Dead and Gone

by D. L. Michaels

  17

  Martin

  As promised, I waited for Sarah in the local pub, six Saturday nights on the run. Hardly an ordeal, I know, but I went and I sat and I watched my watch. And more than anything, I hoped.

  By week three, I got to thinking she’d been frightened off by me talking so openly, and apparently foolishly, about how we were meant to be together. I’d let slip my incredible immaturity or stupidity – maybe even both – and was paying the price.

  Or perhaps she’d sensed that I was hiding something. That I hadn’t always been the nice, pleasant guy she’d met in the town hall. That I’d done things I’d like to forget and certainly wouldn’t wish to have uncovered.

  Was that possible?

  I’d read that dogs were capable of smelling diseases. That they had a preternatural ability to detect deadly mutations in cells. It made me wonder if women could detect dark secrets in men, sniff out the dangerous, shameful secrets that we thought we could hide.

  To my relief, late on the evening of the sixth Saturday, Sarah walked through the door of The Hunted Boar. To be honest, I’d all but given up hope. I was paying for a drink at the bar when I saw her. She was wearing a pale blue waffle-knit cashmere jumper, white kimono-sleeved T-shirt and black wide-leg trousers and she looked gorgeous and lost. Then I remembered why she was having trouble finding me. It wasn’t simply that the pub was heaving, it was that I’d grown a beard since we’d last met.

  I abandoned the pint of Guinness I’d just been served and hurried off the red-topped stool where I’d been squatting for the past hour.

  ‘Sarah!’ I waved at her.

  She was less than two metres away but couldn’t see or hear me because of the crush of people and the general noise.

  ‘Sarah!’

  She turned. Her eyes caught mine. It was as if the whole room had been lit up with firecrackers.

  Before she could speak, I all but hugged the life out of her.

  ‘Oh, my God.’ She laughed when I finally let go enough for her to breathe. ‘You really are glad to see me.’

  ‘You have no idea how much. I didn’t think you would come. I really didn’t.’

  She looked me up and down. ‘I can see that from how you’re dressed.’

  I realised then that I’d come out in my scruffs. Jeans. No socks. Old trainers. A tatty red jumper. ‘For some mad reason,’ I explained, ‘I thought that if I came looking like a bag of spanners, you’d turn up, but if I got myself all smart and expectant, like I have been for the past five weeks, then you wouldn’t.’

  ‘That is mad.’

  ‘I know.’ I put both hands gently on her face. ‘But you’re here. And you look so - wonderful.’

  ‘Thank you. What’s with the beard? Are you going into some hedgehog-like hibernation?’

  I rubbed my bristly cheeks with both hands. ‘More superstition. I haven’t shaved since I saw you. Wasn’t going to ever again if you hadn’t come.’

  ‘Then that would have been some beard. Almost worth staying away for.’

  Cheering erupted behind us. A party was downing shots. And not their first batch, judging from the decibels of their delight.

  ‘Can we go to your place?’ she asked. ‘Somewhere a little quieter, and more private?’

  ‘Yes, yes, of course we can.’ I looked to where I’d been sitting. ‘Hang on though, I have to get something.’

  I slalomed back to the bar, dipped down and collected a green carrier bag lodged beneath the legs of a stool. I took a quick slurp of my Guinness, then hurried back and passed the bag to Sarah. ‘For you.’

  She took it, seemed surprised by the weight, then looked inside. ‘The brasses from the exhibition!’ she said, excitedly. ‘These are half of the set your friend had sculptured.’

  ‘Yes, Shayne the Pain. They’re 'The Lovers,' the ones you liked.’

  ‘Oh, thank you.’ She looked genuinely really touched. ‘Didn’t you say he wouldn’t split them up? And weren’t they very expensive?’

  ‘Yes, he did. And yes, they were. I traded him. Four of my collages for the one set of four brasses. I have the other two at home.’

  ‘My goodness. And what if I hadn’t come?’

  ‘Let’s not do “what ifs”. I wanted to wrap my arms around her and make love to her right there and then.

  Sarah seemed to read my mind. ‘Shall we go?’

