by Kate Simants
‘You’ve got your boys here to visit you, Carrie,’ the nurse calls over. Their mum, still holding the paintbrush, turns her head slowly to where the nurse is pointing, and blinks a few times. Just from that first second, Luke knows what this visit’s going to be like.
He lifts his hand in a slow wave. Rob just shoves his hands in his pockets and waits.
They take her to the day room and sit at a tea-stained laminate table, the kind with the chairs attached. It’s the only room with a view, but there’s always a slight trace of stale piss in the air, with pine over the top like someone’s tried to cover it up. Rob goes to the visitors’ kitchen and makes tea.
Their mum rubs her temples. ‘I’m sorry, Lukey, I’m a bit bleary this evening.’
She says it every time. It’s the medication she’s on. He’s asked the nurses whether she’ll come off it, and they’ve just nodded and shrugged and said, ‘All in good time,’ or, ‘We’ll see.’ The kind of stuff people say when they don’t want to say no.
One of the other patients is sobbing in the corner with a man – her husband? – patting her on the hand and looking around the room like he’s just realised there aren’t any doors. Heart FM drifts in from the nurses’ station where it plays all day long.
His mum stops rubbing her head and looks at him suddenly as if she hadn’t known he was there.
‘Look at you.’ She takes hold of both of his hands and draws them towards her mouth to kiss them. ‘My baby,’ she says.
Turning into a man, he thinks.
‘Turning into a man!’
While I’m just rotting in here.
‘While your daft old mum’s rotting in here.’
He looks away. ‘You’re not rotting.’ She rubs his hands too hard, squashing the bones together. He knows not to take them away. ‘Or old. They’re just making you better.’
‘Except they’re not,’ she says darkly.
It’s been fourteen months and a week since she got sectioned. The night it happened, he was upstairs in his room, had his headphones on so he didn’t hear the door go when she left. The police asked him about it later while they were still out looking for her. He remembers the too-hot room and the too-sweet tea the woman cop brought him while they waited for the social worker. Can you try to remember what time she might have left? Did she seem happy to you today?
Did she say anything that made you feel worried about her, Luke?
Fact was, he worried about her all the time, but that night hadn’t seemed any different than usual. She went out late a lot. Not drinking or anything, not with anyone. Just – he didn’t know. Walking, she said. Sometimes for hours and hours. And yeah, it used to scare him, when she’d come back and her voice would be weird and croaky like she’d been shouting, her eyes and her face all puffy and red. She’d stand there at the door to his room watching him while he pretended to be asleep. A few times, he’d woken up with her next to him under the covers, still wearing her coat and shoes, curled up in a little ball. When that happened, he’d get out and tuck her back in. He kept a sleeping bag jammed down the back of the sofa for nights like that.
But whenever she went out, she’d always come back.
Until the time she didn’t.
They’d found her down near the river, right out near Hanham, sheer bloody luck that someone had seen her. Lying on the ground, in a clearing. Just so happened that some guy on a narrowboat had got a log stuck in his propeller and had to moor up. Apparently, he’d scrambled through the bushes and there she was. Naked, although Luke only found that out later, from a kid at school who’d put it together because his dad was a copper who couldn’t keep his fucking mouth shut. She’d been gone more than twenty-four hours by then, and she was in the cells for another three before the mental health people came and sorted it out. Psychotic incident, they said. Hypothermia on top.
He goes down there sometimes, that spot in the woods where they found her. Just to sit, or lie down like she did, staring up at the trees. He doesn’t know why he does it. The first few times he thought maybe it meant he was going mental, just like her. But then he’d told Rob about it, and Rob had just nodded and said, ‘Yeah. I go there sometimes, too.’
The first place they’d taken her was OK, and they’d reckoned she’d be out within a month. She had her own room, and there was a woman with blue hair whose job it was to talk to Luke about what was happening. But then something happened – money, one of the nurses had said – and the woman with the hair went. They’d moved his mum twice since. This place seemed more like a big waiting room with beds. He could feel the sadness, feel it hardening against his skin.
