The Mistake I Made

by Paula Daly

  None of which was relevant now, but it popped into my head.

  Winston remained with his weight against the doorframe, not quite ready to leave. He glanced towards Celia, nodded hello, and then turned back to me. ‘He’s still pretty cut up about the incident at school.’

  ‘George is? What did you say to him?’

  ‘I told him he couldn’t take money and other people’s stuff, because they make a massive deal out of it. But it didn’t mean he was a bad person or anything.’

  Silently, I mouthed, Shhhhh, to get him to lower his voice. ‘What did he say?’

  ‘Says he wants to go back to his old school. He reckons he hasn’t got any friends here and he wants to go back to Windermere.’

  ‘I’ll talk to him,’ I said.

  ‘Okey-doke.’

  Then a pause.

  ‘Roz?’

  ‘What is it, Winston?’

  ‘You look tired.’

  I shrugged. ‘It’s been a rough weekend.’

  ‘Are you okay?’ he asked tenderly. ‘I mean, are you managing okay?’

  ‘I’m fine, Winston. Go fly your kite.’

  Upstairs, George sat on the new beanbag I’d picked up for him from Poundstretcher. It was cheap. It would probably last about five minutes. George had his back to the door and was wriggling his small body, trying to envelop as much of himself in the thing as possible, as though trying to disappear.

  ‘Hey,’ I said softly.

  ‘Hey,’ he replied.

  ‘Do you like the beanbag?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  I sat down on his bed. Gesturing to his duvet cover, I said, ‘I gave this a wash for you. It’ll smell nice and clean when you climb in later.’

  ‘Thanks,’ he replied, and I felt silly. What did he care?

  For a time that afternoon, while making up his bed with fresh linen, smoothing out the creases, fluffing his pillows, rearranging his Pokémon figures on the windowsill, I’d had the short-lived sensation of feeling like a good mother.

  ‘Your dad says you’re worried about school.’

  ‘I want to move schools.’

  ‘Okay,’ I said carefully, ‘but where would you go? There’s only one school in Hawkshead. That makes things kind of difficult.’

  He turned to face me. ‘We could move back.’

  ‘We can’t, honey. Not straight away, anyhow. And, besides, you’d still have to go to school tomorrow, whether we move house again or not.’

  ‘I could go to my old school and you could take me there on your way to work. Ollie Mundine goes to Windermere each day because his mum works at the post office.’

  So he’d really put some thought into this.

  ‘Okay, I see where you’re going, and yes, it would be doable. You could move schools, and yes, I could drop you there on my way to and from work, but I’m not going to do that.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because the only reason you want to leave is because you’re ashamed of what you’ve done. And you can’t run away from things, George. What happens if you get into trouble at your next school? Then what? We move again? And again? Every time you don’t like something, you can’t just pack it in or run away.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because you run out of options, honey. And sooner or later you have to face up to stuff.’

  21

  AT WORK THE following morning there was no sign of Wayne. It was now ten fifteen, I was on my third patient of the day and the other clinicians were speculating as to the reason for his absence.

  Absence with no explanatory call was not like Wayne.

  Gary took it upon himself to phone him but could get no answer on either the mobile or landline, so after asking each of us whether we thought he should inform head office, and each of us saying no, inform them the following day if he still hadn’t turned up, he went ahead and did it.

  After the events of Saturday, I wasn’t completely surprised Wayne had gone AWOL, but it was a little worrying, as it was so out of character. Wayne never missed work unless he was incapacitated by illness, and he would always call. He would leave lists of instructions for us, as though he were truly indispensable.

  Where the hell was he? If I could turn up for work after what had happened, so could he.

  Perhaps Wayne was thoroughly ashamed of his behaviour on Saturday and had gone on a drinking bender. Perhaps he’d be back tomorrow, looking worse for wear, full of apology.

  As I said, after my bang on the head on Saturday night, my memory of leaving Wayne’s was a little hazy. I could recall him babbling, telling me repeatedly he was sorry for his actions, that he might not make it into work on Monday. He said he might need a few days to clear his head. Or at least I think he did. Now I wasn’t sure what I remembered.

