Rabbit Hole

by Mark Billingham

  You’ve got to have a hobby, right?

  When Lauren couldn’t control herself any more and started waving her arms around and having a go at me, I made out like I couldn’t hear. I just shook my head and pointed at my headphones until eventually she started shouting.

  ‘What are you playing at?’

  ‘I can’t hear you.’ I deliberately said it too loudly, you know, like people do when they’ve got headphones on. I pointed at them again and said, ‘I’ve got headphones on.’

  ‘Take them off then.’

  It was hard to keep a straight face because by now I could hear other people shouting ‘Quiet’ and ‘Shut the fuck up’ from the back. I thought Lauren was going to have a stroke or start frothing at the mouth or something, so in the end I slid the headphones off and looked at her, all innocent. ‘What?’

  ‘Why the hell are you watching the telly with those things on?’

  ‘I just like the company,’ I said.

  The company was no better than it ever was and I was actually there on surveillance, keeping an eye on one particular nurse who was sitting in the corner like butter wouldn’t melt. I watched her get up and move between patients, trying to keep a lid on things, because quite a few people were on their feet and shouting by now. That’s how it works in here. One patient kicks off a bit and the rest of them tend to join in, like that Russian bloke and his dogs. Chekhov?

  I watched her speak calmly to each of them in turn, a hand laid on an arm where it was needed, until some semblance of normality had returned. As normal as it can ever get when a woman is walking from wall to wall and a slightly camp bald bloke keeps pointing at the TV and announcing, ‘I’ve shagged her.’

  It was funny, I thought, that the nurse never said anything to Shaun.

  I watched her go back to her seat and sit there staring at me. I’m sure anyone else who clocked it thought it was because I was the one who’d started the trouble, but I knew it was because she’d seen me looking at her and that was fine, because I wasn’t trying to hide the fact.

  I knew she was worried.

  I knew she should be.

  I stared right back and smiled until she looked away.

  Once everything had settled down again, I put my headphones back on, loving how Lauren was still bristling next to me like a fat fucking cat with its fur up. I took out my phone like I was changing the track or whatever, but I was really checking my emails. It wasn’t like I was expecting Pindown to get back to me that quickly and certainly not this late, but it couldn’t hurt to have a look.

  Just spam, and some funny video from my dad which I’d look at later, and a message from Dr Bakshi reminding me that I had my next assessment the day after tomorrow.

  I texted a reply to confirm my attendance: Is there a dress code?

  Just after half-eleven, Marcus, Malaika and Femi came in. A few extra staff always turned up around this time to make sure the TV got turned off without a row – Lauren once smashed a window when she wasn’t allowed to watch the end of QVC – and that everyone was gearing up for bedtime and given extra meds or painkillers where necessary.

  I was still watching Debbie, of course, so I was well aware that when I headed out and started drifting towards my room she was following me.

  It wasn’t obvious, she was far too canny for that, making out like she was gently shepherding several of us towards the women’s corridor, just doing her job same as normal, but I could feel her eyes on my back.

  So I slowed down, like I was distracted or something. I let Donna and Lucy go past me, and waited for Debbie to catch up.

  She had that concerned face on, the same one I’d seen just before she’d done what she did to Shaun. Someone else who thought they could fool me by wearing a mask.

  ‘Is everything OK?’

  ‘Absolutely,’ I said. ‘Is everything OK with you?’

  ‘It’s not me we’re talking about.’

  ‘Maybe it should be.’

  She sighed and that mask of concern thickened a little. ‘What’s the matter, Alice?’

  I said, ‘Nothing’s the matter, everything’s great,’ and for the first time in a while, I meant it.

  ‘Is there anything you want to talk to me about?’

  I knew there would be soon enough, but right then I was happy to enjoy myself. ‘I’m fine, Debbie,’ I said. ‘But thanks for asking.’

  ‘You sure?’

