The Mother's Lies

by Joanne Sefton

  Mr Eklund had his elbows on the desk and was holding his hands in a prayer position, with his chin resting on his thumbs. He rocked forward, slightly, apparently nodding his agreement.

  ‘Back on the ward?’ Helen said. ‘But what if it happens again?’

  The three of them looked at each other. It was Linda who finally spoke.

  ‘I totally understand your concern, Mrs Harrison, I really do. But you must understand that this type of accident is incredibly rare. It’s very, very unfortunate that your mother has had to suffer this, but, believe me, the chances of it happening again are absolutely zero.’

  ‘Have you found the person responsible then?’

  ‘You mean the member of staff who administered the drug?’

  ‘Of course, that’s what I mean.’ She heard the anger bubble up in her voice, making it sound cracked and alien.

  ‘Well, as I said, we’re going to conduct a thorough—’

  ‘You mean “no”?’

  ‘Well—’

  Helen glared at her.

  ‘Not yet,’ she admitted.

  ‘So you don’t know who did it; therefore you can’t have a clue as to why. You can’t be sure it was an accident, and even if it was, they might make exactly the same bloody mistake as soon as she’s back on the ward.’

  Linda opened her mouth, but Ms Evans put an arm out to silence her.

  ‘With respect, Mrs Harrison, what happened today has been a great shock to everyone on the ward.’ The consultant spoke briskly, but with some warmth. Linda gaped beside her as she carried on smoothly. ‘It hasn’t happened before, and I’m sure they will all be doubly careful from now on. There’s no doubt that your mother’s medication regime will be followed to the letter. We have increased the staffing on the ward, and I will arrange for all her medication to be administered with at least two staff present, which I hope will ease your mind and theirs.’ She paused, tapping her long nails twice on the table. ‘I can’t imagine for a moment that we’re dealing with a deliberate action, but you are absolutely right that we can’t exclude the possibility until the investigation is complete.’

  ‘Well, I suppose that’s all we can ask for, Helen, isn’t it?’ said Neil, before Helen had a chance to reply.

  He sounded so weary. Helen’s own anger towards them all flared again for putting her father through this. But she couldn’t come up with any better plan. She wondered if she should tell them about the notes, but she couldn’t do it now, with Neil here. She’d google the hell out of it as soon as she got back to the house, she vowed, and go back into the safe or through whatever papers of her mother’s she needed. She’d do whatever she needed to get to the bottom of who Jennifer was and whether she was finally making good on her malicious threats.

  Out loud she simply said, ‘I suppose so.’

  The three hospital staff nodded in unison.

  ‘Do you both want to come and see her again before she moves back to the ward?’ Mr Eklund asked gently.

  ‘There’s one more thing,’ Ms Evans cut across them as they murmured their agreement. ‘Until the investigation progresses, we can’t allow Barbara to have any visitors without a member of staff being present. The hospital is very keen to make this as easy as possible for you all. We’ll ensure that we make someone available whenever you are here.’

  ‘You couldn’t think that one of us would …’

  ‘It’s not my job to think anything like that, Mrs Harrison. We have to ensure we’re doing everything to protect Barbara as well as yourselves.’

  *

  Barbara was okay. They’d stopped the bleeding and she didn’t have the breathing mask on any more. She smiled and talked to them a little, though her voice was so weak that it was a strain to try to make out what she was saying. Darren was meant to be dropping the kids back at six, so at five-thirty Helen told Neil she’d have to go. She promised that she’d pop in again in the evening, after Neil had returned to the house.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ Barbara said, pausing with the effort. ‘Expect I’ll be asleep.’

  ‘I’ll come. I want to make sure you’re okay.’

  Barbara smiled and Helen could see every crack in her lips as they moved. They looked painful, but that must be the least of it. It seemed to Helen to be a knowing smile; that something passed between them in that glance about the notes, about Jennifer, and about the real reason why Barbara’s recovery had been so horribly derailed. But, as ever with her mum, Helen just couldn’t be sure.