  I’d gone home and crashed. I didn’t need the bottle of Night Nurse, the trauma to my head inducing a solid ten hours of dreamless sleep, the like of which I couldn’t remember having since I was a teenager. I’d woken disorientated and dizzy, with little memory of the drive home, feeling relieved nonetheless that my body had taken charge, falling into such a depth of sleep that I was spared the ordeal of reliving the night at Wayne’s over and over in my head.

  After a long soak in the bath, by ten o’clock the following morning my body seemed intact. My senses were functioning again and with only minimal swelling to the head and a scalp wound hidden by my hair, brunch at Petra’s hadn’t seemed such a disastrous way to finish off the weekend – all things considered.

  Except now I had a date.

  I had a date with the brother-in-law of the guy I was screwing for money.

  I had tried, repeatedly, after agreeing to it, to cancel. I tried to worm my way out of it. But Nadine was smarting after her exchange with Scott, and the whole situation became a stand-off between the two of them. She was convinced that Scott was unfairly pigeonholing her brother, as was typical when people chose to live differently to him, and the more he tried to talk her round, the more she dug her heels in.

  Also, where at first Petra had sided with Scott, in so much as she believed Nadine’s brother would be an unsuitable choice at this stage in Roz’s life, as she phrased it, she ended up doing a complete about-face, declaring, ‘Who are we to decide who’s right for her?’

  Petrified of saying the wrong thing, tripping myself up, I watched the situation unfold with increasing horror, as Scott dragged up instances of Nadine’s brother’s fecklessness.

  Needless to say, with all that swimming around in my head this Monday morning, and a full patient list, I couldn’t ruminate for long on Wayne’s absence, so I left it to Gary to try to track him down.

  Keith Hollinghurst groaned now as I sprung the joints of his thoracic spine. There was a spinous process – T8 – that had become perpetually lodged and proved stubborn to get moving. I climbed on to the treatment couch, straddling Keith from behind to get my full weight perpendicularly over the top of him, and pressed down through my thumbs.

  After twenty pushes, Keith begged for mercy, and some air–it’s pretty impossible to take a breath when having this performed – and told me, craning his neck and puffing hard, that he had a proposition for me.

  ‘Not another one,’ I said, remembering the last time.

  ‘Hear me out. Not …’ and he nodded his head where the word ‘wanking’ should be, not able to bring himself to say it in the presence of a lady. ‘No more of that nonsense,’ he said guiltily.

  I climbed down and washed my hands as Keith struggled with the task of turning himself over – imagine a woodlouse trying to right itself. It occurred to me that it wouldn’t be long before Keith, like the humble woodlouse, would become marooned in one position and couldn’t turn over without assistance.

  Once sitting, and with his breathing near normal, he told me he’d bought a small bed & breakfast at auction. ‘Daft, really,’ he said. ‘The money was burning a hole in me pocket and I bought the thing without thinking.’

  I had
no idea where he was going with this, and knowing Keith and his previous requests, it really could be anything. So I remained quiet.

  ‘Anyway,’ he went on, ‘when I looked at it, I realized it’s going to be hell to staff. You gotta live on site with those things, or else they don’t make money …

  He started to cough at this point. Big, hacking coughs.

  I handed him a wad of tissues and waited as he hawked up the phlegm. This took three growls and another long spate of coughing. Without comment, or even a flicker of disdain, I passed him the bin to drop in his deposit of soiled tissue.

  On first qualifying as a physiotherapist, each clinician rotates between departments to accrue a wide base of knowledge and to give them some idea of the area in which they would like to specialize. It was on one such placement, respiratory care, that I developed my poker face, used for dealing with such stomach-turning situations as the removal of Keith’s phlegm.

  The woman was a tiny bird-like thing, as most chronic bronchitis patients are – the sheer amount of energy needed for breathing, to get the air into their compromised lungs, tends to use up calories faster than they can ingest them. Her chest rattled like an old Ewbank as she spooned tomato soup into her mouth. Beside her was her sputum pot. Each respiratory-care patient had one to spit their secretions into, and it was my job to check the colour of them every few hours for signs of infection, blood and other nasties. With her glazed eyes fixed on the TV hanging from a bracket high in the corner of the room, I watched as she dipped her bread into the sputum pot, twice, before chewing on it thoughtfully.

