Whistle in the Dark

by Emma Healey

  Mostly he’d been quiet, speaking only when they were at the back of the group, or after the classes had finished for the day, and near the end of the holiday she’d suddenly realized he was married to the hotel owner, a smart, rather matronly, older woman who’d been kind when Jen had arrived after a badly delayed flight. She should have been shocked, upset, guilty, but she couldn’t manage it in that languid atmosphere.

  The only thing she regretted was giving away that picture. She’d tried several times to re-create it with an English daffodil but never managed to produce the same effect.

  Holiday romance 2015

  Matthew was cheerful, sandy-haired and outdoorsy; he smelled of worn walking boots and toothpaste. He’d been eight years old when his dad had become the holiday-centre manager, and some of the older staff still tried to ruffle his hair, though he was too tall for them to do it without an awkward stretch. At sixteen, he seemed surprised at his own height and unsure how to carry himself. He talked a lot, with a sort of stutter, repeating words and phrases, and most of his speech contained a question. He’d been visibly working up the courage to say hi to Lana since they’d arrived two days earlier.

  ‘I was going to, I was going to go badger-watching?’ he said, as everyone filed out of the hall after dinner.

  ‘Okay,’ Lana said.

  ‘Do you, do you want to come?’

  ‘Okay,’ she said again.

  ‘I’d like to see some badgers,’ Jen said.

  ‘Oh,’ he said. ‘Yeah, I guess, I guess you can come, too.’

  ‘Ah, I see. Not to worry, I’m sure I can see some badgers another time.’

  ‘Cool,’ he said.

  He had a blanket with a waterproof lining, and Jen tried to work out if this was chivalrous or calculating: was he saving Lana from the damp ground or preparing the way for intimacy? Either way, it was good, she decided, it was healthy, it was normal. Jen turned away as the two teenagers walked off together.

  The badger-watching spot was at the edge of the grounds. One of the centre workers told Jen that spliff ends were sometimes found there, but mostly the kids around here were good kids and cleaned up after themselves. They took peanut-butter sandwiches and dog food and sat quietly and waited for the thrill of white-striped faces in the gloom.

  Jen wondered if she should follow them, just to make sure, but she resisted the urge. And Lana had come back safe and sound. That night, at least.

  Awake

  Hugh was asleep, slumped sideways over the bottom of the bed, an empty paper cup precariously balanced on his knee, when Lana woke properly.

  ‘Dad,’ she said, moving her toes under the sheets and almost patting his head with them. ‘Poor Dad.’

  ‘Poor all of us,’ Jen said. ‘We’ve been so worried.’

  ‘Sorry.’

  Jen had known her daughter would be confused, unsure where she was, in need of reassurance, but it was worse than that: Lana seemed only half there and could barely manage more than one syllable at a time. Her head rolled on the pillow and the red of the cut that ran through her hair flashed at Jen. She tried to keep her eyes away from it, from the parts of Lana that were still matted with blood, from the scrape on her cheekbone and the crack in her tooth, but it was impossible not to feel a burning on her own scalp, a throbbing in her own cheek, an ache in her own teeth. When Lana’s hands appeared from under the covers the sight of the broken nails and ragged cuticles sent a phantom pain running up Jen’s arms.

  ‘Are you hurting?’ Jen said.

  ‘Always.’

  It was an echo of the conversations they’d had before, when Lana was blocking the door to her bedroom, or pulling her sleeve down over her arm to hide whatever marks she’d made there.

  ‘What happened?’ Jen asked, trying to soften the desperate edge to her voice.

  ‘Can’t,’ Lana said, squinting as if the room were full of bright lights.

  ‘Can’t what? Can’t tell me?’

  She shook her head. ‘It’s…a blur.’

  Hugh’s paper cup finally toppled on to the floor and, no longer held in place by its ethereal weight, Hugh drooped further on to the mattress, letting out a sharp snore.

  ‘But these bruises,’ Jen said. ‘How did you get them? Did someone hurt you? Did you fall?’

  ‘Must have.’

