by Anna Legat
Rob went on sobbing and I could do nothing about it. I must agree with him that I was a sorry sight. My head was bandaged, my face swollen and discoloured. It looked misshapen, like a potato. My body was laden. I too felt like crying.
‘Dad?’
Mark was standing in the doorway, looking aghast. There was a hint of accusation in his tone. It was aimed at Rob, as if he knew that his father’s botched CPR had sent me on my merry way into eternity.
Rob rose from the plastic chair and rushed to hold Mark. He needed holding, too. They stood there in each other’s arms for a while.
‘What happened?’ Charlotte’s voice came from behind Mark. ‘Your neighbour told us there was an accident.’
‘Hit and run.’ Rob pulled away from Mark and withdrew to his plastic chair. ‘She is in a coma.’
‘She’ll be all right, right?’
‘Of course, she’ll be all right!’ Charlotte knew something nobody else did. ‘Medicine today does miracles.’
Mark, my poor Mark, wasn’t quite up to standing. I could see his legs were failing him. He staggered and collapsed on the end of my bed. He was pale and could easily pass for a ghost even though I was supposed to be the ghost here, if not a fully qualified one. He didn’t dare look at my bruised face as if looking would cement the fact of my dying – make it irreversible. Seeing me there would be an acknowledgement of that fact for when you see things you don’t believe in you’re forced to start believing.
Like his father earlier, Mark reached for my hand. He squeezed it. ‘Mum?’ Briefly, his eyes travelled to my face; he gasped and looked away, but his hand stayed locked on mine.
The hardest thing about the out-of-body experience is that you can’t feel. I couldn’t feel my son touching my hand and I couldn’t conjure that feeling up from the past either – the last time Mark had held my hand was when he was a toddler. After that, he refused.
‘She can’t hear you, she’s in a coma.’
‘Of course she can,’ Charlotte was quick to contradict Rob. ‘People in a coma can hear you, it’s a proven fact.’ She was such a know-it-all, but it was a fact: I could hear them. ‘Talk to her, squeeze her hand … Mrs Ibsen!’ she raised her voice at me as if I was an old dear with a hearing aid out of batteries. ‘Mrs Ibsen, it’s me, Charlotte! Mark is here too, sitting on your bed, holding your hand. Can you feel it? You’ll be all right! Go on, Mark, squeeze her hand!’
Instead of doing as he was told, Mark stared at her, bewildered. Rob did too. For some reason, he had picked his kettle off the bedside table and was clutching on to it.
‘Oh, the kettle! The kettle is here! We were wondering about the kettle. We found the front door wide open, thought there was a burglary. Mark went upstairs with his cricket bat. I checked downstairs, went to the kitchen, found the kettle missing … Strange, I thought, that they would steal a kettle in this day and age … I knew something was seriously wrong when I saw Mrs Ibsen’s mobile phone on the kitchen table. A burglar would’ve taken that rather than the silly kettle. Mark came down, said everything seemed OK. I told him about the kettle. We were beginning to worry, like, really worry, when Rowan from next door turned up. She told us … We rushed here straight away. We borrowed your car, if that’s OK?’
Rob was still staring at her. Charlotte was a big girl. I don’t mean she was fat, just tall, big bones, wide chest, that sort of big. She had that poster girl look, like Anna Kournikova. It seemed as if Rob was seeing her for the first time in his life – he was analysing her physique with great concentration.
‘Yes, that’s fine,’ he mumbled after a long, attentive pause.
‘Have you eaten?’
‘Eaten?’
‘No, I don’t think so.’
‘You must be hungry? Mark, are you hungry?’
‘Hungry?’ Mark and Rob kept repeating after her as if they were learning a new language.
‘Wait here!’ She turned on her heel and disappeared.
I like Charlotte, but I must admit I was relieved to see her go. She had taken over the entire Intensive Care ward, sidelined me, talked over me, just marginalised me all together. What a character!
When she left, Rob replied to Mark’s earlier question.
