by Holly Seddon
“Mum denied it afterward but she must have thought I was going to be charged with something. I’d never seen her so worried.”
Alex bit her lip to stop from prompting him. Interviewing 101: shut the fuck up and let the interviewee fill the silence.
“The questions the police asked were pretty full-on,” Jacob carried on, looking at Alex and then away. “That’s their job but it must have been obvious from the start that I couldn’t have done any of those things.”
“So did you go to see Amy once the police released you?” asked Alex, trying her damnedest not to rush her uninvited guest.
“No,” said Jacob. “I went back to school. Only for one day. My parents had said to just carry on as normal.” He laughed. “My mum worked at the school, and she’d spoken to all my teachers at the end of the day and asked how I’d coped. Well, I hadn’t coped, of course. So that was it. We left.”
“We?”
“My brother Tom and me. He was a couple of years below me and I guess kids had been hassling him too.”
“That must have been tough on him?” asked Alex.
“Yeah, I think so. He moved to a private school up the road. He didn’t like it, but I was too wrapped up in everything to notice.”
“So did you go on to a new school as well?”
“No, the teachers sent work home for me and I took my GCSEs at a nearby college. After that, I went to the same college to do my A-levels. I did them at night, with all the stay-at-home mums.”
“Why?”
“My mum was worried I’d be in a class with someone from school. She didn’t want me to be bothered, but I never saw any of them again.”
“So did you start visiting Amy while you were at college?”
“Yeah, just now and then. After Jo died, Amy didn’t have anyone. I didn’t really want to go but I felt I should. Amy was still wired up to machines when I first went in. She was so fragile—I don’t know, it seemed like some kind of duty or something. So I just…I haven’t stopped.”
“Did anyone go with you?”
Jacob shook his head. “I went alone. In secret.”
“Every week?”
“No, not straightaway. Each time was so hard that I really had to force myself to go. I went every few months. Every time I had to gear up for it. That was when she was in intensive care. It got a bit easier when she was moved to Bramble Ward. I gradually went more and more and started to, kind of, need to go. So I became a sitter, and that took some of the pressure off. That probably sounds weird.”
“Not really. It sounds really tough. There must have been times when yours was the only voice she heard. That’s a real kindness.”
“I don’t think of it like that but it’s nice of you to say.”
“So how long ago did you become a sitter?”
“A couple of years. I’d actually gone in to tell her that I couldn’t keep visiting so much, and—”
“Why was that?”
Jacob looked down. “Because I was getting married.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah.”
“So what happened when you went to tell her that?”
“It’s going to sound ridiculous. I’d been going about once every few weeks by then, sometimes more. I told Amy that I was getting married the next week and that I’d always love her but that it wasn’t right for me to keep seeing her as often as I did.
“Like I said, it sounds ridiculous, but Amy looked as if she was going to cry. She didn’t cry—I mean she can’t, can she? But her eyes welled up. That’s how it looked.
“I felt so bad that I told her I didn’t mean it and that I’d still see her. On the way out I saw a poster about volunteering to sit with the patients. And I figured it wasn’t quite so dodgy, you know, I was doing something for the patients, plural, I wasn’t just hanging out with my old girlfriend.”
“Are you the only person from her past that visits her?”
Jacob faltered. “I think so…” He trailed off. “Yes, I am now.”
“So what was your plan today? What would you have done if I hadn’t come home and found you?”
“I just wanted to look, you know, at what you really knew. I got so worked up, imagining some kind of exposé in the paper, me and Amy, accusations or something. I know I’m in it up to my neck here. I’ve really fucked up.”
“Jacob, that’s not the kind of journalism I do. Look, what’s in the bag?”
“USB sticks.”
“For taking stuff from my computer?” Alex asked, not able to conceal her shock.
Jacob started to panic. Downing the rest of the tea Alex had made despite his protestations, he tried to stand up.
“Please don’t—you’ll hurt yourself. I’m not going to call the police.”
