by Julie Corbin
‘Yeah. I just . . . I’m sorry, Mum. About the keys and everything. I thought the drink spiking was a one-off. I really did. And I don’t know why that was written on the wall.’ His jaw trembles. ‘I don’t even think I’ve ever really hurt anyone, never mind murdered them.’
‘I’m sure you’re not responsible for this, darling. I know it can’t possibly be true.’ I rest my hand on the top of his arm. ‘It must have been written by someone who’s deluded, mentally ill even. And there’s no reason why you would know anyone like that.’
‘Do you think the police will find out who did it?’
‘I’m sure they will,’ I say. ‘Perhaps the forensic team will come up with something.’
‘I’m really tired.’ Lauren yawns and rolls on to her side. ‘I don’t think I’ve ever been up this late.’
It’s a cue for us all to get ready for bed. We take turns in the bathroom and then Robbie climbs into one of the beds, Lauren and I into the other.
‘I don’t understand why they wrote that on the wall,’ Lauren says, taking a hesitant, baffled breath. ‘I mean, you’ve never even pulled the wings off insects like some boys do,’ she calls across to Robbie. ‘Whenever there’s a daddy longlegs in my room, you don’t kill it, you just put it out the window. Nobody in our house has ever killed anyone, apart from Benson. Benson kills rabbits and once he killed a squirrel. Remember, Mum?’ I nod. ‘And we made him give it to us and its fur was all matted with blood.’
‘It’s just some weirdo, Lauren,’ Robbie says, already sounding sleepy. ‘We shouldn’t be giving him the satisfaction of talking about him, never mind trying to work out his rationale.’
I can’t agree with Robbie because whoever is doing this is sending us a message, and working out why will be the only way to make it stop. I think about what Lauren’s just said – nobody in our house has ever killed anyone – and it sets my thoughts off in a completely new direction. If this person is sending a message to someone in the house, could that someone be me?
But you’re not a murderer, I remind myself. And it’s true; I’m not. I’ve spent my working life trying to preserve life, not extinguish it. Primum non nocere. First, do no harm.
But.
‘It was the best night of my life, and then it became one of the worst nights of my life, and now it’s ended up being a bit better again,’ Lauren tells me, and I stroke her hair until she falls asleep. It doesn’t take long but when she’s breathing soundly I don’t shift into a more comfortable position. My body stays still while my mind roams elsewhere, through caves and tunnels, shining torchlight into the darkest of spaces until it finds what it’s looking for . . .
I wake up with a start, rigid with fear as I blink into the darkness; what I expect to see at odds with the shadows that fill the space – large, indistinct, unfamiliar shapes that loom out of the darkness towards me. And then I remember that I’m not in my own bedroom. I’m in a hotel room with Robbie and Lauren and we’re all safe. I blink several times to determine what the shadows are made of: a chest of drawers, the enormous bureau with the television and the mini-bar, a cupboard and the bed Robbie’s asleep in.
My pulse begins to slow and I lean up against the headboard. My neck has been resting at an unnatural angle and I try to stretch it out, being careful not to disturb Lauren who is fast asleep beside me. The digital clock on the bedside cabinet reads 4:16. I’ve had about two hours’ sleep but I’m not tired. Connections are coming together in my head. On the one hand they feel far-fetched, but on the other perfectly logical. Robbie hasn’t lived long enough to make any serious enemies. And the same goes for Lauren. Phil doesn’t live with us any more and so that only leaves me.
The grotesque image of the red-painted MURDERER is now indelibly printed on my retina. I can see it when I open my eyes and when I close them – there’s no escaping it, the message is there, a larger-than-life accusation that cannot be ignored. I remember the half-dreams, half-memories of two hours ago as I slid into a short sleep, and know that I need to dredge those thoughts up again. But not here. Not while I’m in bed with Lauren, so peaceful by my side.