‘We must prepare ourselves for the worst.’
Mark started crying.
It was nice and quiet for a while, the three of us sitting together in silence. There was no rush. I was in no rush. They just sat with me. I watched them: they were like two peas in a pod, father and son. As long as they were here in this room with me, they would be fine, but outside …
That was when I started to worry. Rob was no survivor, and Mark was just like him. He had Charlotte and she would be his mainstay, but Rob? He would have to do the school runs, remember things, make decisions … He would have to step outside his garden and off the bus, into the real world. The kids would go astray. Bills would be unpaid. Electricity would be cut off. The house would be repossessed. No one would visit Mother. She would be livid!
I really had to get over this, I told myself. Concentrate on coming back from the dead.
‘Hello again!’ Charlotte reappeared, carrying three pizza boxes and a bottle of Coca-Cola. ‘You need some refreshments: can’t starve yourselves to death! I didn’t know your favourite, Mr Ibsen. I got you ham and cheese, to be on the safe side. Mark, you have your finger-licking-good BBQ chicken!’
Rob capped his face in his hands and rocked in his plastic chair. He looked like a schizophrenic who had just heard those dreadful voices telling him to kill someone. I guess that someone was Charlotte. Mark looked equally traumatised. ‘Charlotte, we’re not hungry. NOT HUNGRY!’
‘You don’t realise how hungry you are!’
‘Go home, Char, please, go home!’
‘But –’
‘Take my car,’ Rob offered. ‘We’ll be staying here a bit longer. Take my car. And go,’ he smiled at her apologetically. ‘And thanks for … everything.’
Charlotte bit her lip, picked up the pizza boxes, and marched out of the room. I saw her throw the boxes into the rubbish bin before she whizzed off in Rob’s car. Till then I didn’t know she could waste food like that. I didn’t know she was such a little madam either.
There was no point rattling about the hospital corridors. My two men were fast asleep. Rob was snoring softly in his plastic chair, his head thrown back and mouth wide open, nursing in his lap the now indispensable kettle. Mark was lying face down on the far end of my bed, his legs hanging off, his feet dangling comically. Two nurses were chatting casually about me and the man in a neighbouring room; one was betting on me kicking the bucket first, the other one’s bet was on the man. He was on his fifth heart attack, a no-hoper. Sure enough, an alarm rang from the man’s bedside and both nurses dived in to save him. Doctor Jarzecki turned up instantly and began shouting orders in his theatrically rrrolled-Rs accent. It seemed to me that the nurse whose bet was on the man wasn’t really giving her best to deliver him from the jaws of death. Maybe her heart wasn’t in it, considering that her mind was already made up. She was right. Two minutes into the resuscitation the man’s spirit left the room and bumped into me in the corridor. He gave me an almighty fright.
‘I’ve had it,’ he said. ‘I’m off.’
‘Hi.’ I felt a bit idiotic talking to a ghost, but it would be rude to pretend I didn’t see him. We were in the same boat, though technically he was already overboard and I was still clinging on. ‘I’m next door. Um … nice to meet you. Sorry to see you … go.’
He was a short-tempered man. ‘Bah! Don’t worry, no one else is. They’ve had enough of my antics! Frankly, so have I. Fifth heart attack in so many years! Pain in the arse! Oh well, clearly I’m needed in higher places.’
He floated away with a purposeful whoosh. Only at that point did I look about me and realised that the place was full of people just like me and him: some of us hanging on to our earthly remains, others strolling boldly into their tunnels of light. I wasn’t
ready to join their ranks. I had things to do, things that couldn’t be done from the relative safety of heaven. Anyway, I thought with a shudder, there were no guarantees I’d be going to heaven and not the other way. I’d stick around if it was all the same to God. He probably didn’t have much use for me up there at the moment, considering that all my responsibilities were down here. Emma was one of them.
