House. Tree. Person.

by Catriona McPherson

  Mona! Whose daughter knew it was real, no matter what I was telling myself, sitting here trying to name a child who’d never been and picking out imaginary benches I knew I’d never buy.

  I’d never buy one because Marco would never agree.

  The memories of our whispered words that night in the side ward were burned into me. I’d been taken away from all the other mums, and I didn’t know why. Maybe my stark face and empty arms would frighten them or maybe their sleepy smiles and milky warmth would send me raving. Whatever. I was in a side ward, curtains closed across the glass front wall and lights dim. Marco had taken away the flowers I’d brought in with me. The girls at work had bought them for me, a huge burst of orange and red gerbera, freesia, and gladioli, like a firework going off, and a balloon bobbing above them—You can do it!

  Afterwards, when I opened my eyes, shuffled to the toilet, brushed my teeth, shuffled back, choked down a cup of weak tea and finally looked around, there were no cards, no teddies, no ribboned parcels of tiny dresses.

  The nurses just outside at their station were speaking in low voices at first, no laughter. But by the end of the night they were back to normal, clucking and cooing at the other babies and giggling about what one of the dads had done. But by that time I was dressed and sitting on the side of the bed. I just needed the doctor to sign off on me and I was ready to go.

  “I know we can’t take her home,” I said to Marco. “I get that. I really do.”

  “Take … home?”

  “But I want to hold her. Just once.”

  “Ali.”

  “Or even just see her. I want to see her face.”

  “Face?” Marco said, sharply enough so that the nurses’ conversation outside dipped a little. “Ali, I thought you were awake when they told you. Didn’t you hear what they said?”

  “Anencephaly,” I said. “I heard.”

  “So why … ?” he said. His voice was gravelly with exhaustion, his face grey-yellow under long stubble and his breath sour from a night of coffee out of the machine. “You can’t see a face, Ally-pal. There’s nothing to see.”

  “I keep thinking I can hear her crying,” I said. “I hear her calling for me.”

  “We need to get you out of here,” Marco said. “They’ve given you the furthest away room but of course you can still hear them. You need to come home.”

  But it wasn’t the other babies I could hear. I mean, of course I heard them: their reedy voices lifted high in hunger or grunting rustily as the fumbling new mums tried to get them dressed and comfy. But I could hear something else besides. All the way home from the hospital I kept straining to see if I could still hear it over the stretching miles, and then I slumped into the emptiness when I was finally sure it was gone. That first night when I heard her in my dreams—“Mmmmhmmmm”—I felt no fear at all, only a wash of pure relief that she was still with me.

  It was the six months in the day clinic three days a week that turned her voice into a problem, a symptom, something to be recovered from. I went in there furred over with sleeplessness and loss and there, in group, in class, in session, I killed her all over again. I unpeeled her gripping fingers from around my heart and brushed her off me. I left her there and walked away without a backward glance, all the way to Australia and the perfect silence of being far too far away for her to find me.

  After that, any time I heard her voice my pulse rattled like dice in a cup and my mouth flooded bitter. If your head hurts, you take an aspirin. If your leg’s broken, you put a cast on. If your dead daughter calls your name, you ignore her.

  If, on the other hand, someone else’s daughter, eighteen years old, is in the kind of trouble I suspected Julia was in, you pay attention. But was she? Or was it all smoke and shadows?

  I squeezed my eyes tight and then lifted my head to look out, past the fretted woodwork of the gazebo this time, all the way to the far trees, trying to clear my brain. As I gazed out over the gardens, starting to feel my certainty drain away, getting the first whiff of the foolishness coming along at its back, I saw a sudden movement.

  Dr. Ferris was standing at the French window looking out into the garden. I thought she had a hand clapped to her head in a parody of shock or outrage, but when I saw her lips move and then saw her throw her head back and shake her hair, I knew she was on the phone to someone. And I knew it was someone who made her happy. She was laughing and, with her free hand, she smoothed the front of her throat and let one finger catch on the string of pearls at her collarbone. If it had been anyone else, I would have thought she was flirting. At least I could be sure she couldn’t see me sitting here in the shadows; she would never have carried on that way if she knew someone was watching.

