After Sundown

by Mark Morris

  Inside the fridge door – milk, orange juice. The shelves were packed. Big jar of mayo. Babybels for his lunchbox. Cream cheese dippers. Ready meals for the week. Nobody intended to die today.

  She separated one of the apple juice cartons from the six pack, tore the straw off the side, broke the seal to insert it. Hung on the banister, behind and above him. Handed it down.

  He slurped eagerly.

  “You know I have a favourite place, and sometimes I want to go there and never leave it. It makes me feel really good there.”

  “I don’t have a favourite place.”

  “It isn’t the stairs?”

  “The stairs?” Again like she is mad. “Why would the stairs be my favourite place?”

  “I don’t know. I thought you didn’t want to leave it.”

  “I want to leave it, but I can’t leave it, can I?”

  “Why’s that?”

  “Because!”

  “Because what?”

  “Because she said!” Anger overspilling, he flung the juice carton away down the hall. It tumbled, splashed and lay.

  She lowered herself, holding the banisters like prison bars. “What did she say, sweetheart?” He struggled. Sighed. “It’s okay.” She touched his knee.

  He recoiled as if receiving an electric shock. “It’s not okay! It’s not okay!”

  “Tell me, Jared love, and maybe I can help.”

  “You can’t! I know you can’t!”

  “How do you know if you don’t tell me? You’re hurting. I can tell you’re hurting inside and I want to do something about it.”

  “You can’t! Nobody can!”

  Wait. Wait. Wait. Her heart was breaking, but she knew she had to give him time. She had to give him the air to fill with his words. Maybe the space she gave would tug them out of him. Maybe they were ready to come, like a baby tooth that had worked itself loose.

  “It wasn’t my fault,” he said, then it came like a dam burst. “All I was doing was watching Transformers: Cyberverse. She said I could watch another one, but before it finished she said come and have your pasta, and I said, mum, Transformers hasn’t finished yet and she said now! and Jared! and Jared, listen to me! and I said but you promised! and she said right, get you-know-where and think about the way you’re behaving and don’t come back until I...” He stopped, gasping, trying to catch the words. “And I did. I went to the naughty step.”

  And that’s what you’re doing. Waiting. Waiting for her to call you. Waiting for her to say it’s all right. But she never can call you, can she, sweetheart?

  “Jared, what if I said it’s okay to leave the naughty step now?”

  “It isn’t.”

  “Why?”

  “Because she has to say. That’s the way it works. That’s the way it always works.”

  But your mum’s not going to say anything now, is she, Jared?

  She heard a tap on the front door. Shape outside. She went and opened it.

  “Can I have a word, please?”

  “Quickly,” she said to the female PC, looking back at the boy whose arms now covered his head.

  “It would be better if we spoke outside.”

  The cold hit her as she stepped out. The scene was depleted. Fewer cars, fewer officers. Seemed like that. What she was wearing, foolish. No coat, no stab vest.

  “The father’s been found dead. Suicide.” The PC turned her crackling radio to mute. “Found by the railway tracks. Use your imagination. There was an allegation against him, apparently. Made by her.”

  Shit.

  “Yeah. Look, CID’s going mental. We need to get this kid out of there.”

  “Great. How do you intend doing that? By force? By sedating him? Dragging him kicking and screaming into the back of a police car?”

  “Obviously not.”

  “What then? He’s the responsibility of my department now.”

  “And what are you intending to do?”

  “Stay here.” She didn’t care whether the PC thought she was mad or incompetent or both. She knew what she was doing and CID wasn’t her problem. “He’s got to start relaxing, the adrenaline can’t last forever. The body will eventually level out. You can’t deal with fear indefinitely.”

  “You’re the expert. How long?”

  “As long as it takes.”

  “My shift’s over soon. Anything I can do?”

  “You can go and feed my cat.”

  She almost got a smile out of her at that. Almost.

