‘Hello? Reg?’
The first thing I see is the huge stereo with a turntable, CD player, cassette decks and large speakers. I stride over and press the off button. Quietness at last, so quiet that I now hear a dull groan coming from inside the room. Behind me, slumped on the sofa, is a man’s body, his hand clutching onto what looks like a brandy or whisky bottle. There’s a vomit trail cascading from his mouth. Immediately I reach for my phone, dial 999 and ask for an ambulance. Then I put my basic first aid training from my hospital induction into action, try to clear the existing vomit from his mouth, check that he’s breathing and slap him round the face for good measure.
To be clear, slapping isn’t in the handbook. I want to rouse him to ask what he’s taken and how much, but also I feel a flash of anger that he’s made his problems mine. I don’t need his cry for help when I have my own problems to deal with.
The slap works. Reg regains consciousness for a minute, a fact I gather by his shouting, ‘Ow!’
‘Reg, this is Annie from next door. I’ve called an ambulance. What have you taken? How much? Tell me, it’s important.’
He moves a little and breathes out toxic alcohol fumes. The stink, mixed with the smell of stale vomit, is almost unbearable. ‘Annie? Go home. Just let me die.’
‘No. I won’t.’ I shake him gently by the shoulder. ‘Sit up. Stay awake. What have you taken? How much of that have you drunk?’ I say snatching the near-empty bottle from his grasp.
‘Paracetamol. Whisky. Leave me be. I deserve to die.’
‘That’s not your decision to make. It’s never too late to get help.’ I pull him upright and haul him to his feet. ‘Can you walk?’ I don’t know where the strength is coming from for me to do this. Once again, I seem to be on autopilot mode, my body ruling over my conscious thoughts. Reg takes a couple of steps leaning on me and then bends double to be sick. I plonk him down on the sofa and look for the kitchen. I find it in the room at the back of the house, just as dated and tired as my mother’s but far dirtier, turn the plastic bowl in the sink upside down to pour the murky water down the drain, fill up a mug with cold water from the tap, grab the tea-towel hanging from a cupboard and then go back to the lounge, giving Reg the bowl to catch the rest of his vomit in.
Once he’s finished, I pass him the tea-towel to wipe his mouth with and the mug of water.
‘Swill your mouth out then drink some water,’ I tell him. Where’s the ambulance? Surely a good few minutes have passed since I rang the emergency services?
‘Diana,’ Reg says seemingly to me. ‘I’m sorry, Diana.’
‘I’m Annie,’ I reply. ‘Try to stay awake. The ambulance is on its way. Why did you do it, Reg?’
He tries to stare at me but his eyes aren’t focusing. ‘It was a split-second thing, I didn’t mean to…’
I think that it must have taken longer than a second to neck all that booze and wash down the pills.
‘You can get help, Reg. It’s never too late.’
‘What? It is too late.’ He looks at me confused as his eyelids start to crinkle and droop, tempting him once again into the black realms of unconsciousness. I give him a good shake.
‘You’ve got to stay awake, Reg. The ambulance will be here soon.’
I don’t know if he hears because he passes out again.
Outside I finally hear ambulance sirens. I put Reg in the recovery position then head to the front door to show the ambulance crew the way. They double park and, in a flash, run into the house asking questions about Reg and what has happened. I tell them I’m his neighbour and I went in because he was playing loud music (did he do that because he wanted to be found, I wonder?) and his front door was open. I explain Reg said he’d taken paracetamol and whisky. I tell them he’s been in and out of consciousness – all the things I think they’ll need to know.
A police first-responder arrives to join the throng in the lounge and the team insert a cannula into his hand. Whilst they’re working I notice an envelope on the sideboard. I try to make out, although my head is spinning, the spidery writing on the front. It’s addressed to the police. I pick it up and see that underneath is another with a scrawl that looks like ‘Diana’ on the envelope. Without thinking I slip that into my back trouser pocket and mention the other to the police officer.
Reg is on a stretcher now ready to be taken straight to hospital. Will he recover? Time is of the essence the two paramedics say, but it helps that they know what he took. I give my contact details to the police and say I’m going home. I don’t know whether they expect me to accompany Reg in the ambulance but the way I’m feeling that’s a good Samaritan act too far. Besides, I tell myself, the NHS doesn’t need my germs.
