The Blame Game

by C. J. Cooke

  I nod and study his face for clues. This is probably as much information as I’m going to get from him about the man who came. I look around the ward – it’s unusually quiet, all the visitors gone and the patients asleep. Just the sound of the traffic outside and the ceiling fan.

  ‘Let’s go check on Saskia,’ I say, and he wheels me quickly down the hall to her room. When I see her there in the bed it’s a bizarre mixture of relief and renewed grief that hits me hard.

  I take her little hand in mine, staggered by the confirmation by each of my senses that this is happening. Crescent moons of blood and dirt under her nails. Her closed eyes and the frightening chasm between each bleep of her pulse.

  Night falls and every time I hear footsteps coming up the hallway I seize up with blunt, raw fear. The ward I’m in is right at the far end of the wing and there is no exit without going up the hallway, so if anyone came to get Reuben and me, we have nowhere to run. The hospital is like something straight out of a zombie movie – there is one bathroom that I’ve spotted and it was crawling with insects, no loo paper, and brown water pouring from the taps. No catering, very little drinking water. Both Reuben and I are weak from hunger. I’ve asked to be moved but the nurses either don’t understand me or feign ignorance. Vanessa hasn’t appeared and I’m worried that she won’t return. She said a neurosurgeon was coming to see Saskia – why isn’t he here?

  There is no phone I can use and I don’t have my mobile. Worst of all, they won’t let me sleep in Saskia’s room. Reuben and I take up too much space and the nurses need to be able to access her – it took half an hour of interpretive gestures for me to work out that this was the reason – but it’s utter rubbish, because we only get seen once a day. I’m trying to be brave for Reuben’s sake. He keeps saying, ‘What’s wrong, Mum? What’s wrong?’ and I have to tell him I’m fine, that everything is fine.

  But it’s a lie.

  9

  Michael

  31st August 2017

  My head hurts like a meteor has landed on it. Someone’s knocking against the windowpane, a thunk thunk that seems to fall into rhythm with the banging in my head. I get up to see who’s knocking and find it’s an insect of some sort, the size of a small bird, trying to get outside. With a gasp of pain I yank the tube out of my arm and struggle forward to let the bugger out. He has a stinger about three inches long but he’s more scared of me than I am of him.

  I sit on the side of the bed and discover I’m wearing a snot-green hospital gown, tied at the waist and neck like a weird apron. Nothing underneath. Who undressed me? I’m in what seems to be a hospital, albeit a pretty nasty one. It looks like a building site. Smells like one, too. My back aches like I’ve fallen off a mountain. I’m covered in cuts and bruises. My first thought is that I’m here because of the fire, and my mind spins back to being trapped inside the shop, black smoke swirling. The sensation of my lungs being crushed.

  And then the sight of Luke at the beach hut. His hands out at either side in a half-shrug, as if to say, what did you expect? With a shiver I wonder if I saw a ghost. A more rational explanation is that I was half-asleep, or that the trespasser bore an uncanny resemblance to Luke. But it could have been Theo.

  There’s a black rucksack on the floor next to the bed. I pull it towards me and begin hunting through it. Not much in here. Someone’s already been through it. Of course they have. I know I put Helen’s passport in here, the kids’. All three are gone.

  I remember putting my passport in the secret pocket at the back. It’s still there, along with my wallet, a notepad, pen, and my mobile phone. The battery’s dead. Damn it.

  My checked shirt is rolled up in there, too. I pull off my bloodied T-shirt and use it to wipe my armpits and neck, throw on the clean checked shirt. I see my shoes on the floor by the door.

  I see a nurse walking down the corridor and my impulse is to call out to her, tell her to contact our next of kin and tell them what’s happened. But neither Helen nor I have parents, or any close relatives.

  I sit back against the cold bars of the bed, weighed down by the knowledge that we have no one to call for help.

  This is my family. I have to do it. There is no one else.

