by Graham West
***
We took the lift back to the third floor and were greeted by a young male doctor who approached us with a sympathetic smile. Josie nudged me in that be strong manner. “Ask him,” she whispered.
I didn’t need to.
The doctor stopped directly in front of me. “Mr. Adams?”
A cursory, nervous nod sufficed.
“Jenny is still sleeping—if you’d like to sit with her for a while…”
Josie wiped a tear from her cheek and checked her reflection in a glass door. “Come on, hun,” she said stoically, “let’s do this!”
Jenny looked pale, almost angelic, and as beautiful as I’d ever remembered her. The room was softly lit and warm—more of a bedroom than a private ward.
“I wouldn’t mind a couple of nights here…” Josie began but stopped short as Jenny stirred.
“Jen?”
My voice was almost inaudible, but my daughter seemed to sense my presence. Her eyelids flickered, closed and then opened wide. She re-entered the world with a weary smile.
“Hi, Dad,” she said with a husky, almost unrecognisable voice. Her eyes roved, taking in her surroundings. “Where am I?” Her voice was clearer but still strained.
Josie raised her eyebrows. “Hospital. You’re in hospital, babe.”
Jenny frowned. “Hospital? Why?”
I reached out, taking her hand. “You don’t remember?”
I watched as my daughter continued to gaze around the room, confused by her surroundings.
“Remember what?”
Josie looked at me, shaking her head slowly. Easy, hun, tread carefully!
“What was the last thing…”
Jenny hadn’t checked her wrists. “I was taking a bath…” Her voice disappeared, trailing away into the distance.
“And then?” Josie prompted softly.
“I must have fallen asleep…”
Neither of us spoke, both watching as Jenny’s look of confusion deepened.
“I had a dream…a nightmare…”
“Amelia?”
“Yes…but…” She paused, and her eyes narrowed. “I was Amelia—again. I was…drowning. I was in this stinking water…there was blood. My blood…” My daughter’s eyes flashed. “That’s why I’m here, isn’t it? I nearly drowned…”
Josie was looking at me. What the hell do we say now?
We didn’t have to say anything. Jenny caught sight of her bandaged wrist. She glanced quickly at the other arm to see the red marks across the ball of her hand and stared at me, her eyes wide with fear. “The blood,” she said. “It was real…the blood was real.”
“You cut your wrist, hun,” Josie said suddenly. “You used nail scissors…”
The sound of my daughter’s sobs turned my stomach and clawed at my heart. I gave Josie a look to kill; What the hell were you thinking? She shrugged as if there had been no option. What happened to the taking-it-easy plan?
Josie looked away, reading my anger. I understood why relationships were often destroyed by grief. Jo and I had been friends for nearly twenty years. We had enjoyed an understanding that was deeper than many married couples enjoyed, yet at that moment I almost hated her.
The weight of my daughter’s sobs was crushing me. I was helpless, unable to reach out and stem the tide. I turned to Josie who sat like a target, waiting.
“Look what you’ve done!” I hissed
Josie looked up, and the pain in her eyes felt like a knife between my ribs. She tried to say something, but the words escaped her, and I watched helplessly as she ran from the room. I sat holding my daughter’s hand, stroking her fingers with my thumb and waiting for the tears to stop.
“I didn’t do it, Dad—I didn’t… I fell asleep—dreaming—just dreaming…”
I squeezed her hand, pulling it to my lips and gently kissing her fingers. “It’s okay, sweetheart, it’s okay.”
She looked at me through puffed, pink eyelids. “But it’s not, is it? It’s not okay at all! They won’t believe me. They won’t believe all this stuff—dream stuff!”
I wished I could have reassured her, but I couldn’t. They would only see a troubled teenager with issues.
***
I spotted Josie sitting on a plastic chair in the corridor. She looked up the moment she heard my footsteps, which seemed to echo in the silence. It had just turned midnight—Jenny was sleeping, and the nurse had suggested that a couple of hours’ rest wouldn’t do me any harm either.
