The Fading

It didn’t happen straight away – in fact it was quite gradual.  It started innocuously – teachers forgetting to hand out a worksheet to her, skipping her name on the register.  People would miss her out in headcounts and leave the shop while she was still looking at the magazine rack.  This did not unduly bother the girl – she was quiet and unexceptional and easily missed, and she accepted this.

         Soon, however, things started getting stranger.  Automatic doors would fail to slide open as she approached.  Her mother would only put three little steak pies in the oven instead of four.  Even the wind seemed to blow through her instead of passing round.  Now she was getting more confused – with all the overlooking and miscounting, even she was beginning to wonder how much person was left in her.  Some mornings she would lie in bed waiting for the memory of why and what and who she was to find her, and she could not help noticing that this was starting to take an increasingly long time.
         Nobody spoke to her now.  Teachers would frown over their stack of marking, counting the bored, sullen faces in the room, counting the tatty exercise books and scratching their heads at the extra one on the bottom, with what looked like a large tea-stain obscuring the name on the front.  She’d never had many friends, so she was used to spending her lunchtimes alone in the library, reading books that she couldn’t withdraw because her name had somehow been wiped from the computer system.  Must’ve been a virus, she told herself unconvincingly.

         Two months later, and the middle-aged woman is cleaning the guest bedroom of their 3-bed semi, thinking of nothing in particular.  She lifts the duvet and flaps it to remove the creases.  The swishing fabric makes a hushed whispering sound as it settles back onto the mattress.  The woman smiles – it reminds her of the chattering voice of her young daughter.  As she plugs the hoover in, she wonders again why they’d never decided to have two children.  Her daughter often talks of having a big sister.  Under the roar of the vacuum cleaner the faint, desperate whispers are lost