Beauty Sleep

by Kathryn Evans

  I frowned at him, trying to figure out what he was saying. “Cryotherapy?”

  “Strictly speaking, cryogenic therapy. You were placed in a cooled gas suspension chamber until a remedy could be found for your illness. You were dying, Laura. To give science time to find a cure, you were frozen.”

  “What? That’s not a thing, that’s…”

  “It is a thing. You were—”

  My stomach turned over. I held up a hand. “I remember.”

  I am lying in bed, so weak, crushingly tired. Someone is trying to explain…it’s cancer. There is no hope left except this, to go to sleep for a while, to buy some time. Two people are crying – who…?

  With an electric jolt, I remembered: Mum and Ima. My heart squeezed as I pictured them. Mum, tall and elegant with a mass of black curly hair; Ima, short and broad and solid. My two mums. My shelter, my warmth, my safety.

  Love and loss swamped me.

  “Benjie…Mum and Ima – why don’t they come? Don’t they know I’m awake?”

  A look passed between Vera and Benjie before Benjie spoke. “A lot of time has passed since you were frozen, Laura.”

  My heart galloped. “What do you mean? How much? Benjie, how much time?”

  “A few…years.”

  “Years?” I gasped. “Years? How many?”

  No one answered. I said it again, forcing each word out. “How…many…years?”

  Finally Vera replied. “Just over forty.”

  I was winded by it.

  “Forty? Forty years?”

  “I know it’s a shock,” Benjie said.

  It was impossible. Completely impossible. I tried to process what they were telling me, but my brain couldn’t cope.

  “How…what…how…?” Then my head snapped up. “Wait, is it gone, the cancer?”

  Benjie smiled. “We began treatment as soon as you were revived. You slept through most of it, but you responded well. You’ll need a lot of monitoring, but we’re confident you are on the road to a full recovery.”

  I wrapped my arms around myself, as if I was checking I was whole. “So what…when…what year is it?”

  Benjie paused, then said, “2028.”

  It was impossible. It couldn’t be 2028. That sounded so far in the future – it was science fiction.

  What was the year I went to sleep then? I wracked my brain, frustrated again by my lack of memory. Then I remembered sticking something into a scrapbook – a picture of Prince Andrew and Fergie getting engaged – and writing the date in bubble letters. It was March. March, 1986.

  I shook my head.

  How could I remember that and so little else?

  Forty years?

  Benjie held my arm. “I’m so sorry. We weren’t sure… We didn’t want…”

  I pulled my knees up to my chest and curled into a ball, turning my head away from them. I closed my eyes. I wanted to shut him out.

  I wanted to shut everything out.

  They didn’t leave. I could hear them whispering. Still I kept my eyes closed.

  Forty years.

  A lifetime.

  No.

  No, it wasn’t. It was a long time but it wasn’t a lifetime.

  How old would Mum and Ima have been in 1986? I searched my patchy memory. Early forties? Maybe? A spark of hope ignited.

  I opened my eyes. “They could still be alive, Mum and Ima. Do they know? Can’t you find them? Tell them I’m awake?”

  Benjie bit his lip.

  “I know they’ll be old, it doesn’t matter, Benjie. I just want to see them. I need to see them. I can cope, I swear.”

  He wouldn’t look at me. Cold crept over my skin.

  “Where are they, Benjie? I’m not asking for a memory. You can’t influence my brain by telling me something I never knew.”

  His hand tightened on my arm as he said, “I know. It’s just going to be very hard for you to hear. I’m so sorry, Laura, the last known data imprint of your parents was a hire car they’d picked up in France.”

  “Data imprint?”

  “A sort of recording, of where they were. It showed that the car was in a fatal collision just south of Calais.”

  It was like a sledgehammer to my chest. I couldn’t breathe. Somewhere deep inside me, I started shivering. I was dimly aware of Benjie trying to hug me. I clung to him, drowning. It wasn’t fair. I’d worked so hard to remember. I’d only just got them back and they’d been snatched away.

  The hand I’d held, the arm I’d twirled under when we’d seen the swans – it was Ima’s.

