Distress Signals

by Catherine Ryan Howard

  Then Papa would wink at Romain in the back seat and whenever Mama caught him doing it she’d say that he needed to decide whose side he was on.

  This Friday though, she had something new to say.

  ‘Ask him about the bird, why don’t you?’ she said to Papa. ‘Get him to tell you what happened to the bird. Let’s see who has an overactive imagination then.’

  ——

  Yesterday was the first day in a week it hadn’t rained. After being cooped up with Mama and Mikki and Jean in the house for so long, Romain was excited to get outside, to get away from them. He preferred the world when it was quiet.

  The path to the lake went past the old shed at the end of the garden where Papa kept things he never used. There was a big rusty lock on the door of it and Romain and Jean knew that they weren’t allowed inside. At the back of it, just next to the gap in the hedge that led to the lake, stood an old plastic water barrel.

  As Romain passed it, he heard a strange noise coming from inside.

  A flapping noise.

  Splashing.

  Chirping?

  Romain had to stand on tip-toes to see over the lip of the barrel. It was a third-full with greenish water and smelled funny and a little bird was near the bottom of it, drowning.

  It looked like a robin, but Romain wasn’t sure if it was. He didn’t know a lot about birds. He thought they liked water, but this one didn’t seem to. Only its head and the ends of its wings were above the water, and it was chirping and flapping and hopping up and down, going crazy, trying to get out.

  Romain spent a few seconds thinking about what he could do. He could do nothing and carry on down to the lake, but then the bird would probably die. That wouldn’t be very nice. He could try to find something to pull the bird out with, but he wasn’t sure he was tall enough to do that. He could go get help, but if he told Mama about this, he’d probably get in trouble for it somehow. He always did. She’d find a way.

  How else could he get the bird out of the barrel?

  That’s when Romain got the idea to pull the barrel over, so all the water and the bird would come out.

  It took a while, because Romain wasn’t strong enough to pull it over all by himself. In the end, he had to hang from the side of the barrel with his arms outstretched, pulling on it with all his weight, before it tipped over. He tried to jump out of the way then but the water came out before he could. He felt it, cold and slimy, splashing against his legs. There was much more of it in there than he’d thought and it went everywhere in just a second, crashing out of the barrel and spreading all over the ground.

  Everything went quiet.

  Even the chirping had stopped.

  At first Romain thought the bird had flown away and he was happy. His plan had worked! But then he heard the flapping noise again – quieter now and slower too, not flap-flap-flap like it was before – and when he followed it, he found the bird lying on its side in the muddy grass.

  He could see its little chest going up and down, like it was breathing. He wondered if it was just tired after all the chirping and now just wanted to sleep.

  ‘Romi, what the hell are you doing?’

  It was Mama’s voice.

  Romain’s heart sank.

  He turned towards her. She was looking around, at the barrel on the ground; the wet, muddy grass; the stains on his jeans where the water had splashed him.

  ‘What’s going on here, Romi?’ She peered over his shoulder. ‘What’s that, down there?’ She took a step forward, careful where she put her feet, and looked down into the grass behind him. ‘What the . . .’

  By now, the flapping noise had stopped too.

  His mama took a couple of steps back quickly, away from the bird, putting one of her sandals right into the mud.

  ‘Romi, I asked you a question. Answer me. What did you do?’

  ‘It was drowning, Mama,’ he said, looking up at her. ‘The bird was drowning. But now it’s not any more.’

  ——

  Papa told him about the Sleepover School the very next day.

  ‘It’ll be fun,’ Papa said. They were on the rowboat out on the lake, eating chocolate bars with footballers on them that Papa had brought home from the city. ‘You’ll do your schoolwork and play with your friends and eat dinner and sleep, all in the same place. It’ll be like being on holiday.’

  ‘But there’s no school on holiday,’ Romain said.

  ‘Yes, well... Look, Romi, it’s hard for your mother, okay? Being here all week without me, trying to look after the three of you by herself. We need to figure out a way to help her.’

  ‘Send Jean to Sleepover School then. He’d love to go. He’d get to stay in bed even longer because school would be right there.’

  ‘He’s too young to go now. It’s a big boys’ school.’

