The Exit

by Helen FitzGerald

  The painting opposite me was moving. A block of green at the bottom swayed beneath a mess of colour above. I shut my eyes again. Maybe I could yell without my mouth being open. Or just talk even. Just a sound, any sound. Nup. Oh that painting had to stop moving! Those noises had to stop noising . . . tappety, tappety tap-tap-tap, in time with the moving green on the wall.

  Bang. The space beside the painting changed. A door, open now, some people coming in, closing it again. If I could blink, surely I could yell, please, mouth, do as you’re told and yell! Maybe Nurse Gabriella was here and would hear me, come to my rescue. If not her, who? Paul was to come with food. That’s right. At eight. Was it after eight? No idea. If he’d gone to my house, he might have assumed I’d forgotten, or gone out, or fallen into a deep sleep. He probably left a message or two, then went home to study. I’d never been a very reliable friend with Paul – always late (6. Catherine’s timekeeping) or rescheduling (7. Catherine’s poor organisational skills) or forgetting (8. Catherine’s absent-mindedness). No, Paul wouldn’t rescue me, and there was no one else.

  There were three men in the room. No, four. No, three. There were men in the room.

  No, one was a woman. Short, rotund, a hundred times grotesque. Harriet. The others were men, though.

  ‘Just Rose to get down,’ Harriet said, I think. ‘Wondering actually, can I make myself some toast later?’

  ‘Yes, that’s okay,’ someone said. ‘I disabled the alarm as usual, so keep a keen nose, won’t you.’

  From Harriet again, ‘Yes, sir; buzz me when it’s break time and I’ll get the kettle on. I’ve prepared the buffet. And I’ll be in the office all night. Right you are.’

  *

  I guess most film sets are bland before the staging. The men had so much to do! The laptop monitor was placed on the bedside table and turned on, camera pointing at me. If I turned my eyeballs, I could see myself on the screen, right in the centre, my swirling other self at centre stage, a counter at the bottom indicating that viewers were already tuning in.

  ‘Fifty-five in two minutes!’ one of the men said. Chris, that was Chris. He was smartly dressed for tonight’s show. He was excited. ‘Fifty-six, fifty-seven. fifty-eight! Check it out!’

  The sound had to be checked. ‘Testing, testing,’ one of the other men said, then he moved a piece of equipment and said it again. Jimmy, that was Jimmy. Hey there, Jimmy. He had a spliff in his mouth, sucked in a huge mouthful, blew it in my face, said, ‘It’s good to giggle.’

  ‘Sixty hits, and we’ve not even prepared her! Imagine after make-up and wardrobe.’ The man who said this was Marcus Baird. ‘How many tickets sold?’ Marcus was obviously the business head.

  ‘Eleven at three hundred, four at four. And Mr F has booked some private time for after.’ Chris was adding up the takings on paper as he spoke.

  ‘How much?’

  ‘Two thousand for an hour. JX has enquired too. Might get a few privates depending on time. Maybe offer half an hour at twelve hundred?’

  Chris, Marcus and Jimmy sat down for a meeting, at least that’s what it looked like. There was much to discuss before Action. Marcus wanted to clarify that, like the last one, I was an emergency measure only, that this site was not about torture or killing, that this kind of thing had never been his intention. Chris clarified that this and the last one were one-offs, that they had no choice, but that it would have been madness not to capitalise on a tricky and dangerous situation. Marcus wanted to know what would happen with the actor afterwards. Chris calmed him, he had it all sorted.

  I didn’t take in much else. Something about payment for Harriet, something about security and the anonymity of the viewers, something about how long the drug would work, how best to get the job done. ‘A gentle death,’ Chris decided, like with the last one. ‘As you said, this isn’t about torture. And she’s so beautiful and innocent. Gentle, yeah, gentle.’

  Boxes of tissues were placed about the room and the pictures on the wall were covered over with cloth. Then Chris began to clean up the actor. That was me, by the way.

  I’ve panicked in the past. When I lost all my friends at T in the Park music festival, for example, and when I thought I was pregnant that time. Looking back, I didn’t mind the combination of fear and helplessness, because it was swiftly followed by adrenaline and solutions. In this instance, adrenaline would not rescue me because there were no solutions. I tried Mum’s mantra ‘Just don’t think about it’. But three men had drugged me and one was now cleansing my face with wipes. They were going to kill me. How could I not think about this?

