Donald smiled, put down the tub and came towards me. I thought he was going to touch my hair, pat my arm, but at the last minute he let his hand drop to the side.
‘I’ve got an idea. Something to sort all this out. I need to get my application finished, collect a final piece of evidence, get it typed up and sent off. Once I’m on that vessel—’
I remembered then what Barbara had told me in the shopping centre the time that he’d gone missing.
‘You know, Dad, you might not win. They’ll get loads of applications.’
‘It isn’t a lottery, sweetheart. They’re looking for quality. And once I’m on that vessel, working alongside the scientists, the biologists, the oceanographers – I’ll be able to tell them my idea. That’s why I need your help. Think of yourself as a kind of research assistant.’
I liked the sound of that. And I thought again about what Barbara had said about encouragement, and then shrugged it off. Barbara was paranoid and she took the fun out of everything. Donald’s interests weren’t doing him or anyone else any harm. And if I could get a little something out of it myself, who was that hurting?
‘Assistants get paid,’ I said, and Donald went back, picked up his tub.
‘The good ones do,’ he said, slipped the rubber band aside and opened it. ‘If I knew,’ he said, pulling out a folded ten-pound note, ‘all the ins and outs of it, the full situation, would I,’ he put the money on the table next to where I was sitting, ‘help you out?’
‘I don’t know,’ I said, and I put my hand over it.
‘It’s for a taxi,’ he said, ‘I don’t want you messing about waiting for a bus.’
‘All right,’ I said. Ten pounds was a fortune. There was no way I was going to waste it on a taxi.
‘I mean it,’ he said – trying to sound like Barbara.
‘Yes.’ I smiled. ‘And I promise I’ll take your library books back tomorrow.’
‘And I have the draft application. It needs typing.’
‘I can do that at school. Put it under my door and I’ll take it in with me. Okay?’
We shook hands on it, Donald and I. He looked solemn and Barbara banged on the kitchen ceiling with the broom, making the boards under our feet vibrate.
Chapter 15
After Donald had given me the money I ate tea with him and Barbara: grey mashed potatoes and tinned peas with a Fray Bentos steak and kidney pie. The brown salty gravy had spilled down the sides of the tin to burn on the bottom of the oven and it made the kitchen stink. I ate quickly, the ten-pound note tucked into my sleeve. While Barbara was washing up, I lifted my coat from the hooks in the hall and snuck out the back.
The streets were empty – partly because of the ice which was thickening on the streets day by day and causing hundreds of minor bumps and slips across the City. And partly because of the flasher, of course. I don’t think anyone really believed that he’d stopped for good. We were holding our breaths, especially us girls.
The bus dropped me outside the hospital and no one spoke to me as I hurried through the corridors looking for Chloe’s ward. I was going in prepared with the advert for the Brook Advisory Centre and the poster with Wilson’s face on it. I had my action plan sorted out in my head. I was going to find out if she still needed an appointment at the clinic – and offer to arrange it all for her if she did. And I was going to show her the poster.
Carl had chased Wilson into the woods and then he’d gone missing. It looked fishy and it was down to us to tell the police, even if that meant she couldn’t see him anymore. And once Carl was out of the picture, things would go back to normal between us. Although I wasn’t going to come right out and say it like that, I reminded myself.
When I’d found the right bay, Chloe’s bed was obvious. There were four pink heart-shaped helium balloons tied to the end of it. There were three other beds in the bay, each one stuffed with a crunched-up, colourless geriatric and surrounded by a batch of visitors. I knew without having to ask that Chloe had refused to go into the children’s ward.
Nathan was sitting on the edge of her bed and scrutinising marks on a chart. He was wearing a green V-neck jumper over a blue shirt. Amanda sat in a plastic chair slowly turning the pages of a magazine. I couldn’t see Chloe because Amanda’s chair was in the way, but I could see her feet – two lumps under the waffle blanket.
‘Oh, it’s Laura come to see you. Look, it’s Laura!’
