Daughter

by Jane Shemilt

  But the steps are too small, I thought. It will take too long. All the same, the weight of disappointment seemed to shift just a little.

  ‘What will happen now?’ I asked him.

  ‘The van will be taken to the forensics garage at the police headquarters in Portishead and examined inch by inch; all the findings will be kept, in case further information comes to light which makes them useful. That’s how it works, you see,’ he said.

  Coming out of the trees, I faced the view for the first time and saw how the green of the Severn estuary flattened out towards the broad river, some two miles from where we stood on the hill. The water looked brown between the high muddy banks where the bright hulls of sailing boats lay on their sides above the tide line. Away to the left the lights of the new Severn Bridge glowed through the dusk.

  ‘Over there is Wales,’ Michael said, and he nodded at the hills that looked close enough to touch, just the other side of the water.

  27

  DORSET 2011

  THIRTEEN MONTHS LATER

  Coming back from the shop on Tuesday morning I notice Mary moving slowly through her garden, carrying handfuls of feathers. She looks at me over the wall.

  ‘Fox,’ she says. ‘Dug his way in.’ Rounded shapes spill awkwardly from her grasp, tubes twist through her gnarled fingers. Close up, these become the torn necks of two chickens. Behind her in the coop are piles of red-stained feathers. There are no soft background bird noises, no heads dipping and lifting.

  In the tar-smelling darkness of her neat tool shed, I reach down two spades from the shining rows hanging against the wall. We dig a deep hole in the corner of her vegetable patch, where the soil is softer. She tips in the six dead birds, their broken bodies bright against the walls of cold black soil. We trample the surface flat when we have filled in the hole. The images come, as I knew they would; they still flare and burn, though less often. Now it’s her soft face that is under the soil; mud is matting her hair. I step away quickly. Mary smiles at me as she takes my spade and I wonder if she guesses what’s on my mind.

  ‘At least the leeks will be tasty next year,’ she says. ‘Blasted foxes.’

  Inside we sit together in silence either side of her kitchen table. Sage and chives are bunched in a flowery teapot between us, and red, yellow and blue squares of knitting spill from a paper bag, to be taken to neighbours for sewing into mission blankets. The stack of empty egg boxes sits next to them.

  Her mouth purses round the lip of china and she pushes a tin of biscuits towards me. ‘Sandy bought these for Christmas. Don’t like them myself.’ Mary’s love for her daughter is buried deep. Sometimes I try to dig it out.

  ‘She probably made them, Mary.’

  ‘If they look home-made that’s because she bought them cheap at the school fair. She can’t pull the wool over my eyes.’ Then she adds, as if inconsequentially, ‘Dan liked meeting your boys. He’s planning on staying with them in New York.’

  ‘He told me.’ I reach out and rub a sage leaf between my fingers. ‘He popped in the other evening.’

  Mary’s bright bird eyes half close against the steam from her cup. ‘The boy needs to get away.’

  Dan’s face hovers between us.

  ‘My old man left some cash for him.’ She nods at the photograph on top of the television. ‘For his education. Comes in handy now.’

  Deep-set eyes under thick eyebrows look sternly from the frame. He knew then that Dan might change. He must have watched and listened to his grandson in the way that I didn’t with my children. My regrets are just under the surface, waiting to emerge at any thought.

  Mary gives a short laugh. ‘Dan’s in a bit of a fix with his feelings.’ She looks at me, sideways. ‘Thinks he’s in love.’ She leans over, pats my hand. My cheeks feel hot, as though I am guilty of something.

  ‘Mary, for God’s sake, he’s a child, like one of mine.’

  ‘You don’t feel like a mother to him, that’s all. Not your fault.’

  She stands, picks up the empty egg cartons and drops them into her recycling bin.

