The Uninvited

by Liz Jensen

  ‘Don’t bother. She’s at the hospital with Kaitlin.’ I don’t explain why. ‘What’s up with Ashok?’

  My question triggers tears. While Belinda sobs and apologises, I take a sip of coffee and wait. Thirty-four seconds pass.

  ‘He’s looking after his sister.’ I recall the family photo on Ashok’s shelf, next to my paper ozuru pecking at hole-puncher confetti. The women and girls in traditional dress, the men and boys in suits.

  ‘Last night, the two younger kids killed their dad with a kitchen knife.’

  ‘Ashok’s sister is called Manju,’ I remember. ‘It means sweet or snow or dewdrops.’ I’d asked him to explain the origins of all their names.

  ‘Hesketh, did you hear me? I said last night—’

  ‘The sons are Birbal – that means Brave Heart – and Jeevan, which means Life. And Deepak. Lamp or Light. The daughter is Asha. Which translates as Hope or Aspiration. Her husband is Amit, which means limitless or endless.’

  ‘Well it’s Amit who’s dead. Her youngest two killed him.’

  So Amit is not endless. He has been murdered by Lamp or Light and Hope or Aspiration. She’s looking at me questioningly.

  ‘Dead. I see.’ There’s a silence. ‘I’m sorry. I’m slow. It’s taking me a while to—’ I stop. More silence.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ says Belinda gently. ‘I can’t believe it either.’ She gulps. ‘I rang the official helpline. All the kids’ attacks have to be reported. There’s a Families at Risk register. If you take Freddy to a Care Unit they’ll take charge of him during the day. That’s what Ashok’s doing with Deepak and Asha. They can’t guarantee more than twelve hours because they don’t have enough staff or beds yet.’ I am trying to muster a coherent reaction when Belinda’s eye line shifts. ‘Anyway, Hesketh. Perhaps we should say goodbye.’ I turn round: Freddy has entered the room, his hair ruffled, yawning. Belinda flashes her teeth in an unlikely smile and uses a new voice, louder than before, to say, ‘So, Hesketh. Ashok may call you later. He’s working from home today.’ With another sidelong glance at Freddy she adds, ‘Good luck with everything on the home front,’ before switching herself off.

  On ‘the home front’ the boy is tired and grumpy. I ask him if he wants to go back to bed for a couple more hours. No, he wants to eat, he says. He wants porridge. He also wants eggs. Scrambled. While I make the porridge – the habitual movements of pouring and stirring are soothing – I try to make sense of what Belinda told me about Ashok’s brother-in-law. But I can’t. All I can picture is colours. A Desert Sand carpet in Ashok’s sister’s home, stained Heliotrope with blood. Freddy eats his porridge ravenously and then, when I present him with the scrambled eggs, pronounces: ‘That’s not enough. I want more.’

  ‘Eat them and then decide.’

  The eggs are gone in seconds.

  ‘I told you,’ he says. I switch to observation mode. He still hasn’t mentioned his mother. He jumps down from his chair, swings open the door of the food cupboard, and pulls out a can of tuna. ‘Pass me the tin-opener,’ he commands. A moment later he has expertly opened the tin and is reaching for the salt-grinder: a huge, heavy cast-iron thing that Kaitlin bought in a junk sale. She is a magpie that way. He can barely lift the thing, but he persists, grinding far too much on to his plate of tuna. He devours it fast and messily. ‘Oi woont more. Oi woont more.’ The deep throaty archaeopteryx voice again. He makes short work of a plateful of mashed potato which I find in the fridge and reheat in the microwave. This he salts heavily. He chews with concentrated haste. I don’t stop him. I just watch and take mental notes. I wonder if this counts as fieldwork.

  ‘Freddy K. Did you know that lots of salt can be bad for you?’

  He laughs. ‘That’s like saying lots of air can be bad for you!’

  ‘No. Air and salt are different.’

  He looks at me, head cocked to one side. ‘I’m not the weirdo! You are!’

  ‘How?’

  ‘Do you want to have the wrong kind of blood?’

  This is interesting. ‘What’s the wrong kind of blood?’

