I fell out of the van, whimpering, half-running, half-crawling round the bonnet to Jem’s side, pulling on his door until it opened. I saw the huge black cat hunched over him, maddened beyond endurance, savaging her friend, growling as she did so, long, low, and pitilessly.
Someone was screaming, an endless high wail, stabbing at my ears. Beneath the sound of the scream was the sound of boots on stone, running, doors slamming, voices. From a long way off, as if down the black length of a tunnel, I could see an animal on the ground, wrestling with something, rolling and shaking and chewing the something, a person, no, a bundle of clothes maybe, an oversized doll or dummy, or a mannequin, with long black hair and a red painted face.
I wished someone would stop the screaming, turn it off.
A figure appeared behind the animal and began beating at its back with a thick rounded stick. The animal dropped the big doll, spun round and squared up briefly to her attacker. But as he lifted his stick — a softball bat, I saw now — to bring down on her head, she took fright and turned, leaping the doll, running over grass to the road.
‘Stop it, cat,’ said the figure with the softball bat. It was a cat I realised. A massive black cat, hefty but lithe.
‘Shut up, shut up, stop it!’ said the figure again.
What’s he saying? I wondered. The cat’s gone. The screaming continued, but the cat was away. I watched it, bounding along the road, becoming more and more distant, until it was swallowed up by the dark.
Chapter Eleven
‘That’s the last thing I remember,’ I said to Miriam Wilkie. ‘Watching Cleo disappear down Galbraith Avenue. I blacked out after that.’
I was exhausted, wearier than I had ever felt in long months of weariness. My body sagged with the weight of the effort. I felt like I’d given birth to the story of my life.
‘I’m post-natal,’ I said, laughing tiredly, and Miriam smiled, appreciating the joke.
‘You’ve done incredibly well,’ she said. ‘You’re very tough.’
I felt my eyes fill at that. Ironic, really. ‘I’m just tired,’ I said, excusing the tears. ‘Post-natal depression, ha ha.’
‘Feel free,’ said Miriam, ‘you’ve got a lot to cry about.’
‘I never used to cry,’ I said, blowing my nose noisily. ‘Now, I do it all the time. Ever since that night. I’ve been crying for four months — I couldn’t cry at first.’
‘Shock,’ said Miriam.
‘I just felt as if I’d start screaming again, every time I opened my eyes. It was like the panic finally engulfed me and just stayed.’
‘Do you remember anything about the rest of that night?’ Miriam asked.
I shook my head.
‘It’s good what the body and mind do, isn’t it?’ she said. ‘To protect you.’
‘I’ve sort of pieced it all together,’ I said. ‘Freddy got it from the police — and Simeon — and he told me. I didn’t want to hear it, but he made me listen; he said I needed to start facing up to things that hurt. I hated him for that.’
‘But not for long?’
‘I couldn’t hate Freddy for long.’
‘So you know that people in the street called the ambulance.’
‘Yes,’ I said, trying not to picture it all. ‘And the police. Jem and I went in the ambulance and Simeon went in the police car. They searched the Garrison later and found all Simeon’s home-bake equipment. And later they found various stashes of pills. And then, later still, after a tip-off, they found his dope crop in Bottle Lake.’ I said it all quickly, getting it out of the way.
‘How do you feel about Simeon now?’ said Miriam, studying her rings.
‘I feel like I never knew him,’ I said, thinking of that unreadable face, the chaotic emotions behind it. ‘I think,’ I said slowly, ‘I think it was all about him and Jem — I was just in the middle, irrelevant to him really.’
‘Does that make you angry?’
‘Yes. But I feel sorry for him, too,’ I burst out. ‘He’s that sort of person — he makes you furious with him one minute and sympathetic the next. He’ll go to prison, Freddy says.’ I thought of Simeon in a cell, mutinous, seething. ‘I don’t think Freddy has much confidence in his future.’
‘That night?’ said Miriam, taking me back.
