by A J Waines
‘I might be able to help,’ I said.
I couldn’t go back to work without knowing more. I gritted my teeth, digging my nails into the apple left uneaten in my pocket.
The officer let me through, just as the boat pulled up at the jetty. As soon as I saw the green T-shirt I knew, but I needed to see her face, just to be certain. The diver had stopped punching down on her chest and one of the officers on the boat was shaking his head.
The sodden body was carefully lifted onto a stretcher and taken up the ramp towards the ambulance. The stretcher was dripping as it passed me and lumps of mud slopped to the ground. An arm was flapping over the edge – the nails delicate and pearly-pink. I wanted to take hold of her hand, but it was too late. Her eyes had a strange film over them, like raw egg white, but the rest of her face was finally at peace. A paramedic pulled the blanket over her head.
‘I know the victim,’ I said, my voice breaking. ‘It’s Jane LaSalle.’
‘It isn’t your fault,’ said Con for the tenth time. He was out of his depth, pacing up and down beside my bedside.
The last few hours had been a blur. I’d spoken to police and given a statement, had a debriefing and was given the once-over by the team psychiatrist. Professor Schneider asked to speak to me, but he could see I was too upset to give precise details. I’m sure staff were starting to worry about my mental health and they had every reason. I couldn’t stop crying.
I’d sat in my office with the blinds down, holding a mug of cold tea, unable to move. I don’t know how long I’d stared into space. At some point, a nurse came in and put a blanket around my shoulders. She told me to go home. In the end, Con had to come for me in a taxi. He half carried me up the stairs to my flat.
I was exhausted. A deep, racking fatigue that dragged every ounce of energy from my body. I kept going over and over it in my mind. I thought we’d had a productive session a matter of minutes before Jane had decided to take her own life. I’d let her down. I’d missed something obvious. What the hell was I doing? I was a disgrace. I should be struck off.
I clutched my damp forehead. ‘I’m killing people, for God’s sake.’
The psychiatrist had given me a sedative and by now my bedroom was shifting around. I felt like I’d been cast adrift at sea. I wanted the world to stop bobbing up and down.
‘You need to take a break,’ said Con, wiping my forehead with a cold flannel. ‘This girl – she must have been psycho.’ I didn’t have the energy to argue with him.
I thought again about Jake taking his own life a matter of days ago – and now this.
‘You need to come with me to Arizona,’ said Con. ‘Think about finding another job when you get back.’
I blinked hard in disbelief. ‘I can’t just walk away,’ I croaked, anger swiftly rising to boiling point inside me. He got up to make yet another cup of tea.
I slept fitfully after that and woke up to find Miranda kneeling by my bed. She was stroking my hair.
‘Con’s been great,’ she said. ‘He’s just done a massive supermarket shop. He’s even bought you some of those herbal teas you like. I should hang on to him, if I were you. He’s a gem.’
‘Yeah…yeah…’
‘One of us will be here until you feel better.’
I didn’t care about me.
‘I can’t see Jane’s parents – not yet. I can’t cope with that.’
I could already hear the cries of Mr and Mrs LaSalle: What the hell happened? What did you say to her, for God’s sake?
‘Shush. No one’s going to bother you. Just stay here where you’re safe and sound.’
‘I should have done something.’
‘You can’t rescue everyone, Sam.’ She looked at me. A look that said she knew I’d spent my life devoted to saving others, because I could never save her.
I took her hand, but before I could say anything more, I slipped away from her into drug-induced slumber.
The next few days came and went in snatches. It was like listening to a radio that kept sliding off the station for hours at a time, but then suddenly came back loud and clear. Miranda left Con and me together; she was right about his kindness. He was a consummate nurse: attentive and patient. Nothing was too much bother for him.
By the third day, I felt like I was finally waking up and as I climbed out of the shower, the doorbell rang. Con had gone out after I’d mentioned a craving for chocolate mousse, so I answered the door in my dressing gown.
