by Liz Jensen
She is trapped transversely on the stairs, with her legs splayed at an odd angle. Being vain, she would not like to be seen like this, with her staring white face and her hair in a tangled cloud streaked with grey. Her brightly coloured Oceanic Range clothes, and the fact that her skirt has flown up around her neck, disturb me. Her eyes are wide open, as if she’s transfixed. She doesn’t blink.
Stephanie rushes over and cradles her head. She presses her finger to Kaitlin’s neck and begins to whimper. I am about to ask if Kaitlin is dead when something makes me look up.
A movement at the top of the stairs.
‘Hey, Hesketh.’
There, as rigid as a little Lego man, stands the boy I love.
He still has a sore pink halo round his mouth where he licked the salt from his lips. He doesn’t seem to notice his mother lying sprawled and motionless on the stairs. Or Stephanie holding her head.
‘I’m still hungry.’
I can’t speak.
‘I said I’m hungry!’ he shouts. Then he shifts to the deep archaeopteryx voice. ‘Hoskoth, oi sod oi om still hongra!’
It’s a command.
Due to the unexpectedly high number of emergencies, we can respond only to life-threatening situations. Check that the situation you are calling about is life-threatening. If it is not, you must hang up. If you stay on the line, your call will be put in a queue.
I lived in this house long enough to know that normally at this time on a Sunday there is a loose pattern of activity in the street. You’ll see the last shoppers coming home, the first cinema-goers heading out, a few kids on bikes and skateboards in the sinking light. But when I go to the window I see only one person: a large woman standing in the middle of the street swinging her head heavily from side to side. She seems distressed. A car swerves to avoid her. To confirm that your situation is urgent, press the hash button. I press it and begin to rock. Be aware that any hoax or non-urgent calls will result in prosecution. Please hold. Some narcotic music comes on: I recognise Josef Strauss’ Sphärenklänge, The Music of the Spheres. If its intention is to soothe, in my case it fails. I put the phone on loudspeaker, shove it in my jacket pocket, shut my eyes and visit the same inner panic room I went to on the construction site in Dubai. I don’t know how long I stay there.
‘Hesketh.’ It’s Stephanie. ‘Hesketh. Look at me.’ I take a breath, open my eyes. ‘Listen. I’m going to phone Felicity. My sister. She’s a nurse. Get Freddy downstairs. Keep him in the kitchen till the ambulance arrives.’
Yes. Freddy is not a stranger or a tokoloshi. He is Freddy K and he is hungry and the part of me that can function can go and supervise him until help comes. Stephanie punches at her phone and goes into the living-room.
‘Come down now, Freddy!’ I shout. He must have gone back to his room. I shout again and he reappears. He looks very small. His face is flushed and pink. I wonder if he has a fever. Might a fever explain what has happened? What he did? ‘Come down. You’ll have to step past Mum. We’ll get an ambulance for her. I’ll make you spaghetti. Out in the kitchen.’
He hesitates and says in a small voice, ‘OK.’
He looks disoriented as he picks his way past his mother. He doesn’t stop to look at her or glance back. He is panting slightly by the time he reaches the bottom of the stairs. He glances from side to side, as if unfamiliar with his surroundings.
‘This way.’ I put my hands on his shoulders and march him into the kitchen, where a message interrupts the Strauss in my jacket pocket: you are now number twenty-nine in the queue. I start calculating, then give up. I don’t know enough about the local healthcare infrastructure to guess what number twenty-nine might mean, in waiting terms. ‘Stay here,’ I tell Freddy.
‘OK,’ he whispers.
Back in the hall, Stephanie has finished her call. The muscles in her face are drawn tight. I watch her lips move as she speaks.
‘My sister says we have to move her or more blood will go to her head. We just have to hope there’s no spinal injury. Come on. Let’s do it.’
Wordlessly, we shift Kaitlin as the tinny music – in normal circumstances an oeuvre of distinctive beauty – crackles away in my pocket. The stairway is narrow and manoeuvring Kaitlin’s unresponsive body is hard work. At one point, she kicks out, then goes limp again. A sign of life, surely: of a body still responding to the pump of blood. We lay her in the recovery position.
