The Killer Next Door

by Alex Marwood

  ‘No. You’re not too late. She’s still here. She may well know you’re here. And sometimes they rally a bit. Come back for a while. It still matters. That you’re here.’

  She remembers Hossein’s words from earlier. I wish I could have been with her. She needs me to be here, she thinks. Even if she never knows I was.

  She crosses the threshold.

  Janine is as white as the sheet on which she lies. A morphine drip runs into the back of a veiny hand, and an oxygen mask is clamped to her face. She’s all wires and monitors, her life edging away to a ragged beep, beep. The doctor picks up a chair that’s pushed back against the radiator, places it by the bed. ‘Sit with her, maybe,’ she says. ‘Hold her hand. She’ll like that. There’s a call button just here. One of the nurses will keep an eye on you.’

  Collette obeys, like a zombie. Reaches for the hand that lies on the blanket and slides it into her own. It’s cold. As if she’s been out in the snow. She chafes her palm up and down it, like a mother warming a child. Glances up at the clock on the wall. It’s nearly ten, already. Three hours gone past since she received the phone call telling her that Janine has been taken to hospital. I should have got here sooner, she thinks. I should have gone down to visit her this morning. Maybe if I’d been, I would have noticed. Could have stopped it before it got this far.

  It’s not your fault, Collette. She’s been ill a long time. Longer than you realised, probably. And how could you risk going back to the nursing home? No chance that you’d escape Malik a third time. But there’s no way they can know she’s here, she tells herself. They can’t be watching the home twenty-four hours a day, can they?

  Janine. Here you are, more yourself than you have been since I came back. The frown has gone, the lines of suspicion round the mouth, the angry denial of who and what she is. It’s a long time since she watched her mother sleep. The last time was when she was still Lisa, in Lisa’s garden, a day not unlike how today has been, all sweaty heat and rising pressure, but with the lulling accompaniments of a padded sunlounger, a gin and tonic and the soothing plash of that stupid slate dolmen water feature she thought was the apotheosis of sophistication, at the time. Ten years ago, maybe, though her mother looks as though thirty have passed. She had blonde hair, then, and her face was plump with creams and camouflage, painted in, contented. How many people only know what a woman really looks like on her deathbed? she wonders. I’ve been wearing make-up since I was thirteen years old. I don’t suppose anyone much has seen me with my natural eyebrows.

  Do I want her to wake up? Shake her till she opens her eyes? Maybe I don’t. Not if she’s going to be that stranger again. The woman who thinks I’m some kind of jailer. Maybe I want her just to slip away. That way I can pretend that she was still here.

  She shifts on her chair, feels awkward as she tries to think of something to say. Thinks about how they always start in the movies, can’t think of anything better. Clears her throat and starts, if only to drown out the bubbling coming from her mother’s lungs. ‘Mum? It’s me. It’s Lisa,’ she says, and starts to stroke the hand again.

  This is the last time I shall be Lisa, she thinks. After this, Lisa’s gone for ever.

  ‘Collette.’

  She looks round, realises that she’s drifted away as she held her mother’s hand, that time has passed in the mist and Vesta is standing in the doorway.

  ‘Hossein told me,’ she says. ‘Can I come in?’

  ‘Of course,’ says Collette, and feels the tears begin to flow. She lets go of the hand and stands up, and lets Vesta enfold her, hold her, pass her her strength. A kind, kind woman, the help to strangers. Should have been my mum, she thinks. Should have been someone’s mother. If you’d been my mother, I would never have had to have left.

  ‘Oh, lovey,’ says Vesta, ‘it’s hard, I know. But I’m here now, and I won’t go away.’

  A single sob wrenches itself from her chest, and Vesta holds her tighter. Then she lets her go and finds herself a chair.

  At two in the morning Collette hears Janine’s breathing change. Her mind’s been wandering for hours. The effort of maintaining her concentration, of staying in the moment, is too great even when she wants to fix the moment for ever. She hadn’t realised that boredom is as much a part of the deathbed experience as grief. The faces of nurses, popping their heads round the door, have come as a welcome distraction.

