Whistle in the Dark

by Emma Healey

  Jen had hardly known Grace at art college, and they’d only met again by chance a couple of years ago. She’d been walking along the high street one day when she’d caught a glimpse of green leather shoes and a yellow jute bag through a shop window. That was just before she heard the thud of a woman’s head hitting the glass.

  The woman had been Grace.

  A sales assistant in the shop’s uniform had run noiselessly over as Jen had stood watching from the pavement, replaying the shock of the thud, observing Grace being attended to, wondering how she hadn’t realized she was heading towards a window. Had she, like an insect, not recognized the glass?

  ‘I was having an epiphany,’ Grace said later.

  An embarrassing thing to say, Jen had thought, putting it down to mild concussion. But of course it wasn’t the concussion. And since then, Jen had sat through lectures on every kind of fad, had nodded and smiled and teased Grace for her ideas. And afterwards, she had almost always walked home feeling more competent than usual, feeling superior, as Lana had said. Because, if nothing else could be said for her, at least she hadn’t walked into a plate-glass window.

  Compartmentalizing

  Jen thought of Grace as she knocked on Lana’s door the next morning. She thought she would tell Lana she was right, that her friend wasn’t so very different from Stephen. She thought it might be something to discuss, maybe even to laugh about. There was no answer, so Jen called through the door.

  ‘If you don’t want me to come in, say so now.’

  She waited a moment before entering the room. And then it was as if all information had to be corralled into lists, every sensation or action logged carefully and distantly, if she were to keep sane.

  What was gone:

  Any residual warmth in the depths of the mattress.

  Lana.

  What remained:

  Silence.

  The overhead lamp, left on all night.

  The curtains, open, no longer weighed down by a hidden mobile phone.

  The books on Hell, brought out into the light and set on a shelf.

  The smell of Jen’s expensive perfume.

  Sunflowers that had contracted into brown fists in the jug.

  The bandana that Lana used to cover the scar on her head.

  Long chunks of light-coloured hair, curled in the wastepaper basket like snakes, and still showing the scissor marks where they’d been cut from Lana’s scalp.

  Who was called:

  Lana (seventeen times); no answer.

  Hugh (once); he said he’d come home from work immediately.

  Reactions:

  Dizziness which forced her to lie down.

  The need to turn every room in the house upside down.

  A tendency to bite at her own hand.

  An urge to run down the road, to race across the common, to scream Lana’s name at the top of her lungs.

  A compulsion to take off her clothes and put them back on again.

  An ability to notice, unaccountably, that the hand wash had nearly run out in the bathroom, that one of the little Japanese cups in the kitchen was broken, that Lana had left a half-eaten packet of Hula Hoops by the kettle.

  An unexpected appetite for slightly soft BBQ-beef-flavoured Hula Hoops, finished in two large mouthfuls.

  Snacking

  She had tried. She had tried everything. Reading books and keeping diaries and talking to professionals and spending time with family and being there and not being there and Western medicine and homeopathy and crystals-and-metals-and-astrology and staying home and having a change of scene. What was there left but superstition, bargaining?

  Jen’s mind went back to a Saturday, months ago, when she’d been chopping parsley. She’d felt she had been chopping parsley for a thousand years, and had been annoyed at herself for agreeing to cook what Meg suggested for dinner. Tomato juice was dripping over the edge of the chopping board, a paper cut on her thumb stung from squeezing lemons, and damp bits of herb clung itchily to her skin from fingers to elbow. She wasn’t even certain how to pronounce ‘tabbouleh’, which syllable was supposed to be emphasized.

  Meanwhile, Lana had sat at the kitchen table and helped herself to the pomegranate seeds that were waiting to be sprinkled on top. She’d seemed unaware that she was eating at all, the movements of arm, hand and mouth mechanical, automatic. And something about the action, the sleepwalking quality of it, had made Jen uneasy.

  ‘Stop eating those,’ she’d said, and Lana had stopped for a few minutes, looking at the bowl as if she’d never seen it before. But the sound of teeth crunching the flesh-covered seeds had soon begun again.