Stephanie says, ‘My sister says it’s not just Freddy. It’s other kids too. They’re attacking people.’ I begin more impossible calculations. Epidemics can adhere to certain models, but mass hysteria can’t be mapped. ‘I’ll see to Kaitlin and you deal with Freddy. Just keep him right away from both of us.’
When I go back into the kitchen Freddy is sitting on the floor with the contents of a cardboard box spilled on to the tiles. His usual paraphernalia: empty toilet rolls, pigeon feathers, felt pens, paper clips, blobs of Blu-Tack. But he seems uncertain what to do with them, or even how to handle them. It strikes me that he’s even more spatially confused than he seemed earlier. His eyes zigzag across the ceiling as if searching for something. He squints at the light fixture, then opens his eyes wide and blinks repeatedly. He grabs a tube of wood glue, clutches it to his chest and spins around on his bottom, like a human compass finding north. When he stops again, his face is completely blank.
‘Freddy K?’
Then out of the blue, he’s crying. Big angry sobs that shake his small frame. His face is smeared with snot and tears. I step over to him, crouch down, put my hands on his shoulders. He falls against my chest and put his arms around my neck. We stay like that. I pat his back and he sobs.
‘Freddy K, Freddy K, Freddy K,’ I say. ‘Let’s sit at the table and talk about all this. I’m here. I’ll take care of you. I love you. We’ll work out what to do.’
But for reasons I can’t fathom, this jolts him into another mood. He pulls away from me and leaps to his feet. ‘I’m hungry!’ I grab his shoulder: with a rough and surprisingly strong movement he squirms free. ‘I said I’m hungry!’ His voice wobbles, but it’s forceful. As if there’s anger in it. Or some kind of violence.
I hunt in the food cupboard, find the spaghetti and think about sauce. The minutiae will save me. Lipids, proteins, fibre, sodium. Ingredients: wheat flour, water. Put water in pan. Turn on gas. Bring to boil. At some point the Strauss is interrupted by a voice and I speak to someone from the emergency services. I answer the questions she asks, assure her it’s serious, give the address, say can you hurry. Please hang up now sir. We are doing our best. The hot water goes milky and forms a gelatinous scum. Carbonara. He likes carbonara. I find a packet of bacon. I tear it open with a blunt knife and get my hands covered in grease, which brings me to the edge of panic because there are certain textures I find it hard to endure. I throw it in a pan then separate the yolks and whites of two eggs over the sink. I make what my mother would call ‘a hash’ of it. When I finish the sauce I mix it with the spaghetti and put a plateful on the table and point to it. I provide a bowl and a fork and knife and spoon and a glass of milk. I might vomit.
He reaches for the salt and pours it on in a steady stream. Ssshhhhhhew. I don’t stop him. I feel an inner vertigo.
Child One dreamed of a sparkling white desert. Is that what he wants? Is he waiting for something in the world to tip, something that will send civilisation hurtling back into a dark age of djinns and trolls and tokoloshi and vengeful ghosts, of what Ashok called ‘fucking little people’? Or forward into a new kind of darkness? What does the boy want? He spills his milk. I don’t mop it up. I’m glad he doesn’t say anything. What could there be to say? He is a seven-year-old boy who falls asleep listening to CDs of Captain Underpants. He drops spaghetti all down his T-shirt and smears it all over his mouth. I don’t tell him to wipe it. By the time the doorbell rings – ding-dong, kapow, aagh, kapow, aagh, kapow, aaagh – I am fighting down a ball in my throat that is a stopper for noise. Perhaps sobbing, perhaps cartoon noise
s. Stephanie opens up and I hear two men asking her questions, and the murmur of her answers, and the sound of equipment being manoeuvred. Freddy shows no signs of interest. I hear Stephanie talking in distress and then a man – Southeast Asian, possibly Malay – puts his head around the kitchen door. He seems shocked to see I have been cooking, but I point at Freddy.
The man says, ‘Just to tell you we’re off. We’re taking your friend Stephanie with us, is that what you agreed?’ He thinks I am Kaitlin’s husband. I see no point in correcting him. ‘Normally this would be a police matter. But they’re snowed under. I understand your son’s committed a serious crime. That means he’ll go on the list and be assigned to a Care Unit. In the meantime there’s a curfew on all kids below twelve. The net’s down, so I’d keep the radio on, if I were you, sir. Listen out for announcements.’
