The Blame Game

by C. J. Cooke

  And now I’m a fugitive.

  At the hospital in Belize City a nurse pages Alfredo and explains that we wish to take Saskia back to the UK for treatment. He agrees readily that she would be better cared for in the UK, and before I know what’s happening Jeannie is arranging a medevac air ambulance, and a team of consultants are drafting a systemic procedure for Saskia’s transportation and care while in the air. I’m so caught up in the frenetic pace of things, one eye on the hospital entrance for any sign of the police and another on Saskia, that before I know it Jeannie’s telling me that the air ambulance will arrive in the hospital parking lot at dawn and that Shane has found us a hotel close by for the night.

  I look at her, wondering if I’ve heard her right. ‘But what about Michael?’

  Jeannie tries to talk me down, telling me I have to think about what’s right for Saskia, and at this I explode.

  ‘How can you possibly know what’s right for my children?’ I roar. We’re in the corridor. Nurses turn and stare but I don’t care. ‘You have no right to try and force me to abandon my husband in a foreign country!’

  Her cheeks burn and she looks around, feeling the eyes of the nurses and doctors watching us.

  ‘I want to Skype the police back home,’ I say, composing myself. ‘I want to tell them what’s going on and get their advice.’

  She nods, silently pulls out her phone, and hits a button. A few moments later we’re in a side room speaking to the detectives online. They tell me that they’ve found the man we’d seen in the CCTV footage at the hospital, the man who had walked behind Michael and who I’d suspected was pushing him out the door. His name is Apolonio Martinez and he was visiting his wife in the hospital. His alibis all ring true: his wife was being treated for kidney failure and he came to the hospital every day. They confirm what Jeannie says: that Michael appears to have left the hospital voluntarily without checking to see if me or our children were even alive. They say he’s back in England. That he flew to Heathrow without us.

  Impossible.

  ‘Michael’s passport was scanned at Heathrow airport yesterday afternoon,’ DS Jahan says. ‘Unfortunately there was a technical fault, which meant that they didn’t detain him there and then. We’re reviewing CCTV footage to work out where he might have gone. But he’s definitely in the UK.’

  I stare at the screen, wondering if I’ve heard them correctly. I can’t fathom it. Why would he have flown from Belize to Heathrow? Why wouldn’t he have come to find me?

  ‘He did have a head injury,’ DCI Lavery adds. ‘People often do strange things after accidents like this.’

  I nod, mutter a reply, but my brain is doing cartwheels, filtering and piecing together every fragment of information that the police provide in the hope of working out how anything makes sense.

  Saskia is last to be manoeuvred on to the plane, assisted by Alfredo, a team of nurses and the paramedics. So far, the ICP monitor in her head is signalling that she is in a stable condition. Alfredo tells me he will have a meeting online with the neurosurgical team back in the UK to update them on her procedure and subsequent care.

  I keep watching out for Superintendent Caliz but, mercifully, he doesn’t appear.

  The medevac team insist on giving me a sedative for the journey to help me sleep, and finally I relent, laid out beside Saskia, holding her hand. Reuben clasps her other hand. I can hear him making noises, a series of repetitive drills with his tongue matched by stamps of his foot. He’s trying to keep his anxiety in check. I lift my head to offer him as much of a reassuring smile as I can manage and he smiles back.

  The plane takes off with a roar.

  23

  Reuben

  4th September 2017

  Planes are noisy but not as noisy as a blue whale. A jet engine is 140 decibels at take-off. A blue whale calling underwater is 230 decibels. I think that, if I ever swim with a blue whale, I’m going to need to design noise-cancelling headphones that can be used underwater.

  I feel sick when we lift into the sky, and when the internet signal drops out my belly starts to bubble up again. I want to be on the plane home but I don’t want to be. My dad is not here. He should be here. Mum says he’s coming home soon but I don’t think he is because Shane drove us around San Alvaro forty-six times looking for Dad and we wouldn’t be doing that if Dad was coming home. I filmed a hundred and twelve minutes of people shouting at us in their cars, plus fifty-four seconds of when someone’s monkey got loose in traffic and almost got squashed by a van full of melons.