‘I brought this,’ he said, producing a small canvas from behind his back. ‘I thought it would last longer than flowers.’
‘Crikey, Leo – it’s gorgeous.’ It was a painting of an empty rowing boat floating on shimmering water. It sent tingles up the back of my neck.
‘He paints lots of Venetian landscapes,’ Leo said, without telling me who he was.
I backed up so he could come inside. ‘What are you doing here?’
Then it clicked. A surge of dread made me stagger back; he must have heard I’m about to be fired and has decided to break the news to me gently, in person.
‘The department has managed to fend off Jane’s parents. They won’t be bothering you.’
‘That’s a relief.’
Our eyes met. There was no point beating about the bush. ‘Have I still got a job?’
He laughed. ‘Of course.’ He waved me away down the hall. ‘I hope you’ve booked plenty of sick leave,’ he said.
I scoffed. ‘No way. I can’t just hide away. I’ve got to face this.’
‘Fair enough,’ he said smiling.
I offered him coffee and he stood with his hands behind his back appraising items in the sitting room as I went to boil the kettle. As I brought in the drinks, he pointed to a painting Miranda had insisted I hang up to cover a crack in the wall.
‘Yours?’ he asked.
‘No – my sister’s.’
‘The one with schizophrenia?’
I nodded.
He continued to scrutinise the picture. ‘Mmm…interesting.’
I offered him a seat, aware his eyes were now following my every move.
‘When did your sister first start showing symptoms?’ he asked without a preamble. It was a big question and I was shocked by its directness. Admittedly, he’d been very frank with me recently.
‘My parents were ambitious and self-obsessed. They sent Mimi – that’s her original name – to boarding school when she was eight. I followed suit two years later. Tidy the children away.’
I tugged my dressing gown around me, closely.
‘But she’d been volatile before that,’ I continued, perching beside him. ‘She was chaotic a lot of the time, both at school and in the holidays. Everyone thought it was attention-seeking. It got to the point where any social event became fraught. Will Mimi behave herself? Will Mimi have an outburst? Dinner parties…Christmas.’
Leo leaned forward so he could see me better, listening. I could smell his expensive aftershave – a seductive musky smell, with hints of cedar and vanilla.
‘She took her A levels a year early, because she was actually very bright, but failed them all,’ I said. ‘The following year, after terrible pressure from my parents, she retook them and scraped through. She got a place at university to study Medieval History, but then she failed her first-year exams and my mother humiliated her by burning all her course notes so she couldn’t do the re-sits. She dropped out when she was twenty and a few months later she was in a psychiatric ward. I think my mother’s actions in destroying her files were the final straw and that’s when the full-blown symptoms became undeniable.’
He gave me a sympathetic nod. ‘Like Superman bursting out of a phone box – only the person who emerged wasn’t someone you were pleased to see.’
‘Exactly. From that day, instead of trying to help or understand, my mother disowned her and Dad went along with it. They completely cut her off.’
I hadn’t intended to tell him any of this, but here I was, practically giving him m
y life story. Maybe it was because all my emotions were tripping over themselves after what had happened at work. But it wasn’t just that. There was something about Leo that made me want to open up. I’d felt it before with him; like there was an instant understanding between us. Then I put my finger on it – he made me feel safe.
At that moment, my phone chimed. It was a text from Con saying ‘something’ had come up and the chocolate mousse was on hold. I was relieved he wasn’t coming back. I didn’t feel strong enough for any fuss and nonsense over Leo’s unexpected visit.
Leo waited for me to put down the phone. ‘Okay?’
‘Yes,’ I said, with a sigh.
‘Carry on,’ he said, ‘what was Miranda like?’
Now I’d started telling him the whole story, I couldn’t stop. ‘Well, there were hallucinations, delusions, the voices she talked to and the periods of lucidity. Miranda was in and out of hospital and care homes. She ran away twice in her early twenties – hitch-hiked her way to the East End, stopped taking her medication, ended up homeless and disoriented. A stranger would pick her up, get in touch with my father who would collect her and the cycle would begin again.’