  Jen had poured a packet of Thai-red-curry-flavoured crisps into another bowl, wincing at the slightly foetid smell of them, and swapped the bowls around in a smooth movement. Lana had continued to eat, as if she hadn’t noticed, though she obviously had because, after a couple of mouthfuls, she’d asked Jen if she was trying to make her fat.

  ‘You’ve swapped the healthy option out for the unhealthy one.’

  ‘Well, I need the seeds for the recipe,’ Jen had said, but really thinking that no maternal deals had ever been made over curry-flavoured crisps.

  Relief

  She was at Meg’s.

  Grapevine

  ‘She arrived about ten minutes ago.’

  Jen gripped the phone and sank on to a kitchen chair, imagining Meg’s flat – peaceful, beautiful and full of odd things that would seem ridiculous in anyone else’s home. The dried seed heads of alliums dropped into square candle holders, a vase filled with porcupine quills, a string of bright silk scarves suspended above the window, the wall of artists’ palettes encrusted with a thousand shades of paint.

  The things were always so pristine, and Jen suspected that her daughter dusted, and not only that, took the scarves down and hand-washed them, ironed them and hung them up again on a regular basis. She had once watched as Meg took about a hundred corks out of a huge glass jar, cleaned the jar, brushed fluff off each individual cork then put them all back in again. ‘Whose child are you?’ she’d wanted to ask.

  ‘Is Lana all right?’ she said now, leaning on the table and finding butter on her sleeve. ‘What’s happened?’

  ‘Apparently, she set off early this morning, but it took her a while to get here because she doesn’t like using the Underground. Did you know that?’

  ‘Yes,’ Jen said, turning at the sound of Hugh’s key in the lock. And then he was there, filling the kettle, getting down mugs, pinching camomile tea into them. The room immediately felt calmer, more comfortable, though he hadn’t yet taken his jacket off.

  ‘Meg,’ Jen mouthed at him, pointing to the phone. ‘Lana’s there.’

  He nodded then sat down, looking at the phone, concentrating.

  ‘Mum?’ Meg said. ‘You knew? That Lana doesn’t like the Tube now?’

  ‘She told me. But what’s she doing there?’

  ‘She’s asked to stay.’

  ‘With you? For how long?’

  ‘We haven’t really discussed it yet.’

  ‘Okay. Look, I realize this is a pain, but can you hang on for an hour? Your dad and I will set off now.’ Hugh nodded again.

  ‘No, Mum. I think it’s best if you give her some time alone.’

  ‘Alone?’

  ‘Or, not alone, but just some space, you know?’

  ‘You mean, away from me?’ There were crumbs on the table, and Jen gave the phone to Hugh while she swept them into a hand, smearing more butter on to her sleeve as she did so. Getting up to throw the crumbs away, she noticed that the fruit bowl held only the remains of a bunch of grapes, mostly knobbly stalks, and that the glass in front of the fish print was covered with speckles of grease. No wonder Lana would prefer to be at Meg’s, she thought, fetching a cloth and some vinegar from under the sink.

  ‘Lana’s cut off all her hair,’ Hugh said, holding the phone away from his cheek for a moment.

  ‘I know. I found it in the bin.
’

  ‘Yes. She found the hair,’ he said into the phone.

  ‘Why did she do it? Has she said?’

  ‘Sick of having to cover the short patch over her scar, apparently.’

  Jen tipped some vinegar on to the cloth and then rubbed at the grease over the fish print. ‘So she’s okay?’

  ‘Yes. In pretty good spirits.’

  The glass was clean. She dabbed at her sleeve. ‘But, I mean, why did she leave without a word? Why did she go to Meg’s?’

  ‘Did you hear that?’ he asked the phone. ‘Right.’ He looked up. ‘Meg doesn’t know. Oh, really?‘ He held the phone closer, his mouth open. ‘Is that what she says?’

  ‘Says what?’ The strong smell of vinegar made Jen’s eyes water.