‘I woke up in the hospital and Stella and Freddy were both there — that was weird, I couldn’t take it in. And being conscious was so awful I started screaming, so they just put me out again. I couldn’t … I mean—’ I wanted to explain this to Miriam. ‘I couldn’t stop seeing Cleo and Jem, I couldn’t shut it out in the usual way, and even if I had, there was everything else and it was all awful. So I think I just screamed to keep it all away. I don’t remember anything for days.’
Until Freddy came and told me that Jem was going to be all right, but that some farmer in Marshlands had shot Cleo and she was dead.
‘Then I started crying,’ I said to Miriam, ‘and I don’t seem to have stopped since.’
‘You’re my best friend,’ I say to Penny, my eyes filling with tears at the thought.
‘Same,’ says Penny, giving me one of her best smiles and putting her arm round my shoulder. ‘But you’re a blubbery old bag. Not that I mind. Feel free.’
We sit together in the grounds of Fitzgerald Clinic, eating lunch. Penny comes most days, bringing sandwiches for both of us. She is working in town this summer, clerking for a lawyer, a friend of a friend of her father’s.
‘Dogsbodying, really,’ she says.
‘Actually, you’re my only friend,’ I say, flicking the tears off my cheek. ‘Under thirty, anyway. But, hell, who needs more than one.’
‘One good one,’ says Penny, taking two custard squares from a bag, holding one up to me. I take it and bite it.
‘You look better,’ Freddy said, on his last visit — day before yesterday. He comes two or three times a week. So do Nan and Toni. Freddy’s mum and dad have come several times. The Salters came too, just after I arrived here, but I got so upset that Jules, the supervisor, suggested they leave. I’ve phoned them since then — Miriam asked me to. I wrote down what I wanted to say and I said it and of course they were so kind I wanted to die — or at least sleep for a week, to blot it out. But I didn’t.
Progress, Miriam says.
I’ll see them when we have the reparation conference. After I leave here.
‘So, any progress on the departure date?’ Penny asks. She asks this about once a week.
I squint up at the sky, look at the elms bordering the property, sigh.
‘Something else,’ I say, vaguely. ‘One more thing.’
‘Can you tell me about it?’ she says.
I laugh. Penny hates not knowing things.
‘I will afterwards,’ I say. ‘I’ll tell you everything.’
I wave her off five minutes before she’s due back at work. She’s running all the way.
I realise we haven’t talked about Jem today. For a long time I couldn’t talk about Jem. Thinking about him was so awful I just became incoherent, choked up with guilt and sadness. But Penny and I talk about him quite often now. I still feel guilty and sick at some of the memories, but I can think about him, say his name, discuss his wounds. Penny sees him from time to time, tells me how he’s doing. The face is healing, the prognosis is good.
Progress on all fronts, says Miriam.
We are talking about guilt these days, Miriam and I.
‘Lines of causation, eh?’ says Miriam.
‘What?’ I say.
‘Like detectives,’ she says, with total recall, ‘they probe and probe. They analyse, they’re rational, they follow lines of causation back to their source.’
‘Bloody therapists,’ I say, ‘do you have to remember everything?’
‘But what if the line of causation is actually many lines, parallel lines?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘What I mean,’ says Miriam, ‘is that I see how you must take some of the responsibility for Jem
’s accident. But I don’t see that you have to take all of it.’
I grunt.
‘Jem made choices, didn’t he?’
I can only remember my choices, my heedless actions.
‘What about Simeon?’ says Miriam. ‘I could argue that his own problems, his private war with Jem, played a big part, perhaps a major part. Or perhaps you could call it an act of God.’
‘I don’t believe in God,’ I say.
‘Well, call God fate then,’ says Miriam. ‘Some things just happen.’
‘You can’t say something has just happened if human action — or lack of action — has brought it about.’
‘Is that why in the ambulance you said you had killed Jem?’
‘I thought he was dead, then.’
‘And you had done it.’
‘More or less.’
She is quiet for a minute, but I know what she is going to ask me next — I can see it coming. All our talking has led us to this bit.
‘Do you remember what else you said in the ambulance?’ Miriam asks, leaning closer, looking at me.
It’s that moment, the moment I’ve been putting off for so long.
