The Kate Fletcher Series

by Heleyne Hammersley

  Delaying the inevitable, Caroline searched the kitchen for anything that could be of use. She pushed back the sliding door of a cupboard, hating the feel of the raised bumps of glass providing friction for her hand and echoing her own goose pimples. Tissues, a notepad, numerous useless objects and an electric shaver all looking like they had been in their current position for decades. She grabbed at the shaver, feeling slightly less lost and disabled. A drawer bulged with plastic carrier bags when she opened it and two spilled over, floating down to her shoes. She jerked back, disgusted by the clinging polythene, and tried to wipe them off on the carpet. More evidence of pointless hoarding. She shook out one of the bags, enjoying its efficient snap as it filled with air, and put a packet of tissues and the shaver in the bottom.

  Caroline went into the hallway, ignoring the stairs that loomed over her, fixing her eyes firmly on the floor. A faded strip of carpet led to the front door – the edges didn’t quite reach the skirting board, revealing irregular strips of bruised tiles. She pushed open the door to the sitting room, ‘the house’ as he always called it, half expecting someone or something to leap out at her from behind the door. The signs of recent occupation were more disturbing there than the desolation of the hall. One chair was pulled close to the fire, its cushions sagging, the arms worn with use, cheap sponge filling starting to spill out. On the wooden panel in the left arm stood an ashtray, empty except for the stale ash smell. A library book lay open, face down, on the floor, its plastic cover bent into a mocking smile. It was surrounded by wadded tissues and sweet wrappers. His glasses were on the top of the gas fire, sightless eyes staring at her, ownerless and accusing. Nestling next to them was a packet of butter mints which Caroline scrunched carelessly in her fist before stuffing them into the bag. She could almost smell them as she shook her hand free of the crisp plastic – sweet, sickly, cloying.

  She picked up the glasses, disgusted by the oily film of his hair cream on the cheap metal arms and folded them carefully. Their case was on the sideboard next to her graduation photograph, which she couldn’t resist picking up, surprised that he’d kept it. She’d only sent it as a two-fingered gesture, her way of saying, I made it despite you. She looked different in the photograph, younger, obviously, but also bolder, more defiant than she ever remembered feeling. She tried that self-satisfied smile now, on her older face, but it didn’t quite fit. The shape was wrong, somehow, and the emotion just wasn’t there anymore. Placing the photograph carefully back in its position, half hidden by cheap, postcard-sized line drawings of past holiday destinations, Caroline carelessly stuffed the glasses into their case before thrusting them into the carrier bag.

  Now for the bedroom.

  She made her way upstairs, the steps easing her path with the familiar cracks and creaks which had once betrayed her early morning or late night escapes, each one sounding as fraudulent as those in a fairground haunted house.

  Even from the landing she could see that her bedroom had changed completely. The lemon and pale blue of her last decoration experiment remained, but that was all there was to show for the eighteen years that the room had alternated between prison and sanctuary. The bed had been moved from her preferred position under the window and occupied the back wall, covered by a faded blue candlewick bedspread which Caroline vaguely recognised. She crossed to the bed to an accompaniment of more familiar floorboard whisperings and ran her hand over the rough texture of the cover. It had roses picked out in pink and green thread, most of which Caroline had unravelled years earlier to leave a balding winter scene. As she sat on the bed, head in hands, she wondered if she really had the courage for this? Could she actually go through with it? Without allowing time for further self-indulgent reflection Caroline leapt from the bed, trying to convince herself of her own resolve and strength. A quick look in his room, grab a few things from the bathroom and out. How hard could it be?

  She tried not to look at the door to the smallest bedroom. It was closed, just as it had been the last time that she’d been in this house and just as it would remain for as long as she was here. She knew that all her sister’s posters and clothes had been removed a long time ago: she knew because she’d helped. There was nothing belonging to Jeanette in the house; she’d made sure of that.

