Falling Apart

by Jane Lovering

‘I haven’t seen him. They must have chatted down at the coffee shop.’

  I opened my mouth to say that Zan didn’t ‘chat’, the vampire didn’t have a casual bone in his body, but realised it was pointless. My father didn’t know anything, and my mother hadn’t seen fit to confide in him. ‘Tell me about my birth mother,’ I said, leaning forward so that I could see the expression in those autumnal eyes. ‘Rune. What was she like?’

  A twitch of the fingers over my hand. ‘Why do you want to know?’

  ‘I found the letter. From the government.’

  The fingers curled for a second, as though in pain, and then flattened. There was a tone from the machine, and then the reassuring ‘bip bip’ noise resumed, and my father sighed. ‘It was a bad moment when that arrived. I wanted to keep it from … from you all.’

  ‘Dad …’

  ‘I just want to keep you safe … to keep you away from them.’ A breath that sounded difficult. ‘We didn’t know, Jess, love. You have to believe that. She was a nice girl, nervy, but that was to be expected under the circumstances … Pretty little thing though.’ A sideways smile. ‘You look very much like her.’

  ‘Nice try, Dad. But … what was she like?’

  He sighed. ‘I’m sorry, love. Yes. We should have told you all this before. She was …’ He seemed to search for the words. ‘Rune was afraid. Of everything. She never talked about her background, about her upbringing, parents or anything, just … fear. Always looking over her shoulder, always … like that old collie we had, the one that we got from the dogs’ home, you remember?’

  ‘Ziggy? The one that used to bite anyone who came to the door?’

  ‘He’d been ill treated as a pup, y’see, love. Never forgot it, poor lad, but he was a good worker, great with the sheep. It was just people he hated. And Rune – she had something of the same about her, like she was just waiting for it all to happen again, but then, I suppose, with your father being … what he was, she was right. But I always thought there was more to it than that, almost as though … sounds a bit silly really, but I remember, when I was teaching, some of the students … almost as though she’d been born afraid.’

  ‘Like paranoid, you mean?’

  He made a face, drawing his mouth down at the corners. ‘Like she wasn’t quite right. That’s the best I can describe it, as though she’d never been right. That’s why … that’s what I put it down to, her not wanting to keep you. Not because of who your father was, but because of herself, because she was afraid of who she was.’ Another pat of my hand. ‘She never spoke about it, but we suspected there was something in her past, some kind of abuse … but we never thought … not the government. Well, you wouldn’t, would you?’

  ‘So what do you think happened to her? Before, I mean?’

  Beside the bed my mother stirred under her blanket. ‘Brian?’

  ‘I’m fine, Jen. Go back to sleep.’ Then, dropping his voice to a faint whisper, he said, ‘She gets upset when you ask. About Rune. Takes it badly. Doesn’t want you to know but … she thinks we did something wrong, taking you in, pretending you were ours. Something bad.’

  I couldn’t answer. Couldn’t reassure him. My throat strained and ached with words I couldn’t say and tears I dared not release. ‘No.’ The words echoed off the hollowness. ‘You did what you thought was right.’

  A quick glance at my mother, who’d half-turned over, one crumpled hand clutching the blanket to her shoulders. ‘That’s all anyone ever does, love. What they think is right. And now I think’—he lowered his voice even more—‘maybe they took Rune when she was very young or something. Can’t even guess why, but it won’t have been good.’ He moistened his lips with a dry-looking tongue. ‘I wish I was out of here, wish I could do something.’

  I tried to smile, but my mouth wouldn’t co-operate, and only went as far as a straight-lipped grimace. ‘With the best will in the world, Dad, I don’t think filling in farm subsidy forms is going to be any kind of preparation for this sort of thing.’

  ‘No, but I could …’ He stopped speaking so suddenly that I glanced over to the monitor. The trace was irregular, though at least it was there. But he’d closed his eyes as if he wanted to avoid looking at my face. ‘I should protect you.’ A whisper so faint that it barely registered over the beeps and clicks and whirrs, and a tear slid from the corner of one closed eye. ‘I should be there.’