  Jen felt under the bed for the cup, reaching into the dark and grabbing for it. Her fingers were jittery. She had pushed her hand, her arm, into some other dark space recently. Yesterday? Two days ago? Time was unsettled in her memory – there was the abyss while Lana was gone and there was now. She crushed the cup and pushed it absently into her bag, finding the small bottle of perfume Hugh had given her for Christmas. It smelled of something bright and sweet, of mandarins or orange blossom. It also smelled like four days of despair, and she knew she’d never be able to use it again.

  Lana held her wrist out for the perfume and Jen sprayed a little on her, thinking of it as an act of truce, though they weren’t really fighting. She watched as Lana brought the wrist to her nose and sniffed.

  ‘Nice. Thanks,’ she said, letting her arm flop back on to the bed.

  Jen stared at the arm, the hand, the nails. ‘Were you trapped somewhere?’ she asked. ‘Caught in something? Were you in a fight?’ She moved her gaze to Lana’s pale, doughy face. ‘You said something about…you said you were underneath, when you were sleeping.’

  ‘Ugh.’

  ‘You don’t remember that?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Leave her alone now, Jen.’ Hugh’s voice was deadened by the mattress. ‘The questions can wait.’

  ‘How long have you been awake?’

  ‘Define awake,’ he said, sitting up. ‘I’ve been vaguely conscious for about twenty seconds.’

  ‘I’m just asking Lana if there’s anything we need to know.’

  ‘Well, I’m just telling you that you can do that later.’

  ‘She’s angry,’ Lana said.

  Jen sighed. ‘No, Lana, I’m not. I’m upset, confused, exhausted, I’ve hardly slept this week for worry, but I’m not angry.’

  ‘Okay,’ Lana said, with what might have been a smile. She closed one eye and then the other, shifting between them until she could keep both open at the same time. ‘I’ll expect more questions, then.’

  ‘Yes, do,’ Jen said, feeling as though battle lines had been drawn.

  Continuous stationery

  To prove there was no animosity (or to lull her daughter before another attack), Jen bought, at the hospital shop: a KitKat (which would go uneaten), a mindfulness colouring book (which would be left black and white), a set of felt-tip pens (the caps would never be removed) and, in a moment of levity, a pack of novelty moustaches (Lana would attach the orange ‘Walrus’ one to her upper lip and stare challengingly at a nurse who was taking her blood pressure).

  Carrying this haul back upstairs, Jen looked through the corridor windows at each little courtyard. In one was a sad-looking tree, all stringy branches and frizzy leaves, lit by leftover electric light. It was dismal to think of it stuck there for ever, or for as long as the hospital buildings surrounded it, lonely and isolated, with no access to the landscape beyond. The sight had not affected Hugh, though.

  ‘You keep grinning at everyone,’ Jen said, greeting him as he came out of the loo at the end of the corridor. ‘Stop grinning.’

  ‘Sorry,’ Hugh said, grinning.

  ‘What’s the matter with you?’ she asked, stopping at the entrance to Lana’s ward.

  ‘How d’you mean?’

  ‘You’re…giddy. Laughing at things that aren’t funny, humming to yourself.’

  ‘I’m happy to have my daughter back.’ Hugh looked at Lana through the doorway to her bay. She was sitting up in her hospital bed, eating a red-coloured jelly. ‘Happy to have found her alive and safe. Aren’t you happy?’

  ‘Yes, but she’s been gone nearly a week, and we still don’t know what happened to her, where she went, or why.
It seems inappropriate to be so jolly all the time.’

  ‘We’ve been through it, though, Jen,’ he said. ‘That’s the thing. It’s like trial by fire or whatever. After everything we’ve been through with Lana, the fear and guilt and those excruciating therapy sessions, I couldn’t see how it would ever get any better. Then the worst happened, or nearly the worst, and we thought we’d lost her, but we got through it and came out the other side, and so did she.’

  He sighed, and it was nearly a giggle. Jen wondered if he was hysterical.

  ‘Do you see, though?’ he said. ‘It’s all over.’

  She stared at Hugh for a moment. ‘You think Lana won’t have depression any more? That she’s been cured somehow?’

  ‘Not cured – that makes me sound ridiculous. But yes, I think we’ve reached a tipping point. What are you scrabbling in your bag for?’