I ease myself out from under the duvet, tiptoe towards the door into the hallway to check it’s still bolted, then head for the bathroom, easing the door shut behind me. There is a choice of half a dozen products on a shelf at the end of the bath. I choose one of the small plastic bottles of bubble bath, a blend of relaxing essential oils, and tip it into the running water. The tub is long and deep and it takes several minutes to fill, minutes I spend standing still and staring, just staring, at the plain white tiled wall. When the tub is almost full, I turn the taps off and undress, laying my clothes neatly on the lid of the toilet seat. I feel as if I am preparing for something of great significance and, while not delaying the moment, I’m not rushing it either. I slip down into the water, welcoming the warmth that covers me all the way up to my neck. The bubbles smell of sandalwood and cinnamon, winter scents that are comforting in June because I know the memories I’m about to mine will be stark and cold and grossly uncomfortable.
No, I’m not a murderer, but I have killed someone, and this truth is pulling at my sleeve like a demanding child whose voice grows ever louder – You. You are the only person in your house who has killed another human being. You are the murderer – on and on, and now I feel I have no option but to examine the memories, turn them this way and that, look at them with excruciating honesty to work out whether what I did can be the reason Robbie’s drink was spiked and the red-painted message was emblazoned across the wall.
The first thing that occurs to me is that for something that happened over eighteen years ago, the memories are perfectly preserved. Perhaps keeping them in a dark place is what’s done this. I know that psychologists have long since discovered that accurate remembering is difficult. We tend not to remember the actual event itself but are more likely to remember the details we conjured up last time we remembered it. And so, like a game of Chinese whispers, the details can be lost or changed. We have a vested interest in our own memories, after all, and so the urge to reshape them is hard-wired into our consciousness. We like them to reflect the person we are now. Today I am a brave person, an honest person, so surely back then I must have been too?
With the warm water lapping at my neck and the bubbles covering my body, I scroll back through time, dredging up every little detail, every glance, every action and every misplaced step. The memories are virgin, untouched, unsullied by time and self-delusion. There has been no repackaging of the truth and there will be none now. My eyes are wide open and I look back and see it exactly as it was.
6
August 1993. I’d made it – I was a doctor! – and I couldn’t stop smiling. I’d worked hard and long for this moment: in the classroom and the labs, in the library and on the wards. And it had all paid off. My plan was to become a neurosurgeon and so I chose a neurosurgical ward for my residency. I was setting my sights high, bewitched by the working of the central nervous system, the brain with its infinitesimal capacity to surprise and shock. When the ward was less busy, I spent time in the pathology lab, dissecting brains and spinal columns, eager to learn about neural pathways, and all the diseases that could affect the central nervous tissue. Every day I woke up with a sense of adventure bound to my pulse, blood and enthusiasm charging through to my fingertips. I was Christopher Columbus discovering the Americas. Neurology was a faraway land that I was making my own and I soaked up every minute of it.
I organised my life to accommodate my passion. I lived in a modern, low-maintenance flat just a fifteen-minute walk to the hospital. I didn’t hanker after nights out clubbing or beach holidays in the Far East. Socialising consisted of impromptu get-togethers in a local bar with colleagues, or nights in with Phil when we watched a good movie or sat with medical textbooks, testing each other’s recall. By then we had been going out for almost three years and had recently moved in together. He was two years ahead of me and was already several months
into his chosen specialty: psychiatry. It was perfect. Our interests were linked but we weren’t in direct competition with each other. We would discuss cases where brain injury led to psychiatric illness and vice versa. If our life together sounds boring, I would defend it by saying it wasn’t so much boring as focused. We were high on our chosen careers and we were high on each other. We cooked and cared for each other and made love every other day, often wordlessly, our bodies doing the talking for themselves.
I’d never been someone with regular periods and when I started vomiting, I thought I had a virus. It wasn’t morning sickness, it was all-day sickness, and it went on for two weeks before it occurred to me that I should get myself a pregnancy test. I didn’t expect the result to be positive – I normally used a cap – but there was no harm in ruling out the obvious so that I could work out what was really wrong with me. During my lunch hour I went to the Gynaecology ward, where Leila was doing her residency, and gave her my urine specimen.