It was quite a revelation to realise that I wasn’t bound to my body. I could leave it behind and it wouldn’t miss me. There was no place I couldn’t be and I didn’t have to travel to get there. All I had to do was to focus on the person I wanted to be with, and presto, I would find myself by their side, as if teleported, but without the excess luggage of my earthly body. In fact, I could probably be in two places at the same time. In three, four, twenty places! I was omnipresent, not unlike God Himself. Now that I had proof that He could exist, I really had to start taking Him seriously. Just in case.
It was a bright morning: clear skies, trees in the park bursting with pollen, buses bursting with fumes. It was the rush hour. People went about their business of commuting to work and begrudging God for it.
I found Emma sitting on the bus, next to Becky. This time they were communicating without the aid of their mobile phones. There was lots of giggling, nudging, and ‘Oh, my God, you didn’t, did you?’ Unlike her usual apathetic self, Emma was positively excited. Her cheeks were glowing pink. Her voice was loud.
There was a brief moment when I felt deeply resentful: here she was having a whale of a good time while her mother – me! – was lying there on her deathbed. Then I realised she didn’t know. No one had told her. After the long night’s vigil, Rob and Mark were fast asleep by my side. They had forgotten Emma. I shook with frustration. Rob! I knew he wouldn’t cope. I knew he would forget to pay the bills and put the rubbish out, but it didn’t occur to me he would forget he had a daughter!
‘He said he’d get fresh sheets, brand new from the shop.’
‘Did he? Why would he?’
‘Don’t you know?’ Emma gazed at Becky, incredulous. ‘Because everything has to be perfect for my first time. The sheets will be clean. And white. You know?’
Becky shook her head.
‘Like a bride’s dress. Isn’t that cute?’
My ears pricked. First time for what? Bride’s dress? Did I dare to speculate what my fifteen-year-old daughter was talking about? God, no! I had been such an idiot! All mothers are. Never letting our little baby girls grow up. Fussing around with ribbons and white socks while our little bundles of joy conspire to turn us into grandmothers at the first opportunity … So no, that huge thing on the phone hadn’t been a tattoo! Where was my daughter going with it? And where was her father? Where was Rob?
‘You sure you gonna go through with it?’
‘I love him, Becky.’
‘I see …’
‘He loves me.’
‘How do you know?’ Becky, that’s just what I wanted to ask!
‘I know it. I just do. I know it in my gut. You know? Down there,’ Emma put her hand on her lower abdomen. ‘I know it in every part of my body.’
‘Ah! I wish …’ Becky gazed at her dreamily. Then she sobered up, ‘But what if you get … you know? Pregnant …’
‘I won’t. We’ll use a condom.’
My heart sank. It was a distinctly physical sensation within my strictly ghostly form. How come I hadn’t see it coming? Never mind Rob, where had I been in the last five years? I expected my family to be immaculately virginal on every level. I expected no deviation from the picture perfect I had in my mind. What was I thinking! They were only human, but I was hardly ever there to get to know them. What I knew about them was sweet fuck all! I should’ve been angry with myself, but I don’t have it in me to take the blame. So I blamed that … that … that lecherous dickhead! It was his fault! Oh, how I raged! My daughter’s future was being trampled over by some dirty old bastard and I couldn’t do anything to stop him! I couldn’t burst onto the scene and strangle him with my own bare hands. I couldn’t get Rob to do it (though I doubt he would be up to it even if he knew what was going on). I couldn’t call the police. My hands were tied by my incapacity. More than that! I was not in command of my own hands! All due to a freaky, random hit-and-run! The timing of it could not have been any more inconvenient!
The girls were laughing, looking at the screen of Emma’s mobile.
‘Show me the other one!’ Becky implored.
‘Which other one?’
‘You know which one!’
A nudge, a wink, a giggle. Emma touched the screen. Their heads hung over it as Becky gasped with a ‘Wow!’ and Emma laughed. I could see what it was: a photograph of a naked torso. Emma flicked her fingers over it and zoomed in on the part of the photo that displayed something misshapen and unsightly, something the colour of a worm, one with a swollen head and one eye. Something that could only be summed up as an erect penis.
