I knew she was coming home today, but I guess I forgot. So when she was standing at the top of the stairs when I got back from school, it sort of made me jump and I felt scared. She didn’t say anything at first, just stood there looking down at me in her big white nightie, like a ghost. Her eyes had even darker circles underneath them than before and she looked really skinny, like she’d forgotten to eat while she was at the hospital.
I didn’t know what to say, so I went into the lounge to watch the big TV. The remote doesn’t work any more, so you have to push a button beneath the screen and then wait a little while for the picture to blink itself alive. A cartoon I don’t like came on, but I was already sitting on the sofa so I watched it anyway. I was still wearing my hat and gloves because it is always cold in our house since the radiators stopped working. We’ve got a fireplace and we have a real fire on Sundays, but I’m never allowed too close and today isn’t Sunday.
I could hear her coming down the stairs really slowly, like Grandad used to do when his hip had gone somewhere. A bit of me wanted to run away, but there was nowhere to run to. I went to bite my nails but the gloves got in the way, so I sat on my hands and swung my legs instead, as though I was on a swing instead of the sofa.
She stood in the doorway and asked me if I had anything to say to her. I shook my head and carried on looking at the TV. The cat in the cartoon chased the mouse but it got away again, clever mouse. I laughed, even though it wasn’t very funny.
‘It’s happening again, isn’t it?’ she said.
The mouse took some matches and stuck them between the cat’s toes, the cat didn’t even notice, it was too busy looking in the wrong direction. Then the mouse lit all the matches and ran away. The cat could smell the smoke, but didn’t see the flames until it was too late. I laughed again, a pretend loud laugh, hoping she would just go away and leave me alone.
‘I said, it’s happening again, isn’t it?’ She spoke in her cross voice, the one that means I’m in trouble.
I shrugged my shoulders, stood up and walked out to the kitchen. My colouring things were still on the table from the night before, so I started doing that while Mum followed me and sat down on the chair opposite. I didn’t look up. My pencils were too blunt, all of them. I looked at her then and asked if she would sharpen my pencils for me. I’m not allowed to do it myself. Our eyes spoke but her lips didn’t move. She shook her head to say no. I wanted to use the red pencil even more then, but it was so blunt it hardly left a mark. I pushed harder, making a pattern of clear, jagged dents in the paper. Mum tried to take my hand to stop me but I pulled it away. She said we needed to talk, but I didn’t have anything to say to her, so I just carried on pretending she wasn’t there and picked up the black pencil which still had some colour left in it. It was hard to stay inside the lines with my gloves on, so the black pencil went all over the picture until I couldn’t see what it was any more.
Mum told me to look at her. I didn’t. She said it again but broke up the words so they were on their own:
Look. At. Me.
I still didn’t look up, but I whispered something very quietly. She asked me what I had said and I whispered it again. Then she stood up so quickly that her chair fell backwards making me jump. She leant over the table and grabbed my chin, forcing my face up to look at her. She spat in my eyes a little bit as she asked me again what I had said. She was hurting my face, so I told her:
I. Hate. You.
It was the opposite of a whisper.
She let go of me and I ran out of the kitchen and up to my bedroom. I still heard what she yelled up the stairs, even though I’d closed my door and put my hands over my ears.
‘You’re not to see Taylor any more. I don’t want her coming to this house.’
She can’t stop me seeing Taylor, we go to the same school.
I tried reading for a while, but I couldn’t concentrate, I kept reading the same sentence without meaning to. I threw the book on the floor and took Taylor’s broken bracelet out from the drawer next to the bed where I hide it. I unfastened the safety pin and tried to put it on, but the end of the chain kept slipping off my wrist. I wanted to go trick or treating tomorrow night, but I know there’s no point even asking now that she’s back. I can hear her down there, shuffling about, scraping the contents of casserole dishes into the bin and ruining my life.