  Later, as I paint in the shed, Dan’s shadowed face, uncertain and unhappy, gets between me and the paper. I haven’t seen Dan since he came to supper. He would never admit to being in love, wouldn’t want to talk about any of it. He would turn his face away, crushed. Or am I wrong there too? Does he want to talk about how he feels? I sit down on the bench, brushes in hand, and look out of the little window up to the grey unmarked sky. What do I know about how much space a person needs around them? I thought Naomi had needed space, but perhaps that was what I wanted her to need. It was easier that way. I can think that was true as easily as I can think that of course it wasn’t. Everything has started wavering again. Time had taken me somewhere I could manage, but now I am sliding back to where I used to be. Since the drugs, since I saw the name Yoska again.

  I stand up and look at the scatter of seeds on the paper; I make my eyes take in the tiny red oval fruits of the haws, the black dots at the top. Slowly they become all there is, these little waiting pips of life, shuttered, small, secret. The buzz of the mobile breaks the silence.

  ‘I’ve found a picture of Yoska Jones.’ Michael’s voice sounds careful. ‘It’s not his real surname. He has several aliases.’

  ‘What does he look like?’ I hold the mobile as tightly as if it were Michael’s hand.

  ‘Mid-twenties, medium build.’ Is it Michael’s clipped policeman’s description that makes me feel suddenly cold? ‘Olive complexion, brown eyes and hair.’

  I remember the slanting brown eyes that had watched my every move.

  ‘I did some investigating,’ Michael carries on. ‘See you in a couple of hours.’ He puts down the phone.

  My thoughts jump over each other, like Mary’s chickens fluttering and scrambling in the dark to get away from the fox. What has he found out? If Yoska the patient turns out to be Yoska the drug dealer and he was involved, does that make it better than if it was someone I don’t know? If he was the one who took her, is that good or bad? Bad, answers the voice in my head. Bad, bad.

  Could I have said something else in the surgery? If it was him, and I had asked him to come back, or if I had referred him, he might have been placated. What if I had asked him about the sister he mentioned, and offered to help?

  In the house, I build a fire to welcome Michael. Theo’s montage of photos catches the flickering light. The main photo in the centre always holds me. Her face seems full of secrets. Today I look at her mouth for the first time. I notice the lips have a little mocking twist. What about the photo before that one? In the corner there is a photo full of orange leaves – the first in Theo’s woodland series – and she is laughing, her face taken up with mouth and teeth, her eyes too difficult to see. The one before that? Her profile on a holiday. Her eyes are trained on something out of the picture, slightly narrowed. What had she been thinking? She had been quieter than usual, texting, reading or hunched over her writing in the little book that she took everywhere. She hadn’t fought with the boys so much; she hadn’t come shopping with me. Ted had said she was moody. I look back further and see her at the New Year’s Eve party the year before; Theo must have gone to collect the photos that were on my wall at work. I had noticed the intensity of her expression in this photo before, but now I see she looks even harder and more determined than I had realized. I sit down, trembling. Had she been waiting to escape for a long time? And when her chance came, had she been so focused on getting away at last that she forgot to be careful and took the first, dangerous opportunity that came her way?

  Michael knocks at the door. He comes in and kisses me briefly, his eyes preoccupied, his lips cold against mine. He takes his coat off slowly, as I wait for this second to pass, then the next. Soon he will show me, soon I’ll know.

  We go into the sitting room; he opens his case, pulls out the photo. I know him instantly. The slant to the eyes, high cheekbones, handsome even in a mugshot.

  I don’t w
ant it to be this man; he was too cunning and his eyes had been so guarded. ‘That’s him. My patient.’ Then I say quickly, ‘But even though this man came to see me and even though we know now he is a dealer in ketamine, that still makes it a long shot, surely?’

  ‘Your surgery couldn’t help because he was a temporary resident and he’d failed to fill in the address, but there’s another connection,’ says Michael. ‘I know his face. I’ve seen him before.’

  ‘How come?’ But, of course, a drug dealer. The police must meet them time and again.

  ‘In the hospital.’

  ‘What hospital?’

  ‘Frenchay.’

  Ted’s hospital.

  ‘He was part of a large family of gyppos who kicked up in summer 2009.’ Michael’s voice is curt; I look at him, surprised. Travellers are often irrationally feared and despised. Michael is different, surely?