  ‘My phone’s buzzing,’ Jen said. ‘It’s Meg. Will you take it? I want to get back to Lana.’

  ‘All right. I’ll get something else for us to read while I’m at it.’

  Jen didn’t remind him she’d just been to the shop and she kept her lips together while Hugh checked he had his wallet and kissed her on the head and answered the phone and finally left. But her teeth were already parted as she walked through the ward, her tongue poised, and as soon as she sat down next to Lana’s bed she began.

  ‘Just tell me, truthfully, did you deliberately go off?’ she asked.

  Lana sighed and put her empty jelly pot down. ‘I can’t remember, Mum.’

  ‘What time did you leave the centre? It must have been after I’d gone to sleep.’

  ‘I really can’t remember.’

  ‘Were you alone?’

  ‘I can’t remember.’

  ‘Why did you go off, Lana? What were you feeling?’

  ‘I can’t remember that, either.’

  ‘Did that boy have anything to do with it?’

  ‘Oh, that boy, that boy. You keep going on about that boy. I kissed Matthew, like, twice. This isn’t Romeo and Juliet – he has nothing to do with anything.’

  This wasn’t going well, Jen realized, she was only making Lana annoyed, making her exhausted, but still, she had to ask; there wasn’t much time before Hugh came back.

  ‘How did you get the cut on your head?’

  ‘I can’t remember.’ Said with a flat tone, looking at the ceiling.

  ‘How did you crack your tooth?’

  ‘I can’t remember.’ Slightly ironic, as if this were a tedious game.

  ‘If you can’t remember anything, how did you know to turn down the forensic exam, the rape kit?’

  ‘Oh, Jesus, Mum, there are some things you just know, okay?’

  ‘Okay. Fine. Good.’ Thank God, she said to herself, promising not to think about the rape kit again. ‘Were you angry with me?’ This was the important question: Was it my fault? Did I make this happen? Do you blame me? Should others blame me, too?

  Lana looked angry now, her chin jutting, her jaw locking. ‘Mum, I can’t remember,’ she said.

  ‘Weren’t you scared?’

  ‘I can’t remember.’ Her consonants were hard and biting.

  ‘You must have been inside some of the time. Where were you?’

  Her voice rose. ‘I can’t remember.’

  ‘Not even an impression? Was it dark? Warm? Lonely? What?’

  Lana looked at Jen for a long moment before opening her mouth. ‘I can’t remember.’

  Jen felt they could go on like this for ever, her own words constantly bridged by Lana’s identical sentence. She imagined their conversation being printed on an endless piece of paper, on one of those printers from the eighties with the holes along each side, the stack of paper uncurling as it was fed through the rollers.

  Pausing a moment, she heard the clack of the woman visitor’s knitting needles and began to blame her, to think of her as the cause, the creator of this terrible pattern of speech.

  ‘How did you lose your phone?’ Jen asked, unable to stop herself.

  The knitting needles tapped together. I told you so I told you so.

  ‘I can’t remember,’ Lana said.

  ‘Did you meet anyone at all?’

  The woman’s bangles jangled as she unwound the ball of wool. I know teenagers.

  ‘I can’t remember,’ Lana said.

  ‘What were you trying to do? What were you hoping would happen?’

  There was a crack as the woman put down her knitting and stretched her back. Think she’ll tell you where she’s been when she wakes up? Don’t you believe it.

  ‘I can’t remember,’ Lana said.

  ‘Here we are.’ Hugh had come back with paper cups and an armful of magazines. ‘You used to read these ones, didn’t you?’ he asked Lana. ‘I looked for Jackie magazine, but apparently they don’t do that any more.’

  ‘That was stopped in the nineties,’ Jen said. ‘I doubt Lana’s even heard of it.’

  ‘Oh. Well. “Cute Boy Confessions”,’ he deciphered from the cover. ‘Sounds…fun.’

  The magazine was in plastic and there were various things sliding about inside it: a cat-shaped rubber, some popping candy and a set of lip balms. Lana ripped the plastic open and unscrewed a lip balm’s cap. The scent of artificial strawberries escaped and the chemical smell was the final trigger for Jen’s behind-the-eyes headache. She sipped at her coffee and slumped in her seat and watched as Lana retreated behind the garish, hectic pages of the magazine.