‘It’s positive,’ she said, her face halfway between a disbelieving frown and a tentative smile.
‘What?’ I looked over her shoulder to check she had it right. ‘It must be a false positive.’
‘You know false positives are rare.’
‘But I can’t be pregnant! Do the test again.’
‘Liv,’ she said evenly. ‘Do you always remember to put your cap in?’
‘Of course!’ I said, then checked myself at once, because it was an automatic of course and the truth was that there were times when I was so preoccupied with being a doctor that I forgot everything except the case I was working on. ‘Shit . . . I’m not sure . . . A few weeks ago when I was on nights . . . there was so much going on and I hardly made it to bed . . . but maybe I have a tumour on my ovary or something.’ I rubbed my lower abdomen. ‘That could be producing HCG.’
‘It’s far more likely you’re pregnant than you have a tumour.’ We were in the small doctors’ room that overlooked the ward and Leila stared through the glass partition to where rows of women lay in beds, in various stages of illness and recovery. ‘You don’t want to be wishing tumours on yourself.’
‘Help!’ I slumped down on to a chair. ‘I’m so tired I can’t think straight.’ My head collapsed down to halfway between my knees and the floor. It felt surprisingly comfortable there. I could fall asleep, except for the hard nudge of the stethoscope that was in my pocket, digging into my middle. That, and the slowly solidifying truth that I might be pregnant. ‘A baby.’ I jerked up straight. ‘A baby, Leila?’ The bleep in my other pocket sounded and I glanced down at the number. ‘That’s the ward. I’d better get back.’
‘Listen.’ She held on to my drooping shoulders. ‘There’s no need to look so hopeless! Don’t panic. Don’t fret. Give the news time to digest. We can always repeat the test.’
‘But it’ll still show the same result?’
‘Most likely.’
‘Bloody hell!’ I walked away from her and after a few steps turned back to say, ‘I have to get my head around this. Please don’t say anything to Phil.’
‘Of course not.’ She gave me a supportive smile. ‘It’s not the end of the world, Liv.’
It was to me. I felt as if my world was teetering on its axis and I was about to be pitched into an alternate future where I would find myself on an unknown trajectory, one I’d neither planned for nor wanted. Phil and I hadn’t talked about children but, if we had, I would have said – ‘Yes, of course! One day we can start a family. Not now though, not soon . . . one day.’
I resolved to tell Phil that evening, but by the time I got home he was heading for bed. He’d spent the weekend on call and was exhausted, so I kept my worries to myself and slid under the duvet beside him, wrapping my limbs around his. He was warm and comforting and I relaxed my tired bones into his, praying that in the morning there would be the familiar bleed and all would be well.
The morning came and went and so did seven more and still nothing except continued vomiting and increasing fatigue. Phil spent several days in Glasgow on a course and was on call again all weekend, so he’d only caught me vomiting the once and I managed to fob him off with a complaint about hospital canteen food being too fatty.
Because by then I’d made a decision. My body, my life. I was entitled to do what I felt was right for me, wasn’t I? I certainly thought so. I arranged for Leila to come round to the flat to sound it out with her. It was Sunday morning and I knew we wouldn’t be disturbed. Leila and Archie were already married – it was the first thing they did after graduation – and, like Phil, Archie was on call all weekend. They made no secret of the fact they wanted a large family and medicine would take second place to that. Leila intended to become a GP, where hours were more flexible, and Archie was keen to specialise in radiology, a more nine-to-five branch of medicine. When she arrived, I gave her a mug of coffee and then sat her down on my worn but comfy futon, covered in a paisley patterned throw that had been with me since I was eighteen.
‘Leila, I need your help.’
‘Okay.’ She sat up straight and watched me expectantly, her mug held high in her hand.
‘I’m going to have an abortion.’
‘What?’ The mug wobbled, coffee slopping close to the rim, so I took it from her and put it on the mantelpiece. ‘Why? Was Phil really angry about it?’
‘I haven’t told him.’
‘You haven’t told him?’ She stood up alongside me. ‘For heaven’s sake, Liv, why not?’
