‘Is Gretel safe?’
‘She’s takin’ good care of Gretel for the time being. Quit frettin’.’ Steve angrily pulled the bass back onto his knee. ‘So given that Gretel’s fine, and given that we have six days to pull a show together, I suggest we get on with rehearsing these songs. Laszlo, have you heard enough to start working out harmonies yet? Sheet music’s right there on the table. Sal, you get to forgettin’ the rhythm part and get to rememberin’ the lead, that’ll be a whole lot more help here.’
A brittle silence followed, then Sal swallowed and started picking out the notes of the first song. He stopped again.
‘I didn’t think they should have had Gretel. That doesn’t mean I don’t love her. It doesn’t mean I’m not going to do what’s best for her.’
Steve released a hissing breath. ‘I know that, Sal. I know Yuka loves her too, even though she don’t say so.’
Yuka narrowed her eyes at him, but didn’t deny it.
Sal plucked out a simple melody on the strings. ‘She’s going to need protection.’
‘She’ll have it.’
‘From us, I mean.’
Yuka scowled at Laszlo’s startled expression. ‘From those who would use her to get to us.’
The melody Sal was playing remained gentle but strong. Steve began to play a bass line through it.
‘She’ll be protected,’ Steve said.
‘Will this have any effect from this far away?’ Yuka asked, beginning a quiet beat anyway, her hands against the skin of her smallest drum, marking a sweet-sounding rhythm.
‘It’s her song. It’ll find her,’ Steve said.
Laszlo listened to them, and to the words that the three of them began to sing.
Heave a sigh, baby girl
Don’t you cry, baby girl
Your daddies are guarding the door
He lifted the violin to his chin and raised the bow. The melody was simple, and this old instrument was full of magic. It couldn’t hurt; and he was one of them now.
Laugh out loud, baby girl
Be strong and proud, baby girl
Keeping you safe is what your daddies are for
Laszlo drew the bow across the strings, harmonising. The song was sweet and uncomplicated, as lullabies should be. It reminded him of his own long estranged children, and he poured his heart into the next two stanzas. He didn’t know if he had any music magic of his own, but the violin had enough for both of them.
Sleep after rehearsals proved a challenge in their crowded hostel room. Sal kept them awake again with muttering, reading aloud from the poems and epitaphs written in his notebook; then later, with his nightmares. He’d had them almost nightly since they’d lost Alex and Kurt. Since he’d had to behead Alex, to keep his best friend dead. Cut out his dead heart. Stuff his mouth and heart cavity with garlic. Burn the body. To be sure.
It took four days before Sal had been able to sleep at all. The nightmares were only better than the insomnia-induced hallucinations in that Sal could at least wake up from nightmares. That tiny speck of comfort was hardly enough, when Sal whimpered and cried out in his sleep and everyone woke fractious and unrested. By unspoken agreement, nobody ever talked about it. Nobody knew how to make Sal feel better. They hardly knew how to make themselves feel better.
Breakfast – toast and butter cadged from the ‘take this leftover food’ shelf in the hostel’s communal kitchen – led to rehearsals. Laszlo was getting the hang of the set list and finding his place in the music.
Sal was more confident with Alex’s old part in the lead too, but often as he was hitting his stride, he’d falter, stumble and end in a jarring mess of notes.
Steve called time out seconds before Sal began to smash his guitar to splinters.
‘I’m gonna get some air. You might want to go get your sticks, Yuka. Then we better check out the venue, see what we might need. Then we’ll try rehearsing here again,’ and Steve stalked outside.
CHAPTER SIX
Trudy Schumacher was in the embalming room when Kitty went down to the basement workroom to make the final preparations before the Driscoll funeral. She waved hello through the glass partition separating it from the area where the departed were made-up and dressed in their eternity-best for their funerals.
Kitty waved back. Trudy was beginning the embalming process for a middle aged man. Another table held Mrs Entwhistle, an elderly woman in the final embalming stages before she would be laid to rest in a family crypt. A third table bore a journalist, Meredith Lawler: a recent arrival whose face and throat were in the process of reconstruction.
Trudy peeled off her gloves and scrubbed her hands. ‘Maddie Driscoll is ready for you.’
Maddie’s body was laid out in her coffin, clad in the pretty summer dress her family had chosen for her. The dress had been cut up the back so it could be arranged properly without having to jostle her body too much. Pads in her mouth gave the girl’s face the illusion of fullness, though Maddie’s white skin had none of the glow of life about it.
‘I have to go out,’ Trudy said. ‘Will you be all right on your own?’
‘Of course,’ Kitty assured her.
‘By the way, have you heard from the institute yet?’
‘I should hear this month.’ Kitty set up her work station with brushes, photographs and palettes of colour. She had, on Trudy and Marcus’s urging, applied to become a fully qualified mortuary worker, so that she could conduct embalming and reconstruction work as well. With their letters of recommendation, submitted with the application, Kitty was almost certain to be accepted despite her twenty-one years.
‘I’ll be an hour or so.’ Trudy left to change out of her work clothes and run errands.
Kitty compared the dead girl in the casket with the photographs propped on an easel for reference, assessing the differences so she could compensate for them with her palette.
Kitty’s tools and materials were laid out on the bench – the brushes and sponges, the special make-up designed for use on skin that had no warmth or blush of blood beneath it; skin that perished more every passing moment, despite the best preparation. It was a body’s business, after all, to return to the component parts from which it came, like it was the soul’s business to go wherever souls go.
Using a sponge, Kitty first restored colour to Maddie’s exposed arms and hands.
When the make-up had dried and was ready to be touched again, Kitty wound Jasper’s collar around Maddie’s wrist, the royal blue of it matching the pattern of blue flowers scattered over the dress. She arranged Maddie’s hand to be cupped open and placed the phone charm of the outraged red bird into the hollow. Matthias’s necklace was in a box on the workbench, ready to place around Maddie’s neck after her face was made up.
As Kitty worked, she hummed a wandering melody, inventing words to go with it as she sang.
Once outside, Steve pulled his phone from his pocket and checked his messages. One had arrived from his nephew, Angus.
Of course we will. Nothing could make us happier. We’ll sort out tickets and meet you and Harper soon.
Well, that was something. Gretel would be cared for the way Alex and Kurt would have liked. And if Steve hadn’t told the rest of the band yet, well, it was partly that he didn’t want to say anything until everything was confirmed.
Truth was, he was reluctant to involve Yuka and Sal in the arrangements.