Good Lord!
I stared in horror. Was there no end to the man’s depravity?
Emma slid her finger across the screen and another picture came into focus. The nasty paedophile surprised me. He wasn’t as old, fat, bald, and slimy as I had imagined. For one thing, he was young and slim. And he had hair.
‘He looks like Jamie Oliver. It’s like … weird that he’s a chef, you know?’ Becky offered me another piece of intelligence.
A chef? A dishwasher more likely. Good grief!
‘He’s a palaeontologist, actually. He told me last night. I always knew there was more to him than al pesto.’
‘Palaeontologist!’ Becky and I exclaimed at the same time. Becky added, ‘Is that like … dinosaurs? How cool is that!’
‘He couldn’t find a job.’
Why am I not surprised!
‘But he likes being a chef.’
And he likes innocent fifteen-year-old girls! Someone call the police!
‘You’re so lucky, Em!’
Emma glanced back at Becky in that condescending way only she could. ‘Luck has nothing to do with it. You have to go and get it. Veni, vidi, vici!’
‘What?’
‘I liked him the moment I saw him, and I always get what I like.’ She shrugged.
‘You do? So what’s that got to do with Da Vinci?’ Becky was trying to get her head around the Latin.
‘Never mind that, it’s something I heard … Probably from Mum. It’s like, “you go get it, girl”, yeah? So I did. I had to lie about my age at first, but that’s all behind us. And now he’s all mine.’
I hated to admit it, but she was more like me than I could ever imagine. She had it all mapped out in her head, even though, I feared, it was a road to hell. But she was my flesh and blood, she was me – and at that moment, I knew nothing would stop her. Little minx!
Emma jumped as her mobile rang in her hand. She put it to her ear. ‘Dad? What is it? What …’ The colour drained from her face. The smile had vanished. ‘She’ll be all right, right?’ Mark had asked the same question, so I knew what Rob’s answer would be. Emma was bravely holding back tears and trying to sound mature.
‘Which hospital? I must see her. I’ve no money for a bus fare, Mum was picking me up after school … can you pick me up? Now? Please?’
Her hands were shaking as she lowered the phone into her lap and looked at Becky with disbelief.
‘It’s my mum …’
It’s funny how even in a near-death situation we tend to stick to our daily routines. Straight from ‘dropping off’ Emma by my hospital bed, I headed for the office. I was conscious of the meeting I had arranged with someone called Ridley from the CPS’s Central Fraud Group. I had to have the investigation into Ehler’s affairs started before I could ask for an adjournment in sentencing. At this late stage the judge would frown on adding new charges. And I would have to explain myself to my superiors. Extra expenses in a case that was cut and dried and on the verge of a successful conclusion would not go down well. I would have t
o show solid prospects for success. I knew I could, but even though I was there in spirit, the in body part was sadly missing. And that complicated matters somewhat.
When I saw that pimply twit Aitken sprawled at my desk, I knew there was no hope. The smug grin on his face signified nothing but the intoxication of power, with no room for conscious thought. Related to some posh public servant holding high office in London, Aitken was on a fast-track ride to the top. He would spare neither the time nor the attention to the messy job of pulling the guts out of my cut-and-dried case. He would sew up the corpse nice and quick, and claim the credit for it. No doubt would enter his small mind unless he saw a greater benefit in it for himself.
I crossed my fingers – the virtual ones – and urged him by my sheer willpower to look into my notes. Ehler’s fat file was lying in front of him, unopened. The frayed green ribbon was tied up as I had left it the previous day. The printouts from Companies House were inside. Even if he saw them, would he have the brains to make the connection between the long line of Prickwanes with multiple investments and one small-time panel beater who had fallen on hard times in this bad world of ours? Would he have the curiosity to investigate the links?
He wouldn’t.
Aitken was sipping coffee from an extra-large Starbucks mug. He picked up the phone.