by Kate Hamer
‘The thing is, Grace, this is why I wanted to talk to you. I’ve been making enquiries—’
‘What?’ I snap it out too quickly and a flush marks her cheeks. ‘Sorry. I’m a bit tired.’
‘No. That’s fine, fine. Of course you’re tired. You have a lot on your plate.’ She bites her lip. ‘It’s about what I mentioned before, the respite charity …’
Keep still and quiet, bitch, I tell myself. Quiet and still.
Oh no. What if she’s been speaking to vague Debbie at the agency? Fear tightens my throat. It wouldn’t take much for all my little lies to come unravelling on the ground for them to pick over and examine. When the carers came back I told them she’d had a dreadful time at her sister’s, fallen out with her in a big way and please not to mention it because Mum would get upset. I have to hope that that holds up.
‘And of course it’s something you must want …’
‘What is?’ I’ve missed part of the conversation. Focus, I tell myself. This is how they get you, by sliding things past when you’re not focusing.
‘The respite, of course.’ She seems surprised I haven’t cottoned on to what’s she’s saying. ‘A respite break where your mother will go into a well-equipped residential home for a short while to be cared for, leaving you free – although it would probably be best to stay with someone, relatives perhaps, so you get spoiled for a change. They can be difficult to organise but in my experience really benefit both parties, I mean benefit you both.’ She stops, a little breathless. She’s trying so hard but I’m also aware she’s putting me on the spot by doing this, by coming and finding me like this. I’ve been on her mind.
‘I’ll think about it.’
She relaxes. ‘Great. I’ll put my thinking cap on too and I’ll write or call you when something’s more definite. It’s a new scheme. Often it’s the carer taken away but not with this one. All the same, it’s worth a try?’
It’s always a step further with her, I think; now it’s not just me considering it but enquiries being made. Instead of being angry, suddenly I’m pleased – even though I know I’ll make sure this respite will never happen – that someone is thinking about us. Being on someone’s mind – outside the two of us in our tight little world, despite everything – there is a relief in it too. There is a bit of me that feels good about it.
‘Mum’s ever so much better,’ I say. I can hear the excitement in my own voice.
‘That’s great.’ She hitches the files up into her armpit.
‘No, really, really better.’
‘That’s wonderful, Grace.’ She smiles. ‘I really must run now, and I’ll be in touch.’ Then she’s gone, taking her glow with her, and the hospital atmosphere wraps itself back inside the place she’s left empty.
A doctor that I recognise – Dr Adams – pokes his head out of his office.
‘Ah, Grace. Just the girl.’ Today is beginning to feel like Hunting Grace Day. ‘Come in. Come in.’
I tilt my head to one side, puzzled. This is unusual. ‘OK.’
I sit on the plastic chair next to his desk and he looks at the screen of his computer and clicks his mouse for a bit.
‘Where’s Mum?’
‘Weighing and bloods. She’ll be back in a jiffy. Thing is, she asked me to have a chat with you.’
He swings his head round very suddenly and looks at me over his glasses. I’ve got into such a habit of feeling I have to hide everything, the direct gaze makes my cheeks flush.
I squirm on the hard chair. ‘Oh yes?’ It’s a day not only of hunting, but hunting and chats. So that’s what the tenner and the magazines and chocolate were all about, I realise. Sneaky bitch wanted to get me out of the way.
‘She knows you’re very excited about developments.’
His voice is too kind. He’s going to set me off again and I hate that. I hate that swelling choking feeling in my throat and the swimming-pool sensation of tears welling. I try to keep the shimmer of them dammed behind my eyes.
‘I am. I’m really pleased. It’s been …’ I have to stop.
‘Yes, I can imagine. You do an awful lot, Grace, for such a young girl.’
‘She had a fall.’ I say this suddenly, blurt it out, and don’t know why. There’s some urgent need to unburden myself because of the strain of it all. Those days when the world seemed to have shrunk to a pinpoint and all there was was just me, trying to keep her alive. The nights spent awake. It’s made me weak. A blabber. Stupid blabbing bitch. I vow not to give in to it again.