  ‘Please, Papa. I don’t want to go. I want to stay here. And if I go there, I won’t be here when you are.’

  Papa looked away, out over the lake.

  ‘Well, I’ll try to talk to your mother, Romi. Okay? I’ll try. I’ll see what I can do. But you’ll have to do something for me in return. You’ll have to start being good. Really good. All the time, no matter what. Like Jean. And if you can manage that for, say, one whole month, then we’ll see about school.’

  ‘But Jean isn’t good! He just pretends to be.’

  Papa frowned. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘He’s just good to get things. Like yesterday, Mama said whoever ate all their dinner would get some ice cream, so Jean ate all his dinner to get the ice cream, and then Mama said he was good. But he wasn’t! He just wanted the ice cream.’

  ‘Did you eat all your dinner?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why not?’

  Romain shrugged. ‘Because I don’t like ice cream.’

  Papa looked at him funny for a second and then laughed.

  ‘Okay, Romi,’ he said. ‘Fair enough. But what do you think? Are you going to be a good little boy for me? For your mama? Will you promise?’

  Romain really didn’t want to go away to Sleepover School, so he promised Papa that he would try his best.

  ——

  At first it was easy. Come Monday morning, he got dressed without delay and brushed his teeth before coming downstairs. He ate all his breakfast without complaining that the cornflakes were soggy even though they were really soggy, and when he was done he brought his and Jean’s empty bowls to the sink. He left for school before he had to be told to, and while he was there he stayed quiet and in his seat. He didn’t listen to the teachers – he never did – but Mama wouldn’t know that. The teachers didn’t either. After school he walked straight home without stopping and, as soon as he got in, he changed out of his uniform and hung it up in the wardrobe.

  But then, in the afternoon, things started to go wrong.

  Papa had told him to be good like his brother, so Romain started watching Jean to see what he did so he could copy him. They’d both be pretending then, but things would be easier for Mama and Romain wouldn’t have to go away to any awful Sleepover School.

  He watched from the doorway while Mama sat down to look at the TV. After a while, Jean left his toy trains abandoned on the floor and climbed up beside her on the sofa. He snuggled up against Mama, who smiled at him and put an arm around his shoulders and gave him a squeeze.

  Watching them gave Romain an ache in his belly. Mama never hugged him like that. He hadn’t really thought about it before, but he realised now that he wanted her to.

  So he went to the sofa and climbed up on Mama’s other side and smiled at her exactly like Jean had.

  But Mama didn’t hug him or squeeze him. She looked away from him and got all stiff instead. A few minutes later she told Romain to go sit on the armchair across the room instead, on his own.

  Romain didn’t
know what he’d done wrong.

  Soon after that it was dinnertime. Chicken stew, Romain’s least favourite. It looked like the muddy water from the lake and he knew it would taste like it too. Mama never made anything nice. Dessert was chocolate mousse in pots, but only if their plates were cleared. Romain didn’t like chocolate mousse and he’d probably feel sick if he tried to clear his plate, but he remembered what his papa had said. He was supposed to be good. He was supposed to do what Jean did.

  So when Jean clapped his hands and said, ‘It’s my favourite, Mama!’ Romain did exactly the same a moment later.

  Mama turned to stare at him.

  ‘What are you doing, Romi?’ she asked. ‘What is this? What are you up to now?’

  ‘Copying Jean,’ Romain said, because that was the truth.

  ‘Copying . . . Why?’

  ‘Because Papa said to.’

  ‘Papa?’ Mama said. ‘Because Papa said to?’

  She sounded like she was making fun of him.

  Romain wasn’t sure what he was supposed to say now so he said nothing. He stayed quiet for the rest of the meal. Mama did too. He cleared his plate but didn’t get any mousse, which was good because he didn’t want any anyway.

  Afterwards, while Mama was doing the dishes in the kitchen, Mikki started crying. He was only a baby so he was always in his cot in the living room and, now, Jean and Romain couldn’t hear the TV over him.

  Jean went into the kitchen and asked Mama to turn up the TV, but she said no and told him to make his baby brother quiet instead. Jean went back to the cot and held Mikki’s hand and made funny faces but Mikki didn’t stop crying. He just started doing it louder.