Josie stood, so small and vulnerable in her surroundings, the dark tracks of fresh tears staining her face. On stage, this girl could strut like a rock star, but now she looked like a street waif. “Oh, Robert—I’m so sorry,” she sobbed, launching herself into my arms. “I wasn’t thinking—I really wasn’t thinking.”
My anger—if it really was anger—melted away. “It wasn’t you,” I said, hugging her so tightly that I almost heard the air leaving her lungs. “I just got stressed out—seeing Jen so upset.”
I released Jo and pulled a paper handkerchief out of my pocket. “Have I ever mentioned that you look like Alice Cooper?”
She flashed me a weary smile. “I need to freshen up,” she said.
We walked the empty corridors and took a lift down. Josie gasped at her reflection in the window of the hospital shop and dived through the door marked Ladies. She appeared ten minutes later looking like the woman I knew.
I smiled and put my arm around her shoulder as we negotiated the revolving door. “I know a late-night diner that serves horrible coffee and stale cakes,” I said casually.
“Sounds great,” Josie replied without a flicker of a smile.
***
Tammy’s had been famous for its heart-attack-on-a-plate food and caffeine-loaded beverages that attracted truckers and young families from surrounding council estates. We arrived to find that only the name had stayed the same. The old greasy-spoon tables had been replaced by designer chrome and wood furnishings, and the walls had been stripped of their wood panels and re-plastered and painted a fresh cream colour.
We stood in the doorway, breathing in the heavenly aroma of expensive coffee and fresh bread, staring at walls lined with frameless modern art. Nothing remained that would remind the customers of the old eat-if-you-dare retreat. The tattered linoleum had been ripped from the floor and replaced with dark-grey flagstones; the fluorescent strip lights had gone, and the diner was now lit by series of halogen lights suspended on chrome rods that hung from the ceiling. From the miniature speakers set into the walls, Neil Diamond serenaded us with an appropriate, ‘Hello, Again, Hello’.
Josie looked at me. “I don’t think the coffee’s going to be that bad after all,” she whispered. The state-of-the art machine that hissed away behind the chrome-and-glass counter suggested she might be right. The smell made me feel hungry. Behind the glass, a healthy-looking array of fresh cakes and slices remained. We sat in the corner by the window and picked up a menu. Welcome to Tammy’s place.
Josie grinned. “There’s a slice of chocolate fudge cake with my name on it,” she said in a low voice that was heard by the heavy-set man sat less than ten feet away.
He lowered his paper and winked. “I can recommend the cheesecake,” he said with a grin that revealed a set of teeth that suggested he might have been better giving the sugar a miss.
Josie blushed and thanked him. “Now I feel like a pig,” she whispered.
“Jo, treat yourself. No one is going to know but trucker guy and the waitress.”
She nodded and shrugged. “And you, of course.”
An attractive young woman in a crisp white blouse and knee-length red skirt sidled up behind us from the shadows. She turned out to be the wife of the new owner and seemed happy to talk us through the whole makeover. Apparently, Jim Steen had an eye for opportunity and saw the potential in the ailing café that had little respect for the working-class people who no longer wanted to die via the plate.
They were doing well. Business w
as good. They closed at two and opened at six for breakfast—continental or cooked but, she insisted, still healthy. Josie settled on her chocolate fudge and a Brazilian coffee. I tried the cheesecake and a hot chocolate.
Laura Steen winked and slipped us a money-off voucher. “Everything is made from fresh ingredients,” she said, “so it’s kind of healthy in a calorific kind of way… Enjoy yourselves.” She smiled sweetly.
We left at two-fifteen and promised to do the whole Tammy’s thing again. I kissed Jo on the cheek and said goodnight as she climbed into her car. She reminded me that it was morning and we laughed. Yes, I loved Jo. I had always loved her.
Later that day, I found myself sitting in a perfectly square room with white walls and a dark-green carpet. The hospital’s Styrofoam cups of coloured water couldn’t compete with the stuff we’d been treated to at Tammy’s diner. I found myself thinking about Josie, and our reminiscing, trying to find some kind of hope for the future.
