When She Was Good

by Robotham, Michael

‘Why can’t we just paint it over?’ I suggest. ‘Or we could do a proper mural, like Banksy would do.’

  ‘Who?’ asks Carl, who is helping us.

  ‘Banksy. The street artist. One of his paintings sold at Sotheby’s for a million quid and he shredded it in the auction room.’

  ‘Why?’ asks Ruby.

  ‘He said that destruction was part of the creative urge.’

  ‘He’s a tosser,’ says Carl, who is lying on the grass, not helping. ‘I’d have taken the million quid.’

  ‘And do what?’ asks Ruby.

  ‘Buy shit and blow it up,’ he says, grinning. Carl got sent to Langford Hall for building a home-made bomb that blew up a pie-cart outside Manchester City’s Football Ground.

  ‘You’re supposed to be helping,’ says Davina.

  He holds up a finger. ‘I got a splinter.’

  ‘Get off your arse.’

  ‘Why is it our job? We didn’t do it.’

  ‘We’re going to show these people that we are better than they are.’

  ‘But we’re not,’ says Ruby. ‘They think we’re scum.’

  ‘You’re not scum,’ says Davina.

  ‘I’m proud of being a scum,’ says Carl. ‘I’m a deplorable.’

  I nudge the bucket with my foot, spilling water over his crotch. He leaps up, wanting to hit me, but he changes his mind because I scare him.

  ‘Miss, I got a wet patch. I got to change my jeans.’

  ‘He pissed himself,’ says Ruby.

  ‘Fuck off !’

  I’m distracted by laughter from the far side of the street. Two young guys are leaning on dirt-bikes with muddy wheels. They’re watching us working, finding it hilarious. I drop my brush into the bucket and head towards them. Davina doesn’t notice until I’m halfway across the street. She calls my name but I ignore her. She’s not the quickest mover in the world, not since she got pregnant and ate her own body weight in Nutella.

  The boys see me coming and strike poses.

  ‘What are you doing?’ I ask.

  ‘We’re enjoying the view,’ replies the skinny one, who has a lisp.

  He’s leering at Ruby, who has taken off her denim jacket. Her cotton shirt is wet and clinging to her chest.

  ‘Who’s your friend?’ asks the taller one. ‘You should bring her over. We’ll take you both for a ride.’

  ‘Any idea who might have painted the wall?’ I ask.

  ‘Nah,’ says the lispy one.

  ‘Was it you?’

  He stabs at his heart with an invisible knife, pretending I’ve mortally wounded him.

  ‘What sort of moron vandalises a wall and comes back to gloat?’ I say.

  ‘We’re not the idiots cleaning it up,’ says his mate.

  ‘How do you spell delinquent?’

  Both of them frown.

  ‘I’ll get you started: d … e … l … i … n …’

  They stare at me blankly.

  Davina has caught up with me. Puffing. ‘Leave the boys alone, Evie.’

  ‘They vandalised our wall,’ I say, pointing to their boots.

  Davina’s eyes pick up on the spatters of red paint, but she doesn’t want a scene.

  ‘We’re sorry to bother you,’ she says, grabbing my arm.

  I pull away aggressively.

  ‘Oooh,’ says the skinny one, ‘isn’t she feisty.’

  I feel my vision narrowing and the air darkening, as though someone has hit a dimmer switch.

  ‘Are you a virgin?’ I ask.

  His eyes widen. ‘What? No!’

  ‘Maybe you’re gay. Maybe you fancy your mate. He’s not very pretty but he might let you suck his dick.’

  They both tell me to fuck off.

  ‘Ooh, feisty,’ I say, mimicking him. ‘Sounds to me like you’re both gayer than laughing gas. If you fancy your mate you should tell him. Don’t bottle up your feelings. He might feel the same way. There’s nothing wrong with liking boys.’

  The skinny one swings his punch. I see it coming. I always see it coming. I see it so early that I could duck, but that’s not the point. I feel it connect and the flash of pain. I taste the blood on my lips.

  ‘I’m calling the police,’ says Davina, as she hustles me away.

  I smile through pink teeth and yell over my shoulder. ‘Now you’re one of us. Another fucking delinquent.’

