"Emma?" chapter three.

It was a blur, the next three weeks, all a blur. I was just completley bemused as to why I was still exsisting. Emma was my life and my reason were living, I just couldn't understand how she could be gone. I expected to hear her to walk through the door at any moment, to here her laugh or to yell at her for playing that damn music too loud. Whenever I cooked I made two meals, just like I had always done. It made me too sad to gaze upon that uneaten food day after day, that sooner or later I just stopped cooking,1

I just stopped eating.2

People were worried, I was vaguely aware of that. Janey and Stacy from work came over a couple of times, to offer me meaningless but sympathetic words. Even my mother, who had cut me off when I became pregnant, spared me a short phonecall, it was almost comical.3

"Cordelia?" 4

"Mum?"5

"Yes, Cordelia, it is your mother speaking. I, just wanted to offer you some condolences and to inform you I will not be attending the deseased's funeral, that is all." click,6

and that, coming from my mother, was like her saying 'I love you'. I didn't care about her though, all I cared about was my daughter, my7

dead8

daughter.9

By week two I was tired, ill, depressed and malnourished. My light brown hair hung aroud my guant face in unwashed clumps.I felt like a dead woman walking. I began to seriously conteplate suicide but in the end I didn't even have the courage, even with he future clouded in darkness, to take my own life. This was partly to do with the remnents of catholism that lingered in me from childhood. There was still that nagging sense that killing myself would send me to sme sort of hell, and I couldn't risk being sent anywhere that my daughter wasn't. Because if there was a heaven I knew she was there, she was an angel even before she died.10

By week three I was a gohst, an imprint, a lost soul that was wondering the earth without any purpose or direction, I had no idea what to do. I had cut off any friends that offered support and had taken up a strange and unhelpful routine.11

I would sleep in my Emma's bed and wouldn't leave her room until noon. Then I would watch home videos or look at photograhs until it began to get dark, which was when I would return to her room, if not to sleep immediately but to just feel closer to her.12

It was on the third Sunday since... it happened when I recieved a wake up call, well it actually came in the form of a phonecall, from the police. 13

"Mrs James?"14

"It's Miss, actually and I hope your telling me that your bloody post mortem is finished because i want to let my daughter to rest, not to have her kept frozen in some bloody hospital." I had been informed on several occasions that rigourous post mortems were being carried out on all the deceased. It made me sick to think what they were doing with Emma's body. 15

"No, Miss James I'm afraid not but we're going to have to ask you to come down to North Hall high school as quickly as possible."16

I was extremley angry, there was no way I could ever return to that place "Why? infact, no, no! I refuse."17

"Miss James, a piece of the shell casing from one of the bombs was discovered a few days agoin the reckage of the cafeteria, there were two sets of fingerprints found on the casing. One set belonged to your daughter, there was also some DNA found in blood dried on the casing, which was similar to your daughters but not a complete match, therefore we're pursuing the investigation that she acted with a relative. We just need to ask you a few questions down at our base at the school."18

I was dreaming, I had to be dreaming. Either that or I had just sinked into a layer of hell that no-one had ever plunged into before.19

"You, you think my daughter and I blew up a school?" I whispered.20


"We just need to ask you a few questions."