  Going out for a walk, pulling on yellow wellies to leave the house, bursting with excitement because it was nearly Christmas. Mum needing a nap, her tummy round and fat…

  Oh God.

  Oh God, oh God…

  Alfie.

  The little boy.

  My brother. My baby brother.

  Panic bloomed in me, flowering into shuddering shock.

  “Alfie! Where is he? Benjie, my brother, he has to be here. Alfie has to be here. He was with me, he was sick too, he was put to sleep before me!”

  Benjie held on to me, but I struggled against him, as much as my weak limbs would allow.

  “Where is he? We were together!”

  I had to find him. I tried to grab for the walking frame. I was gabbling, I knew it, but every inch of me was screaming for my brother.

  “Laura, please…”

  Tears cascaded down my face. I was making a noise like some kind of injured animal, but I didn’t know how to stop.

  Benjie whispered something to Vera. She said, “Not now, it’s too much.”

  And I knew. I knew.

  I looked at them, and their grim faces told me everything.

  “He’s dead too, isn’t he?”

  My world collapsed.

  I shut down.

  Utterly broken.

  I was full of beans. Not literally. Literally I was full of water and dry bread, but that was a whole lot better than nothing, which was quite often what I had for breakfast. The sun was shining and Scrag was trotting along next to me, weeing on anything that stayed still long enough. Bert used to call them p-mails. Little messages for his doggy pals. It made me smile, remembering that. I’d always say, “Nah, he’s a modern dog. They’re Status Pupdates.”

  I missed Bert. Since he’d gone, I’d been a bit braver about going out. I’d had to be really. It was impossible to get food otherwise. Bert had always done the food runs, leaving me strict instructions not to go anywhere until he came back. Food hunting had to be done in the day cos shops locked everything up at night, including the bins. I’d been nervous about it at first, but it was all right. I was careful, and we did okay, me and Scrag.

  We headed for a little supermarket by the seafront. On a sunny day, it was always full of people buying stuff they’d forgotten to pack for their jolly day at the beach. More people meant less chance of me getting caught borrowing stuff. It had been a few weeks since I’d been in there, so I reckoned it was safe to give it another go.

  When we got there, I said to Scrag, “Right-o, little feller, you stay here. I’ll be two ticks.” I smiled at myself. Sometimes I sounded more like Bert than Bert. I liked how I could still hear him in my own voice – it made him feel closer.

  I went inside. It wasn’t busy. Damn.

  “Oi, you.”

  I looked up, knowing full well that was the tone of voice reserved for scumbags and maggots. Me, in other words.

  A huge hairy shop worker called over, “I’m watching you.”

  “I’m getting some food for my dog.”

  If you’re a bit scruffy, people automatically think you’re a thief. I found the dog food and picked up the cheapest can before heading back to the door, where Hairy Face was stacking some floppy lettuces.

  “Just getting a basket, if that’s okay with you?” I said.

  He grunted and when he turned back to his rabbit food, I slipped an apple in my pocket. At the cheese fridge I tucked
a tiny block of Cheddar up my sleeve. I didn’t say I wasn’t a thief. I said people shouldn’t assume I was one just because I was a bit scruffy. Anyway, I planned to pay them back when I had money. I was good at making stuff. Like an inventor. One day that would pay. One day.

  I grabbed a pint of milk, put it in the basket and headed for the checkout.

  “Can I have a bag?” I said.

  “They’re fifty pence.”

  “Oh.” I counted out the coins I had, enough for the milk and Scrag’s tin of food, with twenty pence over…

  I said, “Will you take twenty?”

  “It’s fifty pence, and if you’re paying with cash it’s ten per cent extra. Come on, there are people waiting.”

  I looked behind me. A queue had grown. That was perfect. If I spent enough time searching through my pockets and asking questions…

  “Ten per cent extra? That a new poor tax, is it?”

  “I don’t make the rules, mate. It costs them more to bank it or something.”

  “Well, how much is another ten per cent?”

  “Didn’t you go to school?”

