by Jane Rogers
Of course he would think that. Driving along the icy roads, with blackness swooshing past the windows, he’d think about all the things I was thinking – the late clinics, the smart clothes, the supposed teas with Mandy – and he’d think I must have been in on it, helping to cover up her lies. He’d think I was as bad as her.
I had to listen for him coming back. I took off the headphones, turned off the light and got into bed. After a long time I heard her coming upstairs. She stood still on the landing for ages, then used the bathroom and went into their room. She left the landing light on. I lay rigid straining my ears for the car, willing it to turn in at the end of the road. I lay like that for hours, and my head kept flashing with images of Dad skidding off the road, of black water swirling over the roof of the car, and the wavering headlamps shining on astonished flickering fish, down in the murky depths of the river.
I thought about texting or phoning him but I was afraid of causing an accident if he was still driving. I lay awake all night and in the morning when Mum knocked quietly on my door and then opened it, I pretended to be asleep. Eventually I heard her leave the house. When I crept down she’d left a note saying she’d be back from work by 7 and that she’d cook. No mention of Dad. She’d probably left it hoping he would come back and see it.
I had a shower and put on some clean clothes. I didn’t know if they’d split up. Part of me didn’t want to know and didn’t in the least care. I stared at my empty phone for a bit then I texted him, ‘Dad r u OK? xoxoJ’ There hadn’t been any reply by the time I got to college so I switched it to silent. There was no reply all day. And no Sal at college.
When I got home, it was exactly as I’d left it. I didn’t want to eat with Mum so I made a sandwich and took it to my room. I rang Dad’s lab but there was no reply. After a bit I rang his mobile but it went straight to answer. Which was weird, I’d never know him turn it off.
When Mum got in I called down that I’d had my tea. She came and tapped on my door and I told her I didn’t want to talk. She opened the door anyway.
‘Have you heard from Joe?’
‘No.’ I couldn’t bear to look at her.
I stayed in my room all evening. I could hear Mum moving around downstairs, and when she started talking I opened my door to listen. But she was on the phone to Paul the carer. I heard her asking what Mandy’d had for her dinner, and had they been for a walk? Her voice turned fake and cheery when she talked to Mandy; ‘Great, well done! I’m ever so pleased.’ Then the whole house was quiet again, waiting for the phone to ring, or the sound of the car in the drive.
Mum stayed up till midnight; after she used the bathroom she stood listening outside my door. I didn’t move, and eventually she went into her own room and shut the door.
My window was open and I could pick up the sounds of cars all the way to the main road. There weren’t many, and none of them were his. There were lots of other sounds, ticks and clicks as the heating cooled down; an owl, the sound of water rushing down next door’s drain like someone’d just let out a bath. If he’d had a crash someone would’ve found him and taken him to hospital; they could look in his wallet, the police would trace him. He hadn’t had a crash. He just didn’t want anyone to know where he was.
I thought of everyone dressing up and dancing at YOFI; of twirling around in that blue dress. Of the ones who sacrifice themselves. How clear and simple and good that was, in comparison to all the stupid mess of being married and telling lies and fighting. Why didn’t he text me? I was convinced he knew I knew about Mum. Maybe he never wanted to see either of us again.
I must have fallen asleep sometime after five, because I woke up with a jolt when the letters came at half past nine. Mum’d gone, she’d left another note about coming home to cook. My eyes were prickly and my head ached with tiredness, but I couldn’t bear to stay in the house. I thought of talking to Sal but I was afraid she’d go ‘So what?’ She’d be right – so what if they did split up? Her mum and dad split up, it was just one of those things that happened. Stupid adults; their days were numbered.
I caught the bus to college and sat in the front seat upstairs. The sky had clouded over and everything through the window was flat and factual, like a crime scene. Like a place waiting for something bad to happen. Like suspended animation. I thought, a Sleeping Beauty wouldn’t know anything. Being dead, the state of being dead, would be OK – just the same as before you were born. A dreamless sleep. I could do that – it wouldn’t really matter. No more feeling upset about stupid parents, no more waste of energy and emotion. Just peacefulness and calm. Then I suddenly saw Dad. He was walking along the near-side pavement and the bus was coming up behind him, I recognised his shoulders and his striding walk. As I jumped up and the bus passed him I glimpsed his face. Not Dad. It wasn’t Dad at all, it was a man with a moustache.
