If They Knew

by Joanne Sefton

  She’d decided a long time ago that age-related deterioration in eyesight was a small mercy; those stray hairs, liver spots and discoloured veins, which would have horrified her in her youth, were easier to ignore through the forgiving blur of myopia.

  I’m still me.

  Her limbs were firm and strong; she’d been careful not to run to fat, though it was true her back ached now when she bent like this to shave her legs. At least the hairs grew slower than they used to, even if they compensated with random migration – sprouting witchily in unexpected places. All in all, she looked and felt in good nick for sixty-nine. That had been old-woman territory in her own mother’s day, but not any more.

  Barbara remembered the paradox of the ship of Theseus – not that there’d been much in the way of the classics where she’d had her education, but she’d come across a Myths and Legends book in the library during her early days at the newspaper. It turned out that a couple of renewals brought a surprising amount of useful bullshit within her grasp. If every plank on a ship is replaced, one by one, until none of the original planks are left, is it still the same ship? Or the same axe, or broom, or human being?

  It was said that our constantly regenerating cells meant no part of our body was ever more than seven years old – or perhaps it was ten? What, then, made these the same feet that had run pell-mell on terraced streets in gaping shoes? What made these the same lips that joined, shaking, with Neil’s on their wedding day? What made these the hands that, trembling with fear, had cradled newborn Helen?

  It was the pattern, the mould, that was important. Just as each plank of the ship was measured, cut and sanded to fit in its position, so each cell died and another grew in its place, arranged just as before, cheek by jowl with its comrades, directed by God or DNA or both to maintain the thinness of her bottom lip, the flecks of gold in her brown eyes and the bluntness of her stubby fingers. But not any more.

  ‘Cancer’ is our word for what happens when the mould breaks.

  Barbara lathered her breasts, lifting each one tenderly and committing the weight and tone and pucker of it to memory. Her pattern read 34C, the cells dutifully multiplying and expanding to sprout at thirteen and to swell during pregnancy, just as mandated in their instructions.

  Now, though, they’d gone rogue. She had Militant Mammaries. Jihadi Jugs. The pattern had been ripped up, and right now there were thousands (millions?) of manically reproducing cells bulging into colonies of chaos, thrusting aside the law-abiding, structured tissue and making manifest the sins of the flesh.

  I’m still me. She let the middle finger of her left hand creep over the Lump. Except for the bits that aren’t. She pictured the glinting edge of a scalpel. Incision. Excision. Fifteen hundred years of medicine and it still came down to this: cut the damn thing out.

  When she wasn’t thinking of the cancer, she was thinking of the note. Barbara was sure that Helen’s sharp eyes had picked up on it. She’d find the others in the safe soon enough – if she hadn’t already. That girl gets her sharpness from her mother, Barbara thought proudly, even if her daughter couldn’t really be called a girl any more. There was a distance in Helen’s eyes, an uneasiness in her smile, that told Barbara she had read the note, and would be asking awkward questions soon enough. Helen’s distracted look could just be worry about the illness, especially coming on top of the business with Darren, but Barbara didn’t think so. She had a sense about these things.

  Of course, the fact the notes were there didn’t mean anything would come of them. Anonymous vitriol was easy enough – just look at the internet these days. This was the curtain call for a closing act that Barbara had waited all her adult life for, but she still didn’t know if she was ready to take to the stage.

  I’m still me. She muttered it aloud this time, letting the bitter soap taste into her mouth.

  Still me; but so, so tired.

  That was how she knew the cancer was for real, not the blurry shots from the mammogram or Eklund’s careful explanations, but the numbing, bone-aching, deadening tiredness that had her in its embrace, sucking her down like quicksand. She had prepared for this finale well enough. If it was ever going to play out, the curtain was going to have to come up pretty damn quickly.

