by Paula Daly
Bonita uncurled herself and angled her small head towards Leon.
‘Kind of,’ I said carefully.
Alistair Armitage was the author who heckled Leon at events. The one who accused him of taking his ideas.
‘How do I know him?’ he asked.
‘He’s a writer … you just sort of know him through work.’
‘Oh,’ he said, and he seemed relieved. ‘Good. Thought I was going mad there for a minute.’ And he took himself back to his room.
I watched him go.
What had prompted that particular memory? I puzzled. Seemed like an odd thing to suddenly pop into Leon’s head. Sure, his recollection of things returned with no real orderliness – memories from thirty years ago resurfaced mixed up with things that had happened back in July. But there had been a kind of running theme so far. Most of what Leon remembered were events that had elicited heightened emotions: births, deaths, feeling afraid as a child … that sort of thing.
Where had he plucked Alistair Armitage from?
I frowned. I grabbed my laptop from beneath the bed and typed ‘Alistair Armitage’ into Google.
Who was this guy and why had Leon suddenly remembered him?
I scrolled through the results. It seemed ‘Alistair Armitage Author’ was big into social media. He was a mustard-keen blogger. He’d self-published a couple of novels, but without the weight and money of a big publishing house behind him, it looked as if he’d had to rely on social media to get his products out there. This could be an uphill battle, I knew, because I had friends who’d self-published and it required a lot of hard work to get the books noticed.
I read a couple of Alistair’s recent blog posts and decided I needed to talk to him.
Up until now, I’d always taken Leon at his word that of course Alistair Armitage was a hanger-on, a jealous wannabe, someone who had taken to stalking Leon because his own work had yet to resonate with publishers. And he was desperate to blame his lack of success on something, anything, rather than admit his own lack of talent.
But what if that wasn’t entirely true?
What if Alistair Armitage was not a misguided hapless failure and there was actually some truth to the story of Leon sabotaging his work?
Was that possible?
I didn’t want to believe it, and – granted – it was unlikely, but then again, it was also unlikely that a successful author such as Leon should lie about his financial situation to everyone he knew. And also keep hidden the fact that he was unable to finish his latest novel.
I sent Alistair a quick email.
Dear Alistair
You don’t know me. I’m Jane Campbell. Leon Campbell’s wife. I know you two have a ‘history’. Would you be willing to talk to me? I have some questions. I’m sure you heard about Leon’s brain injury and things are quite difficult for us at the moment. I’d appreciate a moment or two of your time if you could spare it.
Kind regards
Jane Campbell
Immediately, I got a response.
Dear Jane
I have been interviewed by the police three times. I have nothing further to say.
Sincerely
Alistair Armitage
Interviewed three times? I’d got the impression that Hazel Ledecky had dismissed my information on Alistair Armitage. That she hadn’t taken it seriously at all. Perhaps she was doing more behind the scenes than we were giving her credit for.
I sent a reply.
Dear Alistair
I appreciate that. And I really wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t important. I feel like you could be the missing link in finding out what happened to Leon. Do think about it. Please.
Jane
And then I got this:
Dear Jane
I find it hard to talk about this without it having a deleterious effect on my health. I have spent a small fortune on medications, supplements, counselling, meditation retreats, osteopathy, acupuncture … I could go on. I am currently experimenting with CBD oil for anxiety-related problems (it’s extracted from the cannabis plant, now legal in the UK) and this, finally, seems to be working. My point is this: I’ve come a long way since your husband’s actions ruined my life. My health is everything. I value it more than my writing.
I understand that you are looking for answers but I am not the person to supply them. In my experience, someone like Leon Campbell, who I have been consistently disappointed in because of his inability to tell the truth, does not oppress the little people to further his own career in isolation. There will be others he has hurt.
Please do not contact me again. Just the mere fact of writing this email has caused the tremor in my right forearm to return. Something that I thought I’d seen the back of.