  10

  Helen

  1st September 2017

  I fight sleep for as long as I can, listening out for sounds of movement in the hallway. I have the distinct feeling of being watched. Not just a feeling – a gut-wrenching certainty. All the hairs on my body stand on end despite the crushing heat, my senses on high alert and my heart fluttering in my chest. I’m in excruciating pain and physically helpless against whoever is in the shadows, watching us. None of the nurses on the ward tonight understand me and no one helps. We are completely alone.

  The white van coming towards us is a vivid, garish splinter in my mind, and my foot jerks, puppet-like, at an imaginary brake pedal every time I think of it. Over and over, this circular reaction, my body reacting to a memory that’s stuck in the pipework of my mind.

  When my body finally caves in to exhaustion I dive deep into dreams and surface again with a gasp into that same terrible realisation of where I am, and why.

  I dream of the fire at the bookstore, black clouds of smoke billowing out of the windows of the shop, ferociously hot. Michael and I at the end of the street helplessly watching on as fire fighters roll out long hoses and blast the flames with jets of water. In the dream, though, it is the beach hut that’s ablaze, not the shop. A figure running away from the scene, up the bank into darkness. I try to get Michael’s attention.

  Look! Do you think he was the one who caused the fire?

  Michael’s comment floats to the surface of my dreams.

  Kids didn’t start the fire, Helen.

  There is a tone in his voice that I can’t work out. When I wake, it continues to echo in my ears, making the slow transition from dream to memory.

  A little after eight in the morning I hear voices down the hall: an ambulance is here to take Saskia to the hospital in Belize City. To my relief, they say that both Reuben and I can go, though for one terrifying moment I feel I’m abandoning Michael. He would want me to go.

  But right as the nurses are helping me into the ambulance, Vanessa pulls up alongside us in her car. ‘The police have requested that you go to the station right now to make a statement about the collision,’ she says emphatically.

  I tell her that Saskia is going for surgery right at this moment but she holds up her hands.

  ‘It’s not my call,’ she says. ‘The police have the last say. And they require you to go to them right away.’

  It’s a heart-breaking decision to have to make, but Vanessa insists I have no choice. She says I have a legal obligation to give information on the crash and that it has to happen right away.

  ‘I’m very sorry,’ she says. ‘But this is out of my hands.’

  I watch on, tears rolling down my face, as the ambulance pulls away with my daughter inside. It feels like someone is pulling off one of my limbs and dragging it down the street, out of sight. My instincts divide me, one shouting that at least Saskia will be safe in Belize City and the other shouting, Are you nuts? You’ve just let them take her away! You have no idea that they’re even real doctors!

  At least the police will protect us. I’ll tell them about the trespasser, about the van driver who got out after the crash and looked over us without helping.

  And perhaps they’ll assign Saskia a police escort to ensure she’s safe.

  The police station is about half a mile outside the town of San Alvaro, which appears to be no more than a row of wooden shacks selling fruit, vegetables, and handmade rugs and clothing at the side of a dirt road. Children running naked in the streets. Stray dogs everywhere, their ribs protruding like comb teeth through patchy fur.

  Inside the station, we are summoned to a small room at the end of the corridor. Vanessa pushes me in the wheelchair and a couple of police officers stop chatting at the front desk when they se
e us. Vanessa addresses them cheerfully in Kriol, but they don’t respond, their eyes fixed on me and Reuben, who is clicking his fingers and being extremely brave in this hostile and foreign place.

  ‘So, tell me what happened,’ Superintendent Caliz says once Vanessa, Reuben and I are sitting down by his desk in the small room. His eyes are hidden behind darkened lenses, the corners of his mouth turned down in a deep frown. A pot belly stretching out his beige uniform, badges on the breast pocket. Photographs behind his desk show him being decorated for service in the police over many decades. He flicks his eyes across Reuben who has his attention fully on the row of glass bottles by the window, filtering sunlight across the floor in a kaleidoscope of colours.

