by Sam King
Chapter 5
Ellen phoned just as she was finishing. She raced into the master bedroom and caught the landline just in time. Whenever it rang, she could almost be certain it was Ellen. Virtually no one else used the landline.
“How are you, Susan?”
She was fine, but was aware of having failed to do anything about a physiotherapist as yet.
“I’m having trouble getting in and out of bed,” Ellen said.
“Oh, no.”
“Yes. I was up most of last night, sitting in the recliner, because I simply couldn’t get my left leg into the bed.”
Susan nodded. “I’ll get onto it in a moment,” she said. “I’ll phone the hospital.”
Ellen thanked her and asked how the boys were doing.
“Good. Great. Looking forward to the holidays.”
“I’ll bet.”
“And you’re coming for Christmas, of course. Aren’t you?”
“Of course.”
“Good. Well, hopefully you’ll be a little more mobile by then.”
“Oh, I should be fine. Most likely I’m making a fuss about nothing.”
Susan didn’t think this was true, not if she’d been up all night. They’d only brought her home last Wednesday, and knowing Ellen, she’d been suffering in silence.
“Have you finished Foyle’s War?” Ellen had leant her the complete series on DVD.
“No. Barely halfway through it.”
“Is Michael enjoying it?”
“I’ve been watching it with my lunch, so no, he hasn’t seen it.”
Ellen remained silent.
“Anyway, I’ll get onto the hospital.”
Ellen thanked her and they rang off.
After enquiring at the hospital she managed to find the number of a physiotherapist. She rang the woman, who sounded barely eighteen, and asked if she could see Ellen sometime today. Her name was Kath, and she said she could visit Ellen at around four p.m.
Susan phoned Ellen and told her, and she sounded pleased.
Now there was washing to do. She made her way downstairs, to the basement, and began sorting the clothes from the heap at the bottom of the laundry chute. Michael’s shirts and underwear and the boys’ school things took priority, but of course she had to look after herself as well. She would do three loads, she decided, sorting them into piles on the floor.
As she finished, she put her hands on her hips and then turned to the machine. She heard music, very low music, coming from the play room. She opened the door and walked through. The boys had their own domain down here, a room the size of a family room, complete with leather sofa and arm chairs, TV and stereo. When they were children, they’d used to play down here, and there was a cupboard full of their old toys, most of which she supposed they’d never touch again.
They’d left the radio on. The station was playing a dance track, one she knew, and though she approached the stereo with the intention of turning it off, the rhythm caught her and she turned it up, first tentatively, and then all the way.
It was the Jackson’s, Michael singing ABC. It was as easy as walking to simply slip into the rhythm and dance a little as she made her way back to the laundry.
Then she started the machine.
Chapter 6
The boys caught the bus in the afternoons. When they came in, she was sitting in the kitchen drinking her seventh cup of tea of the day. She heard the front door slam and sat up a little straighter, guessing one of them would call out for her in a moment. Then she heard Jude’s voice, and guessed he was here for the afternoon.
Luke appeared in the kitchen a moment later.
“Jude’s here,” he said.
She nodded distractedly.
“Is that okay?”
“Of course, Luke.”
“Tom said he could come.”
Susan guessed she’d have to phone Jean and tell her. She hadn’t come over for a cup of tea this afternoon, otherwise she would have been here now. Jude might have called her already, but the best policy with children was to always make sure, so that everyone knew where everyone was.
She didn’t particularly like Jude. He was a loud, gauche boy with dark hair and an oblong smile. He tended to make a mess of social situations, and on this account she had always felt slightly sorry for Jean. She knew she had problems with him, with him fitting in and so on. He wasn’t shy. Quite the opposite. But he never seemed to know what to say or do, and she could now think back over a whole string of the boys’ birthday parties, parties which had ended in tears for Jude. It had got so bad that this year she had hoped he wouldn’t come. Luke had reminded her in the end, and he’d come, but it had been the usual mess. Not tears, but Tom had been ribbing him about something.
And now Tom had him over for the afternoon, which might mean dinner as well. What was he thinking?
She got up and rinsed her mug and then wandered into the hall. Tom was coming down the stairs with Jude in tow.
“We’re going down to the play room,” Tom said. He tossed something into the air and caught it again, something that looked like a plastic toy.
She frowned. “You know you left the music on down there last night?”
“Not me. Luke.”
That was his standard reply. It was never his fault. It was always Luke’s.
“How are you, Jude?”
“Not bad, Mrs Hope.” He smiled his awful smile, and she winced.
Then they were gone.
