by Lia Louis
Then he pulls two white chocolate Magnums from the plastic bag in his hand.
He hands one to me, and the other to Roman with a smile. ‘Eat up. Before they melt.’
‘Thanks, Hubble,’ Roman says. ‘Thank you.’
Chapter Twenty-Five
The Hartland isn’t at all like I imagined – not in the slightest. In my mind’s eye, I’d seen the usual: a concrete tower, beiges and greys, the clinical smell of disinfectant mixed with vats of mince being cooked for lunch, the mousy squeak of the wheels of trolleys, people rocking in corners, distant shouting, nurses in tan tights wielding big syringes. In my mind, I’d seen Roman appearing in amongst it all, in a white coat and an even whiter smile, like Dr Drake Ramoray from Friends. Like those doctors on the posters of private hospitals who advertise on the tube. I didn’t expect this. A house that looks as though it plays regular host to murder mystery weekends or is owned by the sort of bloke who wears pastel colours and checked trousers and gets whipped by his secretary on the weekends.
‘Who knew hospitals could look so … idyllic?’ said Priscilla as we arrived at the top of the sweeping, stony drive. ‘I mean, seriously, if Chris and I pulled up here on a mini break, I would be over the fucking moon. It’s beautiful. And listen.’ Priscilla closes her eyes. ‘Silence. Seriously, if ever my kidneys fail—’
‘It’s a mental health hospital, P.’
‘Well if ever I need an asylum.’
I raise an eyebrow.
‘It was a joke,’ she says, linking her arm through mine. ‘A bad one. Sorry.’
Priscilla and I had come up to Reading on the train. ‘It’s only a ten-minute walk from the station. Plus, Chris needs the car,’ she’d text last night. What she hadn’t realised, though, was that ‘the ten-minute walk’ was at first along a speeding main road with a tiny footpath that wasn’t really a footpath, just a kerb, which she screamed the whole way along as lorries roared by. One had even honked us, probably an attempt to bring to our attention our utter disregard for basic safety, and the sound was so loud, we both screamed and threw our arms around each other as if shielding each other from death.
‘This may not have been the best route,’ shouted Priscilla into the wind and gusts of exhaust fumes, her hand firmly squeezing mine behind her. She didn’t take her eyes off the phone in her other hand, held high up in front of her, the polite Google Maps lady’s calm rasps completely lost in the screeching and rumbling of speeding vehicles. ‘We should have got a taxi.’
‘Oh, should we?’ I shouted back, eyes scrunched against clouds of exhaust and dust. ‘I seem to remember suggesting that. I did, didn’t I? Actually, I vaguely remember suggesting it about seventy-five seconds ago.’
‘Shut up, Lizzie! Keep left!’
‘Yet all you did was mention how we were both going to die of high cholesterol if we didn’t walk more.’
‘For Christ’s sake, keep left, Lizzie! Concentrate!’
‘Which is hilarious really, Priscilla,’ I shouted over the roars of cars and lorries, ‘considering we are practically fucking dancing with death right now.’
‘Forty yards!’
‘Goading it, even. Mugging it off, as you would say. Staring it in the face and cackling loudly.’
‘Just thirty more yards, Lizzie. Thirty’
When we finally got to the safe turning of Beaufort Way, a road with speed bumps, a pub, a library and a secondary school, it was like that end scene in Heathers, where Christian Slater has blown himself and the school up, and amid the chaos and madness, Winona Ryder just floats out, blackened and burnt, but with the sort of face belonging to someone who’s just had a hot stone massage, and calmly lights a celebratory cigarette. There was silence, people carrying babies and shopping bags, a couple sitting outside a café drinking coffee, and there we were, throats hoarse from screaming, our hair windblown, and our shoes covered in mud and exhaust dust. Then Priscilla stopped and lit a cigarette, and when she looked at me, we both broke down in fits of giggles.
‘So,’ Priscilla says now, looking up at The Hartland; grand, with smooth, thick pillars and walls the colour of sand. ‘Should we buzz?’
I take a deep breath. ‘Yeah. I suppose.’
Priscilla smiles gently, long, silky hair dancing in the breeze. ‘It’ll be alright, babe, you know,’ she says. ‘Whatever happens, whatever we find—’
‘Say if he’s really ill or something,’ I blurt. I look to my side at her. ‘Ramesh said he took tablets when he saw him. Several.’