  Someone huffed behind me. Excellent. Just a few more seconds…and…

  “Oh here, take it.”

  Bingo. I took the bag, gave him the coins and left him muttering to himself as I stepped outside.

  Sometimes small victories meant the world.

  I made a fuss of Scrag for a minute and then we sneaked round the back of the store, me mentally crossing my fingers that the bin would be open. Yes! I glanced quickly behind me, in case I was being watched – believe it or not, people don’t like you taking stuff from bins. Honestly, I really don’t get that – I’m doing them a favour. They have to pay to get rid of the waste, so really, taking stuff from the bin probably paid for the apple and the cheese.

  The bin was a treasure trove – yogurt, doughnuts, more cheese, even a packet of ham that was only a day out of date. I shoved what I could in the carrier bag seconds before the back door of the shop opened and out came Hairy Face.

  “Oi! You! I knew it!”

  “Thanks,” I called, legging it. I knew he wouldn’t chase me. Far too much effort for no good reason. I’d just stay away for a few weeks, then there’d be someone new behind the till and I might get lucky again.

  I let the heavy bag swing beside me, enjoying its satisfying weight. “We’ll have a feast today, Scraggy Boy.”

  I whistled as we walked. I was thinking the day couldn’t be more perfect when I spotted a huge black car coming towards me. My heart flipped over. It wasn’t the first time I’d seen that car and every time I did it gave me the creeps. The last time I saw it, it slowed down like it was checking me out.

  I was relieved when it drove past me, but it came back. This time, it slowed to a crawl beside me and the driver’s door slid open. The guy swivelled in his seat so he could properly intimidate me. Definitely the same ugly brute in a suit I’d seen a few days ago. His car alarm went mental: “Driver’s side door is open. Please close the door.”

  “Hello again, boy.”

  I wanted to run. I tried to get out of his reach, but the pavement was too narrow. My heart was starting to hurt, it was thudding so hard.

  “Aren’t you going to say hello, then? That’s not very polite, is it? I’m pretty sure you were brought up better than that.”

  I flicked a panicked glance towards him. What did he mean? Was he talking about Bert?

  His car said: “Please close the door. Driver assist will close the door.”

  The car kept pace with me and the man’s big gorilla arm reached for my carrier bag. I snatched it back as the car door began to slide shut with him inside. He forced it back open and the car said, “Locating safe place to stop.”

  “You’ve got the wrong bloke, mate,” I said, walking quickly away as the car slowed.

  I could hear him behind me, yelling at his car: “Just drive, will you? I decide what’s safe for me, you pile of…parts!”

  “I’m sorry, I do not recognize your instruction. Would you like to return to the main menu?”

  I didn’t hang about to listen. There was an alleyway ahead. I scooped Scrag up and ducked down it.

  I wouldn’t speak to any of them. Actually, that’s not entirely true. I couldn’t speak to any of them. They all tried – Benjie, Vera, Mariya – but it was as if my throat was full of hard dough. I could barely breathe, let alone speak.

  I lost count of the days. I stopped drinking the milkshakes and doing my physio exercises. I gazed out of the window, over the tops of the trees, wishing I could just disintegrate into it all.

  I think I must have collapsed after a while of refusing the C-plan, because one minute I was in my chair watching a cloud drift across the blue sky and the next I was back in bed, and they were reconnecting me to a drip. The cold liquid chilled my veins.

  I let my mind wander, picking up and sorting memories. It was so painful, so exquisitely painful, but I couldn’t stop.

  The day Alfie is born: Mum and Ima so proud – having obviously needed a bit of help conceiving, and it having taken a while. I am eleven and it is the happiest day of my life. Mum lays Alfie on her hospital bed and I put my arms all the way around him like a nest – a sister nest. I notice a little mole above his right eye. I kiss it and whisper, “I’m going to look after you, always, I promise.”

  Tears made a wet pool on my pillow.

  Alfie stealing ham from the fridge for our fluffy black cat, Pickle Cat-Chops. Alfie trying to push me on a swing. Alfie’s first day at playschool. (I’d been more nervous than him or even Mum and Ima. “What if he doesn’t like it?” “What if the other kids pick on him?” He’d been completely fine, but I’d spent the whole day at my school with a feeling of dread in my stomach…)

  Wait.