She sniffs and pulls her hands away. There’s a smile on her face. You could never tell when that was going to happen, that change.
‘Do you know what I miss, Lukey?’
‘No. What?’
Rob comes into the room then with the teas. ‘Milk was running out,’ he says, putting them down. One of them’s normal, one of them’s way too dark and the other one’s got no milk at all. Luke pushes the good one towards his mum, and Rob takes the in-between one.
Ignoring the tea, their mum says, ‘Our garden.’
‘What?’ Rob says, blowing steam.
‘I miss our garden. I bloody loved that garden.’ There’s a weak smile that could go either way. ‘We had a little, what was it called? The thing that the bees liked. In a stone pot.’
Luke dredges his memory of the little patch of green behind the house. How they’d take the sofa cushions outside and put them on the patio slabs, drinking lemonade in the sun. They had their dinner out there sometimes, trailing the extension cord through the kitchen window so they could have the radio too. Fish-finger sandwiches wrapped up in kitchen roll like a picnic.
‘You must remember the plant,’ she says, squeezing up her face. ‘How can I not remember its name?’
Luke meets Rob’s eye for a second, both of them thinking the same thing: how every time there’s something she can’t remember, if they don’t change the subject soon she’ll get on to how the electric therapy thing has scrambled her head.
‘We had that sprinkler,’ he says.
‘Oh!’ she says, and it’s like a light’s gone on. ‘Yeah! And you two running about in it – you’d scream and scream! Remember?’
Rob gives a short laugh. ‘What I remember is Luke hiding and connecting the tap up and turning it on when we weren’t expecting it so we’d get soaked.’
His mum slaps the table. ‘He did! The little shit! And we lost him that time, didn’t we, and he’d put a pallet against the wall and made a den.’
‘I called the police,’ Rob adds, grinning.
But Luke’s not grinning. Because Luke knows what comes next when she’s like this, what always comes next.
And Rob knows, too.
‘And they came!’ she shouts, her eyes bright, unnaturally bright. ‘The police! Oh, it was so funny! We looked everywhere and I was screaming up and down the street and it was just the funniest thing,’ which it wasn’t; it was a lot of things but funny was definitely not one of them, ‘and everyone else came out to see and stare at us!’
Luke tightens his hands around his mug while she pulls everything out of the memory, producing the details like endless handkerchiefs from a magician’s sleeve.
‘And that mean old cow over the road came over shouting about us bringing the neighbourhood down! God, we had a laugh about that, didn’t we?’
Around them, other patients are stirring, moving away or getting anxious at the switch she’s making. She has two settings these days: she’ll either shrink herself down into a tiny little corner of her head and turn her back on you completely, or else she’s like a TV version of herself with the volume and the brightness stuck right up, with no off button.
Luke exchanges a glance with Rob, both of them recognising the peak. A nurse comes in, drawn by the volume. She pauses at the door for half a second like she’s assessing what she sees, and Luke’s mum cloc
ks her. Something passes between them, and the nurse gives a little nod, then leaves the room.
And practice has made perfect, because Luke’s called it, almost to the second. The joy slips back out of his mum’s eyes.
‘We had a laugh,’ she says again, but flat this time. And just like that, she’s a million miles away, somewhere he can’t reach her.
She leans slowly back in her chair. And then she slides down onto her knees. On the floor.
‘I don’t want to live like this.’
Rob gets up and goes over, kneels down. He takes her hand. ‘You’re all right, Mum,’ he says. ‘We’re all going to be all right.’
‘No, we’re not,’ she says. ‘Nothing’s going to change. I’m not any better. And what if I was? What then? Who’s going to give me a job when I tell them I’ve spent the last year and a half in the nuthouse?’
