But then, she had said sorry, brought me flowers …
The night before, she had spoken those words to me as if she might care, as if she was the nurse telling me what was wrong. Of course I knew about all that Munchausen’s syndrome by proxy stuff, but it simply did not apply. I was kind, not cruel, and rarely cruel to be kind. Her being so damn smart, chatting on about the terrible consequences of early trauma – she and I both, then! Childish, I knew, but she did go on and on, about how severe stresses could arise in traumatised parents, flaring up like crackpot birthday candles when their own children reached that same devastating age. All that, as if she were a shrink; as if she, the shrunk one and all of sixteen, were teaching me a thing or two!
I did not react as I should have. I should not have done what I did. But I did, I suppose, stay calm. Unflapped. Professional, as only born carers can be.
9.11 a.m. On. Her phone was on.
I launched the app, a green dot shone. She was in London. Harrow-on-the-Hill.
I drove to the station. When I got on the train, my carriage was almost empty. A few seats ahead a couple of girls were laughing and whispering; there were two or three business types jabbing at their phones, one standing cyclist, a man in a bomber jacket with his back to me.
We pulled out and I lost the WiFi. ‘Cannot Connect’. I would have to wait for some 4G and pray that Lola didn’t get on another train, or bus, or even plane before I reached her. Nothing I could do, for now, except hope hard.
I picked up the local paper from the seat opposite. An unknown celeb and some depressing political scandal on the front page. I got as far as page 2. It was him. The man in the photos was Darren Hodson, the guy from the supermarket, the one who had hurt me all those years ago. The wing-tips of his tattoo were showing. The headline read:
BOUNCER IN PUB RACE ATTACK
I read fast:
Darren Hodson, forty-two, has been charged with an assault on a man, twenty-seven, of Eritrean origin, outside the Rose and Crown where Hodson works as a bouncer. The victim is being treated in hospital. He is an asylum seeker and reliable witness accounts lead police to believe the attack was racially motivated. There may be further drug-related charges. Hodson is being held in custody.
By the third reading, all I could think about was the custody-holding and the reliable witnesses. It was not a conviction yet but, again, I would hope hard. And, for today at least, his eagle tattoo would not be swooping through our streets.
The train to Harrow-on-the-Hill took forty-seven minutes. The dot was still just there, where it had been for more than an hour, right opposite the station we pulled into, at the Lemon Grove Café. I waited for the traffic to part, rushed across the road. At last, I pushed into an airy room, what Thomas would call ‘the sort of place we used to call hip’. A young crowd, music; I scanned fast. Almost empty, no Lola. Puffed out, I slumped into the nearest hard chair. If one of the ponytails bounced over I would order a cappuccino; she had to be in the loo. Sitting at a corner table I watched three or four Tuesday-night-clubbing patrons prod suspiciously at fry-ups, testing the quality of the sausage with their knife and seeking out the advertised black pudding under their duck eggs and home-sauced haricot beans. Post-come-down fry-ups, far from a bed that cared.
Where was she?
I refreshed the app. The same green dot: here, it said she was right here.
I waved over a young waitress.
‘I’m sorry, is there another room here, maybe? A back room, or upstairs lounge?’
She shook her ponytail in pretty denial.
‘Just here, just us! Can I get you anything?’
‘Give me a moment, please.’
I lifted the menu, ignoring the flat whites in sizes Live it Large, Spoiler and Basic Ration. I passed over the croissants with rooftop-churned butter and manuka honey, the dense, rare-breed, orange-yolked poached eggs. I was hungry for nothing, no one but Lola, Lolly, Lolapaloo.
Where are you, Lo?
My mind was churning with ideas for her, explanations, what I would and would not say; cunning ways to pull parental rank should matters take a turn for the worse. My mind was bright, full of clean white light, dazzling with intention. I let it turn and turn.
I had to try harder.
I played with my phone, waiting for some sign. Then I saw it, an ‘i’ in the bottom right of the screen. I selected ‘Satellite’. There, no doubt it was this road. Refresh. Zoom. I tapped until the image grew. She was definitely here, the green dot insisted. My mind gone grey, I tapped once more.