‘You don’t know he’s a patient.’
‘I know that, but what if the tablets are because he’s ill, and he’s sending old letters, volunteering here, volunteering at The Grove to …’ I can’t finish my sentence.
‘To what?’
‘Make amends before it’s … too late, or something’
Priscilla jerks her head as if she’s been slapped. ‘Jesus. Lizzie.’ She presses her lips together. ‘Look,’ she says, ‘you’re bound to be going around and around in circles, trying to piece this all together.’ Priscilla reaches out and touches my arm. ‘But the danger of that is that you can piece it together the complete wrong way. Put two and two together and get … eighteen.’
I nod once, eyes to the gravel, chin to my chest.
‘Chris takes three different tablets, at the moment. He’s not dying. Neither is Katie, and I know she takes that pill once a day for her low blood pressure.’
‘I’m just worried that …’ I exhale a long, tight breath. ‘I’m worried I’m going to find something I wish I hadn’t.’
‘Lizzie,’ says Priscilla, her hand giving my arm a gentle squeeze. ‘We’ve got this. I promise.’ Priscilla straightens and eyes the front door. ‘Buzz.’
I pause, but I know she’s right. I have to. It’s time. I tread up to the top step and push down on the cold, brass intercom button. Moments later, instead of a voice from an intercom, a woman, short and rotund, in an immaculate skirt suit, pulls open the heavy chestnut door, a big brass knob smack bang in the centre. She’s my mum’s age, perhaps a little older, and she has short hair the colour of wheat, that is sort of standing on end.
‘Another half hour until visiting, but if you have your forms, you can come on in and wait,’ she says warmly, and I can tell by her voice – the slight, Irish twang – that it’s the woman from the phone. ‘Unless you have an appointment, that is, then I can take you straight through.’
She takes us both in, her eyes scanning us subtly.
‘Um. N-no,’ I start. ‘I– are you … Jill?’
She nods, gold, ropey hoops in her ears swinging. ‘Yes.’
‘We spoke on the phone. I’m Lizzie James, I—’
‘Yes!’ Jill’s mouth bursts into a wide smile that blushes her cheeks pink. ‘Of course. You’re trying to find your friend. Please. Come in.’
Inside, The Hartland looks more like a hospital. The ceilings are still high with ornate, decorative coving, plums, and leaves, carved into the wood, and the light surrounds are the same. There’s even a chandelier in the reception area, the glass slightly yellow with age, but these little footprints, traces left from when this place was a house for a privileged family, complete with a library and oppressed daughters, is offset by stark injections of present day – a rumbling vending machine, the deep, low song of the reception phone, and makeshift signage of laminated pieces of A4, with bright green clipart arrows printed on them.
‘I won’t be a moment, and then I’ll be with you,’ says Jill, circling the beech counter, and taking a seat behind it. She types something into a computer, then picks up the phone.
Priscilla squeezes her leg into mine. ‘You OK?’
I nod my head.
‘Wonder if she’s calling him,’ she whispers with an excited grin.
I barely manage a smile. My chest is tightening with nerves. The vision of Roman appearing in the entrance beside the reception desk, tall, filling the doorway, prompts a flurry of butterflies; him ducking to
let Jill know he got her message, and yes, Jill, what is it? And her nodding, gesturing to me, sitting here, frozen on this chair, and his face, when he sees me … frozen, too, eyes widening, as it registers on his face. Or him, in a hospital gown, surrounded by nurses, his eyes bruised, his face full of shadows like it was on that hospital bed. ‘Oh god I don’t know about this, Priscilla.’
‘It’s going to be fine.’
‘Seriously, P, I feel like I’m gonna shit myself.’
‘Oh, Lizzie, you won’t—’
‘Seriously, if you mention being on first name terms with my bowels or whatever I will—’
‘Miss James?’
Jill is standing now, and beside her, is a short brunette, with rosy cheeks and an eyebrow ring. She is smiling at me. ‘Miss James, this is Harriet, one of our volunteers. She’s going to try to assist you.’
‘Hiya,’ says Harriet. ‘Do you mind if we step outside?’
