by Ann Morgan
‘Come on,’ he says, taking your hand. This time he leads the way.
55
Just gone three, according to the clock above the door, and outside it was dark. The lights were low, the humming and sighing of the machines muffled. Night lay like a blanket over everything deadening sound. If she popped her head out of the room now, the corridor would look like something from a horror film: deserted, jaundiced, grim. Smudge sat blinking in the chair by the window. What had happened? Had she fallen asleep? How come they hadn’t kicked her out?
The room shrank and expanded with each sigh of the ventilator. Other rooms tried to crowd in and take its place: Nick and Hellie’s attic. The bedroom in the maisonette in Walworth. The one at the unit. The room at Beryl’s place. The one back at Mother’s house where two girls lay side by side all those years ago. Single beds, all of them, with only one exception: that apartment room in Amsterdam. None of them truly hers.
She screwed up her eyes against the memories and shook her head. When she opened them, she saw Hellie was watching her.
‘Hello,’ said Hellie.
‘Hello,’ said Smudge. Shock sent ripples through her, making her arms and legs numb.
Hellie wrinkled her nose. ‘Well, this is a turn up for the books,’ she said.
Smudge said nothing. The moment stretched. She had the sense that everything had turned to porcelain and if she made a false move the world might smash.
‘You must hate me,’ said Hellie at length, wincing as though the words were painful.
Smudge shifted in her chair. The plastic cover grunted under her, farted. She thought of the letter with its manic scrawl.
‘No,’ she said. ‘I did, but not any more.’
Hellie nodded. Seemed to understand.
‘I had to do what I did,’ she said, her voice rasping and faint.
‘Because of Father,’ anticipated Smudge. ‘Because of what you saw.’
Hellie inclined her head.
‘I didn’t have the strength to be her as she was,’ she said. ‘To be Ellie. I couldn’t live to that script.’
She paused. The tube in her throat glistened. It occurred to Smudge that she should call someone, alert the staff to Hellie’s consciousness. But she was frightened of what might happen if she looked away. The seconds passed and she did not.
‘Neither could I,’ said Smudge. ‘I just smashed on. Screwed things up. I went to prison, for fuck’s sake. Well, not prison, but as good as. Worse.’
‘Exactly,’ said Hellie. ‘You escaped.’
Smudge closed her eyes.
‘And we had fun, didn’t we?’ Hellie’s voice continued. ‘Before it all happened, we did have fun sometimes. The trip to Dorset… cycling in the park. That day on the cliffs with him before he went. He used to bring us so many things. You remember the time he bought up every T-shirt in that shop?’
‘Because he liked the colours,’ Smudge said.
‘And the day we came home to find the living room full of cuddly toys—’
‘Because he thought they’d be lonely if he left any of them behind.’ Smudge saw it now: every surface covered with stuffed animals with plastic eyes and goofy grins, and Mother with her head in her hands in the midst of their whoops of delight.
‘He was like one of those characters on children’s television,’ said Hellie. ‘Magical. Larger than life. I always thought of him when I watched those programmes with the girls… with Heloise. Reality wasn’t colourful enough for him. He should have been in a story, but instead someone’s imagination got cracked and he ended up in the real world.’
Smudge nodded. It was true, that was Father, an escapee from a daydream. Mr Majeika.
Hellie took a rattling breath and put a hand to her throat where the tube dug in. ‘I saved one of his pictures,’ she said. ‘That day Mother cleared out the box room and burned his paintings in the garden. It’s a little one of an exploding firework, glittering like him. I hid it behind the wardrobe in our room at Mother’s house. It’s in the attic at my place now. I thought I should tell you about it so you can have it, in case… you know.’
Smudge bent forward and took her sister’s hand. It was cool to the touch, soft.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said.
Hellie blinked. ‘What for?’
‘For the things we did. Me. Mary. Mother too, I suppose. Father – for what we made Ellie become.’
Hellie shook her head, the tube shimmering.
‘You were just being yourself,’ she said in a distant voice. ‘That’s all any of us can do. Most of the time.’