  The machines steadied, the peaks and troughs ironed by approaching sleep into a smoother line. ‘It’ll be okay.’ I willed the words to sound strong, and raised his bruised-looking hand to my lips. ‘I’ve pretty much got a team on my side, after all. I mean, I know it’s Team Obsessive-Compulsive, but it’s still a team.’

  ‘Be careful, Jessie.’

  I kissed his cheek as he started to slide towards sleep, and watched the machines settle into another, slower rhythm. ‘Thanks, Dad. I will.’

  A mumble and he was asleep, his hand slack in mine and his face oddly younger. I tiptoed from the room and went back to the only place I could think that I might be welcome right now.

  The computer beeped at me in a parody of Dad’s monitors. The mugs sat on my desk positively begging for me to call Liam, even the pencil sharpener glared at me with its bladed eye of disdain and I wavered over the phone for a few seconds. My fingers did a little dance, miming the digits of Liam’s number, but I balled them into fists and refused to give in. It was barely seven a.m. and Sarah was, if I was not reading completely the wrong script between Liam’s fairly widely spaced lines, getting a little bit annoyed with him being called in at all hours – I didn’t want to spark any relationship discord. Liam was so level-headed you could practically use him as a cup-holder and he had to stay that way. With me slowly turning into a walking psychological disorder – Like my mother, whispered that treacherous bit of my brain that refused me sleep, had forced me to sit in the office almost overnight and was currently warning me away from the barely-hidden HobNobs – one of us had to stay sane.

  I flicked the Tracker program up. Nothing flashed, no warnings. When I hovered over the little dots that represented our Otherworlders all I got was the little ‘Permitted’ icon. It would have been nice, right now, to get a call out, to go and take some of my frustration and confusion out on a wandering vampire or out-of-area were-creature, but there weren’t any. In the end I decided to go and see Rachel and raise the subject I’d been putting off for a while.

  ‘You want to know about what?’ Rachel carried on folding laundry. Apparently Jasper was unwell and had been sick all over her duvet, although from his smug expression I suspected he’d coughed up hairballs in a bizarre revenge attack. ‘Sounds like you’re starting to take life seriously, Jessie, and it’s about time too!’

  ‘Well, no, actually I’m not, or I am, but not like this. And it’s not me who needs to know, Rach. It’s … some … err … friends of mine.’

  She slowly brought two edges of a sheet together and thoughtfully smoothed out the creases. ‘I suppose I could. Is it vampires?’

  Rachel has a really weird penchant for vamps, despite losing her entire family to them during the Troubles. She just has this whole image of them as deeply troubled, emotional creatures who only need the love of a good woman to get over the whole blood, sex and death thing. I do keep pointing out that what she’s thinking of is a goth band front man, but she still keeps mooning around whenever I mention Sil or Zan.

  ‘Not exactly.’

  ‘I wish I had your job, Jessie. Honestly, I’m sick of boxing up perm lotion! Do you know, the most dangerous thing I get to do is sometimes turn a blind eye to someone buying more than one box of Nurofen at a time! Can I apply for a place in your office? Would you put in a word for me?’

  I wondered what she’d say if she knew, really knew, about my job. About the ulcer-invoking anxiety, the perpetual armpit-drenching terror of getting it
wrong. I tugged again at my collar, thanking any of the Powers That Be that I’d got Sil to bite me low down on my neck. ‘The pay is terrible,’ I said. ‘Really bad. I get through tights like nobody’s business, and the hours are shocking.’

  ‘Maybe not, then. I mean, I have to be there for Jasper; I couldn’t do difficult hours.’

  I sat down and took another sip of my herbal tea. There I’d been, assuming that I missed the flat, the secret chocolate supply, the freedom to come and go as I’d pleased, when I’d really missed the chats, the vegan-orientated magazine-reading evenings, the gossip. And Rachel herself, with her biased acceptance of my job and my affiliations. The normality. It just highlighted how weird my life had become now that I was thinking of a fridge full of bean curd and a vet on speed dial as normal.

