by Aly Sidgwick
‘Shall I turn off the engine?’ she asks.
I squeeze my hands tight around my sunglasses.
‘Go right at the next corner.’
‘Stainton Street?’ She points to the junction several feet before us.
I nod.
Rhona starts the car and we creep forwards. As we turn into the street where I grew up, I struggle to withhold a whimper. An image flashes through my mind, of the day I left this street for good. Dad shouting at me to get a real job. Mum crying. I swore never to come back. And until now, I’m pretty sure I kept my word.
‘Are you all right?’
‘Mm hmm.’
‘Tell me where to stop.’
‘Not yet.’
Slowly, we climb a shallow slope. Sometimes we creep so gently that the car almost rolls back. But Rhona never loses her patience with me. When we reach number eleven, I whisper, ‘Stop.’
#
For some time, we sit in the car. My parents’ house looks much smaller than I remembered. All of the lights are off, and this detail raises questions I am wholly unprepared to face. There is no car in the driveway.
‘Looks like no one’s home,’ whispers Rhona.
‘Give me a minute. I’ll go look in a minute.’
‘I’ll come with you.’
‘I’m not scared … I just …’
My voice trails off. Rhona keeps schtum for a second. Then she says, decisively, ‘I’m coming with you.’
We look at the house.
‘Seems a nice neighbourhood,’ offers Rhona. I don’t know if this is meant to be sarcastic or not. Without a word, I click my door open and set a foot on the kerb. The breeze is colder than I’d expected. Behind me, I hear Rhona following.
‘You’d better lock it,’ I tell her. ‘The kids round here are little shits.’
We cross the scrubby front garden. Flip-flopped feet schlopping in unison.
‘What time is it?’ I ask, just before we reach the door. She looks at her wrist. Makes a face.
‘I don’t know. My watch stopped working.’
I stare at the door knocker, which is fancier than the one I remember. More curly. Tarnished in a deliberate, shabby-chic way. That must have been my mother’s doing. Dad has no taste when it comes to such things.
‘It must be nine-ish,’ adds Rhona, over my shoulder. ‘Do you think he’s in bed?’
‘No … He stays up late …’
My stomach twinges. It’s not like I’d expected everything to be the same, here. I’d already known my mother wouldn’t answer the door. That something has happened to my Dad. But now that I’m faced with it, it’s a shock. As I stand looking up at the house, I realise how naïve I was to imagine my childhood home would remain the same forever. A hollow feeling burrows into my chest as I realise my father might not even be here. That he might not be alive.
‘I feel sick,’ I whisper as I raise a hand to knock. The brand-new door knocker is too big a step for me right now. I can’t bring myself to even touch it.
Holding our breath, we wait.
Nothing.
Across the road, no one is in sight. I stand back from the house and scan the first-floor windows. No sign of life.
‘Hmm,’ I say, and go round the house, to the driveway. In the shadows at the end I see the gate that leads into the back yard, and almost automatically, I try the handle. It opens.
‘What are you doing?’ hisses Rhona. Then we step through, and I close the gate behind us.
‘It’s okay,’ I whisper.
Back here, like the front of the house, the drawn curtains are dark. I tiptoe to the back of the yard and lift up the last, cracked paving stone. There! The back-door key. Some things don’t change after all.
#
‘Dad?’ I call as we close the kitchen door behind us. Gingerly, I switch on the light. The first thing I see is my dad’s green anorak, draped over a kitchen chair. Then I know for sure we’re in the right house. The wallpaper is the same. The beige telephone. The mugs on the shelf. The butter dish in the shape of a cow.
‘Dad?’ I repeat, feeling dizzy now.
‘This feels wrong,’ mutters Rhona. Her voice is tense.
I rush past her, through the sliding door into the living room. Through the door to the stairs, up to my parents’ bedroom, and turn on the light. Nothing. The bed is perfectly made.
I go back to the landing and look down the stairs. Rhona is in the hall, looking up at me.
‘There’s no one here,’ I say.
‘Are you sure?’
‘Yeah.’
‘But … you recognise it?’
‘Yeah. All of this stuff is theirs.’
‘Maybe he’s away?’
