I could feel my own eyes grow wide. ‘Does that happen often?’
Geraint shrugged. ‘Yeah. Quite often. Then, couple of weeks back, I was followed home.’
‘A car? Did you see a suspicious black sedan with tinted windows?’ Sam’s mouth was quirking up in the corners and I frowned at him.
‘No.’ Geraint ignored Sam. ‘I saw the same cyclist, though. I mean, you tend to see the same faces when you bike. There’s a bit of comradeship amongst riders. But this guy was new.’
‘That doesn’t mean anything. Just a new face. He probably lives around here.’
‘And I heard beeping noises on the phone. I ditched my mobile. Got a new one, pre-paid.’
I remembered the text messages from the unknown number, Geraint asking about the man in the café. That was ten days ago. I had known something was wrong and I’d left him to go back to the flat alone, to descend into this state of paranoia.
‘But why?’ I kept my tone gentle. ‘I mean, you’re not very high up, are you? It doesn’t make any sense—’
‘That doesn’t matter,’ Geraint said. ‘If the work is wanted by an outside agency or a terrorist group, then anyone on the team is a possible target.’
He was so certain, sounded so – momentarily – rational that the hairs on my arms stood up. ‘Have you spoken to your team? To your boss?’
Ger shook his head so violently I felt my own neck twinge in sympathy. ‘God, no. I don’t know who to trust. It could be an inside thing. I mean, there could be a mole.’
‘Very Spooks,’ Sam said. Unhelpfully.
Geraint turned his gaze on to Sam, eyes widening still further. ‘What the fuck do you think they based that stuff on?’
Sam held up his hands. ‘I’m just saying. You don’t expect this in the real world.’
Geraint shook his head. ‘Not in your world perhaps. I’ve known it was a possibility since day one. Nature of the business.’
‘You’re not being serious?’ Sam said.
‘Okay.’ Geraint pulled out a packet of cigarettes and lit up. ‘When I first started, my line manager had just come off long-term sick leave. Stress, we were told. I didn’t take a lot of notice. Breakdowns are common in coding. Obsessive people who can’t leave work at work. You know the type?’
‘Vaguely,’ I said, raising an eyebrow. Ger didn’t seem to notice.
‘Well, it turned out that the stress wasn’t just overwork. He’d had a wiretap on his phone. We caught on to it quite early on, but he had to carry on as normal. Not tip them off that we knew people were listening. The strain of it got to him.’
‘What happened? Who was spying on him?’
Geraint shrugged. ‘Militant group. Middle Eastern most likely although I didn’t just say that.’ He flashed a quick smile, the first I’d seen since we arrived. Talking was making Geraint seem more balanced. His leg was no longer jiggling and he sounded quite sane. On the other hand, my head was threatening to explode. I’d had no idea that his work could be properly dangerous. ‘So . . . You’ve always known this was a possibility. Your bosses know it is a possibility. There must be some, I don’t know, guidelines or something. Steps you’re supposed to follow in the event. I mean, don’t you get training on this?’
‘Of course . . .’ Geraint’s voice trailed off. He was staring over our heads, seeing something in his mind. ‘This project was a little bit different from the other stuff I’ve done, though. The security level was through the roof. I was working on a code.’
‘For who?’ Sam was leaning forward, caught up in his very own television episode. ‘Government? Terrorists? Al-Qaeda?’
‘I can’t tell you,’ Geraint said. The withering tone of voice was back. ‘Obviously. So, I was working on this code—’
‘Were you going to crack it? Is that it?’ Sam said.
Geraint looked at him pityingly. ‘I did that ages ago. And I had almost finished a program that would decipher it in real time, too, but that wasn’t when the problems started.’
He looked around again. ‘I remember the first morning I saw the cyclist. It was after I decoded a particular message.’
‘So, what was the message?’ Sam was on the edge of his seat. Literally. If he got any keener he’d fall off.
‘It’s better if I don’t tell you. Safer for you.’
‘Oh, for goodness’ sake, Geraint. Get a grip. This is crazy.’ My voice sounded shrill and I wished I could snatch the words back. I wanted Geraint to let me help him, not make him retreat.