  “Wait a sec.” The PC disappeared into the dark, her equipment giving her pear-like figure a kind of waddle, reappearing a minute later with a plastic bottle of water and a Yorkie. “It’ll keep you going. I’ve got ten more in the glove compartment.” She retreated back into the gloom. “Good luck. One for the memoirs, huh?”

  Memoirs?

  She supposed it was a joke, smiled, left the night to its own devices and shut the door gently after her.

  It was a neat seal, like the door of the fridge. She switched the porch light off, kept the hall light on. The fact the PC had gone home weirdly unnerved her. Her cat would be all right, of course. A vet had told her once it was healthy for a cat to miss a meal once in a while. More like in the wild. Didn’t stop the thing whining if she did, though.

  “Go. Go if you want to.” The boy.

  “I don’t.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I like it here. Right here, with you.”

  She held out the bar of chocolate. Head shake. Water. The same.

  She leaned against the wall and stripped off her crinkly white SOCO suit and the shiny elasticated slippers, to reveal a green M&S pullover and jeans.

  The boy looked at her with curiosity, as if seeing her for the first time.

  “Are you somebody’s mum?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  She thought it best to answer him in a way a child would understand. “Nobody loved me enough, I suppose.” She unexpectedly felt tears welling, and blinked them away, fighting them off with a smile. A smile she wanted him to see.

  “My mum and dad loved each other.”

  “I know.”

  “They did.”

  “I’m sure they did, sweetheart.”

  Anger again, bedding down into a knotted confusion. “Why do mums get so angry? Why did she have to get angry and shout at him?”

  “Maybe she couldn’t help it.”

  “She could help it. All she had to do was stop. If she stopped...”

  “It wasn’t her fault, sweetie.”

  “I know. I know. It was my fault. They were arguing about me.”

  “Don’t say that.” She sat next to him on the step. Put her arm around him. “Don’t think it. Think about nice things.”

  “What nice things?” A sob escaped. “What nice things, though?”

  She couldn’t say. But felt the soft, almost unnatural warmth of him. The proximity of him like a glow.

  Could she scoop him up right now, she thought, when he was upset and vulnerable, less likely to fight back? Could she just hold him to her tightly and make a run for it, get through that door and outside to the police car that was parked in the street?

  No. It would feel like the most terrible betrayal. After her earning his trust, it would destroy him. She could imagine him howling in her arms. Trauma heaped on top of trauma. It would destroy her. She couldn’t... But she needed to do something. Soon.

  “My dad loved me.”

  “They both loved you in different ways. I’m sure they did.”

  Allegations.

  “He wouldn’t leave me, would he?”

  “No, he wouldn’t,” she lied. Hand on his back. Ready to urge him to stand up. Leaning forward. “Do you think you can come as far as the front do
or, can you do that for me?”

  He stiffened. Went rigid – his back like an ironing board.

  “Sorry. Sorry. Sorry—”

  “I can’t!

  “I know you can’t, sweetheart. I know you can’t.”

  She sat back down, rubbed his spine. The hotness radiated through her palm. She settled, and let him settle. Let his heart slow down. Let hers.

  What time was it? She daren’t look at her phone. Was it nine now? Ten? Without the porch light on it was really dark, as dark as she could ever remember seeing, and the house felt cold and unloving. She sometimes felt that when she visited. Toxic relationships, you could feel them, you knew something was brewing, you knew it wouldn’t end well, there was going to be no saviour, no knight in shining armour.

  His breathing was heavy, guttural, his sinuses blocked.

  She wondered if she could creep upstairs to the bathroom cabinet and get him some Calpol. Something that would relax him. It was a sedative. If it calmed him down, that would be a good thing. If it got him to sleep, even better.

  He leaned against her, his cheek against her chest. His breath against her heart.

