by Sue Walker
“Anna! Anna! C’mon!”
Lydia had sidled up beside Innes, swathed in a huge bath towel, her hair dripping. “What the…”
Innes left her standing in the doorway and headed across the grass towards Sarah, just as Anna wrenched the hut door open. “Oh, God, Anna!”
Innes could see Sarah’s face clearly now in the yellow light pouring from Anna’s hut. She was pale, drawn, frightened.
Anna looked sleepy. “What you doing here? You and Ranj are meant to be with the kids. What’s goi—”
But Sarah was grabbing her by both shoulders. “They’ve gone, Anna. Gone! We’ve lost diem! Ranj is up on the high road in the Land Rover.”
Anna stepped out of the hut and was roughly pulling Sarah’s hands away. “Fucking hell, Sarah! How’d that happen? Jesus! A’right. C’mon! Round up Lydia and Innes. We can’t leave them here on their own. And let’s get the other Land Rover and get looking. They can’t be far.”
Innes retreated into her own hut and closed the door, leaning her back against it. She should have known something like this would happen. As she dragged on jeans and a warm jumper, she thanked her lucky stars that she’d stayed here. God only knew what had happened to that lot in their current weird mood. A flicker of concern for Abby ran through her mind, but she shook it off. Danny was out there and he would never, ever let harm come to her.
With that sense of relief, she took a deep breath and headed outside.
NINETEEN
She shouldn’t have done it. It had been a long time since she’d got herself in that state. Innes dragged herself through the torture of a deliberately lukewarm shower, desperate to wake herself up. Then watched as the two tablets fizzed their way up the tumbler. The room was a sty. The empty wine bottles glinted searing sunlight back at her. Accusing. No need. Her head and stomach were punishment enough. She wondered at being here again. A home city she’d given the cold shoulder to since the death of her parents. Nothing much to visit for. Until now.
The hangover was hellish. Agonizing. She could barely shuffle downstairs to get to the hire car. Probably still well over the limit too. Had to get going, though. Within twenty minutes she’d arrived. There it was. She could feel her heart quicken, her throat constrict, she laid a cold hand on her pocket, satisfied at the crinkling sound of the paper bag, ready to hand. The detached stone mansion lay at the end of an exclusive cul-de-sac. Her house. Except it had never been that. Mercifully, mother had gone first, followed by a broken and also cancer-ridden father a mere seven months later. She’d had the house cleared in a week. Paced its empty hallways for three days and nights. Then put it on the market, never setting foot inside again.
It was a house with children now. Two toddlers’ bicycles leaned crookedly against the ivied front wall, and she could hear whoops of laughter from the open side door. It was in a happy house. More than it had ever been during her occupation…
“You’re a nasty, ugly little girl. I’m ashamed that you’re my daughter. I wish you’d never been born to me. Now get away. To your room. Just you wait. I’ll be speaking to your father.”
“…now come on, Innes. What’s this your mother’s been telling me about? You’ve got to understand that your mother…well…your mother can…can be…be…difficult. It’s much better if you just be careful around her…be careful…”
Careful! It had become so clear in adulthood. Mother had been mentally ill and malevolent: a sickening combination. Innes always thought it a miracle that neither she nor Dad had taken an iron bar to her skull. There had been enough provocation, for God’s sake. She was still working it out in therapy. Families. A naturally dysfunctional unit in almost every case. Not bitterness. Not cynicism. Just an empirically provable truth.
The rain had started up, picking away at the windscreen and kicking up spray in front of her headlights. The March evening had turned as dark and cold as any winter’s night. But it mattered little to her. There was no stopping now. She pondered the seeming irrationality of what she was doing. It made perfect sense to her. Of course, she hadn’t a clue if the building would still be standing. She half smiled as she thought about a previous nocturnal visit years earlier, after a particularly fraught stay with her parents. The circumstances, the emotional ones at least, had been reasonably similar. Her mother had been getting at her for never holding down a ‘successful relationship’, only too aware that her daughter’s marriage was faltering. Innes had stormed out, driving her car recklessly in fog to this place, in an act of both penance and pilgrimage. Back then, it still was alive, lit up, a large sign with adolescent psychiatric unit (APU) clearly visible.