  Helen

  They agreed that Neil would take Barbara into hospital by himself when she was to be admitted for the operation. That way, Helen could stay at the house with the kids and not have to worry about bothering Chris and Adam again. Chris had frowned when Helen told her, saying: ‘I thought you’d want to be with your mum,’ but the look in her mother-in-law’s eyes told Helen there was more to it than that. She didn’t want to give Chris the chance to start pleading Darren’s case about seeing the children.

  It was afterwards that Barbara would need the support, anyway, once the doctors were ready to say exactly what it was that they had found in there. And later on, when she came home, and would need care that Neil might struggle to provide. Helen had already made a couple of discreet calls to social services, just to check what would be available for them, but Neil had started talking darkly about the indignity of having strangers poking around when you’re at your lowest ebb, and Helen knew she wouldn’t be able to bring herself to walk away.

  So, instead of following up with the council, she had called her boss. It came down to an ultimatum – give me a sabbatical or I’ll walk. The managers weren’t happy, but there wasn’t much they could say. Helen told herself that keeping up the mortgage payments was the least she could expect from shit-rat Darren and prayed to God that her bravado wouldn’t come unstuck.

  Now, the day had come and she was helping Barbara to pack. The master bedroom had barely changed in twenty years and Helen still felt odd going in there. They had never been one of those families who all piled into the double bed on a Sunday morning – like she and Darren used to do with the kids. Whilst she hadn’t exactly been forbidden from going into her parents’ bedroom, it certainly wasn’t encouraged, and it brought back stiff memories of having her hair done on school-photo day or before a birthday party.

  ‘Thank you again for the nightie you got, Helen,’ said Barbara, rather formally. ‘It is lovely.’

  ‘Let me get it out. Did you put it in the drawer here?’

  Helen opened the drawer as she spoke, but had got confused. Barbara kept her nightwear in the fourth one down, and she’d opened the third, full of tights.

  ‘Sorry!’

  ‘Next one down, Helen, perhaps I should just …’

  A couple of minutes later, once Helen had managed to pick up the wrong toilet bag and then folded Barbara’s spare jumper incorrectly, Barbara insisted on swapping places.

  ‘I’m not an invalid, not yet at any rate.’

  ‘I know … I just want to help.’

  ‘Don’t worry, love, it’s nice just to have you here.’

  Helen couldn’t help but notice that her mother was avoiding her eyes as she said it.

  She tried desperately to think of some way to start a real conversation. The notes on their sickly green paper swam in her mind’s eye. Her thoughts flicked back to a time, aged twelve or so, when she’d sat in this same chair and Barbara had outlined the facts of life in her brisk, hearty journalist’s manner. Neil had practically had to push Helen in through the door to have the conversation, and, looking back, she reckoned he’d probably had to do the same for Barbara. Beyond that she struggled to remember any meaningful conversation the two of them had had alone.

  ‘Have you got the list the nurse gave you?’ she asked, stalling for time.

  Barbara just waved a hand towards a scrap of paper on the bedside table and carried on folding the nightie.

  ‘What books are you taking?’

  ‘I picked a couple up at the library.’ She nodded towards a couple of paperbacks on the bed. Helen nearly picked one up to ask about it, but decided she had to do better than that.

  ‘Mum? Are you scared?’

  Barbara didn’t answer, just car
ried on arranging the same few bits of clothing in her bag. For a moment, Helen wondered if she’d not really said it out loud, but she noticed Barbara’s hands were trembling. Eventually, she sat down heavily on the bed and looked Helen in the eye for the first time since they’d come into the bedroom.

  ‘What sort of question is that?’

  Her gaze was hard, almost contemptuous.

  ‘I didn’t mean to—’

  ‘Yes, I’m scared.’ Her voice was flat.

  ‘I want you to know you can talk to me, Mum, if it helps – that’s all.’

  ‘Talking doesn’t help, Helen. I’m afraid that’s one thing that your dad and I disagree on.’ Her smile looked thin and forced. ‘If you’re trying to tell me you care, don’t worry – I know that. I know that I’ve not always made it easy for you and I know that you care anyway. You’ve got that much of Neil in you and we can both be grateful for that.’