Luckily, he didn’t seem offended. ‘I know how it sounds,’ he said. He took a long drink of his coffee and pulled a face. ‘Jesus fuck. What is this?’
‘Coffee.’
‘It tastes like piss.’
‘Good,’ I said briskly. ‘You don’t need any more caffeine.’
‘I’m going to shower.’ He lurched upright and disappeared into the bathroom. I wanted to get up and follow him, to check for blades and pills, although that was more because I felt it was the kind of thing I ought to do in the circumstances. I didn’t think he was depressed or suicidal, more hyper. Possibly high. As always, I couldn’t get the proper perspective when it came to my twin; his mix of charming bravado and stomach-churning vulnerability eroded my logic. I just wanted to wrap him up in a duvet and feed him soup. And, at the same time, I wanted to shake him stupid.
While he was gone, Sam and I sat in awkward silence for a moment or two. Then, Sam said: ‘Jesus. Your brother . . .’
‘He’s just stressed,’ I said, defensive. ‘He’s been working too hard, that’s all. He does that. He’s fine.’
Sam shook his head. ‘I don’t think he’s fine.’ He paused. ‘Look, I’m not an expert and feel free to tell me to take my big nose elsewhere, but—’
‘You’re just seeing him on a bad day,’ I cut in before he could finish. Sam seemed like a nice guy, but I didn’t want to hear his opinion of my brother. ‘He gets a bit fried when he works too much. He forgets to eat and sleep and then he gets a little strung out. That’s all this is.’
‘So, you think he’s just paranoid?’
I took a deep breath. ‘I don’t know. I think so. But . . . his job. It’s possible.’
‘Jesus,’ Sam said again.
I stood up, did a bit more tidying. The holes in the wall seemed to watch me; the patches of damp mould on the ceiling seemed to be creeping. I thought I saw something move from the corner of my eye. If Ger hadn’t left this depressing place for a week, it was small wonder he was going peculiar. All I had to do was get him out, for some fresh air and a decent meal.
Once he was clean and dressed, he seemed even better. With plenty of coaxing from me and a blokey ‘Come on, mate’ from Sam, we convinced Ger to come out to eat. It wasn’t a comfortable meal, especially since he insisted on sitting at an outside table as it would be ‘harder to bug’ and it wasn’t a warm day.
Sam zipped up his coat and didn’t complain. He made conversation, as if the situation was entirely normal, and joked with the confused waiting staff, who wanted to know why we didn’t want the perfectly nice table they’d offered us inside.
It was a shame, I thought, that I would probably never speak to Sam again. Nothing beyond a ‘hello’, at any rate. Even if I could come to terms with the enforced intimacy of the day, his knowing my twin, seeing us in this vulnerable state, I knew that he’d remind me of it all. Whenever I saw Sam, I’d remember the fear and anxiety of this day.
After lunch we walked back to the flat and the exercise warmed me up. Geraint seemed almost normal and was even managing to make jokes. I asked him to take some time off work, to come and stay with me for a few days, but he refused. I wasn’t surprised.
‘What are you going to do then?’ Sam said.
Geraint shrugged. He looked at me. ‘I’ll speak to my line manager. Work a bit less.’
He was just saying what I wanted to hear. I knew that, but I believed him anyway. ‘You need to eat regularly,’ I said. ‘Three meals a
day.’
‘Yes, Mum,’ he said, smiling a little.
‘And call me,’ I said.
‘All right,’ he said, although we both knew he probably wouldn’t.
I hugged him. ‘Email me,’ I said, quietly. ‘Email me every day.’
I opened my eyes and cast around the ward for something to distract me. I didn’t want to think about this. I didn’t want to remember Ger this way. I wanted my brother back, my strong other self. The bulletproof version who never got scared.
I wanted Grace, my nurse, to appear. I wanted her comforting presence so badly I ached with it. I stared at the end of my bed, hoping she would magically materialise, that I could conjure her just by wishing. The curtains around my bed stayed resolutely still, though, and nobody appeared.
There was nothing to stop the memory from coming back even though I knew, now, that I didn’t want to remember it.
