by Louise Beech
I collected the diabetes box and went across the landing. Rose’s door wouldn’t budge. I knocked, panicked.
‘Rose!’ I cried, imagining her unconscious on the other side. ‘Answer me, please, or I’ll have to call an ambulance!’
‘I’m fine,’ she said.
‘Why won’t the door open?’
‘Because the bed’s there,’ she said.
‘Why on earth? Move it now and let me in.’
‘No. Because you’ll make me go to school.’
‘You’re damned right I will.’ I knocked harder. ‘Open it now.’
‘Language, Natalie,’ she said.
‘Stop with the Natalie!’ I tried to breathe slowly, stop the blood racing through my body, think of a way to cajole her. But hadn’t I done all that? Hadn’t I pleaded and promised and persuaded for weeks? Hadn’t I been patient and done my best? I was tired. Beyond tired.
‘If you don’t move the bed now I’ll smash this door up,’ I said. ‘Don’t think I won’t because I will. I’ll get your dad’s hammer and I’ll smash it up and you’ll be going to school.’
No answer. I’d either scared her or she was still refusing to budge. But I had no way of knowing. When I’d made the threat, it was empty; I’d expected her to open the door. Now, I’d finally had enough. I went downstairs, searched roughly through the kitchen drawers until I found Jake’s wooden mallet. On the landing I passed it from hand to hand, assessing the damage it might do.
‘Have you moved the bed?’ I demanded.
‘Nope,’ she said.
‘Are you going to?’
‘Nope.’ She didn’t think I’d do it.
‘Stay clear of the door because I’m coming in.’ I paused; was I really going to smash it down? ‘Where are you?’
‘Near the window.’ She sounded unsure, like she didn’t know me. Good. Let her be shocked. Let her see me have a tantrum for a change.
‘Stay away from the door.’ I raised the mallet. All the frustrations of recent weeks came down against the door with it. Smash, crack. And again and again and again. The flimsy wood splintered and broke. I could see Rose through the ragged gap by her strawberry curtains, mouth open, eyes two large plates, looking very small. Sweat coated my forehead.
‘Stop,’ she cried. ‘I’ll move the bed.’ She abandoned her corner and pulled it clumsily into the middle of the room. I opened the shattered door, went in, and dropped the mallet with a clunk by her bin. She backed away.
I kicked her bin over.
Furious, I said, ‘If you ever pull a stunt like that again, I’ll call Dad’s emergency number and tell him that he shouldn’t bother coming home again. Do you hear me? Because I will.’ Rose didn’t look at me. ‘Don’t you ever stop to think that maybe I hate all this as much as you? I know you have to endure the injections, that’s why I’ve tried so fucking hard to do everything I can think of to make it as painless as possible. But this behaviour stops now. Right now! I can’t help you if you don’t let me. You have to let me. I want my daughter back!’ My voice reached a crescendo, and then softened. ‘Do you hear me? I don’t like you. I don’t know who you are – I like Rose. You smell like her and you look like her, but you’re not her.’ I stopped to get my breath. Rose hadn’t moved an inch. ‘Right, we’re going to read your blood and do your injection without Colin this morning. I haven’t the energy for it. And then get your things together because you’re going to school. Understood?’
Rose didn’t argue or say language or call me Natalie. I followed her downstairs. My anger dissipated as quickly as it had flared at the sight of her spindly legs beneath a purple polka dot nightie. How could I have frightened her like that? Been so violent, spoken so brutally?
I pricked her fingertip; as it bled onto the machine’s strip I saw a thousand future readings, a thousand days of bloodshed, of numbers, of pain. Even if we conquered this disease, it would never be over. Rose would take it into her teenage years, into adulthood, parenthood, old age.
And I couldn’t even keep my temper in check.
While she ate her Bran Flakes quietly at the table, I washed the pots so she’d not see my tears. They fell into the bowl, bursting bubbles. She put her empty dish next to me and I turned to try and say sorry, but she’d gone back upstairs. Footsteps above; back and forth from bed to wardrobe to bed to drawers, pad, pad, pad. Packing for school. No arguing. I’d won the battle but feared I’d lost her for good.