Amanda always said everything as if she was announcing the Second Coming. It must have been exhausting to be so constantly enthusiastic. Nathan looked up from the chart, and then back to it. Chloe was wearing light pink pyjamas and had her hair tied up neatly. She was leaning back on five overstuffed white pillows – so white they made her skin look sallow. But really, she looked fine. Tired, but fine.
‘Hey,’ I said, but she only rolled her eyes at me, and out of habit, I rolled mine back. There was a pink and silver Point Romance book face down on her lap. She picked it up, closed it and shoved it into her bedside locker.
‘Sit down, why don’t you?’ she said, but there wasn’t a chair.
Amanda jumped up. ‘You go, go on,’ she said, and made Nathan go and get another chair. She directed him with one hand, and with the other she opened the second layer of a box of chocolates so I could have the other strawberry creme. The bags under her eyes were purple: being Chloe’s mother must have been exhausting too.
‘You help yourself, sweetheart. I know you like the pink ones, don’t you?’
I saw straight away there was no way I was going to be able to talk to Chloe on her own, and I folded the poster, which I’d been carrying in my hands the whole time, over and over into a triangle. When I couldn’t get it any smaller, I put it in my back pocket. I crushed the chocolate against the roof of my mouth with my tongue. It shattered and the greasy strawberry filling covered my teeth. It tasted like Calpol.
If it had been me in the bed, Chloe coming to visit and Donald and Barbara cluttering the place up, Chloe would have found a way out of it. She’d have shaken her head and pursed her lips – behaved like an adult – and shooed them off to the cafeteria for a cup of coffee and (winking at Barbara), ‘Maybe a smoke?’ They’d have both gone, too, swept along by the force of whatever it was Chloe wanted. I imagined them blinking over coffee they didn’t like or want, wondering how they’d got there and what had made them buy it. I glanced at Amanda, arranging white flowers busily in a plastic water jug, and I didn’t even try.
‘You are funny,’ Chloe said, in her grown-up voice. ‘Come all the way here and don’t say anything?’
‘Don’t be ungrateful,’ Amanda said quickly. ‘Laura’s come on the bus on her own to come and see you.’
On my own. As if I was six years old and couldn’t be trusted with the change for my fare. During all my careful planning and the times I’d rehearsed what I was going to say while I waited for the bus to bring me here (it’s not your fault Carl did something daft – but you can’t let him drag you down with him) I hadn’t considered how I was going to approach things with Chloe’s mother looking over my shoulder. It was irritating.
‘So, are you all right?’ I said.
She looked all right. Her parents weren’t pissed off with her so she couldn’t be pregnant – or if she was, they didn’t know about it. The fact she was surrounded by doctors who’d probably take one look at her blonde hair and kohl-rimmed eyes and check for that kind of thing first of all meant that more likely than not, the whole thing had been a false alarm. Or she’d been lying. One or the other. But here she was in hospital all the same. What was wrong with her? I started to think she’d been pretending. Her hair was done nicely. She had pink lip balm on and her pyjamas looked brand new.
‘I’m fine,’ she said, and smiled at me broadly, ‘fine. A bit tired, but all right.’
There was a television on a cabinet at the end of the ward. Another repeat of The Crystal Maze was on and Nathan put the chart down and drifted over to watch it.
&nbs
p; ‘She collapsed right in front of the school, did you know?’ Amanda said, and put her hand on her chest. ‘I’ve been worrying myself sick. Her father nearly had a heart attack. A literal heart attack.’
I nodded. Of course I knew, or I wouldn’t be here, I wanted to say.
‘Emma helped her. Little angel. Went and got a coat to put under her head, ran to find a teacher. She would have come with you in the ambulance too, if she’d been allowed, wouldn’t she, Chloe?’
Chloe smirked. Amanda patted her leg absently.
‘She’s always had people around, wanting to help her,’ she said, ‘since she was a baby. It’s because you’re such a pretty little thing. People think you can’t shift for yourself.’
No one was listening to Amanda. I was trying to stare into Chloe’s head and invent telepathy using willpower alone. I raised my eyebrows at her and she smiled again, and shrugged slightly.
