by K. L. Slater
‘Perfect. Thank you, John.’ Father MacCarrick smiled. ‘I’m guessing you knew all of those qualities, Daniel. Am I right?’
‘Yes, Father.’ Daniel nodded and tried not to look at his mother’s cold, incisive stare.
‘Now then, I wonder if you might avail us of the duties of a book-bearer? See Daniel, this is to be one of the prestigious duties of our new altar server at St Mary Magdalene.’
Mother had said earlier what an honour it would be to act as Father MacCarrick’s book-bearer in church. She had told him exactly what duties a book-bearer should carry out for the priest, and she had tested him several times. But now his head was as empty as a licked-out cereal bowl.
‘Daniel?’ Father MacCarrick tapped his long, slim fingers on the table.
Daniel watched the priest’s fingers and began to feel light-headed. A hot trickle of perspiration slid down his back and he shifted in his seat.
‘Carry the book,’ Daniel whispered.
‘Carry the book indeed.’ Father MacCarrick laughed quietly but there was a brittle edge to it. ‘It’s a little more than just “carrying the book” though, am I right?’
‘Yes, Father,’ Daniel said.
‘He does know all the answers,’ Daniel’s mother pleaded. ‘I made sure he knows all of it, Father.’
‘John?’ The priest turned to the seminarian.
‘The book-bearer holds the book of prayer for the priest at the beginning and the end of service,’ John recited. ‘He must ensure the book of prayer is open at the correct page and hold it at such an angle as is easy for the priest to read from, Father.’
‘Quite.’ Father MacCarrick nodded gravely. ‘Thank you, John.’
The priest stood, walked around the table and stopped directly behind Daniel, placing his hands on the boy’s shoulders. He bent forward to speak quietly into Daniel’s ear.
‘You’re a bright lad; we all know that so let’s have another go. Can you tell me the duties of an acolyte, at all?’
Daniel felt the warm pressure of Father MacCarrick’s hands on his shoulders, smelled the priest’s slightly sour breath on the side of his face.
Daniel’s hands began to shake and he couldn’t make them stop, even when he pressed his fingers into his thighs.
‘Daniel,’ Monica Clarke said, ‘tell Father MacCarrick the duties of an acolyte this minute.’
Daniel heard the threat loud and clear that hovered under her reasonable tone.
‘C-candles,’ Daniel stammered.
He wanted Father MacCarrick’s hands off him, but when he shrugged his shoulders the priest dug his fingertips in harder.
‘Carry candles in pairs at the beginning and the end of mass and also during the gospel,’ John offered.
But as he continued to speak, John’s monotone voice drifted further and further away, and Daniel watched his mother’s face contorting and her mouth opening wide but he was unable to make sense of her words.
John smirked at him, and he felt the pressure of Father MacCarrick’s fingertips digging into his collarbone and the warmth of the priest’s body behind him. Suddenly it became too much.
Daniel vomited all over the table.
Chapter 24
Present day
Anna
I have started waking regularly in the early hours. In fact, it is rather more than simply waking up.
There is nothing gradual about it, no coming-around sensation. My eyes just snap open from the depths of deep sleep like I’ve been woken by a loud noise.
Each time it happens I freeze and listen but there’s nothing but silence. There is absolutely no reason for me to be so suddenly wide awake with a pummelling heart and painfully dry throat.
It’s as though part of me has flipped back to being that terrified young girl again. The rehashed and counselled Anna seems to be losing her grip just lately.
I don’t want to leave any room for thinking about the past or even what might happen in the future.
This morning it happens at three thirty a.m. and I am scared to move.
Scared of what? I haven’t got a clue and that just makes it worse. Perhaps it is the silence, the shadows.
I can’t move a muscle; I can barely breathe. I lie there in a state of terror, absolutely certain that something terrible is going to happen but without any inkling what it could be.
I think this is what it must feel like to slowly go mad.
I have lived in this house all my life, long enough to know all its noises. . . all those inexplicable little creaks and taps that you hear in the dead of night if you lie quietly and listen. But that isn’t the sort of thing that is fuelling my terror.
It’s more of an awful sense of certainty that the world is going to come crashing in on me in some indistinguishable way. I don’t know how or when it is going to happen, just that it most definitely will, and there isn’t a damn thing I can do about it.
All those years ago, I grew a little stronger each day by constructing a life of routine for myself. I had to put my head back together first and that took a whole year in the muted surroundings of the carpeted clinic with its crisp lawns and neatly bordered gardens.
I got better very, very slowly.
Eventually, within a few years, I had a life that just about held itself together.
I made sense of time mainly by doing certain things at certain times of the day. Nothing unexpected, nothing unusual. Just nice, reliable and simple tasks to drape each day around.
And when I was ready, the job really helped. My social worker had a contact at the Royal Mail and helped me apply. It was something else to hold on to: one of the few things I was good at and could take a pride in.
Now, it feels increasingly like there is nothing solid under my feet to keep me steady.
Once daylight floods the room and I am properly awake, the feeling slowly fades. By mid-morning, my heartbeat is normal and I’m not scared any more, just a bit bruised inside.
