by Nathan Filer
‘I live in Bristol,’ I told her. ‘I’ve got my own flat. I mean— I don’t own it or anything.’
The sea looked like black silk. Or maybe velvet. I always confuse those two. It looked nice is what I’m getting at. It was the same black as the sky, so looking out to the horizon you couldn’t be sure where the sea stopped and the sky started.
And the moon was huge. And everywhere, the stars were scattered in their millions.
‘It must be nice living here,’ I said.
‘I live in a bloody caravan, Matt. With my dad. It’s not nice living here.’
‘You haven’t seen my flat.’
She laughed at that. I wasn’t trying to be funny, but it felt nice seeing her laugh. She laughed a lot. She’s a person who might say, ‘Well if you don’t laugh, you’ll cry.’
She didn’t actually say that, but I can easily imagine it. She seemed nice. I reckon anyone who would stay to comfort a stranger whilst they wept their life out must be fairly nice. It was more than that though. She had a way about her too. Like everything was important, but nothing was so important that it couldn’t be interrupted with another offer of tea from her flask, or a question about if you were warm enough because it would be really no trouble at all to go back to the site, to borrow you one of her dad’s jumpers. And she’s sorry that you’re having a hard time, she really is. But it’ll all be okay. She’s certain of it.
She’s known sadness. That’s what it is. I only just thought that as I wrote it. She’s known sadness, and it has made her kind.
‘She didn’t have a name,’ she said.
We had walked along the shore, and then back on ourselves towards the scattering of beach huts. And now we were sitting side by side on a small upturned wooden rowing boat. Our knees were almost touching.
‘She wasn’t my favourite doll. If she did have a name it would have changed every time I played with her. But when you saw us. When you watched her funeral. She was called Mummy.’
She knew that. Because they all were.
If I’d counted to a hundred the day before then I might have watched her bury a Barbie in the dirt, or the day before that a Furby, or a rabbit from the Sylvanian Families. And all of them were called Mummy.
‘Jesus,’ Annabelle said. She put her face in her hands even though it was too dark to properly see her blushing. ‘What was I like?’
The only difference with the funeral I saw, was what she kept.
‘The coat?’
‘It’s meant to be a dress.’
She took the piece of yellow cloth from her pocket, but she didn’t hand it to me. It’s strange. She trusted me enough to be alone with me in the night-time. But there was something about the way she held it, her small fist closed tightly. I knew this wasn’t an invitation to take it again. ‘We made it together,’ she said. ‘It was supposed to be a dress, but Mum let me help a bit too much and it ended up— It is more like a coat, you’re right.’
It became a comforter. Her friends teased her because she was never without it. That’s what she told me. It’s worn right through in places from where she rubs it between her thumb and fingers whenever she’s watching TV or reading. And it’s grubby too. More brown than yellow really. It even smells a bit. She laughed loudly as she said that, as she told me she’s never once put it in the washing machine in case it falls apart.
And all of this somehow made it more real. Like it couldn’t possibly be Simon’s comfort blanket because it had its own story. Because it was Annabelle’s.
‘I would never have kept it all this time,’ she said. Suddenly serious, suddenly looking straight at me. ‘I don’t suppose I would have done. Except it took on more meaning after what happened. And in a way, I suppose that’s because of you.’
Dr Clement glanced to my dad with an apologetic wince. Dad nodded slowly. ‘Let’s do this another way,’ Dr Clement continued. ‘I’d like to ask you the difficult question.’
Instinctively I found myself reaching for Mum’s hand. Not because I needed comfort, but perhaps to offer her some. This is my care plan: As a small boy I killed my own brother, and now I must kill him again. I’m given medicine to poison him, then questioned to make sure he’s dead.
Dr Clement lowered his voice. ‘Tell me,’ he said. ‘Is Simon in the room with us? Is your brother still talking to you?’
The door swung open, the student nurse bounced in, spilling tea on his hand, ‘Ouch! Here you go, Matt. Sorry it took so long.’