  Anyway, all this to say, I was not totally grossed out, as most would be by Keith in this instance, and was genuinely interested in what he had to say next.

  He dabbed at his eyes. ‘I’ve got builders in there at the moment, tearing the place apart.’

  ‘What are you planning to do with it?’

  ‘Offices,’ he said. ‘I thought you might want one.’

  I waited.

  ‘Not on a lease,’ he said. ‘Just month-to-month rent. All bills included except phone. There’ll be a downstairs toilet and space for your punters to wait in the hallway.’

  ‘How much?’

  ‘Seven hundred a month. But I’ll waive the first two months’ rent, let you get on your feet, if you treat me for free when I need it.’

  ‘You would do that?’

  ‘You’ve always seen me right, Roz. And I know you don’t like it how Laughing Boy out there’s always got his eye on you, controlling your every move.’

  ‘You mean Wayne?’

  ‘You could work for yourself again, love,’ he went on. ‘Be your own boss. What do you say?’

  I did a quick sum in my head. With what Keith was offering, overheads deducted, I could increase my weekly wage by around thirty per cent. That was as long as I didn’t screw up again.

  ‘I’d say thank you, Keith,’ my voice catching as I spoke his name. ‘Thank you, thank you, thank you.’

  And he smiled broadly.

  ‘Grand,’ he said. He touched my shoulder affectionately, as he could see I was tearing up. Then he gave me a firm pat, the way you would a Welsh Cob you were particularly fond of. ‘That’s my girl,’ he said. ‘That’s my girl. It’ll be yours to move into in a month.’

  22

  THE PHONE CALL came on my mobile at around mid-morning, during my tea break. I was outside watching with interest as a song thrush tried to smash open a snail shell using a piece of broken roof tile as an anvil. The repetitive tap-tapping had caught my attention, reminding me of the pieces of grit Winston used to launch against my bedroom window, back when he was on his way home from the pub after I’d thrown him out for good.

  ‘Roz Toovey?’

  ‘Yes,’ I replied. ‘Can you speak up? The traffic from the road is quite noisy.’

  ‘I was told to ring you,’ the caller said. ‘By my sister. Nadine?’

  ‘Oh, yes.’ I found myself screwing up my face. Wanting to cut the call without further conversation.

  ‘So then,’ he said, ‘this is me calling you. Bit awkward, really.’

  I took a breath. ‘Did Nadine mention why she wanted you to get in touch?’

  A small laugh. ‘Yes. You are a nice person whom she thinks I might find interesting.’

  ‘She said that?’

  ‘Of course not. You want the truth?’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘She said she was friends with your sister, who was desperate to get you together with someone who wasn’t a total fuck-up. And I immediately sprang to mind. Frankly, I think she’s probably sick of hearing about your single status.’

  ‘What else did she tell you about me?’ I asked, amused now.

  ‘Nice figure, bit scruffy – which she thinks I am, too, so I took that with a pinch of salt. She said you’re a could-be-kind-of-fun-for-a-while type of person. What did she say about me?’

  ‘She said you were definitely not a loser.’

  ‘I’m not,’ he said.

  ‘Well, that’s good then.’

  ‘I believe we have to go out on Thursday. Is that correct?’ he said.

  ‘That’s correct.’

  ‘Do you have anywhere in mind?’

  ‘Surprise me,’ I said.

  ‘All right, Roz Toovey,’ he said. ‘I will.’

  When I finished the call I was smiling. And it was only later, when treating Scott’s elbow, that I realized I’d forgotten to ask him his name.

  ‘His name is Henry,’ Scott said, regarding me steadily.

  I had hold of his forearm in one hand, and with the other I was pushing down on his wrist to stretch out the extensor muscles. His elbow was almost better, and this would be the last treatment session. ‘So you are going to go out with him?’ he asked.

  I stopped what I was doing and took a step back.