I fell back into my seat, my heart was making my whole ribcage shake. Might Dad kill himself? The thought flew in before I could block it. Maybe that was why he didn’t want to speak to me – he’d lost hope. Because of Mum, because of MDS, because everything had gone wrong. Yet again I rang his mobile. No answer. I remembered him that night he and Mum brought Mandy into our house, half-dragging her between them, and Mum put her to bed in the spare room. He stood by the sink staring at the kettle as if he could see the future in it, as if it paralysed him. Now he thought I’d betrayed him too. He must think we didn’t know where he was and we didn’t care, we hadn’t even tried to find him.
I got off the bus at Guide Bridge and took a train into town. From the station the next bus down to the clinic. Surely he would be at work? I walked through the car park looking for our car but I couldn’t spot it. I couldn’t get in the lab doors because I didn’t know the key code. I had to go round and up the steps to the front doors. The security guard stared at me but when I told him my name he grinned and nodded, ‘Haven’t seen you for a while!’ Just getting inside the building made me feel calmer; the corridor was peaceful, with names on every door – I passed a nurse with a tray and she winked at me. As I ran down the stairs to the labs I smelled that old friendly smell which only belongs to the lab. It’s a bit like alcohol, and it clears up the back of your nose. A warm smell, that brings out the dark scent of the wooden work benches. Dad would always be here, I thought.
But he wasn’t. The door to his lab was locked – no Dad, no Ali. I tried to peer through the little wired-glass window but it was dark in there and I could only see my own reflection. Even the corridor down there was still and empty; there was nobody to ask. I had to go back the way I came until I found myself outside again, with the cold grey day glaring down on me, not knowing what to do.
I walked back fast into town and now I was angry. It was idiotic. Idiotic to come all this way, looking for him. Of course he wasn’t at work – if he was, Mum would’ve spoken to him. And there was no way he’d kill himself, the old cynic – he even laughed about the suicides doing the Grim Reaper’s job. Why was I wasting my time chasing after him and worrying, when he’d gone off somewhere without a second thought for me – gone off probably to visit some old friend or the British Museum or some amazing library. Was he so upset about Mum he didn’t even remember me? Why on earth should I care about him? If he could abandon me then I could abandon him.
I was starving and I stopped at The Eighth Day and got a smoked tofu burger and an apricot smoothie to guzzle on the bus. The taste of apricot flooded me, orange mixed with hyacinths, gritty behind my teeth. I wished I had bought two.
I finally got to college with half an hour to spare before History. I did a diversion past the music rooms, and my luck was in: I could see Baz in the practise room on the grand piano. He looked up and grinned, but kept on playing – I walked in to a waterfall of tumbling notes.
I wanted to tell him about my parents. Why shouldn’t I? At least his dad couldn’t help being mad; mine behaved like idiots without any excuse at all. Why should I cover up for them? Baz finished and jumped up from the pia
no. ‘Nat’s found out what’s happening at Wettenhall!’
‘You what?’
‘The animal lab near Chester that they’ve been investigating. They’ve managed to infiltrate it.’
It took me a while to grasp what he was on about, but it turned out the ALF had been trying to get into this place for a long time and now they’d managed to take some secret film of the animals, drugged, with tubes and wires attached to them, strapped down and unable to move.
‘But why are the researchers doing it? There must be a reason.’
‘What could excuse that? I’m going down there as soon as things settle down at home – ’
‘What’s happened?’
‘He’s in hospital. Mum didn’t want me to but I finally rang the doctor, and they came for him in an ambulance. He was so busy raving on he didn’t even notice until they’d got him outside.’
‘Is he OK?’