‘Thank God for Emma,’ Amanda murmured again, still patting Chloe’s feet. ‘Who knows what would have happened to you otherwise? Young girl, lying unconscious and vulnerable on the pavement. Doesn’t bear thinking about, does it?’
I turned away in frustration and saw the blue light from the television bouncing off the shining dome of Nathan’s head.
‘I’m sure someone would have come along sooner or later,’ I said.
Even if it had been a perv – he wouldn’t have done to Chloe anything that she didn’t already do with Carl, so it didn’t matter, did it? Fucking Emma. Chloe was all right. She was having the time of her life.
‘What did the doctor say?’ I asked.
Chloe leaned back against her pillows, took her time choosing another chocolate, put her head on one side and sighed.
‘An infection,’ she said, ‘that got out of hand. I’m going home tomorrow.’
She waved her arm at me and I saw the thin white bandage on her wrist and the tube leading to a drip on a stand by the side of her bed.
‘It’s antibiotics,’ she said proudly, ‘double strength.’
Someone had hung a small stuffed penguin holding a heart from the top of the drip stand. The heart had blue and white swirly writing on it. Get Well Soon. Chloe followed my eye.
‘Emma brought that,’ she said. ‘Cute, isn’t it?’
‘She’s been already?’
She nodded. ‘Got a taxi over here straight from school. They weren’t going to let her in because she was too early for visiting hours, but she said she was my sister.’ Chloe laughed. ‘Cheeky cow.’
‘You don’t faint with infections,’ I said.
‘I had a fever,’ Chloe insisted, but without much energy. ‘God, look at my chart, why don’t you?’
‘It was in the waterworks, right up to the kidneys,’ Amanda whispered with impossible enthusiasm, ‘you know.’
I thought she meant Chloe had picked something up from drinking the water at school, which wouldn’t have surprised me. If you asked for water in the dining room you got it in a little polystyrene cup – we all encouraged each other to break the cups into fragments after we’d used them because it was a certainty that if they were thrown out whole, the dinner ladies would fish them out of the bin and reuse them.
Amanda nodded meaningfully towards Chloe’s thighs.
‘She means my bladder,’ Chloe said loudly, pointing her thumbs at her stomach, ‘kidneys, pee-hole – the lot. It was horrendous.’ She said ‘horrendous’ even louder than she’d said ‘pee-hole’, never taking her eyes off Amanda, and smiling when her mother flinched.
‘I just can’t understand why you didn’t get me to take you to the doctor when it first started,’ Amanda said, shook her head at Chloe, and stood up to fiddle with the cards again.
I felt the triangle of the poster poke me through my jeans pocket.
‘Don’t start,’ Chloe said. Amanda opened her mouth – was about, I think, to try some discipline, when Nathan stood up and, with his back still to us, motioned towards the television. The Crystal Maze had finished and the news had started.
‘Turn it up! See if they’ve caught that pest!’
Nathan obeyed the warbly voice from across the room, and turned the dial.
Terry appeared on time, waving to cameramen and production assistants as he strutted through the studio before sliding onto the couch and drumming the coffee table in time with the final chime of the theme music, as he always did. Fiona didn’t get a walk through – she was always sitting there on the couch waiting for him to arrive. He smiled. His face was pleasingly asymmetrical: one raised eyebrow, one dimple in his cheek. His hair parted on the side and black and matt and luxuriant – dense as an old fur coat.
‘That’s some tie,’ Amanda said breathily.
And it was. Not Santa or reindeer now Twelfth Night was over, but a snowman with black twigs for arms and lumps of coal for eyes and mouth. Terry was the sort of man that appealed to everyone’s mother.
‘Good evening,’ Terry said, ‘and welcome to The City Today at six o’clock.’ His tone was cordial enough, but his smile had faded, which always meant bad news.
‘Police reports have been coming through to us all afternoon concerning the recent disappearance of a local man: Daniel Wilson, from the Longton area of the City.’
They put his picture on the screen. Wilson, in his red paper party hat, grinning open-mouthed and missing. Missing since the afternoon of the 26th when he went out for a walk after a late breakfast. Vulnerable adult. No sign. And in this weather.
