The Life and Times of Anna Mendel

It was a late afternoon; Grace had been due to finish work an hour ago, but had gotten caught up in something or other and decided she could leave the pasta waiting in her fridge in her flat for a few more hours. The way the late August light flowed onto the tall, white walls was something to see, anyway.

The woman's cough was what alerted her to the human presence. A slight clearing of the throat, careful, calculated, though it nearly gave way to something more.

"Hello?" Grace asked, looking up at the figure in the doorway. The woman was shortish, and her hair was a dark red that had a few strands of golden grey.

"Hello," she replied, and the word seemed to hang heavy in the air.

"Can I help you?"

"Possibly."

"Sorry, who are you?" It always was so difficult keeping track of everyone who worked in the Hold. Everyone was coming and going at odd hours, staying in their own offices surrounded by papers, rarely communicating with anyone other than those in proximity.

"I am, I suppose, a visitor," the woman said, and their was humour in her voice as though Grace had missed the joke.

"Do you have an appointment?"

"No."

"Well, I'm sorry, but we're closed to the public at the moment, you'd better come back in the morning." Grace wondered how on earth the woman had been let in - was the receptionist really past the point of caring? If so, Grace could hardly blame her; all the staff on the front desk were underpaid considering the middle class visitors who tended to be attracted to the Hold.

But in spite of Grace's suggestion (which she had thought was very reasonable), the woman simply took another couple of steps, so that she was now officially in Grace's office.

Well, technically it was the office that she shared with Melanie and Jan, but Melanie left at lunchtime every day and Jan had been off sick. There were three desks, three separate projects for three separate women who had all had dreams before. Grace's desk was neater than Melanie's but not as organised as Jan's; she liked her colleagues, but they didn't speak much outside of work.

Grace was working on a poet called Anna Mendel. She'd never heard of Mendel before she started at the Hold, and if she was honest she didn't love the poems. But Mendel had led such a life; abused by her parents, a parent herself aged 17, affairs with notable wives of politicians, imprisoned for violent anti-war campaigning... The list went on. Yet she had died in obscurity, her journals stored in her daughter's attic until someone had fished them out and sent them to the Hold to be sorted. And so Grace had been enlisted to shed some light on the life of this women, to formulate some kind of story.

"I'm afraid I'm only here for the night."

"I'm sorry to hear that, but I must ask you to leave, or at least to make your enquiries at reception."

Grace had dealt with plenty of angry customers when she had done work in cafes and bars and museums; she'd hoped that now she was some fancy researcher with an office she might be able to avoid them more.

The woman wasn't angry; she looked constantly amused. She didn't seem a day over 30, and there was a certain twinkle in her eye that spoke of times long past but not forgotten.

"And what do you do here?" the woman said, like this was a normal conversation.

"I am a researcher, and I would be more than happy to discuss my work with you further tomorrow."

"You're looking at the work of Anna Mendel, yes?"

Grace jolted slightly at the sound of Mendel's name spoken with such familiarity by someone outside of the Hold. The name still sounded odd in the woman's mouth, though, like it didn't belong aloud.

"Well, yes-"

"And what do you think of her?" Grace found herself being blatantly cut off, but the woman still seemed curiously interested in her.

"Ma'am, I-"

"You shouldn't be discussing things like this with me, I know. But I want you to. And you will."

Grace looked into the woman's eyes, and she saw a kind of power in there. As though the woman had travelled a long way, and wouldn't leave until she got her information, and she knew she would get it too.

"I don't like her poetry." Grace said, and stood up from her chair at last. If the woman wanted her to be nice, then she wouldn't.

"Oh?" the woman said, and Grace almost felt warmed by the note of surprise, although the humour had not left.

"No. She was a fascinating woman, but I find her poetry to be too abstract and fake-deep, like she wants it to mean more than it does. Personal taste, I suppose, but I much prefer the shorter notes she makes in her notebooks and diaries. They feel more real."

"Perhaps all of it was real, but you just don't want to admit you don't understand it."

The woman did not seem easily ruffled at all; from her perfect red lipstick to her elegantly smooth skirt. And yet she now shifted her feet as she spoke out defiantly.

"Perhaps. But I like not understanding things, and I don't like her poetry."

At this, the woman laughed softly.

"Believe me, you clearly don't enjoy not understanding. You can't comprehend me existing here, in your space, and so you react defiantly."

"Yeah, well-"

"No one seems to like Mendel's work, do they?"

Grace found herself interrupted once more, and it needled in her chest.

"No one's heard of her. Ask anyone you can if they've heard of her and they won't recognise the name. She died in obscurity, and then its up to me to extract her life from her journals like some kind of jigsaw."

Silence, and Grace had gone too far.

"I enjoy it though," her words admitted, "She's interesting. Her journals, her diaries - they're something else. She was talented."

"I knew her," the woman said, quietly now, and she moved as she spoke. She moved until she was tracing the set of papers on Grace's desk. There was a tenderness in the movement that nearly brought tears to the throat.

"How did you know her?" Grace asked, the words startlingly quiet.

"What a question," the woman said, hollow, before light seemed to bloom in her voice once more, "Tell me, how do you think I know her?"

"I don't know. She died in 1980, so... Well, perhaps she was a friend of one of your parents?"

Grace wondered how she had ended up here, in this moment, but before she could reach any conclusions about fate or karma, the woman uttered a single word.

"Wrong."

"Did you ever meet her, then?"

"Oh yes. Many times." the woman now carried the smugness of one who knows something that their conversational partner does not.

"Well, I don't know then."

"Come on. I thought you believed you enjoy not understanding? Open your mind, Grace, there's a dear."

"I don't remember telling you my name.

"Ah. Another clue." The red lips twitched into a smirk. Grace wasn't smiling.

There was an impossible amount of silence.

"Fine. Even though you're meant to be the researcher, I'll give you more clues. Did Mendel have any children?"

"One. She died last year."

"Any grandchildren?"

"No."

"Any other close relations? Cousins, second cousins?"

"Not that we have a record of."

"Does she write about any close friends?"

"Not many, and they're all dead now."

"Okay, perhaps we are getting somewhere. Mendel had few close relatives or friends, none of whom are still living. And yet I swear to you I knew her from the moment of her birth to the moment of her death. Who am I?"

"You make no sense."

Grace stared at the woman, as though she were trying to discover something in the unruffled face before her. Was there a familiarity there?

"I do. And you're starting to know now. Come on. Let yourself understand."

"I don't know, I don't understand, not at all."

"Still no? Well. Grace. I'm disappointed. You do know, you just won't admit it. Admit it to me, admit what you are ashamed to see as logical. I can't be anyone else, so tell me who I am."

"You can't be." Grace said, not breaking eye contact with the woman who was steadily getting closer and closer.

"Say it. Who am I?"

"You're... You're Anna Mendel."

"Good. Yes, I am. Child, mother, activist, poet, obscure name on a research paper."

There was no malice in Anna's voice now.

"But... That's not possible."

"Possibility is a social construct," Anna said through a chuckle. "I am dead, yet I am here talking to you, and you are very much alive."

"But-"

"Shh