  ‘Wait a minute.’ Hugh covered the mouthpiece. ‘Lana says she’s always thought of Meg as a second mother.’

  ‘Has she?’ Jen dropped the cloth in the sink.

  ‘Not that I was aware. Meg certainly doesn’t feel like her mother. Perhaps she just means because of the age gap.’

  ‘Well, it’s news to me. How long has she felt like that?’

  ‘About five minutes, I expect. Just long enough to make a case for staying at Meg’s.’

  ‘Ask her when we should come over.’

  ‘When d’you want us, Meg?’ Hugh asked.

  ‘No, not when d’you want us? When should we come?’

  Hugh turned his face away to better hear the voice at the other end of the line. ‘Right. Jen, here’s the plan. The summer holidays end in six days. Meg says Lana can stay till then. She’s editing a catalogue and can work from home till next week. So maybe this is a good time for everyone to have a rest.’

  ‘A rest? As if I will be able to rest with Lana roaming London.’

  ‘She won’t be roaming London. Meg says she’ll keep an eye on her. She promises.’ He laughed into the phone. ‘She says, think of it as one in the bank for your future babysitting duties.’

  ‘Oh.’ Jen stopped a moment, cheered by the idea of looking after her granddaughter. Meg couldn’t think she was so terrible a mother if she was willing to leave her child in her care. ‘Will we have babysitting duties, then? That will be nice.’ She looked around the kitchen, at the flakes of onion skin that skittered about under the cupboards, at the tea stains around the kettle, at the limescale on the taps and the burnt sauce on the hobs and the soil under the plant pots. ‘But the place is such a mess. You couldn’t have a little one here.’

  ‘Well, it won’t be for a while yet.’

  ‘I know, but I should get started,’ Jen said, dumping the mushy grapes into the bin and squirting washing-up liquid into the bowl. Hugh tried to hug her as he left the room, but she wriggled out of his grasp and began to fill a bucket with Dettol.

  Trinity

  Hugh was in bed, asleep, by the time she had finished scrubbing the toilet and moving furniture so she could hoover under it, and washing the cushion covers and shining the windows and cleaning the skirting boards and disinfecting the floors and running every piece of crockery and cutlery through the dishwasher.

  ‘I thought nesting was meant to be limited to the mother-to-be,’ he’d said, as he went upstairs.

  In the morning, after he’d left for work, she started again, gouging at the mould in the bathroom sealant. But she was distracted. The cleaning seemed less urgent today; the impulse had turned into a general restlessness. She tried to call Lana and then Meg, but they didn’t pick up (she imagined them smirking at her name flashing on the screens of their phones) and, when she got a text a few minutes later, it was just Meg telling her they’d call that evening, that she should relax. A dismissal.

  She tried to feel anger but didn’t have the energy for it, and she wondered, rather desperately, what to do with the day, how she might pass the time in the house. Then came a sudden awareness of her solitude, her freedom. There was no one here to watch out for, to wait for, to manage. If she was restless, she could leave the house, she could go anywhere she liked. At first, she couldn’t think where to go. It was a blazing-hot day, the sort of day to share with other people, only no other people wanted her.

  But perhaps she could visit her mother, she thought, and she got into the car. There was a sense of unoriginality in her actions as she set off, that she was following Lana’s reasoning, Lana’s movements of the day before: leaving the house without telling anyone, running away and seeking sanctuary with the only family within reach. Except that Lily really was Jen’s mother; she didn’t have to rewrite their relationship to justify the visit.

  Once on the road, though, Jen felt reluctant to drive to Suffolk, to end up in a garden centre admiring dainty fuchsia trees in glossy pots and bending to read out the labels on each plant. She felt too wild for that, too wilful. And it wasn’t long before she found herself heading north-west, rather than north-east, exchanging the gentler landscape of Suffolk for the tors and moorland of the Peak District.

  It was inevitable, she realized, that she would end up back there; this had been where she was heading, in her mind (in her soul, Grace would have said), for months. Something had been lost there, something had gone awry, and she needed to feel the soil under her feet, to retrace her steps, her daughter’s steps, and see if the landscape would reveal any secrets.

