by Lucy Booth
Her eyes dart to the corner where Bella cowers. Bella who tried to save her in the car and who’s turned on her master from the very second he first shouted at Ellie.
‘I’m sorry, Ellie.’ Lips pressed against the top of her head as he whispers into pale blonde hair.
I reach for his wrist. Thread my fingers through his. Bring his hand up to Ellie’s face to pinch closed those tiny nostrils and cover her mouth with that meaty palm.
She struggles against him. Arching her back and trying to bite his palm with her small teeth. And though she draws blood, though the pain slices through his hand, I hold him firmly in place, crushing him against her face. Muffled screams come from under the hand until her body starts to sag. As her eyes close, once, twice, three times, she sees me, clear in the room.
‘Mummy!’ A scream. In these final seconds she breaks free of her corporeal body, leaving Ian to finish the job. Runs full pelt into my arms. I can’t tell her. I can’t explain to a seven-year-old that I’m not her mummy. That I just look like her mummy and she’ll never again see the real woman.
But I look down at her, at her soft hair and rounded cheeks, at the blonde hair that now hangs shiny and straight and smells faintly of apples. I look down at her and I know that I can’t do this. That this is wrong. That I’m taking the wrong person, that I don’t care about the consequences, about my future, about my life. This is the life I can’t take. This is the line that I must draw. She can’t die. Not here, not like this. She can’t.
Where Ian crouches on the other side of the room there is a flicker of movement in a slim leg and I know I haven’t got her yet. I still have time. To leave her now, to leave her to life.
A wooden strut next to me, left to one side by the door from his first entry into this space. A wooden strut with a rusted nail protruding from one end. One swing is all it takes. One upward swing to embed sharp metal into the soft, vulnerable spot at the base of his skull. He doesn’t see me coming. He doesn’t hear me coming. Just a groan as his back arches and his body slumps to cover hers.
To accompany his muted slump, a screech fills the air. The howl of a banshee, a fishwife, a harridan. ‘You bleedin’ idiot!’ My foot kicks at his lumpen body and he moans. His body flops to the side to look up at me and he groans. Eyes squint and peer through the gloaming, the gloom. He can see me now, hunched shoulders outlined in the dim light.
‘Mother …’
My hands have shrunk, gloved in wrinkled skin. Stubby nails blackened with grime. That screech, that scream, it was mine. For Ian has chosen his mother, the woman whose approval he sought for so many years, to be the one he sees, that last woman before he fades and passes. But she would not have chosen to see him again. Not for the world.
‘You dirty little bastard!’ we shout, her and I. A kick to his spine. He rolls from where he has covered Ellie, turns his back to her to curl into a ball, arms wrapped round his head to protect himself as blows rain from above. ‘You nasty little man.’ The wooden strut swings once again to swipe blows against his side, his thighs, his hands, his rear.
To his side, Bella snuffles over a small figure lying bent and broken, but alive on the floor. Licks salty tears from smeared cheeks, from eyes that blink at a soft tongue. Small barks, gruff little ruffs. She runs to the door, scrapes and whines. Runs back to Ellie. Doesn’t understand why she doesn’t move, doesn’t follow her. But Ellie can’t. Her limbs are heavy, her head filled with wool. So Bella runs from door, to girl, to door, to girl. Until finally she settles where she’s needed most.
Nudges her nose under curled fingers to wait for help to come, however long that may be. Other than a snarled growl in the direction of Mrs Morris and me when that first strut was swung, she has paid no attention to Ian. Her loyalty no longer lies there.
Where Ian lies, a tirade of abuse, of insults, of derision cascades over him. High-pitched and ranting, his mother has never held him in any esteem, has never really cared. His father left before he was born, and she hated Ian for that. Blamed him for Colin walking out the door, when in reality it was that self-same tirade of abuse, of insults and derision that drove a mild-mannered man on his way. It was her brother whose fingers would creep under that thin duvet all those years ago, and her brother who she’d call downstairs when dinner was ready. If she knew what was happening she never admitted it, never tried to intervene. But he loved her all the same, did Ian. Desperate for her acknowledgement and approval. And all she could do, all she would do, is criticise.
And so he ends his life where it began. A good-for-nothing, lazy, hateful waste of space. In her words. These words that pour from my mouth.