‘In theory, I’m not really allowed to say much.’ Harriet pulls an electric cigarette from her jacket pocket. ‘Patient confidentiality, you know.’ She raises her shoulders and her eyebrows at the same time. ‘But Jill told me when you called, that there was a girl asking for Roman, and …’ She sucks down on the electric cigarette and blows out a mist of appley vapour. ‘Sorry, girls, do you mind?’
We both shake our heads, and she laughs. ‘Did that a bit backwards, didn’t I?’ She has a West Country accent and a jolly face, and as much as she seems lovely, I’m having to resist grabbing her shoulders and shaking her, making her stop with the giggling and the small talk, and talk – tell me why we’re out here, on the gravel.
‘You’re Lizzie,’ she says, looking at me, arms at her side, fleece zipped to the neck.
I nod, although it isn’t a question. ‘Yes.’
She smiles, cheeks mottled pink from the cold. ‘Did you get the letter?’
Priscilla immediately turns to look at me. I hear a small gasp in her throat.
‘Yes,’ I say urgently. ‘I did. Roman’s letter, you mean. The letter w-with … the Christmas stamp.’
I stop. Because she’s nodding and grinning at me, teeth, crooked, and two dimples like perfect prod marks in her pink cheeks.
‘I sent it,’ she says.
I look at her blankly.
‘I sent Roman’s letter,’ she says again, the smile on her face beginning to fade. ‘To you. It already had the stamp, everything else, I just stuck it in the postbox. And I don’t know if I should’ve but … well, I did, but now you’re here I’m starting to feel a bit better about it.’
I look at her, opening my mouth to speak but she cuts in.
‘Sorry, I probably sound unhinged,’ she says, with a chuckle. ‘I’m a volunteer here. Have been for many years. Used to work the odd Saturday, after my son passed, but ah, I dunno … gets under your skin, this place, becomes part of you. Now I’m here most days of the week in some capacity.’ Her eyes scan my face. ‘I don’t know how much you know.’
‘Not a lot,’ I say, and she bows her head, lips together, as if considering her words.
‘Roman was a patient.’
It’s not like it wasn’t what I was expecting, but her words are like pins to the heart. It stings in my chest. ‘Well, is I suppose you’d say. With Roman, he comes and goes. Has done for as long as I’ve been here which is what, five years now? So is. Was. I dunno which, until the next time. I always hope,’ she ducks her head as if it’s a secret, ‘and in the nicest way, that I never see him again when we say goodbye. But,’ Harriet doesn’t finish. She just sighs and says, ‘You know.’
Rain begins to patter down, and Harriet holds her hand out, motioning to the curved Perspex smoking shelter on the drive, at the side of the house – it’s the type they have in school yards for bikes and looks totally out of place before such a beautiful building. We walk with her and duck under it. The rain taps on the roof – that satisfying steady, clip-clopping sound of fat rain drops, quickening, and multiplying.
‘You grow very fond of people,’ says Harriet. ‘They become friends. Friends that you want to see better, see fixed, see them off out in the world again, getting on, finding happiness. And Roman was the first one I got to know. A favourite, I suppose, although I know many would say that.’ She laughs to herself, scratching her nose with her thumb. ‘Same age as my son, he was, when I met him, and we just got along. Though, it’s hard not to get along with him, isn’t it?’ She looks up at me, head cocking ever so slightly to one side. ‘You alright there, flower?’
I nod, trying to stop my teeth from chattering with nerves and hot anxiety which are both building up inside my chest like a rising fountain.
Harriet sucks on her electric cigarette and exhales. ‘It’s hard to believe sometimes that someone that cocky, that full of beans, could end up back here, time and time again, but … well, it doesn’t discriminate, does it? It takes who it takes. Long as you’re human and you’ve got a brain, you’re up for grabs.’ A lump sits in my throat. There are so many words in my head; so very many swirling around, like papers in a windstorm and I am reaching for them. But I can’t get hold of one.
‘When you say patient,’ starts Priscilla, her voice hushed and low. ‘I mean, is it—’
‘Drugs?’ I ask. ‘Is it drugs? Is it depression? Is he … sick?’