  I’d looked on Google, so I knew the right way to cross myself. Forehead, chest, left shoulder, right shoulder. ‘I swear to God.’

  TWENTY-NINE

  I was chatting with one of the janitors who was trying to clean sticky toffee pudding off the camera outside the nurses’ station when Lauren came bounding – well, waddling at speed – towards me. Having wound her up so successfully the night before, I was all set for argy-bargy, but I could see immediately that there was nothing to be worried about.

  She looked like she’d won the lottery.

  She winked at me, rubbing her hands together then pointing towards the closed door of one of the examination rooms at the end of the corridor. She hissed, ‘Fresh meat.’

  That explained it. ‘Serious?’

  She nodded and beamed, excited as a kid on Christmas morning. ‘Got here a couple of hours ago, Ilias reckons.’

  ‘Yeah?’ I was surprised it had taken this long for someone to fill the bed that had been unoccupied since Jamilah had left. It was usually one out, one in, like straight away. I wasn’t complaining though. ‘Man? Woman?’

  ‘Some woman, apparently . . . fifty-odd, he reckons.’

  Donna was passing by on her morning route march and had clearly overheard. ‘I’ve already seen her,’ she said. ‘Seems nice enough.’

  Lauren and I both wheeled round immediately, desperate for more details, but Donna had gone, heading quickly away towards the airlock. It wasn’t a big deal because we knew she’d be back again soon enough and there was no way Lauren would let her go next time without pumping her for every bit of info she had.

  She’d already begun to sing, throwing her own, horrific idea of twerking into the mix, as she mangled the words of a Bob Marley song.

  ‘New woman, new blood, new woman new blood . . .’

  That should give you some idea of just how giddy the patients in here can turn when a newbie gets brought in. I’m not talking about an Informal because they’re rarely worth getting the flags out for. I’m talking about a brand spanking new section-monkey.

  Same as I was, a couple of months ago.

  It’s easy to tell which is which, because it’s a whole different process.

  The ones being sectioned don’t go to the 136 for a kick-off and they usually rock up in an ambulance, fresh from A&E. The Informals are on their own if they’re asking to be admitted, or with coppers hanging off them like that poor bastard who’d been dodging traffic. The unfortunates who are likely to be here for at least twenty-eight days tend to arrive with one or two distressed rellies in tow, a doctor or two and maybe a social worker to make an outing of it. They’re all over the place most of the time. They’re still confused about what had happened to them back at the hospital or why the hell people had turned up at their house with legal documents. They’re angry because they think they’ve been conned and some of them (yours truly, very much included) scratch and spit their way through the admittance procedure like they’re being dragged towards a firing squad.

  Ah, the procedure . . .

  You know when you check in to a nice hotel?

  Well it’s bugger-all like that.

  You know when you check into a shit hotel?

  No, not like that either.

  There’s some basic medical stuff to begin with, which if you ask me is just them going through the motions, really. I mean it is a hospital, in case you need reminding. Oh, your blood pressure’s
up a bit. Well, that’s a real surprise. There’s your meds to sort out. The ones you might well be on already – for a dodgy heart, gut problems, diabetes, whatever – and the variety pack of new ones you’ll be taking from now on. There’s loads more paperwork to be completed and of course you have to be issued with a handful of faded printouts telling you where you are, why you’re being detained and who’s who on the ward. Your care plan, your daily routine, your right to privacy and dignity . . .

  Then, talking of which, you take your clothes off and they dole out the jim-jams.

  Then they take your stuff away (remember my potentially lethal bra?).

  Then, finally, several hours after stepping into then out of that airlock, you’re escorted to your lavish sleeping quarters, where a smiling nurse will show you your bed like you’ve never seen one before and ask if there’s anything else you need. I remember that all I wanted was the Wi-Fi code and for the smiling nurse to fuck the fuck off.

  No prizes for guessing who that particular angel was.

