Poppet

by Mo Hayder

  It’s always at the point where he is about to go through the pinhole that AJ wakes. He lies there, breathing hard, feeling something beautiful has just been snatched away from him.

  He’s at home. There is a very dim lit coming through the thin curtains. He rolls over and looks groggily at the clock. Five fifteen. Wearily he throws back the covers. Drops his feet on to the floor. He’s got to be at work by seven.

  He showers, shaves and drinks lots of Patience’s coffee. Then he heads off, stopping in Thornbury to do some comfort shopping for the night – stuff like crisps and chocolate and little-kid treats. All the staff do it – easy comforts to push them through the tedium of a night in the unit. The shop’s got Forager’s Fayre jam on the shelf – it’s a locally made line and the only store-bought preserves Patience will allow in the house. She actually takes inspiration from Forager’s Fayre instead of scoffing at it. He throws a few jars into the basket to give to her in the morning.

  It’s an ordinary late-autumn evening in a rural town – a couple of express supermarkets still open, the pharmacy and a gift shop. The off-licence and the Indian and Chinese. But as he’s leaving the supermarket loaded down with bags, he notices something out of the ordinary. On the opposite side of the road two or three people have gathered around someone who is kneeling on the ground.

  The Good Samaritan in AJ died a death many moons ago – he’s so used to picking up messes in his job his instinct is to walk the other way – but he’s got basic first-aid skills, so morally he can’t pretend not to see. He crosses the road. As he gets nearer, he realizes the person on the pavement is a woman. She is apparently unhurt, apart from her hand – which she is pressing hard with a white handkerchief. She is wearing the white lace blouse she wore this morning, and lilac leather Mary Janes, from which rise her delicate ankles and her strong calves. He recognizes the calves instantly – God knows he’s studied them often enough. It’s Melanie Arrow. Ice Queen.

  ‘Really,’ she is saying to the onlookers, ‘I am absolutely fine.’ Next to her is a carrier bag surrounded by a pool of clear liquid – a few pieces of broken glass lying amongst it. ‘I mean it – I’m absolutely fine.’

  ‘You don’t look fine,’ someone says. ‘You’re bleeding.’

  She is indeed bleeding – the handkerchief is already soaked. A woman is rummaging in her handbag, pulling out handfuls of tissues that drop like petals on the ground. AJ puts down his shopping and nips across the street to the pharmacy. It is quiet and the assistant hurriedly pulls out all the bandages she can find. He pays and trots back outside.

  The group of people is still there and so is his shopping, but Melanie Arrow is gone.

  ‘What happened?’ he calls to them. ‘Where did she go?’

  The woman with the handbag nods in the direction of the car park. ‘Said she was OK.’

  AJ turns and crosses back over the road. The car park is small – quite empty at this time of day – and he spots the familiar black VW Beetle immediately. It is perfect – the alloys sparkling, the sun glinting off it. It’s a few years old, but the bright plastic flower that was the finishing touch when it rolled off the production line still sits perkily in its holder. In the driver’s seat is Melanie Arrow. She sits with her head bent slightly, her hair covering her face. Her hand is bleeding copiously; it is running down her wrist and the tissues aren’t containing it.

  ‘Hey.’ He taps on the window. She looks up, shocked to see him. He rolls his hand, miming the action of undoing the window. She shakes her head.

  ‘I’m OK,’ she mouths. ‘I’m fine.’

  ‘You’re not fine.’ He tries the door handle – it’s locked. He knocks on the window again. ‘You’re bleeding.’

  ‘I’m fine,’ she yells. ‘Honestly. It’s nearly stopped.’

  ‘Bollocks. Open the door.’

  ‘I’m fine.’

  AJ doesn’t know what takes over – maybe a memory of the look she gave him in the office that morning – but instead of walking away he pulls out his phone and jabs in the numbers 999. He doesn’t press call but holds the phone up to the window. Melanie looks at it and he raises his eyebrows at her.

  ‘OK? Now open the door?’