  Helen nodded. For a weird moment, she felt almost jealous of whoever had written the notes. Barbara was so self-possessed, so isolated, it was hard to imagine how she’d ever got close enough to anyone to wreak the harm the author of the note seemed to blame her for.

  Helen took a deep breath.

  ‘I found the note, Mum.’

  ‘What note?’ Barbara looked up only for an instant. She was winding the cable on a phone charger, ready to add it to her bag.

  ‘You know what note: the green one, the awful poison pen thing.’

  ‘So that’s what you’ve got your knickers in a twist over! And I thought the idea of me at death’s door was enough.’ Barbara raised her eyebrows.

  ‘Well? What’s it all about then?’

  She shrugged. ‘It’s sad really, a young girl in town – well, not so young any more, I suppose – her shoplifting conviction was reported in the paper and I was the one who wrote up the report. She lost her job – I think that’s right. I’m not sure of the details. Anyway, she fixated on me, blamed me for making her life fall apart, and started sending notes, threatening to get me sacked or to expose me as a liar.’

  ‘So how long’s it been going on?’

  ‘Well, it started about ten years ago. I got the police involved first time around, but once you unmask a stalker they tend to be a lot less scary than you imagined. When I found out it was her, I felt sorry for her more than anything else. She’s tried it on two or three times since, dropping little poisonous notes into work, or here. There were one or two phone calls too. Then years with nothing in between. She’s never gone any further. The best thing is just to ignore it.’

  ‘Does Dad know?’

  Barbara’s lightness of manner lifted, leaving her tense and rigid once again.

  ‘He doesn’t,’ she confirmed, with a shake of the head. ‘I should have told him first time around – I wish that I had – but I didn’t want to worry him. If I tell him now, with all this … all this other stuff, I don’t know what he’ll do. That’s why I was so cagey about it when you brought it up before.’

  She looked up at Helen, assessing. ‘And that’s what’s worrying me. If another one arrives here, when I’m in hospital, and he finds it … it’ll all be so much worse than it needs to be. Would you keep an eye open?’

  Helen nodded. ‘I don’t understand why you don’t just put them in the bin, though, Mum?’

  ‘I probably should have, but I threw them out when it happened before. The police told me off – very nicely of course. They said I should keep anything else. I remember a woman officer wagging her finger at me and saying, “You never know”. I don’t know what she meant by it. I doubt she did, to be honest.’ She sighed, wearily. ‘So there should be one or two from last time – about three years ago. I could probably put my hands on them if I had to, but I think we’ve all got bigger things to worry about, don’t you?’

  Suddenly decisive, Barbara pointed to the jewellery box on her dressing table. ‘Put the note in there: the one from downstairs, and any others that come. There’s a compartment underneath. They’ll be safe there.’

  And that was it. Barbara tucked the phone charger down the side of her little wheelie case and zipped it closed.

  Helen fingered the notes in her pocket. Were the notes she’d found in the safe years old? Or had they come recently? Barbara’s explanation allowed for either possibility, but she couldn’t nail it down without admitting to the raid on the safe. She wasn’t proud of herself for riffling through her parents’ private papers, whether as a teenager or now, and it was her reticence to bring that up that had led her only to ask Barbara about the latest note.

  If the notes had been coming sporadically for years, with no sort of escalation, then perhaps her mother was right to ignore it. Helen certainly found that idea more comfortable than the thought that this was something that had kicked off very recently. It was unpleasant, she reasoned, and odd. But not dangerous. As Barbara had said – they both had bigger things to worry about.

  June 2012

  Helen

  All the other NCT mums thought Helen was crackers. Barney was only two weeks old – a red, mewling alien, so tiny his whole being would expand and contract with each precarious breath. Now, rather than sitting back and letting grandparents queue up to fuss over her in the comfort of her own home, Helen was taking Barney to them.