  I log in to iPix Chat to read my messages but the 4G on my iPad dropped out right as I was typing a message to Malfoy to tell him I’d recorded more stuff for him. He said he’d give me rendering software for my animations if I did, so I sent it as soon as I could. I recorded me and Shane searching for Dad and then some old footage of me and Saskia making a Mayan sandcastle.

  No messages. Major suckage. Wait – there’s one message. And it’s from Malfoy! He’s sent a link to a download with a password and I’m able to download Trapdoor Particular for free. And he’s sent a link to a YouTube tutorial. Awesome!

  Mum is asleep on a stretcher next to Saskia. Her hand is holding Saskia’s hand, but all of a sudden, her hand goes limp and falls down in the gap between the beds, knocking Jack-Jack to the floor.

  The floor is dusty. Jack-Jack will get dirty. So I get up and stagger a bit as the plane is still moving upwards slightly, but I manage to get Jack-Jack and dust him down.

  He’s still got the love heart on his collar. Some girls at school passed Love Heart sweets around on Valentine’s Day and I got a yellow one that said ‘True Lips’ and a white one that said ‘Be Mine’. I didn’t know what that meant but Lucy thought it was funny.

  When I look closer I see Jack-Jack’s love heart isn’t a Love Heart. It tastes and feels like plastic, for a start, and the name on it is ‘TRKLite’. I don’t know what that means. Is it a word?

  I go online to Google it and then remember the 4G isn’t working. There’s another signal though from the plane so I click it and in four seconds I’m online. I type ‘Trklite’ into Google and four thousand two hundred results come up. There’s a website, www.trklite.com, so I click it and it tells me that for just forty pounds I too can own a TRKLite in a range of colours, including baby pink, like the one Jack-Jack wore around his collar. The website says, An easy and versatile way to track keys, luggage, phone, and valuables via Bluetooth! Just download our free app and never lose your keys again!

  I download the app to see how it works. It’s genius. A red circle appears on a map, locating the love heart. I watch the screen for four minutes. The red circle blinks on the digital map on my screen as we fly over a place called Calakmul. The love heart is a tracking device. I’ve seen those online. They’re really cool. You can attach them to something and then find them with Google maps anywhere in the world. So that’s what this is.

  But that doesn’t make any sense. Why would someone put a tracking device on a teddy?

  PART TWO

  24

  Helen

  5th September 2017

  Grey streets. Car horns. Crowds.

  Helen, love. We’re just going to give you a sedative, alright my lovely? Sharp scratch. That’s it.

  Blackness.

  I am trapped in my body, locked inside a glass cage, unable to speak or move.

  White coat, face full of pity.

  Photographs of smiling children on her desk.

  You experienced a delayed reaction of shock, Helen. It’s common for people who experience trauma overseas to cope whilst away only to have a breakdown when they come home. Sometimes the familiar makes what happened abruptly real. We’ll assign you a trauma counsellor. Liz will visit with you every day, OK?

  I shake my head. I don’t need a trauma counsellor, I need Reuben to have his father back, and his sister. I need my husband to come home. I need my daughter to live.

  I lie flat on my back as they slide me into
the white hoop of the CT scanner. I want to enter another time zone, reinsert myself into the past.

  The cut in my head is healing and I have a mild concussion. Whiplash, a fractured wrist and torn ligaments in my foot. My head wound is healing nicely. My bladder is fine. Bruised, the doctor says, like most of my body, but whole. Unlike my heart. I imagine my heart under a CT scan. A hundred broken fragments, each bearing my daughter and husband’s names.

  I am discharged with a prescription for heavy duty painkillers, and a bandaged foot, a wrist brace, crutches, and a sheet of daily neck exercises for my whiplash. I hate myself for surviving when Saskia is at death’s door. It’s wrong. I would do anything, anything to trade places with her.

  I’m sitting in a wheelchair in scrubs at the foot of Saskia’s bed, watching the rehabilitative and respiratory nurses and Saskia’s neurologist, Dr Hamedi, busy about the machines around her, attempting to break her out of the coma.

  ‘Ready?’ I hear a voice say, and on an exhale I tell myself, ready.

  Under the honeycomb lights she looks lunar white, angelic, as if she already belongs more in heaven than she does on earth.