Smudge looked at Hellie and saw how small she was: how the bones stuck out through her cheeks and sinews quivered in her throat. Suffering, she saw, was written there. A pang of compassion ricocheted through her and she wanted to lean in and gather her sister up, take her back to the little bed by the wall in the small house and make everything cheery and joyful, screw up the past like a child’s drawing and do it all over again.
‘I’m sorry about Emily,’ she said and it came out with a sob. ‘Losing a baby… I…’
Hellie shook her head again. She opened her mouth to reply and emitted a high-pitched beep. Smudge stared at her for a moment, uncomprehending, her sister’s face sparkling through the lens of her tears. Then she glanced up at the monitor above the bed and saw its flat green line. When she looked back at the bed Hellie’s eyes were closed and she was lying as she always had done, facing the ceiling.
Daylight was streaming through the window. There was the sound of feet running in the corridor. Then bodies pushed in between Smudge and the bed. She was left sitting in the corner, the cool sensation of Hellie’s fingers fading against her palm.
56
You move into Gareth’s room in the rented apartment. It has a large window looking out over the trees that run down the centre of the road towards the train station that will one day take you to the airport and home. You like to stand naked at the window and look out across the city. Any pedestrian or cyclist who glances up going by could see you, but you don’t care. You’re happy and you know it and you really want to show it. Sometimes you clap your hands.
When the two of you are feeling reckless, you go back to the coffee shop and sit squinting up at Lotto Weekend Miljonairs and Holland’s Got Talent through plumes of smoke. You don’t venture there often, however. You don’t feel you need to. As the weeks pass, you prefer to spend your time walking around the lake in Vondelpark and visiting the art galleries, the Rijksmuseum and the Van Gogh Museum, where you sit on the floor, often for hours at a time, sketching out elements for ideas. What’s interesting is how, even when you’re drawing from the same painting – Van Gogh’s chair, for example, or Rembrandt’s self-portrait (you have an idea for a while of redoing it to show the artist clutching an MP3 player) – the pair of you come up with quite different results. They always relate and they’re always recognisable, but whereas you home in on minute aspects, capturing the veins on the back of a hand, the sweep of an ear, Gareth draws down the essence of the picture on to the page. His lines are bold and strong, sure. Yours are little scuffmarks stitched together to form a whole.
‘You have an amazing eye for detail,’ he says one day, looking over your shoulder. ‘You could be a good forger.’
You wonder for a moment if he’s on to you – if he knows Trudy is a fake – but you paste a smile over your alarm and when he starts to talk about a new idea for the campaign, you realise he meant nothing by it. All the same, you’re relieved that the museum doesn’t have The Starry Night. You don’t know what you’d do if you had to sit here, with him sketching the swirls of the painting that framed the director’s face that day they told you you were leaving the unit.
Your favourite times are when you’re both in the studio, working on ideas. There are moments when you’ll lose yourself in a picture and look up to find him there. The joy of it startles you: a bolt of feeling enlivening your senses. It is as though someone has plunged you into anot
her reality; as if the channel has been changed on the TV set of your existence and now you are in another life.
The feeling deepens on the rare occasions you meet the clients. Jan Heijn’s staff members from Air Bubble are every bit as respectful and kind as he is, expressing wonder and admiration at even the most mediocre of your efforts and venturing gentle jokes in their quirkily modulated English. They take you out for meals at tastefully expensive restaurants and, once, for an afternoon going up and down the canals on Jan’s private launch.
It seems unreal a lot of the time. As the weeks go by, you learn to trust it more, but there are still nights when you lie awake next to Gareth, staring up at the dark blue sky and the silhouette of the trees outside the window. One night he shocks you by reaching for you and murmuring something when you thought he was asleep.
‘Tell me something,’ he says, his voice thick and sleepy.
‘Like what?’ you say after a pause.
‘Tell me about the tattoo,’ he says. ‘The “MONSTER” written on your forehead. Tell me about that.’