I hate these deaths, these final moments harbouring hate. For however hateful that person is, the idea that they are so despised, so desperate for love from the one person who shuns them, those final moments are all they have left.
And so these deaths, these ones filled with hate, are the quickest. Who wants to stay around to be abused, to be hit upon and hated? So as I lay my hand on a shaking shoulder, and as these words flow relentlessly from my mouth, Ian Patrick Morris plummets to black.
*
Dusk in that prison quickly spirals into the blackest of nights, and we lie, we four, side by side as we wait to be found. For Ellie, limbs are leaden and eyes tired, her head aches and an egg-shaped lump on her brow gently throbs. Though her eyes flicker and her foot occasionally twitches, she remains motionless, sleeping the sleep of the drugged, the spent, the weakened and drained. When her eyes briefly open, she has no sense of her surroundings, no memory of where she is or how she came to be there. So heavy are those lids that the effort to look around her is too great and she quickly falls back into the deepest slumber. She doesn’t remember him coming at her, can’t see the shape of his body lying so close, and so she lies, she sleeps, cocooned and protected by an amnesiac embrace.
To one side lies Bella. Noses her snout into Ellie’s palm. She is alert to every twitch, every sigh, every flicker of lids, causing her eyebrows to raise, a low whine to escape, a tongue to gently dab at a dirty cheek. When Ellie sleeps, Bella’s chin rests on her paws and she watches. Doesn’t sleep for a second.
To the other side, I stretch. Lying on my side to shelter Ellie and form a barrier to her body and Ian’s, lying inert behind me. Head lolling in a viscous pool of its own blood. There is nothing there, nothing left. No soul clinging desperately to life. But I separate them, for fear that she’ll wake in this hell hole, turn to the side and find her face inches from thick fingers reaching towards her to stroke once more.
A late dawn in this dim little prison. While the rest of the world are waking to a bright blue sky, to a crisp morning and the sound of birdsong, colours are muted in our cell, where windows are layered in moss and shaded by the trees outside. But as fingers of light creep through smeared windows to caress dormant faces, so they are sliced through by pulses of flashing blue. Where birdsong and the scratch of branch against glass seep to remain unheard, the screech of sirens and the rumble of engines pierce sleeping ears and stir slumbering bodies.
Banging at the door.
‘Ian! Ian Morris! Are you in there?’
No reply, for the man they are looking for will never be woken again by lights, by sirens, by the rumble of engines and the shouts of men. No reply except for a bark from Bella. A whine. She runs to the door, scratches against it. Barks once, twice. Returns to Ellie, her charge, who lies still motionless on the dirt-caked floor.
A face appears at a cracked window. A gloved hand taps at the cracked pane, breaks off shards to clear the view.
‘Sir! They’re here, sir. Two bodies, sir, neither moving.’
A crash, a thud at a secured door. Bella’s barking is insistent now. She growls, runs towards the door before another crash sends her spiralling back to Ellie, where she remains, barking at the door, protecting her friend.
Two more crashes, two more contacts between battering ram and barrier and one of the door panels falls, casting a bro
ad shaft of light into the room. A head appears in the gap ‘Sir. It looks like we’ve found them.’
Detective Superintendent Paul Harper steps through the hole made in the door. Hands gloved in sterile white. A female police officer by his side. She crouches beside Ellie, reaches warm fingers to find a pulse. Bella spins on the spot, barks incessantly, but makes no move to bite. They’re here to help, these strange people who have arrived to bring light and hope.
‘She’s alive, sir. There’s a pulse.’
Bodies cloaked in white move into the area. Ellie is bundled up tight, an oxygen mask gently placed over her face. Bella is carried into the back of a police Land Rover, where she runs from side to side, desperate to catch a glimpse of her friend, to check she’s OK as a tiny body is stretchered into an ambulance.
They turn to Ian, the DS and his second. Reach to feel for a pulse, but finding none step back and stand upright to look down at this body, broken and bloodied.
‘Looks like he had a nasty fall, sir, that’s what I’d say. Must’ve tripped over in the dark. Knocked himself out. Bastard.’
His body is lifted on to a stretcher. Zipped into a black bag. Carted off to who knows where, and who knows who cares.
