The Trawlerman

ten seconds it lit the air with a bright beam; a fixed point in a moving world.
They wheeled their bikes home together, mother and daughter.
It was only a short distance down a single-track road to their more solid house.
‘Which pub?’ asked Alex.
‘What?’
‘The pub that man says he saw the ghosts from. Which one was it.’
‘Kenny Abel? I don’t know. Was near the house where the dead people were, though.’ They had reached the back door of the house and Alex had her key in the door. ‘He said they flew up from the roof of the house into the sky.’
They flew up from the roof and into the sky, thought Alex that night as she sat awake in bed, listening to owls.
When she woke in the morning there was a cup of cold mint tea by her bed which she didn’t remember making.

Nine
Dressed in khaki shorts and a huge T-shirt that hung off her angular shoulders, Zoë was holding a knife in one hand and poking inside the toaster with it.
‘Is that unplugged?’
Zoë looked up. ‘Yes, Mum. I’m not an idiot.’ For a while she carried on digging, until broken pieces of bread started emerging.
‘Is that peanut butter on that?’ Alex asked.
‘Kind of.’
‘What do you mean, kind of?’
‘Peanut butter and Marmite.’
Zoë had the grace to look embarrassed.
‘Yes, Mum. I’m not an idiot.’
‘I hate using the grill,’ Zoë said. ‘It takes forever.’
The sun was already high. It was going to be another delicious, slow summer’s day and the thought of finding anything to fill it made Alex’s heart shrink.
Zoë was now trying to put the burned pieces into the bin, which was already full. Alex sighed. She crossed the room and pulled the bag out of the container, tied it and took it outside.
As she was making her way back to the kitchen, a young man in a Manic Street Preachers T-shirt, standing by the back door of the house next door with a cigarette in his hand, looked at her nervously and asked, ‘I don’t mean to intrude, but is everything, you know . . . all right?’
Puzzled, she said, ‘Yes. Fine.’
‘What did he mean, Is everything all right?’ she asked Zoë, when she was safely indoors.
‘You don’t remember.’
Alex blinked. ‘Remember what?’
‘You were shouting.’
Alex nodded. Pulled out a fresh bag from the drawer. ‘Was it bad?’
Her daughter shook her head as nonchalantly as she could. ‘Not really. I’m used to it.’
‘You made me mint tea.’
‘It calms you down.’
‘Does it?’ she asked. She didn’t like mint tea, she thought.
The house next door was rented out to people who wondered why their neighbour was screaming in the night. What kind of people, Alex considered, would leave it until the morning to ask if everything was OK? She wouldn’t have. She would have been out banging on the door, but maybe that was what was wrong with her.
Zoë’s toast was ruined. Alex offered to make her some more but Zoë shook her head. ‘I’m not really hungry anyway.’
Alex looked at her. These last few weeks, Alex had been so bound up in herself. ‘You have to eat something. Especially if you’re going digging again today.’
Zoë didn’t answer.
‘Look. I’ll give you a lift there, if you like.’
Her daughter nodded. ‘Not that I approve of cars, obviously.’
Twenty minutes later, in the car parked at the Romney Marsh Wildlife Visitor Centre in front of the low, green-roofed building she said, ‘I’m sorry. About the shouting.’
‘It’s OK.’
‘Is it scary?’
‘Nope,’ her daughter said simply. ‘Not for me. Probably just for the neighbours.’
Children accepted what you did, thought Alex, because you were their parent.
Instead of getting out, Zoë sat in the car for a moment, rucksack in her lap. ‘I just want you to be all right,’ she said, then opened the door and got out before her mother could say anything in answer.
Alex watched her stride off towards the building’s big front door.
She sat for a minute, checked her face in the mirror, then got out and followed her.
When Alex entered the building, she was already talking to a well-built man in his thirties, with long matted hair. He wore a khaki utility vest over a blue pullover.
‘Are you Kenny Abel?’
‘Mum,’ protested Zoë.
‘About her hands . . .’ said the man.
‘It’s not that. She’s fine. She chooses to do this stuff, I’d be scared of trying to stop her. But I wanted to ask you something. About what you saw on Wednesday night.’
‘Sorry,’ muttered Zoë. ‘I wouldn’t have told her if I thought she was that interested.’
The man raised his head. ‘Why are you asking?’
‘My daughter said you thought you saw their souls going upwards.’
‘Yep,’ he said, chin jutting forward a little as he answered. ‘I was having a drink in the Romney Hotel after work. Went outside to have a ciggie and to make a call to the wife. I knew what it was when I saw it. Only realised something had gone on next day when I tried to get in to work down Ashford Road and it was all closed off. Then it was on the news.’
‘You can see souls?’
‘Yes.’ The muscles in his face seemed to tense, as if daring her to disbelieve him. ‘Not everyone can. I can.’
‘See souls?’ she repeated.
‘Yes.’
‘So you’ve seen souls before?’
Beside him, Zoë was squirming with embarrassment.
‘My grandmother’s. Only, that was during the daytime in a hospice. She had pancreatic cancer. She was weak as a kitten, barely breathing. The only way you knew she was alive was the beeping of the monitors. I saw her leave her body and go up, clear as anything. Nobody else did. Just me. It was like this pale cloud rising upwards. And, like, ten seconds later the monitors showed her heart stopping.’
He could see the scepticism on her face. ‘I know what you’re thinking. I was tired and grieving. But I’m not the only one who’s seen stuff like that. Same happened to the poet William Blake. He saw his brother rise up from his deathbed and float into the