The Last Day I Saw Her

by Lucy Lawrie

  Then she grabbed Janey’s face in her hands and said, ‘Oh, look at you, with those solemn grey eyes. You’re such a good girl. A steady girl. NEVER let anyone take that away from you. Passion . . . creative spirit . . . they’re all very well. I can’t help the way I am. But sometimes it’s like a curse.’ She gestured wildly to the walls of her dressing room. ‘Look at me, living this life . . .’

  But then Macavity the Mystery Cat appeared looking for some paracetamol, and Martina’s attention drifted. I don’t know how she could flirt with him like that. He has practically no hair, which you only notice when his cat-head thing is taken off. Janey just sort of shrank into the corner, twisting the plastic belt on her new C&A coat, and looking like she might cry.

  Later, Mum took us out to Sorrento’s, an Italian restaurant, and we had pizza with oozy mozzarella cheese, with grassy bits on top which were called oregano. Mum was all smiley for once, teasing us because of the way we wolfed it down. Janey told her that Mrs White says that too about us, whenever she’s on lunch duty. She says we eat like a pair of criminals on the run. This was a daring thing for Janey to say, as she doesn’t normally do chit-chat with adults. But Mum threw her head back laughing.

  ‘You’re a treasure,’ she said, patting Janey’s hand, her rings glittering as they caught the candlelight.

  Then it was back to the hotel. We walked along the street all holding hands, with Mum in the middle, and we sang ‘Memory’. Mum told us that it had always been a favourite of hers, and not to tell Dad! Once we got to the room, we raided the mini-bar for more Cokes, and stayed up to chat for a bit, but not too long; Mum said she wasn’t going to stand for any nonsense. She had a twinkle in her eye, though.

  Janey started crying when she was brushing her teeth.

  ‘It’s okay, Hats,’ she said. ‘I’m crying for happiness. I feel like I’ve had TWO mothers today, as opposed to the usual none.’

  I didn’t say the obvious, that Mum is hardly ever like this, and usually only when there’s an audience. I suppose I didn’t want to break the spell.

  ‘Did your mum never want you to live in London with her?’ I asked.

  She shook her head. ‘She says Granny and Grandpa’s is the best place for me. They’ll always look after me because of my dad. And they can give me a good steady life without any cursed passion, like she’s got.’

  Janey’s gone to sleep holding her powder compact. What she doesn’t know is that an Estée Lauder powder compact should come in a box, with cellophane wrapped around it. That is half of what you’re paying for.

  15

  Janey

  Dr Polson was the oldest doctor at the practice, with a reassuring manner and a furrowed brow that suggested he really cared, whether or not that was true. He checked the rash on Pip’s tummy and declared in a jolly voice that it was a spot of eczema.

  My heart was still racing, as it had been since I’d made the appointment that morning. I’d half made up my mind to mention the sleep situation to Dr Polson, and to casually drop in a mention of my nightmares. But maybe the more important thing would be to mention the knife in the fridge?

  Or the other thing I’d been trying to put out of my mind: the jar of damson jam I was sure I hadn’t bought, standing proud and crimson on the kitchen shelf last Saturday.

  Was it just absent-mindedness? Or something worse? What would Dr Polson do if I confided in him? Scenarios ran through my head: psychiatric referrals, a visit from the social work department. Oh God.

  ‘How are you getting on?’ Dr Polson asked as he typed something into the computer. ‘They can be a bit of a handful at that age, can’t they?’

  ‘Oh,’ I said, forcing a smile into my voice. ‘We’re fine.’

  Pip slid off my knee and pulled at my hand. He wanted to leave. His fingers were cold in mine, I’d only been able to find one of his gloves that morning. I’d been scolded by Mrs Paxton when we’d got to nursery. She’d told me that the children needed to be properly wrapped up for the cold weather: ‘A hat, a scarf, and two gloves next time please, Miss Johnston.’

  Every day, another small failure adding up to . . . what?

  ‘He’ll be needing constant attention, I daresay?’ He gave a wry little chuckle.