‘Thanks.’
‘We were out of sugar. I had to get some from the store cupboard—’
‘It’s fine, Tim,’ Claire-or-maybe-Anna said softly, gesturing him to sit.
Then the whole room was looking at me again. I must have answered too quietly because Dr Clement said he was terribly sorry, but could I speak up a little.
Someone pressed the button on the electric fan, bringing the whirring blades to a halt.
She didn’t mean what had happened between us.
The way I’d pushed her over in the dirt as she had her toy funeral. As she tried to make this goodbye, the goodbye; the one she thought she needed.
No. She wasn’t talking about that, because she didn’t remember it. She has no recollection of a small boy spying on her, or how she had shouted at me, and told me that I’d ruined everything.
And if that’s hard to believe then maybe think back through your own life, to when you were eight or nine years old. See if the memories you have are the ones you might expect. Or if they are fragments, dislocated moments, a smell here, a feeling there. The unlikeliest conversations and places. We don’t choose what we keep – not at that age. Not ever, really.
So she hasn’t kept that. But she has kept some memories around it. This is how we piece together our past. We do it like a jigsaw puzzle, where there are missing pieces. But so long as we have enough of the pieces, we can know what belongs in the gaps.
A piece that Annabelle has, is of her doll coming back from the grave.
‘It was a few weeks after—’
Annabelle stopped to interrupt herself. She said it was cold. She said I was soaked to the skin, would I not rather go and get some dry clothes?
‘I’m okay here,’ I said. ‘I’m not cold. Are you?’
‘No. I’m fine,’ she said. ‘It’s hard to talk about. I don’t want to upset you. We could talk about something else? Perhaps you’d rather be getting home?’
I hadn’t told her that home was currently a mental hospital. But I would. Before this evening was over. Before finding myself on a twilight bus with an extra jumper, with an apple and a Snickers bar and a cheese sandwich. Before that, I’d tell her everything.
‘It was a few weeks after the accident, the horrible accident. With your—’
Simon wasn’t saying anything. He was listening though. He was on the shoreline. He was in the shallowest ripples. He was making pebbles shiny.
‘Is that what it was?’ I asked.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Is that what people called it? An accident?’
‘Of course. Of course that’s what it was. You blame yourself, don’t you?’
‘Sometimes. A lot, recently.’
She shook her head, ‘My dad blamed himself too. For not putting a rail up even though he’d been meaning to. For not putting a sign up. For being too sad to do much at all. But it wasn’t his fault either.’
And that’s what the policeman had come to say when he brought Annabelle’s doll back in a brown paper bag. The policeman – the policeman with a bushy ginger-brown moustache and glasses. The same policeman who had taken a statement from me. He was an old family friend. More a friend of Annabelle’s mummy, really. They’d gone to college together. He’d gone to the wedding. He’d gone to her funeral. He knew how much Annabelle’s dad was struggling – drinking too much, taking too much on. He was looking for excuses to check up on him from time to time. He needed excuses, because Annabelle’s dad is the kind of man who would never ask for help.
>
He’s like me.
So when a brief investigation into the death of Simon Homes reached the verdict of a tragic accident – this family friend looked for an excuse, and he found one in the small cloth doll that was discovered at the scene. That I had carefully placed under my brother’s head, to make him comfortable.
It was a poor judgement, perhaps. No. Definitely.
The policeman didn’t stop to think that Annabelle may run in to say hello. He didn’t stop to think that she had no bedtime any more. No bath time. No story time. He didn’t really think at all. But sometimes all the stars in the entire universe conspire to make something good happen.
‘I just froze,’ Annabelle said.
And she was sort of reliving it as she told me. She was staring ahead at the big black sea, but in the place in her head where pictures form she was standing in the small reception area. Her dad and Uncle Mike the Policeman were talking. A stilted, awkward conversation. And there on the counter, an arm flopped awkwardly, face tilted, staring back at her, was her dead dolly.
