called the comphy room (and to

anyone else would have been a sitting room), reading by candle light. Thought she

wanted more than anything to be asleep and wasting the night. She stopped reading to

consider everything that needed to be done. Planning to settle everything as early in the

morning as possible and be on her way home by the afternoon. Desires soon changed

when she saw that her only candle had no more than an inch of life. Sure enough half an

hour later she flickered into darkness.

Resorting to memory she stumbled towards the stairs. Candles had once been kept in a

cupboard upstairs and their was no sign of fire wood. Suddenly feeling the weight of

going deeper into the house. The shock of each familiar surface she touched and the

memories it catalysed made her heart beat like a halcyon fuelled drum. Every memory

distant and longed for, resented since its passing.

She lent for the old oak handrail with a sigh, desperate for some respite. But it had long

been removed and she fell on to her chest. Winded and unable to stand Adele rolled down

the step she’d almost climbed and remained there for some time. Looking toward her

destination she saw white wisps within the darkness. It was instantly dismissed and her

thought fell once again on the dinner party she was missing. It dawned on her that had she

fallen just now and broken my neck no one but the silhouetted nurse was aware of her

being there. Before this could plague further Adele thought of Lilies last heated cries.

Disbelieving that Lillie could be angry at her, she who had paid for Lillie to live here

rather than collect inheritance on the cottage. She had never given anything to Adele.

Lillie’s inherited madness had not always damped her fantastic conversational skills. It

had broken her but she became similar version of her old self when calm.

“Perhaps she hated me for leaving. Thou I had spent money, selfish people usually want

to spend time.” Adele remembered the nurses’ manner wasn’t she expecting to

meet a grieving sister? She thought how most people find their capacity to love expand

exceedingly when faced with death and the grieving, however the nurse she had met

tonight had cared nothing for Adele. Had her sister spoken badly of her? She was the type

for revenge, Adele had always thought her the kinder of Lillie and herself. A nurse would know better than to listen to the mad.

“Lillie would never wish me harm” she defended to the darkness. A pause. Adele

became plagued with thoughts of a conspiring Lillie. The woman that died here was not

Lillie. She was a woman with all the knowledge of her sister, nothing else. She would

know of Adele’s weak hips, her delicate heart. Surely a nurse wouldn’t conspire to such a

thing? Adele stood and walked the stairs now with more reason to find a candle.

Hoping that once she had thoughts of her death would seem childish and distant. Being

careful not to stumble backwards down the stairs she stumbled needlessly forward. As if

wanting to appear weak so the darkness would take pity on her. A small patch of

moonlight from a window showed her she had stumbled into the bathroom. The once

dripping taps were silent. She left the room and turned right towards a linen closet. Every

shadow was becoming suspect and as she walked down the corridor. There was now little

difference between having her eyes opened and closed. Before her hands felt the end of

the corridor her feet found a box. In it were candles and matches. Now however Adele

was unsure whether she wanted to see into the darkness. Feeling her way back to the

stairs Adele’s black view began to use its self and her memories like a cinema. The

vibrant red carpet she was treading on, the carpet burn Lillie had gotten walking up the

stairs on her knees, the pleated skirts their aunt made them, trying to find the

photos of their parents at Christmas, the dinners Lillie could never finish, sitting on their

aunt’s bed talking about their first boyfriends, all these memories betrayed. Memories

ending after twenty-five years. The last nine of her sister’s life spent away from Adele.

She could not face to see the house again. She to forget the things that would never be

again. And the memory of a sweetness she could not be kept. Hers and lilies alike.

In the morning the nurse arrived to find the door open.

“Miss?”

There was no reply, no note. She checked the house and nothing was missing other

than the lunatics sister and a box of photos. Asides from an over turned box

of candles and the fireplace being full of new ashes nothing was particularly unusual.

Not trusting and barely remembering the visitor that had stayed claiming to be the

lunatics sister the nurses had Lillie buried in the church graveyard next to her aunt. It was

many years before the house could be legally passed on to another owner and within that

time it became unfit to live in it. After being destroyed it remained an empty space and

nothing was ever built in its place.