“Really?”
“Yes, really. Just as long as you’re honest with me.”
“My wife’s pregnant and she has no idea that I visit Amy. She has no idea about Amy whatsoever. She’s not from round here and my family doesn’t talk about what happened, it’s just this huge secret.
“We’ve been having a tough time, together I mean, my wife and I. I thought you were going to write about Amy and me and I thought it was going to ruin everything. I guess you’re still going to write about me, and I’ve given it all to you on a plate.” His head was in his hands, heel of his thumb thumping his forehead.
“I didn’t even know it was you at the hospital,” Alex admitted. “I’d not thought that far ahead.”
“Great,” said Jacob, “so now I really have fucked it all up.”
“I don’t want to make things difficult for you, but why don’t you talk to your wife about this? You’ve not done anything wrong.”
“You don’t know my wife. Lies are her thing, the line you can’t cross with her. Especially lies about another girl.”
“But Amy’s not a bit on the side, she’s a victim, she’s not in a position to do anything wrong.”
“It doesn’t matter, believe me. I’ve kept this from Fiona since the beginning, when I barely saw Amy, and it’s just snowballed. The longer time’s gone on, the bigger the secret’s got. We’re talking years. She won’t think I’ve done nothing wrong.” Jacob shrugged. “I mean, I have done something wrong, haven’t I? I’ve lied to her.”
“I know what it’s like to keep secrets from the person you love,” Alex said. “And I know that the damage is done by the secret, not from being honest.”
“With all due respect,” said Jacob, looking up, “I can’t imagine that you’ve kept a secret like this. I’ve been sneaking around for years to sit with my half-dead teenage girlfriend. You’re honestly telling me that you can match that? Try me.”
Alex tried to shake a memory. The look on Matt’s face when he found a bottle in the cistern.
“What?” she’d laughed. “Oh come on! I hide my emergency credit card in the freezer so I don’t buy things I won’t need. Are you telling me that makes me a spendaholic too?”
Matt had said nothing. He’d placed the bottle on the tiny sideboard of their London flat and washed his hands, slowly and carefully.
Alex hovered nearby, trying to decide whether to put the bottle back or open it to make a point.
“The flush works now, anyway,” he’d said. “I need to get ready for my shift.”
Alex looked at Jacob. She thought about his healthy, sober wife full of a healthy, plump baby, wondering where he was right now.
“Maybe another time,” she said. “Let me get your address and I’ll call you a cab.”
I woke up this morning and Bob was in my room, sitting on my bed. I knew it was him from the weight, even before he spoke. The whole of my bed was sagging like a little boat caught in a big wave.
I think he’d just woken up from a bad dream or something because he wasn’t making any sense. His voice was all gargled like it gets when a soccer game on TV doesn’t go the way he wants, or one of his elderly customers dies. Actually it was worse than that, it was like his m
outh was full of pickled onions and he couldn’t get his words out.
“Ames, love,” he’d said, but I hadn’t answered and I don’t know why. Then there was a long pause and if it wasn’t for the weight I’d have thought he’d gone.
Eventually he said, in one breath: “I’ve got some bad news about Mum, sweetheart.” He always says it like “swede heart” and I imagine little swede turnips carved into heart shapes, bobbing along on a chorus line, kicking their legs up and down like showgirls.
He said that Mum had been poorly for a while and struggling to cope. That’s how I know he was wrong because my mum’s fine, she’s not called in sick to work for as long as I can remember. We even went shopping just the other weekend. She took me up to Camden, after a hell of a lot of nagging. She’d been promising for a long time and we finally went on the train. I was like a little kid, nose pressed to the window, steaming it up. Mum was nervous. London always makes her nervous. She had her handbag clutched to her chest the whole time and when we got off the train and walked down to the Tube, she wouldn’t touch the handrail because of all the germs.