As I leave the room, the police first-responder picks up the envelope on the sideboard. A suicide note, I presume. But if Reg’s overdose was a split-second decision then how come he had time to write a letter? Perhaps he wrote it a while back when feeling suicidal and had never ripped it up.
I know I’ve started a healthcare job, but I wasn’t expecting to have to deal with a serious incident like this so soon. Although my legs are shaking, my feet manage to carry me home. My aching hands unlock the door and I dash straight for the loo where I’m sick myself, a reaction to what I’ve just experienced and the pounding of my throbbing, scorching head. The next thing I know I’m in bed, fully dressed, the feel of the pillow on my temple providing a momentary cooling sensation.
Everything goes black.
29
I’m burning in hell, the flames lapping the bottom of my jeans and threatening to climb higher. However much I shake my legs I can’t put out the fire that’s creeping up my legs and burning my flesh, its acrid stench accompanied by crackling and the sound of manic laughter just behind my head. I can barely breathe – despite the flames I’m bathed in sweat but it’s not enough moisture to stop the orange tentacles reaching out for my torso and my face. ‘Gemma, Gemma, is that you? Help me!’ I cry out but she does not come and the laughter continues. The flames reach my hair and I scream in pain before succumbing to the relief of nothingness.
Then she’s there, right beside me, holding my hand and wiping my brow with a cold flannel. I’m five again and tucked up in my own bed. Gemma is looking down at me with compassion, her ponytail swinging as she moves her head to lean closer towards me.
‘Thank you,’ I say, feeling comforted. She smiles and brings her pale shiny lips towards my ear. ‘You evil bitch. Dying is too good for you. I want you to suffer.’
I’m screaming again, back in the flames. Someone is trying to strip my clothes from me but I know that if they do the fire will sizzle my flesh and I lash out, kicking and pushing as much as my limited strength will allow. The person – or is it a being, a devil? – holds my two hands together whilst my trousers are pulled off. I know I’m going to burn on my own funeral pyre. Terror gives me one last impetus to fight but the other is too strong for me. ‘It’s OK, Annie,’ says a voice, ‘I’m trying to make you better.’ I feel water on my lips, a glorious cooling sensation, and I gulp it down. There’s something else in my mouth too, a pill maybe, and I swallow it along with the liquid, which forces the flames to back off and there I am, naked, no energy left to do anything rather than lie down and give in to whatever will come next.
Blankness and then I’m a little girl again, sitting at the top of the swirly carpeted stairs, listening to what the grown-ups are saying down below. My mother is sobbing, crying, ‘Why, why, why,’ over and over. ‘My lovely Gemma, why couldn’t Annie have died instead? She should have taken Gemma’s place in the grave. Annie has always been a bad girl. Bad blood will out.’ I clutch the top step with my fingers then push back violently, throwing myself forward, and I tumble in a forward roll down hundreds of stairs, a pain shooting through my body as I pass each step, going further and further into the black abyss but never reaching the respite of the bottom, no final crunch to signal the end of my ordeal. Just pain, never-ending pain, sobbing – i
s it coming from my mother or me? – and utter, intense sadness.