You touch your fingers to the edge of your eyebrow. You’d forgotten the word was there. It’s been so long since you’ve thought about it. You’ve grown used to wearing your fringe long, screening the letters from view. You blink in the darkness.
‘Why?’ you say.
He runs his palm over your belly.
‘Because I want to know you. Because I want to have something that g-gives me the key to all of what you are.’
You open your mouth and it comes out in a rush. ‘I had mental health issues as a teenager. I wasn’t well. This was one of the things I did then.’
You feel his body stiffen. Outside the window, the trees shake their heads. You shouldn’t have said that.
He takes a deep breath. ‘What sort of mental health issues?’ he says. And then, hopefully: ‘Depression?’
You lie still. ‘Bipolar disorder,’ you say. ‘What they used to call manic depression. At least, that’s what they decided it was.’
‘How does that…?’ he ventures in a small voice.
‘Highs and lows,’ you say. ‘Ups and downs. Proper mental.’ And then, because you’ve done it now and you might as well finish the job while it’s still in your control: ‘My family didn’t understand it. They basically threw me out. I had to go into a secure unit.’
Time freezes. The night yawns. Reality, cold-eyed and slimy, sits in the black depths, licking its lips like a toad. ‘I knew it,’ it whispers. ‘You couldn’t keep it up, could you? You were only ever going to screw this up. That was the way this story was always going to end. We both know happiness isn’t meant for the likes of you.’
The world sags and begins to slip away. Gareth gives a long, low whistle. Then he turns to you and takes you in his arms.
‘My poor baby,’ he says, rocking you against him. ‘What fucking, hideous bad luck.’
His gentleness shocks you and the tears come in a rush, dissolving you into sobs. Because it was bad luck. It was. It was fucking, hideous bad luck. It was. It was. And why didn’t anyone ever see that – say that – before? You cry for the little girl in the garden, the teenager in one beige room after another, the child standing in the hallway staring up at Mother and Akela as a man lugs luggage up the stairs.
He holds you until at last you fall quiet, stroking his fingers through your hair. Suddenly you’re afraid his tenderness might suffocate you. You push him away, wriggle back.
‘Now you,’ you say.
‘Me?’ he says.
‘You,’ you say again, pointedly, urgently – shocked by how vulnerable you are all of a sudden, by how much he knows. ‘Tell me something about you. The key to you. Something that gives me the same power.’
He puts a hand to his face. In the dim light, his eyes are pools of darkness. The pockmarks on his temples harbour shadows.
‘Something that g-gives you the same power?’ he says wonderingly. ‘It’s not a competition, you know. I’m not trying to control you. That’s not a-what this is about.’
You nod. But secretly you know it is. That’s the thing. It is.
‘All the same,’ you say.
He coughs. ‘A-Well, all right.’ He takes a deep breath. ‘I’ve only slept with one person.’
The words sound tight, as though he has buttoned up his throat.
‘You’ve only slept with one person before me?’ you say.
‘No. I’ve only slept with one person.’
The truth assembles itself in the silence.
‘Oh,’ you say. ‘I—’
‘I knew it!’ he said. ‘I knew it would ruin everything if I told you that. I wasn’t g-going to say anything. Just forget it, please. Try to forget.’
The little boy in his voice clutches at your heart.
‘No, it’s OK,’ you say. ‘It’s just a surprise, that’s all.’
You draw him to you, breathing in his newness, his innocence. You want to take it and wrap it round you like a cloak. Perhaps it will be enough for both of you. Gladness bobs to the surface. You were wrong: this isn’t about control. You stroke his smooth skin. Its softness makes you want to climb inside him, put on what he is, and begin the world again.
57
A pulmonary embolism. A blood clot travelling up from the legs until it blocks the artery from the heart to the lungs. That was the most likely explanation. That’s what they would write on Hellie’s death certificate, subject to the findings of the coroner’s post mortem. Dr Jalil didn’t seem all that surprised. They were quite common in people who had been immobile for long periods, he said – his voice assuming a weary tone as he explained, as though he’d seen it coming all along. They took precautions – stockings, blood thinners in some cases – but nothing was a hundred per cent. It made Smudge want to shake him. Wake up, Doctor, she wanted to say. This was someone’s life. This was my sister’s – my – life.