  So, to take a step back, you can understand why we get so worked up when someone new arrives. Why it’s such a big deal. Yeah, it’s always nice to see a fresh face, maybe make a new friend, but mostly it’s about the pecking order.

  A new patient means everyone else moves up one.

  Lauren, who already reckoned she was in pole position, was dancing with Graham and Lucy by now. It was like a party. I was all set to stick around, every bit as eager to catch my first glimpse of the gang’s latest member as anyone else, but when my phone buzzed and I saw who the email was from, I knew that it would have to wait.

  It wasn’t like the new girl was going anywhere.

  Half an hour later I was back, hanging around near the entrance to the women’s corridor with the rest of the welcoming committee – Lauren, Donna, Lucy, Graham, Ilias and Bob – and waiting for the newbie’s coming-out parade. Shaun was watching from the doorway of the music room. Tony was sitting by the airlock with his bags packed, but he was watching, too, in case our newest arrival was the Thing.

  Everyone was in high spirits, yakking and smiling, so I must have looked like I’d just been shagged silly by Tom Hardy or something.

  ‘What you so happy about?’ Ilias asked.

  My grin got even bigger. ‘Just . . . this, you know. A new face.’

  Ilias nodded, peering anxiously towards the examination room. Same as the rest of us, he knew how long the induction process usually took and that, any time now, the latest admission would emerge and be escorted to her bedroom. ‘You want to play chess after?’

  ‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘Sounds good.’

  I was excited to meet my new wardmate, but the real reason for my good mood was the phone conversation I’d just had with the man from Pindown Investigations, which could not have gone better.

  ‘Howard’ was extremely friendly and didn’t ask too many questions. He told me how much his ‘investigation’ would cost and asked if I could transfer half the money straight away. I told him that wasn’t a problem (three cheers for that police pension) and asked how long he thought it might take.

  ‘It’s all pretty standard stuff,’ he said. ‘Should have everything you need sometime tomorrow.’

  Some deep-seated, law-abiding part of me was gagging to ask how he was going to get hold of all this ‘pretty standard stuff’ but it was just a low, muffled voice, you know? There was something far stronger screaming inside me, desperate to get this information and to use it. I didn’t want him to know that though. I didn’t want anyone to know just yet.

  I said, ‘Hopefully talk to you tomorrow then.’

  When the woman came out of the examination room, me and Lauren and the rest of them surged forward, like groupies outside a stage door. Marcus and George stepped out from the nurses’ station to make sure we didn’t go any closer and George shook his head, like we were all being a bit sad.

  ‘Come on, give her some room.’ He lowered his voice. ‘Remember how it was for you.’

  I’m damn sure the woman wasn’t fifty . . . closer to forty if anything . . . but I could see why Ilias had told Lauren she was older. I don’t think he’d had a proper look. You know how they reckon TV cameras make people look fatter? Well this place can put ten years on you, easy. Sometimes I look in the mirror and see my mum staring back at me.

  My mum, if she wasn’t well.

  The new girl was white and tall and skinny – not Donna skinny, but a bit on the scrawny side – with dark hair tied up in a scrunchy. Her head was down, but I saw her glance up at us all, just for a second, and I could see the bruising under one of her eyes. She was moving well enough though, certainly not the usual Fleet Ward shuffle, and I remember thinking that, in spite of everything, she looked . . . determined.

  ‘Just make some space and let Clare come through,’ Marcus said.

  So now we had a name. I nodded at Lucy and Lucy nodded back.

  There was a nurse escorting her, of course, a hand on her arm, and it could not have been more perfect. That same mask of concern she’d worn for me the day before. I stared at her, rushing like I’d had a double dose of something, because I knew she was on borrowed time.

  As they came alongside us, Lauren reached out a hand and Debbie ushered Clare quickly past. Graham waved and Donna murmured, ‘Nice to meet you.’

  ‘I’m Ilias,’ shouted Ilias. ‘And you’re not.’