  So Romain tried instead.

  He’d seen Mama make Mikki quiet lots of times. Whenever he was crying, she’d take him out of his cot and hold him in her arms and walk back and forth across the floor, shaking him up and down and saying ssshhh a lot.

  Mikki was heavier than Romain thought he would be and his arms got tired almost straightaway, but he remembered his promise to Papa so he did it anyway – and it worked!

  After a few minutes, Mikki stopped crying. He looked like he’d fallen asleep. Careful not to wake him up again, Romain gently put him back in his cot and covered him with a blanket.

  But when Mama came into the room a while later, she wasn’t happy at all.

  She looked at Mikki and starting shaking her head and saying ‘No’ a lot and then when she picked him up she started screaming and crying and then she knelt on the floor with Mikki in her arms and shouted at Romain.

  ‘What have you done this time, you evil little shit? Oh, God. And to think I was out there feeling guilty about you! Oh, God. No. Please, no. What have you done . . .’

  Papa was called and told to come home right now and doctors came in an ambulance for Mikki and Mrs Laurier came from next door to bring Jean and Romain over to her house, and a week later Romain got sent to Sleepover School anyway and Papa didn’t talk to him at all in the car the whole way there.

  Even though Romain had kept his promise.

  He had tried his best.

  All Romain wanted was to be a good little boy.

  He just couldn’t figure out how.

  Adam

  I always knew when someone was outside our apartment because the building had a tell. Whenever the fire door at the end of the hall was opened, our front door got pulled outwards, the wood against wood meeting in a loud clunk. Some kind of suction thing. When I heard it on the Tuesday evening I held my breath, waiting for a key to turn in the lock or one of my neighbour’s doorbells to sound. But neither came. There was only a pair of voices, whispering furiously in the hall.

  I tiptoed to the front door and looked through the peephole. Moorsey and Rose were on the other side.

  I turned my head to press an ear against the door. Listened.

  ‘You have to tell him,’ Moorsey was saying. ‘You know it’s the right thing to do.’

  ‘I don’t have to do anything.’

  ‘But you should.’

  ‘Sarah’s my best friend.’

  ‘And I’m his.’

  ‘You tell him then.’

  ‘Maybe I will.’

  ‘Maybe I’ll move back out.’

  ‘Rose, please.’

  ‘I’m sorry. I just don’t know what to do here. What are we supposed to do?’

  The talking stopped. I put my eye back to the peephole and saw them hugging. When they broke apart, Moorsey kissed Rose on the cheek and then Rose reached for the doorbell.

  I opened the door just as she pressed it.

  ‘I thought I heard voices out here,’ I said.

  I turned and walked into the kitchen without another word, sensing a silent exchange of meaningful glances behind my back. Footsteps on the hall’s hardwood floor followed me. Someone closed the front door, snapping its lock into place.

  I took a seat at the head of the kitchen table. Moorsey sat on my right, Rose next to him.

  I looked to Rose. Everyone always said that she and Sarah could be sisters, they looked so alike. Blue eyes; brown hair with blonde highlights; small, full mouths. But that evening there was nothing familiar about Rose to me, not when she was sitting in our kitchen with no Sarah in sight.

  ‘I don’t know where she is, Adam,’ she said. ‘Not if she’s not at that hotel. Really. I don’t.’

  ‘But you know more than I do about where she’s been.’

  ‘I don’t know anything. Not for sure.’

  ‘You know who she’s with.’

  Rose looked to Moorsey for help.

  ‘What’s going on, Ad?’ he asked me. ‘What’s happened?’

  I told him about not being able to get through to Sarah’s phone, about Jack and Maureen not hearing from her either, about the one-night stay at the hotel and the pre-booking of a middle seat.

  ‘The hotel says they don’t even do conferences,’ I said, ‘and when Maureen and Jack called Anna Buckley—’

  Rose’s head snapped towards me.

  ‘They called her office?’

  ‘Oh, it gets much worse than that. They’re completely freaking out. If they don’t hear from her soon, they’ll probably call Interpol to launch an international missing persons operation.’