  ‘You’d rather I didn’t,’ I said. A statement.

  ‘No, you can see who you like,’ he said. ‘It has absolutely nothing to do with what I think. It’s just, like I said yesterday, Henry’s limited.’

  ‘Limited? He sounded nice.’

  ‘Nice,’ he repeated. Spitting the word from his mouth.

  ‘Look, Scott,’ I said, losing patience with whatever game he was playing, ‘what do you suggest I do? It was your wife who orchestrated this, your wife who basically bullied me into doing it. I tried to say no. In fact I did say no. Perhaps if you hadn’t been so vehement in your attack on your brother-in-law yesterday, then we wouldn’t find ourselves in this pickle.’

  ‘You think she did it because she suspects something between us?’

  ‘I think she suspects nothing. She forced the issue because you were so against it. Because you were so fault-finding about her brother. It was puzzling to watch. I could see Petra didn’t know what to make of it, she—’

  ‘Fuck Petra!’ he snapped, out of nowhere. ‘Petra hasn’t got an original thought inside her head.’

  Again, I pulled away.

  Quietly, firmly, I said, ‘Stop it, Scott. That’s enough.’

  I was taken aback. I’d not seen him like this before.

  ‘Stop what?’ he demanded.

  Keeping my voice low and without provocation, I said, ‘I don’t understand why you acted like that. It was like you wanted to be found out. Do you want them to know what’s been going on between us?’

  ‘Of course not. Don’t be fucking ridiculous.’

  ‘Then what? What?’

  And it was as if he had stalled. I stopped speaking because, all of a sudden, his expression collapsed and he lifted his hands to his face.

  He bowed his head before exhaling deeply.

  Then he reached out his hand, gesturing as though to say, Give me a minute. I really need a moment to regroup here.

  With his eyes soft, remorseful now, he whispered, ‘This is so hard for me. When can I see you again? I need to see you.’

  True to his word, as soon as my invoice was sent to his offices, an hour
later the four thousand from Scott landed in my account and I began to dream about the future. Not the fantastical dreams of the desperate that had occupied my thoughts in recent months. Instantly, I stopped dreaming about lottery wins and surprise windfalls and got back to planning the upcoming months. I couldn’t repay my parents overnight, that much was clear, but I could, if things worked out with Keith Hollinghurst’s benefaction, begin to earn a decent living, putting away some money each month that would go towards making up for their loss.

  At this point, I didn’t know how long the thing with Scott would continue. Not for ever, I knew that, and his recent behaviour – going from nasty to oddly clingy in the space of a second – had unsettled me somewhat. But when you see that money start to mount up, when you’ve lived each day frightened of what else is coming through your letterbox, it can be hard to give up on something so lucrative. Two more nights with him and the credit-card balance would be zero.

  And, if kept secret, no one was going to get hurt by our actions. I wasn’t ripping anyone off to make money, trampling over the little people. There were no harmful environmental effects. I was even going to pay tax on my earnings. The socialist in me almost approved.

  And yet I couldn’t reconcile myself to the fact that what I was doing was okay. No matter how many ways I looked at it.

  Also, I now had a sense of growing unease that what had started out as a business arrangement, – what for me was very much still a business arrangement – was perhaps taking on another significance for Scott. And of course I felt sick with guilt when my thoughts turned to Nadine.

  It would be our third meeting when I would get a sense of things to come.

  This time we did not need the whole night. Scott wanted to meet badly and I told him an entire night was impossible. I explained that George was fragile. He understood, and we negotiated a one thousand five hundred pound fee for an afternoon of fun and pleasure to be undertaken the following day.

  So now, on Tuesday morning, without Wayne’s prying eyes, I was able to do something I would not ordinarily do, and that was to cancel the afternoon patients. I moved them around and slotted them in elsewhere, giving the vague excuse of a ‘hospital appointment’. Patients tended to be too worried you might have something sinister wrong with you to pry, so they rearranged without complaint. And should the worst happen, should Wayne return while I was out, my excuse would be that I was at the hospital for ‘a head X-ray’, which ought to keep him quiet.