Alistair
OK, so he was a little more upset and affected by his quarrel with Leon than I’d first anticipated.
But that kind of reaction to failure wasn’t exactly unheard of amongst the writing community. I had online writing friends who’d had to have therapy when one member of our writers’ group got a publishing deal and they didn’t. Suddenly, people who’d at one time been chatting on Twitter almost hourly, supporting one another, championing one another, could now not even bring themselves to type an emoticon.
Writers are a sensitive bunch. We feel more intensely, sulk more readily. I’ve heard it said that to be a writer you must be thin-skinned enough to feel the pain of others deeply, and as thick-skinned as a rhinoceros to be able to withstand all the rejection.
Alistair Armitage was obviously pretty thin-skinned. But I found it hard to believe that Leon was responsible for all his health issues. He seemed like the kind of guy who just couldn’t let go of the past. One who blamed his current situation on everyone but himself. A common enough affliction.
But that line about Leon oppressing people to get what he wanted? That made me pause. Was there any truth to it?
Pre-brain injury, Leon would have described himself as a bleeding-heart liberal. He fought against injustice. He was outspoken on the rights of minorities. But when push came to shove, like many an outspoken socialist, would Leon feather his own nest before helping out a neighbour in need?
Undoubtedly, yes.
I needed to find out the truth of what happened with Alistair even if it all came to nothing. There was certainly more traction to the idea that Leon was targeted because of unpaid debts. But there was more I needed to know about Leon’s state of mind before the attack.
Perhaps that was the answer.
Perhaps the key to all of this lay within Leon himself.
I got up and used the loo. On my way back to the lounge, I looked in on Leon. He was asleep again, sprawled diagonally across the bed: one leg was thrown wide, out of the duvet, and he was snoring softly. A slice of amber light illuminated the breadth of his chest and I watched as it rose through a number of inhalations. Like this, he looked like the old Leon. My Leon. And the cold stone of loneliness I’d been carrying around inside my stomach since the day of his attack felt heavier than ever.
The next morning, Wednesday, I sat across the breakfast table from Leon, watching him carefully.
He was joking around with the kids, going cross-eyed every time he put his spoon to his mouth, and Martha thought this was beyond funny. Jack, more reserved, and knowing that this behaviour would not have been tolerated in the past (as Leon would have been in his pre-writing, stressed-out state), spooned cereal into his mouth carefully and methodically.
I caught Jack’s eye. It’s OK, I tried to communicate, go with it. And he stopped eating, nodded at me almost imperceptibly, before asking Leon if he knew how to hang a spoon from his nose.
‘Did I used to do that?’ asked Leon.
‘No,’ said Jack.
‘OK, son, then let’s try it … Martha,’ he said, ‘you try it too.’
I reached forward to grab Martha’s spoon. It was covered in Weetabix and the lot would end up inside her hair. Leon didn’t think through these spur-of-
the-moment ideas, had no recollection of how Martha would howl like a banshee when you tried to neaten her up. But then suddenly Martha laughed out loud, so uproariously, so delighted by Leon’s attempt at hanging his spoon from his nose (unsuccessfully), that I sat back in my chair again.
Let them play. Play was the one thing they’d been short of, being ferried as they had been to my mother’s all too often. My mother was the least playful person I knew when it came to little kids. Men, by contrast, she could act playful around for hours, without ever becoming tired of performing for their amusement.
‘Leon,’ I said casually, ‘remember last night you asked about Alistair Armitage?’
‘No.’
One thing about Leon’s new personality was you always got a straight answer.
‘Was he important to me?’ he asked.
‘Not important exactly,’ I said. ‘But he was …’ I paused, searching for the right word. ‘I think he was significant.’
‘Significant.’ He shook his head. ‘Sorry, I’ve got nothing. What did he look like?’
‘Kind of featureless. It doesn’t really matter if you can’t remember him. I just wanted to know.’