Slipping out past the men clad in white, I step out into a fresh, crisp, blue-skied day. A day of new beginnings, of spring. It’s time for me to leave. I’m no longer needed here. The game is over, my time is up. While one person lies dead, it’s not the person for whom I was sent, and that, ultimately, is my failure. I see Him leaning against the trunk of a young silver birch, bathed in the acid-green light of new leaves. See Him shake His head, scuff His toe against mossy ground. Turn His back on me and walk silently into the woods.
And so I slip away, in the opposite direction. To another death and my morbid life. Slip away to start again, to a chance missed and a love lost. For Tom can no longer be mine.
21
A DARKENED ROOM, LIT BY THE GREEN DIGITS ON a digital clock that flash minute by minute in the dimness, and a lamp on the landing that keeps the real darkness at bay. I know I can’t have him, this slumbering body who lies next to me, but I can’t keep away. It is here, in Tom’s bedroom, where I find my refuge, where I find my relief. And it is here, in Tom’s bedroom, where I find myself trying to block out the horrors of the week gone by, to hunker down against the screams of a fishwife that ring in my ears, and the image of thin, pale legs flailing against the bulk of a middle-aged man.
He draws me in, tucks me close. Wraps one arm around my waist, throws one leg over my thighs. He smiles a sleepy smile, sighs a contented sigh. Wriggles deeper into bed to nestle his head into the crook of my neck. And as I lie awake, fixated on the green digits that flip and blink, he sleeps.
As those digits flip from 02:28 to 02:29, I feel that lurch. The pull that tells me I am heading on to my next death, wherever that may be, whomever I may find and whomever I may become. Because what I must remember, in this sanctuary, this haven, is that I have failed. That I have no place here. And for me, death must go on.
I close my eyes, waiting for the lurch, the swirl to subside. Feel the weight of Tom’s leg lift, feel his arm stretch and uncurl away from me. Hear the light tap as soft shoes make contact with lino, and open my eyes to find myself in one of the hospital corridors it has been my habit to stalk. Dark but for the working lights, I can hear the trill of the heart monitor, see bulging curtains surrounding a bed to betray the flurry of nurses working within, and I know that I have found my place.
Behind those curtains, Francis Wellesley lies prostate and helpless in the midst of nurses who bustle about, around, above and to the side. Rearranging the oxygen mask, checking the level in the catheter bag that hangs heavy from the bed frame. His blood pressure is low, the oxygen in his system dropping despite the mask clamped over nose and lips.
I slip through a gap in the curtains to take my place. Brush past the backs of nurses crouching over a motionless body to settle into the high-backed chair to the side of the bed. To the side of my husband of fifty-seven years, whom I left myself six long months before. For in this bay, next to this bed, I am Barbara Wellesley. Loving wife and mother of three. Grandmother of seven. A woman Frank never expected to see again, despite the longing and loneliness, and his deepest desires to have her by his side once more. As I sit, I reach up to pat short permed hair into place, softly set and curled for the occasion. For this occasion. For one final goodbye.
My hand drops to the bed to cover his, to offer a reassuring squeeze. His eyes open at the unexpected gentle touch, but there is no surprise in them at the arrival of Barbara in the wee small hours. He has been expecting me. Not knowing of course what form I would take, but knowing with great certainty that death is but a matter of moments away.
‘They do a marvellous job,’ he mumbles in his deep, West Country burr, nodding at the whirlwind of activity around him. ‘I thought that, you know. When you were here. But then I was so worried about you, and I felt so sick at the thought of you going that I couldn’t tell them. And now, well, it’s too late now, isn’t it? For me to say thank you. Because I’m off now, I think. I hope they know. I hope somebody does tell them.’
I smile. A thin effort. Watery. The most I can muster in an effort to reassure. Pat his hand with its raised veins and broken capillaries.
‘I’m sure they do, dear.’ Even I can hear how dismissive my tone.
‘You’re quiet,’ he says. ‘Everything all right?’
I smile again, that same thin, sad smile. But inside I am lost. For while I have the appearance of Barbara, of a wife well loved for more than half a century, I’m not her. I can’t tap the memories that ordinarily come so readily to hand. I know we have children and grandchildren, but I can’t capture the intimacies, the memories, the secret moments that would ease this final passage. While I try to remember, to embody her, the memories I see behind my mind’s eye are all my own. Of Hywel and Rose, Rob, Ellie and Ian. Of long nights in dark rooms with Tom.