When she went out of the door, silent as Santa Claus, I called after her, ‘I’ll come in to school at lunchtime with Colin’s diary, okay?’ and watched her disappear around the hedge.
To occupy myself until then I rang Vonny. We chatted for half an hour but I didn’t mention my outburst that morning. I couldn’t, I was afraid she’d think me terrible. The words I want my daughter back, I don’t like you followed me as I walked around the house with the phone. I tried to drown them out with trivialities; I talked about where we might go on holiday next year and the Christmas shopping and what I might buy Jake. But Vonny wasn’t stupid; she knew me better.
‘What’s wrong?’ she asked.
‘I’m fine,’ I lied. ‘Just tired.’
‘You’re not you,’ she said. ‘The bounce has gone out of your voice. Do you want me to come over after work?’
‘I’m okay. We’re putting the decorations up tonight so that’ll be nice. Rose is happy about it. We always do it on Jake’s birthday.’
‘It’s today? No wonder you’re sad. Must be horrible not having him there.’
Far more horrible, I realised, to endure the anniversary of your birth on a lifeboat in the middle of the ocean, as one of Colin’s crew had.
‘Is Rose okay?’ asked Vonny. ‘Feels like I haven’t seen her in ages.’
You wouldn’t know her now, I thought.
‘She’s putting weight on,’ I said. ‘She takes the injections better now.’ What more could I say? I longed for lunchtime so I could maybe apologise; I dreaded it in case it the words wouldn’t come.
When I put the phone down, it rang again immediately. My boss Sarah asked how things were. I knew she probably needed to know when I was planning to return to work, but she didn’t ask. I was missed, she said. Everyone was thinking of me. Was there anything I needed? I needed so many things. Like Colin had in his diary – ask and ye shall receive – I asked only for a small thing. I asked Sarah if I might ring her in another few weeks, once Rose didn’t need me quite as much.
When I hung up I went upstairs to get the decorations from the loft and saw the broken door. Its top panel looked like a row of broken shark teeth. I’d have to replace it before Jake returned. He’d seen me lose my temper before, smash plates and swear at inanimate objects that wouldn’t work. But the knowledge that his wife had taken a hammer to a door with her child on the other side might be too much to take. What kind of person did such a thing? I’d have to tell him. But I’d do it when he was home and I’d made everything right again with Rose.
I carried two boxes of decorations into the living room and realised we didn’t have a tree. Last year our silver one had died. The threadbare six-foot twig had been passed down from Jake’s great granny and had served us well, if a little pitifully, throughout our marriage. Every year I’d squint as Jake plugged it in, say, ‘Surely this time it’ll blow up.’ Last year it had, with a smoky stench. Rose had jumped up and squealed. Jake and I had laughed hard.
That was a lifetime ago.
I’d have to buy another – a new tree and a new door. I spent the morning unhappily browsing online for a door that would match the others, and for a tree gaudy enough to please Rose. Before I knew it, lunchtime had come and I got together the diabetes paraphernalia and Colin’s diary and drove to school.
It was trying to snow. I hoped it would; it always reminded me of Jake’s surprise visit on his bike. Tiny flakes fluttered across the windscreen like the white feathers Rose often caught and wished upon. She sometimes said the swish-swish-swish of t
he windscreen wipers sounded like wish-wish-wish.
Did she still wish?
Mrs White met me in the school corridor with a pile of folders, holding the hand of a boy covered in yellow paint. The last time I’d been there was to persuade Rose to open a toilet door. How had I succeeded then but not this morning? I seemed to be getting worse at my management of things, not better. Mrs White was warmer with me and didn’t even mention the suspension.
‘Rose is in the staff room waiting for you,’ she said. ‘You can use my office while I go for lunch.’
In the staff room Rose sat alone, Hello Kitty rucksack in her lap and a tiny smudge of ink streaking her left cheek like a tick after the right answer. One sock had fallen down and wrinkled around her ankle; the other clung victoriously to her knee. She stared at the floor and hummed a melody I didn’t know. The enormous room dwarfed her.