I sent the kids to brush their teeth. Martha tended to simply suck on the end of the toothbrush rather than endeavour for any kind of sideways action but I decided her attempt would have to do today. I needed to be at Lark Lane community centre for nine thirty, so would have to go straight there after dropping Jack at school and Martha at nursery. Creative writing was followed by a West African drumming session and the teacher purportedly became rather hostile if he was late in starting.
Leon stood and removed the breakfast dishes from the table, taking them over to the dishwasher and beginning to place them inside with great care. He’d been taught how to stack the dishwasher correctly by Matt, the occupational therapist at the rehab unit, and Matt was pretty anal about what went where. ‘Leon,’ I said gently, ‘I usually just rinse the breakfast stuff in the sink. It only takes a minute. Leave the things on the worktop and I’ll do it if you like.’
He turned. ‘Do I know this already?’
I smiled. ‘Kind of,’ I answered, because I mentioned it each day. It was one of my secret tests to assess how his short-term memory was doing.
Leon deposited the rest of the dishes next to the sink before sitting at the table with a pen and his stack of yellow Post-it notes. Then, taking an extraordinary amount of time over each word, he wrote out, in a cursive, decorative hand: ‘Breakfast bowls to be washed in sink.’
One of the oddities of the brain injury was that Leon had reverted to the joined-up handwriting that he’d learned as a child. For as long as I’d known him, and I’m sure for all of his adult life, Leon had written in boxy capitals. The handwriting was a nice throwback, one of those few pleasant anomalies that sometimes happened with brain-injured patients. Like those people who woke from a coma speaking fluent Spanish. Or the ability to balance quadratic equations.
The Post-it notes were everywhere.
I gestured to the one on the wall by the light switch. ‘Can you remember what that says?’
Leon rose from the table. Clearly he couldn’t remember as he moved closer to the small yellow square. He read, ‘Nurse, Wednesday 10 a.m.’
He frowned and then turned around to face me. ‘For me?’ he asked.
I nodded.
‘Is today Wednesday?’
I nodded again.
‘Why would I need a nurse?’
‘She’s coming to chat to you. It’s part of the follow-up care you receive from the rehab unit. They keep a close eye on all their discharged patients to check they’re coping and to assess what sort of support they might need.’
Not true.
They’d only agreed to send someone round because I’d begged.
‘What do you mean, what sort of support I might need?’ Leon said. ‘I don’t need any support. I’m OK as I am.’
‘Maybe someone to talk to about how you’re feeling so you don’t get so anxious and irritable? That would be OK, wouldn’t it? Someone to help you work stuff out that you might be struggling with?’
‘I don’t feel anxious and irritable,’ he said simply.
Conscious of the time, I let it go. I got the kids into their coats and shoes and took the car keys from their hiding place within a pocket of one of Martha’s old coats. It would be at least six months until Leon would be allowed to get behind the wheel again but that had not stopped him from trying. The sensible thing would’ve been to get rid of Leon’s car. It couldn’t be used. But when I’d raised the subject with him he’d reacted as though I’d suggested the removal of his penis. So for now, the car stayed. It was parked on the street. Which of course would be driving Lawrence insane but he’d not said a word. Not one word.
Halfway out of the door, I shouted to Leon to stay away from the toaster and the oven, and told him I’d be back by eleven. I pulled the door closed and in the past this would have been the moment that I’d have shouted out one last ‘I love you!’ the kids chiming in: ‘Love you too, Daddy!’
But we didn’t really do that any more.
25
Returning home, after class, I saw there were no spaces left on the street except for one outside Lawrence and Rose’s house. I’d not parked on their side since Leon had backed into their wall, as it seemed as though I was crossing a line of some sort. I almost drove on. Almost did another circuit in the hope of something becoming available, but then I was very firm with myself. This was my street too.
I pulled into the gap and then tried to act blasé as I retrieved my handbag and the small bag of groceries from the passenger-side footwell. No big deal. Nothing to make a fuss about.
And it was when I was closing the car door that I saw her.
