Madame Zero

by Sarah Hall

  Jem walked back down the cut. On the street a bus passed by with Out of Service on the front. It never made sense when buses drove along out of service – they were still going somewhere and could drop people off and be useful. They were doing exactly what they said they weren’t. She walked down the road towards the Saracen’s Head, which smelled of beer and vinegar. A dog was tied up outside – a border collie. Its tongue was long and pink and tipped up at the end like a spoon with spit in. She looked at its mouth for a while until she felt a bit sick, not with a bug, but a sort of strange worried sickness.

  She turned and walked home. She opened the door and went through the front room into the kitchen, where Sav was playing with pots and pans on the floor, and Gran was having a cigarette at the table and reading the newspaper. Clouds of cauliflower steam billowed from the cooker. Hi, love, said Gran. Jem picked up the box of Mumm-Ra’s sandwiches. I’ve got to go and drop these off, she said. Her face felt like it was glowing pink but she’d said it, matter of fact, like it was on a list of things to definitely do. Oh, said Gran, that’s nice, you’ve certainly got a spur in your heel. Do you know the way? Yes, said Jem, get off at Ashton Road. Gran nodded. OK. I’ll keep a plate warm for you.

  Jem waited a moment. Sav held his arms up for a carry, but she ignored him. Her face felt very hot now. Her armpits felt tingly. She waited for it to all fall through, for there to be a telling off, though Gran never told her off. Her heart was clapping, quite fast, as if it was applauding the brave performance. Mostly you didn’t feel your heart, only after sprinting or when you were afraid. Gran turned the page of the newspaper. Bye then, Jem said. Bye, love, said Gran.

  Sav wailed as she walked away. Jem got to the front door and opened it. She went outside. She walked down the street, past Deborah’s house, past the dog and the pub. When you were sensible, you were trusted to do things. You could look after your little brother alone in the house. You were allowed to find the hospital on the bus, even though you didn’t know exactly where you were going. She had 50p in her pocket. She didn’t have her coat. Gran hadn’t even made her take her coat.

  A bus was coming in the right direction. She half ran to the stop. The sandwiches bumped about in the margarine tub. She might have to stick them back together again for Mumm-Ra. She waved, and the bus stopped. Jem got on. The driver had smeary jam-jar glasses and didn’t seem to care who she was. I have to get off at the hospital, she told him, Ashton Road. He nodded. She waited for him to say how much the fare was, but all he said was, Sit down then, Cuddles. The bus moved and jerked her forward as she walked down the aisle. There were no passengers except for a couple of women in brown cashier smocks and a man in a hat who was asleep against the window. Jem sat near the front, though the back seat was empty and she never got to sit on the back seat going to school, like Deborah did. She sat with the sandwich box balanced carefully on her knees. She could see a purple wrapper in one corner through the plastic. A biscuit. A fruit Club, probably. They were Mumm-Ra’s favourite.

  It took ten minutes to get to the hospital. She kept looking at her watch, the big hand ticking round. The town was dark silver in the rain, like pencil lead. The bus went past the prison and the castle, up the oneway system. People were already going into the pubs. A few umbrellas bobbed along. The streetlights were on.

  She’d been to the hospital once before, not to visit Mumm-Ra, Mumm-Ra wasn’t working there then, but to have a bean-shaped growth removed from her chest. She’d lain on a table covered with white paper and they’d given her a stinging injection to numb the patch and she hadn’t felt them cut. She’d looked at the ceiling the whole time and a nurse had held her hand. She’d had eight proper stitches afterwards, with thin black string because they couldn’t use paper ones. She’d pulled the stitches out early because they were itchy and the hole had gaped open. There was a silky white scar on her chest now, a bit like a spider’s sac, which her T-shirt covered. They’d done tests on the bean but it was harmless.

