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Kate strikes the match and lights each candle in turn. The first one, and the smallest, is both shaped and scented like almonds and one of her shelves is entirely taken up with these. After Jo left, they were the easiest to get hold of and a sickly-sweet reminder of one of their happier times together — an early start in March and the hardened face of her boss softening as she took the croissant and coffee held out to her. Ever since then, it became a tradition on a Monday morning for Kate to bring in the coffees and pastries as they chatted about their weekends for a few minutes. She still goes on autopilot sometimes and finds herself at MIT on a Monday with an almond croissant in her hand and the feeling of thick glue in her heart. She always eats it anyway, even though she doesn’t really like it. She pretends it’s because she doesn’t like to waste money but, in reality, it’s because there’s a gleeful pain found in eating something that brings—brought—Jo joy.
The second candle is called ‘Fireside’, but Kate isn’t sure it smells anything like one. She only bought it because she knows for a fact that it’s what gives Frederico’s its distinctive smell, alongside the stench of divorced men on the pull. It’s a crummy pizza bar and they both knew it at the time, but it’s within walking distance from what used to be Kate’s flat, so they decided it would do. Every week they drunk sweetened wine until last orders, then stumbled home and crashed on Kate’s sofa. She always offered to sleep on it or in Josh’s room so Jo could have her bed, but Jo always said that it was big enough for both of them. Every Friday night, Kate lay awake wondering if either of them would be brave enough to touch on what was growing between them.
The third is the second largest and has the overpowering scent of Parma Violets. Kate hesitates — each candle has its own bittersweet meaning but the heady aroma she knows it’ll instantly give off is the one tainted with the most regret. It was one of their Fridays and Frederico’s was shut due to issues with the electrics. Jo suggested drinks at hers, for a change, and filled two glasses with Parma Violet gin. The evening went on and they got more and more drunk, Kate complaining about Mark and Jo complaining about her unspecified partner. In a moment of drunken courage, she lunged forward and kissed Jo. Despite her surprise that she hadn’t been pushed away, she kept as much of her cool as physically possible and let it, and the many more to come, play out with the sense that this was what was meant to be happening. She can still taste the gin on Jo’s lips, if she focuses. She still feels those kisses when she needs to.
The fourth candle is simple. Own-brand from a supermarket, yes, but Jo told Kate a couple of weeks after those first kisses that her mum had bought her that specific, orange-scented candle every Christmas and birthday from the age of twelve. They didn’t have much, she said, so it meant all the more that she’d forgo proper food for a few days just to make those days special. Kate closes her eyes for a second, guilt stabbing at her all the more knowing what she does now about Jo’s childhood. She mentally shakes herself down; it’s almost time.
The final one — the largest of the five and scented like jasmine — is a copy one of the few possessions found in Jo’s flat when it was ransacked. Kate called in on her day off, making sure to step into every corner as it was stripped bare. I’ll leave the memories of us that night here, she thought at the time. The wall I kissed you against will remember the imprint of your body after a hundred new layers of paint. She found the candle, almost burned completely out, in one of the neat drawers and slipped it into a forensics bag whilst no one was looking. It sits on her shelf now, distinctly separate from the dozen replicas she’s bought since. She breathes in deeply. Lighting it feels like she’s beginning something holy. Maybe she is.
“Hey,” she breathes as the jasmine candle is lit. It joins the other scents to mingle in the air as the flames dance in the wind. She pulls her blanket further around herself. “Sorry I’m a bit late.”
She got the call at four in the morning just under a month ago; Joanne Davidson had been killed in a car accident on a tricky, winding road in the rain in the middle of a night. There was no OCG involvement. No one else was hurt.
“I was hurt,” she says quietly. “It, erm, it hurt me.” She looks at the stars, a tiny part of her expecting a response. There’s none, but she pushes through regardless. “Yeah, as I said, I’m sorry. I’ve been busy. Steve’s wedding, for starters, and I had to make sure Josh doesn’t see me like this.” She feels tears pricking at the back of her eyes; this was always going to happen. “Yeah, it seems impossible, doesn’t it? Steve Arnott, settling down. Course, you didn’t know him that well.”
She remembers the taste of almond croissants lingering on her tongue as she talked to Steve. Jo made a poor, unsuspecting PC go on a coffee run after they’d all learned it was going to be yet another long night. There was Steve, practically begging her to be a rat, and not half an hour ago had she jokingly toasted to long nights at the station with Jo, their coffees spilling into each other with the force of the collision.
“I watched the interview with AC-12. Sorry. And I’m sorry for how they all acted towards you, Jo. Ted and Steve are my friends and Carmichael isn’t so bad once you get to know her, but they were wrong for treating you how they did.” Her mind wanders back to an argument in a stairwell. “You always told me we should be delicate with our suspects, that they’re still people. You didn’t even do anything, not compared to me. That’s why I fought for your happy ending, and I’m glad you got it.” She sighs, regret on the tip of her tongue. “However short lived it may have been.” The tears are close now, and they’re welcomed. Making the pain something visible, something of substance, might help to make it a separate thing from her continued life.
“They wouldn’t tell me on the phone — were you with someone?” There’s a lump in her throat and the image of tear-stained screens at two in the morning, almost impulse-booking train tickets, floods her a moment. “I was going to try and find you. Get a train. Walk around Scotland until I find you. I was just scared that you’d hate me, or you’d have some beautiful woman on your arm that isn’t as fucked up about their feelings as I am.”