  I took her by the arm and quickly led her out of the back door into a courtyard. People were smoking and drinking under table brollies drummed by heavy rain. We cut past them, slipped through the rear gate and across the rain-lashed road to my house.

  As soon as the front door banged shut Sarah pushed me against the wall. Our mouths locked and within seconds we were undressed, making love on the floor of the cramped hallway. I can’t remember feeling more aroused. Life seemed to feather at my nerve endings. Her hands were in my hair, mine were all over her breasts and thighs. We slid to the floor and, naked, we crossed coarse hessian matting, cold stone tiles, dusty rugs and finally the warm carpet in front of the log burner.

  And there we came to rest.

  Breathless.

  Spent.

  Delirious.

  I lay staring at a ceiling crack, the worries of the world washed from my mind.

  ‘Are you okay?’ I asked.

  ‘I am,’ she answered, without hesitation. ‘I am very okay. Maybe more okay than I have been for a very long time.’

  ‘Good.’ I kissed her again. ‘And are you staying for the night, or running off again?’

  She looked up at me and I feared I’d punctured her mood, then she said, ‘I’m staying. The night. And for as long as you’ll have me.’

  I rolled over, so I was above her, and said, ‘That will be forever, then. Because I never want to spend another minute without you.’

  18

  Annie

  Charlie and I are amusing Nisha with tales about old times, as we walk back to the interview room. I’m telling her about how he once tore a strip off a new recruit who’d screwed-up on evidence collection duties, only to be told that the aforementioned rookie was in fact the chief constable’s son. Charlie duly stopped his rant. Went straight to the CC’s office, where he gave the boss of all bosses a dressing down and demanded the kid be transferred. It didn’t end well. Yorkie got lumbered with organising security for an upcoming royal visit and then a month on any course HR could dream up.

  We all stop laughing at the recollection, when paramedics edge out of the interview room, carrying Andy Ellison on a stretcher.

  ‘What’s happened?’ shouts Charlie, hurrying towards them.

  ‘He’s unconscious,’ says the nearest medic. ‘Looks like he’s had a stroke of some kind.’

  Charlie stops the stretcher and peers down at Ellison. ‘Fuck, fuck, fuck!’ He steps back so the stretcher squad can finish carrying him out of the building. Once they’ve gone, he slaps a hand angrily against a wall, then leans his forearms and head despondently against it.

  A thin, bald man in a grey suit steps out of the interview room where Ellison had been. ‘Your interviewee collapsed while I was examining him,’ he tells us. ‘I was taking his blood pressure and he passed out. Fell off his chair and has been unconscious ever since. If there hadn’t been a defibrillator on site, he would already be dead.’

  Charlie’s anger disappears. ‘He’ll be okay though?’

  The doctor’s face remains impassive. ‘He’s got a good chance of survival.’

  ‘How good?’

  ‘Let’s leave it at good. He got treatment quickly and is heading to hospital. That’s the best a stroke victim can hope for. The next few hours will be critical.’

  ‘So, if he gets through those, then he’ll be okay?’

  ‘Not that simple. I think he’s suffered a TIA.’

  ‘A what?’ I ask.

  ‘A transient ischaemic attack, or mini-stroke as it’s often called. About a sixth of TIAs die within the month.’

  ‘Tha
t sounds as bad as a heart attack,’ says Nisha.

  ‘No, it isn’t. It’s worse.’ The doc starts walking to the door. ‘I hope you got everything you wanted from him.’

  ‘Not really,’ I answer. ‘Why?’

  ‘Stroke victims who do survive very often suffer brain damage and memory loss. If you haven’t got what you want, then I’m afraid you might never get it.’

  ‘Which hospital is he going to?’ asks Charlie.

  ‘Royal Derby.’

  I look to Charlie. ‘I’ll fix a PC to keep watch on Andy Ellison and give us a heads up when he regains consciousness.’

  Charlie nods. ‘Thanks.’

  ‘I’ll do it,’ says Nisha, reaching for her phone.

  Charlie stops the doctor walking away.

  ‘Have Ellison admitted under the name John Smith. Private room on police budget. I don’t want anyone knowing he’s there.’

  ‘Understood.’ The doctor gives us a goodbye smile and leaves.