  Her father’s bedroom smelled of someone old and ill. Not rotten exactly, more like a sweet smell of decay like cheap talcum powder mixed with body odour. The bed was unmade, the duvet thrown back, forming a triangular section like skin peeled back from a wound. He’d left in a hurry. On the bedside table a glass had been knocked over onto a pile of tissues which had dried into ridge-like wrinkles, reminding Caroline of elephant hide. She turned to the dressing table, bare except for his deodorant and watch, and caught her triple reflection in the mirror, each face a different person. The left side looked grim and determined, the right bored but the Caroline in the middle, the face-on one, was pale and frightened.

  She smiled to herself and stuck out her tongue. Scared Caroline smiled in response, but she had the feeling that the reflections in her peripheral vision hadn’t changed, refusing to acknowledge her show of bravado. Self-consciously, she swept the deodorant into the plastic bag that hung by her side like a faithful dog, and bent to examine the drawers. Here, at least, the smell was clean. Fresh washing bulged in the bottom drawer, shirts, jumpers, vests. She pulled out a selection at random and piled them on the dressing table, careful to ignore her reflection. The smaller top drawers contained underwear: vests, socks and old men’s underpants. Grimacing, Caroline removed the top layer from each drawer and placed the items with the other clothes.

  The wardrobe held new terrors. Dark and imposing, it lurked in a lightless corner of the bedroom, intimidating and threatening her. She approached slowly, another, more ghostly, reflection of herself advancing from the highly-polished, dark surface of the door like a drowned figure rising from a lake. It stretched out a hand as if to hold Caroline’s own as she reached out to turn the key and then it disappeared as the door swung open.

  Caroline took out a suitcase and threw it on the bed. It was soft-sided and buckled, not like the hard plastic case that had scraped her shins on the few family holidays that she allowed herself to remember. She opened the case and filled it with the items that she had collected, including the carrier bag. Finally, she reached into the wardrobe for the dressing gown, that universal symbol of the hospitalised. As she pulled it down, her fingers brushed something hanging from the clothes rail. She parted the hangers for a better view, jolted from the present by the object she had discovered. A simple plastic container no bigger than a lemon hung amid the suits, its sides woven to look like wickerwork, a ribbon in its top holding it in place on the rail. She carefully unhooked it and pulled it down for a closer inspection. It nestled in her cupped hands, pale blue and harmless; an object as familiar as the reflections she had been avoiding for the past ten minutes. Every autumn until she was nine, she had taken it from its hiding place and filled it, under careful supervision, with lavender from the huge bush in the back garden. Every autumn, before Jeanette had gone, Caroline had held it in her cupped hands, inhaling to see if any memories of the previous year’s long summer lingered in the stale seeds before she poured them into the dustbin and replaced them with a new fragrance that made her nostrils twitch and her throat burn.

  Caroline sat on the bed and cupped her hands around her find as if she was protecting a precious stone. Exhaling heavily, she leaned forward and inhaled, trying to discover some lingering scent of that last summer, some reminder of the family that they had once been.

  Nothing. But that wasn’t a surprise. After what had happened with Jeanette, there wasn’t really much left of the family.

  Chapter 6

  Caroline pulled into a parking space as far away from the main entrance of the hospital as she could find and coughed out the remnants of smoke from a low-tar cigarette. Winding down the window, she threw the butt across the car park, despising herself for picking up th
e habit again after so many months of abstinence. It showed weakness, she knew; the first sign of trouble or stress and she was smoking. Low tar now, full strength in a few days, she knew the pattern and was prepared for the consequences of her behaviour.

  It was raining gently but instead of winding up her window, Caroline held out her right hand, palm up, accepting the cooling drops as a baptism or a blessing before the ordeal ahead. She pulled her hand back into the car and studied the droplets that she had collected, some still almost perfectly round, others melting and merging into a slick sheen on her palm. Caroline shuddered as it reminded her of nervous sweat; unpleasant but strangely appropriate. She checked the clock on her dashboard; she’d planned to arrive about an hour from the end of visiting time to limit the experience to something that might just be bearable but the minutes were passing at an alarming pace. It was time.