But she didn’t. She sat still and nodded while he talked, a sad, respectful smile on her face. She didn’t mention the middle-of-the-night conversation. She didn’t trust herself to put it into words. As far as she could see, there was no box for it on any of Dr Jalil’s forms.
When Nick arrived – rumpled, bewildered, not meeting her eye – she kept it from him too. Within an hour it was unsayable.
They were in the canteen when Mother and Horace appeared, striding across the linoleum clutching overnight bags. The chairs shrieked as they pulled them out.
‘Oh Nick,’ sighed Mother, pecking her son-in-law on the cheek. She had had time to style her hair with curling tongs.
She didn’t glance at Smudge.
They sat in silence for a minute or two while Nick went to get everyone coffee. Mother looked everywhere but at Smudge. Horace drummed his fingers on the table top. There was a flake of superglue stuck to one of his nails. He’d been working at the model planes again.
Smudge took a deep breath.
‘It was all very sudden,’ she said. ‘But they say it’s one of those things that can happen with coma patients. It’s all the lying down, you see. It makes people vulnerable to clots.’
Behind the counter, the coffee machine hissed disapprovingly.
Mother pursed her lips and looked out of the window.
‘They did everything they could,’ said Smudge. ‘The response was very quick. There were three or four people in the room within seconds.’
Mother jerked a nod. Said nothing. The make-up was slathered over her wrinkles like paint on cracked plaster.
‘I’m just trying to tell you how it was,’ said Smudge. ‘I thought you’d want to know.’
Mother turned from the window, fire flashing in her eyes.
‘I’ll tell you how it was,’ she said. ‘You sat and waited for this. You’ve been wanting this to happen for years. You prayed for this – if you even believe in God, which I very much doubt. And now you’re sitting there triumphant. You’ve got what you wanted. Things are finally ruined beyond repair.’
‘No, Horace, I won’t be quiet,’ she said. ‘I don’t know what she’s doing here. Or rather, I do know. Yes, I do. She’s come to gloat. To glory in our misery. Well, she can take a good look because this is all she’s getting.’
Mother clamped her mouth shut, but the words kept coming and she had to spit them out like bitter coffee grounds.
‘I wouldn’t be surprised if she didn’t have a hand in it somewhere along the line,’ she continued, not to Horace or to Smudge but to the air, to some jury she seemed to feel was sitting in judgement on proceedings. ‘Flicking a button on a machine or some such. A fit young woman dying of a blood clot – whoever heard of such a thing? She must take us all for fools. Well, she might find she’s miscalculated. She might find that when we look into it, when we get a proper investigation, when the coroner does his post mortem, the story doesn’t hang together. She might find it’s only a matter of time before things come crashing down around her again and we gather the evidence to put her back inside, back in the criminal loony bin where she should have stayed all along to protect decent people from her bile and poison. She might find—’
Smudge stood up.
‘You’re wrong,’ she said. ‘You’re wrong about how things were between us.’
Mother offered a sour smile. ‘Am I?’ she said. ‘Am I really?’
‘She wrote to me,’ said Smudge. ‘You didn’t know that, did you? She wrote to me – all sorts of thoughts about her life, about Emily, about Father, about us growing up. She admitted the swap had happened. She called me Helen. It was on the envelope. “Helen Sallis” it said. She knew the truth. And she was ill too, Mother. Mentally ill. Like Father. Like me.’
Mother gave a jolt. Her expression faltered for a moment. She blinked rapidly. Then she glanced at Horace and folded her arms.
‘Oh, really,’ she said, her disdain sharper than ever. ‘Helen said that, did she? And why should I believe that?’
‘Because I’ve got the letter,’ said Smudge. ‘You only have to look at it to see. She wasn’t well.’