He nods. ‘There were a few old bruises. You should’ve brought her in, or at least got her checked over by your GP.’ His tone has changed now. There’s a note of censure in it I don’t like and I wish to God I hadn’t said anything, even though it sounds like he would have worked it out for himself anyway, and I know I can’t rely on Mum to keep her mouth shut either. Careful, careful, Grace, remember how on the back foot you need to be, and obediently I bow my head as if in apology. See me, I want to say, see how humble I am.
‘Sorry,’ I say. ‘If it ever happens again, that’s what I’ll do.’ I leave the silence to dangle for a moment. I’m used to counting out these beats, making them seem just right. ‘Why did Mum want you to talk to me?’
‘It’s about this recovery.’
I blink. ‘Yes.’
‘Listen. It’s not uncommon, you know.’
‘What isn’t?’
‘For periods … periods of remission. Remission by its nature means it’s a temporary state. That’s why this kind of MS is actually called relapsing-remitting.’
I’m feeling fuzzy. ‘I see.’ I knew that. I’ve heard that all before. Why didn’t I put two and two together? Because this time the remitting bit was better than ever before? Or because I didn’t want to put two and two together? Because it let me off the stupid-bitch hook I was dangling from.
He looks relieved. ‘Good. I knew you would. You’re a sensible girl, but your mother was worried.’
‘Worried about what?’ I’m questioning like a robot but he doesn’t seem to notice.
‘That you might’ve thought some miraculous recovery had occurred. You know, walking on water, that sort of thing.’
The ringing in my ears is like the echoes from the tiled walls of a swimming pool now. I’m drowning. I don’t know why he’s going on about walking on water. They’re both right. I think I was hoping that.
I shake my head. ‘It’s fine.’ It’s the thing I say when I’m lost for words and it always seems to work, even if only in a partial way like now.
‘Good, and you have understood?’
I nod.
He rubs his hands together and they make a dry sound, like old leaves. ‘Well, let’s find your mother then. Nurse will probably have her done and dusted and back in her chariot by now.’
As I’m wheeling Mum out of the hospital I lean down and hiss, ‘You didn’t have to say anything, you know. You didn’t have to get them to talk to me. It’s better if they don’t.’
An arm shoots out and she grabs onto a doorway. If I carried on I’d wrench her arm off so I don’t have any choice but to stop pushing. She eases round so she can look up and into my face.
‘Grace, you have to realise that it is better. You don’t listen to me, so I think if you hear things from a doctor you might sit up and take notice.’
I fold my arms. ‘Being taken into rooms for little chats. I can do without all that, you know.’
‘Yes, but you need to be told.’ She sounds angry now and this takes me aback. ‘You need to know what the facts are and not go round making up fairy tales about what’s happening. I know it’s because you care but in the long run it won’t do either of us any good. We need to be realistic.’
She folds her hands on her lap to show that she’s said her piece and I use the opportunity to grab the handles on the wheelchair and continue pushing, a bit hard and fast if truth be told, so she just about manages to pick up her feet before they get squashed underneath.
We take off down the pavement outside. The breeze flutters over me and the last weeks with their animal fear, the stifling intimacy, finally begin to fall away. I trundle Mum past offices and flats and gardens, and I can’t quite wipe the smile off my face at the relief of it, that we’ve got away with it.
We are free again. I think of Phoebe and what she was talking about in the hospital grounds. Why not? I allow myself for one tiny moment to believe that she was right. That our drug-addled muttered incantations – me dressed only in raggy knickers and bra, mud-smeared legs – have worked and that, despite what Dr Adams had to say, Mum is forever and completely cured. The feeling is so good I don’t want to let go of it. I want to believe it so much. I tell myself that doctors don’t know everything anyway. It’s something I’ve heard about, the blind seeing, the lame walking. All the way home I just let myself give in to the idea and it swells inside me like some beautiful soft healing cloud that I can float on and takes all the worry and pain right away.