And so I answer with a non-committal, ‘Hmm.’ Squeeze his soft hand once more and dredge through the memories I have of visiting Barbara in this same hospital barely six months earlier. When I arrived as her daughter. Dredge through what memories I can amass to dedicate myself to the man lying beside me at this very moment.
He struggles to sit upright, raising himself on arthritic elbows from which all pain seeped at my arrival. ‘I don’t understand,’ he says. ‘You’re you, but you’re not … you. Remember when we went to Tenerife in seventy-nine? With the kids? And you had some dodgy fish and couldn’t get out of bed? You wouldn’t even stop talking then and you couldn’t even move. What’s wrong, love?’
I laugh at him, with him, a small laugh held in my nose. A forced laugh because this, this whole situation is the wrong way round. He is not here to support me, to worry for my welfare. And so I laugh to disguise my confusion, to maintain a guise that I am here for him, and that I am who I purport to be. Because in truth, I don’t remember that holiday in Tenerife. I don’t remember food poisoning and the inevitable fevers, being bed-bound in the August heat. I don’t remember because for the first time since taking on this role, I am not who I say I am, and my own personal reality is encroaching too closely. Where I would ordinarily leave my individual self on the far side of that bulging curtain, I am here, myself, by Francis’s bed in the veiled disguise of a beloved wife. I am here, myself, an unwelcome hanger-on.
‘I’m fine, dear! Just fine. I just don’t like to see you like this, you see.’ My voice pitched high, unnaturally cheerful.
As I speak, his face contorts. A grimace. A gasp. An iron claw grips his chest, sending shooting pains through the very heart of him. He clutches at my hand.
‘Barb …’ His voice hoarse, strained. The voice of the physical man lying in that bed, not the soul I am here to soothe. My presence is doing nothing to calm, nothing to console. Nothing to alleviate the pain that tugs on every nerve of his being.
‘Oh, Frank. Ju
st wait, my love. It’ll all be over soon. The pain will pass and you’ll be at peace. I promise.’ But the words are hollow, meaningless, and I myself am helpless. They are simply words. Not personal to him, not meaningful to them. Simple words that could be uttered by anyone.
His clutch on my hand tightens, knuckles whiten. Another spasm of pain passes through like a crashing wave. Blood pressure drops still further, oxygen can’t reach where it is so desperately needed. His body lies shrouded in wires, all leading to a monitor that shrieks its high-pitched scream in an unbroken screech.
‘Frank, I’m …’ I try to find the words but they are lost to me.
My presence here is unsettling – to him and to me. And as pain takes hold, as the final breaths are eked out of a dying body, the cubicle is plunged into darkness. Not for Francis a gentle fade to black, an easy passing from this world. A switch has flicked, his soul has leapt from his body, but he is no longer in pain. It is the sole solace I can take, for I have had little part to play in easing his end.
At the foot of the bed, a young doctor stands slump-shouldered and defeated.
‘We’ve lost him,’ he says to the clutch of nurses who still surround his bed, peeling the sticky pads that monitored his vitals from delicate skin that could rip at any moment. ‘Francis Wellesley. Time of death two forty-seven a.m.’
Hours pass, days pass, weeks pass, lives pass. Deaths surround me, support me, distract me, subsume me. They are now, more so than ever before, a job. A way of life, a daily grind that must be endured. After Francis, each death fills me with worry, a fear that I will leave other souls in torment, other bodies in pain. And so I force myself to concentrate, to expel all thoughts of those that have gone before and those I know no longer have the hope of ahead. Because, ultimately, I have failed. Failed in this mission to win life. Failed in my mission to leave death far behind. In taking the wrong life, back there in that miserable little cell, I have put any chance of having my own life out of my reach. And in my failure to kill Ellie and my determination to serve those passing on from this life, I know that I must stay away from Him. Stay away from that mocking laugh, from the inevitable derision in His voice when He jeers at me, parades my shortcomings before me and forces me to relive every minute of that painful night. The shake of His head in a spring glade was enough – I have disappointed Him, His challenge has come to naught, and I don’t need Him to tell me that.
