by Deborah Bee
‘Carol, you’re here,’ says Mrs Beresford, leaning over and kissing her.
Mr Beresford stands up to give her a hug and there’s this well awkward bit when we don’t know whether we should get up or stay sitting.
‘This is our eldest daughter, Carol – she lives in Canada,’ says Mrs Beresford to my mum. ‘She just arrived yesterday.’
‘Glad to meet you,’ says my mum. My mum looks at me like I’m a total spaz and I say, ‘Hello, I’m Kelly’, and she nods and smiles. She’s only a bit older than Sarah and quite a lot like her to look at.
Mr Beresford is hurriedly putting his hands in his pockets and pulling out hankies and a wallet and a diary, looking for some change.
‘Do you want a coffee, Carol?’ he says.
‘Yes, please, Dad. Do they do cappuccino?’ she says.
‘It’s very milky. Full-fat milk,’ Mrs Beresford says. ‘You won’t want all that milk, will you?’
‘Cappuccino, please, Dad,’ she continues, smiling a bright smile. ‘And a packet of crisps, please.’ She winks at me, looking down at my half-eaten packet.
Poor-old-bastard Mr Beresford trails off to get the coffee, joining the back of the queue he just left. And Carol launches into this interrogation about like totally everything the doctor has said, and the nurses have said, and how does Sarah seem, and all that. And Carol writes notes in a small leather notebook that matches her scarf. And when her coffee arrives she looks up at me and says, ‘So, Kelly. What have you got to say?’ Funny really. She doesn’t mean it properly, you know, like she doesn’t really think I’ve got anything to say. She’s just trying to be nice, I spose. Join me in the ‘adult’ conversation. She’s the only person to actually properly ask me anything. Out of all these people, the police and the nurses and Mrs Tea and Tampons, who just assume that I won’t know anything cos I’m a bit of a twat or a kid or something, the one person to ask me anything is someone who doesn’t know anything about me at all. ‘Oh, I don’t know,’ I say. And my mum goes, ‘She never says anything much.’ And I give her a look that means fuck off, Mum. She winks back. She’s funny, my mum. She totally gets me sometimes. Ever since she asked Sarah for help, I’ve been much more in control of my life. In control of what I say and how I say it. Making choices for me rather than just reacting to the choices other people were making. I think I only realised that just around the time that the school got burnt down.
My mum wants to go home. She keeps swivelling her eyes towards the door and thinks no one else can see her doing it. She’d said we’d have to go if Carol arrived. And Carol wants to see Sarah like right away. My mum decides she needs the loo. She goes in the disabled cos there’s a queue. Why are there always queues in women’s toilets? While I’m waiting outside holding onto her fucking ridiculous beige handbag, I see Nurse Hodder. She’s just standing there, in the corridor, staring at a printout. When she sees me she blushes slightly. Weird, right? Then she walks towards me. My mum is still in the loo.
‘Hi,’ she says. ‘Can you have a look at this for me?’
It’s a photo of a man, from CCTV. The printout is rubbish. The ink has smudged. It looks like the entrance to the hospital. The time on it says 23:39. 14.03.2014. Last Friday.
‘I dunno,’ I say. ‘Could be anyone.’
The man has black hair. Curly. He’s wearing a parka with a fur hood. He looks about thirty, I spose. His clothes don’t look like old clothes. It’s hard to tell.
‘This is the man who says he’s Sarah’s brother,’ she says.
‘Well, it’s not, cos she doesn’t have one, right?’
‘No. I know. But I wondered if you recognised him.’
‘I don’t know who he is,’ I say. Cos I don’t.
And the more I look at him the more he looks like Adam. I start to feel sick.
‘What’s the matter with you?’ she says.
‘You’ve turned green. Are you alright?’
‘It looks like Adam,’ I say.
‘He’s dead, Kelly,’ she says.
‘I know,’ I say, and then pause. ‘Are you sure?’
‘Yes, I’m sure he is,’ she replies and puts her arm around my shoulders.
‘Do you believe in ghosts, Beth?’
Beth looked at me strange. And blinked.
23
Sarah
Day Four – 5 p.m.