***
The nurse was dressing Jenny’s wound and I had been asked to hang back for a while. Admittedly, as waiting rooms went, it was pleasant. They had dispensed with the portable TV, replacing it with a wall-mounted plasma screen, although the faces of the daytime presenters looked as pale as milk. I picked up an old copy of some trashy celebrity weekly and thumbed through, looking at overweight, underweight and just-right soap stars in their bikinis before a rather haughty female voice cut through the boredom.
Dr. Grace was an attractive woman with deep-brown eyes and a Mediterranean complexion that belied her advancing years. She called me through to a room that smelled of fresh paint and invited me to take a seat in front of a rather jaded looking desk.
“I spoke to Jenny, Mr. Adams,” she said, with a warm smile.
I looked at her suspiciously.
“Don’t worry—we just had a very informal little chat.”
My stomach did some kind of flip as she glanced down at a lined notepad on the desk.
“You lost your wife and other daughter last year, I see.”
“Yes.”
“How are you coping?”
The doctor studied me. What was she expecting me to do? What was I supposed to say?
“I’m just taking one day at a time.” It was the best I could manage.
Dr. Grace nodded. “Have you spoken to anyone? Professionally, I mean.”
I shook my head. “Only the Victim Support lady.”
“Well, they do a very worthwhile job, however—”
“I don’t want a shrink!” The word escaped before I could stop it. “A psychiatrist, I mean—sorry.”
“Don’t worry—we hear worse. You’d be surprised how many people regard psychiatry with suspicion.” A slightly crooked smile put me at ease. “But there is no stigma these days. There is nothing to be ashamed of—just think of it as a health issue.”
“Is that what you think Jenny needs? A psychiatrist?”
Dr. Grace crossed her hands, and the smile faded. “We would like to keep your daughter with us for a while longer. She doesn’t remember cutting her wrist—she claims to have fallen asleep.”
“I know.”
“She told me about the dreams,” Grace continued, her eyes never leaving mine.
“Yes, they’ve—”
“I’m a little concerned, Mr. Adams. If she is self-harming in her sleep, then obviously, we have to take this seriously.”
“What are you going to do?”
“We will need a professional assessment. We need to get to the root of the problem. And we can’t sort this out on the operating table, can we?”
“I was thinking…maybe a holiday…”
“Mr. Adams,” the doctor said softly, “your daughter needs help. She cuts herself and writes messages on the fridge—messages from an ancestor who does not appear to have existed. She is becoming more and more unpredictable and is clearly a danger both to herself and possibly to you. Don’t you think it’s time we stepped in?”
I felt my face burn. Jenny must have told them everything—everything—even the knife attack? “What do you mean, unpredictable?”
Dr. Grace glanced once more at the notepad. “The incident at the church?” she replied, as if she might be questioning my memory.
“I don’t want her sectioned.”
“Sectioned?” The doctor laughed. “What do you think we’re going to do, Mr. Adams? Put your daughter in a padded cell and throw away the key?”
I didn’t. But I feared for my daughter’s sanity.
“She will talk to someone who is trained to help people like her, and we will go from there.”
“She’ll be on drugs?” I asked.
“We can’t say.” Dr. Grace saw the look of dismay on my face and smiled sympathetically. “I’m not the one assessing her, but I can assure you that she will be in good hands.”
I nodded.
“Don’t worry. We will just talk with her,” she continued. “It will be an assessment—to find out how she feels about things. It will feel like a chat, that’s all.”
***
Jenny was sitting up in her bed, humming along to something on her iPod. Again.
“I’ve just spoken to Doctor Grace,” I said, trying to sound nonchalant.
Jenny pulled the headphones from her ears and nodded. “Yeah, she said she’d have a word…”
“You told her everything?”
My daughter stiffened. “Well, yes. That’s okay, isn’t it?”
“Sure. What did she say?”
Jenny relaxed. “She just asked about stuff.”