The road the house stood on wasn’t private as such. But it was little used. Its chief function was as a cut-through to the main hospital and its various outlying clinics. She rolled the car to a stop and put out the lights. The house was still there. But it was in darkness. The old APU sign was half torn down, the wooden stake supporting it pointing at a crooked angle.
She got out of the car, all four indicators giving a simultaneous orange blink as she activated the remote-locking system. She stood at the main entrance. No evidence of life or recent occupation. She walked a few yards down the road and looked back, straining to see through the ground-floor windows of the old morning-meetings/psychodrama room. It looked like the wooden shutters were firmly shut against inquisitive intruders like her. Whatever was going on, the place wasn’t being used any more. It had the sad air of the forgotten and neglected. A blot on the night’s landscape.
She looked down the length of the garden. The night was clear enough to make it out. The swing was still there. Incredible! She’d hopped over the short wall and was halfway across the lawn before she thought about what she was doing. Christ. It was dark. She was a woman on her own. This was madness. But the swing was so near now. Just a few more yards. When she reached it, she tugged tentatively on both chains, using her sleeve to wipe the excess moisture from the faded, wooden seat, and sat down.
The familiar creaking started up as she gently allowed her feet to leave the security of the muddy ground beneath her. Slowly, slowly, she tilted her head back, looking through the overhanging trees to the sky above. A few stars, wispy clouds and half a moon. Calm. All calm…
That summer. Summer of ‘77. Everyone had a ‘summer of, didn’t they? Funny hers should be one spent in a mental hospital. The summer to remember. And not. What could she remember of it? Hot. Rainy too. Everything verdant. Obscenely lush. Over-green. Yeah, yeah, but what else? What about here? This very place? The place she’d first set eyes on them. Carrie, Simon, Danny, Lydia. They’d all spent countless golden, sunny evenings together here. Lydia liked the swing too. At tea-time—when she repeatedly had to be called in. Attention. All she craved. And who else loved the swing? Abby visited it when she could be alone. And alone with Danny. Yes, that had caused some jealousy. Danny and Abby. She swinging. He occasionally pushing. Carrie and Simon too. Heads bent. In intimacy? In conspiracy?
She blanked out the memory. Eyes still closed, she was enjoying the cradling motion when another noise, a distinct rustling, joined the creaking of the metal chain links. Her head shot up and she stamped her muddy feet firmly down to halt the swing.
Pushing herself out of the seat, she started a brisk walk up the garden that soon broke into a slippery and sliding sprint, as she headed for the relative security of the car and nearby street lamps. She allowed herself one backward glance, and watched as the little bit of moonlight caught the metal on the swing chains, as it toed and froed its empty way to a halt.
Back at the car, she leaned over the bonnet, keys at the ready, heavy breathing turning to falsely jolly, self-convincing laughter.
“Idiot. There’s nothing there. Just old, harmless ghosts!”
Sitting in the warmth and safety of her locked car, she felt reluctant to leave. Something about being in such close proximity to the Unit building allowed her mind to travel the memory paths she had for so many years successful
ly blocked off.
She glanced towards the swing. Thinking back, there was more conspiracy going on than she had known at the time. Or that she’d paid attention to. Especially around that Christmas…
TWENTY
Seven inches! So much of the stuff! Every tree branch, grass blade and pathway of the garden, obliterated.
Innes was at the top of the hilly lawn watching Carrie hurl an enormous snowball at Danny. “Come on, fuck arse!” But Danny was quick and had ducked, swifdy returning fire. “Bull’s-eye!” And suddenly he stopped, tuning in to a repeated grunting noise a few feet behind them. “Alex! What ye doin’?” He dusted ice fragments from his two sodden, woollen gloves, and shrugged his puzzled amusement at Innes, as he watched the coated and scarfed figure of Alex, shaven head red-raw with cold, chopping the limbs off one of three snowmen with a broom handle.
Innes heard Lydia scuttling up to join them. She let out a childish and manic giggle as she prodded Innes’s arm. “Oh-oh. She’s got it in for Anna. Bet you Sarah’s next. This’ll be fun!”