  Jem got off the bus at Ashton Road. The driver didn’t tell her where it was but she could see the hospital looming. She walked across the crossing. Ambulances were parked in a bay outside and as she walked towards the main doors one of them turned on its siren and whirling light and blared off. In front of the main doors, under the dripping porch, was a huge pregnant woman and an old man in a wheelchair with a metal stand next to him. A clear bag hung from the stand with a tube snaking down. It was rude to stare but Jem couldn’t help it. The man didn’t even look like a person. He was slumped over in the wheelchair. His bare shins poked out under his gown and his feet were purple and lumpy, like bruised vegetables. The gown was the same as the one Jem had worn, white with little blue diamonds.

  Some patients died here, some died on the way here, and some were dead when they arrived. It didn’t matter to Mumm-Ra, though maybe the ones who were dead or died coming were harder. They would have bad injuries, like motorbike smashes, and the baby attacked by the dog. They might be in pieces. Decapitated. Jem tried to stop looking at the man in the wheelchair. He would be going to the mortuary soon. The rain was very light again now; she could just about feel it on her nose, as if the rain was only thinking about what it was supposed to do. Most people thought working with dead people was a man’s job, according to Gran. When the job had been advertised Mumm-Ra had interviewed and got it. She had the right disposition, Gran said. She’s always been like that, your mother.

  The Royal Infirmary was old, several storeys high, with an even taller tower, but also new bits built on the sides. Hospitals had to keep getting bigger, because more and more people needed them and there were new cancers all the time. It was hard to picture Mumm-Ra anywhere, touching cold hands and faces, talking to relatives with orange baby food staining her back. She would probably have new scrubs on. Jem could picture her at home, on the sofa, tired, her head leaning on her hand, eyes closed, or staring at something on the other side of the room that wasn’t really there. Mumm-Ra’s staring always made Jem nervous.

  The signpost of departments outside the main doors didn’t list the mortuary. Jem could ask at reception. She could even leave the sandwiches at reception and someone might take them to the mortuary and Jem could go home. Probably they wouldn’t even let her go to the mortuary, you might have to be eighteen, like for pubs and some fairground rides. She looked at her watch again. If a bus came in a few minutes, she could be back home by six o’clock, to Gran’s cauliflower cheese, to Sav throwing water out of the bath and screaming when his hair was shampooed, to watching telly until later than normal because it was Saturday.

  The woman on reception didn’t seem concerned when Jem asked where the mortuary was. She pointed to a door on the other side of the building, described the way through the hospital, and then let Jem go, just like Gran had. Follow the blue line, the receptionist said, until you get to pathology, then turn right. Pathology sounded like a joke that actually was funny, though Jem felt too wobbly to laugh. She walked down a corridor, past several wards. A dinner trolley was going round. There were lots of old lopsided ladies. There was lots of coughing. She remembered the hospital smell from when she’d had the bean off; it wasn’t as bad as everyone said. It was sort of aniseedy. A couple of doctors walked past and looked at her. One smiled. He had on a paper hat and a kind of paper apron, like a man who worked at a meat counter. Maybe he thought she was a patient. Maybe he knew Mumm-Ra, Jem looked more like Mumm-Ra than Sav did. People said they had the same eyes, hazel, which wasn’t brown, and wasn’t green, but was both mixed up. Gran said quite often that Mumm-Ra should marry a doctor. Not my type, Mumm-Ra always said. Exactly, Caroline, exactly my point.

  Jem followed the blue line. She didn’t get lost. The Royal Infirmary wasn’t very big really. She went down some steps, then up some steps, out a back door and past a few prefab huts until she got to a small plain building with a sign on the door. Mortuary. Jem stood outside. The doors opened and a woman came out and she also smiled at Jem as she walke
d past. The woman didn’t look like she’d been crying. Maybe she was a secretary. The door swung closed. Mortuary. The building looked like a building where nothing important happened, like one of the humanities huts at school. She’d expected something frightening, tall, sooty, with ivy or broken windows, like a haunted house. This wasn’t that.

  Something caught her eye and she looked to the side. Next to the mortuary was a small car park with yellow lines painted on the concrete, which meant cars couldn’t park there. Parked on the yellow lines was a long black car, with an oblong window: a hearse. It was right there. She could see in. You were supposed to see in. On the back shelf was a coffin. It was made of dark, very shiny wood. Someone had polished and polished the wood. There were brass screws and handles and there was a smooth brass plaque with nothing engraved on it. No name. No birthday. Nothing. There were no flowers around it, like when hearses went to the church and made other cars drive slowly.