  “It’ll be all right, you’ll see.” She cradled him. “A lot of people are here to help you. I’m here to help you.” She didn’t know if there were, but she knew one thing for sure. She’d stay there till he was ready. “You know, if you want to come with me, that’s all right. Nobody’s going to be angry with you. Your mum wouldn’t be angry. She’s never been angry with you for very long, has she?”

  Nothing. His face snuffled in closer.

  “Sleep. That’s it. Sleep, if you want to. It doesn’t matter. I’m here.”

  He was quiet for a long while.

  She wondered how often the house was this quiet. This still. This cold.

  The letterbox lifted, breathed. The wind had become strong. Gusty. Something began banging, clattering out in the garden. Loose corrugated iron on the roof of a shed, she thought. She wondered if the fence he jumped over when he’d escaped, fearing the neighbours would see him if he went out the front way, was broken. Pictured his wet hand on it. Wet with blood. His wife’s blood.

  “Sometimes we hear foxes.” The little voice next to her chest. “Sometimes they make me scared. My mum says there’s nothing to be scared of. They just want to get in our bins. She says they’re more afraid of us than we are of them. Is that right?”

  “Shshshsh. Don’t think about things like that. Go to sleep. Just let it all float away, yeah?” She rocked him. “There were ten in the bed and the little one said, roll over, roll over...”

  When the song was over, her voice a drone, lulling, she heard a long, warm sigh.

  He was drifting away but he wasn’t off yet. She didn’t envy his dreams, poor mite. Or perhaps they were an escape right now. She hoped so.

  Perhaps when she was sure he had dozed off she could carry him to her car without him waking up. But what if he woke when she was driving to the emergency foster care? And she didn’t know where that was yet. She should’ve phoned before she got here. She told herself not to get anxious about things that hadn’t happened yet. It would all work out, as long as she didn’t panic. And there was a team outside to help her – wasn’t there?

  She heard a bin blow over. A high-pitched dog, if it was a dog.

  They’re more afraid of us than we are of them.

  “It’s all right.” The voice below her. “I know it’ll be all right because he promised.”

  “Shsh.”

  “He’s going to take me. He said he would. She said no. She said she had enough of him letting me down, but he didn’t, he was busy sometimes and couldn’t come on time, that’s all. She was wrong and he was nice. He was the nice one. Why did she have to be so horrible?”

  “Darling—” She felt her insides tighten. Hands knotting them like rope.

  “He said we’d go somewhere special.” Squirming. “He’s going to come back and take me somewhere special!”

  “No, nobody’s coming, darling. Don’t worry.”

  “He will though. He comes every Friday. He’s got to come!”

  “I’m sorry. He’s gone, darling. Gone a long way away. He can’t touch you now. He’ll never touch you ever again.”

  “No! That’s not true!”

  “It is true.”

  “It’s not! He’s here. He’s here now! I can hear him!”

  The wind outside rose to a whistle. Buffeting against the stable door in the kitchen. She could hear it shake. Something had fallen against it. A tree or branch. Something heavy and unrelenting. Something beyond the bloody fingerprints.

  “Dad?”

  The boy sat up. Alert. Eyes wide. Trying to pull her arms off him. She tried to hold him, but he was like a snake, and she heard herself say the worst thing, and she knew it was the worst thing. She simply didn’t know what else to say.

  “But you can’t go, sweetheart. Remember, your mum said you have to stay here. Your mum said!”

  Her arms wrapped around him, trying to hold him tight and still and safe.

  “Let go of me!”

  “No. You don’t understand. Jared. He doesn’t love you.”

  “He does! He does!”

  Allegations.

  “He called it love but he wants to hurt you and I won’t let him.”

  “Let me go you fucking bitch!”

  She saw the knife go in. A rolling wave of filth seeped from the kitchen, through the air between them, and she knew that he stood there, in the kitchen, nameless and hairy-bellied. Saliva or snot on his lips. Hand on his knife or his cock.

  “I won’t let you go! He’s not going to have you. I won’t let him!”

