One For Sorrow

by Sarah A. Denzil

  I took a step towards Chi, surprised and upset by his news. “What did she do?”

  “She stole a plastic fork from the kitchen, sharpened it, and cut her arms. She’s going to be fine. She’s had a few stitches. Luckily the plastic wasn’t sharp enough to do too much damage, but she’s still very depressed, and the event caused the other patients some stress. She did it in front of everyone in the communal area.”

  That didn’t sound much like Isabel to me. She wasn’t someone who ever seemed to crave attention. Chi must have noticed my frown, as he echoed my thoughts.

  “It seems out of character for Isabel to behave in such a shocking way, but I’ve spoken to her psychologist in depth and we both agree that this was a cry for help. There’s going to be a more formal meeting later today, but it’s clear that Isabel will need to be on suicide watch for the next few days.”

  “Well, I’m here to help, Chi. You know that.”

  He nodded. “I appreciate that. We’re going to need your help for this, definitely.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  There was an empty room around me, transformed from the colourful, lively place I’d once known. The walls were blank. The desk was empty. The floor was clear. It was a sterile room where it was difficult to imagine laughing, crying, or even breathing, and it was Isabel’s room.

  She entered slowly, dragging her plimsolls across the carpet. Her head was bent low, but I dipped my eyes so I could get a good look at her. Though it had been less than a week since I’d last seen her, it was like she was a different person. Isabel had been slowly losing weight over the weeks, and now I noticed how the loss of weight had sharpened her features, almost to the point where her cheeks were sunken and gaunt. Her hair hung over her face in a different style. I saw that she’d trimmed her fringe, and was it my imagination, or was her hair a slightly darker shade? There was a hairdresser who came to the ward every once in a while, so perhaps Isabel had requested this new look. Whatever she’d done, it made her seem more sallow, less healthy, more tired.

  “How was art therapy today?” I asked, moving out of her way so she could go sit on her bed and I could sit on the chair outside the door, which was open, as always. I would never be in the room alone with her and the door closed.

  Isabel slumped her body down onto the bed. “Okay, I guess.”

  “What kind of bird did you draw today?”

  “I didn’t draw anything.”

  “You haven’t given me a sketch today, have you? What are you going to draw for me today?”

  She rested her elbows on her knees and placed her head in her hands.

  “Isabel?”

  But she didn’t respond. It wasn’t the first time I’d seen a patient unresponsive to my questions, but I was surprised to see Isabel like this.

  “What happened to your art? The room seems bare without it, doesn’t it?”

  I sat patiently as Isabel remained quiet. After speaking with Chi, I’d attended a meeting with Isabel’s psychologist to discuss moving forwards with her care. It was concluded that she required 24/7 surveillance until she improved again, and if she didn’t improve it was suggested that she move to the intensive care ward for a short period of time. In the intensive care ward, Isabel would not be able to use the communal area, and instead, would be supervised when she was let out of her room. I didn’t want that to happen for her.

  The meeting had been short and sweet, with Isabel’s psychologist explaining that her actions had appeared to be a cry for help, and perhaps attention, too. But Isabel had never struck me as an attention seeker.

  “When I was at Brookhill, the youth offender institution they put me in shortly after… the crime, I learned pretty quickly that I was never going to have a normal life ever again. Learning curves tend to stick when you’re being punched in the face by a fourteen-stone inner-city girl-gang member. Everyone already assumed I was guilty, and why wouldn’t they? The jury thought I was guilty. Everyone did—even I did at times, though I wish I could be sure.” Isabel rolled up the sleeves of her jumper so I could see the bindings from where her cuts had been dressed I winced, but forced myself not to look away. Then she pulled the jumper down past her collarbone so I could see the faint lines of old scars. “They liked to sharpen their fingernails and drag them down my chest. They each took turns.”

  “That must have been hard,” I said.