  14

  Cyrus

  Visiting hours at Rampton Secure Hospital are between two and four on weekdays. Professionals can visit during business hours, but I have never claimed to be anything other than family when it comes to my brother.

  Rampton is a high-security psychiatric hospital, one of only three in Britain, housing the most dangerous patients: killers, rapists, arsonists, kidnappers – some were caught before their fantasies became a reality, but many have committed crimes so terrible they are etched into public consciousness.

  Entering the reception area, I pass a sign that reads: WELCOME TO RAMPTON HOSPITAL. WE HOPE YOU ENJOY YOUR VISIT. Below is a photograph of Princess Diana on a royal visit.

  I am on an approved list, but must provide proof of my identity, and sign a stack of forms. My belongings are scanned by an X-ray machine. Large bags and holdalls are not allowed. No phones, radio scanners, USB sticks, compact discs, lighters, matches, foods, chewing gum, sweets, safety pins, drugs, tobacco or sharp things.

  Twenty minutes later, my escort arrives. His name is Nigel and we’ve met before. I follow him along a covered walkway between the various wards. There are twenty-nine in all, most of them dark red-brick blocks, but some are detached ‘villas’ dotted around the sixty-eight hectares.

  When Elias first arrived, he was housed in The Peaks, a unit for men with severe personality disorders. He spent eleven months in solitary because of his violent behaviour but has since been moved to a new unit with more privileges. Even so, he still has to be chaperoned by at least four people when he’s moving around the hospital.

  I am taken to a small lounge where two sofas are arranged facing each other with a narrow coffee table in between, bolted down so it cannot be moved.

  ‘Won’t be long,’ says Nigel.

  I perch on the armrest of a sofa and gaze out of the window at the ‘rings of steel’ that surround the hospital. The last escape from Rampton was in 1994 when someone used a makeshift ladder to climb the fence. After that, they added a second barrier and installed more than nine hundred CCTV cameras. One of them is watching me now, a bulbous eye in a corner of the ceiling.

  Visiting Elias always triggers mixed feelings in me. I am no longer the boy who idolised his older brother, who followed him around and proudly wore his hand-me-downs. I am a visitor, the sole survivor, the boy who lost his family in one violent hour.

  I have happier memories of my brother, before he was diagnosed with schizophrenia. I remember us playing football in the garden and how he dinked me to school on his bicycle and once took me to see Manchester United play Nottingham Forest at the City Ground. Forest was my team and we lost eight-one. I wanted to cry but Elias told me it was only a game and I believed him.

  At secondary school, he set up his own business mowing lawns for money. He’d sharpen the mower blades in the garage, using a bench grinder and whetstone. Later he began to hone axes and kitchen knives for our neighbours, revelling in how sharp he could make them.

  Elias was barely sixteen, with money in his pockets and girls trying to attract his attention, but slowly he started withdrawing, drifting away from us. As the months passed, he grew secretive and reclusive, spending hours in his bedroom, where he talked to himself and argued back and forth. I thought he was on the phone, but the handset was still in the living room.

  He stopped mowing laws and sharpening knives. Instead, he spent his weekends sleeping and playing video games, and watching movies in his room. When he did come out, he’d make strange comments, like accusing Mum of trying to poison him or telling me the government was spying on him. He said he had special powers
and could control the planets and that without him the moon would hurtle into the Earth and make humankind extinct, just like the dinosaurs.

  The diagnosis made things easier for my parents, because answers are better than uncertainty, but it took months to sort out the right drugs, which Elias called ‘zombie-pills’. His grades were in freefall and A-levels were out of the question. Mum and Dad let him drop out of school and got him a job working as a gardener for Dad’s business partner, a property developer. For a while, we got the old Elias back, with his quirky sense of humour and alarming laugh. He’d have dinner with the family and belt out songs on the twins’ karaoke machine and dance my mother around the kitchen until she threatened to pee her pants if he didn’t stop.

  He became obsessed with exercise and built himself a weight bench from planks of wood and old sawhorses. The ‘weights’ were paint tins filled with rocks that he hooked over each end of a broom handle; or plastic milk jugs full of sand that he curled until his forearms bulged.