‘And you?’ he said. ‘What effect did this have on you?’
I hesitated. ‘I got tough. I cut Miranda off like everyone else did. I was no better than they were. I could never relax if I was around her, always waiting for the next thing to smash, the next person to scream.’
‘You were scared?’
‘Yes – scared of her – she was so unpredictable.’
He narrowed his eyes, taking time before he spoke. ‘But scared in other ways, too?’
He was spot on. He knew.
‘Yes,’ I said. I stared at my fingers, coiled in my lap. ‘My worst fear was that I might become like her.’
As I spoke, a prickle crept across my scalp. I’d never admitted this to a soul. The words came tumbling out, as though Leo had opened a hidden valve inside me that I knew nothing about.
‘If I spent time with her,’ I said, ‘I’d be “infected”, so I had to steer clear of her. And of course, I had good reason to be afraid – as her sibling, there’s a seven to nine per cent chance of developing schizophrenia myself. I’m still terrified by that. Always on the lookout for signs.’
‘So you let her go.’
I nodded. ‘I dreaded my visits to the first care home she was in. Every time I was due to go, I threw up the night before. When I actually came face to face with her, it was like talking to a hostile stranger.
‘After a few months, we’d set up a pattern where half the visiting time was spent in silence. Not just an awkward silence, but one saturated with accusations and guilt on both our parts. Eventually, she asked me to stop coming. I think she found my visits just as painful as I did. I wrote to her instead for a while, but she never wrote back. She told me she wasn’t ready. Ready to do what, I’m not quite sure. I waited and waited, but it never happened.
‘The last time I saw her in care was four years ago when I went with Dad at Christmas. Two years ago, she moved to a new place, but I’m ashamed to say in all that time I’ve never been. Then a couple of weeks ago she turned up on my doorstep.’
To my dismay, I felt a tear tickle down my cheek. Why hadn’t I told Con any of this? Was it just because he hadn’t asked the right questions?
‘Perhaps we can learn to face our regrets about the past together,’ he said softly.
Con brought over a wine-and-dine meal for two, the following Saturday. Only hours before, I’d been tempted to cancel and opt for a night alone with The Grand Budapest Hotel, but I knew time was running out before he started filming.
He looked ravishingly handsome as he stood in the doorway; his thick hair freshly washed. Breathing in his smell of leather and coconut, the tragedies of Jake and Jane folded themselves away at the back of my mind.
I don’t remember many details of what we ate – one minute I was spooning out horseradish sauce, the next Con was pulling my top over my head. We used our tongues, lips, fingertips to get to know each other all over again – grabbing each other’s flesh. Our love-making was frantic, verging on ferocious.
Afterwards, we took the dregs of the wine bottle to bed and listened to Adele, curled around each other.
I plumped up my pillow and was about to say something when I realised that Con had fallen asleep. I was too wide-awake to join him, so I read for a while.
As I reached over to put out the light, I stopped and propped myself up on one elbow, watching him. His eyelids quivered and he let out intermittent groans, then every so often he’d say a word. Most people mutter in their sleep, but with Con the words came out crisp and precise as if he was reciting poetry. Sometimes his words woke me with a jolt and with such clarity that I was able to scribble down what he said. In the morning, when I told him about the surreal little Haikus he’d produced during the night, he never believed me.
‘Rubbish,’ he’d say. ‘No one recites poetry in their sleep.’
I got up shortly afterwards for a glass of water. When I climbed back into bed, I felt the prickle of an unpleasant realisation. It wasn’t just Con’s possessive streak that made things difficult between us, there was another underlying problem. Lust had made me so blind, I hadn’t even spotted it. It was about the level at which we connected. Even though I wanted to share my deepest feelings with him, he didn’t give me enough space to do it. He swept over my emotions and made his own mind up about what I was going through, before I’d even opened my mouth.