  I pictured long rainy days in the flat, doing my best to raise a smile when Pip wanted to get out playdough for the fourteenth time in a day, or empty out my bedroom drawers again. How could it be possible to adore somebody so much, yet be so drained by spending time with them? I could lose myself in watching him, the faint trace of an eyebrow, the roundness of a cheek, or the whorl of an ear, and yet at the same time dread the prospect of a day alone with him.

  ‘Yes. He goes to nursery three mornings.’

  ‘But other than that, he’s with you? He’s a lucky boy. Time with Mum’s the best thing at that age, eh?’

  Not necessarily. He’d probably realise that when he was older. She was like a wet weekend, lost in her own world half the time.

  ‘We’re not getting much sleep.’ I blurted it out.

  Dr Polson frowned at the computer. ‘Now, why has it done that?’ He shook his head, pressed a few more keys, and the printer on his desk started whirring.

  ‘Sleep,’ he said, reaching over for the prescription, ‘or lack of it, is the bane of all parents’ lives. The health visitor can help with sleep-training techniques. Ask at reception. And meanwhile, try and get at least one or two decent nights’ sleep a week. That’s where Dad comes in. Make sure he takes a turn. Boot him out of bed if need be!’

  Gretel would be delighted about that.

  I drew Pip closer, and he nudged his silky head into the crook of my neck. It centred me for a moment, and I felt quite certain that I’d be able to sort things out, pull myself together. Pip would grow up the happiest of boys, and he would know that I loved him – how could he not? It would be a truth he wouldn’t even have to think about, as warm and certain as the sun in the sky.

  ‘Well,’ said Dr Polson, handing me the prescription. ‘Don’t hesitate to come and see us if you’ve any concerns.’

  I stood up. The knife. Should I mention the knife? Would I one day look back at this moment and wish, with every shred of whatever might be left of me, that I’d sought help?

  ‘Okay, Pip? Say bye-bye to the doctor?’ I lifted his wrist and swirled it in a limp little wave.

  What kind of person hides behind a two-year-old?

  It started raining on the way home, sleety drops pelting the roof of the car. As usual I had to park miles away from the flat – there were never any spaces during the day. I carried Pip, tucking him inside my coat as much as I could. His cold, damp cheek bobbed against mine as we walked.

  ‘Here we go, darling. Let’s go in and get dry.’

  I opened the door. He clung to me as I tried to lower him down, lifting his legs so I couldn’t set him on his feet.

  ‘Cold,’ he said. ‘Want Mummy.’

  ‘Okay,’ I said, kneeling to peel off his coat and his wet trousers. ‘Let’s get these wet things off. Oh look, there’s your blue train jumper drying on the radiator. Do you want to wear that? It’ll be all cosy. It will warm your tummy up.’ He squealed as I rubbed his tummy, my hand still cold from outside. ‘And let’s get a towel for that rainy hair!’

  I went into the bathroom, found a towel and turned to walk out.

  No. It was impossible.

  Pip’s missing glove was stuck over the shower head that extended from the wall above the bath. The navy-blue fleece was stretched taut around it, the fingers splayed out in a way that somehow made me shudder.

  Whatever noise I made must have frightened Pip, because he started crying.

  I tugged his wet trousers back onto his protesting legs, grabbed the blue train jumper from the radiator and got us out of there.

  I phoned Murray from the car, saying I thought there’d been a break-in.

  ‘Janey, I’m just going into a meeting. What do you need? The police? Locksmiths? I’ll get Sandr
a to send someone down.’

  ‘Someone’s been messing with Pip’s stuff.’

  He appeared ten minutes later in a taxi, and told me to wait in the car with Pip while he checked the flat. Somebody could still be in there, he said, frowning.

  ‘Should we call the police?’

  ‘Let’s just take things one step at a time,’ he said, holding his hands up in a ‘slow down’ gesture.

  When he returned, he opened the car door and bent down to speak to me. I could smell the sharp tang of coffee on his breath. He probably hadn’t had any lunch.

  ‘There’s no broken windows, no forced doors. Nothing to suggest a break-in. The front and side doors were locked. What exactly did you think was missing, Janey, because I’ve got the board of Robertson Cathcart twiddling their thumbs back at the office.’

  Once back in the flat, I made straight for the bathroom.

  ‘It’s his glove. Pip’s glove.’ I pointed to the shower head. With Murray in the room now, the glove, so threatening before, merely looked tiny and comical.