  ‘Can I talk to you for a sec?’ Hugh hadn’t sat down and was beginning to walk backwards out of the ward, narrowly missing an orderly with a dinner trolley.

  Jen got up to stop him bumping into something.

  ‘You need to call Meg,’ he said, lowering his voice as they got into the corridor. ‘Not now, but tomorrow morning. You need to give her a call. God knows what’s got into her. Oh, that seems an unfortunate way to have put it.’

  ‘Why?’ Jen said, putting her coffee down on a windowsill.

  ‘She says she’s pregnant.’

  ‘Pregnant. Meg?’ She pictured her elder daughter, the tall, brown sensibleness of her, the straight fringe and the neat shoes and the slight, sturdy figure in between. ‘How?’ she said at last. ‘Or do I mean who? No, I definitely mean how.’

  ‘She made some arrangement with her friend Tom,’ Hugh said. ‘He donated his sperm.’

  ‘Directly?’

  ‘No, and, apparently, I shouldn’t have asked that, so make sure you don’t when you speak to her.’

  Jen felt rather faint, and wondered if the nurse would object to her getting into one of the beds. ‘And she’s telling us this now?’

  ‘She’d planned to tell us today, after her second scan,’ Hugh said, ‘so she thought she’d stick to the schedule.’

  Which was like Meg; she tended to stand by her decisions, no matter what. Jen and Hugh had often discussed this trait, wondering where she’d got it from, as neither of them was particularly good at keeping up routines or remembering their promises.

  ‘Second scan? When was all this decided?’ Jen asked.

  ‘Months ago. She’s twenty weeks gone.’

  ‘Good God.’ Jen joined her coffee cup on the windowsill and leaned against the glass. It was cool on her shoulders, but she didn’t trust it not to open suddenly and send her plunging down to join the trapped tree in the courtyard.

  ‘Exactly what I said.’

  ‘Trust Meg to be halfway through it all before she includes us.’

  ‘Exactly what I thought.’

  ‘I’m going to have a grandchild,’ Jen said, not quite sure what she was feeling.

  ‘We both are.’

  ‘I’m going to be a grandmother.’

  ‘Oh, for heaven’s sake, Jen,’ Hugh said. ‘Stop grinning.’

  Self-sacrifice

  She was surprised to hear she was grinning, as that implied an unalloyed joy at the news her daughter was pregnant. And although the prospect of a grand
child was joyous, she was frightened by the idea of Meg giving birth. It was an ancient fear, an ancestral, female fear. It was this fear that had caused the eleven-year gap between Meg and Lana.

  After Meg’s birth Jen had decided not to get pregnant again. Not because her labour had been so terrible (it hadn’t), but because she felt she’d got through it unscathed by sheer luck, and that her luck wouldn’t hold for another baby.

  On the maternity ward in the days after, she’d watched the other women, watched them wincing as they shifted in their chairs, or hobbled to the bathroom. They’d looked so shattered, so bruised, while their husbands had spring-stepped about, showing the babies to their relatives, rosily pleased. It was disturbing to Jen that one half of each couple had become a sort of sacrifice, and she didn’t want to be a sacrifice. She didn’t want Meg to be one either. She wished Meg’s girlfriend was carrying the baby.

  Self-sufficient

  Lana, then, was an accident. And Meg had known it. She’d given them a pitying look when Jen and Hugh had told her she was going to have a younger sibling, as if they’d demonstrated that they couldn’t manage some simple task. This judgement wasn’t entirely unfair. Having avoided getting pregnant for ten years, Jen had started to believe conceiving was beyond her, the conscientiousness with which she took contraceptives had dwindled, she and Hugh had grown complacent.

  So perhaps it was this proof of their irresponsibility that made Meg decide to cook for herself. Two weeks after Lana’s birth a tired but not terribly sore Jen (her luck had held for this second birth and she’d come through it unscathed again) found Meg in the kitchen at six o’clock, waiting while a bowl of baked beans rotated in the microwave.