I look at the clock. It has been an hour and ten minutes since we found Kaitlin on the stairs. I am not an expert in medical crises. But I estimate that this is far too long for any good outcome to be likely. Forty seconds later the front door slams shut and two minutes and fifteen seconds after that the ambulance siren has started up, nee-naw, nee-naw. And then I am left alone with Freddy.
A new timescale begins.
I sense it will have different rules.
CHAPTER 9
Freddy is still showing signs of disorientation when I send him to bed an hour later. For once he makes no objection. Downstairs, I turn on the TV, but it isn’t working and the net’s still down, so I try the radio.
The Home Office has ordered a curfew on all children under twelve in the wake of increased domestic violence across the nation, and made a plea to all families to stay calm but vigilant. Public helplines are now open to those with concerns, and the army has been mobilised. Care Units to house disturbed pre-teens have been established in empty office compounds and school premises, and the government’s emergency committee, COBRA, is meeting now to expand the conversion programme.
The news continues with reports of a train crash near Leeds that has claimed more than fifty lives.
If it’s sabotage, I think, it will be played down. As will subsequent incidents. But whatever censorship the official media is subjected to, and however strenuously commerce and industry stifle evidence of their crises, the scale and nature of the phenomenon – which I would guess is peaking – must be public knowledge by now. I have little doubt that social-networking sites are already awash with potent theories invoking alien invasion and the supernatural.
Of course Professor Whybray came back from retirement. How could he resist a job like this? And how can I? It may be a long time before I can return to Arran, to my coastal walks and my dictionaries and my origami hermit crab. But while the prospect of working alongside my mentor, on the biggest challenge of both our careers, fills me with excitement, there’s anxiety too. It centres on Freddy.
At five, Stephanie calls from the hospital. Kaitlin is still unconscious. There is a risk of more swelling and further bleeding into the brain which may trigger seizures. She has been given drugs to reduce the chances of these secondary injuries.
‘The hospital’s inundated. And the casualties are still coming in. So she isn’t getting the care she should. I’m spending the night here. I reported Freddy. Naomi’s fast-tracking him into the Care Unit in Battersea.’
I feel a wash of relief. Professor Whybray and I will work on this. We can’t reverse what has happened. But we will come to understand it. And then solve it.
‘Hesketh. If Freddy acted in a fugue state, it’s quite possible he won’t realise what he did. But if he does ask, we have to think about what Kaitlin would want.’ Stephanie says nothing for a while. When she speaks again, it sounds as if she has gathered herself. ‘Tell him it was an accident and it wasn’t his fault.’
Quickly, she wishes me luck with Freddy, and hangs up.
I am planning to wait until the morning to talk to the boy, but when I go upstairs to check on him he’s still awake, pink-cheeked and feverish-looking, listening to a story on headphones. A small night light illuminates his jumble of stuff: the big Lego crane lifting a basket of dinosaurs; his crude, lively paintings of animals and battle scenes; the bulbous shapes in dirty plasticine and cracked clay and a few of the origami models I folded for him: a lobster, a flamingo, a turtle, some big water-bombs and Satoshi Kamiya’s fiendishly complex dragon. I turn off the CD, remove the headphones, get him to sit up.
He grins. Three gaps. Upper right incisor, upper lateral incisor and lower cuspid.
Human teeth develop in the womb, at embryo stage, long before they push through the baby’s gums. All twenty milk teeth are lined up inside, long before birth.
What else has been biding its time?
‘Mum’s still unconscious,’ I tell him. ‘The fall caused some bleeding inside her skull. We don’t know when she’ll wake up again. Or if.’
The smile disappears and his eyes open wide. His mouth struggles with words that won’t come. When they do, he’s clearly confused.
‘But – but Hesketh. But. I mean, Mum. What did you say about . . .’
He stops, then blinks and takes a deep shuddering breath. His body gives a brief spasm before settling. Then he sits up very straight.
‘Hello Hesketh.’
Hello? ‘Freddy K? Did you hear what I said about Mum being in hospital?’
‘Yeah. Cool.’ Cool? It can’t have sunk in properly. I wait some more. But nothing comes.
‘Freddy K?’His head gives a small involuntary jerk.
‘Yep?’