  He gives me another sideways look, but doesn’t answer. When I repeat the question he asks, ‘Why are you talking about blood? You’re a freakman, Hesketh.’

  I say, ‘You mentioned it first. Not me. You said, did I want to have the wrong kind of blood.’

  ‘Is this a game or something?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then you are a freakman. Can I watch TV before school?’

  ‘Freddy K, you won’t be going to school today.’

  ‘Cool. Why not?’

  ‘Because we’re waiting to hear about how Mum’s doing in hospital.’

  He stops and blinks. There is a three-second pause. Then he says, ‘OK. Can I watch TV?’

  In normal life, Freddy would become hysterical at the thought of his mother being in hospital.

  ‘No.’ I don’t want to risk him seeing the news. ‘Choose a DVD.’

  He scuttles out and to my surprise comes back with a nature series about desert life called The Dry World.

  I call Battersea. It’s permanently engaged. The net connection has disappeared again. I text Professor Whybray – My stepson Freddy attacked his mother last night. I plan to observe him until we meet – and join Freddy in the living-room, where he’s already engrossed in scorpions, snakes, cacti and scuttling rodents. He settles on the sofa and I throw a rug over him, and he says ‘Foonk-you-fonk-you-fank-you’. For a brief moment I begin to think normality has returned. But when I fetch him a glass of milk and put it on the coffee table in front of him he reacts with a cry of alarm.

  ‘Hey! What are you doing? I don’t want that white stuff!’

  ‘Freddy K, Freddy K. Calm down. It’s just milk. You usually drink it. What’s wrong with it suddenly?’

  He’s looking at it with fear and disgust. ‘It might be poisonous!’ His alarm seems quite genuine.

  ‘It isn’t. Look.’ I take a sip to show him, but he won’t be swayed. This too is odd.

  ‘It isn’t poisonous to you because you’re from the Old World. But we have a different kind of blood. We need Coke or Sprite or Dr Pepper,’ he insists.

  Again, I think of Jonas’ hoard. Coca-Cola, Annika said. We.

  ‘What do you mean, we?’

  ‘Kids like me.’

  ‘What kids like you?’

  ‘I want something from a can.’

  ‘Mum doesn’t buy them, you know that,’ I tell him. ‘So it’s milk or nothing.’

  ‘If you eat something poisonous you go blind!’ he calls after me as I leave. Curious, that he should make a connection between poisoning and blindness. Jonas also mentioned blindness, when he was raving in the hospital. He had good reason to: his eyes were alarmingly infected.

  I leave him with the DVD blaring at the volume he likes it and enter what used to be my workroom. I know exactly what’s in the boxes. Books, a set of shaving things, three pairs of shoes, some casual clothes. Origami supplies. All useful. I sit there for a while, just rocking, then make five ozuru in my head. I hesitate, then slowly create a lotus flower for Kaitlin. She always liked those.

  Then I get to work.

  I arrange my thoughts best when I can physically touch and shape each idea, and endow it with tangible dimensions. My whiteboard and my paper supplies, including the large sheets of coloured tracing paper I intend to use, are still in what used to be my cupboard. Though easier to set up and faster to manipulate, computer models offer none of the sensual gratification that paper does. Within minutes I have made decisions about the basic set categories, and picked a colour system that will not jar on me. Soon enough, new connections will reveal themselves, and I will move on to combine the templates. I feel calm yet energetic. My best state of mind. I have a project. I’ve brought the radio with me: I keep it on as I work. Every five minutes I stop and call Battersea – I need to talk to Professor Whybray – but the line’s still busy. I want to know if the kids there have mentioned blindne
ss, or having ‘different’ blood, or expressed a fear of poisoning. Whether their physical examinations show anything unusual. Do they mention the Old World?

  At 11.18 I call Annika Svensson. I am in luck: she answers her phone after eighteen rings, breathless.

  ‘How are you, Hesketh? Is it as bad there as it is here?’

  ‘Numerically speaking, it will be worse here because we have a much bigger population.’

  ‘I was just with my neighbour. She’s been going crazy. Her son attacked his sports teacher last night. With an ice shovel.’

  Briefly, I fill her in on what happened with Farooq and de Vries in Dubai, and what Freddy did to his mother last night. She shows her shock and horror in a typically Scandinavian way, by expressing denial: ‘No!’