25
Phoebe
It’s all over.
She’s back. Nearly two whole glorious weeks on my own and now it’s all over. She is marooned upstairs in her bedroom but her presence still permeates the whole house. My diary goes unread. There seems little point in making entries in it when it’s without an audience. She can barely make it to the bathroom two steps down from her room, let alone to here. My glasslike serenity, my cool-hearted witchiness, my Queenly nature, my appetite and my sanity have fled.
‘Phoebe.’ Her voice calls down the stairs and I have no choice but to attend.
I hover by her bedroom door, then by the dressing table.
‘Come closer,’ she snaps. ‘It’s irritating when you don’t stay in one place. I can’t see you properly.’
It’s the neck brace. She can’t turn her head. I bite into the meat on the side of my palm and approach, willing for the horrid treacherous nervous laughter to stay at bay when I lay eyes on her face.
I manage to restrict it to almost silent snorts down the nose like the soft whinnying of a pony. With luck she won’t notice. I come a little closer again.
‘Do you want anything to eat?’ I ask.
‘No. I don’t.’
‘Coffee? Water? Juice?’ I feel dizzy. ‘Herb tea?’ I want to go on forever naming drinks like this to offset what’s to come.
‘Phoebe, stop it.’ Her eyes spark out from the pillow. She knows. She knows. She knows what I did. She thinks I tried to kill her. Did I? I can’t even stand by the bed properly and get near those flashing eyes.
‘Come closer.’
I inch forward.
‘For God’s sake. I want to be able to see you.’
I stretch my leg out and take a giant step as if avoiding a chasm beneath me. Now I am right by her and she is looking up but the flashing is gone. It’s unexpected and I don’t know quite what to make of it. She is looking thoughtful.
‘Phoebe, there is something I want you to do for me.’
‘OK. Do you want something from the shops?’
‘No, not that.’
‘Tissues?’
‘Stop it. I want you to find Verity.’
‘What?’
‘You heard.’ She props herself on her elbows and uses them to manoeuvre her body in a swinging action a little further up towards the pillows. The movement is almost athletic. She’s becoming well horribly quickly. Soon she will be all recovered and I feel absolutely miserable. My reign over the house has been pitifully short and incomplete. It was just a delicious taste of it, a lick.
‘But I don’t even know what country she’s in. Where do I start?’
‘It may be Italy now … Ring round her friends and see if anyone can tell you anything. I did ask her to leave me details of exactly where she’d be but she managed to take off without it and without getting a new phone which she faithfully promised to do after she lost her old one. I only realised she hadn’t an hour before she left and I should’ve stopped her from going then. She needs to know what’s happened. I need her here now, not gallivanting across Europe. It’s up to you to find her. I’m relying on you. Everything is so difficult with this neck brace and I’m tired in two minutes every time I try to do anything.’
I’m seized with panic. ‘I don’t know if I’ll be able to manage it.’
She falls silent again, watching me for a moment. ‘I haven’t forgotten what happened, you know,’ she says.
The panic is so bad now I can’t even speak. We just look at each other until she sighs and closes her eyes, and after a minute or two I manage to creep away.
I stand in the kitchen wringing my hands. So she does know what I did and the only way I can make it up to her is to get The Beloved to return. If not, there will be the rage, the terrible rage, and I’ll do absolutely anything to avoid that.
I look around at my ruined refuge. There are breadcrumbs all over the counter. There are butter smears on the breadboard. Dad must’ve come and gone. How quickly my territory has been encroached and messed on, and I am left once again stateless and adrift. And now The Beloved is to return, if I am able to track her down, although the chances of that are slim. My character is once again reduced to nothing. When I opened the window of the living room last night to let in the soft night air and I called, even my flying bat friends made of leather skins seem to have deserted me.
