Ilias was already in there playing Connect Four with himself and ignored me when I took off my headphones and asked if he wouldn’t mind buggering off. I tried asking a bit more politely, but that didn’t work either. Even five minutes of me bashing the living shit out of the bongos didn’t shift him, but at least he wasn’t showing too much inclination to chat, so I gave up and sat there.
Alone, thankfully, or as good as.
It was all stupidly unfair, because so much of what I’d told Bakshi and the rest of them about Andy was true. He was still angry, I knew he was, and he is obsessed with me. Oh, and I certainly wasn’t making it up when I said he sometimes liked to get a bit rough in bed; the fact that I didn’t actually mind is neither here nor there.
The sad truth is that, right then – six and a bit weeks without so much as a snog – I’d have settled for action of any sort. Rough or smooth, kinky or vanilla. There probably wasn’t a bloke in there I hadn’t thought about that way at some point. Tony, Marcus . . . even the hairy little bastard who was playing games with himself in the corner, God help me.
A cuddle would have been nicest of all, though.
Andy had been good at that, once upon a time.
There was a knock, and when I looked up my dad was standing with Femi outside the door. He smiled and started waving at me through the glass like I hadn’t seen him (which I obviously had) or might not remember who he was (which had happened the first time he’d visited).
Femi opened the door and my dad came in.
I stood up when he was halfway to me, that big lolloping walk, and he pulled me into his chest as soon as I was within range.
Yeah, a cuddle was good.
‘Hello, you,’ he said.
As he was taking off his coat, I saw him clock Ilias in the corner before he looked at me and grimaced. I shook my head to let him know it wasn’t a problem, that this was as private as we were likely to get.
‘So, how you feeling, love?’ He sat down.
He asked the question with a little more sincerity than Dr Bakshi had done a few hours earlier, which was nice.
‘Where’s Mum?’
‘Oh . . . she’s back at the hotel,’ he said. ‘She wasn’t feeling too clever.’
‘You don’t need to make things up,’ I said.
He nodded. ‘Yeah, well she gets upset coming in here, that’s all.’ He looked at his feet for a few seconds, smiled when he looked up again. ‘You sleeping OK?’
I told him that I was probably sleeping too much. The drugs I was on.
‘Well, that might be a good thing,’ he said.
‘I suppose.’
He looked around and pulled a face. ‘Bloody Nora, do you ever get used to the smell in here?’
I think I’ve mentioned Fleet Ward’s distinctive aroma already, but in case I’m misremembering, just assume that it’s there all the time, and even though I didn’t bother answering my old man’s question, no, you never get used to it.
There’s that . . . bleachy hospital smell, obviously, but that’s just what’s always around, lurking underneath. On top of that, you’ve also got – in various pungent combinations, depending on the time of day and the ‘condition’ of certain patients – all manner of other special stinks.
What do wine ponces call it? Top notes . . .
Blood, shit, sick, sweat, piss, jism.
Sometimes you just catch a niff, if a niff feels like you’ve been punched in the face, and other times it’s something that lingers and you can’t shift, that you can smell on yourself in bed at night however hard you’ve scrubbed in the shower. Oh, and you smell fresh paint quite a lot, because even though bedclothes and curtains get cleaned regularly, removing any of the above from the walls is going to involve a fair bit of redecoration. There’s usually someone in here slapping emulsion around once a week, and even though too much of that can make you feel like throwing up, given the choice I’d take the smell of paint any day.
Dulux Lemon Zest, if you want to be accurate about it.
‘Oh . . .’ Dad grinned and held aloft the plastic bag he’d brought in with him. He set it down on his lap and rummaged inside, to remind himself of the things my mum had put in there so he could list them correctly. ‘There’s some of those biscuits you like . . . a bit of fruit and a few little boxes of juice.’ He leaned forward and winked. ‘And several Twixes, obviously.’ He said it like he’d smuggled in a kilo of heroin, or a cake with a file inside, even though the bag might have been checked while he was signing the visitors’ book in the airlock. The truth was that, unless you were visiting someone whose diet needed to be carefully monitored, you could bring in more or less whatever you fancied.
I’d actually gone off Twixes a bit, but I didn’t say anything.
‘So.’ He sat back. ‘How did it go this morning?’ My dad knew what Friday morning meant as well as I did.
I held out my arms. ‘Good news,’ I said. ‘Well, good news for you at least, because the section is still in place.’
‘Listen, love—’
‘I’m not going anywhere . . . and don’t tell me you’re planning to sit there looking like a wet weekend, as if you’re disappointed for me. Can you honestly tell me that isn’t what you want?’
‘You’re not being very fair.’
‘Best place for me, right?’ I nodded towards Ilias. ‘Stuck in here with the likes of him.’
Dad puffed out his cheeks and shook his head. ‘Come on, Alice. Even if I do think that now . . . how does that mean your mum and me don’t want you home and don’t want you better?’
I looked away and stared at the wall for a bit, done with a conversation we had in some form or another every time he or my mother visited. It was never going to go anywhere.
‘Oh . . . Jeff and Diane from next door. They wanted me to say hello. Pass on their best.’