Rose was standing in her front window watching me. Glaring at me. She was very still. Like the time just before she aimed her missile at Bonita.
Her face seemed smooth, completely without expression, and if I hadn’t known better, I might have thought her unreal.
I swallowed. Busied myself with my keys.
And then I thought: No. Enough of this.
So I turned to face her. I didn’t gesture. Didn’t smile. I simply stood my ground and stared back at her, willing her to lose her nerve and move away.
She didn’t.
She stuck it out. Seconds felt like minutes and I could feel my heart thumping in every one of my muscles as I wondered what motivated this woman to behave as she did.
I can stay here all day, Rose, I was trying to convey with my eyes. You’re not going to creep me out with your weirdness, when suddenly I heard the pip-pip of a car horn behind me.
I turned and saw Erica slow her car, lower her window.
‘You all right, honey?’ she sang. ‘Leon behaving himself?’
And I smiled. Nodded. Told her I’d be across later for a cuppa and some adult conversation if she fancied.
When I turned around again I saw Rose had closed her curtains. But I knew she was still watching. I could feel it. I could feel her eye on me from the gap in between the drapes.
I crossed the street angrily.
I put my key in the lock, vowing to have a word with Lawrence about Rose, sod what Ledecky said about keeping away. She was becoming unnerving. And I really didn’t need to feel any more uneasy than I already did when—
On the tinted glass of the front door was a yellow Post-it note. ‘I don’t want to talk to you. Go away’, it said, in Leon’s careful, cursive script.
My heart sank. Jesus Christ, Leon. Not today.
He’d left this for the assessor. He’d sent the assessor away before she’d even had the chance to talk to him.
I slammed open the door and dumped my bag in the hallway, shouting, ‘Leon!’ ready for a fight.
He couldn’t do this. I’d pleaded with the rehab unit for this evaluation. He couldn’t just say he didn’t want it and pretend he wasn’t in. I needed this carer. I n
eeded some back-up. I couldn’t carry on doing this on my own.
‘Leon! Where the hell are you?’
I heard sounds from upstairs. I stopped in my tracks and listened.
‘Leon?’
‘Yoohoo!’ called out a cheerful voice.
There were footsteps at the top of the stairs.
‘Up here. Leon’s giving me the guided tour.’
It was a woman’s voice. Pleasant. Accommodating. She wasn’t visible from where I was standing but she sounded around sixty.
‘We’re almost done!’ she sang. ‘Be down in a minute.’
I could see her in my mind’s eye as a rounded woman with soft white flesh, a woman who radiated a floral aroma when she moved.
I exhaled. Calm down, I told myself. Make a good impression. I was still rattled after Rose but she didn’t need to think I was a loose cannon as well.
I went through to the kitchen and put the kettle on. Opening the fridge to retrieve the milk, I saw that Leon had added a Post-it to a jar of apricot jam. ‘Not nice’, he’d written.
I smiled.
He wasn’t a fan of it before the brain injury either. He preferred raspberry.
Leon had read somewhere once that children needed to be presented with new foods as often as twelve times before they would accept and develop a liking for them. Something he’d put into practice with his own children, and something that I could find pretty draining after a long day alone with them (especially when one of them was either whimpering or gagging over whatever was on the end of their fork). But Leon would persist. And when I tried to intervene, saying that they were still so little, and I was certain they would be eating Brussels sprouts by the time they were seventeen, he would say that that laissez-faire attitude was exactly the reason teenagers today only ate boneless chicken. His new change of policy amused me. One taste and the apricot jam was deemed too unpleasant for a second try.
I could hear Leon and the woman making their way downstairs. She was telling him that her knees were not what they once were, and she found going downstairs more difficult than going up. ‘Ageing,’ she declared, ‘is no fun at all, Leon. And the thing about it is, you never think it’s going to happen to you! I used to roll my eyes when my mother complained about her poor old bones. Now I wish I’d been more sympathetic because—