  As she left the car, Caroline checked the door carefully, twice, aware that she was still stalling rather than being genuinely security conscious. The suitcase was heavier than she remembered and she wondered uncomfortably if the extra weight was guilt or reluctance; the answer was clear from the heavy breath she let out, barely masked by the whoosh of the hospital’s state-of-the art automatic door swinging away from her, beckoning her inside.

  The main desk was set back at an angle from the entranceway as though the staff wanted to be as unobtrusive as possible, or as unhelpful as possible, Caroline thought wryly, scanning the walls and doors for a clue. There were at least three ways out of the foyer, discounting the most appealing which would take her back to the car. Each had a coloured sign above its double doors, different colours for each wing of the hospital. Turning from door to door, Caroline scanned the signs until she found a green one for Aspen, the ward that Dennis had been admitted to for a few days’ observation.

  Taking a tight grip on the handle of the case, Caroline plunged through the double door before she could even think about changing her mind and surfaced in a long corridor which drew her round a series of sharp bends and corners like the rabbit in a greyhound race; except that Caroline wasn’t afraid of what was behind her but of what was still to come. The doors leading off looked like watchful eyes eager to keep her on the right path, many had cryptic signs above them warning of X-ray or Medical Physics; even the mortuary sounded more tempting than Aspen ward.

  And then she was there.

  This door was different as one half stood open, inviting yet sinister, waiting to close and allow her no way back if she stepped over the threshold. Forcing a smile into her eyes, Caroline stepped onto the ward expecting to see rows of beds and smiling, helpful nurses. Instead she was confronted by more doors and a small, unattended staff desk. Each doorway was just an entrance, there were no actual doors and each opening was flanked by frosted glass windows. The obvious thing to do was to walk round the central area, peering in until she was able to locate Dennis in one of these anterooms. Feeling slightly foolish and more than a little conspicuous, Caroline began her search, desperately trying to avoid the eyes that stared back at her.

  He was in the second room that Caroline checked, propped up on the bed reading a Daily Mirror without his glasses. His close scrutiny of the newspaper allowed Caroline to study him, noting the changes, wondering which were recent, from the illness, and which had happened gradually, over the past couple of decades. He was much thinner and smaller than she remembered, ankles protruding from hospital-issue pyjamas like thin branches stripped down to the white wood. Each foot, lying on the bedcover like a dead fish floating belly up, was mapped with blue and purple veins, stark against the pallor of the flesh. The full belly and broad shoulders were gone, his rib cage looked slightly bowed and sunken, creating an almost hunchbacked effect. The hair was different, too; thinner, whiter and no longer held in place by the oil which had once darkened it to a mid-brown.

  Only the eyes were the same – grey, cold and cruel. These eyes registered Caroline’s presence as she moved towards him and they barely flickered with surprise.

  ‘What’re you doing here?’ he asked without shifting position or letting go of his newspaper.

  ‘I was about to ask you the same,’ she joked, aware of how her accent had changed since they’d last spoken. She stood uncertainly at the foot of the bed before remembering the reason for her visit.

  ‘I’ve brought you some things. Pyjamas, shirts, socks.’

  He folded the paper and studied her closely, no doubt noting the changes in her own manner and appearance. ‘How did you know I was here?’

  ‘Bren phoned. She thought I ought to know.’

  ‘She came in yesterday but it’s a long way on the bus. She can’t carry much. She didn’t say she’d rung you.’ He was still watching, still appraising, tempting Caroline to flirt with the idea that he felt as uncomfortable as she did; that he was no more in control of the situation than she was.

  ‘Where do you want this?’ she asked, shaking the case as if it were a naughty child.

  Dennis looked around, suddenly helpless and vague, his age clear in every tic and twitch of his facial muscles. ‘Empty it out and you can put the stuff in the cabinet.’

  It was an instruction rather than a suggestion and Caroline did as she was told more out of habit than any sense of being helpful. She unpacked the items carefully and stacked the clothes into the shallow drawers housed inside the small bedside cupboard. The toiletries she placed in the top drawer where they would be easily accessible.