I waited for her reaction upon seeing me. My heart hung on it. But at that moment a dinner bell rang and I flinched when children filled the corridor and so I missed Rose standing up and coming to the door.
‘Are we going to the cloakroom?’ she asked. It was where we’d done previous injections when a room wasn’t available.
‘Mrs White said we can use her office while she’s at lunch.’
We walked to it, Rose swinging her bag, shy somehow, coy. It was difficult to assess her expression so I tried small talk, asked about PE and what she’d done at playtime and got a couple of agreeable answers. Once in the office, I locked the door and got out the lancets, insulin, blood meter, and Colin’s diary. On the table the book looked out of place, like a prop from a period drama abandoned on the set of a contemporary play.
‘I’m gonna sit on Mrs White’s chair,’ said Rose. ‘See what it’s like to be boss of the whole school.’ She jumped into the leather seat and twirled it around a few times, her hair dancing flames. Just like the old Rose. ‘This is cool,’ she said. ‘I’d make a great headmistress, wouldn’t I?’
When she stopped spinning I knelt at her feet and she offered her hand. More than ever I didn’t want to cut her finger end. Like Grandad Colin, I often played the wish exchange game; I’d imagine that if I saw three birds on the washing line Rose’s blood sugars would be perfect, or if the bin men came ten minutes earlier than usual I’d find a book under her pillow again.
Now I held her finger softly between mine, wanting to kiss its pink tip before clicking the pricker against it, wanting to utter a million apologies. But I was afraid to speak. I was afraid to break the spell and stop her being an agreeable Rose who answered my questions (if a little reservedly) and swung on chairs with abandon.
‘Go on then,’ she urged.
‘Should we open the diary now?’
‘No, after my injection,’ she said, ‘because I want to read it this time.’
‘You do? Okay.’
We did her blood – seven-point-six – and I injected her tummy (Rose’s least preferred place). Then, between mouthfuls of cheese sandwich, in a careful, reverent voice, she read from another randomly opened page.
I have never forgiven myself for hurting Young Fowler. But I did worse. I can write now all the excuses. I can record that it was a particularly bad day, following a particularly bad night, but they were all bad, all enough to drive a man to do things he might later regret, things that might later wake him in the dark and have him lying there trying to ignore his demons. I do not now know for sure which day it was – it could have been the fifteenth or the twentieth. We were weak. I was weak. But some of the men began singing, ‘Two Dead Men and a Bottle of Rum’, over and over and over. It drove me half mad. It was King and then Bott. Bott sang it and sang it, his eyes wild, and I couldn’t stand it. I punched him, right in the face. He stopped at once. I don’t think he’d even known he was singing. But he stopped. He didn’t sing again. Yes, I can write now the excuses, but they do not lessen my anguish. They do not help me sleep. And it’s much too late to say sorry.
When Rose finished reading, the last line hung in the air between us. The faraway sounds of chairs scraping on floor and a whistle in the playground hauled us back to reality again. I wanted to say sorry; sorry I’d scared her and behaved like a bratty child, sorry I’d said the F-word when she didn’t deserve it, sorry I’d been stupid and cruel.
But Rose spoke first.
‘I get why Grandad Colin got so mad,’ she said. ‘When you feel that tired you always act mean to the ones you like most. I just wish he didn’t feel so bad afterwards. Cos he really wasn’t.’
Was she talking about my behaviour too? Was she explaining how it had been for her, and excusing me for breaking the door?
‘Yes,’ I said, softly. ‘And the ones you like most always understand.’
Rose opened her crisps and ate noisily. ‘Remember when I snapped all the needles up and put the insulin in the bin? Well, I was just trying not to smash the door up. Cos that’s what I really wanted to do.’ She paused. ‘Grandad Colin didn’t have a door to smash.’
‘Neither do you now,’ I said.
Rose looked at me with a smile in her eyes but not yet her mouth. I pursed my lips and tried not to smile first. It was a game we used to play called First to Laugh Loses. This time I didn’t care who lost and I smiled before she did.