She picked up the mail and began to open it. She’d avoided doing this earlier as she knew it would all be bills, or at least she’d thought so. There was a letter from her old school, inviting her to a reunion. She sighed.
In the kitchen, Luke was making himself a cup of tea.
“You want something to eat?” she said.
“Is there any cake?”
“There’s a slice of that orange cake left.”
He smiled, and then scooped his hair back over his head, an action that was characteristically him. Tom tended to leave his hanging forward, so that it was always hanging over his eyes.
She retrieved the cake tin from the pantry and found him a plate.
“How was school?”
“The usual.”
“Swimming okay?”
“Sure.”
She stopped for a moment and glanced at him. He seemed so like Tom at times.
“I spoke to Grandma Ellen today.”
“How is she?”
“Getting better. She’ll be on her sticks for a few weeks yet.”
“Oh, right.”
She poured herself a cup of tea. In the pantry she found some biscuits, and then she sat at the table with him. A few minutes later came the sound of the most enormous crash from downstairs.
Chapter 7
“What the fuck was that?” Luke said.
She was already on her feet and already moving. It occurred to her vaguely to tell Luke not to swear, but she was worried about Tom. He might easily be hurt. Whatever had crashed downstairs had sounded dangerous.
“Oh, fuck!” she then heard. “Oh, fuck!” She was at the top of the stairs when she heard Tom’s voice in distress, calling, “Mum! Mum!”
She took the stairs two at a time and turned into the playroom only to see the toy cupboard on it’s front, a cupboard that was in fact an old oak wardrobe. Toys were strewn all over the carpet, but protruding from one end of it she could just make out Jude’s head.
“Oh, my God,” she said.
She reached for the cupboard and began to pry it upwards. Then Tom was beside her and Luke was in the room. Between the three of them, they managed to set the massive old wardrobe back on its feet. But Jude was unconscious.
“Hell!”
She sunk to her knees and began almost automatically with her CPR training, which was a little sketchy. She listened for breathing, and when she couldn’t find any, shoved her fingers into Jude’s mouth, looking for an obstruction.
“He choked.”
“What?”
“He choked on something.”
“Hell!” She reached into his throat and felt something with the tips of her fingers, something slimy, but she couldn’t get a purchase on it. She grappled for a moment and then all but screamed. “Call an ambulance.” She glanced up at the boys. Tom was loosening his tie and Luke was scooping his hair back over his head nervously. “Luke, help me,” she said. “Tom, call triple zero.”
A moment later Luke was at her side. “You know how to do the heart, the compressions?”
He nodded, and then she thought to search for a pulse. She pressed her fingers onto Jude’s neck, but as the moments passed realised there was no pulse. She glanced at his lips, at his oblong mouth, and then bent forward and took a deep breath. She sealed his nose with her fingers and exhaled, long and deep, though there was obviously a good deal of resistance. His cheeks puffed out and then there was a farting sound as air began to escape.
She glanced up at Tom, to see if he had his phone out. She caught him smiling, but he had the phone pressed to his ear. It wasn’t funny, and couldn’t be thought of as funny. She closed her eyes momentarily, feeling a little faint. When she opened them again, Luke had started on the compressions.
Chapter 8
The ambulance wailed toward them and finally came to a halt. She gasped a deep breath and turned to Tom. They’d been at it for minutes now, but she could barely get Jude’s chest to rise.
“Go and let them in.”
Tom nodded, looking grief-stricken now.
She turned back to Jude and gave him another breath.
“He has something in his throat,” she said to the paramedics as they came down the stairs.
Then they took over.
She sat back on her heels, then got up, reaching for Tom’s hand. He pulled her to her feet, but all she could do was stare. It looked hopeless. They wanted to know what he’d swallowed, and Tom said, “A toy. My Wongdongler.”
“A Wongdongler?” The paramedic winced.
Susan vaguely knew what a Wongdongler was. She remembered buying one for Tom for a twelfth or thirteenth birthday. It was a plastic ball with spikes that protruded when you squeezed it. They popped out from everywhere, making the thing look like an old sea mine, meant to destroy ships. It was a puzzle, and once the spikes had protruded you had to depress them again in a certain pattern. This thing was now firmly lodged in Jude’s throat.
The paramedics used a pair of tongs, and finally managed to dislodge the Wongdongler. Then they set to work on Jude.
She wrung her hands and hoped, but after a few minutes had passed she knew to expect the worst. They pronounced him dead at the scene and she began to weep.
“There!” Tom said silently, in something that sounded like a whisper.
Luke had tears in his eyes.
The paramedics retrieved a stretcher from the ambulance, and within minutes they were carting Jude out of the house.