  The good times didn’t last. Elias lost his job. Tools went missing … then money. Nobody could prove it was Elias, but he was let go regardless. After that, he retreated to his room again, surfing the internet, watching horror movies and pornography.

  When Dad took away his TV, Elias pounded holes in the walls. He swung my mother so violently that he broke her wrist. She was crying and holding her arm, pleading with him. ‘Please, Elias, tell me what’s wrong.’

  He looked at her blankly. ‘They won’t let me talk to you.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The voices.’

  We lived like that for almost two years – up and down – having good weeks and bad – never knowing what to expect. Sharing a house with a paranoid schizophrenic is like carrying a timebomb that you can hear ticking, sometimes faster, sometimes slower, but always ticking.

  Elias arrives and is patted down one final time before being allowed to enter the lounge. He grins at me warmly and then bounds across the room like an energetic Red Setter, not yet fully in control of its limbs.

  He stops just as quickly, unsure of whether to hug me or shake my hand. We shake. He’s nervous.

  ‘You came.’

  ‘Of course. Happy birthday.’

  ‘They’re making me a cake, but it won’t be ready until supper. You’ll miss out.’

  ‘That’s all right.’

  ‘It’s going to be chocolate.’

  ‘Your favourite.’

  I produce a present from behind my back. The wrapping is torn because security has checked the contents. I wanted to buy an iPod loaded with his favourite music, but electronic equipment isn’t allowed. Instead, I settled on a sweater with a heavy weave. It’s probably too heavy for him, because he doesn’t get outside very often, never beyond the grounds. I also give him a bundle of comic books, which I know he likes. Black Panther. Spider-Man. Venom. Deadpool. Titans. It’s easy to forget that Elias is turning thirty-six because he acts like an overgrown teenager.

  ‘Sit down. Sit down,’ he says. ‘Not there. Here. This chair.’

  He has a picture in his mind of how the scene should look.

  ‘Can I take your jacket? Are you cold? Too hot? I can get them to adjust the heating.’

  ‘I’m fine.’

  ‘I ordered us tea and carrot cake with cream cheese icing. It’s really good. People are always complaining about the food in here, but it’s top nosh.’

  His voice is a rich, lush baritone, and he talks a lot when he’s nervous, periodically wiping his hands on his thighs – a side-effect of his medications. Sitting opposite me, he perches forward, his face like an open book. Smiling. Eager to please. He’s put on weight since I saw him last and needs a haircut.

  Nigel is still with us, watching from the far side of the room. He’s with a second escort, who sets up a chessboard. Two more orderlies are waiting outside in the corridor.

  ‘How have you been?’ I ask.

  ‘I’m getting better.’

  ‘I can see that.’

  ‘Any day now, they’ll let me go.’

  ‘That’s good.’

  Elias frowns, as though I’m patronising him. Nothing he’s said is technically untrue, but in seventeen years, I have never heard anyone talk seriously about letting him go.

  Elias was convicted of manslaughter by reason of diminished responsibility; hospitalised under Section 37 of the Mental Health Act. This means he cannot be moved or discharged without approval from the Home Office. That decision begins with a mental health tribunal, which looks at Elias’s case every few years. At each hearing, Elias argues that his schizophrenia is under control and expresses remorse, which could be genuine or it could be a learned response.

  A refreshments trolley appears. Elias jumps to his feet and examines the fare, listing the items as though taking an inventory. Cups. Saucers. Milk. Sugar.

  ‘Where is the breakfast tea?’ he asks.

  ‘We ran out,’ says a woman in dark slacks and a floral blouse. ‘I’ve brought some Earl Grey.’

  ‘But I asked for breakfast tea.’

  ‘I’m happy to have Earl Grey,’ I say.

  ‘But you said it tasted like pot-pourri,’ he argues. ‘Nobody drinks Earl Grey except tourists and Americans, that’s what you said.’

  How does he remember this stuff ?

  ‘I was only joking.’

  He is shaking and rocking from side to side.

  ‘Calm down, Elias,’ says Nigel. ‘Remember your exercises. Breathe.’

  Elias inhales through his nose, holding it in his chest. He exhales slowly, as though counting the beats, fighting his emotions. This is a fleeting glimpse of the old Elias, the one who frightens me; the one who frightens everyone.