  For a moment Charlie and I stand silently in the corridor while Nisha finishes her call. ‘It’s done,’ she says.

  Charlie nods his thanks.

  ‘Unless you want to go through my statement,’ I tell him, ‘I’m going to call it quits for the day.’ My thoughts have turned to my family and their needs. ‘Nothing more is going to happen until we get feedback from the hospital, from the forensic labs and the enquiry teams.’

  ‘There doesn’t seem much point going over the statement now,’ says Charlie.

  ‘Then same time, same place in the morning?’ I ask.

  ‘That would suit us. We managed to book into a hotel near here, so can start whenever you want.’

  ‘We?’

  ‘Sorry. I forgot, I haven’t introduced you to my colleague, Jo Matthews. She’s over at the labs at the moment. You’ll like Jo. She’s a real grafter, reminds me a lot of you. In fact, if you’re not doing anything, the two of you could join us both for dinner.’

  ‘I have family round,’ says Nisha, ‘but thank you.’

  Charlie looks to me for an answer.

  ‘Thanks, but no, thanks. I’m looking forward to an early night with my granddaughter and a chance to fall asleep on the settee with a glass of wine and a box of After Eights.’

  ‘Sounds wild,’ he jokes.

  ‘As wild as it gets. For me at least.’

  ‘Some other time, then?’ he says with a smile.

  That smile.

  ‘Maybe,’ I say, trying to sound less interested than I really am.

  19

  Sarah

  Martin and I tied the knot on a Wednesday at a civil ceremony in Florence, the former capital of Italy and the spiritual home of painters around the world. We would have married on a Saturday, but apparently foreigners aren’t allowed weekend marriages in this historically snobby city. Rather than risk upsetting people by only inviting ‘close friends’, we kept it to just family, or, to be precise, just Martin’s family, as I’m an orphan. We even stayed at a small hotel near to the Giardino di Boboli where Martin’s parents had honeymooned more than thirty years earlier.

  I’m now reliving the wedding and thinking of how to mark our upcoming anniversary, as we arrive at Martin’s studio on the outskirts of Chipping Norton. His ‘play pen’, as he calls it, is inside an old stone building that’s only half sandblasted and partially renovated, leaving it looking like an architectural before and after picture.

  We enter through a heavy hardwood door that’s still to be varnished. It’s deadlocked and alarmed, so we have to rush through an ear-stabbing wall of noise to get to the control pad and deactivate it.

  ‘Mi casa, es tu casa,’ he says proudly.

  One look tells me the place is filthy. There are painter’s sheets and drop cloths everywhere. Over the floor. Over chairs. Hanging across ceiling-to-floor windows to block out the light. And, of course, there are twice as many canvasses as cloths. Finished ones. Abandoned ones. Even a smashed one.

  ‘Accident?’ I inquire, pointing to a small, broken collage that seems to have been made up using dozens of pencils, pens, pieces of chalk and painting brushes.

  ‘Euthanised.’ He picks it up and looks at it indifferently. ‘I almost died of boredom creating this thing. Creating is actually the wrong word. Vomiting is better. I vomited this abomination from the bile of my creative vacuum.’ He tosses it to the corner of the room where junk has gathered like a small bonfire.

  ‘Now let me guess. You’ve brought me here to clean all this up? You want me to shift your smashed rejects to the big bin downstairs and restore some order?’

  ‘No, no, that’s not it. I need to leave it all there to remind me what failure looks like. But I do want your help with something new.’ He takes me by the hand and leads me to the end of his studio. Taped to the floor is a blank canvas that I guess must be twelve feet by eight feet.

  Martin looks at me in an expectant way.

  Panic sets in.

  Oh, my God, it’s a completed work, and he expects me to say something profound about it.

  ‘Not the easiest of your creations to interpret,’ I say, tentatively.

  ‘But it might be my best.’ He pounces on my free hand, so now both of mine are cradled in his. ‘I want us to get naked and make love. Right now. On this outrageously expensive linen.’

  My gaze drifts around the room, looking for cameras. ‘Is this some kind of porno video thing?’