Even when he did listen, he didn’t seem able to grasp the finer points of what I was trying to explain. It sent a wave of deep disappointment through me.
The following morning, Con left early. He bolted down the stairs pulling his jacket on, gripping a slice of toast between his teeth. He said he needed to get back to let the decorator in.
As I was tidying up, I discovered his watch on the floor. It was Sunday, so I didn’t need to rush off anywhere. I decided to drop it off for him in Balham and buy fresh fruit on the way back.
He took a while to answer the door.
‘Oh – I wasn’t expecting you,’ he said. His voice carried surprise rather than the delight I’d anticipated, but he softened it with a smile.
I dangled his watch. ‘Thought you might be needing this. I found it under the television.’
‘Can’t imagine how it got there,’ he crooned, pulling me close by the lapels of my jacket. We were still standing on the front door mat.
‘Aren’t you going to invite me in?’ I asked.
He tucked his shirt in. ‘Fancy going out for some decent coffee?’
I could smell paint and remembered Con had said he’d got decorators in.
‘Okay,’ I said shrugging. ‘But we can stay here if you like. I don’t mind the smell of emulsion.’
There was a shadow moving behind Con and I adjusted my eyes. The figure came up behind Con’s shoulder.
‘Well – this is cosy,’ she drawled, a paintbrush in her hand.
‘Miranda! What are you doing here?’ I said, my mouth tight.
They both looked at each other. Why do they look so guilty? No, not guilty, more like smug. I felt the way I had the other evening when I’d found them in my flat. Like they were colluding against me. Like they had a secret and were using it as a weapon.
‘I meant to tell you last night…’ said Con, kicking at the mat with his bare foot.
‘I’m Con’s new flatmate,’ said Miranda. ‘Coffee?’
She turned away.
My eyes pinged wide open. ‘Flatmate?’
He scratched his nose.
‘Did you think I wouldn’t find out?’ I said, once Miranda was out of earshot.
‘Of course not, I was trying to find the right time to tell you.’
‘And the whole of last night wasn’t enough for you? How long does it take to say “By the way, your sister has moved in with me?”’
‘You make it sound like I was t
rying to hide it.’
‘Why didn’t you check with me first?’
‘I didn’t think I had to ask your permission,’ he shot back.
I felt like storming off, but I didn’t want a row hanging over us. Instead, I took a step inside. Con walked ahead of me into the sitting room, running his hands through his hair in agitation.
‘I’ll stop for a coffee,’ I said. ‘But not for long.’
‘Good,’ said Con firmly, although I wasn’t sure which part of what I’d said he was glad about. He left me in the sitting room and joined Miranda in the kitchen.
As I sat down, I noticed that two of Miranda’s paintings had already found their way onto the walls. I recognised trinkets and books that belonged to my sister on the shelves and ledges. She hadn’t taken long to make herself at home.
The kitchen door was ajar and I watched them from the sofa. Miranda was pouring the coffees and Con was laying biscuits on a plate. I didn’t want to get caught up with any silly jealousy about the two of them. It was all above board. I was sure of that. The only reason Con hadn’t said anything was because he knew I’d react badly, due to Miranda’s turbulent history.
As I watched her, a memory flickered on the edges of my vision and then came out into the open. It had been kicking around inside my head for so long, I wasn’t sure if it was a memory or a dream. We were young; Miranda must have been about eight. She came out of my parents’ bedroom one morning, her thumb in her mouth, trailing a towel behind her. The look on her face said she’d been smacked, but the towel hid her legs. Dad always left his mark. Although Mum was the disciplinarian, it was usually Dad who was railroaded into dishing out the final punishment.
I remember I was sitting on the landing and Miranda walked straight past me with a fixed stare.
I don’t know why that particular scene had lodged itself in my mind. Maybe it was the blank look on her face that I’d found so disturbing. Maybe her illness had been taking hold, even then.