  I tried another strategy – the ‘other me’ one I talked about so naively earlier on. Why think about difficult things, why plan for them, when another me altogether will be the one to deal with them? This me, the one lying paralysed and tied on a table, was the only me available. I had no choice but to worry about this.

  The worry filled me, knocked at me from the inside.

  Mum was here, I thought. She’d had this man cleanse her face and pull her trousers off and put a silver nightie on. She’d had a grotesque face breathe on her as he applied concealer, foundation, lipstick, liner, blusher, mascara.

  He held his tongue between his teeth as he worked, concentrating. She’d probably, hopefully, been unconscious while her hair was brushed carefully, almost lovingly, and placed about the pillow. Marcus intermittently checked how it looked on the laptop screen. And it was looking pretty good, just a few tweaks: less on the cheeks, move the strap off the shoulder a little, that’s it, no a bit less, that’s it, yes! Seventy-three hits already, and no wonder because ‘This is looking lovely!’

  Chris and Jimmy left the room to spruce themselves up and Marcus sat on the bed. ‘I’m sorry about this, Catherine.’ He kissed me on the forehead. ‘Don’t be scared, we’re not going to hurt you.’ He kissed my lips. (Yell, mouth, yell!) ‘You’re so pretty when you’re still.’ He pricked my arm, and placed a tube in it. My blood began to drain into a bottle. So this is how I’d die, I’d be emptied into bottles, litre by litre. Drip, drip, drip; tick, tick, tick, 109, 110.

  ‘Ten minutes till curtains!’ That was Chris back again. He’d put some make-up on too, by the looks.

  ‘Ten minutes, Catherine,’ Marcus smiled at me. ‘You’re gonna be great.’

  Chris opened a bottle of champagne as Gavin wheeled his catatonic wife into the room. He poured them all a drink. ‘They’ll arrive soon. We ready?’

  ‘We’re ready!’

  Clink!

  *

  I closed my eyes and thought about the list I’d left on the coffee table back home. I hadn’t finished writing it yet. It was going to be very long because there were hundreds of things I wanted to do. While a few weeks ago I had no hopes and no dreams, now I had millions. I think I might have done a lot of the things on the list. I would have fallen in love. It would have been with Paul. I couldn’t help but smile at this thought and decided I’d lie there and continue thinking it for the rest of my life. Paul and I are kissing, mmm.

  Remember me, won’t you, because you won’t be hearing from me again. I’m twenty-three, female, healthy. I have blonde hair and blue eyes. I’m slim, athletic and cute as a button.

  Dammit.

  If you want to check out what happened to me, click here.

  Chapter Twenty-two

  AGE 82

  Maybe it was kind of like tinnitus, a buzzing or humming not just in your ear but in your entire head and it makes the world sinister.

  Or maybe it was like a series of dreams, bad ones mostly.

  Oh fuck it, Rose would never be able to describe it. She scrunched another page of crappy idiotic writing, lifted her bedside cabinet to the side so it rested at an angle against the bed, and removed two of the boxes of matches taped underneath. Twenty-seven boxes she’d found since she moved here, that’s more than one a month. A message, perhaps, but she didn’t understand it. Ah, the other thing taped there was a phone! Catherine had given it to her. Pr
ess 1 for Catherine. 2 for 999. She untaped the phone and put it and one box of matches in the pouch of her koala onesie.

  One of the perks of being locked in this room was that she could strike matches and burn her shit pieces of writing without being reprimanded like a schoolgirl. She loved burning shit writing. She shook the remaining ashes of her latest effort into the bin.

  A maze, yes, that’s what it was like. Had she just thought of that now? Clever! She’d been wandering around a God almighty maze, neat trimmed hedges enticing her this way, that, until – inevitably – she found herself at the hedge that had been carved out as a lion, or something, and knew she had been there before, that in fact she had got nowhere, just round and round and round again.

  Her daughter should come and help her out. Two, she had two daughters. Why were they not hollering from the exit – This way, Mum! Follow my voice.

  The dumpy care assistant came in to her room, just like that, without even knocking. The people here were ruder than anyone she’d ever known. She sniffed the smoky air, ‘Have you stolen matches from the kitchen again?’