  She made her way to the car park, wondering about what Barbara made of it all and whether she feared for what might happen next. One thing was for sure: Helen could sit beside a hospital bed twenty-four hours a day and still have no idea whether the tablets and injections the nurses were dishing out were benign. You just have to trust them, she told herself. She hoped it was enough.

  When she arrived home, the lights were still glowing on the old VHS player – she’d not switched it off properly in her rush. The anxiety that had plagued her earlier in the day was gone, replaced by a hollow, flat absence of feeling. She’d run out of energy, out of everything.

  She went to the kitchen intending to make tea, but ended up pouring a glass of wine instead. A text message sounded on her phone. It was Darren, breezy and late. It would be another half-hour before the kids were back. She didn’t know whether to be grateful or angry. He had the nerve to put a throwaway kiss at the end of his message.

  At least the extra time gave her opportunity to snoop around a bit without Barney and Alys getting in the way. She’d already tried Google, but there was so little to go on. There were twenty or thirty hits for her mum, all connected to her work for the local newspaper. Most of the archives weren’t online, so she didn’t have to trawl through thousands of articles, but it also meant she had no chance of finding the story that Barbara said had kicked it all off in the first place. None of the results produced anything that seemed to explain the notes, and adding ‘Jennifer’ to the search didn’t help either.

  Now, it was time for a more traditional approach. First, she went to the safe, but it was only the pension details, mortgage certificates and insurance policies that she’d known were in there all along. There were no extra notes that she’d missed, and nothing else that seemed relevant.

  The house had a loft conversion; the whole thing was pretty much used for storage, but at least it was less spidery and easier to get into than a proper attic would have been. Plus, if Neil did arrive back earlier than expected, she could say she was looking for extra bedding or something.

  There were boxes and boxes of papers from Barbara’s newspaper days. Cuttings were neatly clipped, some even pasted into scrapbooks. Everything was bundled with elastic bands and labelled with dates and references. Some of it was self-explanatory – her employment contracts and payslips, for example – whilst a rummage through some of the files with more cryptic labels, such as ‘Forshaw Corruption’ and ‘Zeilig Ten’, showed that they seemed to be long-running research files for stories that Barbara had been working on. Helen stuck with it for about an hour, getting grey and grimy with dust despite the outwardly clean appearance of the room.

  By the time another text came from Darren to say he was on his way, she was getting increasingly disheartened, and with the ebb of the adrenaline, her exhaustion came back all the harder too. Aside from a few passing references, she’d found only two Jennifers in the files – one was an elderly woman who had been badly hurt in a street robbery and the other a woman who worked at the Borough Council in the late 1960s and seemed to have fed Barbara some information about controversial planning bids over a couple of years.

  Neither fitted in with the story Barbara had told about the shoplifter, and neither had any apparent motive for wishing her ill, or, in fact, for getting in touch with her now at all. That said, Helen had gone through only two of the boxes; there were about fourteen she could see and there may even have been more stashed away in the eaves area. Barbara kept things roughly i
n order and Helen had gone for the early dates because that seemed to fit with what Barbara had said about her first contact with this woman, but it was still like searching for a needle in a haystack.

  She skimmed to the end of the second box and then reluctantly began to pack the contents away before hurrying downstairs to wash the grime from her hands and face. So much for Sherlock Holmes, then.

  A glance at the clock showed it was just gone seven. She went to double-check the time of Darren’s text where he’d claimed he was on the way back, but before she got to it she heard the noise of his hire car pulling up outside.

  Alys was slumped asleep in her car seat and Barney looked shattered.

  ‘We’ve had a great time, haven’t we?’ enthused Darren.

  ‘I can’t wait to hear about it. You can tell me everything while we get your PJs on, Barney. Darren – can you open this door? It’ll be easier if I lift her out and carry her straight inside.’

  Barney tugged at her jumper as she tried to turn towards the car.

  ‘No PJs, Mummy, dinnertime.’

  She glanced up towards Darren, but he quickly turned away.