  After another minute she hung up but kept her eyes on her phone and her thumbs busy. She lifted it to her ear. And gazed out. She seemed to be looking right at me when my phone started vibrating in my pocket. My fingers felt numb as I plucked it out and swiped the call to life.

  “Hello?”

  “Alison,” came Dr. Ferris’s voice, clipped and sure, down the line. I watched her turn away from the window and heard through the phone the woodpecker pock-pock-pock of her heels on the floor as she paced while she was speaking. “I think we talked about this but I didn’t expect to have to call on you quite so soon. Would it be at all possible for you to take a nightshift tonight?”

  “Tonight?” I said. It was on the tip of my tongue to say of course not. To ask her on what planet a woman with a family can do an overnight away from home at the drop of a hat, but I managed to stop in time. “What exactly would I have to do?” I said.

  “Sleep in Sylvie’s room with her,” Dr. Ferris said.

  “Sylvie?” I knew it had come out like a squawk.

  “Didn’t you know?” she said. She was back at the window again. “We always have someone sleep in Sylvie’s room. You haven’t been paying attention at shift change, have you?”

  “I thought the night shift stayed awake.” I had been paying attention at shift change, taking notes even. This was pure fantasy.

  “Of course,” said Dr. Ferris. “The nightshift has three awake and one on call. The one on call sleeps in Sylvie’s room.”

  She sounded so sure that she almost had me believing her. If I hadn’t been able to see her I might have swallowed it whole. As it was, I saw her take the phone away from her ear and stare at it, annoyed to have a pawn in her game not simply agree to go where she placed it.

  “Well?” she said, putting the phone back.

  “Okay,” I said. “I’ll need to slip home and get some things, but yes. Okay. Who should I ask what to do? Lars?”

  “No!” It was slightly too loud. “Come to my office. I’m busy just now but I’ll be there all afternoon. Come by before eight o’clock and I’ll go over things with you.”

  “Right-oh,” I said. “And it’s double-time, right? Even though I’m just on call and not actually working?”

  “Yes, yes, good grief,” she said. “I’ll see you this evening.” The line went dead and I saw her go back to worrying over her phone with her thumbs again. There was another short phone call to the same person as before. At least, I would have put money on it, because she laughed and stroked her throat again. But I wasn’t really watching closely now.

  Sylvie.

  Not Julia. Sylvie.

  Or not just Julia, but Sylvie too.

  And it made sense. After all, it was Sylvie that Dr. Ferris took me to see that very first day. It was Sylvie looking at me, making contact with me, that had unsettled her so. It was the thought of Sylvie drawing the Mercat Cross that rattled her. And then me taking Julia and Sylvie out together had enraged her. As it would if I was somehow scuppering some carefully laid plan.

  What careful plan? I asked myself as I sat there.

  There was only one thing I could think of that would get rid of Jul
ia, involve Sylvie, and could be laid at my door. I couldn’t even let myself think it, though. And I had to stop it.

  The French window was opening. As I watched, Dr. Ferris slipped out through a slim gap, her head still turned to the inside, leaving the door ajar. She stepped very softly down the three stone steps and, keeping close to the house wall, she hurried to the front corner and peeped round it. Seeing no one, she put her head down and scurried across the gravel to the last parking space, right under the trees, puddles all around, where she had left her car. She got in, closed the door without a sound and then, taking the brake off and pushing the clutch in, she used the little slope on the drive to roll silently away, not starting the engine until she was round the first bend. Even straining to catch it, I could hardly hear her.