The work she’d got had always been a bit sketchy, bits and pieces of cleaning and nannying, nothing that ever seemed to stick or go anywhere. Not that she hadn’t tried. The attic room she’d made into a kind of studio had been rammed with drawings she’d spent half the night working on: tiny ones on the backs of envelopes, massive huge things on broken pieces of plasterboard she’d pulled from skips when she was out walking.
If I can’t make something beautiful I might as well die, she’d said.
It’s the sort of thing Paige would say, Luke realises. The thought bites into him, lurches instantly down into his stomach. What does that mean, then, if Paige is like his mum? What does that make him? He gives an involuntary shake of his head to dislodge it.
‘You’ll find work, Mum,’ Luke tells her, vaguely, but he still has Paige’s hair, her impossibly smooth skin, slinking around in his mind. He checks the time. He wants to get out of here.
But Rob’s not moving. ‘We are going to be OK. I’m going to sort things out.’ He drops his voice, like it’s a secret, but he won’t look at Luke. ‘We’re not going to have to worry.’
‘Why?’ She drags her hands down her face and sighs, crouching still like she’s making herself smaller. Small enough that the world won’t notice her.
Rob ducks his head to get hold of her eyeline again. ‘We’re going to get someone really good, Mum, and they’re going to make you better.’
Luke coughs hard, staring fiercely at the side of his brother’s face, but Rob won’t look up.
The idea of a smile twitches at the corners of her mouth then drops, forgotten. She looks away and then she mouths something.
‘What’s that, Mum?’ Rob says, going closer.
‘Peony. The shrub. The bees liked it. It was called a peony.’
Just for a second, Rob’s nostrils flare. Then he pulls her hands closer, harder.
‘I mean it. Everything’s going to change.’
Luke storms ahead and doesn’t speak again until they’re on the bus. He sits at the back, Rob in front of him, knees wide apart. Beads of rain track and merge sideways across the black windows. Luke texts Mel because he’d told her he’d be back by seven.
Thnx Luke but I’m not on shift tonite, she replies. I’ll pass it on. C U Thurs.
Rob is frowning at his own phone, messaging someone, but he’s angled it so Luke can’t see who. Luke kicks the back of his seat until he looks round.
‘What?’
‘What was that about?’
Rob shrugs like he’s got no idea what Luke’s referring to.
‘With Mum. You said, everything’s going to change. What did you mean?’
‘Nothing. It’s not a big deal.’
‘You can’t just say stuff like that to her!’
‘She needs hope, Lukey.’ He rings the bell and gets up.
‘Not if it’s bullshit she doesn’t!’ Luke says, following him down the aisle.
‘What if it’s not bullshit?’
The bus lurches to a stop and then they’re on the pavement, facing each other. Rob’s putting his phone away. Luke’s fists are balls of iron in his pockets.
‘She’s going to expect you to make it happen,’ Luke says. He thinks of her there now, sitting on her bed like she does for hours and hours. She’ll be thinking about what Rob meant, how he’s going to make everything all right. And what happens when she realises he was just talking out of his arse?
‘Maybe I’ve got a plan, though. You think of that?’ Rob’s mouth tightens and Luke takes a step back. ‘What about trusting me, huh?’
‘I do trust you,’ Luke says mechanically, because he does. Doesn’t he? It’s what they’ve always done. When you can’t rely on jack shit except one person, you hold on to that person and you don’t let go.
Except now it’s changing. Rob’s changing.
Rob rolls his eyes and lets out a long sigh like he’s had enough of him. He says he’ll ring in the morning. And then he walks away. No hug. No slap on the back. Nothing.
Luke opens his mouth to say something, to pull them back together somehow, but then the worst thing comes into his head and his throat just goes hard and there’s nothing but that thought. Right in this second, standing on the street with the turbulence from the bus lane rushing past him, lifting the back of his coat and making him totter like he’s made of nothing at all, it’s all Luke can think, over and over.
I hate you.
16
Now
Pulling out from the car park under the offices, Wren edges into the traffic and flicks on the radio. It’s almost five, and the office car park is disgorging itself like clockwork.