  She shakes her head, resignedly. The central-locking system clunks and AJ goes round to the passenger side and gets in. The car stinks of alcohol. On the back seat is the carrier bag that was earlier on the pavement – a little blood on it. It’s got one bottle of vodka in it and the remains of a second, smashed.

  ‘AJ, I’m absolutely OK. I tripped coming out of the shop, that’s all.’

  He tugs the bandages out of the packing and reaches for her hand. She flinches when he touches her. Pulls away, her expression defensive.

  ‘Come on.’ He shakes his head. ‘You are an adult. Aren’t you?’

  She sucks in a breath to reply. But instead of speaking she holds the breath, holds it and holds it as if she can’t decide what to do with it. Then she lets it all out at once and relinquishes the hand, the bloodied tissues falling into her lap.

  ‘Oh God,’ she mutters, staring out of the window. ‘Just get on with it.’

  Maybe AJ is too well trained, or maybe he finds a long-forgotten empathic spark, because while he is inspecting the damaged hand and wrapping it, he hears himself saying, almost confidently, as if this is a patient and not the super-organized, mega-sorted clinical director: ‘You know, Melanie, it seems to me, as an outsider, that you’ve got a really tough role. A really tough role. And if you want me to be honest, it looks as if the world is asking an awful lot of you at the moment.’

  The comment provokes a shiver. She turns her head away, her uninjured hand pressed hard against her mouth. AJ holds the wounded hand and stares at the back of her head. He can’t quite believe this – that she hasn’t smacked him in the face – that he’s forced his way into the car – that he’s daring still to speak.

  ‘No,’ he continues. ‘I can see it’s not easy – not easy at all.’

  She drops her head then. A faint current runs through her muscles – a contained spasm, but he can’t tell if she’s actually crying or not. His memory opens suddenly on the drunken night years ago, and he wonders again why he didn’t respond then to her come-on. At the time he had a girlfriend, but there was something else stopping him. Melanie somehow seemed in a different world – as if she belonged to a grown-up league of dating he had no right to trespass in. She was just too … too sensible somehow. Serious. When he and the girlfriend separated a few weeks later and he made a tentative approach to Melanie she froze him out, saying something short about the Trust and its dim view of relationships between staff. Since then their only interactions have been the cool, professional ones. Like this morning. Now he concentrates on bandaging her hand. It should stop bleeding if it’s dressed properly. He’s glad he didn’t dial 999; they don’t need a hospital visit.

  ‘You know what,’ Melanie says quietly, ‘I spent five hours today talking to the review team. Five.’

  He glances up, surprised by her tone. Her face is still turned away, her blonde hair covering her expression. ‘About Zelda, you mean?’

  ‘It’s like they’re accusing us of doing something to her. Her post-mortem has finally been done. Did you know that?’

  ‘What did they find?’

  ‘Nothing.’ She shrugs. ‘At least, nothing you can hang a hat on. It said she died of heart failure, but they couldn’t pin the cause on anything, except possibly her weight. So now the review team can’t make up their minds whether to walk away or to keep on at us. They’ve gone over and over everything – the staff logs, her care plan. Every time they turned up as much as a spelling mistake in one of the meds logs they looked at me as if I had horns.’

  For the first time it dawns on AJ that Melanie’s feelings about the unit run really deep. Yes, it’s her professional reputation on the line, but she actually seems to care. Really care. In his experience genuine commitment beyond a pay cheque is thin on the ground in B
eechway.

  He clears his throat. ‘You’ve carried the can for the rest of us. We wander around whingeing about overtime and night pay, but at least at the end of the day we can walk away from it.’ He finishes tying the bandage and gently pushes the hand back at her. ‘There you go. You’ll live.’

  Melanie fumbles up one of the blood-stained tissues from her lap and blows her nose noisily. She lets the hand sit in her lap and stares at it blankly. She has been crying, there are mascara trails on her face. ‘Everyone’s going to say I’m suicidal. They’re going to say I cut myself. What’s the expression? Eventually the system will turn in on itself?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  She sniffs again and looks at him. ‘AJ?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I’m sorry about the professional-bitch demeanour this morning.’