Talk about it, Cat, says Freddy to me, often, pleading. Say it, and you take away its power, its grip on you.
I look at Miriam, see her smile, the confidence in her face.
‘Yes,’ I whisper. ‘I remember.’
I close my eyes, hearing myself in the ambulance. I am holding on to the St John’s medic. I can feel the white coat.
‘I killed my little sister, too, you know,’ I say quietly to the medic, searching his face for some comfort.
I only say it once, but then I can’t let go of his arm. He tries to detach my fingers, gently, kindly, but I’m too scared to let go. I am crouched, holding on to the white uniform, my eyes fixed on his face, waiting for a response, but someone sticks a needle in my arm and I never hear.
Chapter Twelve
‘I loved her so much,’ I say to Miriam, crying and crying, a torrent running down my face. ‘And she loved me. She’d kiss me fifty times and tell me she loved me, and could we always live together.
‘Her skin smelled so lovely, she had her own special smell. Sometimes, after the fire, I was so glad everything was burned so that I couldn’t come across her smell on her clothes or her pillow and be reminded of her. Then other times, I couldn’t bear it, that there was no way to get that smell, get anything about her. It was the most unbearable feeling, unbearable — knowing she was dead, that I could never see her or listen to her or cuddle her.
‘And I couldn’t bear the sadness, I couldn’t bear feeling it. It would just go on and on and on, that terrible hollowness, so I just made myself not think — I cut it out, never talking about it and not letting anyone else.
‘I know it was cruel to do that to Stella and to make out it was her fault because she’d broken up, her and Freddy. I know I was a monster — she was feeling so feeble and grief-stricken and guilty, she just let me ride over her.
‘I knew it was awful, mean, unfair, but it was all better than thinking about Tiggie and the fire, because all the time, underneath everything, I knew it was my fault.’
More tears. Tears and tears and tears.
‘Why was it your fault?’ Miriam asks calmly.
‘I wasn’t there. If I’d been there I would have got her out. I know I would have. But the worst thing is, she wanted to come with me and I wouldn’t let her. If she’d come with me, she’d still be alive.’
‘Go back to the beginning,’ says Miriam. ‘Go back to the beginning of that night.’
I stare straight ahead and expel a shuddery breath.
That night. That long dead black night. A small curl of grey smoke, unseen in the black, a rush of startling flame — then black again, on and on and on. I always think of it like that. Then I don’t think.
‘Where were you?’ says Miriam, prompting me when I am silent.
‘I had an awful fight with Stella,’ I say, my voice dull. ‘Tiggie was in bed, reading, or playing with her Barbies. I was doing my homework and Stella was sitting on the couch smoking like a chimney.’ I could see our old living room, the easy comfort, Stella framed by the big bay window.
‘She suddenly got up and told me she’d finished with that sleazebucket Laurie Whatsisname. That it had all been a mistake and she was very very sorry but she could never go back to Freddy because she’d burnt that particular bridge.
‘I was so angry with her, furious. I’d never felt so despairing in my life — it made everything seem so pointless, all the misery of the breakup with Freddy, Freddy being so hurt. I just opened my mouth and started trashing her, said the ugliest things, told her she was a stupid, selfish bitch and that I hated her. I just went on and on, I couldn’t stop myself, and she went very white and tried to speak but I just shouted her down.
‘And then I told her I couldn’t stand the sight of her and I was going to Freddy’s. I stormed upstairs to get some things and Tiggie came into my room looking all anxious and asked why was I being mean to Stella.
‘And when I said I was going over to Freddy’s she wanted to come too and said she’d get her backpack. I said, no, you can’t, get back into bed. I don’t know why I said no — I was just mad, mad at the whole world, but especially Stella, and I wouldn’t go back on it, no matter how much Tiggie begged.
‘She was very stubborn sometimes,’ I say, feeling the tears coming again, a huge obstruction in my throat.
‘Was she upset when you left?’ says Miriam.
‘Yes. That’s the bit I hate, that’s the worst. She went back to bed crying and saying I was mean. And that’s the last thing I remember about her.’