‘Sit down, please. Just hear me out.’
She gave me a disappointed look and sat back down, muttering, ‘You can’t keep this from him. You’re closer than any couple I know.’
She was right – we were close. Phil had asked me to marry him twice over the past year and each time I said no, not because of a lack of love or commitment, but because I wanted to be a surgeon and I needed to concentrate on getting myself in with the right firm before all the distractions of a wedding. And how much worse would it be with a baby? How much would that knock the centre out of both our plans, especially mine?
I started explaining this to Leila, knowing that she would test my resolve by reminding me of every reason not to have an abortion.
‘I’m too young to be a mother,’ I said.
‘You’ll be twenty-four when the baby’s born. That’s not too young.’
‘I’m too unprepared.’
‘That’s why nature gives you nine months to get used to the idea.’
‘I’m not maternal, Leila.’ I banged my chest. ‘I swear I don’t have one maternal bone in my body. I hated my time in obs and gynae – swollen bellies and ankles, and endless discussions about the best prams and cots and fucking hell! I’ll go insane if I have to join that club.’
‘You don’t have to join any club!’ she said, keeping her tone light. ‘And you’ll be a terrific mum.’
‘You think? With my own mother as my only role model? What if I end up like her?’
‘You won’t! She was only miserable because she underachieved. Like lots of women of her generation, staying at home made her depressed and bitter. You’ll be a surgeon.’
‘I won’t be a surgeon!’ I gave a dismissive laugh. ‘You think when I apply to Professor Figgis he’ll accept me? With a brand-new baby in tow?’
‘Sex discrimination, Liv. He can’t refuse you because you’re a mother.’
‘Think about it, Leila. Why would he pick the new mother over another doctor who’s just as keen, just as committed? It wouldn’t be discrimination; it would be common sense. I’d have to have the stamina of an ox to cope with both a new baby and a steep surgical learning curve. And then there are the endless hours spent on the ward and in theatre.’ I shrugged. ‘My dream will be over.’
‘Not over, just delayed.’ She urged me to look at the bigger picture. ‘Real life is often uncomfortable,’ she told me. ‘Sure you want all your ducks to line up perfectly, but sometimes reality gives us a nudge and throws another duck into
the pond.’
‘A baby is a bit more demanding than a duck.’
‘Yes, but it’s not as if you can’t afford this baby. You can set up excellent childcare. You’re healthy. You have a man who loves you. Phil might be a bit taken aback at first but we both know he’ll be fine with it.’ She stood up and hugged me tight, trying to wrap me up into her way of thinking. ‘This will be your baby, Liv. A brand-new human being! How marvellous is that?’
I didn’t share her romantic ideal. Instead I saw a burgeoning stress on my relationship with Phil, both of us vying to be allowed to put career first. Leila dug up every argument she could think of to change my mind. She cited my Catholic upbringing and I told her that while I still believed in God, I was no longer religious.
‘Once a Catholic, always a Catholic,’ she said.
‘That’s not true. I don’t feel like a Catholic any more.’
She told me about some of the abortions she’d seen – messy, complicated affairs; late ones where the foetus attempted to breathe.
‘I’m only eight weeks at the most,’ I told her. ‘We’re not talking viability here. It’s still an embryo.’
She tried to make me feel guilty about not telling Phil. She asked me to think about how this could affect us in the future. I told her, ‘We’re not married yet. This is my body, my decision.’
‘You’re Mrs Organised,’ she said. ‘Maybe somewhere in your subconscious you wanted this!’
‘I definitely don’t want a baby, Leila.’ My voice was loud and accusing and she drew back. ‘When I’m busy with work, I forget to eat and sleep, and if I forgot to put my cap in then it was bloody stupid. It wasn’t because I secretly wanted to be pregnant.’
She gave up then, and taking her mug of coffee from the mantelpiece, sat back down on the futon and gulped back half the liquid. I watched as her dark eyes welled up with tears.
‘Leila, you’re my best friend.’ I knelt down in front of her. ‘I know you don’t agree with my decision, but please, will you help me?’