  It might have been nothing. Even watching her, I thought maybe she was having an affair or maybe she’d heard the arrival of some heart-sink visitor she couldn’t face. I knew all about those. There was a woman who “dropped in” to Face Value whenever she was in town and wouldn’t take no for an answer, always sure I could squeeze her in if I tried. I used to get reception to buzz up and I’d leave by the fire escape.

  So Dr. Ferris’s sneak getaway might be nothing to do with my night shift, but sometimes it’s good to listen to your gut. And my gut was telling me it was a sign written in red letters, three feet high. I needed to tell the Swains to get Julia away; tell the—oh, what was Sylvie’s name?—that she was in danger. Hope they believed me.

  But I couldn’t ask Julia for her mum’s number. She might be faking her disorder but she was just a bit too good at it for me to trust her. And she was only eighteen. There must be another way. The new house Julia had spoken about had to be close. It was built on some remaining corner of the estate they’d sold to the army. But I couldn’t just drive around knocking on doors. I had to think of a way to find it.

  I put my chin up and my shoulders back and walked towards the front corner of the house as I had every right to do. Then, when I was in the lee of the walls and invisible to anyone looking out, I darted round the side, up the stone steps, and in at the French window.

  I went over to the hall door first to see if I could lock it against anyone trying to get in, but Dr. Ferris had had the same idea and the door was already bolted on the inside. I put my back against it and looked around. There was nothing so old-school as filing cabinets; even if there had been, they’d be locked, full of confidential patient information. There was a new phone book, still in its plastic wrapper, wedged into the top shelf of a low bookcase, but that pretty much summed it up. No one’s in the phone book these days. I unwrapped it anyway and checked, but Mona Swain certainly wasn’t and neither was Peregrine Uving. And what was Sylvie’s family’s name?

  Dr. Ferris didn’t have anything so handy as a Rolodex or a fat Filofax on her desktop either.

  So far, all I had done was walk through an open door, look in a phone book, and cast my eyes over the surfaces of a room. It was when I stepped around the desk and tugged the handle of the top drawer that I crossed the line. I don’t even know what I was looking for. Maybe that Filofax after all, or one of Mona Swain’s business cards. If she would even have business cards when she had no business. A little frog of hope leaped up into my throat when the drawer opened, and another one joined it when I recognised what I was looking at in there: invoices, some of them with cheques stapled to the tops. But there was no SWAIN amongst them.

  I tried the next drawer down, but it was full of highlighter pens and index cards, boxes of paperclips, and cartridges for a colour printer. Losing hope, I opened the bottom drawer.

  It took a long moment for the sight that met my eyes to make sense in my brain. I blinked twice, half expecting it to disappear. But when I reached my hand out, it was as real under my touch as the warm polished wood of the desktop where I put my other hand to steady myself in case I fell in a faint to the floor.

  It was in a plastic sandwich bag, sealed shut with that zip thing that I can never get to work, either unable to shut it or unable to prise it open. It was filthy, rusted and crusted with grit, the glass crazed and missing some shards that gathered in the bottom of the bag, but it was unmistakable. A Timex watch with its bracelet still closed. It had been wrenched from the skeletal hand of a long dead man without being opened.

  I slipped back out of the French window and ran round to go in the front door, not caring this time who saw me.

  Twenty-One

  Angel came first, as ever. I hurried into my little treatment room and called home. It took three calls to rouse him. The first one got kicked to the answering machine; the second one let me switch the automatic answer off. With the third call I let the bell ring out for a solid two minutes until, at last, enraged, Angel swiped up the phone and shouted, “Sod off, will you? The fuck is wrong with you?”

  “Angel, it’s Mum,” I said. “And I need you to listen to me. I don’t have time to go into it all just now, but I need you to promise me something. If Dr. Ferris gets in touch with you, hang up. If she comes to the door, don’t answer.”

  “Dr. Ferris?” he said. “Your boss? Why would she want to be phoning me?”

  “Dr. Ferris, your therapist,” I said. “Promise me.”