  They stop the sedation. The hum of the machines stalls, and my heart lurches. They fold over her, calling her name.

  Saskia, are you alright? We’re just waking you up now. Mummy’s here, sweetheart. Would you like to see her?

  I rush out of the wheelchair and stagger towards her, my own voice echoing off the tiled floor, shrill and half-crazed with desperation.

  ‘Saskia, love, I’m here. Mummy’s here, darling. Mummy’s here.’

  Her eyes flip open, milk-pale, as though she’s been ripped from a nightmare.

  ‘Can you hear me, darling?’

  But I can tell she doesn’t see me, doesn’t see anything but the dreamscape she inhabits. Suddenly her legs and arms begin to flail and crash against the bars of the gurney.

  ‘Saskia!’

  I reach frantically to calm her, seizing her hand, and as she locks her wide grey eyes on me for one heart-splitting moment I say, ‘Please! Please stay, darling!’

  But she continues to convulse. I have to move back, back, to allow the nurses space. I watch in horror as they reinstate the tubes, switch the machines on, begin to re-sedate her.

  She slides back under, adrift in the darkness and watchful stars.

  Dr Hamedi brings a cup of water into the room, sets it on the table in front of me.

  ‘Sometimes the patient simply isn’t ready to wake up,’ she says gently. ‘The brain needs a little more time to rest and heal.’

  I’m curled around the hole in my chest where my heart used to be. Tears drip slowly down my face.

  I cannot think about what I will do if Saskia dies. I cannot accept a world without her in it.

  Our street.

  Detached stone houses surrounded by gardens.

  A marble sky of mourning.

  A large crowd of familiar faces armed with balloons and banners are waiting outside our house: my friends Camilla and Rosie, Lucy and Matilda, the two students we’d employed to cover weekends at the bookshop, a large group of Saskia’s friends from school and ballet, two dozen parents and children from St Mary’s Primary School. Andrew Cheek, Michael’s accountant and business mentor, is there, and I notice Jim and Simon, a couple of the school dads that Michael had a beer with a few times. I’m at once moved by the show of compassion and terrified to face everyone in case I collapse into tears.

  ‘Who are all those people, Mum?’ Reuben says, peering out the window.

  ‘I think they’ve come to see us,’ I tell him, bracing myself.

  ‘Why?’

  Nope. I’m not strong enough. I turn to Jeannie. ‘I don’t think I can face them.’

  ‘It’s my fault,’ she says quickly. ‘I got a phone call from the school and I told them we were leaving the hospital …’

  ‘No, no, it’s fine,’ I say, taking deep breaths. But I crumble. It’s all so strange. The sight of familiar faces confirms that what happened in Belize was real. That I’m returning home without half my family.

  ‘Leave it to me,’ Jeannie says firmly. ‘I’ll tell them you need some space …’

  I see the kids’ banners, the effort they’ve put in to make a huge poster with ‘WE MISSED YOU’ and ‘GET WELL SOON’ spelled out in bright colours. Everyone looks so keen to see us.

  ‘I’ll be OK.’

  ‘Why are those people in our garden?’ Reuben asks.

  As soon as I step on to the kerb I burst into tears. The children surround me in the front garden and bombard me with hugs, kisses, and concern.

  ‘Mrs Pengilly, why is your face like that?’

  ‘What happened to your arm? Are you better yet?’

  ‘When are you coming back? Will you be at school on Monday?’

  ‘Did you get my picture? I painted butterflies on it and a rainbow.’

  Jeannie steps forward, holds up her hands like she’s talking down a terrorist. ‘Now, kids, I know I told you I will personally see to it that every single painting, canvas and sand picture is displayed in Mrs Pengilly’s house, but right now I think she needs to have some rest, OK?’

  The kids look disappointed but the parents take their cue to usher them all back into their cars. I feel terrible but relieved. A handful of people have showed up to see Reuben. Several teachers from his school, Mr Aboulela and Mrs Abbott, and the Head Teacher, Dr Angier. Lily, a girl from his year who acted motherly and protectively towards him, and Jagger. But no sign of Josh. They surround him and say hello, but he takes out his iPad and films them as they attempt to ask him how he is. I don’t intervene.