‘Jesus,’ she said. ‘What did he think my dad was going to do? Give her a wash, bring her through to me. Here you go Bella-Boo, here’s your dolly back. Uncle Mike thought you might want it. By the way. It was found under the dead little boy! Fuck! Shit. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, Matt.’
‘It’s okay,’ I said.
And I meant it too.
Dr Clement offered a small glance to the other doctor, then they turned back to me.
‘No, he isn’t,’ I said. ‘Simon isn’t speaking to me. He isn’t here. He isn’t in the room. He died a long time ago.’
Mum snatched a tissue from the table.
Dr Clement cleared his throat. ‘My feeling is that you’ve been making real progress—’
‘Can I go home?’
‘As I say, you’re making progress but these things take a while. It’s best not to rush. We’ll try some short periods of leave first, away from the ward. One evening at a time. It’s early days for you to be at your flat by yourself but—’
‘He can stay with us,’ Mum said. ‘He can stay with us. We can look after him.’
‘That’s an option, certainly.’
I can’t remember too much after that. It was difficult to keep up. So I don’t know exactly when the lady from the community team started talking. She was looking forward to working with me, but this wasn’t about who would look after me, it was about laying a path for me to look after myself.
That’s how she put it, anyway.
I never know how to respond when people say stuff like that, how to fill the expectant silence that always comes attached.
‘What’s your name again?’
She smiled, ‘It’s Denise. Denise Lovell. Good to meet you.’
I stared at the sickly plant for a while, and eventually Dr Clement made a show of looking at his watch, saying how productive this had all been.
It was sort of awkward because he cut straight over a man who was still enthusiastically talking about some Day Centre, where there were lots of groups that I’d be more than welcome to attend.
‘Sorry, Steve.’ Dr Clement said. ‘I’m just aware of the time.’
‘No, no. I was wrapping up. Just to say that the Art Group’s very popular. I hear you’re good at Art, Matt? Oh, and we’ll be getting a computer at long last, so there’s that too.’
He nodded at me. And winked.
The policeman left, taking the doll away with him, making a silent gesture to Annabelle’s father, with his fingers held to his face like a telephone receiver, mouthing the words, ‘I’ll call you tomorrow, mate.’
Annabelle felt her toes lifting from the floor.
She landed with a gentle bump on her daddy’s lap. If she closes her eyes and concentrates, she can still feel the warmth of his hand against her teary cheek, the way he held her face to his chest. She can still feel the edge of his tie tickling against the side of her nose. She can still hear their conversation.
They didn’t talk about the dolls. They didn’t talk about the little boy. What they talked about, properly talked about – and for the first time since she had died three months before – was her mummy.
Annabelle told her dad about the way her mummy had said sorry to her over and over again when she explained about the cancer. How she said sorry like it was her own fault somehow, but that it wasn’t her own fault was it? And Annabelle’s daddy explained that this was because she didn’t want to not be there for her, to not be there for Annabelle to turn to whenever life got difficult. Because life can be difficult. But that she could always come to him, always, and that they could always think about what Mummy would say.
‘Mummy would want you to keep reading me bedtime stories,’ Annabelle said.
‘She would, wouldn’t she?’
‘Yes.’
‘And she’d want me to make you eat your vegetables, all of them. Even the broccoli.’
‘No.’
‘Wouldn’t she?’
Annabelle pressed her face into his shirt and said a muffled, ‘Yes. She would want that. But she would want you to stay and watch me at ballet lessons and not go to the pub until I finish.’
If she closes her eyes and concentrates, Annabelle can still hear it all.
‘I think you’re right. I think you’re right.’
She remembers holding the little yellow doll’s dress to her chin, stroking it between her finger and thumb as they talked.
The funeral had been too big and strange. And everything since had been empty. But sitting on her dad’s knee, sitting long into the night because they both agreed that this one time, just this once, her mummy wouldn’t give her a bedtime – they began to say goodbye.