  He continues: ‘They created a fracas in the ward, started smashing up furniture, breaking computers. They took to breaking into local houses.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘They were angry. An operation on a young girl in the family went wrong.’ He stops, sits down on the sofa, takes my hand to pull me next to him. ‘A neurosurgical operation.’

  As he is saying it, even before, I know what he is talking about.

  Ted’s voice had been low, monotonous. Was it June or July 2009?

  ‘Something bad happened at work. It was my fault.’

  He never usually said anything was his fault. I should have listened. I was stacking kit on our bed for the boys’ Duke of Edinburgh expedition. They were going to the Atlas Mountains with the school. I had ticked the list as I collected the clothes. It was hot, Ted had come home unusually early and had lain on the bed, his tie pulled off, shirt sleeves rolled up.

  ‘What was your fault, darling?’

  I glanced at him as I walked to the drawers, lifting out thick socks, more comfortable inside climbing boots.

  ‘An operation on this little girl. She had Hurler syndrome … her spine was narrowed, she had a hunchback.’

  His voice was so slow; I thought it was tiredness after a long day. He had been coming in later, working harder. I glanced at my list: suncream, sunhats, woolly hats as well because it gets cold in the mountains at night.

  ‘Hurler syndrome, that rings a bell.’ I turned to him for a moment. ‘Lysomal storage disease? Lacking an enzyme so abnormal metabolytes get stored everywhere: the spine, the liver?’ I was surprised I could remember from my exams years ago.

  I think Ted stood up and paced then.

  ‘I let Martin do the op. He wanted the experience. It went wrong.’

  I kept my finger on the place I had got to on my list.

  ‘That’s bad.’

  I added a fleece to each pile on the bed.

  ‘It’s my fault, you see. They think it is, anyway.’ He turned his head away and I couldn’t see his expression. His voice was so quiet. ‘Happened on my watch.’ He sat down on the edge of the bed and put his face in his hands. ‘Might go to court.’

  ‘That’s horrible, darling. Poor family. It wasn’t your fault, though. You’ll be all right, you’ll see. They’ll realize you weren’t to blame.’ I sat next to him, resting the clothes on my lap. I couldn’t see his face so I took his hand.

  ‘But I am to blame. Morally and legally.’ He moved his hand away after a while and I stood up, reluctant to leave the packing.

  ‘I’m almost done here. Can you wait till supper? We’ll talk about it then. Try not to worry.’

  But while I was still sorting clothes his mobile rang; he had to go back to the hospital. I had supper on my own. I thought we would talk about it again; instead it had quietly disappeared from view.

  ‘It was Ted’s case, wasn’t it?’ I ask Michael fearfully.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Shit. He was right, then.’ Grudge-holders, he had said. Doctors playing God.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Way back, when I was making that chart of people we should question, Ted thought we ought to consider the possibility of revenge. He said you can easily make enemies; all it takes is one mistake.’ I can hardly breathe as I say these words. ‘I remember saying I didn’t think anyone would hate us that much.’

  I get up to phone Ted and he answers almost immediately. ‘I’ve finished my list and I’m coming down now. I want to see the photograph.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘If it’s him, then it’s my fault.’ His words come fast before he hangs up.

  I turn to Michael. ‘You thought of this too.’

  He frowns; I can see he is thinking back.

  ‘A long time ago you asked me to make a list of enemies,’ I continue. ‘All I was able to come up with were Jade’s father and Anya’s husband.’

  He nods, remembering, and I feel the burn of regret. What if I’d thought of Yoska then?

  My teeth start to knock together, my body shivers. I must have caught Ted’s virus. Michael puts a glass of whisky in my hand, and then he runs a hot bath for me. The warm water stops the shivering, and afterwards his arms are close round me. He kisses me and pulls me closer, but I feel too ill, too distressed to make love. He is next to me as I drift to sleep but when I wake I’m alone. I can hear Ted’s voice downstairs. I sit up confused, not believing that I could have slept, and then feel giddy when I stand up. My head is burning. Downstairs Ted takes a step towards me.

