It’s dark outside and raining just heavily enough to be unpleasant but too lightly to make the pavements glitter. I must confront Jody, but the last place in the world I want to be is back at St Jerome’s. I just don’t have the energy to sort out a hotel. I’ll go back, have an early night, and then tomorrow decide whether to stay and see this thing through or else give up and go home. I’m not usually a quitter but tonight I feel beaten. In fact, when a passing lorry throws up a cascade of filthy puddle water all over my legs, I feel like crying.
Instead I take out my phone to call a cab.
The missed call was from Daniel. He didn’t leave a message. I don’t call him back.
25. Mira
The sister told the police that they must arrest Jody for murder. They didn’t, though. They didn’t say, You have the right to remain silent, as I have seen on British police programmes. They just said they would take her to the station for a little chat. They treated her gently because she was so very upset, and for that I was grateful.
I don’t know what she will tell them at the station. Will she carry on protecting you?
You are still not home when I start preparing our dinner. The smell of the onions makes me feel sick. I know that a piece of bread and butter will take away the feeling but I do not have any. You said that women use pregnancy as an excuse to become fat pigs.
Is that why you went with another woman?
You think I didn’t guess?
The kondomat in your gym bag.
The late nights spent in the pub with the guys from the building site?
The times you crept out in the middle of the night, like you did a few nights ago.
The sudden smiles as you thought about something – about someone – that wasn’t me.
It’s as if you wanted me to find out, but I stubbornly refused to, didn’t I?
Because where will I be without you?
I will have to go home. To the shame of being unable to keep my husband. The dishonour surrounding me like a bad smell, revolting all other men who might once have wanted me. The sullied woman with her bastard child.
They will think it strange, the people who gave us the flat, that I can just trot back to Albania where we were persecuted for being Roma. We are not Roma. Why did you tell them we were? Because it would be easier for us to stay, you said. Why do you not want to go home? My parents do not understand. I do not understand. You have cut all ties with our mother country as if you believed the lie you told the English authorities, that we were in danger of our lives, that we could never go back.
Could you bear to leave the baby, Loran? He, at least, you seem to love.
It is a miracle I am pregnant at all. We make love perhaps once or twice in a month when you are drunk. You want a son. Then, you say, you would not be sad to come home every night to a miserable house. You would call him Pjeter, which means rock, because this is how a man must be. A man must be strong because women are weak. It is your burden to look after me.
The burden of my mother and sisters rested lightly on my father’s shoulders. Papa often laughed. But all men are different, and all women are different.
The day I left her Mama told me to be a good wife for you. She was crying as she said it. You stood by the car with your face as hard and cold as the ice on the puddles in the ditches. Papa told her to hush because she was upsetting you. He was grateful that you had chosen me because you were from a better family than ours. Mother said it was you who should be grateful, that I was the most beautiful girl in the whole of Tirana and could have any man I chose.
I chose you. Papa would not have forced me into marriage if it wasn’t my desire. I did it for love: but not of you, of them. I could not bear to see them disappointed. And I thought I could make you love me. It had been so easy for me before you. I had thought men were simple creatures, that all you had to do was smile and wear pretty clothes, to paint your lips and listen to their woes, to make them supper and open your legs. I thought love would follow.
I could tell you did not desire me, even as you asked for my hand. This had not happened to me before. It excited me, the thought of bringing you round. I imagined the moment you would break: as you made love to me, suddenly love would come upon you like a wave crashing over your head. But you fuck me like my pidhi is just a hole in the mattress.
What is she like? Is she tighter? Softer? Does she smell better?
Is it Jody? Or the drug-addicted woman downstairs? If so, I shudder to think of what you bring back to our bed.
I swallow the nausea and chop the onions, then I wash and dry up, then I fold the towel and tuck it into the handle of the cooker so that the back and front edges are lined up. You like the house to be tidy.
I don’t know what else I can do.
If I were at home I would feed the pigs now, or collect the eggs, or cut off the runners from the pumpkin plants. Or I might treat my hair with olive oil and simply lie by the window, reading Kadare, while the oil sinks into my hair to make it glossy and thick for a man to run his fingers through.
I am glad to hide my hair under a scarf now. Seeing it would only make me sad.
There is nothing else to do but wait, so I watch television – very quietly so that I can hear your footsteps echoing in the stairwell. I watch the programme where English people shout at each other because they have behaved badly towards one another. Sometimes it makes me laugh. Always it lightens my heart because it shows me that all people have troubles, that mine are not so great.
26. Mags
Daniel leaves me a message, asking how my brother is. It’s a stupid thing to say and probably only born out of guilt over his rekindled domestic bliss, so I don’t bother replying.
From the police station I head straight to the hospital.
Jody isn’t there. The nurses don’t seem aware of what’s happened. If I told them she’d be barred from visiting him, but this is the one place I can guarantee to see her, so I don’t.
I ask for Dr Bonville and they say he is coming to see another patient so I can catch him then. I’m intending to tell him I want Abe’s machines turned off. But as I sit down beside my brother’s bed, I find I cannot concentrate on the novel. I read the same page six times without taking it in, then finally close it with a sigh.
