Corey Mulligan, The Heart Thief - A Short Story

XXIV

"Mads I'm so s-sorry... I should have got back earlier it was all my fault... I should never have left you..."

A girl, maybe a bit older than twenty, sobs uncontrollably into the open coffin of another girl, who looks slightly younger than her. Where the young woman's hair is tied back in a harsh blonde bun, strands falling carelessy out to the sides of her face, the girl in the coffin's is combed perfectly into place, a straight black fringe concealing a yellow bruise caused when she fell in her final moments and hit her head against the floor.

Her eyes, once vivid and cobalt blue, are now cold and concealed, paper thin lids covering them over so she looks almost peaceful, despite the clinical stench of disinfectant and death. The second pair of eyes are red and bloodshot, black streaks of makeup carving down a face that  hasn't stopped crying for pretty much four days. Tears that have started to spill over into the pristine white lining of an expensive coffin are quickly wiped away. The grey droplets don't leave much of a stain.

"It wasn't your fault Karen, love. I shouldn't have sidetracked you that day. Then you would have got back in time to... to save her..."

Karen is wearing a navy blue dress, with a woollen cardigan and thick tights sheltering her bare skin from the cold outside. And yet she is still shivering. The other girl is cold too, not only because she is wearing only her favourite yellow dress and dinosaur socks, but because she has been lying in a morgue since Monday evening. Her skin is like ice to the touch.

She considers her girlfriend's statement for a moment, but finds herself shaking her head. True, if Lauren hadn't kissed her in the hallway, Karen could have found Mads before it was too late. But neither of them were to know what their friend was doing inside the dorm. And even if they had saved her then, there is no way of knowing that they could have saved her if or when she tried to take her life again.

She had always known Corey wasn't quite right, but pointing that out before Madison decided it herself would mean hurting her best friend. She didn't want that. And anyway, Corey was tall and strong, and had Madison completely under his spell, whereas Karen was small and weak, and too far from the happy couple to know what was going on between them.

"You must be Karen? I-I... can I talk to you, please?"

With a squeeze of her girlfriend's hand, Lauren retreats into the background to allow Karen to talk with a woman who introduces herself as Denise Hayford, Madison's mum. The one who Mads had told her was a prostitute and a lying bitch. She was still her mother though, and so she greets the middle aged woman with a wavering smile.

"It's nobody's fault but mine, my dear. I'm her mother and she died having not spoken to me for years. I wasn't there for her when you had to be instead. To be fair I don't deserve to even be here, but you deserve recognition for being there when everyone else had failed her. Thank you, Karen."

The service finishes with a song, the only one of what had felt like millions of songs to make Mads smile on the night Karen found her. She had searched through her friend's Spotify playlists for something, anything, to cheer her up.

The lyrics buzz in Karen's head- it is one of those songs that makes you want to explode inside for its duration, then leaves an unbearable semsory emptiness in its wake.

Karen shivered as she stepped outside the church, her eyes suddenly affronted with blinding white.

It was snowing.