I walk across the landing and open the door to my old bedroom. Without meaning to, I give a little cry.
‘What?’ calls Rhona. As her feet patter upstairs, I remain frozen to the spot. Rhona appears at my shoulder. She looks at me, then at the room, then back at me.
‘What?’
‘My old room. It’s exactly the same.’
‘My God, don’t scare me like that. I thought you’d—’
‘No. I mean exactly the same.’
Steadying myself on the door frame, I hobble inside. None of it has altered since the day I left for university. The tiny single bed with its Halloween duvet cover. The shelves of books and NMEs. The giant poster of Trent Reznor, now faded to beige. The photos of long-gone school friends. My sketches and clippings and study notes still sellotaped to the peeling wallpaper. A nectarine stone wrapped in a tissue by the reading lamp. Scrunched-up receipts and loose change. Even my Lightwater Valley mug with an unwashed coffee stain clinging to the inside rim. Every surface, whether flat or vertical, hard or porous, bears a thick, bluish-grey mantle of dust.
‘Why would he keep it the same?’ I gasp. ‘It’s been … years …’
Rhona pats the duvet cover, sending a grainy cloud into the air. Both of us cough.
‘No,’ she says. ‘It’s not just this room. This dust’s all over the house.’
Outside, a dog is yapping, and though I know it can’t be the same dog that used to yap out there, the memory sends a shiver through me. Behind those curtains, is it still 1998? It feels like I could pick up where I left off. Rewind to a point where I still had choices, and choose a different path.
‘Come on,’ calls Rhona, from halfway down the stairs. ‘It’s not good for you to be in there.’
‘Wait. I just—’
‘Come on,’ she repeats. I drift to the top of the landing and look downstairs. The floor below the front door is piled with letters. I descend to Rhona’s side and we hover over it.
‘Do you think we should open one?’ she asks.
I shrug. We start to kneel down. And that’s when we hear the footsteps.
35
The door knocker raps loudly and our shoulders leap up to our ears. Rhona is making a face at me that I think means Don’t make a sound. We hover, semi-hunched, staring at each other. Outside, I hear feet shifting. A rustle of cloth. Then a shadow passes the keyhole and the door knocker raps again.
‘I know it’s you, Bill,’ says a woman’s voice. ‘I can see the light on.’
My eyes widen. I leap to look through the spyhole, and Rhona leaps after me, making a noise like f-th-wp-fth-thp!
‘Go round the back!’ I hiss.
Rhona’s fingers claw my arm. Outside, feet shuffle. A pause. Then, ‘Kathy?’
‘Go round,’ I repeat. Then I free myself from Rhona and slip through the house.
A tiny woman waits at the back door, arms crossed across her massive bosom. She wears a Michael Jackson T-shirt over tracksuit bottoms, and a pair of pink sheepskin slippers. As I approach, she peers through her varifocals.
‘It is you!’ she cries. ‘I thought my old ears were playing up.’
‘Hi Madge,’ I grin. She’s the closest thing to family I’ve seen in a long time.
Rhona comes around the corner then, and Madge j
umps at the sight of her.
‘Well, haven’t you been in the wars?’ she exclaims. Suddenly I realise how dishevelled we must look. The cut on Rhona’s head has scabbed up, and though we washed our faces earlier with a bottle of water we’re still not a pretty sight.
‘Kathy, what on earth are you doing here?’ Madge asks.
‘I came to see Dad. Where is he?’
Madge puts a hand to her mouth. ‘I thought you were him,’ she says. ‘I thought they’d finally let him out …’
‘Is he away?’
‘Do you really not know? Oh … Heck …’
A tear trickles from her eye and pools along the frame of her glasses. She leans on the wall with one hand and holds her face with the other.
‘Your dad’s in the hospital, pet. They’ve had him there since the breakdown …’
My stomach lurches. But this is better news than I’d feared.
‘What hospital?’
‘Lysdon Manor.’
‘Where’s that?’
‘Is that your car out front?’
‘Yes,’ I reply. Rhona shoots me a look.
‘Well, if you’ll give me a lift, I can take you. It’ll have to be the morning, though. Visiting hours are over.’
I look at Rhona. She frowns.