  A sudden grin broke out above the duvet-folding. ‘I’ve missed you, Jessie. Honestly, if you ever want to come back to the flat, I’d love to have you.’ A small pause. ‘I might have to put the rent up a bit, though, what with the demons burning holes in the carpet thing.’

  I carefully didn’t remark on this. I had a feeling, just a small, needling kind of worry, that Zan was keeping me at Vampire Central simply so that he could watch my comings and goings, and wouldn’t take kindly to me decamping back to my old stomping grounds. He wouldn’t be able to criticise my laundry proceedings or my predilection for Top Gear repeats if I moved out, and I was beginning to suspect that passing judgement on my pastimes was the nearest he got to a hobby. It said something about life chez Vegan that this was still preferable to coming back to the flat.

  ‘Thanks, Rach. That’s nice to know. That I can come back, I mean, not the bit about the putting up the rent.’

  ‘That’s okay. Now, when would you like me to come and talk to your friends? Only I ought to be off to work now, it’s my day for opening up. I don’t want to hurry your tea though.’

  I looked down into the cup. The liquid was the colour of healthy wee. ‘I think everything that can happen to this tea has already happened. Which pretty much sums up my friends too. How about tomorrow?’

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  ‘But’—Rach gripped my sleeve as we walked across the yard—‘they’re zombies, Jess!’ A sheaf of papers slipped from under her arm and she attempted to retrieve them without taking her eyes off the group who stood watching us. The fact that they were all wearing their warehouse coats made them look a bit like an army of the undead, if that army had uniforms with little logos of bicycles on the pockets, and ‘Hurson Brothers’ Bikes’ embroidered on the back.

  ‘Yeah, so?’ I gave her a small shove and she stumbled a couple more steps.

  ‘But … they’re dead! You said it was vampires …’ Which went some way to explaining why she was wearing so much make-up. You would have had to poke her face quite hard with a long stick to reach the real Rachel underneath. ‘I’m sure you did.’

  ‘Rachel, are you or are you not a union rep, newly appointed to do your best for the under-represented section of the community working in exactly this sort of job?’ I looked across to where Richard stood waiting. There had either been more trouble lately or he’d had some kind of industrial accident, because one arm hung lower than the other, as though an elbow had detached. ‘Because these guys, dead or not, need your help to get themselves organised.’

  Rachel hesitated. ‘Seriously? I mean, you didn’t just bring me here to get my brains eaten, or anything?’

  ‘Er, no. Dawn of the Dead wasn’t a documentary, you know.’

  I was proud of the way she straightened her back and set her jaw, then stepped forward to meet Richard, who was lurching towards us, even though she did hold the paperwork out in front of her, as though a massed zombie attack could be held off with lists of workplace codes and bank authorisation forms. ‘Organisation is my raisin detrer, Jessie. I shall do my best.’

  ‘I know, Rach.’ I stood back to watch the unlikely scenario of a warehouse yard full of zombies listening to my mostly-built-of-bosom friend giving her All Brothers Together speech. It was surprisingly effective and I found myself rethinking Rachel, who’d been my best friend through school and my flat-share partner for some time after that. I hadn’t realised that she had a core of steel, although, since most of the rest of her was built of Quorn and tofu, I should have known that there must have been something holding her up from within. Her lecture on the Rights of Man was emotionally given, and I could see the zombies collectively drawing themselves up as she talked about equal rights for all (even though her voice did waver a bit when someone’s leg fell off, and I was sure she added the bit about ‘championing the rights of all members, living or deceased, to exist without fear of discrimination’).

  When she finished talking and waved a bunch of membership forms, a small and somewhat uneven cheer went up and a queue began to form. I even caught Rachel batting her eyelashes in a slightly uncertain way at Ryan, the good-looking zombie I’d helped by the riverside. Prejudice and Rachel obviously went together about as temporarily as ice cream and flamethrowers, luckily, and just as well, otherwise her future as a union representative would have been very short.

  Richard was the first to sign the forms; then he came over to talk to me. ‘I think this is just what we needed, Jess,’ he said.