  She’s been off in Peckham, back in her childhood, wandering through the rooms and the rows and the boyfriends. Pulling Janine from the settee and supporting her to her bed. Running down to the corner shop for a packet of Rothmans, because kids could still do that errand in those days, and a KitKat for herself from the change. Feeling the burning shame when Janine staggered on her heels and had to hold herself up on the crossing barrier outside the school gates one afternoon, eating fish finger sandwiches in front of the telly. The table where every now and again Janine would insist that they eat together like a proper family, only she never sat down herself, just stalked up and down the carpet and complained about Lisa’s cutlery technique. The what-you-looking-at exchanges with the Murphys next door. The way she enjoyed the stupid things Lisa bought her with her salary: the widescreen TV, the halogen cooker, the memory foam mattress.

  She hears the change and sits up. Blinks and rubs her eyes. Janine’s eyes are flickering, her lips smacking behind the mask. She stares at her intently, squeezes the hand again, to let her know she’s here. Is she coming back? Is she?

  Vesta sits up and watches, too. Out in the corridor, someone walks past, the swish-swish-swish of orthopaedic soles. Look, she thinks, she’s not dying. There’s colour in her face, or at least a couple of fever spots on the crowns of her cheeks. You don’t get more colour when you’re dying, do you?

  Janine’s eyes open. They blink behind her mask and rove over her surroundings, and her breathing becomes more laboured.

  ‘It’s okay,’ says Collette. ‘It’s okay, Mum. You’re in hospital.’

  There doesn’t seem to be any power in her hand. It lies in Collette’s like a piece of porcelain, cold, unmoving. But slowly her head edges round until her eyes rest upon her face and a burst of mist explodes into the mask.

  ‘Lisa!’

  She is cut off by a cough, then another. Feeble, bubbling coughs with no power behind them, her body too weak to allow her to sit forward. Vesta leaps to her feet, all competence where Collette is frozen. She hustles round to the other side of the bed, grabs a cardboard basin, pulls the mask off and slips her arm behind Janine’s shoulders. Pulls her gently forward until her mouth hangs over the bowl. Rubs gently at the bony back. A great gob of green-brown phlegm appears at Janine’s lips, but the cough is too weak to push it further. Vesta nods at the box of tissues on the bedside table. Collette, unfreezing from her state of shock, grabs them and clears her mother’s mouth. Feels tears begin to prick her eyes. She wiped my bum when I was a baby, she thinks. She’s been here all my life.

  The coughing fit subsides and between them they lower her back on to her pillows, put the mask back in place, endeavour to make her comfortable. Janine gazes at Collette’s face while they do it, her eyes wide and adoring. She lies there quietly for a while after she’s settled, her mouth half open, her chest moving visibly up and down. Collette wrings out a cloth with water from the jug, and dabs her grey-white forehead. Oh, Janine, she thinks. I love you. Despite it all, I love you.

  The heart monitor has slowed. The beats come so far apart, and so unpredictably, that Collette finds it hard to believe that no one has been in to look. But it’s what they’re expecting, she thinks. Congestive heart failure and pneumonia and a DNR she signed years ago: she’s going to slow all the way down until she stops. The thought brings on another surge of sorrow and she busies herself moving back to her chair, picking up the stranded hand and stroking it until she’s fought it back again.

  ‘I didn’t think you’d come,’ whispers Janine, and Collette’s heart skips a beat. She leans forward, looks
at her mother and sees that her eyes are clear. She knows me, she thinks. She knows me.

  ‘I wouldn’t stay away,’ she replies. ‘You knew I’d come back eventually.’

  The beginnings of a tired smile play around Janine’s lips. ‘It’s nice,’ she says. ‘We’re back together again.’

  Collette forces herself to smile, and squeezes her hand.

  ‘How are you?’ asks Janine.

  ‘I’m okay,’ she says. ‘I’m fine.’

  ‘And Tony? How’s Tony?’

  She freezes. ‘Who?’

  ‘Tony. You know. Handsome Tony, from the club.’

  Oh, no, Janine, she thinks. Oh, no, you didn’t.

  ‘Such a nice man,’ she says. ‘Always brought me flowers. Always asking after you. Always losing your phone number, silly goose.’