‘I can’t believe you didn’t know,’ says Madge. ‘But seriously, pet, why are you here? Your Dad said you were in Norway—’
‘I was.’
Rhona clears her throat. I look at her, then say, ‘Listen, Madge … It’s kind of a secret that I’m here.’
‘Oh! Well, you know me! Say no more, petal. I wouldn’t have anyone to tell anyway.’
‘It’s really important,’ I say. ‘That you don’t tell anyone.’
‘Righto. Well, I’m freezing me cheeks off. I only nipped across for a minute. But I’ll come by tomorrow … Say, ten o’clock? That should give us plenty of—’
‘No,’ says Rhona. ‘We have to go now.’
Madge stares at her, the light bouncing off her glasses.
‘It’s after nine,’ she replies, in a does not compute voice.
I look at Rhona too. She raises her eyebrows.
‘Surely it can wait till morning,’ adds Madge. Her facial expression suggests she is waiting for the punchline.
‘No. It can’t.’
‘What if they won’t let us in?’ I say.
‘We’ll tell them it’s an emergency.’
‘What kind of emergency?’
‘I don’t know. But it’s the only way. Time is not exactly on our side.’
‘Oh dear …’ murmurs Madge, and rubs her glasses with the back of her hand.
‘Can you take us there?’ I ask.
‘Kathy, love, are you in some kind of trouble?’
Over Madge’s shoulder, Rhona gives me a look.
‘Yes,’ I reply. Rhona does an angry-dance.
Madge’s face crunches smaller.
‘Don’t you watch the news?’ I ask.
‘Telly’s on the blink. Why?’
‘We’re on it.’
She steps back and looks at me. In the silence that follows, I can almost hear her brain whirring. A cool breeze drifts around us, smelling like vinegary fish ‘n’ chips.
‘Well,’ replies Madge, at last. ‘We’d best get going, hadn’t we?’
#
We wait in the car while Madge fetches her anorak. As the minutes tick away, Rhona’s knuckles grow white round the steering wheel.
‘She’s calling the police. I know it.’
‘No. She wouldn’t.’
‘How do you know? How well do you know her?’
‘She’s as good as family.’
We drift back into silence. Five minutes later, Madge rushes out, dressed in a dark-green tracksuit. I sit up as she crashes into the passenger seat. But before I can open my mouth, she pants, ‘Sorry! Sorry! I didn’t have anything black!’
‘Why would you need black?’
‘We’re undercover, aren’t we?’
I glance through the front. Her tracksuit bottoms are tucked into a pair of buccaneer boots.
‘Sorry!’ she says again, and the earnestness in her face makes me want to giggle.
‘Right,’ says Rhona, and starts the engine. All of us tilt backwards.
The drive to Whitley Bay is tense. Though the roads are smaller now, there’s far more traffic, and we’re forced to stop at many brightly lit intersections. I slide further and further down in my seat, shielding my face when pedestrians come close. Rhona adheres wordlessly to Madge’s directions, but the rhythm of her breathing shows she’s scared. At one junction we stop beside a supermarket, and I have a clear view through the doors to the news stand. There, the front page of a newspaper displays a picture of my face. After that, I lie down.
Lysdon Manor lies in private grounds on the northern edge of town. An eighteenth-century mansion house, hidden from the road by a tall stone wall.
‘Not NHS, then,’ says Rhona as she brings the car to a halt. I sit up and peer through the windscreen. Before us, the gates are closed.
‘Come on,’ squawks Madge. ‘There’s a car park at the top of the—’
‘No, this is fine right here. Some exercise won’t hurt us.’
I shoot a glance at Rhona, but her expression is difficult to decipher.
‘How will we get in?’ I ask.
But Madge says, ‘Don’t worry. I know the lass on reception.’
‘The gates …’
‘There’s a button,’ says Madge. She shoves her door open and disappears.
Rhona tips her seat forwards for me. As I get out I hear Madge on the intercom, saying she has important business.
Madge grumbles about her legs all the way up the driveway. Rhona and I trail behind, and though it’s too dark to see each other’s faces, she turns her head my way many times. Twice she touches my hand with her own, and I know she is offering me the chance to turn back. But I shake my head and keep walking.