It was Kelly who hissed in my ear. I remember her. The girl from next door. Blond hair. Or was it brown? Brenda’s girl. And I remember the first time I saw her. I was less than impressed. I was in this Victorian house. My house, I guess? It had a newly painted white wooden gate and a privet hedge. The upstairs bedroom had no carpet and the furniture was stacked against one wall, with cardboard boxes piled up against the other. There were no curtains either, and I was looking out of the window over the street where I could see just around the bend. It was about four o’clock – home time – so the street was full of mothers pushing prams and dragging toddlers, and straggling kids in no hurry to get home. It was a summer afternoon with no breeze and the sky felt heavy. A storm was threatening. A blond girl, who was actually twelve but could have been ten years older judging by the state of her, was eating crisps, just by the corner before she turned into our final stretch of street. She had over-bleached and ironed her hair to the point that it wafted in the non-existent breeze. She was over-made-up too. I wondered what kind of mother would let her daughter out looking like a wannabe hooker, and what kind of school would let that pass for uniform. She was holding the hand of a small blond boy, who looked like she might have done before the war paint got the better of her. I guessed he was her brother. He must have been about five. The air felt dense and their conversation was muffled. But they seemed to be having a joke about something. He had a pink lollipop. Suddenly from nowhere, she pulled at his arm. From nowhere. The senseless aggression was completely shocking. It’s the way you see those EDL skinheads yank at the leads of their godforsaken dogs. Her hair flew in a ragged curtain across her screwed-up face. The boy was called Billy, I remember. He didn’t shout out. He just started to cry, his lollipop back in his mouth. Is there anything more tragic than seeing someone cry when they’re eating a lollipop? Without either of them saying anything at all, she continued around the corner, whereupon a middle-aged woman appeared like a bat out of hell and scooped him up. I stepped back from the window. I didn’t want to be seen by her. Or Kelly.
Next time I saw Brenda was when she introduced herself over the garden wall that separated our front paths. My new next-door neighbour. I didn’t say anything. About Kelly, I mean. She talked about her clever daughter. I hoped there was rather more to her than met the eye. Or perhaps rather less.
I am snapped back into reality by the sound of loud voices. My room seems to be full of people.
‘Why didn’t you tell me about that when I got here?’
This is my sister. I’d know her voice anywhere. My sister is here. I know my sister. Her name is Carol and she’s older than me and much braver. Always was. I didn’t realise she had come. God, things must be bad.
‘If some strange man has been in her room, why didn’t you tell me straight away?’
‘Because, Carol, we were talking with Brenda.’
God, they’re all here.
‘And? What difference does that make?’
‘We don’t want everyone knowing our business. Do we, Brian? Brian?’
‘No, June, but that’s not the point. The point is, he’s gone now. The police are here. They’ve got a photo of him. Let’s leave all that to them. We should be looking after Sarah. Helping to bring her back. Talk to her, they said.’
‘But, Dad, it’s not working, is it?’
‘Mr Malin is her consultant and he says that we just need to talk to her.’
‘Well, Mum, let’s get Mr Malin in here. Let’s see what else this hospital can do. Like maybe some medical tests.’
‘We don’t want any trouble, Carol. Brian, tell Carol we don’t want a
ny trouble. Brian!’
‘Trouble? Mum, we’re already in trouble. This is about as big as trouble can be. Don’t you get it? Can’t you understand that we have to do something now?’
I love it when she flips. She has always flipped. She’s the outspoken one. Up until she was about seven she was in charge because she was always first at everything. She could tie her shoelaces, she could read, she could write, she could play cards. Once she got locked in the cupboard at the top of the stairs by the older kids from opposite – only once, because she nearly broke Helen’s and Alexa’s legs when she got out. I could never fight back. Because I was smaller. I got locked in the cupboard all the time. Then, one day, I wanted to play with her and she wouldn’t let me. She said I was a baby and I didn’t know how to play. She laughed. I cried. She ignored me. So I went downstairs. Next thing, my mother comes upstairs and wallops her around the head. ‘Don’t lock your sister in the cupboard,’ screams my mother. ‘I didn’t,’ she shouts back. ‘She’s a liar,’ she says. My mother just hit her again in the exact same place she’d just hit her and slammed the door. I was about five. I was waiting for a thump that never came. ‘Well done,’ she said. ‘You’ve got balls.’ She let me play with her from then on.