  ‘Darren! They have eaten?’

  ‘We had quite a late lunch …’

  ‘You are kidding me?’

  Evidently not. He still had the nerve to ask to come in and talk about ‘the next few days’, but she gave him short shrift, promising to call when the kids were in bed. As he drove off, she edged towards the front door, hung with the spare clothes bag and various toys, as well as the dead weight of her sleeping daughter. At least she’d left it open.

  There was no point in waking Alys. It was unlikely the lack of one dinner would trouble her.

  Barney whinged his way through some cheese on toast and a Petit Filous. He told Helen they’d fed chickens, painted each other’s feet and ridden in a helicopter. Any or all of them might have been true – she simply didn’t have the energy to try to work it out.

  She hurried him through his bath, teeth, story and song as quickly as they could both manage. When she bent over to kiss him, he wrapped his little arms tight round her neck, as always.

  ‘Night, night, darling,’ she said.

  ‘I love you the best in the whole wide world, Mummy.’

  For the first time in the whole day she felt good, but then instantly guilty. She pushed the guilt away, though; it wasn’t her making him pick.

  When she went back downstairs, there was a text from Neil saying that Barbara was sleeping peacefully, and one from an old school friend, Julie Hendricks, who’d got in touch when she’d heard about Barbara. They’d exchanged a few messages, and Julie had offered to have the kids if Helen needed. Her girls were roughly the same age, she said. They’d keep each other entertained, no problem. At least Julie would probably feed them, Helen mused. She decided she’d reply tomorrow, when she had a clearer head. She switched on the telly and collapsed in front of a repeat of a Saturday night talent show.

  She hadn’t realised she’d fallen asleep until the noise of Neil opening the lounge door woke her up.

  ‘Helen?’

  She made some sort of grunt, then managed to ask about Barbara. He said she’d been asleep for the last few hours of his visit.

  ‘She needs her sleep, though, to get over everything she’s been through,’ he added.

  Helen nodded. ‘Of course she does. I still can’t believe what happened.’

  ‘Well, it’s all behind us now, love, that’s the important thing.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, feeling far from convinced. She’d found nothing to disprove Barbara’s claim that the notes were nothing to worry about, far less anything to suggest that the author of them was responsible for the ‘error’ at the hospital. But still the icy feeling clawed around in her stomach and her instincts told her that something in her mother’s life was very far from how it should be. She thought again about telling Neil directly about the notes, but Barbara’s warnings rang in her mind. God knew he’d had enough surprises for today. Tomorrow, perhaps, that would be time enough.

  ‘I’ll go back in then,’ she said. ‘You didn’t park behind me?’

  ‘No, love. But is it a good idea? You’re yawning – look.’

  ‘S’okay. I was dozing just now.’

  ‘Well, if you’re sure.’

  She checked on the kids before she went out, worried that with the living room door shut she might have slept through Barney waking up for a wee, or even Alys deciding she was hungry after all, but they were both sleeping perfectly. She kissed their warm foreheads and said her goodbyes to Neil, stepping out into the chill of the evening with the fug of sleep still heavy about her. She remembered her promise to call Darren, but it was far too late now. It would wait until the morning.

  *

  Geranium Ward was familiar now. Even in the half-light of a hospital night shift, she could clearly make out the nurses’ station with the glazed office behind it, each institutional armchair and each cantilevered hospital table. The blue flickering light of a TV screen lit up two or three of the beds, but most were in darkness. Although she didn’t know any of the patients’ names, she’d begun to recognise their faces. No doubt if they were awake some would have recognised Helen too.

  There was one chair pulled out slightly beside Barbara’s bed. As Helen slipped into it, she could almost pretend that Neil’s warmth still lingered. Across the narrow ward, an older woman in burgundy settled herself with some knitting in a chair at the foot of an empty bed. Helen’s cheeks had burned as she waited at the nurses’ station for a chaperone to be found, but at least the vacant cubicle meant the watcher could observe her with a degree of sensitivity.