  I watched her being led away towards her bedroom and I had to fight the urge to chase her down and tell her to watch herself. Tell her that this place wasn’t safe, whatever it said on her bits of paper. I wanted to point at Debbie and say, ‘I hope for your sake that she wasn’t the one that examined you.’

  ‘All right,’ George said. ‘Show’s over.’

  Lucy and Donna walked away, arms linked, giggling like schoolgirls. Graham took his place at the meds hatch and Lauren wandered over to torment Tony for a while. I stood with Ilias and Bob watching as Debbie opened a bedroom door at the end of the corridor.

  ‘We going to play chess then?’ Ilias asked.

  I told him to get lost and watched Debbie invite Clare to enter.

  Bob sidled up and nodded. ‘I did her in a flat in Peckham one time . . . the new bird. She went like a bat in a biscuit tin . . .’

  I was thinking about that mask, about how good it would feel to watch it slip, as I saw Debbie follow the new arrival into the room and close the door behind her.

  THIRTY

  Dr Bakshi said, ‘You look happy, Alice.’

  ‘Because I am,’ I said. Because I was.

  ‘That’s very nice to hear.’ She began slowly turning the pages in front of her. ‘And I enjoyed your response to my text message, though I see you haven’t dressed up.’

  ‘These are my best trackies,’ I said.

  It was certainly the most upbeat I’d felt at my Friday-morning assessment session in a dog’s age. I could sense something good was coming. Good for me, at any rate. I’d been hoping that Debbie would be sitting there in the circle, like she had been the week before, but they do these things on rotation, so Malaika was keeping Marcus company today. That tight-lipped trainee from last time wasn’t anywhere to be seen either. Maybe I’d frightened her off.

  So, just the four of us. It was cosy.

  Marcus made the official introductions and Malaika did the meds report. I was still ‘responding well’ to the regime apparently, which was always nice to hear, even though most of the time their idea of well and mine were very different.

  ‘By all accounts, you’ve had a productive week.’ Bakshi looked at Marcus, then at me. ‘Would you agree?’

  ‘Yeah, I’ve had a cracking week,’ I said.

  Malaika nodded, like she was on my side.

  ‘Though I gather there was a minor incident in the television lounge on Wednesday evening.’ Bakshi glanced at Marcus. ‘Some
disagreement with Lauren?’

  I laughed and shook my head. ‘Just a spot of handbags, that’s all. Nothing to get excited about. Lauren didn’t think I was giving Grand Designs, or whatever the hell she was watching, enough respect. Yeah, it was daft, but I shouldn’t have reacted.’

  ‘It’s good that you can understand that.’ Bakshi turned another page. ‘I gather it was an interesting occupational therapy session on Tuesday.’

  ‘You heard that, did you?’

  ‘The nurse who was overseeing the session submitted a written report.’

  ‘Did you see any of the pictures?’

  ‘Unfortunately, I didn’t.’

  ‘Oh you should,’ I said. ‘Lucy’s one especially. I swear, she’s like the Leonardo da Vinci of pubes.’ I stared at Bakshi, straight-faced. I might have been imagining the hint of a smile in return.

  ‘Well, that’s all very positive, and I’m delighted that you’re making progress. All that said, however, I’m sorry to say that I won’t be lifting the section this week.’

  ‘OK,’ I said.

  I could see that they were all a little taken aback at the calmness of my response, the absence of histrionics, and I have to admit I was pretty surprised myself. No, I probably wouldn’t have argued if they’d told me I could trot off home that afternoon, but for the first time in two months I had a reason to be there. A reason to stay, at least until I had the proof I knew was coming, and a chance to act on it.

  ‘Can you guess why that might be, Alice?’

  ‘Why what might be?’

  ‘Why your detention under section three of the Mental Health Act needs to stay in place, for the time being at least.’

  ‘I haven’t got a clue,’ I said. ‘I didn’t freak out and show Marcus my tits, did I?’