I loved it. The noise and the smells and all the different people whizzing about. You had faces from everywhere, languages I’d never heard being spoken, all around us on the Tube, every kind of outfit, every kind of shoe. Buskers playing the sixties and seventies songs Mum and Bob like, but even those didn’t seem to make Mum relax. It’s a young person’s place, I guess. Though she’s not really that old. She’s probably the youngest mum out of all my friends. I hope I’m not so scared when I’m in my thirties.
We’d made our way out of Camden Town Tube station and down past the Lock, my mum spinning around and jumping at every bloke who walked past. Thankfully none of them seemed offended. I’d got my purse out to count my money at one point and she’d thrown an absolute fit. Next time I’ll just go up with Jenny or Becky, tell Mum and Bob I’m heading into town for the day and be done with it. Camden’s for the young.
I bought some really cool secondhand jeans and a couple of T-shirts from different stalls while I was there. One T-shirt had a picture of Iggy Pop as if Andy Warhol had painted him and the other was a knockoff Smashing Pumpkins top. Not really a favorite, but I’m trying to move across into rockier stuff and I do like some of the songs off Siamese Dream.
I also got some little hair-clip things for twisting your hair up in cool sections like Björk. When we got home I showed Mum a picture I’d cut out of Select and we tried to do it together but I think my hair’s too long.
I always knew I wanted to live in London but I only really knew it as a big glob of London-ness, red buses and Buckingham Palace and Oxford Street and all of that. I knew it wasn’t where real people lived. Now I can picture everything more clearly.
I’ll go to Uni in London and I’ll live in halls for the first year and then I’ll find the friends for life who’ll be my flatmates and we’ll live in Camden. Maybe I’ll still be with Jake and we can get a flat together. Deep down, I think I know he’ll still be living in Edenbridge with his mum though. Maybe that’s unfair to him; we’ll have to see.
I’ll be editor of the Uni newspaper and be known for my bravery and cutting-edge style. People at real magazines’ll be like, “We’ve been watching your work for a while and you have what it takes.” NME’s the prize though, if I can get in there, I’ll have died and gone to heaven.
Fast forward a few years and I’ll be the NME editor, the first-ever woman—I think—and living in my own place overlooking Camden Lock. I’ll be going out with Damon Albarn from Blur by then, we’ll have met when I go to interview him. Or maybe I’ll still be with Jake and Damon’ll just be my bit on the side. Ha! I know most of that won’t happen but I will go to Uni in London at least, and I’ll meet a whole bunch of new people. I definitely know that.
Bob was wrong anyway. I think my mum’s here now. I can hear her humming an old song, “Fly Me to the Moon,” I think. She’s washing my face and stroking my hair. He must have had a really bad dream to get so worked up. Poor old Bob.
The house was quiet when Jacob got home, the big car conspicuous by its absence. He swung into the living room and flicked the TV on to a rugby match he might have watched had he stayed put.
Could he really trust the journalist to keep her word? It had all sounded so stupid when he’d said it out loud. She hadn’t even known who he was. At least she didn’t know how many times he’d broken in.
He looked at the mantelpiece, over which hung a huge silver frame holding a photo of their wedding day. Fiona had never looked so beautiful. What was it about a big white dress? On no other occasion would that make a woman look good, but she had appeared otherworldly that day. Even Jacob looked like a better version of himself, smiling so widely his face looked cut in two.
Beneath the wedding photo sat two new frames. One with a twelve-week scan of their black-and-white prawn. The other at twenty weeks, the watery gray picture showing an actual baby shape. A real human, that he’d co-authored. There really should be some kind of vetting process, he thought.
Along the mantelpiece was a picture of Fiona and her parents on holiday when she was a teenager. Fiona staring moodily at the camera from under dyed red hair, her parents beaming through sunburned faces. There was a photo of Fiona at her post-graduate ceremony, and one of them as tanned newlyweds, peering over huge cocktails on their honeymoon.