‘Shit!’
I had dropped the phone on the ground, shattering the screen. From the floor, I picked up my device with all its integral power, the secrets it contained. No, hopeless; the unprotected screen was impossibly fragmented, beyond the reach of my touch.
I had to move fast now, she was here. I knew she was here. Where was she?
The ponytail was approaching again. I took out my purse.
‘Hi, listen,’ I said, pulling out a tenner. ‘I’m so sorry, I’m not going to order anything, but do you mind if I have a quick look around?’
‘Go ahead.’
‘Thank you.’ I left the note so that a large corner peeked out from under the menu, then rose. ‘Are the Ladies upstairs?’
She nodded.
The stairs to the first floor were narrow and bent back on themselves. The landing had three doors. I went into the first, the Ladies. Just three cubicles, one occupied.
‘Lola?’
No answer.
I waited by the sinks. After a moment, I bent to see the feet: trainers. I was going to call out again, but then, there, a flush. My heart skittered faster as – chuk – the lock went and …
A young woman of about twenty, Korean maybe, slipped past me to wash her hands.
I looked again. All three cubicles empty; a check around the corner, no one. I left.
Had to hurry. Two more chances on the landing: the Gents and a Staff Only door. I went for the latter: a push, a peek, a few coats, a kettle, a young girl in an apron, texting. Not Lola.
Gents, then.
I barged in. A lone man, fifty-odd, standing at the urinals with business in hand. His face contorted in nascent outrage and then – incalculably worse – he smiled.
‘Sorry! Wrong door.’
I wheeled about. Thanked all that was holy that I could see from where I stood that all the cubicles were empty; I did not have the balls to go in. Downside: no Lola anywhere.
Back on the landing, I trailed my hands along the wall, the windowsill, looked out. Nothing but a small concrete yard, some large bins. Beyond the fence, ranks of headstones, sheltered by trees and woven through with swept paths. A flash of red caught my eye.
A red coat. Lola.
She was walking away from the fence towards the far end of the cemetery.
I rapped, with some force, on the glass. She didn’t turn.
I hurried down the stairs and out of the door, turning hard left and left again, trying to get to what I had seen from the window; no, it was all fenced off. I turned back and broke into a jog, keeping going, now run-running on rocky pavement, following my nose. I cranked myself up to the max, until my teeth juddered and the daylight shook and a low moan started up in my lungs. I dodged swinging arms, bending backs, banging builders and straining dogs as I slapped my fast ugly feet over two, four, seven pavements to find her. At last, I stuttered through the gates of the cemetery.
Red, red, where was she?
‘No. Not you, not here.’
I looked left. On a bench against a wall was Lola. Hunched over, something scrunched in her hand that looked like cellophane. She got up, came over.
‘Lola, I’m so—’
‘Did you know, it was her birthday, yesterday? Mum’s. Dad forgot; first time ever. Everyone forgot. I just woke up and thought: ‘We’re forgetting …’
‘Lola, I’d like to—’
‘I don’t care!’
She walked past
me, binned the flower wrappings and started to jog; then she was running, running away, running flat out.
I had no choice. I ran again, anchoring my gaze to her back as she darted up the high street. The sight of a young man shouting as she caught his shoulder, already too far away for me to hear. She kept going. Then, right under the station sign, she slowed and nipped up the steps.
I ran on, rasping my breath, until I reached the station entrance. The steps. I threw everything into bounding up and up until – there, I was inside. I rushed on, looking around. She was nowhere. I ran through to the main ticket hall, still no sign, then on to the concourse.
There. She was there, in her red coat, next to one of those tapioca-ball juice concessions, looking lost. Utterly lost.
‘Lola, hang on!’ I called.
‘Oh God,’ she said, walking away fast towards the platform gates.
‘You need to come home, sweetie.’
‘No! I don’t want to live anywhere near you! You’ve ruined my life!’