Now
Friday, 30th December 2016
I’m flying feet first and it takes a while for me to remember that I am in the hospital. I still can’t move or open my eyes, but I can see the light shifting above, like I’m going through a tunnel. Subtle changes from light to dark. Then dark to light.
I realise I’m tucked into my bed and they’re moving me somewhere. I’m not sure what that means and I wish someone would explain. I ask the questions in my head but nobody answers:
Am I moving to a ward?
Am I better?
Am I dead?
I can’t shake the last thought from my mind. Maybe this is what dead feels like.
I don’t know where I’m going but it’s much quieter than before. The bed stops moving.
‘Here you are then. I’m off shift now, but someone else will be back to collect you in a little while,’ says a stranger. He speaks to me as though I’m a child. I don’t mind, though. Him speaking to me at all means that I must still be alive.
Thank you.
He leaves me and it is so quiet. Too quiet, something is missing.
The ventilator.
They’ve taken it away from me and the tube in my throat has gone. I panic until I realise that I am breathing without it. My mouth is closed but my chest is still inflating with oxygen. I’m breathing on my own. I am getting better.
I hear footsteps and then there are hands on my body and I’m afraid again. They are lifting me off the bed and I’m scared I will fall, frightened they will drop me. They lay me down on something cool. The surface chills the skin on my back through the open gown. I’m lying flat, with my hands by my side, staring up at nothing, unable to see beyond myself. They leave me there and it is the most quiet it has ever been. For a while.
Whatever I’m lying on lifts me up and backwards, head first again, swallowing me inside itself. The quiet is silenced by a piercing noise, like a muffled robotic scream. I don’t know what’s happening. Whatever it is, I want it to end. The relentless whirring is loud and strange and seems to be getting closer. Finally, it stops.
As my body rides back out into the brighter gloom, I hardly notice. The mechanical screams have rendered themselves into the sound of a baby crying and it’s so much worse. I feel wet and realise I have pissed myself. There was no bag attached to collect my liquid shame, the smell smothers me and I switch myself off.
The sound of whistling brings me back to somewhere a little less dark. I hate whistling. I am on my bed again and someone is pushing me feet first down another series of endless, long corridors. The shadows rise and fall overhead once more as though I am rolling beneath a conveyor belt of lights. The bed stops and turns and stops again several times. I feel like I’ve become a hoover, moving back and forth trying to suck up all my own dirt. We come to an abrupt stop and the whistled tune concludes at the same moment.
‘I’m so sorry to trouble you, could you remind me where the exit is, I always get lost in here,’ says the voice of an elderly woman.
‘Don’t worry, happens to me all the time, it’s like a warren. Back where you came from and take the first right, that’s the main exit to the visitor car park,’ says a voice I don’t want to hear. I tell myself it isn’t him, that I’m imagining things.
‘Thank you.’
‘You’re welcome.’
It is him. The voice of the man who is drugging me to sleep. I’m sure of it.
He starts to whistle once more and it triggers something, dislodges a forgotten memory. He used to whistle all the time when we were students. It irritated me then and it terrifies me now. I’ve been telling myself I was
mistaken, confused, but any remaining doubts that were giving me hope, crumble. The man keeping me here is Edward. I know that now. I just don’t know why.
We’re on the move again and I panic, wondering where he is taking me. Surely someone will stop him, but then I remember that he works here. Nobody would question a member of staff pushing a patient around a hospital. I feel sick. Doctors are supposed to help people, not hurt them.
Why are you doing this to me?
The bed on wheels makes its final stop and the whistling is replaced by something worse. I hear the door close.
‘Here we are, just the two of us. Alone again at last.’
Then
Friday, 23rd December 2016 – Afternoon
The whole team is meant to be enjoying a Christmas lunch together before the holidays, but two people are missing: Madeline and Matthew. Given the latest Category 5 social-media storm and the story being picked up by several other broadcasters, I’m not surprised. The whole interview has been posted on YouTube and #FrostBitesTheDust is more popular than ever on Twitter, albeit for slightly different reasons than before. I wonder if she’s even had time to notice my final blackmail letter tucked inside her handbag. Not to worry, it can wait.