  “Mum,” said Angelo in his duh voice. “I haven’t got a therapist. What the hell are you talking about?”

  I said nothing for a minute, then the words tumbled out so fast even I couldn’t make sense of them. “Angelo, don’t lie to me. It’s too important. I know you spoke to her and I know she told you about Sylvie and the Mercat Cross.”

  “Told me about Sylvie?” he said.

  I bludgeoned on. I should never have told him his sister was called that name, but now wasn’t the time to fix it. “I know you’ve phoned her from our landline, Angel. And for God’s sake, I met you halfway down the drive that night you were so upset. Stop fannying about and start talking straight to me, right? You’ve told me you didn’t show the picture of the watch to anyone, but answer me this: was she there with you when you took the photo?”

  His breath was a long fuzzy blast down the line as he let it go.

  “Was Dr. Tamara Ferris at the Abbey with me when I saw the hand?” he said. “Eh, no Mum. What have you been smoking?”

  “Okay, okay,” I said, then my breath caught. “How do you know her first name?”

  “What?”

  “Never mind,” I said. “My brain’s fizzing, that’s all. Listen, email me the picture of the hand, eh?”

  “Why?”

  “Because I know for sure the watch wasn’t on the hand when the cops turned up.”

  “How?” he said. “Who told you that?”

  “Because I found it. It’s at Howell Hall.”

  “What?”

  “And Angel, I really need to you to be honest with me. Did you take it off the corpse and give it to the doctor?”

  “What? No! Fuck sake. What is it with you trying to make out I’m in cahoots with Dr. Bloody Ferris?”

  “Okay, okay,” I said. “I believe you. Angel, I don’t know what this means, but if she comes to the door, don’t let her in and for God’s sake don’t go anywhere with her. Okay?”

  “I promise I won’t go anywhere with Dr. Ferris,” Angel said. “Or let her in the house.”

  “And email me the—”

  “I have,” he said, and right enough I heard the plink of an email landing.

  “And stop talking to me as if I’m some kind of moron, eh?” I said. “You don’t know everything, Angelo.”

  “That makes two of us then,” he said and was gone.

  I opened the email and looked at the picture to make sure, but I knew already. There was no doubt of what I’d found. As to what it meant, that was a different question, one my brain couldn’t even take the first nibble at.

  I tried Marco’s phone, but it went to voic
email. So I tried T&C and got Melanie, who hadn’t forgiven me for making her feel bad about a pilfered stamp and was in no mood to help me.

  “He’s out,” she said.

  “Can you tell me when he’ll be back?”

  “If he’s not answering his phone … ” Mel said. “Your marriage is your business.”

  “If he’s not answering his phone it means he’s driving,” I said. “If he gets back can you tell him to call me? Or—here’s a thought—do you know where he’s going? To a job? A wholesaler? Can you give me a number?”

  “I’ve got no more idea where your husband is than you have, Ali,” she said. “I might not be the employee of the month in your opinion, but I know more than to grill my new boss about his doings.”

  “Well, can you maybe put me on to the manager?” I said.

  “Chrissake, how many different ways have I got to tell you?” she said. “Are you away to la-la-land again, likes of?”

  I hung up and stared at the phone. La-la-land? How did Melanie from school know that I’d been … a mental health service user was what it was called these days. The rest of her words were lost under that and didn’t hit me until much later. Didn’t even graze me as they went whooshing by.

  Surraya was in the big meeting room with her depression group: Jo and Harriet, dragged away from their jigsaw for once, and two more I didn’t recognise. One of them was crying softly into a crumpled tissue.

  “I’m so sorry,” I said, hovering at the door, “but can I have a quick word?”

  Surraya’s eyebrows lowered and her eyes were like chips of granite as she glared at me. “One minute,” she said to the group and she laid a hand on the shoulder of the crying woman, patting her as she passed.

  “Ali, you can’t do this,” she whispered when we were outside in the corridor. “Group’s sacrosanct.”