I turned back to him. ‘You told them I was in here?’
‘No, but they were over and they asked how you were doing and your mum was getting a bit flustered. I told them you were having your appendix out.’
I laughed a little bit and so did he.
‘So, come on then.’ He leaned forward and he actually rubbed his hands together, silly old sod. ‘What’s been happening, then? That funny woman still trying to do things to your feet?’
‘She’s gone.’
‘What about the one who’s always waiting? Or that woman who sings?’
I just stared at him. I suddenly realised that my dad hadn’t got any idea what had happened since the last time he was here. About Kevin’s death and my investigation. It seemed amazing to me because it was so massive, but he didn’t know a thing about the murder, the drugs, any of it.
So I told him.
He looked appropriately shocked to begin with and he was nodding like he was interested, but slowly I saw his face change, saw it . . . crease a little, like it always did when he was worried. So even before I’d finished I knew what was coming and knew exactly what that tone of voice would be. I’d heard it when I was fifteen and started going out with a lad who was three years older. I’d heard it the first time I told him I was thinking of joining the police.
‘Listen, love . . .’
I tuned out straight away. Some variation on the same tedious is this really a good idea? toss they’d trotted out in the MDR. Same warnings I’d had from Marcus and Bakshi and even from sodding Banksy.
How come I was the one least qualified to know what was good for me?
I was vaguely aware of Ilias grunting on the other side of the room, so I turned my head still further to see what he was doing. I watched him drop a counter into the Connect Four board, then stand up and move to sit in the chair opposite to plan an opposing move. He clapped a hand to either side of his head, evidently stumped by his own brilliance.
‘Alice? Are you listening?
’
I slowly turned back to look at my dad. ‘I’m really tired,’ I said.
He looked like I’d punched him. ‘You want me to go?’
‘Might be best,’ I said. ‘Thanks for the Twixes, though.’
‘Right then.’
It was only when my dad got slowly to his feet that Ilias decided it was high time he joined in. I watched him march purposefully across to my father and stand close to him. My dad didn’t look thrilled about it.
Ilias jerked his head in my direction. ‘You her dad, then?’
‘That’s right.’
Ilias nodded and stepped even closer to my father. ‘Listen, if you procreate with your daughter . . .’ He stopped, seeing the look of disgust on my dad’s face. ‘Yeah, I know, horrible word, right? But if you do . . . you can live for ever.’
I had no idea what to say and could only watch as Ilias, having passed on his pearl of wisdom, strolled from the room. Struggling a bit, I turned back to look up at my dad.
‘This place,’ he said. He picked up his coat and started to cry.
TWENTY-ONE
Saturday morning, after a fried breakfast and the usual assortment of meds, I prowled about looking for Shaun, but every member of staff I asked was a bit cagey and none of the patients I spoke to knew where he was. Nobody could remember seeing him since he’d lost it in the TV room on Thursday night. There was no shortage of expert opinions, of course.
‘I don’t think he’s been around all day,’ Lucy told me. ‘Like they spirited him away or something. I heard that he’s not speaking to anybody.’
‘They’re feeding him in his room,’ Donna said, as we walked.
‘They’ve moved him to another ward.’ Ilias whispered and nodded, the fount of all knowledge. ‘Downstairs with the real head cases.’
‘The Thing got him,’ Tony said.
Shaun finally appeared at lunchtime. Mia led him into the dining room, fetched his meal, then sat with him at a table well apart from the rest of us. It didn’t feel like she was sticking that close because Shaun was on Within Arm’s Length obs – though that might well have been the case after such a major wobble – but more that she was there to keep the rest of us away and make sure he had space.
It seemed to me she was being . . . protective, you know?
Like he was vulnerable as opposed to dangerous.
We all stared, obviously, didn’t even pretend not to and why would we? Shaun didn’t look at anything except the plate in front of him. He didn’t say a dicky bird, not to Mia even, and once he’d finished she escorted him out; her hand hovering a few inches away from his back, like she was afraid to touch him.
After he’d gone – back to his room, I guessed – a few people hung around and drifted across to congregate at the same table. They slurped tea or pushed apple crumble around their dishes, many of them only too keen to share their freshly revised opinions of the situation.
‘He looks bad,’ Donna said.
Ilias grinned at her. ‘You think you look so fantastic?’
‘I reckon it’s some kind of post-trauma thing.’ Bob looked at me. ‘Isn’t that what you had?’
I ignored Lauren’s bark of laughter and stared at him.
‘It’s what we’ve all had.’ Lucy laid a hand on my arm. ‘We’ve all been through something, to one degree or other. There’s trauma and there’s trauma, that’s all.’
‘Has he spoken at all?’ Graham asked. ‘Since the other night, I mean.’
Heads were shaken. Ilias let out a loud burp then shook his.
‘That’s fairly serious, then.’
‘It wasn’t like he said much before,’ Donna said. ‘I mean, he was always quiet.’
‘If he’s actually . . . silent, though.’ Graham let out a whistle. ‘Just saying, that’s not nothing, is it?’
‘Yeah, it’s bollocks,’ Lauren said.
Graham turned to look at her and pointed. ‘You were the one shouting at him the other night.’