  She sighed, tipping her head back until it rested against the wall of the room. “Of course it was.” She tapped the fingers of her left hand on her knee and regarded me with sleepy eyes. “You’re here late tonight. Did you take on the night shift?”

  I nodded. “I did.”

  “Need the money?” She half smirked.

  Though it was a little cutting—and true; I’d even taken a nap in the break room and eaten vending machine food for dinner so I could continue on for the day—I was relieved to see a slight smile on her lips. It was better than the impassive expression with which she’d entered the room.

  “I’m here to look after you, as you know. Some of the other nurses have families, whereas it’s easier for me to work later.”

  “You have a brother, though, don’t you? I miss my brother sometimes. Do you miss yours when you’re working here?” she asked.

  “Honestly, I’m so busy here that I don’t get the chance to think about it much. But I do think of funny things to tell him when I get home, so, yes, I miss him.”

  “It must be nice to see your brother every day.”

  “Do you wish you saw more of your family?” I asked.

  “Some of them.”

  “You look tired, Isabel. Maybe you should have some rest,” I suggested. “It’s getting late.”

  Isabel placed a finger on her lips. “Shh, lights out. People are trying to sleep around here.” It reminded me of my first day when Isabel had told me a secret. I didn’t kill that girl. I still believed her, but the issue was bigger than I could manage alone. Part of me felt like I’d let her down.

  I’d done everything I could, I reminded myself. It was up to the police now.

  “You look tired, too,” Isabel said. “You don’t sleep very well, do you?”

  I paused, wondering whether I should change the subject from me to a less personal topic. But then I changed my mind. “No, I don’t.”

  “Why is that?”

  “I have nightmares,” I said.

  Isabel leaned away from the wall. “You do? Are they bad ones?”

  I thought of my father standing in the middle of the road holding the dying body of my mother. There was the blood dripping down from her fingers, pooling on the cold tarmac. There was the nightgown blowing in the breeze. And then, I thought about the phone call from the hospital and the long talk I’d had with both doctors and police officers, informing me that my father had killed my mother and then himself. Here I was in the hospital, sitting on a chair watching a girl to make sure she didn’t hurt herself, but maybe Isabel wasn’t the only one who needed surveillance.

  “Yes, they’re bad dreams.”

  “I have nightmares too,” she replied. “But I like the dreams where I become a bird and I fly away from the hospital. Sometimes I’m flying alongside Pepsi. Sometimes I’m on my own. Other times I walk out of here with Owen because I’m finally free. All the nurses line the corridors clapping as I’m released. You give me a big hug.”

  “And the nightmares?” I asked.

  “I don’t want to talk about those.”

  As much as I wanted to, I didn’t press. A niggling part of me wondered whether Isabel’s nightmares could unlock some secret that would resolve the murder of Maisie. But it wouldn’t. That was wishful thinking, not based on reality.

  “I’ve been sleepwalking,” I said. The words were out of my mouth before I even thought.

  “You have?” Isabel’s eyes widened. There was a slight pink flush to her cheeks, which was good to see after her pale appearance when I’d first arrived.

  “Yes. It started when
I moved here.”

  “Why?” she asked. When I hesitated, she added, “You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want. I know I’m nothing but a patient. You don’t have to tell me your life story.”

  “It’s okay. Perhaps I need to talk about it,” I said. “Maybe you deserve to know that even people outside Crowmont have a difficult time.”

  “It would help,” she said. “Sometimes all I can think about is how lucky everyone else is. It’s like my mind is stuck on a loop and I can’t turn it off, and all I imagine is people eating ice cream in the sunshine, laughing and joking and holding hands with each other. But it’s not always like that, is it?”

  “No,” I agreed. “It isn’t. It never has been for me. My dad had an accident at work when I was six, and it meant he was unemployed for a while. He started drinking to fill the gaps in his days, and he never stopped, even after he found a new job. The drinking made him violent, but for a long time he managed to keep it under control, at least outside the house. I moved out as soon as I was sixteen and went to live with some boyfriend who smoked weed and wrote poetry. He was a university student until he dropped out in the second year. I left my brother at home and I’ll never forgive myself for that.