  ‘The kids who attacked have salt cravings like Jonas. Can you tell me exactly what else he kept in the garden shed? You mentioned seaweed and jars and sacks of grain and Coca-Cola.’

  ‘Yes,’ she says, still breathless. ‘Which he never even liked. And these big lumps of seaweed. God knows what he wanted that for. It’s not all properly dried out, and it’s full of things that crawl around.’

  ‘What else?’

  ‘There was chocolate. And sacks of nuts. I don’t know where he got hold of them. And lots of seed packets.’

  ‘What kind?’

  ‘Vegetables. All vegetables, different kinds. Which is strange because he was much more into flowers. Hollyhocks and lupins and sunflowers. He liked the tall ones.’

  ‘You mentioned grain before. Do you know what kind?’

  ‘It says on the sacks. They’re imported from India. Ara-something.’

  ‘Amaranth.’

  ‘That’s it. Does it mean anything to you?’ she asks.

  ‘It’s high in protein. Also in lysine, which you don’t get in most cereals. It’s a relative of pigweed. Its leaves can be eaten. It’s not suitable for making raised breads, but you can make a flatbread. Was he into survivalism?’

  No, she insists. He wasn’t.

  After we say goodbye I picture her in her Bamboo-green jacket, with her wrinkled face and her teenage son Erik, and her going-crazy neighbour and her dead husband Jonas whose penis I saw resting on his thigh, and whose death I witnessed, who found beauty in tall things. Back in the living-room, Freddy is curled up on the sofa, asleep, with his bottom in the air. The glass of milk is untouched.

  I spread my circles on the floor and begin experimenting with sets. After a few moments, tenuous connections begin to manifest.

  At 12.41 my phone rings.

  ‘Hesketh.’ That reedy, throaty voice.

  ‘Professor Whybray.’ I could show him these Venns and he would grasp them immediately. We played chess together. Battled with crossword clues. He liked to talk. He especially enjoyed running the theories of his rivals past me, to test my reaction. But he never minded silence.

  ‘You still won’t call me Victor?’

  ‘No.’

  He laughs. ‘Good.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘It means you haven’t changed. Which is excellent. Because I require you to be exactly the same Hesketh you were before. Phipps & Wexman are officially on board. You can start in Battersea tomorrow. I don’t just want you on the team. I actively need you. And if you have any clones out there, I need them too.’ He pauses. ‘Remember those times you were good enough to come to the hospital with me, when Helena was dying?’

  ‘Of course.’ There was a lot of waiting. We’d sit on the plastic benches and he’d make dark jokes about botched surgery and hospital superbugs. When he went in to see Helena or her consultant I bought us food and drinks from vending machines. ‘You know why I never broke down?’

  ‘Because British men of your generation and stature are traditionally proud and don’t show their feelings in public.’

  ‘That’s true. But mostly because you stuck to the facts and never sugar-coated anything. That’s what this task requires now. Someone independent who won’t be swayed by the culture.’

  ‘You once said I probably wasn’t cut out for fieldwork.’

  ‘Did I? Well. I was no doubt right. But this isn’t fieldwork. See the Care Unit as a lab. And until you come in, treat Freddy’s environment the same way. So. How’s the boy doing?’

  He’s still curled up in his pyjamas like a tiny hibernating animal. I reach for the TV blanket and arrange it over him. He doesn’t look like a child who tried to kill his mother. He doesn’t look like a boy who would discuss murder with his friends.

  ‘His behaviour’s been atypical,’ I say, moving into the hallway out of earshot. ‘There was a short period when he seemed to realise what he’d done. And there was some distinct spatial confusion, just after he attacked her. Since then, he’s been nonchalant. But his thinking’s disjointed. He doesn’t remember he did it.’

  ‘That’s the classic pattern.’ He sighs and pauses. ‘There’s been terrible . . . barbarity in response to this. Almost a counter-epidemic triggered by panic. And spread by social networking of course. All that’s exploded as you can imagine. It’s similar to what we saw in some of the cross-species disease scares. Most parents are desperate for their kids to snap out of it and go back to normal. But so far we haven’t seen a single case of that. Word’s spreading that there’s no cure. Even though there might well be, if we can just find it.’