Madeline and Matthew are busy having crisis talks with the station bosses on the seventh floor. I can’t imagine how this story could possibly result in a happy ending for either of them. Matthew told the rest of us to head for lunch without him. He’s booked a small Italian restaurant round the corner, because nothing says Christmas like meatballs in tomato sauce!
The restaurant owner looks scarily happy to see us. There’s one long table, like we’re sitting down to a medieval banquet, complete with napkins and crackers and paper crowns. The others discuss leaving the seat at the top of the table free for Matthew when he arrives, I guess because he is the head of this dysfunctional work family. I seat myself at the end of the table nearest the exit and feel a moment of relief when Jo sits down in the empty seat next to me. Thank goodness she’s here.
‘Vino rosso?’ she asks, before reaching for an open bottle of house wine on the table.
‘Not for me, thank you.’ She pulls a face but I can’t even tell Jo the truth, not until I’m sure. ‘I’m fine, I just had a bit too much to drink last night.’
‘With Paul?’
‘No, an old friend.’
‘A friend who isn’t me?’
‘I do have other friends, you know,’ I say, realising that I don’t, not any more. We’ve received even fewer Christmas cards than I’ve written this year.
One of the producers leans over with a cracker, trying to get my attention. I smile back at her and wrap my fingers around the edge of the shiny gold paper. I pull hard but nothing happens and we both laugh. I pull harder and the cracker snaps, making me jump even though I was expecting it. I’ve won. I put the paper crown on my head and read the joke out to the rest of the team.
‘What lies at the bottom of the sea and shivers?’ I look around at their expectant faces. I doubt I’ll see them again. ‘A nervous wreck.’
A few smiles and a groan but nobody laughs. Someone reads out a better joke.
Jo points out the red plastic slither of a fish that has fallen from the cracker. I pick it up and lay it flat on my open palm; I remember these from when Claire and I were children. FORTUNE TELLER – MIRACLE FISH, says the packaging and I smile at the memory. The fish’s head curls up in my hand. I can’t remember what that is supposed to mean, so I read the tiny square of white paper covered in instructions, scanning it for the translation: MOVING HEAD = JEALOUSY.
I remove the fish from my hand and the smile from my face. I am jealous. I’ve got every right to be.
The restaurant door opens and a cold burst of air rushes in, stealing some paper hats from heads, blowing them onto the floor. Matthew has arrived. Madeline is not with him.
He makes a performance of taking off his coat and sitting down at the table. Then he clinks his glass of Prosecco with his knife, which really wasn’t necessary: the restaurant is completely empty apart from our table and the polite conversation of sober colleagues has already dried up, despite everything we’ve had to gossip about.
‘I want you all to enjoy your Christmas lunch and a well-deserved afternoon off . . .’ he says, then pauses for dramatic effect, and I want to throw my plate at his head. I unfold my paper napkin and place it on my lap. ‘But before we do that, I have some sad news.’ Now he has my attention. ‘I know you’re all aware of the unfortunate incident with Madeline’s microphone on the lunchtime news today.’
I sip my glass of lemonade, it’s more ice than drink and hurts my teeth.
‘What I’m about to tell you has absolutely nothing to do with that.’
Liar. I put down my glass and push my hands together beneath the table in a forward-facing prayer, trying to stop myself from picking the skin off my lips in public.
‘I’m sorry to tell you that Madeline has sadly decided to leave the programme for personal reasons and will no longer be presenting Coffee Morning.’
Now the gasps come, including my own.
‘I’m telling you now because the bloody papers will have it by tomorrow and I wanted to reassure you all that the show will go on, your jobs are safe. We’ll have some guest presenters in the New Year – Amber, I hope you’ll help them as much as you can – and then we’ll look for a new long-term solution.’ I nod. It’s his way of letting me know I’m safe now.