  “I got a job, I saved up, went to college and took my A-levels through evening classes, and then I trained to be a nurse. Whitmore was the first place to give me a job, and that’s how I became a psychiatric nurse.” I picked at the sleeve of my blouse before continuing. “But no one ever becomes a nurse to be rich. After a bad break-up with a different boyfriend, I moved back in with my parents. I didn’t want to, but Mum insisted that my father was getting better. He wasn’t. Now, when I look back at everything that happened, I think she wanted me there because she hoped I’d help. At least I could protect Tom at last.

  “I took my brother, Tom, out for the day to get away from our father. Mum was supposed to come with us, but she didn’t feel well. He’d hit her hard in the ribs the day before. One was fractured, though I didn’t know that at the time. Mum never complained. I wish she had.

  “Tom was sixteen and should’ve been hanging out with his friends rather than his uncool older sister, but Tom didn’t have that many friends, so he didn’t mind going to the zoo together. We spent most of the day watching the monkeys in the enclosure, and we ate chips with gravy at the café.” I exhaled deeply through my nose. “I dropped Tom off at home because I needed to go to my ex’s place to pick up some belongings. If I could change that moment I would.”

  “What happened?” Isabel’s voice was gentle, encouraging.

  “Tom found my parents dead in the upstairs bedroom. My father had slashed Mum’s throat before stabbing himself in the neck. The arterial spray had soaked the curtains in blood.” I allowed myself to look up from my blouse sleeve so I could watch Isabel’s reaction. Her eyes were wide and her mouth was twisted in horror.

  “I don’t know what to say,” she replied. Slowly, she stood up from the bed, walked across the room and took my hand, squeezing it gently. Her hands were warm and soft. Her grip was gentle.

  Tentatively, I patted her hand before easing it away. “It’s okay. It was a difficult time for us both, but we got through it.”

  “Not unscathed,” Isabel said as she settled back onto the bed. “No one walks this earth without scars; your nightmares and sleepwalking, for instance.”

  “Yes, they started after we moved to Hutton. I’d wake up and find myself at the kitchen table, often collapsed in front of the laptop. The other morning I woke up in an abandoned farmhouse on the moors near the cottage I live in.” I laughed. “I had to run home, shower, and come straight to work.”

  Isabel settled herself down on the bed, lifting her knees into a more comfortable position. “You poor thing, Leah.” She placed her hands under her head and closed her eyes. “In the morning, do you think you could help me put my pictures back on the wall?”

  I couldn’t help but smile. “Of course I can.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  There was no reply to the email I’d sent to the police, but I did have several messages from James Gorden asking me if I had any further information about Isabel and her family. I chose not to tell him about my adventure to the Fieldings’ house. He hadn’t updated the crime blog for a while—perhaps he was waiting for me to get in touch—but I didn’t want to talk to him. I wanted to forget all about David Fielding’s hands across my throat. I even wanted to forget about Isabel’s hand on mine as she comforted me about my parents’ deaths. Even now, after swearing to stop obsessing about the murder of Maisie Earnshaw, I was allowing myself to get too close to Isabel.

  It was the second night of Isabel’s suicide watch. With the change in my shifts, I’d slept through most of the day, missing Tom as he went to school, and Seb as he left milk on our doorstep. The cat didn’t bother to attack me as I walked out of the cottage and made my way to the Punto. Maybe the little shit was becoming domesticated. Even though I’d actually slept well for once, I felt on edge. The night before, when I’d spilled my guts to Isabel, I’d thought for a moment that telling someone what I’d been through was going to help me, but there was still a niggling itch inside me that said otherwise. Since my father had killed my mother, grief had worked its way over my body like a cheese grater to my skin. I ate, I slept, I breathed, I drove to work, I talked to others, and I maintained a job, but it was all hanging by a thread. If I was honest with myself, I’d have to admit that I’d been hanging on by a thread since they died.