  School.

  Metal gates – black blazer, yellow-and-blue striped tie, backcombed hair, black eyeliner… Stacey.

  Stacey.

  My best friend.

  Hanging out behind the netball courts at school.

  Stacey, super-cool Stacey, the girl who made me laugh every day. Every hour.

  I had a friend. A best friend.

  Stacey and me, miming in front of a mirror, singing, singing…to what? A band. The Cure, Robert Smith. A tape deck. The first time we hear “The Lovecats” on the radio in Stacey’s kitchen…making cheese-and-jam toasties and bouncing around, easily picking up the lyrics. Stacey bites straight into her toastie, forgetting the volcanic-jam risk. She burns the roof of her mouth so badly she ends up with her face upturned under the kitchen tap swigging cold water, like a human waterfall, for a good five minutes.

  My heart hiccupped. Maybe I wasn’t entirely alone. Maybe I could find some reason to live in this place, this time, where everything else had been taken from me. Maybe I could find Stacey. I could call her. She’d come, I was sure of it. I’d move heaven and earth for her…even if I was… how old would she be? Older than I remember Mum being… But people didn’t change, did they? It didn’t matter how old she was.

  “Laura?”

  I vaguely heard Benjie speaking to me.

  “Laura? Miss Lilly is here. She wants to speak to you. Can you wake up?”

  There was that scent, that warm spicy scent. I opened my eyes and turned towards it.

  A cool hand rested on my arm.

  “I am so desperately sorry for all your losses, Laura. I can only imagine the pain you are going through. If there is anything I can do to help – anything at all – you only have to ask.”

  Her voice was so soft, something about her calmed me. I struggled to sit up, and forced the words out.

  “There is something. Someone. I had a friend.”

  She nodded.

  “My best friend. Her name was Stacey Flowers. Could I call her?”

  Something flickered across Miss Lilly’s face, something like worry – or disappointment. It was so fleeting I couldn’t tell which.

  She nodded. “I know w
ho you mean. Look, Laura, there’s no easy way to say this—”

  I couldn’t bear to hear terrible news again, I just couldn’t, so I interrupted her, shaking my head. “Don’t say it – she’s dead too, isn’t she? I have no one. No one at all.”

  “As long as I am alive, Laura, you will never have no one. I will always be here for you. Always. Do you hear me?”

  She said it with such passion I was stunned.

  “I have looked after you for years. I don’t expect you to understand how much you mean to me – how could you? You were asleep all that time. But I wasn’t. I was working on a reversal process that would revive you successfully. On a cure that would clear your body of the cancer that almost killed you. I was determined we wouldn’t lose you – the loss of your brother was devastating to everyone here. I couldn’t let that happen to you too.”

  Silence hung in the air, but it wasn’t awkward; it was like a warmly scented cocoon I wanted to curl up in. I felt guilty for thinking it, but part of me wished I hadn’t started remembering, that all I knew were the kind people around me. Maybe that was the real reason they’d refused to tell me anything – to protect me. Maybe they’d secretly hoped I’d never remember and they wouldn’t have to tell me all the terrible truths.

  Miss Lilly looked down at her perfectly manicured hands. “Your friend isn’t dead, Laura. I’m afraid she…well, she’s behaved rather badly over the years. Initially, I am sure it was because she was upset by what had happened to you, and of course, she was very young back then. She no longer has that excuse.”

  “What did she do?” I asked, trying to reassemble what I knew of Stacey. She was always wildly defensive of me – having two mums made you a bit of a target, but pretty much no one called me Laura the Lesbo after Stacey had kneed Mark Wright in the nadgers for saying it.

  Miss Lilly studied my face, as if deciding how much to tell me. “There were a few things. She wouldn’t stay away from here for a start. Understandably, she wanted to be near you. But she upset a lot of my clients, people who came here for rest and recuperation from a harrowing world. I tried to help her, but I was afraid of what she might do next.”