“I wasn’t pretending, by the way. Repeated it like a mantra since that night but there’s a chance you’ll hear it this time.” She doesn’t believe in any life after death, but it’s comforting to recognise the presence of Jo Davidson, in everything but mainly in herself. “I could talk for hours on why I wasn’t, but it all boils down to that, The truth.” She leans back, almost casually. “I think I was just scared.”
The first tear falls. “I had a family. I never got round to telling you, but I had a family.” She hasn’t thought about them properly for years. She hasn’t allowed herself to. “They disowned me, more or less, when my mum saw me kissing my best friend when I was sixteen. It isn’t my parents I miss.” The statement is pointed and emotionless. “They hated me and I hated them, right from the moment I had conscious thought. There was a big row and I was turfed out onto the street. I just ran. Haven’t stopped since.” She mentally shakes herself down. Get to the point, Fleming. There’s only so long she can be out in the bracing April night.
“I miss my extended family. You know the like. Cousins, aunts, uncles.” As she says the final word, her blood runs cold. She hangs her head. “Sorry. I have no right, do I?” She thinks back to that dreadful interview and all she found out. If the tears drip until she can taste saltwater, she takes no notice of it. “There was no argument with them. Nothing. Of course, my mum would have told them everything eventually, but…” She wrings her hands together. “I was seventeen when I stopped talking about them. No one knows what to say. I guess that’s one of the benefits of being dead — fewer awkward conversations, though I dare say you’ve had your fill of those.”
She looks up. “Too soon? Probably. I was going to tell you about them, though. I so wanted to. Do you remember the night you told me about your mum? I wanted to tell you then. I don’t know why I didn’t.” Realisation comes over her like a bucket of ice. “You thought I told AC-12 about that, didn’t you? I didn’t. I swear I didn’t.”
“God, there’s just so much, Jo. I can’t make sense of it. And it changed me and I can’t find who I used to be anymore.” She watches the candles for a moment. “Can I tell you about them? Can I tell you about my family?”
“They weren’t remarkable or out of the ordinary at all. My uncle was a teacher. My aunt was a gardener. My younger cousins taught me to play football. We’d go on ridiculously long walks and I hated them, Jo. I hated them. I’d dread going up to see my family because I knew I’d be in for a week of rain and hills and my cousin Andy’s carsickness.” She smiles at the memory, horrible as it is, of standing on the side of the road whilst the car was being cleaned out. “My last day with them was this activity thing. I fell from something that was way too high in the first place and was so shocked I was sick. My, erm…” She squeezes her eyes shut, overwhelmed. “My uncle gave me a mint and said he was proud of me. God.” She wipes the tears from her eyes.
“After everything that happened at home, I didn’t see them again. I tried ringing, once, using my friend’s landline. I’m pretty sure the phone was picked up, but I didn’t get a response to my tearful ramblings. Nor am I getting one now. Nothing changes.” She laughs bitterly. “Also, I’m pretty sure my second cousin Harriet was a lesbian. I just got a vibe.” She shrugs. “Not that she ever tried to get in touch. Still, I hope she got her happy ending. I hope they all did.”
“I don’t resent them. Not at all. I choose to believe they didn’t try and find me because they didn’t want to cut ties with anyone else.” She smiles sadly. “I may be misguided in it, but I forgive them.” She repeats it loudly. “I forgive them.”
“There’s just so much, Jo. So much of you that’s still here.” She puts her hand on her heart. “I know you didn’t really want children, but if you had a daughter, you’d have called her Samantha, after your mum. I know your least favourite colour was turquoise. I know you were more of a dog person than a cat person. I know you jokingly turned your nose up at my box wine, but after three glasses, you no longer cared. I know you slept on the right side of the bed and I know you slept on your back. I know you preferred trains to buses and I know you preferred a window seat. I know you were a much safer driver than I was and…”
In her incessant rambling, Kate almost forgets what happened. But she remembers, a little too late, and breaks down, sobbing into her blanket.
“I have all this knowledge of you, Jo. I don’t know where to put it, so it festers in me because I can remember what I was wearing the day you took my hand in that corridor and I remember the taste of the cupcakes you brought in for your birthday from that independent bakery down the road.” She clenches her fist. “What do I do with it? Where can I put it so I’m not reminded, day after day, of who you were?” A light flickering off in one of her neighbours’ houses is the only response she gets.
“When you say things, you make them real. That’s why we all have secrets. So, I’m sorry. For everything, really. I know it’s too little, too late now, but it still matters to me.” A plane passes overhead.
“Someone deep and philosophical once said that grief is proof of love, and the empty feeling is not emptiness at all, but a sort of crime scene. I loved you, Jo. I love you. I always will.” She grins. “See? Real. Because there are no photographs or videos of us, no letters, nothing broken, nothing tangible. No proof, except this feeling like my heart is full of oil. It’s the only proof that I knew you and loved you. I love you.” She breathes deeply; this is the closest to closure she’ll ever get.
She looks to the candles and sees they’ve all gone out except the jasmine one. The scent fills the air and she edges closer so it fills her lungs too. It smells like Jo and for a second, Kate forgets she’s gone at all.
That’s the idea.