The chatter and gossip escalates again. Now that we have something new to talk about, there is only one topic of conversation. Matthew said that Madeline’s reasons for leaving were personal – I expect I’m the only person at this table who knows just how personal it is.
Our Christmas garlic bread arrives, looking dry and unappetising. I’m wondering how to extract myself from the situation when I hear a knock on the restaurant window behind me. I turn and can see the outline of someone, but the fake snow makes it hard to recognise the smiling face staring back.
‘Do you know him?’ asks Jo.
I can’t speak at first. I’m too busy trying to understand how and what he is doing here. Edward smiles back at us both.
‘Excuse me for a moment,’ I say to nobody in particular and walk away from the table. I step out onto the street, the cold wind reminding me that I should have brought my coat.
‘Hi,’ he says, as though him being here is somehow acceptable.
‘What are you doing here? Are you following me?’
‘Whoa! No, I’m sorry. It probably does look like that but I’m not stalking you, I promise. You said last night that you were coming here for your Christmas lunch today.’
Did I?
‘I had a meeting down the road and, when I spotted you in the window, I had an impulse to say, hi.’
I don’t believe him.
I notice that he hasn’t shaved, a dark shadow of stubble has grown over his tanned chin and he is wearing exactly the same clothes as yesterday, his white shirt visible beneath the long woollen coat. He waits for me to say something and when I don’t, he tries again.
‘I’m lying. I’m sorry, I shouldn’t do that. You see straight through me, anyway, you always did. There was no meeting. I remembered you were coming here and I just had to find a way to see you again . . .’
‘Look, Edward . . .’
‘To say, sorry. I was mortified when I woke up this morning and remembered last night. I just wanted the chance to apologise, that’s all. I don’t know why I said the things I did, it must have been the wine. Not that I don’t think you’re great, but that’s all in the past. I won’t keep you from your Christmas lunch – I’m so sorry – I just wanted to clear the air and reassure you that I’m not a psycho.’
‘O-K.’
‘It’s freezing, please go back to your friends. I fear I’ve made things even worse. I won’t trouble you again, Amber. I’m really sorry for how I behaved.’
He does look very sorry; so much so,
I’m starting to feel a little sorry for him – it’s hard living in a city where nobody really knows you. I look over at the restaurant and can see Jo in the window, beckoning me to come back inside. I feel like I ought to say something but I can’t seem to find the right words. I’m cold and it’s awkward, so I settle for the wrong ones.
‘Happy Christmas, Edward. See you around,’ I say, before turning back towards the restaurant, leaving him out in the cold.
Before
Friday, 11th December 1992
Dear Diary,
It’s happened again. I’ve been suspended, but it really wasn’t my fault. I didn’t want to go to school at all today, I didn’t feel well and if Mum had let me stay in bed then none of this would have happened. So it’s her fault really, just like everything else, but I expect she won’t see it that way when she finds out. Sticks and stones Nana used to say, but Taylor could have been really hurt if I hadn’t done something.
We were in science and using the Bunsen burners for the first time. I’d always wondered what they were, but we hadn’t been allowed to touch them until today. I liked the smell of gas when we turned them on, it reminded me of Nana’s old oven. Mr Skinner taught us what to do. Bunsen burners all have a hole and that’s important. When the hole is closed it makes a yellow flame, but when it is open it makes a hot blue flame. Basically, it’s all about combustion. Gas can be dangerous, though, and so can flames obviously, so when I came back from the toilet and saw Kelly holding the flame up close to Taylor’s hair, I had to do something.
They said her nose was broken this time. I don’t even remember doing it really, I just wanted to get her away from Taylor. Mr Skinner pulled me off her and asked what happened and I said I didn’t know. He yelled at me not to lie and that he’d seen me, but I wasn’t lying. All I can remember is Taylor and Kelly’s faces too close together. It was like something just snapped inside of me. I love Taylor. I won’t let anyone hurt her. I didn’t have a choice.
Sometimes I Lie: The gripping debut psychological thriller you can’t miss in 2017 Page 14