Still, after my shift I take myself down to Sneinton Medical Centre and join the seemingly never-ending sit-and-wait queue for those patients without an appointment.
For forty-seven minutes I sit there amongst the usual gathering of sneezers, coughers and squawking kids until, finally, it is my turn.
It isn’t easy to open up to a stranger, but I manage to convey my disturbed sleep pattern to the peripatetic doctor. I try to describe how I often feel afraid for no reason.
‘Anxiety,’ he says simply and scribbles me a prescription.
I am to try the sedatives to help me sleep, he says, and if things don’t improve he will prescribe something else, specifically for the condition. Happy pills, I’ve heard them called.
After seeing the doctor, I take myself off home.
I don’t go to see Liam, and I don’t take this morning’s bag of undelivered mail out of the boot.
I take a sedative and I take myself off to bed.
* * *
I sleep straight through until the next morning when I snap awake at just gone three a.m.
I lie still, watching, as the red digits count me through to nearly four. Finally, I muster the courage to push myself up into a seated position.
My lower back is wet with perspiration, and when I unclench my fingers, my palms are clammy and tangled up with my own hair.
The thin curtains allow the street lights to illuminate the room with an eerie orange glow that seems to magnify my dread. I can see Albert’s dark, curled form lying at the bottom of the bed, undisturbed by my movements.
I sit up and a dull ache creeps slowly up the back of my skull.
If I don’t take some migraine tablets now, I know the ache will develop into a fullblown tension headache that could take days to go. Yet something stops me moving, and I feel flushed and uncomfortable despite there being no heating on.
I throw off the quilt and sit with my legs bent up to my chest, my arms wrapped around them. Resting my forehead on top of my knees, I rock gently.
Perhap
s Liam is awake, too. The doctor gave him sedatives but said that sometimes the pain could be bad enough to still wake him up. Ivy also takes sedatives at night to help her relax and calm her heart down.
I wonder what might happen if Liam needs help and Ivy is in a drugged stupor, unable to raise the alarm. If it wasn’t for the old woman’s stubbornness, I would stay over with them and there wouldn’t be a problem.
Should the worst-case scenario happen, I mean.
The hospital could have insisted on suitable home arrangements. They could have advised Ivy to let me stay over to help sort things out, at least for a few days.
To be fair, Ivy seems more grateful now that I am helping out with the daytoday tasks but she still fails to recognise there is a need for me to play a full part in their lives.
I’m tired of just being the woman who held Liam’s hand in the road. I want to show him that I am a real friend. Someone he can trust and depend on, I mean. I could never hope that a man like Liam would ever be interested romantically in somebody like me.
I glance at the neon numbers on my bedside table. Just gone four a.m.
I become aware of pain in my jaw and realise that I’m grinding my back teeth together. It reminds me of the long weeks that drifted into long months after Danny died.
I wiggle my bottom jaw a little to free it up but I don’t feel any better.
I think about how I am being really careful not to take any more time off work, so no one gets the opportunity to meddle with my round, but over the last couple of days I think I have probably delivered even less mail than usual.
It’s really important that I don’t draw attention to myself, give them reasons to look more closely at me at work.
Liam coming home from hospital was a distraction but he is depending on me to be there for him, and I plan to go over there this afternoon, when my shift is finished.
* * *
Later, when I am driving to work I decide on a new, more effective plan of action.
Instead of delivering the new mail each day, I’m going to refill the bags with the older mail that’s been stacked upstairs. Then I’ll deliver that mail.
That way I can be sure of falling only a few days behind at any one point, instead of the upstairs mail getting older each day.
When I get to the office, I head straight for my stretch of the mail counter.
‘Morning, Anna,’ Roisin sings as I pass her.
‘Morning,’ I say, slowing my pace a bit. ‘How are you?’
‘Oh you know, bored. Tired. The usual.’
I nod. ‘I’m not sleeping very well,’ I say and then clamp my mouth shut before I reveal more than I intended.
‘I know the feeling; it’s too much tea,’ Roisin agrees. ‘I get up to use the bathroom and then I lie awake for hours trying to get back to sleep.
‘Don’t forget that coffee,’ she says as I walk away. ‘Let me know when you want to meet up.’
I nod and smile and move away as quickly as I can without appearing rude. It would be a relief to have someone to talk to about my work problem. Someone who could help.
I pack up my mail bags quickly, not worrying about sorting the mail in order of streets. That detail ceases to matter when it is destined straight for the box-room mountain.
I’ve almost reached the exit doors when Jim Crowe appears and plants himself in my path.
‘Morning, Anna.’
I swallow hard, and a ring of heat begins its crawl from the base of my neck.
Jim peers down at the bags I’m carrying.
‘How are you getting on.’ He pulls himself up to his full looming height. ‘With the round?’
‘Fine,’ I say quickly. ‘No problems, Jim.’
‘You sure?’ He lowers his voice and grins at me. ‘You’ve only to say and we can split the round down for you.’
I don’t want less hours or massive change. I don’t want to let the people on the estate down.
Admittedly, I haven’t been able to see most of my customers for a while because of my circumstances but that will all change once I put my new delivery schedule into action.
