Everyone was sad when Granny died; you' d have thought they'd be glad to see her again.

1
She had hovered between life and death for a long time before we finally laid her to rest in her coffin. She was dead to her children anyway. Daddy never visited her, and neither did Auntie Helen or Uncle Gerald. Whenever she phoned they would sigh and roll their eyes, and cut her off with excuses. Once she had phoned to tell him she'd forgotten where her keys were and couldn't get home, and he wouldn't believe her until she showed up blue from the cold at our door, half a city away.

We could all tell when it was nearly her time.

We visited her a bit more often then. It wasn't that she was wealthy; all she left us were a few books by her favourite poet, and a framed piece of horrible embroidery she'd made when she was a WREN and was still very proud of: that was all she'd had. But the doctor had told us all that she didn't have long left, and Daddy and Helen and Gerald realised very suddenly how much they loved her.

Four months before the funeral she didn't leave her bed anymore. She stayed in her boxroom, covered in itchy brown blankets with the light coming in through closed curtains the colour of autumn leaves. She had given me her TV, because she said she couldn't see it anymore, and just lay alone there in her bed, half-asleep, waiting for death.

All four of us would go on a visit every Sunday after Church. Mummy would make us all tea, or cup-a-soup (Granny always had a cupboard full of cup-a-soup), and Daddy would sit by her bed and sometimes cry, and Granny would try to read me stories. She always fell asleep halfway through, and read extremely slowly because she found it painful to talk. When she couldn't see anymore she would recite poetry by her favourite poet. Very often she would talk about Granddad, and try to find pictures of them, but she never could.

And all the time I remembered the old lady who had nursed me when I had the flu, who ran madly around fetching soup and books and videos while I lay in a nest of blankets secure and loved. And then I would look at her, too weak to move or speak or see or hear, with skin thin as old paper and just as fragile, in a twilit, musty cell, and I would wish I were somewhere else.

After the funeral Daddy put her embroidery above the mantelpiece, and Mummy hated it because it was so ugly. I kept her poetry books in my bookcase, but I never read them.

In the last month Daddy brought her to stay here, in his bedroom, while he and Mummy slept in the livingroom. She left behind her dusty mirkwood of tan blankets. She arrived like a Queen, escorted by her two sons, and then lay in the great double bed like Snow White, with her hands on her breast folded, barely drawing breath, as if waiting for Granddad to come and wake her with a kiss.

I sometimes sneaked through when I couldn't sleep, and she would notice me, even though she couldn't speak, and put one arm around me, so slender and light I worried I might roll over in the night and break it.

Two weeks before she would cough in the night, and breathe in long, hoarse pants, as if she was trying to scream and couldn't make a sound. I stopped sleeping in her room; she scared me.

The night it happened I heard her come through to my room, and kiss me with dry, thin lips, brushing my cheek with her whiskers. Her small hand brushed my hair, light as a breath of wind. I was too sleepy, too warm to notice it. Then she left, and in the morning I wondered if I had dreamt it.

I came through to her room to say good morning, and Mummy and Daddy were sitting by the bed crying. Granny was lying there just as before, but by the bed was a glass half-filled with water and a small white container, nearly empty, of white pills.

I didn't like the funeral: the priest scared me, and I fell asleep during the meal. I woke up in the car back, on Mummy's knee, feeling empty and treacherous. I cried a little, and Mummy just cuddled me.

And after a week we were almost back to normal.

2
When Granny woke up, she remembered the way she had been carried. She walked back to the church, and sat on the altar just like she had sat a week before, in her coffin. Then she walked home, back the way she had come. She met a hitchhiker on the way back. He was very surprised to see an old lady, returned from the dead, trudging along the motorway. She drank his blood, because she was very thirsty, and her throat was very dry. And then she walked and walked, not noticing how cold it was in her shroud, looking for someone to love her, to hold her close.

She got home in the evening, and let herself in, because now Granny remembered where she had lost our spare keys. Seven days and seven nights under the cold earth had made her forget her manners; she didn't wipe the grave-dirt off her shoes, and left a trail through to the kitchen.

I was happy to see her, but I was mostly surprised because she was dead. Mummy and Daddy were very surprised, and they kept yelling 'Jesus' and the 'F' word, but Granny was very deaf so she let it pass. There wasn't any food for her, but she took her usual seat. She looked very good for a dead person, because they had embalmed her and done her make-up especially for the funeral.

And then Granny, very solemn and well-dressed, with a very quiet voice looked at her children and grandchildren (because Uncle Gerald and his wife and baby were still staying with us) and said "Do you love me?” And everyone said yes (me loudest of all). "My own flesh and blood," she said. "I gave you my own flesh and my own blood and my whole life and you never loved me for it. Well I have come to take them back."

And then while all the grown-ups tried to get out of the house and found that Granny had broken the lock, she quietly turned off all the lights, and took all her children to the place she had come from.

I woke up in the morning, and wondered if it had all been a dream. Granny lay in Daddy's bed, like Sleeping Beauty, with one arm around me and blood on her hands. The curtains were open; maybe it was the sunlight that killed her.