  Murray gave a soft sigh and crossed his arms.

  ‘Someone’s put it there. It wasn’t me. And it wasn’t Pip. He wouldn’t be able to reach.’

  ‘Well,’ he said, after a long pause. ‘It’s one of life’s mysteries, I suppose. Look Janey, if everything else is okay, I’ll get back.’

  ‘Yes, of course. I’m sorry.’

  ‘I’ll get Sandra to send down a locksmith. Cover all the bases, hmm?’

  My mind flashed back to Hattie and all the things that had happened in that dreadful house. The way nobody had believed her either.

  Nobody except me, and even I had treated it like a game. I’d been taken in by her ‘oh well’ shrugs, by the way she’d played her part as the level-headed one in that family, rolling her eyes at the creative whims of James and her father, and at Renee’s unpredictable moods. I hadn’t listened properly. Hadn’t seen.

  ‘Okay then.’

  He stood looking at me for a moment, frowning.

  ‘Are you all right?’ he said gruffly.

  I nodded, and walked him towards the door, anxious that he should leave, giving me time to place Pip safely in front of CBeebies before I fell apart.

  16

  Hattie’s Diary

  Friday, November 17th

  When I sat down next to Janey in biology this morning, I knew there was something terribly wrong. Mental torment was pouring off her in waves.

  I asked her what the matter was and she pressed her lips together and shook her head.

  ‘Buck up, girls,’ said Mrs White. ‘It’s the day we’ve all been waiting for. The frog has arrived, and you’re going to watch me dissect it.’ She handed round the frog worksheets. They were still warm and purple-inky-smelling from the copying machine.

  ‘Janey. You can tell me anything.’

  She placed her pen on the worksheet, then swivelled it round like one of the hands on a clock, so that it was pointing at Hilary Grogan, at the end of the row in front of us.

  ‘Her again?’ I said. ‘What has she done?’

  ‘Come up to the bench please, girls,’ boomed Mrs White.

  Honestly, it was disgusting. The frog was a yellowy-grey colour, not green at all, and pickled in some stinking preservative solution. When Mrs White made the incision right up its front, Janey began to cry.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ I asked, when we’d been allowed to go back to our seats.

  ‘I felt so sorry for the frog. Just lying there, all dead and useless.’

  ‘But you looked terrible before that. Please tell me. It’s Hilary Grogan, isn’t it?’

  It took me another five minutes to get it out of her.

  ‘She called me sourface,’ she said finally. ‘It’s just . . .’

  ‘I know.’

  Of course I knew. It reminded her of the day of her grandpa’s funeral, the first day back to school last January. She wasn’t allowed to go to it, because her granny said it was adults only, and she cried all the way through lunch. Hilary Grogan called her sourface, as she was coming back to the table with seconds of pudding, and Janey – this is very unusual for her – whirled round and slapped her, sending the jam sponge clattering to the floor.

  They both got sent to Mrs Waverley’s office. Janey didn’t come back for ages, and I realised she’d probably been put in the pink room to reflect on her actions. And halfway through French I suddenly knew – I just knew – that she hadn’t told Mrs Waverley about her grandpa, or the funeral, or any of it. So I said I needed to go to the loo, and went over there. I lost my nerve a bit, just before I knocked on the door, but then I closed my eyes and pretended I was Janey’s mother – not useless Martina, but a sort of imaginary one – and that I had every right to stand up to the authorities if Janey’s happiness was at stake.

  So I went in, and I said this: ‘Janey would never normally have done this. She’s upset because her grandfather’s funeral is today. Please let her out of the pink room and give her a chance to explain herself. Think of her human rights.’

  Mrs Waverley raised her eyebrows. ‘What about Hilary’s human rights? Should I stand by and condone an act of violence?’

  ‘I don’t care about Hilary Grogan’s human rights,’ I said.

  That made the eyebrows go up again, more sharply this time.

  ‘Janey’s grandpa wasn’t just a normal grandfather. He was like her dad. She once told me he was the only person in the world who loved her. He was her one person. Apart from me.’

  Mrs W stood and looked at me for ages.

  ‘In that case,’ she said eventually, ‘I think you’d better go into the pink room too.’