  ‘Jesus, you look awful, Jen.’

  Michael puts his arm round me and pulls me towards a chair. The fire is burning steadily again, the room has been tidied. Ted stops and looks at me, then Michael, his eyes darkening with realization. His lips tighten. He is deciding not to say anything, not now.

  ‘Where is it?’ Ted turns abruptly to Michael.

  Michael picks up the photo from the table where I had left it and gives it to him carefully.

  ‘It’s one of them all right,’ Ted says. He is about to put it down, as if he can’t bear to look, then glances at it again. ‘He was there the most.’

  I look at him, unable to speak. My head starts pounding and shiny little lines move at the edge of my vision.

  ‘He was there all the time, actually.’ He turns to me and his voice sounds different, frightened. ‘Is it the guy in your surgery, the one you told us about?’

  I nod. My voice comes out as a whisper: ‘What happened to that girl? I never really knew.’

  ‘I tried to tell you.’ He stares at me. ‘You weren’t interested.’

  I look at him to see if he really believes what he is saying. Is this some kind of excuse or was that how I really seemed to be? Is that how I really was?

  Ted looks at Michael and his gaze is hard. ‘Shouldn’t we be phoning someone? Shouldn’t we be doing something this very minute, now that we know?’

  ‘It’s too soon to say that we know anything for sure.’ Michael’s voice is quiet, steady. ‘I have a team working on this right now, tracing the family. The best way you could help is by telling us exactly what happened.’

  Ted pours a slug of whisky into my empty glass on the table and he swallows it quickly. He sits down near the fire and looks into it as he speaks. His fingers are still tightly holding the photograph.

  ‘It was about a year and a half ago. I saw the child for the first time in my clinic. The room was crowded with people – standing against the wall, leaning on the desk. One huge family. They were gypsies, that’s what they told me, or was it travellers?’ He laughs briefly. ‘Anyway, I remember thinking the little girl was lucky.’

  ‘Lucky?’ Michael looks at Ted quickly, his grey eyes puzzled. ‘I thought she was ill.’

  ‘She was very disabled, yes, but they had all come in for her. Grandparents, parents, uncles, aunts.’ He pauses. ‘She sat in the middle on someone’s lap, calm and smiling. She was obviously loved.’

  I stare at Ted. Why is he talking about family togetherness now? Is he punishing himself or punishing me?

  ‘
Where did Yoska fit in?’ Michael asks.

  Ted looks at the photo in his hand again and is silent for a while. ‘I was never sure of the family dynamics but I think he was an older brother. Maybe an uncle.’ He stops and looks at Michael. ‘He was the quiet one with the power; the mother did the talking, but the group deferred to this guy.’

  Good power or bad? I remember back to those minutes in the surgery; the hands on the table, his smile, the way he had shaped the consultation.

  ‘What did you tell them about the operation?’ Michael has pulled his notebook out and his hands are moving quickly over the paper.

  ‘In the clinic I went through what would happen if we left her as she was. She might have ended up paralysed. I said the operation could be a cure, but there were risks,’ Ted explains.

  ‘Did they really understand?’ I ask.

  He nods.

  ‘When they signed the consent you must have gone through it again?’ I probe him.

  ‘Martin did the consent.’ Ted doesn’t look at me as he replies. ‘The paediatric surgical registrar.’ He is looking at Michael. ‘The paediatric team shared the case and Martin was interested. Unusual problem with the spine; we planned to write it up.’

  Why had the family become so angry if they had known the risks? Was it because no one had listened to them? If Ted had listened, he would have discovered the things they hadn’t understood and he would have warned them properly. Ted’s voice is continuing.

  ‘… and because of the way the back was bent, it took longer than Martin had thought it would. The blood pressure dropped unpredictably during the operation, so the spine suffered ischaemic damage.’

  ‘You’ve lost me now.’ Michael stops writing.

  ‘Sorry.’ Ted smiles briefly. ‘The blood supply to the tissue of the spine was cut off, so that part of the spine died. That means messages couldn’t get to the legs from the brain, or the other way round. She became instantly paralysed.’