Abe’s face is almost as pale as the pillowcase. The bruises are greenish yellow now, as if he’s been painted with glow-in-the-dark paint.
I cannot fawn over this near-cadaver, like Jody, but I could at least hold his hand.
The rush of blood in my ears drowns out the monitors as I reach forward and take his limp hand in my own.
‘Hello, Abe. It’s Mags.’
It’s the first time I have touched him since Eilean Donan castle.
His fingers are cool and dry. I was afraid they would be clammy with death. Carefully I slide my palm beneath his until we are palm to palm, then I clasp my fingers around his.
All sounds recede as I close my eyes and focus on the connection between us. A channel of electricity, or magnetism, or whatever it is that makes up the human soul.
Good God. I can’t breathe, or swallow, or open my eyes. I’m as paralysed as my brother. My beautiful, kind, self-sacrificing brother, who ate fish suppers with a worn-out starlet, who loved a man with a red horse on his hip.
Fingers clasp mine. Just for a moment.
Then the fingers slacken and the hand becomes limp again.
I open my eyes. My brother lies motionless, his eyelashes still against his cheek. The respirator sucks and blows, the heart monitor bleeps. Somewhere far away, in the bowels of the hospital, an alarm sounds.
I don’t lean forward and beg him to give me a sign that he can hear me. I’m not under any illusions. It is a reflex, that’s all.
But I don’t let his hand go.
Dr Bonville arrives on the ward but I’m already pulling on my coat. I’ve changed my mind. Was I actually going to let my brother die just as a way of getting back at Jody? What’s wrong with me?
Have I spent so long repressing all human emotion that I’ve become inhuman?
Bonville is busy with a patient at the end of the room, but as I pass him he looks up and moves towards me.
‘Miss Mackenzie. I was intending to phone you but we’ve been very busy. May I have a word?’ He gestures to the door, for me to follow him.
‘We can talk here,’ I say. ‘It’s not as if Abe’s going to hear.’
He looks torn for a moment, then seems to give up. When he speaks again his voice is very low. ‘Your brother developed a chest infection and by the time it was spotted it had become pneumonia.’ He adds hastily, ‘This wasn’t down to anyone’s negligence. These things happen with our very sickest patients.’
‘So you’ve put him on antibiotics?’
He hesitates. ‘We have.’
‘Fine. You don’t need to ask me about that sort of thing, right?’
‘We don’t.’ He glances up at the door, as if seeking a way out, and I think again how young he is.
He inhales. ‘Pneumonia is very dangerous for people in Abe’s condition. Especially if the infection spreads to the bloodstream and causes sepsis – blood poisoning. I’m afraid the tests for sepsis have come back positive.’
He waits for me to process this fact – that my brother might die without my having to make any decision at all.
‘I wanted to let you know, even though I’m not required by law to do so, that we’ve added a DNR to his notes.’
‘Do not resuscitate?’
He nods, watching me warily.
I’m not sure whether to be angry or relieved. A wave of heat passes over my skin, followed by a wave of ice.
‘There are several reasons for this, not just that his quality of life would be—’
‘You don’t need to explain,’ I say. ‘I under—’ To my surprise, my voice cracks on the last word. However hard I try, I cannot force it out. And then I break down in tears, there, in the middle of the ICU, surrounded by the bleep and whir and gasp of machinery.
He lets me cry for a moment, then he puts his soft young hand on my shoulder. ‘I really am so sorry.’
I know it’s just what everyone says and means nothing coming from a man who must parrot it every day, but I reach up and clutch his hand as if I’m drowning.
‘I can remove the DNR, if that’s what you want.’
It takes me a minute to get myself together again, and when I’m finally able to speak my voice is soft and high as a child’s. ‘No. Leave it. Probably the best thing. And call me Mags.’
I raise my eyes to meet his gaze.
‘I knew when I first saw him that he wouldn’t last long,’ he says. ‘I’ve seen people of Abe’s age with lesser head injuries and I’ve seen them get better enough to go home. But when I look at them slumped in their chairs, dribbling, I think, if it were me, I’d rather be dead.’
I can tell he thinks he’s made a mistake to talk to me that way. He fingers his name badge, blinking his long eyelashes. I want to tell him that it’s OK. That the fight is seeping out of me by the day, that I can feel Abe’s ghost creeping into me, softening me. But I can’t speak.
‘He sounded like a good man. I wish I’d had the chance to know him. And I promise you, Mags, I won’t let him suffer.’
He squeezes my shoulder then and I reach up to clutch his hand, eyes closed, trying to suck enough oxygen into my lungs that I won’t cry again.
When I’m sure I’m in control I open my eyes and smile at him.
‘Thank you.’
He dips his head, then turns and walks away. A moment later the door swings shut and I am alone among the silently dying.
He has given me a gift. I won’t have to make the decision to end my brother’s life. I thought I could do it, but am I beginning to understand that I cannot trust myself any more. The person I thought I was, the person I made myself into, was a lie. And the lie is cracking like an eggshell, gradually exposing something new and white and clean.
I take the bus back to St Jerome’s, hoping to compose myself during the journey. I can’t confront Jody like this.