I find the address book in a kitchen drawer and leaf through it. Mum has always insisted that we note down all our friends and their addresses and telephone numbers. I try to remember who Verity hangs around with these days but it’s hard because we don’t have much to do with each other. The girls I’ve glimpsed her with all seem the same – glossy, with flowing hair, who look you right in the face without flinching. I seem to recognise the name Betty even though I can’t attach it to any of the faces I remember, but the phone number next to her name just rings and rings and I begin to panic. I want Verity here now more than anything in the world so she can head off this awful state that feels like being constantly circled by a shark so there can be no rest ever. I look frantically through the pages again. Stacey. I seem to recognise that. The phone is picked up almost instantly.
‘Is Stacey there?’ I wonder if my voice sounds tight and weird.
‘Stacey’s abroad.’
‘Oh, oh – d’you know exactly where? See—’
‘Who is this? Have you heard something about Stacey? This is her mother.’ She sounds panicky now.
‘No. No.’ I take a breath and start again. ‘It’s Verity’s sister here. Phoebe. I’m trying to track Verity down because Mum’s had an accident.’
‘Oh dear. Is she OK?’
‘Yes, yes. All fine but Mum wants her back and the thing is we don’t really know where she is.’
She breathes out heavily at the other end. ‘Well, that got me worried. I thought something had happened. I can’t quite relax with her gone. Hang on a minute, I’ll get the itinerary.’
‘Itinerary?’ I ask, but the question is to empty air because she’s gone off to find it.
‘Right.’ I can hear paper crinkling. ‘I have it here. Don’t you have one of these?’
‘No. I don’t think so. What is it?’
‘One of the boys who likes making spreadsheets did it because we weren’t sure if their mobile phones would work abroad or if we’d get charged the earth for ringing them, so he typed up a list of all the hostels and hotels they’ve booked, with their phone numbers. Didn’t you get one? He made copies for all the parents.’
One of the boys? I want to scream down the phone. Do you know how nuts my mother would go if she heard this? The Beloved gave her firm assurances it was strictly a girls’ trip.
Instead I work hard to keep my voice even. ‘Verity must’ve forgot.’
‘OK – right. They’re in Spain at the moment.’
‘Spain?’ I don’t think Mum or I even knew she was going to Spain.
‘Yes. They’re staying at the Hotel Miramar
in Barcelona and here’s the number. Got a pen?’
I write the number down and hang up and ring the Spanish number straight away. It’s all so easy, I can’t believe it. I just say her name and the line is ringing to her room and it gets picked up and it’s Verity’s voice at the other end. I feel overjoyed. This is actually, actually going to work. I’ll be able to go up and tell Mum that Verity’s on her way home and she’ll lie back, tired but happy and satisfied. And that’s what her mind will be on from now on – The Beloved returning – and I’ll finally, finally be able to get some peace.
‘Verity,’ I blurt. ‘You have to come home. Mum’s been in an accident.’
She goes quiet at the other end of the line. ‘How did you find this number?’
‘What? I got it off one of the mums. Aren’t you going to ask how she is?’
Silence for a moment. ‘Of course. It was just a shock to hear your voice. How is she? What happened?’
‘We crashed into another car but she’s going to be all right and she’s home now. She’s quite battered up, though, and in a neck brace so she’s getting really tired and bored and she says you have to come home.’
‘What?’
‘She says you have to come home straight away.’
‘I can’t do that. She’s not going to die or anything, is she?’
‘No, but …’ The panic’s welling up again. The last thing I expected was for Verity to refuse.
‘Well then. I don’t see what I can do by being there anyway.’
‘Verity. She really, really wants you home. Please. Please come.’ I know how desperate I sound. ‘You have to. I’m begging you.’
‘Stop it. Stop trying to make me feel guilty. I’m having a lovely time and you’ve got to go and ruin it. There’s nothing I can do that you can’t and you happen to be there.’
‘But it’s you she wants. You know that.’
‘I’ll be back in a few weeks anyway. Just tell her you couldn’t get hold of me.’