  His breathing normalises.

  ‘Thank you for bringing the carrot cake,’ he says to the tea lady, giving her a shallow bow, as though he’s greeting the Queen. The tea lady acknowledges him with a curtsy and smiles. She pours the tea. Milk. Sugar.

  Nigel is still standing alongside Elias. ‘Why don’t you tell Cyrus what you’ve been studying?’

  Elias makes a hushing sound.

  ‘What are you studying?’ I ask.

  ‘You’ll laugh at me.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘It’s nothing really.’

  ‘Then tell me.’

  ‘Elias is studying to be a lawyer,’ says Nigel. ‘Manchester Law School has an online law degree. Part time.’

  I glance at Elias, seeking confirmation. His cheeks have reddened.

  ‘The library can barely keep up with him,’ says Nigel. ‘What are you studying now?’

  ‘Human rights law,’ says Elias, growing in confidence. ‘I’m going to become a solicitor or maybe a barrister.’

  ‘That’s amazing,’ I say, trying to process the news. Surely there’s no way a paranoid schizophrenic could become a lawyer … not one who killed his family.

  ‘How long is the course?’ I ask.

  ‘Four years. I’m in my second year.’

  ‘Why haven’t you mentioned it before?’

  ‘I thought you might laugh at me.’

  ‘I wouldn’t do that.’

  He is excited now. ‘When I get out of here, I’ll need to make a living. I want to help people like me. Represent them.’

  ‘That’s very noble,’ I say, aware of how insincere I sound. ‘You used to hate studying at school.’

  ‘This is different. I’m learning important things – not Shakespeare or Auden.’ He puts on a plummy voice. ‘To be or not to be. Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone.’ He laughs. ‘Who cares, eh? But this is important and I’m getting distinctions.’

  At a loss for words, I let Elias carry on, displaying the breadth of his new knowledge, quoting case law like it’s a new language he’s learned. Elias has always had a good memory but was a poor student. And until now, Rampton seemed to have infantilised him, rather than educated him.

  He touches my arm. I’m surprised by the physical
contact. Nigel is watching carefully.

  ‘Ever since I came to Rampton the doctors have talked about me moving forward,’ says Elias. ‘They said there were pathways for me to get better. This is my pathway. I’m going to be a lawyer and get out of here.’

  15

  Evie

  The young doctor looks like Harry Styles if Harry Styles was Spanish and had a dimple in his chin. I’m at the A&E because Davina insisted I get checked out.

  ‘Follow my finger,’ says the hot doctor.

  ‘Why? Where are you gonna put it?’

  ‘Don’t be disgusting,’ says Davina.

  ‘What did I say? Nothing. You’re the one with the filthy mind.’

  The hot doctor smiles nervously and moves his finger to the left and right, up and down.

  ‘Well, I can’t see any signs of concussion and you don’t need stitches on that lip, so I think you’ll be fine.’ He hands me an icepack wrapped in a towel. ‘Keep icing it until the swelling goes down.’

  I knew I didn’t need stitches, but Davina wanted me out of the way when the police arrived at Langford Hall. Either that or she’s hoping a hospital visit will help convince people that I was the victim of a vicious unprovoked assault, blah … blah … blah.

  ‘Is there anything else I can do for you?’ asks the doctor.

  ‘You shouldn’t ask me a question like that.’

  ‘Leave off, Evie,’ says Davina. ‘Thank you, Doctor, we’ll be fine.’

  We walk to her car, a Mini, which is ridiculous given her size.

  ‘You embarrassed that young man,’ she says.

  ‘Me?’

  ‘You were teasing him. You should be careful of that. Men don’t always like women who are too brazen.’

  ‘What does brazen mean?’

  ‘Slutty.’

  ‘You think I’m slutty?’

  ‘No. I think you’re all bark and no bite, Evie Cormac. You pretend to be all sassy and confident, but if a boy tried to kiss you, I bet you’d run a mile.’

  ‘I guess that depends on how well I’ve tied him down,’ I say, making her laugh.

  We drive back to Langford Hall, listening to music. I look at the lights and the people on buses and waiting at bus stops and think they have no idea of who I am, or what I’ve done. Not a clue …