‘It was a memorial,’ Annabelle said to me.
She was smiling now. She had cried a bit and her eyes were wet and sparkly. But she was smiling as she said, ‘It was the beginning of things getting better.’
I stood up from the upturned boat and felt the pebbles shift beneath my boots.
‘Are you okay?’ Annabelle asked.
‘What was that word you said?’
‘When?’
‘What you called it. A memorial, was it?’
‘That’s what it felt like.’
‘It sounded nice.’
‘It was. It really was.’
‘Annabelle. I’m ready to go now.’
The sun doesn’t set in the east. But seeing the light blue band stretching across the horizon, it looked just about ready to rise.
After the meeting, Mum and Dad took me to the hospital canteen. We ordered two coffees and a hot chocolate with squirty cream and a flake. ‘I can stay with you then?’ I asked.
‘You always can,’ Mum said.
‘I mean, on leave or whatever. Away from this place?’
‘That’s what Dr Clement said.’
‘That’s a bit of good news, isn’t it?’
‘Yes. It is.’
We went quiet then, sipping at our drinks. A lady with a hairnet came around wiping tables. Someone in the queue for the tills dropped their tray, then stared at the mess as if willing it to tidy itself. An announcement came over the loudspeaker saying something about something else. People came and went. We didn’t talk for ages. Then I said, ‘I want to do something.’
‘Uh-huh?’
‘Not now. Next summer.’
‘Well that’s a way away,’ Dad said.
‘I know. But I’m too— I’m too ill at the moment. I need to get better first. I know that now.’
Mum put down her cup. ‘Well what is it?’
‘I don’t want to say. But you have to tell me I can. You have to tell me that I’m allowed.’
‘Well—’
‘No. I need you to trust me.’
Dad leaned in and spoke quietly. ‘Ami. It isn’t that we don’t trust you, but we can’t just agree to—’
It was strange that it happened this way around. I would never have guessed it
would be my mum lifting her fingers to her mouth, stopping my dad from asking.
‘We trust you,’ she said. ‘It’s fine. Whatever you need to do. We trust you.’
keepsake
I wrote the invitation letters sitting right here.
They were the first things I wrote on this computer, before I even thought to write my story on it. I still have them saved, but I needed Steve’s help finding them again. He was a bit distracted. They all are today. You have to hand it to them though – keeping the doors open right to the end.
‘Steve.’
They’ve even had the kitchen open, and the occupational therapist has been in there with some of the others, making a Goodbye Everybody cake.
‘Steve. You busy?’
He was taking down notices from the pinboard. ‘Hey Matt. Sorry. I was a million miles away. How ya doin’?’
‘I’m okay. How are you?’
‘Ah, you know. Bit hectic. Lots of boxes.’
‘If you’re too busy?’
‘No, no. What’s up?’
I told him what I was after, and he pulled up a chair to sit beside me. He did that thing where you spin the chair around and sit on it back to front, with his arms folded casually on the backrest. ‘Some time last summer was it?’
‘Yeah. But don’t worry if you can’t—’
‘We can but try, eh?’
Whilst he clicked through the folders and files, he mentioned something about there being public computers in the library too. ‘It might be worth— if you’re not already a member, that is. It might be worth joining up,’ he suggested. ‘So you can carry on with—’
All my printouts, all my typewriter pages – the whole lot is stacked in an untidy pile beside the keyboard. It was Jeanette from Art Group who added my drawings. When I arrived this morning she was quietly clearing up the art room, taking down posters, putting brushes into boxes. But then she stopped clearing things away and moved to the big table, where all the paintings and pictures that have been left behind were carefully laid out.
I stood in the doorway watching as Jeanette gently stroked her thumb over one of Patricia’s poster paint rainbows. I didn’t want to interrupt, but she caught sight of me and smiled. ‘Aren’t they all wonderful? Yours too, Matt. They’re wonderful. You must take them home and keep them safe.’