As the driveway curves closer to the house, the sculptured bank to our right flattens out and we catch a glimpse to the garden beyond. Just a featureless black expanse from this distance, though by daylight I’m sure it’s impressive. At the back, five spotlights throw circles against an evergreen hedge. Men on a scaffold are threading fairy lights through the branches.
‘Doing it up for the Christmas ball, I see,’ says Madge.
‘Ball?’
‘Yeah. For the residents.’
‘But it’s September—’
‘Ach. They do things a bit early here. It’s not like anyone will notice.’
I stare at the back of Madge’s head. She keeps ambling forwards. Somewhere nearby, a hedge trimmer fires up, buzzes for a minute, then dies. We pass a man in a fleece jacket loading branches onto a pick-up.
‘Award-winning gardens, these,’ calls Madge.
‘Wait. You said this was a hospital.’
‘It is. Sort of.’
‘Sort of?’
Madge’s hand rises, in silhouette, and flutters beside her ear.
‘They’re all … you know … a bit doolally,’ she says.
#
‘Hallo, Margaret, long time no see!’ says the girl on reception. Rhona and I hang back, trying to avoid eye contact, while Madge reels off a fantastically long-winded lie about delivering an important letter. ‘Got new chauffeurs?’ jokes the receptionist, pointing her biro at us. I jump forwards, fearing Madge will spill the beans. But to Madge’s credit, she replies, ‘No, these are my nieces.’
‘Well, I’ll need signatures from you all,’ says the receptionist, and slaps a dog-eared clipboard onto the desktop. Madge signs her name and hands the pen to me. I pause. But Rhona dives in to take over. Without hesitation, she scrawls A. McDonald. Then, in the line below this, S. McDonald. We hand back the clipboard and the girl buzzes us through to a buttercup-yellow waiting room.
‘He’ll be glad to see you,’ she calls, before the door closes.
‘He’s barely had any visitors.’
We sit in silence. We are the only ones here. Cardboard reindeer adorn the back wall, each fastened to the last with yellowing string. Three crimson foil bells hang from the middle of the ceiling, and under the plastic Christmas tree someone has made a manger from a shoebox.
‘Madge,’ I say. ‘Do you mind if I go in alone?’
‘No probs, love.’
‘What about this letter we’re meant to be delivering?’ asks Rhona. ‘They might ask to see it.’
Madge lifts a carrier bag from her handbag and silently hands it to me. Inside, it’s full of envelopes.
‘Mostly junk mail,’ she says. ‘But don’t worry. I don’t think anyone will ask.’
‘Where did you—’
‘Off the doormat. I usually sneak it in for him.’
I look at the letters and suddenly feel very sad.
‘How long has he been in here?’ I ask.
‘Let me see …’ Madge counts on her fingers. ‘It was the day after your mum’s funeral, if I’m not mistaken. They found him in his pyjamas, near where the ferries go out. Terrible business. He was out of it for weeks. Since the very day she died, if you ask me.’
‘What date was that?’ asks Rhona.
‘Hoo, I dunno … March, I think, because of the snow-drops. Such a beautiful ceremony …’
‘Same time you showed up,’ whispers Rhona. ‘March 15th.’
My gaze drifts to a pamphlet on the coffee table. Living with Mental Illness, it says. And below these words, a picture of a family laughing.
The door buzzes and a different nurse comes through. Younger than the other girl, with an asymmetrical haircut I can only assume is fashionable. She perches herself on the coffee table, clasps her hands together and smiles.
‘Okay. I’ve got some ground rules for you new guys.’
I shrink beneath the girl’s gaze, but her eyes keep firm contact with my own.
‘We’ve been in places like this before,’ says Rhona.
‘Well, I’ll go through them anyway. Right. Rule number one – and I can’t stress this enough – is that you don’t discuss the outside world. No news stories, no TV stuff, no gossip, nothing that would upset him. We try to protect our patients from that as much as possible. All right?’
We nod.
‘Second of all, Mr Fenwick is still quite jumpy. He gets anxious easily and is sensitive to sudden movements, loud noises et cetera. So please keep this in mind at all times. Also, we’d thank you not to use any bad language.’