There is silence for a beat, and Harriet sighs. ‘I’m sorry, girls. I can’t go into details of it – wouldn’t want to. I shouldn’t even be doing this but as soon as I heard Jill on the phone, mentioning Roman, I had to ask. When she told me, I even … well, I did a right dodgy and did 1471 on your number.’ She lifts her shoulders quickly, as if she’s just let slip a secret. ‘Wrote it down and everything. But Jill said she knew you’d come. That she’d in not so many words told you Roman was a patient and I thought, if it’s meant to be, she’ll be here.’ She raises her eyes to the sky and smiles gently. ‘Jill and I are both very fond of him. I told her I was sending the letter, so I think we were both hoping, secretly, deep down—’
‘Does he know you sent it?’ I ask. ‘Did he ask you?’
Wind swirls through the shelter, and Harriet brings her fleece down over her fingers.
‘Roman left the letter in his room when he left in June. He always leaves something – it’s his thing. I once told him my son loved poetry. When he left, he’d left a book of poetry on his bed; poet had the same first name as my boy. I once told him in passing that I loved carrot cake, and …’ She chuckles. ‘You can guess what was on his pillow in a cake box when he left.’
That’s Roman. The Roman I knew. I told him once, that one of my happiest memories was being in a rainy car after flying kites with Hubble and Mimi, and Mimi had given us all a Wispa bar, which we had dipped in plastic flask mugs of tea. After that, Roman often left a Wispa bar in my school bag, whenever things were particularly bad, when my anxiety made me shake and vomit and killed every morsel of my appetite. To make sure I ate, even if it was just chocolate. He never forgot anything. He held onto little things, as if they were huge, defining things. ‘Because they are,’ he’d say, ‘more than where you were born, and who your parents are.’
‘Anyway, we’d talked about you, one day in the garden just before he left. Just over there. Of course, I knew about you before that – he always talked about the centre, you, his mum, and your grandfather—’ She stops herself, slotting the electric cigarette back into her pocket. ‘Anyway, that letter. He said he always carried it around with him, always had, wanting to send it. But the more time had passed, the harder it had been to post.’ She pauses, watches my face. Her eyelashes are so fair, they’re hardly there at all. ‘And that was it really,’ carries on Harriet. ‘Few days later, he left, sessions were up, and off he went, as he always does, into the world somewhere.’ She clears her throat and shoves her hands into her pockets. Chill tingles at my neck, but my cheeks are red hot with nerves. ‘And I found it. The letter. It were on his bed. I took it as a go on, Harri. Send it. So, I did.’
The pieces of the puzzle, like the play pieces on Jumanji, move and slide together, some of the picture coming into focus.
Then it’s quiet between us. Rain continues to pop and spit against the misty Perspex glass, and the sun just manages to push through the purple-grey clouds.
‘How is he?’ I ask. ‘Really? Is he … is he well?’ And I mean it in every sense. How is he? How is the boy who is now a man; the boy who saved my life every day that he showed up to be at my side? What does he look like now? Does he still listen to The Smiths and know every word to every Mary J. Blige song? Is his mouth still ridiculous and huge, and does he still do that smile where he bites his tongue? Does he still say ‘twat’ for every other word and paint his fingernails in weird colours and patterns using markers? And does he still have that way – that way where he makes you feel like everything he says is a cold hard fact. Where he makes you feel like he understands the world more than anyone else on the planet but nobody is ready to listen yet?
‘He’s …’ Harriet grimaces, as if she’s trying to find the right words. ‘Well, he’s Roman. He’s charming, hilarious, offensive, let’s himself get away with nothing. But he’s … well, he’s better than he has been in the past.’ She watches me, searching my face for a reaction, something to go on, but I can’t speak. ‘In this job, you generally see two types of people. People that look at things face on and get better, and people that don’t want to look it in the eye, not really, and they bolt. Run from it.’ She looks to her feet, then back up at us. ‘Roman is the latter. I think he’s spent his whole life running.’
‘From what?’ I ask, my eyes blurring.
She shrugs her shoulders, and sniffs noisily. ‘That’s his story to tell,’ she tells me. ‘All I know is that if he knew I was standing here, with you, with his Lizzie. Well, I think we’d have to peel him off the ground.’
I am staring at her, the woman who has all the answers I’ve been dying to know for what feels like my whole life, hanging on her every word, and I feel like I am about to melt into a heap. I want to cry. I want to laugh, with relief, that he’s alive and that we’re getting closer and closer, the gap between us closing like a bridge being built, slat by slat. I want to see him. I want to wrap my arms around him and hold his face in my hands.