  I notice that Superintendent Caliz has no pen in hand to transcribe the interview, no tape recorder. I glance at Vanessa and tell him everything that I can recall: the trip to Mexico, our fortnight at the beach hut, the trespasser running up the bank. Then, my heart in my mouth, I tell him about the crash, recounting it with tears streaming down my face. I have to tell him this so he understands why the van driver standing at the scene of the crash, watching us, was so cruel. Recounting this feels like I’m right back on the ground again beside Saskia, praying for our lives.

  ‘I feel afraid,’ I say, trying to be as clear as possible in my use of language so he doesn’t miss a thing. ‘I feel worried that this man is going to come back and hurt us again.’

  Superintendent Caliz purses his lips, nods. ‘You were all wearing seatbelts?’ he says.

  ‘Yes,’ I say, confused.

  ‘Why your little girl go out the window?’ He makes a motion with his hand. It takes a second for me to realise he’s demonstrating Saskia being catapulted out of the windscreen of the car.

  ‘We were wearing seatbelts,’ I say, but my mind turns to the last time we pulled over to let Saskia go to the loo. Did I clip her seatbelt in? She was capable of doing it herself and I usually left her to it, but the rental car was old, a 1999 hatchback with tight, irritating seatbelts that she complained about. Guilt rivets me as I think that I didn’t check it. If I had, she might not be in coma.

  ‘You were driving, yes?’ he says.

  I nod. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Why your husband not drive?’

  ‘The other vehicle drove straight into us,’ I say in a brittle voice. ‘It wouldn’t have mattered who was driving. He swerved into our lane, right at the last minute …’

  He leans forward across the desk, his hands clasped, and gives me a murky look. ‘You buy drugs here in Belize?’

  ‘Drugs?’

  Superintendent Caliz addresses Vanessa in Kriol. She falters, confused.

  ‘We were told that someone has been arrested,’ Vanessa interrupts, addressing him. I can’t believe what I’m hearing. I had thought the police of all people would want to help, that the Superintendent would see the situation for what it is and offer to protect us. Michael lies unconscious in the hospital. Saskia is seventy miles away, in a hospital surrounded by strangers. Reuben and I are completely alone.

  ‘What’s he saying?’ I ask, and she hesitates before answering me.

  ‘They’ve arrested the driver of the van that crashed into your car,’ she says slowly.

  I take a deep breath. ‘Good.’

  But she shakes her head, as though I’ve misunderstood. ‘He is saying the crash was deliberate. The driver says he was paid to do this.’

  A noise escapes my mouth. Every suspicion I’ve had has been correct, all my instincts ringing true. Someone was watching us. Someone wants us dead.

  ‘So, you’re completely sure,’ Vanessa asks me again. ‘No drugs purchased in Mexico. No reason for anyone to try and harm your family.’

  ‘This has nothing to do with drugs!’ I shout, the strength of my anger surprising everyone in the room, including me. ‘I told you! Someone was watching us at the beach hut and the next day a man crashed into our car. You say you’ve arrested him. Who paid him to crash into our car?’

  Superintendent Caliz leans back in his chair, laces his fingers together and barks something in Kriol.

  Vanessa processes whatever information he has shared before tilting her head to mine, her brow folded in confusion.

  ‘What is your husband’s name?’ she asks.

  ‘Michael,’ I say, confused. ‘Why?’

  ‘Michael Pengilly?’

  ‘Yes, Michael. Why? What has that got to do with the man who crashed into us?’

  My voice rises again in desperation. She repeats this to Superintendent Caliz, then listens intently as he replies in Kriol. The air is suddenly loud with suspicion and menace. I had expected to feel safe here but instead I feel in even more danger than I did at the hospital.

  Vanessa fixes me with a dark stare. She chooses her words carefully. ‘The van driver claims your husband paid him to crash into your car to kill you all and make it look like an accident.’

  Her words are like a black hole, sucking me into it cell by cell, until all that’s left of me is a scream.