  Another ambulance siren wailed in the distance. Jem stood outside the mortuary.

  There was a rush around her, a feeling like jumping off a wall, like before throwing up. She wanted to sit down. She wanted to run back along the blue line, all the way to the bus stop, all the way home. It wasn’t raining at all now. The rain had stopped. It was almost evening, almost six o’clock, the end of the day. But Mumm-Ra was working. She was inside the building, with the bodies of people who didn’t exist anymore. She might be holding the little dead baby, carefully, combing its hair, buckling a tiny shoe strap, doing some makeup to blush its cheeks, or she might be holding the hand of a relative, the man who owned the dog, the man’s girlfriend who people had said didn’t care. Her mother would never die, because she couldn’t, though all of this, all this, would be taking its toll.

  Jem stood outside the door and held the box of sandwiches. She wanted Mumm-Ra to see her through the window and come out and put a hand on Jem’s head, even if she was cross, and Jem couldn’t really tell her why she had come here. Not the sandwiches. She wasn’t even sure what the sandwiches were. Cheese? Fish paste? Egg? She didn’t know. She lifted the lid and smelled inside the box. Egg.

  · One in Four ·

  My darling Christine,

  I can’t call you that, I know, but I still love you and the children very much. I’m sorry you’re reading this, sorry I wasn’t stronger. I know I let you all down. You were never supposed to be involved, but how could you not be involved. It’s all such a mess. Don’t let Nicky and Dominic believe everything negative. I can’t bear the thought of them hating me. I can still see Dominic’s face the last time I tried to talk to him. I won’t try again. I wake up at night terrified that they’ve caught it. Or that you have. We’re in the second wave now, I’m sure of it. Stay safe. It’ll be you at risk, Chrissy, your immune system is stronger, a liability – you know that already, you’ve heard me say it a million times. If you feel sick, with anything, don’t go to the doctor, don’t go anywhere public and crowded. I wish I could make you promise me. And don’t ask for the antiviral. People are queuing up for it but it doesn’t work, it’ll just make you think it’s worked. I never told you but that was my idea, my brand name – Vedi-flu. After Vediovis, the god of healing. What it does to the ego, creating such a thing. We all become gods. You found it dull, my work, didn’t you? All that boring theory. ‘Cytokine storm sounds about as interesting as it gets,’ you once said. Look at the storm now. Tents outside the hospitals, chaos, people drowning in their own fluid. It looks so different outside the lab. I used to think the virus was beautiful under the microscope. A beautiful planet, with so many reaching arms. It’s such a clever little thing, Chrissy, it uses us to kill us. We’re the perfect weapon.

  I want the kids to know – I didn’t bury the trials. I didn’t lie. Maybe I didn’t shout loud enough about ineffectiveness, but I followed protocol, I raised it at boardroom – you must remember me doing that? I said, slow down, it isn’t ready, when Cochrane get the full data the company’s reputation will be damaged. They didn’t listen. Listening isn’t profitable. No one was ever going to stop it, certainly not me. They’re a government agency, Chrissy, at least the CIC is funded by Eli-Meyer. I’ve seen emails. My computer’s gone now, so I can’t prove it. And Sharon Blake doesn’t answer my calls, she’s on a book tour is what they told me. The newspapers aren’t interested anymore. Yesterday’s whistleblower, what a fucking joke. They just want the epidemiologists, the A & E stories, the end-of-the-world stuff. At least someone’s getting rich as well as Meyer. That picture of the little boy asleep on a bench at Paddington, everyone walking past him – except he isn’t asleep, is he. I keep seeing it everywhere, can’t get away from it. They did that to him. I know, I know, this is more of the same, and you’ve heard enough to last you a lifetime. I just need you to understand.