‘It was an accident. Not your fault.’ Telling a lie turns out to be easier than I imagined. Mental preparation helps.
‘Why would it be?’ He seems genuinely puzzled.
‘Well Freddy K. You were there at the top of the stairs. You were the only one there with her when it happened.’ Without saying it more clearly, I can’t say it more clearly. ‘Do you remember that?’ He shakes his head. ‘So you really don’t know why she fell?’ He shakes his head again. On an engagement scale of one to ten, if one were not engaged at all, and ten were extremely engaged, he would score a zero. Professor Whybray would expect notes. But I don’t even have a pen. ‘Do you remember seeing her fall? Or – making her fall, by pushing her? Accidentally?’
He wipes his nose on his pyjama sleeve. ‘Nope.’
‘A skull trauma is a serious injury.’ He grunts and shifts his pillow, bashing it into a new shape. In case he hasn’t understood, I translate: ‘I mean it’s bad.’
‘Was it before I had spaghetti? Or after?’
‘Before. Look, Stephanie and I don’t want you to worry about her.’
He yawns and reaches for his headphones. ‘I’m not worrying. Can you put the CD back on again?’
I’m about to get up to leave when something in the corner by the door catches my eye.
‘That looks precarious,’ I say, pointing. Freddy is a collector, and tins are always useful to a child with plenty of small items to store. So there’s nothing unusual in the fact that he has piled them high. What’s strange is that he hasn’t processed them in his usual meticulous way. Normally he’d soak the emptied tins in hot water, peeling off the paper labels and running the tin-opener around the edges twice, to make sure none is jagged. But these are clearly unopened. I see baked beans, rice pudding, pineapple chunks and various soups. I think: an embryonic stockpile.
‘It’s the Leaning Tower of Pizza,’ he says. He mentioned it earlier. In connection with de Vries. He said he had it in his bedroom. ‘It’s not finished yet. I need more. It’s going to reach the ceiling.’
‘Then you need to build the base thicker. You need to work mathematically. There’s a rule. I’ll show you tomorrow.’ I go and ruffle his hair, the way I used to.
‘Goodnight, Freddy K.’
‘Goodnooght,’ says the archaeopteryx. ‘Sloop toight, Hoskoth.’
I lie awake. It’s not a good sofa for sleeping on. I dislike physical upheaval. S
taying anywhere other than my own surroundings requires inner resources I’m unable to muster tonight. I kick about on the sofa, then give up and shift to floor level, battling with cushions, shuffling my wide-awake legs. What if Kaitlin dies and Freddy is left motherless, as well as fatherless? He’ll be an orphan. Who will put the eleven raisins on his yoghurt? Who will answer his questions about the world? Somewhere out there, Freddy has a biological father. Does the man even know he has a son? If Kaitlin doesn’t recover, Stephanie is unlikely to want to take her place, after what he did to his mother. In the absence of a birth father, might a de facto stepfather become the boy’s guardian?
It has taken me a long time to understand what I want.
Freddy needs a father. And I need to be that man.
The cry of the black guillemot wakes me. I have installed it as the ringtone on my mobile. It’s 7.18 on Thursday 27th September. Stephanie and I were supposed to meet Naomi Benjamin and Professor Whybray at nine. That won’t be happening.
‘Can you get on Skype, Hesketh?’ It’s Ashok’s PA, Belinda. ‘Sorry to call so early.’
‘I don’t know if I have a connection. Give me five minutes and I’ll get right back to you if I can.’
I go and check on Freddy, who is still asleep, then put on coffee and start up my laptop. The net is working again. Forecast: thundery showers and temperatures varying between eighteen and eight degrees. Onscreen, Belinda’s face is pale and lacks definition. I adjust the contrast, but it doesn’t help. Finally, I realise that the issue is not technical. The presence or absence of make-up can change a woman’s face dramatically.
Belinda says, ‘Hesketh. Look, can you come in and hold the fort? Ashok’s going to be away for a few days. He’s dealing with a family crisis.’
‘No. Not today. I have a crisis of my own.’ I tell her what Freddy did to Kaitlin.
As she expresses her sympathy, her voice falters. ‘OK. I’ll ring around some more. I was starting with the staff who don’t have families. I’ll try Stephanie.’