  ‘That’s OK. You’ve got a job to do.’

  She gives a small, tearful laugh. ‘Sometimes it’s the only way I know how to be.’

  ‘Like I said, it’s OK. It’s fine.’

  There’s a short pause. He wonders where this is going. Then she says, ‘We’ve known each other a long time. Tell me honestly. This delusion they have – the you-know-what.’

  ‘The Mau—’

  ‘Please don’t say it.’ She looks at him with a watery smile. ‘Sorry – it’s just, I … AJ – you’ve never seen anything, have you? Something you couldn’t explain.’

  He gives a scoffing laugh. ‘Oh, all the time. People walking through walls.’

  ‘Seriously. What is it about this delusion?’

  ‘That depends,’ he says, ‘on whether I’m Scully and you’re Mulder.’

  ‘I’m definitely Scully.’

  ‘No – you can’t be. ’Cos I’m Scully.’

  ‘Then it’ll have to be two cynics. Two cynics in a Beetle. They should make a film about us.’

  They both give a half-hearted laugh. AJ sits back and stares out of the windscreen to where a drunk woman is picking a fight with an equally drunk man in camouflage trousers. There’s a long silence, then he says: ‘You’ve got to admit, she was a bloody nuisance.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Zelda.’

  ‘No, no – AJ, you can’t say that. Every person on the unit has a right to our care. We shouldn’t let anyone down.’

  ‘But she was a nuisance. I know it’s taboo to say it, but out of all the people it could have happened to, aren’t you glad it happened to Zelda? I certainly am.’

  There’s a pause. Melanie keeps her eyes on the two drunks. Her mouth is moving slightly – as if she’s suppressing a slight smile. ‘We never had this conversation,’ she says, not meeting his eyes. ‘I never heard you say that and you never saw me nod. OK?’

  ‘What conversation?’

  ‘And last but not least, you never saw …’

  ‘What?’

  She tilts her chin over her shoulder at the vodka bag on the back seat. ‘You never saw what was in that carrier bag either.’

  The End

  SUKI’S BREATHING SLOWS. The rapid in and out – the frantic panting of the last few hours – deflates into something slow and thoughtful. A measured surrender. To Penny this is the first sign that the end really is coming. It’s going to be soon.

  She looks at her watch. Five o’clock. Evening. So it will be evening when Suki goes. It can’t be much longer. She hitches up the duvet which makes a tent over her and Suki – here on the floor in the office where Suki lies curled on the tatty old bed that she has had for fifteen years – ever since she was a tiny puppy. Penny has been here all last night and today. She’s not tired, not sleepy. Not at all.

  ‘Don’t be scared, Suki.’ She strokes her face. ‘Don’t be scared. I promise there’s nothing to be scared of.’

  Suki takes another breath. Almost pensive. She lets it out. Penny rests her hand on Suki’s ribcage – very lightly, because the skeleton is so tiny, so feeble. It seems a ridiculous insult to expect it to rise one more time. This little old dog – small and shrunken as a walnut. Even as a youngster Suki was tiny. Not a proper breeder’s dog – she was a rescue puppy, a cute hairy-faced mutt. All her life no one has ever noticed or paid attention to Suki – not the way they’d whoop and ooh over the glamorous red setters and Weimaraners. Of course, Suki has never minded. She’s always been content to trot along next to Penny, quite happy with the world and the way it was. No one is really going to notice when she’s gone. Only Penny.

  Another breath comes. A slow release. Penny watches the ribcage – expecting another.

  She waits, and she waits.

  ‘Suki?’

  No response.

  ‘Suki? Is that it?’

  Her chest doesn’t move. Penny presses her hands into it, her fingertips gently searching between the ribs for the last flutter of heartbeat. Nothing. The little dog’s chin is down and the whiskers around her mouth are curled and brown where they touch her front leg.

  ‘Suki?’