  Anyway, bottom line. It is my fault. I helped make a drug that makes people feel well enough to go out and infect others. They’re saying that one in four will die – a quarter of the population. A hundred years after Spanish flu and we’re no safer. Maybe I should just wait, I might get a lucky draw, might end up in the morgue myself. But I’ve had enough, Chrissy, they’re rinsing me. The phone calls don’t stop. I moved four times last month but they always find me. They’re clever bastards, they know how to open you up, how to climb into your brain. Always at night, when everything seems so hopeless. Or it’s just after the school run, when it could be you phoning, because something’s happened. And the other things. They moved my car last week. Just to the other side of the road, but they moved it. And the deliveries – pornography mostly, but then letters from the bank, accounts I don’t even have, all overdrawn, and, you won’t believe this, Mum’s funeral bill! £2,863.80 for a wool coffin, roses and freesias – she loves freesias, how did they know? How could they have asked her that when she can’t even remember her own name? The undertaker doesn’t exist – I phoned them. I got sent a new number plate last week – H6N1. The police don’t care. Everyone thinks I’m mad. Some kind of ranting madman. They won’t even let me on the library computers anymore because they say I make too much fuss, I disturb people. I know they sent you that letter and the photos and I’m sorry. I should have told you myself, but I was afraid you’d leave. And now you have left. Maybe I do deserve it all. I wish it would stop. Why don’t they stop now – I’m finished, everything’s finished.

  I just keep thinking of our old garden in Stokenchurch. We always had such good light in the trees in the evenings, didn’t we? And that swing the kids loved. God, I miss it. I’m not going there – I wouldn’t do that to you, even though I know you’ve left. The woods at Merryhill. It’s quiet, not many people, I don’t know another way. I’ve been afraid for months and months, I can’t really remember anything else, but I’m not afraid now. Funny how you begin to feel better once you know what to do, once you get out from under it. I’ve been so tired, Chrissy, and sick in my heart. You don’t realize how small and weak you are until you’re shown how big everything else is. The truth is, we’re all so desperate to carry on, but we’re nothing really, just specs on the glass. I’ve spent my whole life trying to find a cure, and here it is, all of a sudden.

  J.

  · Evie ·

  She arrived home after work, sat at the kitchen table and took a large chocolate bar out of her bag. She said nothing, not even hello. She split the foil, broke it apart, and proceeded to eat the entire thing, square after square; a look of almost sexual concentration on her face.

  Had a bad day? he asked.

  She smiled faintly.

  Not like you to go for the junk. Did you miss lunch?

  She shook her head. Her jaw moved, slow and bovine, working the substance against her palate. She was looking but not seeing him. There was something endogenous about the gaze, something private, as if his presence in the room was irrelevant. She ate the entire bar, methodically, piece after piece, while he put the kettle on and began dinner. He heated a pre-made lasagna in the oven, opened a bag of sal
ad and dumped it into a bowl. She ate only a little of the meal.

  I guess the snack ruined your appetite.

  Her eyes flickered up from the plate.

  Yes. I don’t know why I had the whole thing. Only, I’d been thinking about eating some for days. Then I had to.

  She didn’t apologize for the wasted food. Usually she would; she was the type who apologized over any minor or innocuous discourtesy. He wondered if she was angry with him, whether a passive campaign was playing out, though he could think of nothing he’d done wrong.

  Over the next week she began to eat chocolate regularly. She would snap off portions while watching television or between chores. In her car smeary wrappers were strewn on the floor. She’d never had a sweet tooth before, had never ordered dessert in restaurants. She’d always kept her figure because of it. Now, she seemed addicted. And not just to chocolate, but anything sugary: pastries, puddings, fizzy drinks. She would leave her steak or pasta half finished, leave the table, and come back with something glazed that she’d evidently bought in a bakery between her office and the house.

  God, I just can’t seem to stop with this stuff, she said one night.

  It was true. She went with a predatory look to the cupboards. She wasn’t thinking, just acting on impulse. She was drinking more too. Wine with dinner every night, a few extra glasses at the weekend; becoming gently hedonistic. They’d been for a meal at Richard’s and she’d finished a bottle of Cabernet by herself, as well as the lemon torte he’d served.

  Hey, hey, Richard had said, taking her hand and helping her up from the couch, after she’d slumped on the first attempt to rise. Nice to see you letting your hair down, Evie.