Innes knew the others had sensed that something more interesting than a snowball fight was going on. Isabella and Simon were moving up the lawn as well, shaking dieir heads at a demented Alex, making short work of the next snow sculpture. Innes reckoned it had taken Alex just under two and a half hours to build three snow nurses. All clearly identifiable: Ranj, with tea-towel turban; Anna, complete in a turquoise sari, made from an old curtain; Sarah…well, hadn’t Alex been clever? God only knew where she’d got it. Stuck in the mouth of the student nurse’s snowman statue was a baby bottle. They’d all heard Lydia taunt Sarah with the term ‘baby nurse’, in attempts to provoke. Attempts that Sarah unfailingly refused to react to. Now Alex had taken the taunt a dramatic step further.
Carrie was rubbing her frozen hands together. “Alex’s fuckin’ lost her marbles now. Shall we get someone?”
Danny shook his head. “Nah. Let her get on with it.”
Innes stepped forward to peer upwards. She thought there had been a movement in an upper window. “They know anyway. There’s Ranj upstairs. Sarah too. Wonder what she thinks of it?”
Abby was at her side now. “Goodness knows. Strange behaviour, though. Creation and destruction. One for the nursing log, I think.”
Innes more than agreed with her but kept her opinion to herself. The past few weeks had been regularly marred by violent outbursts from Alex. She’d become increasingly moody and uncommunicative, and every time she was in the group, there was a general uneasiness. Why, Innes had no idea. But it wasn’t all just down to Alex. Carrie had been aggressive and tetchy too. Danny had been unusually sullen, hardly ever joking. Not like he used to be. Simon? Hard to tell. Here he was.
Simon was clapping his hands in delight, smiling with glee at her and Abby. “Absolutely is one for the nursing log! The staff’ll make a real meal out of this. Betcha Laurie raises it at tomorrow’s therapy? “Now, Alexandra, tell us. Why did you make snowmen that resembled the staff and why did you ruin your creation with such apparent pleasure?” Yeah. He’ll have a field day. Actually, I’m impressed. Alex’s obviously got an artistic streak that we all missed. She can carve snow sculptures better than she carves up her arms.”
Two feet away, Innes joined in the laughter at the uncannily accurate aping of Dr Laurie’s pompous voice, but hoped to hell that Alex hadn’t heard Simon’s cruel comment about her self-mutilation. She needn’t have worried. She saw how engrossed Alex was in viciously swiping at the heads and torsos of the three snow nurses.
Simon kept up the light air of banter, but his face told another story, and Innes heard him whisper to Carrie, “Alex is at her worst now! Well, almost worst. What the fuck are we going to do with her?”
Carrie was slapping him on the back reassuringly. “Dinnae worry. I’ve been talkin’ tae Danny. Alex’ll need watching. Warning. Teachin’ a lesson, maybe. See, Alex isnae as tough as she makes out. You know that fine well. She’s got her…how shall we say…her weak points. I think we just need tae remind her, in a way that she’ll understand, that she needs tae watch hersel’. For all our sakes.”
Danny brushed past them both, heading towards the kitchen entrance, pulling off gloves and unwinding his scarf, mumbling to himself as much as to the rest of them. “Fuck it! Alex is a born nutter. I’m going in. Remember, as if any of us could forget, it’s the Christmas party tonight. Fun and fucking games!”
“Right, time for the raffle I reckon. Agreed, Anna?”
She’d never seen Anna so jolly as she nodded her agreement to Ranj, speech being useless above the raucous din. Innes stood behind her and surveyed the scene. The group-therapy/psychodrama room seemed bigger than ever. All unwanted furniture and the TV had been moved out of the way. The new Christmas tree was at least a foot taller than the previous one, which had been torched two days before. There had been an ‘inquiry’ about that, but no proof. Apparently Ranj and Anna had had a stand-up row, Ranj convinced that Lydia was up to her fire-starting tricks, Anna that it was the faulty electrics causing a blow-out of the fairy lights, which in turn ignited the tree. But Innes had overheard scraps of conversation about the incident. Enough to know that it involved Simon and Carrie and maybe others. Simon’s words to Carrie had stayed with her: “And that’s what everyone’s meant to think. That it was loony Lydia. It’s called distracting attention, dear Carrie. Got it? The fact is, our dear nursing staff are very sensitive. Very aware of the atmospheres and nuances in this bloody place. It’s why they’re here and not wiping the arses of some geriatrics down the road. I know that they had an emergency case-conference on Tuesday. Just before the fire. They know something’s amiss. So, we needed to give them something to worry about, didn’t we? Let them put out the wrong fires, as it were…”
What it was all about, Innes didn’t have a clue. But it was just another example of this place running askew.