Soon, like his mum’s house, the fireplace would be overflowing with baby photos. The photo collection would grow with their family. Jacob thought of Amy’s mum, who must have collected her own photos so eagerly, and then, no more. No one would take a camera into Bramble Ward to capture that moment. The whole ward was a captured moment.
Fiona’s car pulled up outside and Jacob’s heart thumped as he waited to see if his face gave anything away.
“Hey, J,” she said, holding carrier bags and looking pleased with herself.
“Hey, you.”
“Whatcha watching?”
“Rugby.”
“Ugh,” she groaned. But remained standing on the spot, grinning.
“You look pleased with yourself.” Jacob smiled.
“Well, I am. I drove to Waitrose and got us some nice bits for tea tonight. I thought you might need cheering up.”
“Why?” he frowned.
Fiona looked at him puzzled. “Because you broke your leg.”
“You’re so good to me.”
“Yeah, I am. Got you some posh beer and everything.”
“I love you so much.”
“Oh, calm your knickers down, J,” she said, but looked delighted.
Could he really trust Alex Dale?
The sun streamed through the window into Alex’s bedroom, dappling her crisp white duvet with playful sunbursts and shards of rainbow. A few little dewdrops clung to the window and she could hear children playing nearby.
She sat up slowly, expecting her brain to slide against her skull at any second, but the headache didn’t come.
For the first time since she started this pet project, she felt like she might actually be getting somewhere. She had tugged at the pieces of thread and finally one of them had been attached to something.
Jake.
She half smiled at the memory of his words. Such sad words. As she played back the recording from her iPhone, she allowed the smile to become a full-blown beam.
Jake. Jacob Arlington. The sitter. And he might have told her far more than he realized.
—
It was still early, way before visiting hours, and Alex knew she was trying her luck. But she had nearly two hours to kill before her doctor’s appointment and was desperate to make headway with her investigations.
She stepped out of the big gray lift and strode confidently to the Bramble Ward door, rapping on it loudly.
The door opened ajar and a nurse she didn’t know peered out. “Can I help you?”
“Hi there, I’m writing a story about your patient Amy Stevenson and I have a co
uple of questions.”
“I’m sorry?” The nurse creased her forehead as if she didn’t understand a single word.
“I’m a journalist, my name’s Alex Dale.”
“I’m not sure about this. I’ll have to speak to Dr. Haynes.”
Alex swallowed hard and tried to ignore the fragments of memory. Peter Haynes buying a round of drinks. Peter Haynes in her bed. The awkward weight on top of her. His tongue poking out of the side of his mouth as he concentrated on what he was doing.
“Well, I really do just want to check one thing with you, I’ll be really quick.”
“Wait there,” commanded the nurse. Alex stepped back, leaning lightly against the pale pastel wall. Flyers for self-help groups and fundraisers fluttered by her ears as she waited. She could hear one half of a conversation, the nurse sighing. “You’re the boss,” she said, wearily.
The door opened wider and the nurse ushered her inside.
“I’m not very happy about this,” she said to no one. “So then, what do you want to know?”
—
“How far back do these go?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Might they be archived somewhere?”
“I doubt it. They’re probably just shredded.”
Alex flipped the heavy pages to the first lined entry, just over three years ago.
“Could I take this to the café to look through? I’ll bring it back before visiting hours.”
“I’d sooner you didn’t. You can sit here for as long as you like though.”
It took sixty-seven pages of records to find what she was looking for, but when Alex saw it, a bolt of excitement whipped her spine.
Afterward she sat in the car and scribbled urgently, too scared to drive straight to the GP surgery in case it all seeped away before she had a chance to capture her thoughts. That feeling was back, for the first time in who knew how many lost years. The feeling she’d get when she found that killer line. Or the shock-and-awe setup, or that zinger of a wordplay. That perfect point. How she’d chased that feeling. It became ever harder to catch. She would get closer and closer to deadline until the paper was due to be off stone in mere hours and Alex was still sipping wine from a plastic cup and ignoring her desk phone.