‘Annie, it’s me, I’m here. Just rest.’ It’s a woman’s voice. I’m suddenly aware that I’m wearing fresh pyjamas though the sheet is damp against my unclothed feet. There’s something at the back of my mind I need to think about but I don’t know what it is, it’s locked somewhere in a box with a huge padlock firmly locked. Where am I? I’m tired, so tired. More liquid to my lips but this time via a straw. It’s fizzy and sickly but still I suck hard, filling my stomach as if it were to be my last drink. Someone takes my hand and squeezes it as I lie my head back again against the pillow. Then Gemma is there again, staring at me with her beautiful, unlined eyes. Behind her lurks Toby. She doesn’t seem to twig that he is there. I try and cry out but cannot make a sound. My lungs hurt with the effort to try and scream. He is creeping nearer and nearer to Gemma, raising his hands towards her bare neck, reaching out with his fingers, clasping her flesh, squeezing, and I’m paralysed, can do nothing to stop him…
Darkness again. The sounds far off are of a car driving down the road and the squeal of a fox mating. I need the loo but can’t move my heavy body far enough to get out of bed. My bladder burns with hot rage. The devil comes back. ‘You’re a dirty bully,’ it taunts. ‘A filthy, worthless, waste of space.’ It punches my stomach, pounding and pounding. I try so hard not to let it win, but it keeps on tormenting me and punching until I release my bladder and feel a warm flow down my leg permeating the sheet and mattress. It’s right. I am dirty. I’m a little girl again, outside in the garden, spreading soil across my face and messing up my gingham dress. There’s Gemma, looking at me, judging me, when I so desperately want her to play with me, notice me. She turns her back in disgust and starts to walk away so I run at her, throw myself against her body to make her listen and she falls, far far down into an abyss I can’t reach out and rescue her from.
Then I’m even younger, a baby in a pram my mother has pushed to the park. ‘Everything is all your fault,’ she sings to me in a lullaby voice as she pushes the pram further and further into the lake. It’s a tune I remember, though the words differ: ‘Everything is all your fault, all your fault, all your fault, everything is all your fault, all day long.’
The water reaches my body and soaks the blanket I’m wrapped in yet I feel no cooler. It’s rising higher, up to my head, my lips, but I can’t cry out, can’t scream, can’t fight the sodden material I’m swaddled in. ‘Goodbye, Annie,’ Mother says as she gives the pram a final shove further into the lake…
With a shock I open my eyes, dragged up to consciousness by fear. I have the pins and needles of a dead leg, caused by lying awkwardly on one side, cutting off my circulation. My duvet is tangled around my limbs and I’m bathing in my own sweat. I sit up stiffly and push the covers back towards the end of the bed. The curtains are partially open and I can see it’s daylight outside. Next to me there’s a glass of water and a couple of biscuits. I realise I’m hungry, so very hungry, and devour the biscuits as quickly as possible. What time is it? What day is it? When I try and stand I feel inconceivably heavy on my feet, as if I’ve aged a couple of decades. My phone isn’t where I usually leave it at night on the bedside table. I pull on a pair of socks and a hoodie from the chest of drawers then make my way to the bathroom, go the loo and wash my face with cold water. In the mirror above the sink I look blotchy, haggard, greasy and too thin. I must have been in bed longer than one night I think.
Coming out of the bathroom I hear voices downstairs. One is definitely a man’s voice, although I can’t make out what he’s saying. The other, I conclude, must be my mother’s. I’m so weak that instead of walking down the stairs I shuffle down them on my bottom. It’s when I see the police jacket hung up at the bottom of the stairs that I remember what happened.
Reg tried to commit suicide. Did the paramedics manage to save him?
‘Annie, is that you?’ Mother says, walking into the hall from the kitchen. ‘Thank God you’re on the mend. Come and get some food, you must be starving.’ She reaches out to me to help me down the final two steps then leads me gently into the kitchen where DI Glass is sitting at the table nursing a cup of coffee. He smiles and comments that he’s sorry to hear I’ve had the flu.
They make small talk whilst Mother toasts some bread for me, brings me a glass of water and boils the kettle for a cup of tea. I’ve got too much of a head fog to say anything. It’s only when I’m eating the toast that Mother starts to talk and tells me DI Glass is here to officially confirm that Reg has confessed to murdering Gemma. He told the police where he’d buried her, in woodland a few miles away, and the forensics team have recovered a body that they think further DNA tests will prove is hers. Her schoolbag was found with the remains.
It was Reg? He killed my sister and I’d saved his life? A tsunami of nausea and fury crashes over my head.
‘So he’s still alive?’
DI Glass replies calmly and professionally. ‘No. He died this morning in the ICU of acute organ failure. But yesterday he was conscious long enough to confess to Gemma’s murder and his words backed up what he’d written in a note to the police.’
Mother’s face is ashen and her eyes are ringed with bright red sores. I try to swallow down the blend of sickness and sobs that my stomach threatens to heave up. DI Glass mentioned remains. I gulp down a glass of water.