GRACE
Evie had a picture of Nancy Beaton torn from a copy of Vogue. She kept it tucked between the frame and the mirror of their shared dressing table. Nancy was a shooting star, with a cascade of shining foil for a dress and a peculiar spiked hat jutting out from her head. In one hand she held a spear-like pole with sparkling streamers dangling from the tip and, behind her, there was a burst of silvery light. Evie thought it was the most beautiful thing she’d ever seen. ‘Imagine being Cecil Beaton’s sister, the lucky thing! Fame, parties, all those clothes. And she’s beautiful,’ Evie said, sighing. ‘Good thing, really. I don’t suppose he’d have much time for an ugly girl.’
Grace wasn’t so sure. She had become accustomed to the photograph, of course, seeing it every day, but she didn’t envy Nancy Beaton. The girl looked sad, Grace thought, and all of that shining material bunched behind her looked heavy, as if it were weighing her down. She didn’t look like a shooting star about to streak across a dark sky, she looked anchored to the earth. Trapped. Like a butterfly in a jar.
Dr Palmer wasn’t going to stop. Grace knew that she wasn’t especially worldly and that the things she knew about men could be written on the back of a postage stamp, but she understood that much. He was playing with her and the more she backed away, the better he liked it.
She looked into his eyes and saw something dark behind them. He looked at her the way a cat looks at a mouse. But also, sometimes, with a flash of recognition. That was the worst thing. Like there was something in her that had drawn him. A shadow self that called to him. That wanted him.
Grace didn’t tell anyone. She couldn’t tell anyone. The shame was too much and the shadow too dark. Palmer kept coming. He acted professionally in front of the other nurses, the sisters, his fellow house surgeons. When they were alone, or even when there was just a maid running a broom along the floor or sorting the linen, he showed her his real face.
He liked to find her in the sluice. More often than not she was immobilised before a sinkful of hot water, and if she had a companion, he would send the other nurse out with an errand.
He was good at pretending to be jovial. ‘Ah, if it isn’t my favourite washer-woman.’
Grace stared at the wall. There were tiny black cracks in the tile that were impossible to get really clean.
‘Does your father know that he sent you away to become a maid?’
Grace lifted her head a fraction.
‘Won’t he be pleased when you bring home a surgeon? That’s like winning the pools for a girl like you.’
‘I’m not going home,’ Grace said, realising the truth of it as she spoke. ‘I live here now.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous, child,’ Palmer said, lazily. ‘Everyone goes home eventually. One way or another. Besides,’ he smiled, ‘I’ll have to ask your father for your hand. The working classes are very traditional, in their way, I believe.’
Grace knew he was trying to get a rise out of her. He wanted her to hotly defend her family’s lower-middle-class status. He wanted her to be offended and upset, but he had chosen the wrong target.
She took a calming breath and dried her hands and arms with a towel. Her cuffs were on the side and she took strength from the sight of them. She wasn’t the girl Grace, not any more. She was Nurse Kemp. Unapproachable, unimpeachable. The words ‘touch me and you’ll lose a hand’ jumped into her mind and she wished she had the guts to say them. Evie would say them. Evie wouldn’t hesitate.
‘Dr Palmer,’ Grace said, ‘please don’t tease me. You’re not going to propose to me and, if you did, we both know that my answer would be no.’
Grace picked up one of her cuffs and began to fix it, her fingers shaking slightly.
Palmer looked momentarily blank, but then he rallied. ‘I could change your mind. A little romance, perhaps. I’ve been told I’m rather good at kissing.’
Grace’s fingers slipped on the buttons and her linen cuff fell to the floor. ‘I won’t,’ Grace said. ‘I’m sorry, sir, but I won’t kiss you.’
Palmer smiled as if he had anticipated this resistance, but that it meant exactly nothing. ‘Not here, Kemp. We’d need the proper setting. I was thinking we could go out together, into town.’
‘No, thank you,’ Grace managed. She wanted to dip down to the floor, to retrieve her cuff, but she was frozen in place. Palmer had got much closer without her noticing him moving.
He reached out and touched her cheek. ‘Dancing would be very good for you. It would help you to relax.’
‘I’m sorry, sir,’ Grace said. ‘I won’t go dancing with you.’ She tried to edge past him. ‘Or for dinner. Or to the pictures.’