  So now I know, she thinks, and struggles to keep the compassion in her expression. I should have known it all along. Silly woman, always a sucker for a pretty face, and of course, Tony, there to know she was losing her marbles when all I thought from miles away was that it was the drink.

  The heart monitor goes silent for three whole seconds, the beep cutting into the atmosphere like a harpy’s shriek. It’s almost the end, she thinks. I won’t tell her. Won’t run the risk of letting her die upset.

  ‘He’s – he’s coming in a bit,’ she assures her, and feels Vesta shift in her chair. ‘He sends his love.’

  Janine’s eyes begin to droop. I’m losing her, she thinks. I need to say it. I need to say goodbye. Tell her I love her, that I forgive her, that it’s okay. I need to do it now. I need…

  ‘What was that song?’ asks Janine. She blinks, slowly. Each time her eyes reopen, the lids take longer to make their journey.

  ‘Which song, Mum?’

  ‘You know. Steve Martin.’

  Where does that come from? Steve Martin? On your deathbed?

  ‘I love that song,’ she says. ‘D’you remember? We used to sing it. When you were little.’

  She shakes her head.

  ‘I’d like to hear it,’ Janine says. ‘It was in South Pacific, too. Loved that film. Don’t you remember? We used to sing it.’

  What song? What song? I don’t know what you’re talking about, Janine. I’m here and I’d do anything, and you’re going to make me let you down when you’re dying.

  ‘“Under the Bamboo Tree?”’ Vesta is standing back by the drip stand, trying to keep her presence low-key. But she sees Collette struggling and steps in to help.

  A tiny up-down on the pillow, and Janine manages a smile.

  Collette panics. A faint memory, some vague jumble of notes, but nothing concrete comes to her.

  ‘Shall I start her off?’ asks Vesta. ‘She’s feeling shy.’

  ‘Don’t need to be shy with me, Lisa. I’m your mum,’ whispers Janine.

  Vesta takes a step forward and starts singing. Her singing voice is reedy, cracked: completely different from her mellow speaking tones, as though she doesn’t use it often. But the tune is clear, and the words, once she begins, come flooding back to Collette’s mind.

  ‘“I like-a you and you like-a me and we like-a both the same”,’ begins Vesta.

  And she’s back in Peckham. Four, maybe five years old, before the drink really took Janine over, when she was still pretty and the world was young. They’re in the lounge, the TV on in the background, Lisa standing up on the settee and Janine in front of her, holding her upright on the squashy cushions with her hands. And they’re singing along with the telly, she remembers it now. The Man With Two Brains, Janine’s favourite film and, by default, hers. Janine even had an azalea in a pot, and laughed whenever she said the name, though Lisa never understood the joke. And she remembers that this was the song Janine used to sing to her in bed, back when she still sang to her. Her lovely mother: shiny hair and tight sweaters and the scent of Charlie on her collars. She used to sing to me when she tucked me up. I’d forgotten. Through all the years, I have forgotten.

  She joins in. ‘“I like-a say, this very day, I like-a change your na-a-ame”.’

  ‘Yes,’ says Janine. ‘That’s it. That’s right, my darling.’

  And she closes her eyes and never comes back. For the rest of the night, they sit with her, and hold her hands, and sing, until she leaves for good.

  Chapter Forty-Six

  She’ll go, now, thinks Vesta. Poor old Hossein. He’ll miss her as much as I will. More, maybe. Being by himself’s only something he’s had to learn lately.

  She feels blank. Dazed. She’s desperate for sleep, longs for the narcotic bliss of unconsciousness. Remembers coming home from the all-night vigil over her father’s bed, in a car much like this, tired Nigerian driver, air-freshener dangling from the rear-view mirror, LBC on the radio. When her mother passed, she stumbled from the room and lay down in her own bed in the front room and slept until the undertaker knocked on the door. That was in the days when the basement door was still open to the street, before Roy Preece had it shut off, to protect her, he said, from burglars. I want to die at home, she thinks. Just not the home I’m living in.

  Collette leans against the window and watches the south London streets go by. The driver has put a CD of mixed soul music into the player and turned it up slightly louder than necessary, a sweet gesture to give them their privacy. She sees him watch her in the mirror as they wait at the traffic lights at Tooting Bec, the sari shops and sweetshops just opening for morning trade. I need a bacon sandwich, she thinks. Funny how death always seems to make you hungry.