  The colour drained from Rose’s face until the pink powder she had on her cheeks stood out in circles on her blue-white skin.

  ‘But why?’

  ‘Because they think something terrible has happened to their daughter.’ I heard my voice rise. ‘Has it, Rose? Has something terrible happened?’

  ‘This wasn’t how it was supposed to go.’

  ‘How what wasn’t?’

  ‘I can’t tell you.’ Rose’s eyes blurred with tears. ‘I’m Sarah’s friend.’

  I turned to Moorsey and said, ‘And I thought you were mine.’

  ‘You have to tell him,’ he said to Rose. ‘This is Sarah’s fault, not yours. She shouldn’t have put you in this position. Just tell him what you know and let her pick up the pieces when she gets back.’

  ‘But I can’t.’

  ‘Do you think she’d want her parents to be worried about her like this?’ Moorsey said. ‘We only have two possible outcomes now. Which one would she prefer?’ He put an arm around Rose’s shoulders, pulled her towards him. Whispered in her ear. ‘Just tell him what you know, lovely. You can’t do anything else.’

  I hadn’t been around them much since they’d got together. I’d never seen them like this. He called her lovely? I felt a pang of regret that I’d never thought of calling Sarah that. What would I be calling her now, after this?

  What was this?

  ‘Okay,’ Rose said. She sniffed, wiped at her eyes. Slipped out from under Moorsey’s arm, sat up straight and looked at me. ‘Sarah is in Barcelona, but not fo
r work. That was just . . .’ A pause. ‘That was just her cover story.’

  Her cover story.

  I knew then that everything was about to change.

  ‘Adam,’ Rose said. ‘This may hurt.’

  She paused before she spoke again, and while at the time that beat felt interminable, there is nothing I wouldn’t do to go back to it now. Now, ignorance seems like a nice place to spend time. Although I didn’t know it then, that pause marked the end of my Before and the beginning of this awful After. A moment of silence the universe had the good manners to observe before it tore the fabric of my life to shreds.

  ‘Sarah’s seeing someone else,’ Rose said.

  I honestly think my heart actually came to a stop, just for a second.

  ‘I don’t know much about him,’ she went on, in a rush now that she’d blown up the dam. ‘I do know that he’s American, and he’s married. Or was married, I’m not sure which. She met him through work. He lives in Dublin, I think. I don’t know his name. She just called him The American.’

  My heart cranked back up and got going again, faster.

  Harder.

  Louder.

  The noise of it in my own ears was deafening. Couldn’t Moorsey and Rose hear that thumping?

  ‘They started texting each other,’ Rose said. ‘Emailing, things like that. This was maybe two, three months ago? It was innocent, at first. They met for a coffee a few times, then . . . Well, I don’t know all the details. Sarah felt bad enough as it was without gossiping about it with me. But seriously, Adam. How long did you expect her to wait?’

  I wanted to ask, Wait for what? but didn’t feel confident that I could speak.

  ‘She didn’t want to hurt you,’ Rose went on, ‘and she didn’t want to leave you alone to fend for yourself. She cares about you so much, Adam. You don’t even know how much. I told her if she wasn’t feeling the same as she had before, then she should leave. That if she felt like you two were more friends than anything else, then you should break up. But you know what she said? She said she couldn’t do that to you. She looked like she was tearing up just at the thought. But then your script sold . . .’ Rose shifted in her seat, glanced at Moorsey before continuing, ‘You’d have your own money. You could afford to get your own place. Your career would be taking off. Sarah wouldn’t . . . She wouldn’t have to worry about you. But there was still some waiting to do, and I just think . . . Sarah couldn’t wait any more, okay? She’d waited long enough. He had to go to Barcelona for work and he asked Sarah to go with him. She said she would. It was time to start thinking about her for a change. She’d tell you she was going to a conference, and call in sick to the office. She didn’t say anything to Jack and Maureen because they’d only be asking questions and she rarely sees them during the week anyway. She’d only be gone for a few days. They could speak on the phone and not even know she wasn’t here. She didn’t . . .’ Rose bit her lip. ‘She didn’t want to have to tell any more lies than she had to.’