  ‘Secondary hysteria?’ Is that what he meant by ‘the culture’? It’s good to be speaking to the professor again. To resume the old, effective patterns of communication.

  ‘Exactly. The police are reporting they’ve come across parents driving their children out to the motorway or into the countryside and just . . . dumping them. There are already too many cases to prosecute. If we were equipped to have all the kids in Care Units full-time that wouldn’t be happening. But most of them have to go home at night, if they live anywhere near. A lot of families can’t cope with that. Especially if there are siblings.’ He sighs. ‘Anyway, talk me through the overlaps.’ Quickly, I run through Sunny Chen’s suicide drawings and the new permutations of the Venns.

  ‘Blood. Violence. Eyes. Salt. Some of the elements seem almost Biblical,’ he says.

  ‘Which begs the question: if it’s a shared narrative, are they collectively re-enacting an old myth, or creating a new one?’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘Well I’m wondering. The phenomenon strikes me as going far beyond the physical. There’s a collective subconscious at work here, and it has some kind of ideology or metaphysics that we need to identify. But the anarchist theory doesn’t convince me. And it isn’t terrorism as we know it. Even though I predict it won’t be long before that word’s used.’

  ‘Well the human extinction lobby’s having a field day, of course. Better Without Us is rejoicing. Any more predictions?’ he asks.

  I have already flow-charted it. I am sure he has too.

  ‘There will be many more cases of sabotage than have been reported. If they continue, energy and communications systems will fail. And there’ll be food shortages. Whatever disaster provisions are in place will themselves be at risk of random sabotage, so I see no grounds for whatever optimism the government may express. Regarding the children, the alien-possession theory will have started at grassroots level some time ago, after the first few attacks.’ As I speak, I roll up my sleeve and inspect the flesh on my bicep. The tiny finger-marks are still there. ‘The idea will first be reported in the news as an unfortunate and misguided rumour. But repetition, especially if it comes from someone in the public eye – most likely a so-called celebrity – will normalise and ratify it.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘In either case, you can be quite sure it’s already in the public domain on some level. Superstition evolves with the times. So we’ll hear more about figures from folklore. But my hunch is that among younger generations, aliens will come to dominate. They’re more current. Have any of the children died yet?’

  ‘Not in this country. But two i
n America. They’re being autopsied now.’

  I tell him about Svensson’s anatomical anomalies. ‘Any eye infections among the kids?’

  ‘No, but as you’ve seen from their attachment to sunglasses, they seem to feel their eyes are vulnerable. But pursue this. Stephanie’s out of the picture for now, I gather.’

  ‘Yes. She and Kaitlin—’

  ‘Don’t worry. I know the, er, context. No need to discuss.’

  Later, Stephanie calls to say she might be staying at the hospital again, but she might come home. She’s not sure yet. There is no change in Kaitlin’s condition. ‘They want to take her home as soon as she’s stabilised. So I’m talking to the medics as much as I can, finding out what to expect. Getting skilled up.’ Her voice sounds very strained. I wonder if she is telling me the facts as they actually are, or as she would prefer them to be. There is often a discrepancy. ‘I’ve agreed to help run a group here in the hospital for bereaved families. Crisis counselling. I’ve just held my first session.’ She pauses. ‘It was very difficult for me professionally. In normal circumstances, I’d be considered compromised.’ She halts again and I hear her take a breath. ‘I’m struggling, Hesketh. You should know that. After what Freddy did to her, whatever his reasons, or whatever his illness, I’m never going to be unbiased. I can’t see him the way I did.’

  After she hangs up, I sit and think about this.

  I used to imagine Kaitlin vanishing from the face of the earth, and me and Freddy living in the cottage on the island. We would build and fly kites: proper ones that were not lopsided. Or boats, to float in rock pools on the beach. I’d teach him about birds and we’d get a chart to identify edible and non-edible fungi. We’d cook. He could go to the local school. If I had to travel on business for Phipps & Wexman, I could take him with me.

  This scenario used to comfort me.

  So why, when I conjure it now, do I get a lurch of vertigo?