I remembered Tiggie crying in her bedroom and downstairs, prostrate on the couch, Stella, sobbing quietly. I remembered the look of deep contempt I bestowed on her as I left.
Miriam is silent while I cry some more, the salty tears gathering on my top lip. I pull at the tissue box tiredly, blow my nose, stare at the carpet pile.
‘They were both crying when I left, but I didn’t care. I just sailed along to Freddy’s, full of self-righteousness and fury and after I’d had a rant at him I went to bed and read until I fell asleep.’
‘And back at your house,’ says Miriam, softly, helpfully.
‘And back at the house Tiggie cries herself to sleep, Stella takes two sleeping pills and staggers off to bed and the house catches on fire.’ I say it almost flippantly, as if I hardly know these people, caught in this fire, this sad accident.
‘How did the fire start?’ asks Miriam.
‘A heater. Too close to the couch, they think. It smouldered most of the night then burst into flame in the early morning — about 5 a.m. While I was sound asleep at Freddy’s.
‘Stella was sleeping downstairs,’ I say, wanting to finish it now, get it done. ‘She’d been doing that since Freddy had left and I was upstairs near Tiggie. She didn’t wake up but they got her out in time. Next door rang 111, but by the time the fire service got there the whole place was up. Stella was lucky she was downstairs because they found her more easily and also there wasn’t so much smoke.
‘Apparently you lose your sense of smell when you’re asleep,’ I say, almost conversationally. ‘So the smoke gets you before you get it.
‘If you get me,’ I say, faintly appalled that I could almost make a joke. I stare at the carpet again, thinking of the fog of smoke, the two sleeping people, the whoosh of flame.
‘It would have been smoke inhalation that got Tiggie, they said. She would have been dead before her body was burned. I always think at least that’s something, at least she was asleep and didn’t know, she wasn’t terrified and feeling alone, she was just dreaming about Barbie or something and then she just quietly died before the fire got her. It did get her, but I really can’t think about that, I’m sorry, I just can’t.
‘So,’ I say, shakily, looking up at Miriam Wilkie. ‘Stella rescued, Tiggie dead, Cat sleep
ing through it all. End of story.
‘Except it’s not the end of the story because I miss her so much,’ I cry out in a moment, weeping and weeping, the most ever, a storm of weeping like I’ve never had before. I cry so much that eventually I fall asleep on Miriam Wilkie’s sofa and she covers me with a blanket.
‘You had a right to go over to Freddy’s,’ says Miriam the next day. ‘You needed that space.’
‘But why didn’t I take her? It was selfish. I should have taken her.’
‘You had a right not to take her,’ says Miriam Wilkie, quietly, insistently. ‘You needed attention from Freddy. You needed to be by yourself. That was your right. It was a tragedy that Tiggie died, but you needed to do what you did and it is not your fault.’
‘But she came everywhere with me,’ I say, starting to cry again, ‘and I always looked after her if she was scared — scared of the dark or a TV programme. Or if Stella or Freddy were grumpy, I got her out of the line of fire. I held her hand on her first day of school. I was always there for her.’
‘You needed a break sometimes. You needed a break that night.’
‘You don’t understand!’ I shout, covering my eyes, trying to stop the tears.
‘Maybe not,’ says Miriam. ‘But I understand a lot about the mind and what it can do to the body if it is under stress. I think when the mind is forced to bury things, when it’s not allowed to carry out its natural processes, it rebels, and it annexes the body, too. You need to start thinking and talking about Tiggie, Cat. You need to grieve for her, put her death in perspective. You need to let yourself off the hook.’
I take a hiccoughy breath, look at her, let her words work on me.
‘You’re keen on tracking lines of causation, Cat,’ says Miriam. ‘Can you see a long ragged line, zig-zagging back from the disaster with Cleo and Jem and Simeon, from your panic attacks, your insomnia, your loss of appetite — to your dear little sister’s death and your response to it?’
A long time goes past. I sniff and stare and shudder, and finally I nod slowly, looking at her, but past her, a picture of Tiggie in my mind’s eye, her soft, round face, her olive skin and messy curls, her wide, gappy smile.
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