‘SARAH, ADAM’S DEAD.’
She is yelling. I guess most coma victims don’t get treated like that. Someone starts to cry.
‘Carol, that’s enough!’
That’s my dad. He never raises his voice. Never.
‘Dad. It’s not working, all this nice chatting stuff. Is it? Don’t you think that we have to try everything to get her out of this? Happy memories? Doesn’t work. Surprise, surprise. Telling her you love her? Doesn’t work. So how about this? SARAH – YOU ARE GONNA DIE IF YOU DON’T WAKE UP, SO FUCKING WAKE UP.’
That’s balls.
I was still thinking about Kelly when I got an image of this man, one hand on a lamp post propping himself up. It’s dark. His knees are bent and he’s leaning forwards, and with his other hand he’s leaning on his knee, and his head is dropped forward like he is going to be sick. I can’t see his face behind the thick black curls but I know it must be Adam. Then he looks up into the distance like he is looking for something way off. Not me, though. Probably he is just trying to see straight. He pushes his hand against his thighs and slowly levers himself upright and steadies himself with the lamp post. There is a can of Special Brew poking out of the pocket of his black coat and an empty one by his feet.
This is Adam. I’m sure of it.
It is Adam, but it’s not the Adam I married.
24
Kelly
Day Four – 6 p.m.
I didn’t tell my mum about the photo. Or anything at all about the man in Sarah’s room. I don’t tell my mum a lot of things. She worries too much.
Beth says it’s a coincidence that it looks like Adam. Says my eyes are playing tricks on me. But she doesn’t know Adam. And if his brother is anything like him, he will be up to no fucking good.
My mum says we can’t go and visit Sarah again until her mum and dad call us. She said that the family would want to be together with Sarah and that we weren’t family. I said we were Sarah’s proper family but my mum said people like them didn’t see it that way. We drove down Wood Green High Street and I just stared out of the window. It all looked different. I used to be like, ‘What’s in Top Shop?’ or ‘Who’s in Caffè Nero?’ but now it all seems strange.
Before I knew Sarah I used to bunk school all the time, to go to like TK Maxx or wherever. Or down McDonald’s even though half the time we’d only just got to school and we weren’t even hungry. I’ve never bunked school to sit in a hospital for like EVER, waiting for a coma to wear off. I think Sarah would approve. She’d say I’ve turned into a fucking angel. Well, she wouldn’t say ‘fucking’. She’d say I’m an angel, at least I look like one from the outside.
Before I met Sarah I said ‘pacific’ instead of ‘specific’. I also said ‘random’, ‘totally’, ‘spaz’, ‘weird’, and ‘something’ with a k on the end. Actually I said ‘somefink’ with an f and a k. And I said ‘fuck’ a lot. Out loud, I mean – in your head doesn’t count. Sarah said words like ‘coincidentally’ and ‘furthermore’ and ‘good grief’, which made me laugh. It made her laugh when I said ‘pacific’, especially when she corrected me and I said there was no such fucking word as ‘specific’ and that everyone knew it started with a p.
It was all a bit awkward when I first went round. My mum said that Sarah had invited me for tea. But I knew that was bullshit. I mean it’s totally random for your neighbour who is like twice as old as you are to invite you round for tea when you don’t even like fucking tea. My mum said I should watch out for her car and when she got inside her house Sarah would put the kettle on. I’m totally not big on tea. I like Coke or chocolate milkshake or energy drinks. But although I knew it was all a bit of a set-up, I waited until her car was outside her house and I knocked on her front door. It’s funny seeing the inside of someone’s house when it’s the same as yours only they’ve done it different. My mum has this spongy white wallpaper in her hall, well, it’s all over the house, actually, that’s got spirals on that I trace with my finger whenever I’m listening outside the front room. You can see a grey patch just by the light switch where my forehead has been leaning against it. And my mum has green carpet everywhere except in the hall cos that’s where Billy leaves his bike, unless he’s left it out the back again. And not in the bathroom cos she says it would rot the amount of water I get all over everywhere. Anyway, Sarah’s house is grey downstairs. Grey painted walls that aren’t shiny and apparently that’s the whole point. It’s a funny grey. Sort of nearly green. She says she doesn’t really like green but Adam does. The hallway has these black and white tiles like they have in them posh stately homes and there are grey carpets in the room that Sarah calls the lounge but Adam says it’s called a sitting room.