The lights change, and as she puts her foot down her phone rings.
It’s Yardley.
She snatches it up and answers it without even checking her mirrors.
‘Just a second, one moment,’ she says, cradling it between ear and shoulder. She pulls over into the first side street she comes to, across someone’s driveway, then thanks him for calling her back.
‘It’s – it’s not a problem,’ he says. From his voice she infers he doesn’t want to be overheard. Because of the wife? ‘Look, I’m just returning your call to be decent to you, but I really don’t think I can help you.’
‘OK, look, that’s fine. Mr Yardley—’
‘James.’
‘James. Could we meet? Just us, I mean. And off the record, if you’re worried about that.’
There is a blast of a horn behind her, and she turns to see a Volvo, its driver gesturing angrily for her to move. She makes an apologetic face and holds up a finger, turning her attention back to the call. ‘I just need half an hour. Less, even, if it’s difficult.’
‘No,’ he says, ‘it’s not that. I just don’t have anything to add. There was an investigation. The police tried. I did everything I could.’
‘I know you did.’ Another honk from the Volvo. ‘But no one found her.’
A long pause. ‘They didn’t, no.’
‘Look,’ she says softly. ‘I’m sorry. I know you’ve been seriously affected by what happened. And I’m doing this job because I want to put it to rest, make sure Robert really pays for what he did. And I’m sorry to have to remind you of all of this again—’
‘I can assure you I never forgot it. But I have to ask,’ he says, and Wren winces, knowing what’s coming. ‘This is beyond the remit of your job. Why is it that you’re so interested in Paige?’
‘She was a very vulnerable girl, and she’s gone. Just disappeared.’
Yardley doesn’t respond.
Reluctant to let the silence gain traction, Wren says, ‘I read her case file. People gave up on her. I just think she deserved better.’
‘No,’ he says. ‘No, I don’t think that’s it.’
Wren sighs heavily. In for a penny. ‘OK. Look. We all have our… histories.’
‘Ah. You were in care.’
But he’s already had all he’s going to get. ‘It’s not about me. It’s about Paige.’
‘I understand.’
‘So, will you help? I think that if I can find Luke, he’ll be
able to help.’ It’s as close as she can get to the truth without telling him what Ashworth had really said, his offer of an exchange. ‘I need to find anyone who might know where he is. Not just the people who came forward in the investigation. You knew her – you knew him. So help me. Please.’
She waits, screwing her face up in anticipation. The woman in the Volvo brings herself alongside, rolls the window down and gestures in no uncertain terms for Wren to do the same.
Down the line comes a long sigh. ‘All right,’ he says at last. He names a café on the Christmas Steps, in the middle of town. ‘Has to be early though. Seven o’clock tomorrow. If I’m not there, I’m not there – don’t call, all right? I can’t afford to let Lucilla find out. She’s not strong enough.’
They say goodbye and Wren, shaking with excitement, puts the Corsa back into gear and moves off, the Volvo woman giving her a final character reference via her open window.
She’s only just shifted up to third when her phone buzzes again. It’s just a number this time, not a contact saved into the phone’s memory. She answers the call and taps the hands-free icon.
‘It’s Gary Kitchener,’ the voice says. ‘HR.’
Wren tightens her grip on the wheel. ‘Gary, hi. How’s things with—’
‘You used my login to access confidential information,’ he says. His voice is low, and she knows why. File security has got ludicrously tight in the last few years. Even as a vetted employee, if you want information beyond your clearance, it has been a long time since you could just go and ask someone on the next pay grade up to get it for you.
‘Oh, did I?’ Wren says, as casually as she can.
‘You know you did.’
‘I guess you should have logged out, then. Before you left.’
‘It leaves a digital signature, you know. So I can find out exactly what you did.’
‘What you did, you mean. I hadn’t been logged on to that machine since lunchtime, and the only one using it was you.’