‘When did he do it? Why?’
‘We don’t know the motive as yet. All he said was that it was a moment of madness. Gemma came home from school the day she went missing – one thing we weren’t aware of from the initial investigation – and entered the garden through the back gate. He killed her there after an argument.’
‘In our own garden? But that doesn’t make sense, I would have been at home that day. Why didn’t I hear something?’
Mother stops me. ‘It’s me who should have heard something. You’d have been playing in the house, Annie. Reg told the police Gemma didn’t come indoors.’ I can hear the vitriol in her voice as she says our next-door neighbour’s name. She’d lived next door to her daughter’s killer all those years and never known. How must she be feeling? Hatred? Relief that she finally knows what happened? In one thought I’m glad he’s dead then in another I wish he were still alive so I could have killed him myself with my bare hands.
DI Glass interrupts my stream of consciousness. ‘Once our forensics team have finished their investigation and we have an official identification then Gemma’s body will be released for burial.’ He pulls a compassionate expression that I imagine must be well-used in this line of work. ‘It’s thanks to you, Annie, that we reopened our investigation. We believe it was us interviewing Mr Swanson again that pricked his conscience and led to his confession.’
‘Death is too good for him,’ Mother replies. She’s too proud to let her tears fall in front of her guest. DI Glass leaves, saying he’ll let us know as soon as he has more news with regards to identifying the remains. I slump forwards on the table with the weight of this new knowledge. Then I remember the letter Reg left for Mother. I reach for her hand and squeeze it.
‘What did his letter say? Have you read it? I thought it was a suicide note when I picked it up. Did he confess to you as well?’ The words come out quietly.
‘What are you talking about?’ she replies tersely.
‘The letter addressed to you that I picked up in his house. Have you seen it? I put it in my trouser pocket.’
‘What letter? I haven’t seen one. I washed your trousers after Elaine and I undressed you when you were ill. There was nothing in the pockets.’
‘But there was a letter for you from him. I picked it up, I’m sure I did.’
‘Annie, you’ve been seriously ill with the flu, rambling like a maniac. I haven’t seen a letter. Are you quite sure?’
‘I think so… my memories of that morning are a bit hazy but I thought there was a letter for you. Maybe I dropped it in my bedroom? I’ll go and look upstairs.’
Mother tells me not to because the police had searched Reg’s house and didn’t mention finding a letter addressed to her, plus she says I need to eat and drink some more then rest. I ignore her and slowly, shaking with each step, climb the stairs. Upstairs I search my room. The letter is not on the floor, on the bedside table or in my bag. In fact, it’s nowhere to be seen. I don’t have many possessions but I riffle through them all to find it, pulling clothes out of drawers and pouring the contents of my handbag onto the floor.
‘You imagined it,’ says Mother, who has followed me upstairs. ‘You were in and out of consciousness for three days, hallucinating and talking rubbish about devils, flames and God knows what else. Annie, you had a severe case of flu. Elaine came round to help me nurse you, otherwise the doctor said he’d have had to take you into hospital.’
Good old Aunty Lena. But as for the letter, is it true I imagined it? I can’t have done, can I? I think back to what I can remember from my bouts moving in and out of consciousness in my sick bed. The nightmares had seemed so real.
What I do remember with the force of a gut-punch is Gareth’s betrayal. I suppose there’s no point telling the police about it now. I find my mobile in my bag and the battery bar is red due to lack of charge. There are a few texts from Priti including one replying to a text I sent to her after the ambulance arrived that I don’t remember sending. There are also five missed call alerts from Gareth. I don’t want to listen to his messages so I delete them straight away. The last is a message from the HR department at the hospital confirming that Mother rang them to tell them I had flu and asking me to let them know when I’m fit for another shift.
I slump with the over-exertion. I’m hungry and dehydrated. Mum tells me to lie down and get some more rest. ‘That evil man is an alcoholic who put this family through decades of misery. I hope he rots in hell. All this time he knew what had happened to Gemma, he lived next door and saw our grief but said nothing. Nothing!’
My Perfect Sister Page 19