  Penny looks at her watch again. Five minutes go by. Then another five. She makes herself count the seconds out in her head. All the way to a hundred and eighty. Three more minutes. Nothing, no one, can exist without breathing for this long. It is definitely the end.

  ‘OK.’ She rocks back on her heels. ‘OK.’

  She cries. Just a little, and has to hold up her sleeve to soak up the tears. There’d be more, but the heavy ones passed through yesterday morning, when the vet told her the end was coming.

  ‘I’m picking you up now.’ After a long time she bends at the waist and lifts Suki up on to her lap. The dog doesn’t move or resist. Her legs flop down. She weighs nothing – no more than a small wicker basket. Penny hunches down, puts her face against the old muzzle. Rocks her. ‘It’s all right, my girl. It’s OK. You’ve been so good. Such a good girl. Thank you,’ she tells her. ‘Thank you so so much. For everything.’

  The Nobel Peace Prize

  AJ IS IN that place again. The cave, its walls as smooth and warm and glowing as polished walnut. The hole is there too, slightly to his right. There’s a slender strand of something – gossamer, or spider silk maybe – reaching into the hole, almost as if it’s pointing the way. He is certain that if he tugs on the strand every miracle on earth will be revealed to him, all in one cosmic white blast. But this time, just as he’s about to grip the strand, the babble of infant laughter comes to him. He jerks round to the cave opening. Something is out there. A familiar pitter-patter of feet. A shadow crosses the ground.

  He wakes, gulping in air. Breathing hard, his heart galloping, hands groping for something to hold on to.

  ‘Shit shit shit.’

  ‘AJ? You all right there, mate?’

  He blinks. The Big Lurch and one of the nurses are staring at him from the other sofa. He opens his mouth, struggles up on his elbows and stares blankly at them. He’s in the nurses’ TV room. The digital clock on the wall says nine forty-five. The TV is on. A woman wearing nothing but thigh-high boots is gyrating her pelvis, throwing her long blonde hair around like a whip.

  AJ groans and turns away into the damp-smelling sofa, his face in his hands. He shakes his head. He is so tired now it is beyond a joke. He wants to sleep but he can’t. He is going slowly, very slowly, mad. The lunatics are taking over the asylum, the system is feeding on its own young. He wishes he could wear a You don’t have to be mad to work here but it helps T-shirt. Why is he stuck on this highway to hell of a career? There was a time he’d deluded himself he was going to change the world by caring for the patients, he even thought he was doing it to make Mum proud – make her believe her son was caring and thoughtful. Now he looks back at those rose-tinted days and thinks, without any humour, he should have gone to Specsavers.

  He’s seen the worst of human nature in this profession. He’s seen guys who’ve stabbed random little kids to death in the high street, he’s nursed a woman (long dead now) who killed her disabled husband by pouring a kettle of boiling water over his head and leaving h
im in his wheelchair for three days until he died of the burns and the infection – AJ’s heart used to gallop every time he saw her holding a cup of coffee; she was only allowed that after ten years on the unit. Then there was the guy who’d hacked up, cooked and eaten his neighbour’s pony because it was ‘looking at him strange’. And the AIDS sufferer who put his used needles pointing upwards in the sandpit at the local children’s playground. And so it goes, on and on.

  At some point he decided he didn’t want to know what someone was in the can for. He reckoned he’d nurse them better if he was none the wiser about the things they’d done. Technically, he’s supposed to know it all – the staff need to be aware of the offending history – but he’s found ways of learning only the bare minimum. He prefers it this way – his patients are to him like strangers in a pub or on a train – no illusions or preconceptions. There are simply some he likes and some he doesn’t, but he always tries to give them the same care.

  ‘You should be nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize,’ says Patience. ‘For that and for your work with trees.’

  He doesn’t feel like a Nobel Prize winner. Anything but.

  ‘Right.’ Now he rolls his feet off the sofa. Tilts himself forward and sits for a moment, rubbing his face. There’s a strange, almost fishy smell in the room – maybe something they’ve been eating. ‘Right,’ he repeats. ‘I’m going to do a walk-through.’