  Rose handed Harriet a pack of matches, smiling on the inside, because there was another in her pouch and twenty-five taped to the bottom of her bedside cabinet.

  ‘Now, bedtime!’

  ‘I’m not tired.’

  ‘Yes you are.’

  ‘I know when I’m tired and I’m telling you I’m not.’

  ‘Lie down in bed, Rose, let’s not have any trouble tonight.’

  ‘There won’t be any trouble. I’m just not tired.’

  ‘Good! Lie down now. Bed.’

  Harriet pulled the sheets back and now had a firm hold on Rose’s arm.

  ‘You’re hurting me.’

  ‘No, I’m not.’

  If anything, the hold increased in severity. A pinch, Rose would call that a definite pinch.

  ‘You’re pinching me. Don’t push me down!’

  ‘I’m not pushing. Now, now, just on the mattress, nice and comfy, that’s it. Open your mouth.’

  ‘What is that?’

  ‘Your pill.’

  ‘What pill?’

  ‘The one you need to take. There. Now some water, and swallow, that’s it.’

  Rose pretended to swallow, and manoeuvred her tongue to lodge the pill underneath it. ‘Now get out of my room, you ugly, ugly woman.’

  *

  AGE 10

  The problem was this: Rose was a city girl. Her chores growing up had been city chores. She was not good at milking cows and wading through mud and eating her favourite cow for lunch. She was not good at lighting fires.

  She’d been trying a while now, but there were no twigs here and she had looked everywhere. Her dad’s words echoed through her head as she hunted for kindling. You’re a selfish girl, Rose Price. She would prove him wrong. If Margie was too weak to get to the doctor, she would get the doctor to come here. First, she had to make the fire.

  There was always something other-worldly about Margie, as if she knew from infancy that she would be different, sickly, dependent, and somehow this impressed a look of composure and great dignity on her face. She never complained, she never cried. Like Beth out of Little Women. No, not Beth! Beth died. Margie would be fine. Rose just needed to get kindling.

  But there was no kindling. Rose stamped her foot in frustration. She had to hurry! There was no time to look for twigs. She grabbed what she could find – a book from the shelf, pulled the colourful pages out, scrunched them into balls. No, one book was not enough. She grabbed another and another and another, all thirty of them, pulling the pages out in a fury, piling them on the ground before her, topping them with the hard backs now emptied of their silly stories and drawings. Now, city girl or not, that was a decent looking bonfire. All she needed was a box of matches.

  *

  AGE 82

  Bzzz. Bzzz. The noise made Rose jump back from the door she must have been trying to open. Someone had pressed the buzzer in their room. It bzzz’d into the office. She heard frumpy footsteps on office floor. ‘Yes, sir, of course,’ Harriet’s formal tone matched her words. ‘That’s fine, all ready in five minutes.’

  Oh God, that’s right, Rose remembered! She’d heard this exact sequence before. She knew what was going to come next.

  Frumpy footsteps over hall, into dining room, light switched on, kettle switched on, footsteps from kitchen to dining room, trays being placed on table, and again, cling film being removed from tray, tray, tray, footsteps dining room to kitchen, kettle hissing, and back, three corks taking turns to squeak their way to freedom, kitchen, back, cups and glasses and more glasses on table, pause. And then they came, just as they did the other times. The night Bea died. Emma, Jason. A flock of whispering footsteps now as before, moving from Room 7 towards the dining room until someone closed the door and it was silent.

  Oh, it all made sense, and she remembered, and she understood, and how she wished she didn’t but she did. She knew she must have missed many of these little gatherings, but she’d been in her room listening to this sequence three times, maybe more. They’d be in the dining room, door shut, for about half an hour, but someone would go and check Room 7 every ten minutes. So Rose had nine minutes now. All the time in the world.

  *

  She put her hand in the pouch of her koala onesie. Ha. Matches, phone. She lit the fire she’d built. Hairpin in hand, she picked her lock open, closed her door, and ran as fast as she could to Room 7. To her surprise, they hadn’t locked it. A cocky bunch, this lot. She opened the door, pulled the needle from Catherine’s arm, pushed the brake levers on the wheels of the bed, and – using all her strength – pushed the bed out of the room, and down the hall to the front door. They were still in the dining room, chattering away.