‘Don’t be silly,’ I said. ‘I’ll look after you …’
‘Fuck no! You lied.’
‘Lola!’
‘I know you lied. Pregnant? I know I’m not, now.’
‘I know that, I came to tell—’
‘Ellie and I did another test. And another one, just to be sure. I’m definitely not pregnant, you lied.’
She was almost running again now.
‘Was just going to … we’re—’
‘We nothing! And even if I had been pregnant, it wouldn’t have been “too late”.’
I was panting hard. ‘I needed. To take control. Of situation.’
‘Control of me?’
‘To help. You were—’
‘I know! A fuckup. I know, I … God.’
‘You need to be taken care of, Lola. But now you think that I’m a monster?’
‘You know about your own illness, don’t pretend you don’t! What do you reckon?’
‘Well then.’ So, me too now, that betrayal of fake cheer. ‘We still need to work together, don’t we? At least to stop that Will from his antics. Can’t let him off the hook, can we?’
‘It’s total bollocks.’ She was pacing across my path. ‘Even your own sister thinks you’re—’
‘I don’t care what she thinks!’
We were at a set of barriers. Lola had her ticket ready and was through and on a platform to God-knows-where before I had moved. She turned and we looked at each other, divided by the metal wall. She lifted her chin as she said, too loud:
‘Jade gave me a letter for you and I’ve read it. She was right. About everything.’
She went to turn away and in a second my feet were all motion, nipping behind an Asian woman to go through on her ticket.
Lola walked faster, right along the platform, to where the roof ended and we were exposed again. Hurt as strong as rage propelled me onwards as she threw words over her shoulder:
‘Jade knew if she grassed you up then Stevie would end up being taken into care. She doesn’t want you locked up, she just wants to look after him, she won’t tell anyone about your … She promised she’ll take care of him from now on. Why don’t you—’
‘He’s mine!’ Only powering strides could keep pace with her, she was pumped.
‘She knows you’ve been through a lot. She just wants to help.’
‘You listened to that woman?’
We were on the platform, dark suits weaving around us. A train would be in soon but she could not – could not – get on it.
‘I had to, Darling! Jade spelled it all out in her letter – your illness, the first baby, the things you’ve put your own son through. Probably shouldn’t have read it, I know, but I have to show this to Dad.’
And end our world.
‘You can’t do that. It doesn’t belong to you.’
‘I have to.’
She was turning, pacing in helter-skelter steps as I neared her on the platform, off her nut.
‘Please, Lola. Give me that letter and we’ll go home together.’
‘Dad needs to know.’ She turned, took another step.
‘You’re not yourself, Lola. Let me help you.’
‘Dad needs to know that you’re ill and that you lied. I’m not pregnant.’
There, a detonation behind that metal stare. I could not look into those eyes.
‘Here, just give me that.’ I reached slowly, slow, for Jade’s letter. The train was coming.
‘No!’
It was not stopping here.
‘Please, Lola.’
She pulled the letter away, lurched back. Her foot went back, far back, her toe pointed in some complicated dance step.
‘Lola!’
‘No!’
My hand flew out as she snatched the papers back, yanked back far too far until she balanced on the platform’s edge. Her body waving, wavering. My palm flexed and I reached out again. I had to reach out.
‘Please, Lola, come!’
The look she gave me, everything stripped away. My fingers strained further.
Far too far, she was leaning back, a weird half-smile on her face. I reached out hard towards her, but then I held only paper and she was flailing with horrific grace, arcing back as she fell, a curling red lip, as the train came at her.
What’s Done is Done
She is dead. Now only I am left to love him and it’s all my fault.
Yesterday, Thomas asked me why I seem to be taking it even harder than him and I told him: I missed it. She needed me more than anything, and I missed it. My job is to tend to needs that people may not even know they have.
The post-mortem had shown that Lola was definitely not pregnant.
‘She and Ellie must have got themselves in a state about nothing! Why didn’t she just do a test?’ Thomas did not understand. ‘Surely she could simply have peed on a stick or whatever.’