It was all I could do not to nudge Chloe but her eyes were glued to the screen anyway. That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you, I wanted to say.
‘While his parents have been postering the City with their son’s likeness for the past few days, the police have only now taken up the case. The missing man, after all, is an adult,’ Terry said. He leaned back into the couch. This was run of the mill news, hardly connected to his story of the moment, and so of little interest to him. Fiona, as if a switch had been flicked, sparked into life, smiled and picked up the autocue where he’d left off.
‘We’re running a phone number along the bottom of the screen right now,’ she gestured lop-sidedly with her fingers pointing downwards, ‘and if you’ve got any information – anything at all, give us a call and we’ll make sure to pass it on to the police. The City Today has a long history of harnessing the goodwill of the community to resolve cases like this, don’t we, team?’
The camera swung around suddenly to reveal the backside of the studio, where the laminate flooring and cream partitions gave way to chalk-marked black felt and a gaggle of camera men and production staff, in jeans, nodding furiously.
‘The police are working on retracing Wilson’s steps as he left home that morning and walked across town – and anything you can give us will be helpful. According to his parents, Wilson was a bit of a local legend, wasn’t he, Terry?’
‘He was a well-known member of his local community,’ Terry said mechanically. ‘Despite his obvious challenges he was a keen fisherman and rambler and would often be seen out and about walking through the area. He was especially interested in football, following no particular team but enjoying a kick about in the park most weekends.’
‘We’re told he was particularly fond of striking up conversations and meeting new people,’ Fiona said, ‘which means lots of you out there will be familiar with his face. Can we show that photo again?’
The telly was a rubbish one – just a mini-sized colour portable. The picture jumped and fizzed.
‘Move the aerial,’ Chloe said. Nathan obeyed her. ‘It’s all your fillings, interfering with the reception.’
I ignored her because with Chloe, the sooner she had the last word, the sooner she’d stop. Nathan pushed the thin hoop of wire backwards and forwards until the picture resolved itself and the crackling stopped.
We settled on her bed. I imagined Wilson, wandering around town and introducing himself, asking questions, trying to be friendly and getting on people’s nerve
s.
And then dropping out of the world as if he’d never existed.
Terry outlined Wilson’s last known movements – tracing his appearance on the CCTV cameras that had tracked him on his long walk through the City. They broadcast grainy black and white footage of Wilson standing in front of a petrol station watching a man fill his tyres with air. The camera seemed to loom up on Wilson, its eye catching him in a private moment as he tenderly pulled something out of his pocket, unwrapped it, and started to eat it.
‘That,’ Terry informed us, ‘was a sausage roll left over from the Christmas Night buffet – wrapped in a piece of kitchen roll by Wilson’s mother, and very possibly his final meal.’
Chloe snorted with laughter. I started at her. She was engrossed with the pictures on the screen – staring intently. Even though she’d only seen him for a minute it just wasn’t possible that she didn’t recognise him – didn’t she realise that the three of us were probably the last people to see him?
‘While the police aren’t expressing grave concern just yet, they’d still like to speak with the individuals connected with a,’ he used his fingers to scrape a pair of speech marks in the air, ‘vigilante gang seen gathering in the grounds of a nature reserve across town later that afternoon. This group, made up largely of the fathers, uncles and elder brothers of the young girls who’ve been attacked recently, has vowed to scour the City’s dark and out of the way places until this man is found.’
Terry paused meaningfully. Fiona, next to him on the couch, shuffled papers reverently. ‘Our phone lines are open,’ he added, in a subdued tone.
I was sitting right next to Chloe. Could feel the lump of her knee against the small of my back. I turned my head, tried to catch her eye, but she was pulling a lock of her hair straight and examining it for split ends. When I nudged her, she hissed at me.
‘Shut up!’
Chloe laughed. I think it was nerves. When I looked at her, she looked away. Nathan stood up, and there was a chorus of chatter and complaints from the other beds and their visitors. He hunched, like he was making an exit in the cinema before the closing credits had stopped rolling.
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