  ‘It’s me, Mum,’ Helen whispered, but Barbara was sleeping soundly, head tilted back and mouth open in an unselfconscious snore.

  She sat there for a while, fighting the urge to check her phone, or switch on the television. Her plan was to stay for only half an hour or so. It was the least she could do to focus on Barbara, she thought. Even if her mother didn’t know she was there.

  Gradually, more and more details resolved themselves in the gloom. She picked out the shapes of the get-well cards on Barbara’s locker, a water bottle that rested, forgotten, on the nurses’ station, the sheen of the laminated sign above the alcohol hand-rub.

  Her gaze shifted to the foot of Barbara’s bed. The clipboard leant drunkenly in its holder, as if it had been put back in a hurry. She only meant to prop it upright, but as soon as she bent closer, she spotted the envelope. Her first instinct was to look around for movement, as if she might spot the receding, shadowy figure of a poison postman. But, of course, there was no one to be seen. The envelope was presumably left there hours ago, pushed under the bulldog clip with sleight of hand, so Barbara would have no idea which of the bustling medics had left it, and whatever nurse came round next would think a well-wisher had visited and move it to the bedside table, or even hand it straight over if Barbara was awake.

  The name Barbara was written in large, confident letters on the green envelope. Helen paused for a moment, then pushed a nail under the seal.

  SO SORRY TO HEAR ABOUT YOUR SETBACK.

  WHAT A NASTY ACCIDENT. GET WELL SOON.

  JENNIFER

  The paper trembled in her hand. She looked at the frail sleeping figure on the bed and once again struggled to imagine who could hold this awful grudge against her. The knitting needles gently rattled behind her and rage flared that the hospital was spying on her and her father whilst the real villain seemed to waltz around with impunity. Who was to say that the knitter herself didn’t hold some grudge against Barbara? Or wasn’t in the pay of someone who did? If Helen confronted her with the note now would she herself be accused of writing it? Helen knew only one thing – precautions or not, she needed to get Barbara away from this hospital.

  Plans whirled in her mind, but for now she let her mother sleep. It didn’t take a doctor to see that sleep was what Barbara needed most. She texted Neil to tell
him she’d decided to spend the night in the hospital. The questioning reply she’d expected didn’t come – his response was a simple ‘okay’.

  Unable to let herself sleep, and too tired to do anything else, she simply sat, letting the minutes and hours wash over her like a slow tide.

  Just before five, Barbara stirred a little, and her eyes flickered open. No doubt she would have returned to sleep given the chance, but instead Helen grasped her arm and whispered urgently.

  ‘There’s another one, Mum.’

  When she was fully awake, Helen passed her the note.

  Barbara stared at it, almost as if she was looking through it rather than reading it. Eventually, she let her hands sink back onto the bed.

  ‘It’s just to scare me, Helen; try not to worry.’

  ‘You were in intensive care yesterday, Mum. Someone poisoned you; that’s more than a scare.’

  She shrugged. ‘Maybe it’s a better way to go than cancer.’

  ‘But you’ve got every chance. Loads of women survive breast cancer. This is different, this is …’ Helen struggled for words, ‘… criminal.’

  Barbara gave a sharp sigh, as if she was too weak to snort in disdain. For a long moment, they just looked at each other.

  ‘You’ve got to tell someone. They have to know there’s a danger. They’ve got to move you.’

  ‘There isn’t a danger; it’s a nonsense and no one poisoned me. There was a stupid mistake and this girl’s got wind of it. That’s all. I won’t have your dad worried by it.’

  That was what Helen used to settle it. She told Barbara if she didn’t agree to say something to the medics, then Helen would show Neil the notes herself. They decided that Barbara would ask the nurses about discharging her as soon as they came on shift, that she’d claim to be too worried by what had happened to stay there, and they’d give the same story to Neil, with no mention of the poisonous little green messages. It was an alien feeling, conspiring with her mother. They’d never had secrets together, and certainly not from her father. Helen had heard of situations where serious illness brought family members together. She didn’t imagine it often came about like this.