‘Mummy, I’m scared. What will happen to me when I die?’
I thought about what WILL happen when she dies. I thought about what I should tell her. That she will float to heaven in a long white dress, and she will play with cloud balls, and have a ghost dog as a pet. She’ll be able to visit me in my ghost castle, where I’d be surrounded by house plants and books and all the stories I had written since I died in my sleep aged one hundred.
‘I don’t really know darling, but you don’t need to worry about that for a very long time.’
The next day, her friend’s dad would die falling from a ladder and I would fire an email to my estranged uncle, checking he was still alive. BBC news would report that three more children had died in small boats crossing the English channel.
‘What is cremation?’
Oh god, can I ask for time to think, I wonder? We were sitting in her bedroom, surrounded by soft toys, half finished craft and sweet wrappers. Ten days into the school holidays and I hadn’t set things up for our New Year’s Eve gathering yet.
‘Well, some people, when they die, choose to have their body burned and then their family can scatter their ashes somewhere special.’
Nailed it.
‘Oh. How do they tell people?’
‘Well, they might write it down or talk to their friends or family about it.’
She looked at me with her big, questioning eyes.
‘Ghosts can write and talk?’
Oh.
‘No, no. People can choose before they die.’
‘When they are like ninety-eight maybe?’
‘Yes, darling. Now, sleep.’
I squashed her bed covers down at either side of her eight year old body and kissed the top of her head, breathing in the musky smell of days old de-tangling spray.
‘Shall I stay, sweetie? Just until you fall to sleep.’ She nodded at me and rolled over so that I could stroke her back.
Twenty minutes later, I was at my desk, looking out into the darkness of our long, unkempt back garden. I opened up my laptop and took a sip of cold white wine, my breath condensing on the inside of the glass. I opened a tab and my most recent page greeted me.