  ‘Unionisation? It’s only a start, Richard, you know that. The union can only protect you in the workplace. I just thought it might help.’

  He waved a careful hand to where Rach was writing down the details for a zombie whose ability with a pen had been compromised by having a hand on backwards. ‘It’s not just that. It’s the fact that we’re being taken seriously. The fact that now we’ve got somewhere to turn for help, despite the fact that we’re not … Well, there’s a box on the form that says, “Do you identify as gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender or Differently Vital”.’ He nodded. ‘It’s a sign,’ he said again.

  ‘Anything that helps, Richard. Anything that helps. And I’ll do what I can, you know, to get the Zombie Rights up and running; being part of a union is just the first step to being recognised properly.’ I patted his shoulder. It felt a little bit lumpier than it should have, but who was I to judge? ‘You just have to stand together, all right? It’s going to take time, but you’ll get there.’

  We watched the queue get shorter, and those zombies who’d already signed grouped together talking animatedly, well, animatedly for zombies. There was a decidedly militant feel in the air now, a collective straightening of a spine that had previously become bent under the weight of human dismissal. ‘Thank you, Jessica,’ Richard said at last.

  ‘It’s Rachel you should thank. She’s the one with the forms and the tidy handwriting. And the desire to organise everyone. She’ll have you all marching with banners soon for better tea breaks. In height order, probably, knowing Rach. Although I don’t think you’re going to be getting a pension plan any time soon.’

  ‘But you thought of it. You brought us together.’ Richard gave me what I think was a grin. ‘We owe you one, Jess. Even if this doesn’t help us fight the thugs on the street it gives us hope that we can stand together. Thank you.’

  I’d better bank that gratitude, I thought, waiting for Rach to give me a lift back to the office. It might be the only time I ever got any.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Sil stared at the pictures, and then around the room. Jessica’s parents’ bedroom was like a shrine to normality; there was even a tube of denture-fixative on the bedside table and a bookcase full of farming handbooks and veterinary pamphlets which seemed to indicate that sheep had an alphabetical death wish.

  He paused for a moment and used his thumb to ease the knot of worry that he could feel forming between his eyes. All those words, all I spouted about decency, about killing myself if I proved to be untrustworthy … And I never believed any of it. Never believed that it was truly I who was responsible for a
ll that happened down in London. He dug both hands into the ruin of his hair and let his head fall forwards. I thought I had been magicked, glamoured somehow to behave the way I did. Yet it seems I went to London of my own volition. A snatch of recovered memory, a room, high-ceilinged and dark with books; a girl sitting by him and smiling, laying a soft hand on his sleeve as though to hint at an intimacy recently past. No mistake. No glamour. Just memories that I have locked away and can no longer retrieve. Another faint whisper from the back of his mind, words uttered under the influence, memory fetched with the help of Jess’s narcotic blood. You, Jess. I went to London for you.

  He raised his head and pushed the thoughts away, went to the small cupboard in the corner of the room and, with a quick whispered plea for forgiveness, opened the first drawer and began scanning through the paperwork it contained.

  Somewhere here … somewhere, there must be a clue, he thought, trawling the farm subsidy payment records, the animal movement book, using vampire speed to read notes and sidebar headings. Somewhere … These are organised people, people who need to keep their lives recorded. How Jessica could ever have thought she was related to people who maintain an orderly series on sheep diseases I cannot imagine. He slammed the drawer shut and pulled out the second, but his eye was caught by a small picture half-hidden underneath a carefully-folded copy of Classic Tractor. He drew it free, forgetting his search as his breath stopped. Jess. A more recent picture than those he’d found in her bedroom. Jess and her sister standing in a garden, possibly the garden to this house. Abigail staring at the camera with a heavy, serious expression, while Jess seemed to have been captured in movement: her limbs were blurred with arrested energy and her lips were parted as though she’d either been photographed mid-sentence or about to eat a sandwich. Knowing Jessie, it could have been either, he thought, and found himself stroking a finger over her image before he jerked himself back and began stacking the documents onto the bed. Somewhere here there is an answer. Or, if not an answer, something that will make the questions a little more focused.