I tried to explain to him that she was a sick girl. Such girls got things wrong, exaggerated to their drama-queen friends.
I can’t now give every reason, or justify each word, except to say that I knew at the time it was what she needed. To hand herself over completely to my care. To allow herself to be totally taken care of. I lied not to hurt but to heal.
We are devastated, you understand. My husband, Thomas, did not need to know that I had done a test for his daughter, or that I had declared the positive result. That I slithered a tape measure around his daughter’s waist in that strange rented flat and declared her to be ‘too far gone’. Or about any other tests, for that matter; or even to understand the full ferocity, the tenacity of the bulimic urge. We did not need to discuss any of it.
Not, that is, until the pathologist’s report found, on top of recent cocaine use, evidence of the use of emetics in Lola’s system. So I suggested another, longer, harder look around her room and there we found the sick-making syrup, ipecac, that bulimic’s best friend (if these ever-longing girls – food in! Food out! Release! Thinner! – didn’t mind about the potential damage to heart muscle). It was the sort of thing you can easily get in the shadiest corners of the internet for less than the earth. There it was, wedged behind the corner of her bed. Yes, I had agreed with Thomas, most strange that it had been missed before.
Do you know about ipecac syrup? It can set you off vomiting within twenty to thirty minutes, which would make it the sort of thing you might want to wash down alone. Perhaps in a pissed-off glass of Pineapple Punch, blended and brought up to your room on the night of some toxic racist knees-up. Mistakes – mad, regretted, repeated mistakes – can still taste sweet at the time if you have been starved for long enough.
Anyway, Lola’s state of mind is now clear to us – little wonder she ran so wildly that she fell. But if some violent fear had propelled her too far, we are now certain that it was not that of morning sickness; her unhappiness could not have solely been down to some lie of a pregnancy – so please pipe the hell down, Ellie Motte-Ryder!
Yes, sh
e did feel lost. She did feel guilt, or some other needless self-hatred, shame perhaps at all that racist foolishness (she had been Going, she had leaflets), or maybe that acute self-loathing that we only feel when we realise we have been duped. I know she blamed herself for believing all the pretty – and the ugliest – lies of that boy. Terrible, the lovers we think we’re worth, the torments we think up for ourselves. But in the end, she fell.
Why, though, could she not simply take my hand? I did reach out, but to hold her; Thomas knows this. Why did she smile as I called out her name? I knew, I know, that I was trying to save her. I wanted that piece of paper too, of course, to shred those words to pieces. But that was not all. I needed to save her.
I never poisoned her. Poisoning is designed to kill.
Only the syrup, just a very few times, the largest dose to stop her going to that warped dance with him. Once also in her father’s breakfast, just so I would be free to find her. I only ever wanted to look after her.
To protect her.
Now though, I must continue to try to understand. I have failed. I could not protect her from the pressures in life that were making us all sick. Lola could not have known, when she flew into that train, that she would become my greatest failure. She is destroyed and I can never, now, cherish her.
One morning before Christmas, when the clouds were falling too low upon us and the town was more gripped by the mad weather – the energetic to-ings and fro-ings and blowings of Storm Barbara – than by the coming of Christ himself, I made a decision. I told Thomas about the dramatic improvement the doctors had flagged with Stevie, that we now fully suspected a misdiagnosis. Stevie’s legs were a touch wasted from the KAFOs, but any deterioration had now halted. A mother knows, and Thomas is not a medical man. Stevie will live to be old. We wept, a golden reprieve. We were too happy to sue; the mistake had been caught soon enough. Stevie’s Wonders were ecstatic, when I rang them, that our prayers had been not only answered but yodelled back across the void with a resounding, ‘Yes!’ All the money raised will go straight to the official Duchenne charities as planned; nothing to reconcile there. All OK. I have done a good job with Stevie, though that is something no one may ever understand. I worked to help him regain the strength in his legs, although I did worry that some of the shine might have been rubbed off his wonder. He was just a little bit quieter than before and needed his mummy more than ever.
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