  Tom was at an afterschool study group, but I’d arranged for Seb to collect him later. Not in his tractor this time. As far as I knew, the bullying had calmed down since Tom had Seb looking out for him. It was a small village and many of the parents of the kids at school knew the Braithwaites by reputation. Rumours spread quickly in a small village; the gossip machine had most likely already noted that Tom had the Braithwaites on his side, and I was sure that not even spotty teenage boys were stupid enough to cross a family primarily made up of strapping farmers.

  I was early for my shift, so I decided to smoke a cigarette before starting. To my surprise, Alfie showed up at my regular smoking spot. He nodded and smiled.

  “Not seen you for a while.”

  “I took a bit of time off to sort out my car,” I replied. “Got any more stories for me?”

  “Let’s see.” He leaned against the wall of Crowmont Hospital, his ashen-brown hair picking up brick dust. “Yeah, there was another famous patient at Crowmont. I think it was the late fifties. She was from London, this girl. Her name was Laura something. Laura Simpson. She wasn’t much of a murderer, in fact she killed only one man: her father.”

  My skin turned cold. “What happened?”

  “The father was an abusive piece of shit. He kept her locked up in the cellar for long periods of time, beat his wife, drank. One day, Laura snapped and killed him. She stabbed him seventy-five times, all over his torso. When the police arrested her she was having hallucinations, saying ants were all over her body. She’d dug little holes into her arms with the same knife.”

  “These stories you tell me,” I said, shaking my head. “I need to stop listening to them.”

  “The real world is disturbing,” Alfie replied.

  “Do you think Laura deserved to be punished for killing her abusive father?” I asked.

  He took a drag and stared up at the sky above the metal frames of the gates around Crowmont. “I’m not the law, am I?” He hesitated. “But I wouldn’t punish her. There was a case once, another one at Crowmont. Graham Edwards was found guilty of killing Susan Brown. This was before fingerprints and forensics. Edwards was brought here, when Crowmont was still an asylum, because he had an IQ of fifty-one and wouldn’t survive in prison. He died here fifteen years later. Thirty years after that, forensics reassessed the evidence and realised that it was Susan Brown’s husband who raped and killed her, not Graham Edwards. He died in this place and he didn’t do anything wrong.” He shrugged his s
houlders. “Not very fair, is it?”

  “No,” I agreed.

  He turned and looked me directly in the eye. “But what can you do?” As he flicked his cigarette onto the ground, a magpie flew in front of us and landed on the lawn to the left of the carpark. Was it Pepsi? I wasn’t sure.

  “Good morning, Mr. Magpie,” said Alfie as he turned and walked away.

  *

  Isabel was at her desk this time. She was drawing again, which I took to be a good sign.

  “How are you feeling today?” I asked, pulling up a chair and placing it by the open door of her room. It was late evening and outside I knew the sun was setting—not that you could tell while inside the hospital. Such institutions always blocked out the outside world, merely leaving you a glimpse. Hospitals reminded me of schools, where you could watch thunderstorms from the window, clustered with your class, bonded together as one for an afternoon. It felt like the storm would never touch you if you were in class with the teacher. Perhaps it was because in school, or hospital, or prison, you hand over the control of your life to someone better: a teacher, a doctor, a guard, a boss.

  “Like I slept for a week,” she said, smiling. “What about you? Any sleepwalking?”

  “None.”

  “Nightmares?”

  “None.”

  Her smile widened. “You’re healing, Leah.”

  “I hope you are too.”

  “It’s too late for me,” she said sadly. She turned back to her desk, pencil in hand.

  “What are you drawing today?” I asked.

  “Pepsi,” she replied. “I haven’t seen him for a few days and I miss him.”

  “I think I saw him outside,” I said.

  “While you were having a cigarette break?” She lifted her gaze from the paper and flashed me half a smile. “I can smell it.”