Baz shrugged. ‘Mum’s going to see him twice a day. She says he seems calmer. I don’t know.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘I’ve got to go. She’ll be getting home soon.’ He picked up the metronome from the lid of the piano and put it in his rucksack.
‘Baz?’
‘Yeah, they know I’m taking it. Mine’s broken, and I’ve got another exam.’ He edged towards the door. ‘Mum gets upset, it’s better if I’m there when she comes home.’
His mum was bonkers too, I realised. I walked to the playing field door with him and said goodbye. Checked my mobile. I hadn’t told him about my Dad; well, he had enough to think about. And as soon as things got better with his parents, he’d be off to join Nat, saving the lives of animals.
Sal wasn’t in college again – she hadn’t been in all week but I was pretty sure she’d come back from Birmingham, so I called at her house on my way home. She was there, watching a DVD. She urged me into the front room and insisted on starting it again from the beginning. ‘You should see this, Jess, you should just see it. It’s horrendous.’
I didn’t want to see a DVD, I wanted to talk, but it was hopeless. It was playing before I could get a word in. And the DVD was – well, everybody’s seen it now. But back then I hadn’t even heard of it. She got it from the FLAME women. It was the most horrible upsetting DVD I’ve ever seen in my life. It’s the film of some women who had MDS. But it isn’t one of those ‘diary-of-an-illness’ type programmes, where you go through the stages of anxiety and fear with the person, trying different kinds of treatment and hoping for the best. Where you feel that even though he or she may die in the end, the person has learned something and taught you something. It’s not like that at all. They don’t even tell you the names of the women, they just show them being ill. Bumping into things. Swearing. Repeating words over and over. Falling down and having fits. Women in homes, in hospitals, in different countries, even outside, lying on the ground. Women dead. The point about it is they don’t show the women like people you could care about, they show them like animals, in disgusting states, naked, puking up. People say its pornography. FLAME say it’s a record of what’s really happened, that people have been pretending not to see, and covering with flowers.
‘This’ll show them,’ said Sal.
‘It’s not like that now. They put MDS women to sleep, no one has to have all that awful – ’
‘Put them to sleep?’ she shrieked. ‘Put them to sleep? We’re not talking about aged pets, we’re talking about young women. Women who die. If you don’t have to watch them going mad first, that makes it OK, does it?’
There wasn’t anything I could say.
‘We’re going to campaign with this – we’re going to really make them sit up and notice. Imagine if these were men, dying like this. D’you think there’d still be no cure?’
By the end of the DVD I felt sick and wretched, and Sal was completely hyper. I left her ringing up her FLAME friends. I didn’t let myself look at my mobile till I got home but it didn’t make any difference; still nothing. The kitchen smelled foul and when I looked in the bin I saw Mum had dumped a load of filthy old fag ends. She’d promised me she’d stopped smoking. As if. Like agreeing not to buy more new clothes, when I knew perfectly well the grey wool jacket on the bannisters had just come from Jigsaw. A supposedly educated, intelligent person. If this was the best she could do after being asked and told, what hope was there?
When Mum came in she tried to entice me out for a meal. She followed me up to my room. ‘I know you’re worried about Joe, Jessie, but so am I. This atmosphere’s making it even worse.’
‘Your smoking is making the atmosphere worse,’ I told her.
She went into her own room and it was quiet. I wondered if she was crying. I knew I was horrible. I wished none of today had happened, I wished I was someone else. Sal was in FLAME, Baz was leaving, and Dad thought it was alright to never even contact me again.
I turned off the light and opened the curtain and lay looking up at the beech tree. It was a tracery of black against the sky. The lower branches had a bit of an orange shine to them, from the streetlamp. Behind the black branches the sky was vaguely dark, no stars or moon – just clouds reflecting light pollution. I felt like a creature in a cage. Whichever direction I paced or turned, my way was blocked. There was nothing I could do – I was powerless. I had to find a way out.
Something began to relieve the pressure in my head before I even knew what it was. A pinhole of light. It was the freedom I felt, the night of the blue dress. Imagining I could be a volunteer. How pleased Dad would be if I volunteered (thought I). He couldn’t go on being angry with me then, he’d have to see my mind had been occupied with much more important things than Mum’s stupid affair. He’d be proud of me. I could almost hear him saying, ‘My heroic Jesseroon!’