She shook off the recent memory and gazed at the rainbow-coloured fairy lights twinkling away. The four long and elegant bay windows offered a magnificent view on to the lawn, now coated with the freshest of snow shimmering in the moonlight. Inside, the walls were predictably bedecked with tinsel, shiny Father Christmases and spangly, glitter-strewn snowmen decorations.
The decorating of the room had been a pleasant experience. Everyone had chipped in; even God, aka Dr Laurie, had gone up a stepladder! And the fire incident had, it seemed, been set aside for the festive season. Sister Anna had had one last try at prising something out of them at that morning’s group meeting. But she, and the rest of the staff, knew they were wasting their time. Apart from Lydia’s regular bleats of innocence, no one was talking about it any more. To Innes’s disappointment, even Abby had refused to be drawn on the subject. And Innes had, with some shame, kept her knowledge of what Simon had said to Carrie strictly to herself.
“Anna—dance?” Innes had found a comfortable niche at the back of the room, in shadow. She watched, smiling, as Adrian Laurie whisked the nurse away before Anna had time to reply. They disappeared into a throng of patients, their friends, their siblings. No parents. By order. At least that was a good decision. But she wasn’t so sure about this party. Things had been so…so…off recently. It seemed really false to have some jolly party as if everything was fine. She wasn’t even sure if any of them, herself included, were ‘getting better’. Their individual and collective heads were a bit more of a challenge than a bloody common cold, and she was beginning to doubt whether the Unit or its staff were up to the job.
She spied student Sarah a few feet in front of her, having a furtive look around. After a few seconds, she slipped a quarter bottle of vodka out of her pocket and poured a more than generous measure into her Coke, taking a long pull, unaware of Innes’s scrutiny. And then Anna was standing beside the student, slightly breathless from her energetic dance with Dr Laurie. Without turning her head from the crowd, Sarah asked, “Going pretty well, Anna, don’t you think?”
Anna was tilting her head a
s if the question was a hard one. “Seems to be. Never know for sure what’s going on in their bloody sick minds, though!”
Innes watched as Sarah blinked her astonishment. The student must have been as shocked as she was at Anna’s outburst, even though it probably chimed with Sarah’s own thoughts. And then the student gave her boss a comradely nudge. “Ach, they’re going home tomorrow. Give us all a proper holiday. Not like the bloody fiasco in Argyll last month. Sod it, thkigs’ll be different next year.”
Anna started to disagree. “Think so? I tell y—”
Her words were drowned out by Ranj, who was standing on a makeshift stage where a three-man combo had just finished grinding out festive tunes. “All right, quieten down, everyone! Quie…t! Time for the wonderful…fabulous…superb…Unit Christmas raffle! Proceeds as you know going to the Maybury Wing, for those with head injuries. A good cause, I’m sure you’ll agree.” The remaining murmurs died down, and Ranj held up a small red Santa sack. “Get a move on, Danny. You drew the short straw last week to hand out the prizes. Number one!”
Innes smiled as Danny, complete in red bobble hat and silver tinsel scarf, stepped up beside Ranj, sucked a last draw from his roll-up and ground it out underfoot. “Okay. There’s three runner-up prizes. Numero uno is…” He dug his hand into the sack held out for him by Ranj. He unwrapped the square of paper and shouted out the number. “Number zero one five!” Innes joined in the scuffle to check counterfoils. Nothing. Danny tried again. “It’s number zero one five!”
“I’m zero one six! I think my auntie’s got the one before that. But she’s not here.” Everyone was craning to see Lydia, more rotund than ever in a billowing scarlet and white abomination posing as an evening gown.
Ranj stepped forward, the look of forced patience on his gentle face that Innes had come to recognize as the one he used when the Unit was at its most stressed-out. He held up a hand to quiet the crowd. “Okay, let’s leave that one. We’ll put that prize aside, Lydia, and you can check with your aunt later.” A few complaining grumbles were ignored as Ranj urged Danny to continue. “Okay. Next?”