I had never shared my childhood bed with anyone. My mother wouldn’t allow it. The funeral had been a small affair but the paperwork afterwards took longer than expected and we both felt too tired to travel back home. We made the sensible decision to stay overnight and, though I had a bad feeling about it, I assumed this was normal. My mother had just died, after all. I didn’t have it in me to move into the master bedroom where she had slept – I’d rarely been allowed in there as a child and I couldn’t shake the feeling that I’d be doing something wrong by going in without asking. Even though there was now no one left to ask. Ruth mistook my hesitation for fresh grief and guided me by the hand to my old bedroom. She’d never been there before but she figured out the way. I followed her. The thing about my type of girl – and Ruth’s so my type – is that they can make you do anything they want you to. That night Ruth wanted me to fuck her and found a way to get what she wanted. She didn’t ask; she just didn’t leave me any choice. When I saw her in her white underwear, her slender frame white on my old floral bed cover, I had no choice but to have her.

We did it in the single bed with the flannel sheets rubbing my knees raw. I gave into her and felt her body flat against the mattress. I held her neck and she let her throat go slack like the stem of a flower. I pressed my fingers in until I found her pulse. I hated her then for what she was making me do. My mother had been dead forty-eight hours. But after it was over and I looked at her helpless face, so open and vulnerable, I felt myself warm to her again. She must’ve thought this was a way to make me feel better. Bless her. We fell asleep pressed against each other, like we do now, every night.

But when I awoke in my dead body, I couldn’t find Ruth’s small weight next to me. The bed had collapsed beneath us. I wanted to turn my head but my neck stuck. The sleep paralysis was back.