How crazy, how crazy how crazy that seems now. But that’s what I thought. I lay still, hardly breathing, and allowed myself to float into the ocean of space that was opening before me. To do something straightforward, where there would be no tangled argument and no compromise. Something that would make a difference to the world. Something it was within my power to do without having to rely on anyone else. Something that would make Dad proud. I pulled my pillow and duvet off the bed and wrapped myself up on the floor, so I could go on and on staring at the beech, letting that freedom unroll. The freedom to act. The freedom to do something I had decided for myself.
Wednesday night
When we discuss it he harps on about that all the time. ‘You volunteered because of me. Because of what I said. If I’d never mentioned it, it would never even have entered your head.’
It’s dark outside and he has brought two mugs of cocoa upstairs, and untied my right hand so I can hold the mug by its handle. ‘Dad, undo my other hand. Please.’
He takes the cocoa off me (I seem to have taught him not to trust me!), undoes my left, then passes me back the cocoa and moves smartly out of range.
‘It’s OK. I won’t try anything. I just wanted to warm my hands.’ I flex my left wrist and wiggle my fingers. Luxury. I wrap both hands around the mug. It is a solid triangle of comfort. I can lose myself in the loveliness of its heat and smell; all there is is cocoa.
I have to drag myself back to the argument. It keeps feeling so nearly within reach, the moment of convincing him, that I have to keep plugging away at it. It’s impossible that he won’t understand. ‘I didn’t volunteer because of you. If you’d never mentioned it, it would have hit me in the face when I heard it on the news. It is the thing I need to do, so one way or another it would have found me.’
‘But you lose me here, Jess. I can’t buy it – this destiny stuff, this thing I need to do. You’re a free agent. You can do anything with your life.’
‘I know. Listen. Let me explain – because it is freedom. That’s what it is.’
‘You never used to be a fatalist. Where’s the girl who said Hindu-ism was ridiculous, when I explained it to you?’
‘Father of Wisdom. This isn’t Hinduism. This is something I know.’
/> He’s shaking his head. Outside, far away in the dark night, a dog barks. Yesterday I tried screaming and he gagged me; my throat still feels raw, and my bottom lip is split at the side. Explain. Explain to him; if only he could see.
‘And then I wasn’t even there,’ he says. ‘I told you about it, and then I buggered off. If I’d been there for you to talk to – ’
‘It wouldn’t have made any difference. I didn’t just go, oh yeah, I’ll volunteer. You know? It grew. That’s how I knew it was meant to be.’
‘Jess – ’
‘OK. OK. I’ll tell you what it was like. It was like getting in and swimming in the sea.’
He wiggles his eyebrows at me in the old way, meaning he thinks I’m a loony, and I laugh.
‘It’s true. Listen. On a big wide beach, MDS is the waves, and you’re trying to get in the water. At first you’re on the edge of the beach, playing about. But the tide is coming in. The first waves, they just froth around your feet, they’re cold but still quite small, and you can run giggling up the beach.’
‘Interpret, oh poetic one.’
‘That’s hearing the first news about MDS, when I was too young and silly to understand. Then bigger waves start to come, one after another. They break against your legs and you feel the force of the water smashing against you, and the undertow sucking your ankles. Then the water’s getting deeper, the waves slam into your body and you stagger from the force of them, they almost knock you over.’
‘I get the picture.’
‘The heavy weight of the water beats against you. But you stand upright and resist it and keep walking. And then you’re in quite deep, your head and shoulders are clear and your feet are still flat on the sand, but the water is deep and smooth all around you, and when the next wave comes it’s not breaking, because they break closer in to shore. It’s just a swell, a smooth running mound of water rolling towards you. And when it comes it doesn’t beat against you, it doesn’t smash its strength against yours. It simply lifts you off your feet. It lifts you up and carries you, and you start swimming in the sea.’