  Saskia’s friends, Amber, Holly and Bonnie, are there with their mothers. The Formidable Foursome, we called them, bursting with opinions and exuberant forthrightness, a mutual love of ballet and small animals. I often turned my mind to Saskia’s group of friends when I felt despondent about the future – these girls, I thought. They’ll put the world to rights. They would hold play dates with their pets and despite the logistical hassle I indulged it because it was simply adorable.

  ‘Where’s Saskia?’ Bonnie asks, her little face full of confusion, and when I glance at her mother it dawns on me: nobody knows just how ill she is.

  ‘But why is she in the hospital?’ Amber cries in a shrill voice when she overhears me mumble a tear-stricken explanation. ‘Has she got tonsillitis? I had tonsillitis, didn’t I, Mummy?’

  The mothers don’t know what to say, and when Holly asks me with tears in her eyes if she will ever see Saskia again I can’t speak. It is excoriating, unbearably sad. Amber’s mother apologises and tries to drag her away, but she grows frantic.

  ‘Saskia!’ she screams at the gate. ‘Where’s Saskia?’

  Jeannie opens the front door and I ask her whether or not it was locked beforehand. She can’t remember.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ she says, following my gaze across the living room and kitchen.

  ‘I think someone’s been here,’ I say quietly, looking over the chair that’s lying on its side by the dining table. Has Michael been here? Or someone else? There’s an unwelcoming presence, the trace of something sinister.

  It looks as though someone came in through the back door and knocked the chair over. I spot mud on the floor, too, and there’s a pile of papers on the kitchen table from a drawer, which has been left ajar. The bills drawer, where we keep all our receipts and household paperwork, including birth certificates, Reuben’s SEN stuff. I rummage through it, my stomach flipping and my heart racing.

  ‘To be fair,’ Jeannie says, glancing around. ‘Your house always looks like it’s been burgled.’

  I look over Saskia’s toys in a corner, her toy pram filled with teddies. Michael’s boxes of books from the shop. His coats in the hallway. Her pink wellies at the back door, her ballet bag hanging on the back of a chair. Photographs of us on the walls, strategically positioned, I remember, to cover Reuben’s drawings on the paintwork.
>
  A line has been scored in the universe, cleaving my life into Before and After.

  I curl up into a ball in the middle of the living room and cry.

  Jeannie and Reuben are talking in the kitchen. She finds a frozen pizza in the freezer and puts it in the oven for him. After a while she kneels beside me and rubs my back.

  ‘Can I make you some tea?’

  I wish I could take Saskia’s place.

  ‘Alright. Then why don’t you go to bed? A good night’s sleep always makes me feel better. Come on. I’ll help you upstairs.’

  ‘I can’t go to bed,’ I tell Jeannie.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Reuben doesn’t go to bed until nine. He’ll not break his routine. I have to stay up with him.’

  She gives a chuckle. ‘That’s what I’m here for. I’ve arranged time off work and rented an Airbnb around the corner, so I’m all yours, OK? If Reuben needs a little longer to settle I’ll wait for him. We can go pick up the pets from your friend’s house. And I’ll tidy downstairs while I’m at it. Come on, let me help you.’

  She helps me shuffle along to the bathroom where I brush my teeth at the sink. Michael’s razor is in the cupboard, tiny bristles caught between the blades. His shampoo and deodorant in the basket. His smell clinging to a towel.

  ‘Do you want me to wash your hair?’ Jeannie offers. I can’t remember when I last washed it and I certainly can’t manage it now. I lower myself painfully to the floor, tipping my head backwards over the side of the bathtub while she lifts the shower head and scrubs my scalp. I don’t think Jeannie has ever done this for me. It’s a small act but it lifts me considerably.

  I move at a snail’s pace along the hallway upstairs, past more framed photographs of happy times on the walls towards Saskia’s bedroom. In the doorway I stand and look over the pretty ballet-themed haven that she spent hours in, transforming her four-poster bed into a theatre where her dolls performed Swan Lake. Jeannie makes me sit down, then takes Saskia’s hairbrush from the dresser and offers to blow dry and plait my hair. My hair is much too thick and long to be worn loose, and I don’t feel like me unless it’s braided.