  ‘Put that down by the chair and I’ll get a nurse to put it away somewhere,’ Dennis said, as she closed the suitcase. ‘I can use it when I get out.’

  His economy with words hadn’t changed much, Caroline noted. Never bother to speak when a gesture or a look would do. Words could give too much away, they could indicate moods and feelings; a shake of the head is always much less easy to read anything into, much less easy to invest with emotions or meaning.

  Emptying the case had given Caroline a focus but once the task was completed she was unsure of her next move. She checked her watch in what she hoped was a surreptitious manner.

  ‘Don’t let me keep you.’ Dennis was fiddling with his newspaper. ‘Thanks for bringing a few bits and bobs. You can get off now if you want.’

  More ambiguity. If you want. He could be dying in front of her, Caroline knew, and he still wouldn’t ask for her assistance. Other members of the family had said it was just his way; that he didn’t like to put people out. In the past, Caroline had often felt like she was the only one who had a clear, unblinkered view; the only one who could see Dennis for what he was – manipulative, calculating and flint-hard. She was the only one who knew the truth.

  ‘If you’re staying you might as well sit down,’ Dennis’s instruction broke into her musings. Caught by surprise, Caroline sat and studied her hands, aware that she must look like a small child who had been told to sit still and not fidget. Feigning nonchalance, she stretched her arms, palms clasped together, fingers linked, and rolled her shoulders.

  ‘Must have been a long drive,’ Dennis commented wryly, as if noting her tiredness.

  ‘Not bad,’ she said. ‘It’s less than an hour. It was fairly quiet on the roads.’

  Silence blanketed them again.

  Caroline was surprised at how little they had to talk about after so long, but so many topics were taboo. ‘So what’s up with you? Bren wasn’t specific. I know it’s cancer.’

  Dennis laughed and Caroline felt she was being mocked; so many years and that was the best she could come up with. Still, he wasn't doing any better.

  ‘It’s my liver. The doctors have said a few positive things but I haven’t got long. They reckon six months at best. I had a bad turn in bed a couple of days ago. I phoned Bren and she rang for an ambulance.’

  Caroline wasn’t surprised at the sequence of events. Dennis never had liked to bother the medical profession if it could be avoided. ‘So how long are they going to keep you in? Do you want me to find a doctor? A
sk when you'll be let out?’

  Dennis turned to face her and she felt suddenly impaled on the sharpness of the glance. ‘No, just leave it. They’ll be busy. I'm sure they’ll tell me in good time.’

  ‘Suit yourself,’ Caroline said. ‘Is there anything I can get you while I’m here?’

  ‘Don’t think so.’ More silence.

  Caroline studied the floor, avoiding taking in details of the ward around her. A telephone rang at the nurses’ station reminding her of the world outside. How easy it must be to accept this as the actual, tangible world; this temperature-regulated, disinfected reality. Better than outside, safer, easier to manage. Routine meals, drugs for the pain, for the worry, drugs for the drugs. Then a comfortable death.

  ‘Did you see Bren?’ Dennis asked.

  ‘No. She just left me a note. I didn't want to bother her,’ Caroline lied. ‘Is she coming to see you?’

  ‘I thought she might.’ His voice was light but his eyes betrayed his disappointment. ‘She's probably busy. I expect she'll come tomorrow. You could have given her a lift.’

  The accusation was clear and Caroline felt instantly on the defensive.

  ‘Didn’t think, sorry. I just packed your case and drove over here. Next time maybe. Look, I’m going to see if I can find anybody who can give me some information. You might not be bothered when you’re getting out but I need to make plans.’

  ‘Plans?’

  ‘Somebody’s got to look after you and I don’t think bloody Bren’s up to the job.’

  Caroline walked away from his muttered protests and headed back to the nurses’ station where a harassed-looking woman in a dark blue uniform was tapping a keyboard. She didn’t look up, engrossed in what she was doing, so Caroline coughed gently, unwilling to seem rude but keen to get the information she needed and get out of the hospital. The woman looked up, dark eyes briefly flaring with irritation from beneath her untidy fringe as she made two final keystrokes and pushed away the keyboard.