Restless Dead (Harry Grimm Book 5) David Gatward (reading strategies book txt) 📖

Ruth opened her mouth, but James didn’t give her a chance to speak.

‘I was with her, remember? When she died? Have you any idea what that was like?’

‘Of course, I remember that, Dad,’ Ruth said. ‘It was terrible, I know it was. We all know that, which is why you need to come back, please.’

James stepped towards his daughter, his arms out in front of him now, as though carrying something heavy, his hands splayed open.

‘I held her, Ruth! Held her in these arms, and I couldn’t save her! I prayed, you know that, don’t you? I prayed like you wouldn’t believe! I screamed at that bastard up there in the clouds to do something as my wife bled all over me! I begged him to heal her somehow, because he’s God, right, and he can do that, can’t he? I mean, that’s the whole point of being God, isn’t it? I tried to put the blood back in, to scoop it up and just get it back inside her, but it didn’t work and it just kept coming and coming! Well, guess what? He didn’t! He just let her die, right there in my arms!’

‘You’re just angry, Dad,’ Ruth said. ‘That’s normal. How can you be anything else? It’s okay, really it is.’

‘Angry?’ James laughed, the sound of it twisting his voice into a manic cry. ‘I’m absolutely bloody livid, is what I am, Ruth! Raging inside like you wouldn’t bloody believe! So, don’t you go expecting me to stand over your mother’s body and send prayers to Heaven! I begged for help, I begged for her life! I even offered mine in her place, did I tell you that? Well, I did, and yet here we are!’

James watched as tears rolled down the pale cheeks of his daughter’s face. He turned around to climb into his vehicle, only to hear another voice join in.

‘You can’t just leave, Dad. It’s wrong. This is Mum’s funeral. It’s important.’

Patricia’s voice was all knives and ice, James noticed as he sat down behind the steering wheel. He made to pull the door shut behind him, but Patricia was in the way now, Ruth standing behind her.

‘Best you just let me go, lass,’ he said. ‘Please. I don’t want an argument. I just want to go home, back to where Helen is. Where I can still feel her, that’s all.’

‘No, Dad,’ Patricia said. ‘I won’t. It’s like Ruth said, we need you! And even though I know you won’t admit it, you bloody well need us, too! I mean, why on earth do you think Dan and I have given up our time? It’s not for fun, it’s to help! So you need to listen.’

James tugged at the door, but Patricia had her whole body against it now and was leaning in close. Then Ruth joined in.

‘Mum loved you, Dad,’ Ruth said, and James heard the tears and pain in her voice. ‘And you loved her. You need to say goodbye.’

‘No,’ James said. ‘I won’t. I can’t.’

‘She’s right,’ Patricia said, backing up her sister. ‘Mum loved you more than anyone ever could. But she’s gone and we need to deal with that, deal with it together. So come on, out of the car, and back to where you should be. Everyone’s waiting.’

James tried again with the door.

‘I loved her so much,’ he said. ‘She was my everything. I don’t know what to do. I just don’t!’

‘Then come back with us,’ Ruth said. ‘You have to, you know that, don’t you? For Mum’s sake, for your own?’

James turned to get out of the car, but then his eyes saw what lay behind his two daughters, the graveyard, the mourners, and all he could see then was himself falling into that grave, tumbling down into the musty, damp darkness, Helen somewhere off ahead of him, both of them falling now, and him just screaming, desperate to reach her, to bring her back, and that darkness just going on and on and on, never ending, a bleak nothingness swallowing them both whole.

Overcome with rage and grief, James slammed the car door too hard. Patricia stumbled back into Ruth, who lost her footing, then tumbled backwards and fell onto the road. She stared back up at him, confusion and hurt in her eyes, as Patricia went to her aid.

James paused, thought about helping her up, but then the grief crashed in on him once again, and the next thing he knew he was heading back down into Hawes, and on towards home, where memories waited for him in every room like ghosts.

Chapter Seventeen

The funeral was over and done with, and now, on the evening of the very same day, James knew exactly what the rest of the family were thinking about him, about what they were doing, but right there and then he simply didn’t care. Not in a mean way, more that he just didn’t have the space in his head right now to be dealing with it. They were all dealing with the shock of Helen’s death in their own way, and this was his, wasn’t it? So, the best they could do, as far as he was concerned, was to let him get on with it.

It was certainly healthier than Patricia’s approach, he thought. As she had done with everything throughout her whole life, she’d simply buried whatever she was feeling good and deep, and that was where it would stay. James often wondered if at some point his eldest daughter would suffer a nervous breakdown, on account of everything she had bottled up over the years, like a bottle of fizzy pop, shaken up so much that it finally just explodes.

As for Ruth, she was probably the most normal of them all, wearing her emotions for all to see. He’d lost count of the number of times he’d found her crying. Anthony was being strong for his mum. He was sad, that was obvious, but the death