  To be fair, she realised they had a point as she packed the car. As soon as the bump became awkward, they had traded up Darren’s beloved MX5 for a family-sized Audi. When the new car was delivered, the pair of them had gaped at its interior and laughed when their few lonely shopping bags rolled around and scattered their contents across the felty wilderness of the boot. It had never occurred to them that they would fill the thing, at least not unless another two kids and a decent-sized dog came along. Yet here they were, a few months later, setting off up the M1 on the Jubilee bank holiday weekend, with the boot groaning with baby paraphernalia that they were too scared to leave behind.

  But this had been how Helen had wanted it, she mused, as she held Barney’s hot little hand between her finger and thumb and gazed down at his snuffling, sleepy form in the car seat. Taking him up north meant she could show him off, but saved her from feeling like she had to play the hostess in her sore and exhausted state. She was sitting beside him in the back and it was all she could do to stop herself from unbuckling him and pulling him close. He’d been a part of her for so long, any physical gap between them seemed somehow wrong.

  God knew, she’d survived just fine for long enough without a baby. Thirty-eight wasn’t ridiculously old, but given that she and Darren had been together (well, mostly) since high school and married for twelve years, there had certainly been a few raised eyebrows when they’d announced it. Already, though, she couldn’t imagine life without this mysterious snuffling bundle.

  It was early June and one of the warmest days of the year so far. The daylight seemed to stretch out forever, as if they were chasing the sunset north. That always made the journey feel longer, and this one blurred into a long, fading evening of traffic jams and stops; bad coffee and bored baristas microwaving endless tubs of formula milk; the sound of Barney’s crying; that ‘Umbrella’ song that was never off the radio; and Helen’s own seldom-heard singing voice hoarse with ‘Twinkle Twinkle’. Finally, the blue signs announced their junction and Darren flicked down the indicator.

  ‘Don’t come off here,’ she told him. ‘I got a text from Dad; go on to the services.’

  All the locals used the access road to Moreton Chase as an unofficial junction, but the motorway police closed it from time to time and it was a long trek back from the next official exit if you got caught out.

  Even with the shortcut, it was gone eleven by the time they got to Barbara and Neil’s, and the hosts looked as tired as their visitors did, though their faces lit up to see them all the same.

  ‘Here’s the wee man!’ said Neil. ‘Bring him in, bring him in. Let’s have a proper look. Oh, he’s a smasher, Helen.’

  The NCT mums had tal
ked about their own mothers being all over their babies. But when Helen went home, it was Neil who held Barney first, who kissed his toes and nudged his pinkie into Barney’s hand so the baby’s little fingers would curl around it. Barbara stuck the kettle on so Helen could make up a bottle and they could all have a cup of tea that didn’t taste of cardboard.

  When Barbara finally held him, he reached towards her and did the thing with his mouth that Darren kept saying was going to turn into smiling any day now.

  ‘He likes you, Barbara,’ said Neil.

  ‘I think he does.’ She smiled down at Barney. ‘I also think it’s about time he went down for the night.’

  Neil held him again, whilst Darren and Helen brought the travel cot in from the car and wrestled it up next to their bed in the spare room. His chest still rose and fell dramatically with every breath, but Helen noticed it wasn’t as marked as it had been in those first days. Already her little boy was growing, getting stronger.

  ‘Are you okay?’ It was Barbara, passing by with an armful of carrier bags. Helen wondered if her mother would notice the tears threatening to seep from her eyes.

  ‘Deathly tired, that’s all.’ She smiled. ‘It’s been a tough couple of weeks.’

  She expected her mother to frown, but Barbara just nodded. ‘There’s nothing harder than coping with a newborn, Helen. You need to be kind to yourself. You and Darren, too.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘I mean it. Don’t struggle more than you have to. We can help, and Adam and Christine, of course.’