  ‘No,’ he says indignantly. ‘It’s art. Emotional art. Look –,’ he points at the canvas. ‘– there are light layers of red, blue and green paint beneath the white that you see. Our hands, knees, thighs, shoulders, breasts will create colours wherever we move. The more vigorous we are, the more red will be seen. The more passive, the more blue.’

  ‘Is that a challenge?’ I ask flirtatiously.

  ‘All art is a challenge, Sarah. It has to capture the pleasure and pain of the creator. So, what do you say?’

  ‘I say, let’s get in the pink, to get in the pink.’ I kick off my shoes and loop my hands around the back of his head to kiss him.

  Martin pulls me away from the linen.

  ‘Wait. Wait a second.’ He reaches down, removes his shoes and starts to undress. ‘We must be completely naked first. No clothing, no watches, nothing but us must touch the canvas.’

  I follow his lead and strip. It makes me feel like a skinny-dipper about to dive into a moonlit pool.

  ‘Can I go in now?’ I stretch out a foot, toes pointed, as though I might test the water.

  ‘In!’ he shrieks. ‘I love that you said that.’ He kisses me then holds my arm as I step into our imaginary love pool.

  Martin follows. We stand together and close our eyes. Waves of excitement flow over and through me. He scoops me up and holds me tight; carries me to the white, white centre then kneels and lays me down.

  20

  Annie

  Morning.

  The morning after one of the most horrible nights of my life.

  Dee and I had laughed our way through a family dinner, watched Moana for the millionth time with Polly, then I took my beautiful, unsuspecting granddaughter to bed and read to her until she fell asleep.

  So far, so good.

  It was when I came back downstairs and poured my sister and me some wine that events took a turn for the worse. As I settled down for one of our cosy catch-up chats, Dee told me how she’d found a lump in her left breast.

  Yes, she’d been to the GP.

  Yes, he’d sent her for a scan.

  Yes, she’d needed a biopsy.

  And yes, she’d had that conversation from hell, the one where a nurse says the consultant would like a word about the tests.

  She had cancer.

  No mistake.

  And it wasn’t even a feeble, so-what? cancer. Oh, no. This was the nasty bastard, I’m here to cause trouble kind.

  Malignant.

  Mutated BRCA1 genes.

  The kind that killed our mother. The kind that made
Dee and I get tested and screened so regularly we’d begun to think of the visits like routine dental check-ups, ending in a nice white smile.

  Only not this time.

  Now she is immersed in that perpetual nightmare of uncertainty, further medical exploration and clinical ‘choices’ – none of which you want to choose. Lumpectomy followed by whole breast radiation? Or would you prefer mastectomy followed by radiation? Mastectomy with no radiation? Or lumpectomy followed by brachytherapy?

  No, thank you. No, thank you. No, thank you.

  My beautiful, wonderful sister would prefer none of those things. What she’d prefer is to wake up and all this be a bad dream.

  This isn’t fair, I tell myself.

  I’ve had too much death in my family already. Why not give this bucket of crap to some of the bad people in the world? The killers, the rapists, the terrorists. Let cancer be the consequence of their crimes. Not a blight on good people, like Dee. We stayed awake most of the night, me telling her everything would be okay, neither of us believing it, both of us knowing that with cancer there is never okay, there is just a lighter version of awful.

  She’s told me to go to work. Not to fuss. Not to stress. To be as normal as I can.

  So, I am.

  I am going.

  Outside is a new day. Dad always said a new day was a new start. Gave us fresh energy to face whatever life throws at us. Well, Dee is still sleeping, and I’m hoping Life has stopped throwing things at her.

  I hear the uniquely squeaky beep of Nisha’s car horn and do a final check around the house to ensure that I haven’t forgotten anything. A look in the hall mirror as I lift a coat off a hook shows I look grim and worried. I can’t have that. I stand there until I’m sure I have managed a face as brave as the one Dee showed me last night.

  I open the front door and dodge heavy rain on the way to the car, really wanting to stop and turn around and stay at home and somehow magic away my sister’s illness.

  ‘I was beginning to think you’d overslept,’ says Nisha as I climb into the passenger seat.

  ‘Sorry. I was late getting Polly off.’ First lie of the day. I shut the door and buckle up. ‘The public have no idea, do they?’