That did it.
‘Good.’ Palmer spun her around then whispered into her ear: ‘We both know what you really want.’
Grace felt as if she’d been slapped. She tried to pull away, but with one of his arms around her waist and another across her shoulders and neck, she was held fast. She could feel the length of him pressing against her back. Feel his damp breath on her neck. She pulled away harder and he let her go, so suddenly that she stumbled a little. She kept moving, though. Through the door and into the ward.
Barnes looked up from the tea trolley, raised her eyebrows and then carried on, stirring sugar into a cup. ‘Cuffs,’ she said, then moved off down the ward, the wheels on the trolley squeaking.
MINA
I’d started seeing birds that weren’t there, that weren’t real, when I was a child, but it tailed off throughout my teens. I was distracted by the twin discoveries of bourbon and sex, of course, but it was more than not paying attention. They just didn’t seem to visit me any more and at eighteen, away from home and at university in England, they’d all but disappeared. Occasionally, a magpie would sit just a little too long on a wire above my head and, one Christmas, a robin sat outside the window of my student room like my own personal greetings card. Except it was sitting on a crushed lager can rather than a frost-coated tree branch, and it sat for too long in the same position to be real.
After his paranoia trip, Geraint emailed me (a gif of a baby owl which I stared at for ages, trying to parse the deeper meaning), but he didn’t telephone. I had the feeling he was embarrassed, which was highly unusual. He was always so brazen, his ego bulletproof. I thought, in my ignorance, that it was a good sign. That no matter how brave the face he’d put on, no matter how sharp the spikes on his homemade armour, he realised that he had gone too far. I assumed that it had been a wake-up call and he’d understood he couldn’t keep pushing himself so hard, that he had to cut down on his hours at work, and ease up on the drugs and whatever else he was doing. I decided he’d been on a collision course but had swerved at the last moment.
I was wrong.
I was studying hard at the time, stressed beyond belief by my exams, and when Geraint finally called, I let it go to voicemail. Part of me was angry with him for not calling sooner. I’d been so worried about him but that worry had morphed into frustration.
No matter how much I wanted to forget that fact, I couldn’t deny it. I had been cross with him and took pe
tty revenge by not calling him back. I’d planned to let him stew for a day or two, show him that I wasn’t always going to drop everything and come running, that he couldn’t keep playing the drama card.
It was an effort not to call him back that evening; our roles were so entrenched. I told myself that I would call him the next day or the day after that, and it would do him good to wait for a change.
That same night, I woke up sweating and terrified. I sat bolt upright, the way Ger used to when we shared a room, and, in that instant, I knew something terrible had happened. My face was wet with tears that had appeared while I slept and my throat felt raw and tight.
My phone began buzzing quietly and as I reached for it I became aware of a row of birds – black-eyed starlings – sitting on my duvet. There was no weight to them and they made no sound. They didn’t shift their feet or twitch their feathers. They sat completely still and silent, watching me take the call.
I knew it would be Pat before I saw the number. The knowledge was a black weight in my stomach as I reached for the phone. ‘Come to the hospital,’ she said. ‘It’s Geraint.’
I listened to the name of the hospital, Pat’s directions. Even in this, the ultimate crisis, she was calm and careful. She repeated the directions and the address of the hospital, made sure I knew where I was going. ‘Take a taxi, we’ll pay when you get here.’
I wanted to say that I didn’t care about the cost and that, of course, I had spare cash ready for an emergency (a lie), but I was consumed with the knowledge that I was going to be too late. That I was never again going to see Geraint alive. I don’t know if it was because he was my brother or because he was my twin or because of the birds sitting in a silent row on my bed, I just knew. No amount of therapy will convince me otherwise.
I can remember the hospital with startling clarity. I wish I didn’t, but it’s preserved like a museum diorama. I remember the green-grey walls and the harsh quality of the light. I know a male nurse spoke to me in a lilting Welsh accent of the kind I’d always found comforting and that when Uncle Dylan saw me, he stood up and pulled me to him. He called me cariad and I remember the pine resin and fresh air smell on his clothes. I remember, too, that Pat looked right through me as if I wasn’t even there.
In the Light of What We See Page 23