Anyway, she made the tea and I pretended that I always have tea and put seven spoons of sugar in because she didn’t have any sugar cubes and then actually it was a bit more disgusting than it usually is. And then she asked me how I was getting on. Just that – ‘How are you getting on?’ And you know how sometimes that is like totally the wrong thing to say to someone, cos then they ask themselves how they are actually getting on and then they realise that they are actually getting on really, really bad. So it’s not a question I ask random people cos quite often it makes them cry and you know you’re gonna be in for a right long session when they haven’t even started talking and they’re crying. Anyway, when Sarah asked me how I was getting on, I just thought about it for like one second and then I started crying.
The thing with Wino had got worse than I ever dreamed it could. I’m not even lying. Since the day with the locker key, which I told Sarah about in serious detail, Wino had taken to picking me out. His favourite trick was to come up behind me and kind of wrap his hand around my ponytail and then yank it. ‘’Ello, Blondie,’ he’d say, and I would get pulled backwards into the locker room by my hair. He even did it to Clare sometimes, thinking it was me. Twat. In the locker room the homies, who were like fourteen or fifteen, for fuck’s sake, would finger their flick knives, trying to look as hard as their big brothers or their dads. Half the time I think they were pissed or stoned out of their minds or something.
Kathryn Cowell ran the school from the far corner of the locker room. There used to be a gym next door – it got turned into the canteen when the sports fields were sold to make the Rec. We don’t do games now. Hardly any. Only when the minibus can be bothered to turn up to take us up the pool at Archway. Or when you are in Year 7 when they make you jump off benches and stuff, which is like totally stupid. The changing rooms became the locker room, lined with rows and rows of lockers, and hooks and wire baskets for coats and spare shoes. She had come to the school after being expelled from two other schools before. Someone said that the school PTA had tried to block her coming because they’
d heard her reputation from when she was at a secondary school in Harlow New Town. But there was nothing the authorities could do that was legal because she was under sixteen and because her parents had got the law on their side. I guess this must be a different law to the police law, or that wouldn’t make sense, right? My mum says it’s got nothing to do with what’s legal. It’s to do with Kathryn’s dad being an East End gangster. Mum says anyone messing with Kathryn will get their face rearranged. No one has ever tested out the theory.
Sarah said that Kathryn sounded like ‘a dyed-in-the-wool bully – unfortunate in size, shape, stature and attitude’. I wrote that down so I could remember it. Sarah said ‘dyed in the wool’ means that she was made like that and she would never change. And I think saying ‘unfortunate’ is like not really being as harsh as you might be if you actually saw her cos she isn’t just overweight, she’s like a massive barrel. My mum would say brick shithouse. She’s quite small. Like in height she’s quite short, I mean, and she walks weird cos she’s got like little stocky footballers’ legs and she always wears them platform sneakers. Platform sneakers, no matter what. She has a thin mouth and a big old chin that she shoves out. Kathryn Cowell’s way of dealing with her ‘unfortunate physicality’ – Sarah said I should never get caught slagging her off in terms she would understand – is to make herself look so much fucking worse. Her hair is shaved except for a layer on the top that is dyed white blond with a black fringe that flops to one side against the black stubbly sides. A heavy gold-coloured chain hangs from her earlobe that has grown abnormally long with all that chain, which then connects up to her nostril. The hole in her nostril is dragged down by the weight, making her nose look lopsided. Not that you can ever actually stare at her face for too long. This I have seen from the corner of my eye. She was sat outside Mrs Backhouse’s office once when I had left my French vocab book at home for the millionth time. That’s the only time I have ever seen her without her homies. Her homies are all boys – no girls, just five ugly bastards who follow her around like pitbull puppies and do all the dirty work. Dinner money, mobiles, earrings, homework, pens, packets of crisps, lip gloss, pets – there’s nothing that Kathryn Cowell won’t take. She randomly picks out her victims with her gang in tow, then stands right in their way, with her flat fat hand outstretched, her stubby chewed fingers beckoning impatiently. Sometimes she doesn’t even say anything. She just sticks out her hand.