  The heatwave finally broke in the night and fat raindrops fall against the windscreen. Vesta cracks her window open and breathes deeply of the fecund, green scent of cracked earth and exhausted foliage. London smells muddy in the rain. Especially after such a long time without it, the coat of smuts and dust that has settled on streets and cars and buildings washing down to grime the pavements. It’ll be autumn soon, she thinks. And then another long London winter, the rain and the cold somehow getting through your clothes in a way that country people could never imagine. But Collette will be long gone by then, and Hossein’s heart will be broken. I’ve seen the way he looks at her, when he thinks she’s looking away. It’s not like he can go too, is it? Not just now, but later. His future’s here. He can’t spend it on the run.

  Collette has been silent since they left the hospital. Dry-eyed. Still in shock, thinks Vesta, even though she’s known that this was coming. It’s always still a shock. I had eighteen months with Mum, changing her sheets and mopping her brow and cleaning her down with a sponge as she crumbled away into her pillow, but I still didn’t expect it when it finally came. Still felt like I was falling off a cliff. I remember: until the funeral, it was like looking at the world from the other side of a wall of glass. Everything – sound, smell, touch – was doughy and dull, as if someone had turned the dials down on my senses. That’s how she’ll be feeling now. Just – empty.

  As they wait to turn right into Tooting Bec Road, she notices a shiny black car, smoked glass windows, two cars back with its indicator on. Why would you want to drive around in something that looks like a hearse? she wonders. There’s enough death in the world without reminding yourself of it every second you’re on the road. It bounds forward as the lights change, cuts across the oncoming traffic as though the law didn’t exist at all, provokes a chorus of blasting horns. Collette seems to jump from her fugue state and stares at the shaking fists of the drivers on the Balham High Road.

  ‘Bloody Mercedes,’ says their driver. ‘It’s always Mercedes, isn’t it? They think they own the road.’

  Collette’s head drops back against the headrest and the life goes out of her eyes. Vesta waits a few seconds, then says: ‘You did well tonight, Collette.’

  Collette looks at her with watery eyes. ‘Thanks.’

  ‘How do you feel?’

  She grimaces, shrugs. ‘You know,’ she says.

  Might as well broach the subject, thinks Vesta. ‘I’m
sorry,’ she says. ‘About what she said. About Tony. That must have been… a shock.’

  ‘I might have known,’ says Collette. ‘I can’t believe I didn’t work it out. She’d do anything for a man who paid her a bit of attention. I just didn’t think he’d find her. Denial, I suppose. That’s what they’d say it was.’

  ‘You can’t know everything, Collette. That was good of you, though. I admired you. What you did with it.’

  ‘Thanks,’ says Collette.

  ‘You mustn’t take it to heart. I daresay she didn’t know what she was doing.’

  ‘No, I daresay,’ says Collette, but there’s an ugly edge of bitterness to her voice.

  Vesta tries another route to comfort. ‘Hossein’ll be waiting when we get back. They all will.’

  Collette sighs. ‘I think I could just do with some sleep.’

  ‘I’m sure. Me too. Some sleep before you start dealing with things.’

  Collette’s brow puckers, as though it’s not occurred to her that there might be things to deal with.

  ‘You’ll want to call an undertaker,’ she says. ‘They gave you some cards, didn’t they?’

  ‘Um, I…’ she holds her bag out, open, as though this constitutes some kind of answer. ‘I don’t even know if I’m going to miss her, Vesta.’

  Vesta lays a hand over hers. What do you want me to say, lovey? Don’t worry, the pain will kick in soon?

  ‘You have to just take this stuff one day at a time,’ she says, horribly aware of all the clichés that death forces from one’s lips. She has heard so many with-the-angels-now palliatives from well-meaning people over the years that she wants to bring in a law to ban them.

  They turn right past the common, and Vesta notices that the Mercedes is still behind them. Maybe it is a hearse, she thinks. Or a funeral car. What would someone in a car like that be doing down here in the middle of the day? ‘It will kick in sometime, I’m afraid. You can’t avoid it. It’s just – how it is.’