Bob nodded enthusiastically. ‘Yeah, you shouted.’
‘Shouting because he was being too loud.’ Graham was suddenly getting as worked up as I’d ever seen him. ‘Because you couldn’t hear your precious programme.’
Lauren jabbed a spoon hard towards Graham’s face and smirked when he recoiled like it was something a bit sharper. ‘Shouldn’t you be standing by the meds hatch already like a tit in a trance?’ She looked at the watch she wasn’t wearing. ‘Best hurry up, mate, it’ll be open in twenty minutes.’ She watched as Graham scuttled from the room, panic-stricken, then went back to her pudding and quickly shovelled a spoonful into her mouth. ‘Shaun’s putting it on if you ask me. Poor baby’s looking for attention.’
I tried not to sound too sarcastic. ‘You think?’
‘Course he is.’
‘It’s possible,’ Ilias said. ‘Maybe he’s playing a game or something.’
Lauren nodded, chewing. ‘I did something like that myself once. What I did though was just keep repeating the same word over and over, to mess with the nurses a bit. That’s all I said, that one word, whatever anyone asked me. Kept it up for two weeks.’
‘That’s really clever,’ I said.
‘I know,’ she said.
‘Shaun’s probably feeling bad enough as it is, today. It’s been a week since Kevin was killed, remember?’
‘So?’
‘So you should think about that, and maybe doing all that shouting the other night, when he was already so upset, might not have been the most sensitive thing you could have done.’
Lucy nudged me. ‘You’re wasting your breath, babe.’
Like I didn’t know.
‘I couldn’t give a toss,’ Lauren said.
I turned away, remembering, feeling like it was important. That freaky woman on the TV, showing off her messed-up fake tits. Shaun with his finger glued to some invisible scab or pimple on his chin, asking the same question as he always did, only this time looking like he was genuinely terrified it was really going to happen. Malaika doing her best to calm him down, but getting nowhere. Then Lauren up on her feet, outraged and shouting her big mouth off, demanding that somebody shut him up.
Well, somebody certainly had.
‘What was the word?’ Bob leaned towards Lauren. ‘The word you said over and over again.’
Lauren licked her spoon clean then dropped it into the bowl.
‘Cunt,’ she said.
Later on I was mooching around, while those who weren’t already in bed or otherwise too zombified to watch claimed their pitches in the TV room, when I spotted Malaika heading into the toilets. I stood outside and waited for her to emerge, turned on the tears when I heard the hand-dryer going.
‘Hey, Alice. What’s the matter?’
I shook my head as though I was far too upset to speak and let her lead me into an empty treatment room next to the 136. She handed me tissues and gave me some water until I’d calmed down. She shuffled her chair closer until our knees were kissing and asked what was upsetting me.
‘I . . . saw . . . Shaun.’ One word at a time, breathy and ragged like it was being dragged out of me. I swallowed some more water. ‘It’s horrible.’
‘I know, my love.’
‘What’s happened to him?’
‘I shouldn’t really discuss other patients, Alice. I can’t—’
‘He’s my friend.’ Verging on the hysterical now. ‘It’s important.’
Malaika shook her head. ‘I didn’t know the two of you were that close.’
‘After what happened to Kevin, you know?’ I glanced up and saw Ilias peering in through the window. He stuck his tongue out, then, thankfully, moved on. ‘We bonded.’
Malaika sighed and took the empty water glass from me. ‘You’re right, of course,’ she said. ‘This latest episode is horribl
e.’
‘What kind of episode is it, though? What’s going on?’
‘Well, the good news is that Dr Bakshi is fairly certain that it’s only temporary.’
‘Oh, that’s great,’ I said.
‘Something has clearly traumatised him.’
‘Not what happened to Kevin, though. I mean, this happened after Kevin was killed, so . . .’
‘Yes. We can only assume it’s a direct result of what happened in the television room the night before last.’
‘Really?’ Fucking . . . really? Like that wasn’t blindingly obvious.
‘When a patient becomes extremely disturbed, something . . . shuts down and they just switch off. They retreat into themselves, into their shells. It’s a defence mechanism.’
‘Defence against what?’
‘Everything,’ Malaika said.
I nodded, as if I was thinking it all through, which I was. Shaun had been trying to tell me something, but had been so scared that the whole dying thing had kicked in. That’s what had started it and I remembered only too well what it was that had finished him off.
‘I suppose you had some sort of meeting afterwards,’ I said. ‘You always do, right? After an alarm or whatever.’
‘A debrief, yes.’
‘So, what did everyone think had happened?’
‘Well . . .’ Malaika seemed a little uncomfortable and looked back over her shoulder. To check that nobody was watching through the window? To make sure the door was shut? ‘It’s always very difficult to diagnose these things on the spot. What’s important is that we follow correct clinical procedure, which, of course, we did.’
‘What did Debbie think? She was right there when it happened.’
‘Debbie was extremely upset.’
‘Yeah, I bet. I mean, she’d obviously been trying to help.’
‘Of course. When someone is as manic as Shaun was . . . stuck in a loop almost . . . often the best option is to shock them. To do whatever you can to snap them out of it.’
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