A work chat will sort me out. It’s one-ish back home so Jackson will be back from his Saturday morning run. I take out my phone and hit the contacts, but on my way to his name I overshoot and Daniel’s rolls up. I let my thumb hover over the number. Then I swipe up to Jackson’s. Back down again. Back up. I am about to make the call to the US when the phone shudders in my hand and starts to ring. I almost drop it with shock. A number I don’t recognise.
I answer.
‘Miss Mackenzie?’ A woman’s voice, vaguely familiar.
‘Who’s calling?’
‘It’s Tabitha Obodom, Jody’s social worker. The police have told me that you believe Jody pushed your brother over the stairwell. They said you’re considering bringing a civil case against her.’
‘And you want to try and talk me out of it.’
‘Yes. Yes, I do.’
I tell her I’m not interested in hearing any bleating about Jody’s difficult childhood. I tell her that England is too damn full of bleeding-heart social workers making excuses for criminals. I’m about to say that maybe the US states with the death penalty have got it right, but stop myself just in time.
‘Please,’ she says. ‘Just a few minutes of your time. Just hear me out.’
It’s nearly nine o’clock on a Saturday and this woman is prepared to come to St Jerome’s for what is bound to be a hostile confrontation and then travel home again in the dark and cold. I think of Abe. I think of his kindness.
I say yes.
27. Mira
I am watching at the window when you finally come home, Loran. I see you park the car but you don’t get out straightaway. You just sit there in the darkness. I wonder if you are looking at your phone, if you are texting her. But if you were on your phone I would see the glow of the screen.
After a while you get out. I watch you walk around the side of the building and then, just as you are about to disappear, you look up. I shrink back from the window in case you accuse me of spying on you, but you are not looking at me. You are looking at the flat of the man who fell, where the sister now lives. It cannot be her that you like – this affair was going on before she came. Before Abe fell.
Poor Abe. He always seemed such a kind, gentle man. The first time he spoke to me it was to offer help.
I was taking out the rubbish. Three big black bin bags, mostly clothes I knew I wouldn’t wear again after the birth: tight dresses and short skirts, clothes from my life before. They weren’t heavy, just awkward to carry, and it was taking me a very long time to get them down the stairs. Then I heard a door open on our floor.
‘Let me help you with that,’ he said.
‘It’s OK,’ I said, but he was already taking two of the bags, his fingers brushing my own. I followed him down the stairs, a few paces behind so as not to have to speak to him. The only sounds were the rustling of the plastic and our quiet footsteps on the stairs.
We went out into the sunshine. It is not often sunny in England and when it is it makes me feel strangely sad. It makes me think of long summer evenings at home, lying out in the back field with my sisters, always barefoot, our feet nut brown and dirty as children’s.
The sun on my skin was like a lover’s caress and I paused for a moment with my eyes closed, letting its warmth spread across my face.
When I opened my eyes he was waiting for me at the corner of the building. I went to join him and we walked together to the bin store around the side. It’s a disgusting place; in the summer I could not open the windows because the whole flat would smell of rotten meat and fermenting vegetables. As we threw down the bags there was an explosion of flies that made me jump back. I tripped on the handle of a toy pushchair and almost fell, but he caught my arm just in time and pulled me upright.
He smiled at me as I adjusted my scarf.
‘Why do you wear that?’
‘For modesty,’ I said.
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br /> He laughed. ‘You can be too modest, you know. Let the world see how beautiful you are. It doesn’t last long.’
English people think it is funny to insult you, and I thought it was funny too. I said, ‘Actually, I am seventy-two.’
At first he just stared at me – it took him a very long time to realise an Albanian Muslim woman was making a joke. Then he laughed so loudly it echoed around the building. I liked the way he laughed, with his whole body. He was so long and lean it was like a violin bow bending back.
My face warmed up, and my heart beat faster, and I realised I was feeling something I hadn’t felt for three years, not since we left Albania. I was feeling attraction for a man. I didn’t want him to leave.
‘You are my neighbour,’ I said.
‘Only for the past two years,’ he said, and his brown eyes sparkled. ‘When’s the baby due?’
I told him. ‘I hope you have—’ I gestured, poking something into my ears.
‘Not at all,’ he said. ‘This place could do with a bit of life. Perhaps your husband will let me babysit.’
‘Perhaps,’ I said.
For a moment he just looked at me, and my smile faltered a little, because I knew the look was not one of desire, but of pity.
Then he looked over his shoulder. I followed his gaze and my blood turned cold.
You were watching us, Loran. You were standing by the corner of the building, with your work bag slung over your shoulder, and your face was white. Then you stepped to the side and were hidden by the building.
‘I have to go,’ I said, and hurried away, but when I got to the main entrance you had already gone.
I heard Abe’s footsteps behind me, and I was so scared that he would try and talk to me again and you would see that I set off at a run across the waste ground, and the children in the playground laughed to see a Muslim woman running, with her black dress flapping.
You were nowhere to be seen, and when I got to Gordon Terrace and glanced back, I saw Abe going back into the building. I stood there for some minutes, feeling foolish, until the boys in hoods came walking down from the high road and then I hurried back to the building.
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