  11

  Michael

  1st September 2017

  It’s a shock to the system to be in a car again, right after the crash. I break into a cold sweat as we move through the streets, pushing through crowds of people – donkeys, too, and I swear some guy had an orangutan back there – and then a flood of cars that veer all over the place. The driver tells me there are no road lanes in this town. Looks like there are barely any roads either, at least not of the tarmac variety, despite the fact that there appears to be a car-to-human ratio of eleven-to-one. Dust rises from the tyres, making it impossible to see or breathe. Like driving through a sandstorm. The driver smokes weed, has some funky music playing loudly. He tries to strike up a conversation, asks if I’m a medical student at the hospital. I say yes and try to conceal the lie in my voice.

  There’s a white phone charger trailing into the back seat over a couple of Coke cans. It’s a match for my phone. I say, ‘Can I use this?’

  ‘Yes, of course,’ he says. I plug in my phone and within minutes the screen flashes white. I scroll through my photographs, past videos taken by Reuben. I click on one of them and find it’s of the bookstore, pre-fire. The sight of it pierces me. His face appears large on the screen as he props the phone against the leg of a table, plucks a book off the shelf and then sits on the floor, cross-legged, filming himself reading. A pair of legs appears next to him after a few minutes. I watch as he glances up at whoever’s standing there, then goes back to reading. It must be a customer. She’s carrying a Sainsbury’s shopping bag. She steps over him, like he’s part of the furniture, then turns to him and snaps, ‘Why are you just sitting there in the middle of the floor? Can’t you see people are trying to get past?’

  Reuben lifts his head and stares at her blankly before returning to his book.

  ‘So rude,’ the woman says off-screen, and instantly I feel an old urge to shout, He’s not rude, he’s autistic! Helen and I once said we ought to have that emblazoned on T-shirts and wear them whenever we went out as a family. One day Saskia came home from school and said her teacher had said she was very artistic. Saskia was quick to correct the teacher. ‘I told her that doesn’t mean I’m rude and ignorant, Mummy. Artistic people are just as polite as neuro-typical people. Isn’t that right?’

  We had a laugh at that one.

  I scroll through his other videos, one of him playing Minecraft, another of him drawing. I know Reuben is an amazing boy. Despite society’s obsession with status, personas, the endless barrage of visual culture, we still place a ludicrous amount of trust in what we see. On the outside my boy isn’t normal, and that’s still a problem. Helen and I vowed a long time ago that we would fight for our children to feel at home in this dying, messed-up world, to find their place in it. We would protect them.

  And that’s precisely what I intend to do now.

  I scroll through my gallery to find the photographs I took of the letters. Helen doesn’t know I o
pened them, but she knows we were receiving them. Why hide them from me? Every year, a new letter. And always on the date of Luke’s death to make a point. As if I could ever forget.

  I took photographs of the letters in case she got rid of them. And I needed time to think about what the letters said, about why she didn’t tell me about them. There are many secrets in our marriage, but they pale in comparison to squirrelling away letters that contain so much threat. Helen’s forever accusing me of avoiding confrontation, and yet she was the one keeping these from me. Why? What has she got to hide?

  I start to panic when I can’t find the images. There are photos of Reuben wearing a snorkel mask for the first time, giving a big thumbs up. Pictures of Saskia pirouetting in her Trolls swimsuit, her face all lit up when she spotted the dolphins. I try to flick past them as fast as I can but something in my chest gives and I have to look away so as not to start sobbing.

  Finally, I pull up an image of one of the letters and zoom in on the cream page.

  Sir,

  We write again on behalf of our clients regarding the death of Luke Aucoin.

  Our records show that you signed for our previous letter. We request that you contact us immediately to avoid further consequences.

  Sincerely,

  K. Haden

  A wave of anger rolls over me as I read the words ‘further consequences’.

  ‘Where to, man?’ the taxi driver asks.

  ‘The airport,’ I tell him. ‘Make it quick.’

  12

  Michael

  16th June 1995

  It’s decided: we’ll spend the next three nights in Chamonix learning stuff like what to do in an avalanche (‘Duck?’ Theo offers), crevasse rescue (‘It’s called chucking a rope down there, mate,’ Luke says), and belay techniques, or in other words, we’ll be drinking our body weights in vodka and singing German folk songs, with some token ice pick swinging in between.