  *

  Out the door, down the ramp, across the gravel, over wet bumpy grass. This was difficult, but she had to keep going. But she couldn’t. She had to rest. She stopped, caught her breath, took out the phone and pressed 2. ‘This is Nurse Gabriella Nelson. I’m ringing to report a fire at Dear Green Care Home in Clydebank.’

  Then she pushed and pushed until they got to the tree, turning to watch her prison cell brighten, smoke leaking from its windows. The watchers hadn’t come outside. They were still in the dining room; they may not have even smelt the smoke yet when the fire engines arrived.

  A weak finger reached for her hand. Catherine. Rose bent over the trolley, placed her forehead against Catherine’s, and sang.

  Her voice could not drown out the noises in the distance. Sirens. The skid of car tyres. A voice on loudspeaker saying, ‘Please gather in the rose garden! Please do not leave the grounds!’ Hoses. Shouting. Sirens: ambulance, police. Shouting. Silence.

  Rose stopped singing.

  The girl had so little life left in her, and she used all of it to smile at Rose and say: ‘You stayed with me, Ro-Ro, you stayed.’

  Rose smiled at this perfect girl. As kind and as lovable as her little sister, but not her little sister. Oh, Catherine. ‘I did! I stayed with you. I stayed with you, angel.’

  Acknowledgements

  I’d like to thank my Dad, who died of a brain tumour, and his Mum, who suffered from dementia.

  A big ‘ta’ to Sergio Casci, Liz Hopkin, Doug Johnstone and Luca Veste who read early drafts for me and gave honest and helpful feedback.

  Thanks to my agent, Philip Patterson at Marjacq Scripts, for reading, re-reading, and keeping me motivated.

  And to the fabulous folk at Faber, especially Sarah Savitt, Katherine Armstrong, Sophie Portas and Trevor Horwood.

  Q&A with Helen FitzGerald

  The two main characters in THE EXIT have a big age gap: Catherine is 23 and Rose is 82. Did you find it easier to capture the voice of someone younger than you, or older, or does the age of the characters not matter in this way when you’re writing fiction?

  I deliberately didn’t want to be ageist. I just wanted to think of Catherine and Rose as people, real wom
en, and I hope the authenticity of voice sprang from that. I suppose I did draw on my daughter (17) who, like Catherine, is wondering what she wants to do with her life and taking a lot of selfies; and on Mum (80), who grew up on a dairy farm and loves to write and draw. I’m very close to both of them, and this helped me feel close to Rose and Catherine.

  Several of the characters in THE EXIT turn out to have been harbouring major secrets. Do you think most people are hiding something from the world?

  I live in an area lined with red sandstone terraces and I’m always imagining the secrets that might be kept inside the identical houses – (A cross-dresser? An adulterer? A domestic abuser? A cocaine addict?) So yes, I do think everyone has a story, but most people find it impossible to keep a secret to themselves. They have to tell someone.

  As well as writing, you work as a social worker for people on parole. How does this affect your writing?

  The essential skills for both jobs are the same: empathy and nosiness. I don’t think the job affects my writing; it’s just that they’re both suited to me as a person. As a social worker and as a writer I deal with people in crisis. In both jobs I get to know the perpetrator, I gather information, and I assess the risks. In both I hold the belief that ordinary people can do bad things.

  THE EXIT is set in a care home and some of the characters are facing the prospect of death. Did writing the book make you think about death and end-of-life care (for example the debate around euthanasia) differently?

  My Dad died a few months before I started writing The Exit. I spent two months with him as a brain tumour gradually eroded his faculties. I googled The Brain Hospice Timeline endlessly, wondering what stage he was at, how long he had left. I was with him when a nurse went over his end of life choices (Advanced Care Planning Statement). She asked him bizarre questions that I couldn’t have answered either (‘If you couldn’t walk, would you want to live?’ My Dad said: ‘Well I’d be in a very bad mood’). End of Life care was very much on my mind. I’ve since watched films like Amour, almost obsessed with the euthanasia debate. But I don’t know what I think, or what I’d want. It’s not till it happens to you, or someone you love, that you realise how complex and profound a question it really is.