  A vow. A prayer.

  She crossed her arms over the boy’s body. He kicked. He grunted. He screamed.

  She shut her eyes.

  Her own father once took her to a hawk sanctuary and she’d stood with a baby bird sitting on her finger, a peregrine with its perfect yellow feet, and it was a day they weren’t open, but her father asked them to open just for her. Just for his Lindy. And they did, and the owls had a feeding time and they took these dead mice from the freezer and her dad said not to look but she did just a little bit. And one of the teenage girls had a leather glove and put the mouse on it and the owl flew the whole length of the barn and landed on it, and its eyes were what she remembered now, and the rich smell of the dead animals from the freezer and the sawdust. That smell was in her nostrils now.

  “Bastard. You bastard.”

  She wouldn’t relent. She would be brave. She would be courageous.

  She would do her job.

  She would save this little soul, even as she felt the breath of the dead thing on the back of her neck.

  “You can’t have him. You can’t.”

  * * *

  By morning light, the police and paramedics have to prise his body from her. When they examine him, they think his ribs are broken, she held him so tight.

  The DI asks them how long it would have taken for the child to stop breathing.

  They say the boy probably struggled for some time. They think his face was held against her chest, his mouth and nose pressed against the green sweater probably inhibited his breathing. He suffocated and his little heart gave out.

  When they found her, she was stroking the boy’s hair. Humming a lullaby. Maybe it was a hymn. Maybe it was Kylie Minogue.

  She doesn’t answer their questions. She doesn’t see them. She’s staring. Her arms wrapped around herself now.

  They ask her to come with them, but she doesn’t move.

  Remains sitting on the step.

  “Let me talk to her.” The female PC crouches level to her face, and finally she speaks.

  “I saved him. He’s safe now. He won’t be hurt any more. I protec
ted him. You see that, don’t you?”

  “I see that,” the other woman says.

  Standing aside as men take her.

  Watching as she is led into the light, blinking up at a cloudless sky. Put in the police car, smiling, vindicated, content.

  And the female PC closes the front door quickly as she leaves, for she felt something looking at her while she stood in the hall, and, whatever it was, invisible, mocking, and wet, it had been holding the small, invisible hand of a little boy.

  A Hotel in Germany

  Catriona Ward

  The movie star calls Cara at 3:30 a.m.

  Cara is dreaming of a night forest. She hears the tattoo of spongy elk hooves on the forest floor, glimpses dark hide through the lacework of foliage. The shrill of the telephone merges with the sounds of her dream, entwines with her breath and beating heart. She emerges slowly, reluctant. Perhaps it is not a dream but a memory, resurfacing. That has been happening, of late. She lifts the phone with mitten hands. “Hello.” Her tongue is clumsy with sleep. There is no answer. But Cara recognises the resentful silence that rises between those who love one another. Family.

  “Axel,” she says, then, with difficulty, “Rose?” Her dead brother is calling, or maybe even her dead daughter, whose name still hurts to think or say, like a wound in her mind.

  The receiver crackles with rage. “It won’t work, Cara,” the movie star says. “It won’t be quiet. I’ve tried everything.” She means the TV remote control: her anger is so vast, it can only find tiny outlets, pinhole cracks in a great dam.

  “I’m coming,” Cara says. Reality settles around her.

  She gets out of bed slowly, careful of her limbs, her elbows, her toes. Her body remembers slower than her mind and she hurts herself, sometimes. She puts on clothes at random, plucked from the floor. The hotel corridor is dimmed for the night, with only glowing bars of soft white at floor level.

  Cara lets herself into the movie star’s suite. The TV plays the news at deafening volume, fighting the radio, tuned to a country station. Cucumber slices spill from a glass dish across the parquet floor. The air is filled with the scent of sandalwood. The movie star engages all her senses, day and night. Cara understands that. If you leave a space you can never predict what will arrive to fill it.