  She pulled into a service station for a wee and a coffee, for petrol and another bag of Hula Hoops (she had developed a taste for them), and remembered the overnight drive from Scotland she had attempted in her twenties. At least this exploration, though vague, at least this search, though it was for something unnamed, wouldn’t require her to sleep in her car (she hoped).

  And it wasn’t cold. It was, in fact, the most beautiful day. The heavy summer foliage that lined the motorway seemed to have taken on its own light, as if the sun had splintered into a thousand pieces and hung, glowing, on the trees. The whites of things, of dresses and china cups and tablecloths, was dazzling. Only there weren’t so many dresses and china cups and tablecloths along this way, there were more road markings and empty billboards and VW vans, but somehow, the weather still suggested the former objects better.

  The light printed patterns of whatever was above her on to the ground: birds flying low enough were accompanied by their shadow selves and the branches of trees created criss-crosses on the tarmac. If you closed your eyes, the light would flicker and falter and make you sick. (Though Jen kept her eyes open, as she was driving.) Her sight was slightly impaired, all the same, was bleary and smudged with tears. She was disappointed to be crying, to have been crying for forty miles.

  There had been a Japanese man in the service station, who’d taken his baby daughter on his knee while the mother ate McDonald’s from a paper bag. It had seemed like the loveliest thing Jen had seen in years. The man had sat on a chair in the food court and pointed things out to the baby, hugging her to his chest and smiling down at her and looking so blissful. The baby’s little feet in their little socks had bounced once on the seat of the chair, and the father had pulled his coat around him and tucked it under the feet so the fabric cradled them, protected them from the grubby upholstery.

  Why cry at that? Why cry at the way he held up a knitted doll for the baby to see? Why cry at the rosy cheeks of the mother as she pushed fingerfuls of chips into her mouth? Why cry at the way light filtered through the service station’s skylight to fall on those three figures alone?

  Well, if she cried enough, Jen thought, at least she might not need to wee again for another forty miles.

  First sign of madness

  It was lunchtime when she arrived, and she ate a currant bun she’d bought from a supermarket and felt quaint and rustic. There was a car park in a little hollow about a mile from the holiday centre and, when she had finished eating, Jen slipped off her shoes and pulled on the wellingtons she kept in the car.

  She walked uphill, not really sure where she was going but sensing that high ground would be a good start. Perhaps, if she could get a g
ood view of the valley, she would spot someone, hiding, following her. But the hill was densely wooded and there was no view to be had. It was difficult to know which way to go next, and the ground was littered with sycamore keys, crazy arrows pointing her in every direction, mocking her.

  The creaking-door sound of a woodpecker echoed through the trees and Jen turned towards it, taking a path which led her along the edge of a field to another small wood where there was a tree with bulbous points on the trunk, and a strange root form, like the legs of a child-sized nymph curling out, limboing out of the earth. She thought of the child who was supposed to have found a door to Hell in a tree, she thought about the painting of Daphne she’d seen in the gallery, and she thought about Meg’s baby. She’d had a dream some nights ago about the baby turning Meg into a tree from inside – her lungs becoming branches and foliage, her intestines roots, her skin bark – and the horror of it came back to her only now.

  She spread her toes in her boots, feeling the uneven ground beneath the thick soles. People were always telling you to ‘plant yourself’; they talked about it in self-defence classes, being moored in the earth, like a tree, unbreachable. But what if all women had a propensity for turning into trees? What if pushing your feet too hard into the ground was dangerous, caused you to sprout roots and stay stuck there for ever? She moved on.

  Half an hour later, Jen finally admitted she was lost. She frowned at the mouth of a rabbit warren, she frowned at the rabbit droppings stuck to her boot, she frowned at a row of shotgun cartridges littering the path. The countryside was disturbing. Everywhere you went there was evidence of people shooting things.

  ‘Probably rabbits,’ she told herself.

  Poor rabbits, she thought.

  ‘Or foxes,’ she said aloud.