‘I shouldn’t have lost my temper,’ I admitted.
‘No,’ she said. ‘You’re meant to set an example. I wasn’t scared though.’
‘No, of course.’
‘I wasn’t!’ she cried.
A soft knock on the door interrupted us; Mrs White wanted her office and it was time for Rose to go back to class.
I walked her so far before we parted at the main doors.
‘You know when you get my new door, Mum,’ she said. ‘Can I have a pink one with my name on it?’
‘We’ll see,’ I said.
I watched her walk to the classroom, trailing her bag along the dusty tiles, dawdling like time didn’t exist. It was only when I was in the car and had started the engine that I realised she’d called me Mum again. It gave me hope that we might get through.
A few days later I ordered a new white door to match the others; curiously, when it arrived it was unpainted pine with a tinge of pink, as though it had maybe been in the sun in a factory somewhere. I couldn’t be bothered to complain or to gloss it and anyway Rose rather liked it. We even got a sparkly name plaque. So, somehow, she got her wish.
When she got home from school that evening Rose was grumpy about her homework, a project about motorways. I loved how ordinary her problem was, that it had nothing to do with needles, and that she shared it with me.
‘Motorways?’ I asked. ‘I think I’d be put out too.’
‘Five hundred words,’ she said. ‘Like I haven’t got better words to think about?’
At the teatime injection I told her about when a shark rammed into Colin’s boat. Another flying fish had landed on the deck – big enough for quite a meal this time – and after cutting it up Ken had licked blood from the blade and then thoughtlessly dipped it into the ocean to wash it. Within moments the stream of blood enticed an eight-foot shark to seek prey. A powerful flick of his tail sent the boat sideways a good fathom.
‘What’s a fathom?’ asked Rose.
‘It’s an old imperial measurement,’ I said. ‘About two metres.’
‘So why not just say two metres?’
‘That’s the word they would’ve used,’ I said. ‘Just trying to make it more authentic. You wanted me to do it properly.’
‘If you say so.’
‘Voice is everything in a story, don’t you think?’
I continued telling her how quickly the men had grabbed oars from the second raft and so were ready when the shark butted his great heft at the boat again. Weakness meant their blows were only enough to scare him. He came at the raft again and again and again, then dove beneath, came up under the bow and knocked several planks adrift. Instinctively, Ken grabbed his spear and jabbed at what
ever he could reach – it must have hit a tender spot because the brute swam off as quickly as he’d arrived.
Rose cheered and cried, ‘Go Ken! Spike that shark!’
Story and injection done, I opened the boxes on the table and took out strings of gold tinsel and garlands of fake holly. Rose danced around, clapping her hands, excited about Christmas. She took out wind-up reindeer and Santa snow globes, and oohed over them as though she’d never seen them before. Every year we added a new ornament; the garish trinkets were testament to the length of our marriage, each shiny bauble or singing snowman tribute to another year survived.
‘What about the tree?’ she asked.
‘I couldn’t find a good one online,’ I said. ‘We’ll get one at the weekend.’
‘Can I decorate it?’
Jake usually did. ‘Of course,’ I said.
Christmas might get us through until he returned. Rose wrapped a string of multi-coloured lights around the shelves in the book nook and plugged them in.
‘Did you ever meet Grandad Colin properly?’ she asked, holding her hands up near the tiny bulbs so they glowed red and green and purple.
‘What do you mean properly?’ I unravelled another string.
‘Like when he was alive. Not the way we’ve seen him. Cos you seem to know him as well as you know me and Dad.’
‘No,’ I said. ‘Sadly he died long before I came along. Even my dad was only three. But I do think memories get passed on genetically and relive somehow in our DNA.’
I may have only read about Grandad Colin – had fleeting glances of him as a child – but I smelt his presence between the black printed paragraphs. The same smell he’d had at the hospital that night.
‘I know he survives the lifeboat,’ said Rose, thoughtfully. She knelt now before the lights and let them flash near her cheek, as though being blessed. ‘You said he didn’t have no children back at home. So like…’
‘Any children, Rose. Any children.’