I shrug and keep my shoulders relaxed. ‘Everything is fine.’
He flashes me a toothy grin and pats my shoulder as he strides past me into the main sorting area.
‘That’s what I like to hear,’ he booms. ‘Happy staff.’
I scuttle out of the doors, sweating under the weight of the filled pannier bags. I drag them over to the bike shed and drop them when I am out of sight and leaning against the shed wall.
The fine drizzle and dank air do nothing to alleviate my fuzzy head and pounding chest. Then a thick knot of panic pushes its way up from my stomach.
Deep breaths. Take some deep breaths.
I stand for a moment or two, looking at the bulging mail bags at my feet and thinking about the spare room back at the house.
The wall I’m leaning on feels soft and springy against my hand.
The scene of the accident snaps through my mind in short, jagged flashes. Liam’s face, glass fragments on the road, a seeping ruby pool spreading out from his broken head.
I stand for a moment until the shed wall feels solid again.
But the sickly feeling won’t go away.
* * *
When I get back to the house, I dump the mail bags just inside the back door and collapse down into one of the dining chairs in the middle room. I am too exhausted to go out delivering some of the backlog now.
I promise myself I will make up for it tomorrow. I will work really hard and deliver double the amount of mail.
Tomorrow, I will make a fresh, clean start.
Chapter 25
Later that afternoon after taking a rest, I drive over to see Liam.
I tap on the back door and walk straight in to find Ivy cleaning the oven. She never seems to sit still and relax despite the discomfort it obviously causes her. And she obviously isn’t taking a blind bit of notice of the doctors telling her to rest after her recent funny turn at Liam’s bedside.
‘Hello, Anna,’ she groans as she bends to spray cleaning fluid on the spattered oven-door glass. ‘I’ll make us a cuppa in a minute.’
I glance around the cluttered worktop.
‘Did you come across that business card,’ I ask. ‘The one the policeman left you?’
‘What? Oh no, it’s around here somewhere though,’ she says vaguely, straightening up and pressing her hand to her lower back, grimacing. ‘You said you wouldn’t mind doing me a couple of little jobs, so if you could carry that stack of towels upstairs and then—’
I zone out the remainder of the rather long ‘little jobs’ list she has saved up for me. I wait until she takes a breath before I speak.
‘I’ve got a suitcase in the boot, Ivy,’ I say lightly. ‘Just a few clothes and essentials in there; enough to tide me over for the next few days or so.’
‘Oh, are you going away somewhere?’ She doesn’t look up from her cleaning.
She’s putting on a good show pretending she isn’t fussed, but I know she’ll be panicking inside at the thought of me not being around.
‘Don’t worry, I’m not going anywhere. Quite the opposite, in fact. I’m going to stay here at the house for a while, to give you a hand looking after Liam.’
Her head jerks up from the oven door, her eyes and mouth wide.
‘Oh no, you can’t possibly do that.’ She takes in a sharp breath. ‘I mean, you have your own life, your cat. . . and there’s your work too, love. I wouldn’t dream of imposing on you like that. Me and Liam will cope fine but thanks so much for offering, Anna, I’m touched.’
‘I’ll not take no for an answer, Ivy.’ I keep my voice level. ‘Liam and I have been worried about your health and the fact you’re taking too much on. I can pop home when I need to, and I can go to work from here, it’s no trouble, I—’
‘The answer is no, Anna. It’s just silly; a few days ago we didn’t even know each other.’ That comment s
tings and she sees it but she doesn’t backtrack or apologise. ‘It really isn’t necessary and, besides, there’s no spare bed for you to sleep in.’
I don’t move.
I’m good enough to save Liam’s life in the road but not good enough to be embraced in their home as a trusted friend. Unbelievable.
Ivy goes back to her cleaning, and a wave of heat rises from my abdomen up into my chest. I’m done kowtowing to Ivy Bradbury but my connection to Liam is key in keeping tabs on Amanda Danson. I will have to find another way in.
I walk out of the kitchen and into the lounge without speaking to her again.
I won’t mention this exchange with Ivy or my work worries to Liam. He’ll hardly want to be bothered by my problems when he has enough of his own.
His head is bent forward while he studies something on his knee so intently he doesn’t even notice I’m standing there at first.
‘Anything interesting?’
Liam visibly jumps and presses his hand to his chest. It’s strange to see him in a T-shirt and tracksuit instead of his hospital robe. ‘You frightened the life out of me, Anna.’
‘How are you feeling?’ I grin.
‘A bit better today,’ he says, standing up to prove it. ‘Look.’
‘I don’t think you’re supposed to be standing on that leg yet,’ I chide him. ‘You should rest it, like they told you to.’
‘Everyone fusses too much,’ Liam grumbles. He sits back down and sweeps his fringe out of his eyes just like Danny used to do. He needs a good haircut so he looks more like a man and not a boy. It’s almost as though Ivy has kept him in a boyhood time warp since he came to live with her. ‘My leg will be good as new in a week or two. It’s this constant headache that is driving me crazy.’
‘Are you taking your medication?’ I ask him.
‘Huh?’
His fingers start to dig into the seat cushion.