I waited. Jenny read my discomfort.
“I couldn’t lie, Dad. I had to tell the truth—surely you can see that.”
I shrugged. “Sure…I know but…”
“You’d rather them think that I tried to kill myself?”
“No, but…”
Jenny’s cheeks flushed. “You didn’t want me to talk about Amelia—you didn’t want them to think you had a crazy daughter!”
The indignation erupted within, suppressed only by the knowledge that my father would have dealt with his granddaughter with love and patience. “How could you think that?” I asked, my voice higher than normal. “All I ever do is worry! Worry about you and where all this will end!”
Jenny looked away, her eyes flooding. “Well, maybe it would be better if they did lock me away.”
I couldn’t answer. I had come so close to losing her—losing my precious daughter. I could almost hear them talking in The Keys—Shame about Jenny Adams, wasn’t it? The pain swept through me, and for a moment, I was there, staring at a marble slab with my child’s remains six feet below.
“You don’t mean that, Jen,” I said softly. “I know you don’t.” I sat at the edge of the bed. Jenny looked at me and began to giggle. “What?”
I saw the mischief in her teary eyes, but it was too late. Jenny bounced herself hard and watched with childlike delight as I slid to the floor. The girlish giggles turned to laughter, and seconds later, a confused nurse burst in to find two overgrown children engaged in a pillow fight. Caught in the act, we dropped our weapons, looking sheepishly at the girl who was, I guessed, not much older than my daughter.
To our relief, Ursula had a sense of humour. “I’m not too sure if beating each other up is part of NHS policy.” She beamed.
Jenny pouted and pointed at me. “He started it!”
“I can believe that. Now, if you tell me what you want to drink, I’ll let you get on with your fun!”
Jenny opted for a cola—I was offered a coffee and accepted gratefully. I’d forgotten how much of a thirst you could work up with a pillow.
I called Josie that evening. She seemed relieved.
“Everything will be okay, hun,” she said after listening to a rambling account of my day. But the house felt empty as if the very heart of the place had been ripped out. I needed my daughter back—whatever it took.
Chapter Sixteen
I was woken by a call
at eight. Reverend Francis apologised for the early hour and asked how Jenny was doing. I hadn’t the energy to go into all the details and told him that she was okay.
There was a pause. “Anyway, I’ve been meaning to call you about the graffiti…”
“Yes—I’m really sorry…”
“No, no,” the reverend cut in. “It’s just that when one of our wardens was cleaning it off…well, he noticed something…” Francis hesitated. “The word hypocrite wasn’t referring to St. Peter at all. In fact, it was so obvious that I’m not sure how I missed it!”
“Missed what?”
“There was an arrow sprayed under the word—pointing down.”
“To what?” I asked.
“To the grave of The Reverend Allington,” Francis replied. “He was the minister at St. Jude’s, 1870 to 1880. A great man, apparently. He founded the church school and did a great deal of charity work around Tabwell. He was laid to rest beneath the statue as a mark of the respect. Anyway, I just thought I’d let you know.”
***
I called Sebastian Tint immediately. “I think we can date Amelia Root,” I blurted without bothering to introduce myself. There was a pause.
“Oh, Robert. Hello. Yes, carry on,” he replied, sounding preoccupied.
I told him about the call from Francis. “It still doesn’t make sense, but we know that this Allington bloke was the minister at St. Jude’s between those dates. So that must mean Amelia existed around the same time.”
“Have you spoken to Jack about this?” Tint asked.
“Not yet.”
“Then I’d let him know and then call Francis back. They should have records. It’s worth a look—you don’t know what you might dig up. In fact, it might be worth you paying the old church a visit.”
After leaving the details of my discovery on Jack’s answering machine, I called the reverend, and within the hour, I was taking the fifty-mile trip southwards with the unmistakable sound of Ella Fitzgerald drowning out the lorries as they thundered past. I was there in what felt like a few minutes; I’d made the entire journey on autopilot, my mind preoccupied. Who was this Allington? What had he done?