“What happened?” she said, turning to Tom.
Tom looked at Luke nervously. “I don’t know. I was showing him my toys, and he put it in his mouth.”
“But you had it in your hand as you were coming down the stairs.”
“What?”
“The Wongdongler.”
“Did I?”
She nodded.
“It should have been in the toy cupboard.”
Well, of course it should have been, but he didn’t seem to be making sense now. She reached forward and drew him into a hug. Whatever had happened, it hadn’t been his fault. She knew that much.
“You boys go upstairs.”
They nodded, but then Luke lunged at her, wanting a hug also. She cradled him in her arms and drew him close.
“It’ll be fine,” she said. “I’ll clean this mess up.”
They left reluctantly, hanging back for moments, and then, as Tom was mounting the stairs, he threw a glance at something in the corner. She turned to follow his gaze, but failed to see what he’d been looking at.
A few moments later, she was on her knees with a collection of Star Wars figurines in her hands. She placed them in the appropriate tub, and then slid the tub back into the toy cupboard. The room was a mess.
She’d have to phone Jean, or no, walk down and see her. Or better yet, drive down. It was quite a distance and she needed to get there soon. Before the police.
She stood up with the intention of doing this and then spied her reflection in the corner of the room. She frowned, and then realised it was the screen of an iPad, set up on the shelves. It was filming her every move. She moved closer to it, looped her hair back over her ears, and then moved very close so that the pattern of her dress was all that could be seen. She picked it up and stopped it recording, not thinking about what it had been recording or why it had been recording.
Then she remembered Tom’s glance, thrown to this corner of the room as he made his way up the stairs.
Chapter 9
She wandered across the room with the iPad in her hand, thinking of Jean, and thinking of getting to her soon. Then it occurred to her that the iPad would have recorded whatever had happened this afternoon.
She glanced at the screen, and saw a very small square with Tom’s face close up in it. She gripped the pad with both hands and tapped.
Tom’s face appeared. He was bending forward, bending toward the shelves where the iPad had sat, his face close up.
“You want to see the perfect murder?” he said. “Just watch this.”
He reached toward the iPad to stop it recording, and then, apparently instantly, started it again. Only it hadn’t been instant, because as he was saying the words, there’d been music in the background. Now there was none.
He backed away from the screen, and turned around, and there was Jude, standing in the centre of the room.
Jude looked nervous.
“So you think it’s true?” Tom said.
“I know it is.”
“How do you know?”
“Martin wouldn’t lie.”
“Maybe he did, Luke.” Jude was always confusing the boys.
“I don’t think so.”
Tom nodded. “You want to play a game?”
“What game?”
“It’s called regurgitation. I give you something to swallow and you have to spag it back up again. Then it’s my turn.”
“What something?”
“I don’t know.” He crossed the room to the toy cupboard, opened the doors, and then made a show of retrieving the Wongdongler from a shelf, though Susan was very sure it had been in his hand all along. He turned, and held it out to Jude. “How about this?”
“What is it?” Jude said.
“It’s a Wongdongler.”
Jude frowned.
“All you have to do is get it into your throat and then spag it back up again.”
“You mean vomit?”
“No. Regurgitate.”
“Oh, right.” Jude said. He looked anxious.
Tom handed the Wongdongler over, and after looking at it for a moment, Jude popped it into his mouth. He raised his eyebrows humorously, but he was obviously sucking on it.
“You have to swallow.”
Jude nodded. He tipped his head back and made a big show of swallowing. Almost instantly, he was in trouble. He raised one hand to his throat, coughed and then gagged.
Tom moved toward him. “Are you right?”
Jude shook his head. He gripped his throat with both hands and searched for a breath, his chest heaving.
“Are you choking?”
Jude nodded, troubled. He flailed his arms, and then turned one way and the other.
“Here, I’ll give you the Heinrich manoeuvre,” Tom said. “Turn around.”
Jude turned toward the cupboard and then gripped it as Tom’s arms encircled his waist. Tom jerked, and then lifted Jude off the ground. Jude was big, and he had to take a step backwards to regain his balance. He stumbled, drew Jude with him, and as Jude was gripp
ing the toy cupboard, it too began to fall.
Tom fell onto his rear and then scrambled backwards as the toy cupboard toppled onto Jude. It hit the ground with an almighty crash, the toys spilling everywhere. But Jude was pinned.
“Oh, fuck! Oh, fuck!” Tom said. He struggled to his feet, gripped the old wardrobe and tried to pry it upward, but almost instantly realised it was hopeless. He turned uselessly, looked one way and the other, and then said,
“Mum! Mum!”