  My heart sank, but then she reached into a cupboard behind her desk and piled my arms with Scrabble and a bashed-up box of Cluedo, and a box of silvery-red Tunnocks tea cakes on the top.

  Janey and I sat in there all afternoon, safely boxed away from the world inside those pink walls. She cried, then played for a bit, then cried, and played a bit, and ate tea cakes. I remember the way it made me feel when she finally smiled at quarter past three, at my impression of Colonel Mustard. It just made my heart swell up, like I’d coaxed a freezing, half-drowned kitten back from the brink of death.

  And today Hilary Grogan did it again. I couldn’t believe it.

  ‘How about I come back to your house after school?’ I said. ‘You can show me all the photos of your grandpa.’

  She shifted in her seat. ‘Or why don’t I come to yours, and you can put on that tape of Chopin, and we can meditate to it. And maybe burn one of your mum’s scented candles? Get that horrible frog smell out of our noses.’

  This is her new thing, meditating. We’ve tried it a few times. She closes her eyes and lies very still and imagines her grandpa is sitting beside her on his wickerwork chair, listening to the music too, and reading his newspaper.

  So Janey came home with me. Mum drew the line at giving us her scented candle but we put an old Victoria Plum soap on top of the radiator.

  We sat on the floor face-to-face and tried to think about her grandpa. The funny thing is, it seemed to work better for me than for her. At one point I swear I heard him flick his page over and say, ‘Bloody government.’

  Janey gave me a funny look when I told her. ‘That’s what I was thinking,’ she said. ‘Can you read my mind or something? Get a piece of paper and a pen.’

  She made me sit at my desk with my eyes closed, holding this pen, and she stood behind me with both of her hands on my head and tried to convey her thoughts to me. Nothing happened so I decided to try and spark it off with something.

  ‘Oh Grandpa . . .’ I wrote.

  Janey gasped. ‘Keep going!’

  ‘I miss the sprouts you used to grow.’

  ‘Oh GOD!’ This was very unusual for Janey, who never swears.

  ‘What?’ I said, opening my eyes. My writing had trailed off towards the bottom corner of the paper, looked a bit spidery and weird like a mad person’s
. ‘Were you actually thinking about sprouts?’

  ‘No.’ Her eyes were so wide I thought they might pop out of her head. ‘But I was thinking about my granny’s HAM AND LENTIL SOUP!’

  ‘Hmm. I suppose they’re both foods.’

  We tried it for a while more but nothing else happened.

  When we were lying in bed later, trying to get to sleep, Janey’s voice sounded out of the darkness. ‘Hattie?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The piano in the hallway. Why have you taped the lid shut with all that black tape?’

  I couldn’t think what to say. It was embarrassing. ‘Oh. Just the, you know . . . I thought I could hear it playing again. At night and stuff.’

  She was quiet for a while and I thought she’d fallen back asleep. ‘What did your mum say? I mean, the tape might pull off the varnish or something.’

  ‘Oh. Mum hasn’t been up here for a while. Not since she had that sleepwalking thing.’

  ‘Oh right,’ said Janey. She asked me why my voice was all shaky, and I said it wasn’t, and that she should go to sleep.

  Monday, November 20th

  This morning, as I was going downstairs, something happened. I’d had my breakfast (boiled egg) and was all ready to go, but suddenly remembered I had to go up to fetch The Lord of the Flies. If I get another disorder mark this term it’ll be a detention.

  When I was on my way down, about halfway down the top staircase, I heard something behind me. It was like something falling through the air, down through the space in the middle of the stairs. As if it had been dropped from the cupola right up above. Just a slight ‘whoosh’. I turned round, but there was nothing there. And no sign of anything having fallen onto the chessboard tiles down below, either.

  Maybe it was the whoosh of my ponytail as I swung my head. I’d done my hair nicely, with the new scrunchy that Janey had got me.

  I really don’t think this whooshing has anything to do with the music case. I checked, and it was in the vestibule where I’d put it, wedged against the wall behind the umbrella box. I’ll have to touch it at some point to get out that awful pavane, because Mum is nagging me to practise it. The rat’s tail handle will be very cold, and possibly a little bit damp from the umbrellas, as it has been raining a lot this week. The pavane itself might have got damp.