by Louise Voss
Ed shrugged. His pyjama buttons were done up wrong and the fly of his PJ bottoms gaped open. I looked away.
‘I won’t. When do I ever? And if I did, I can shout you. I think that’s a good idea. I don’t want to hurt you anymore.’
I didn’t correct him. ‘I can shout you’ sounded better than the correct alternative, somehow. Or perhaps I was just getting used to the new speech patterns. In my imagination, the key to the spare room dangled tantalisingly in front of my eyes.
‘No, I guess you don’t. Well – perhaps we could try it. Just for a few nights…’
To my surprise, Ed stood up, came around the table and kissed me on the mouth, slipping his arms around my waist and nuzzling his head in the space between my neck and shoulder. ‘Lynn … I do love you, you know,’ he murmured, sounding so completely like his old self that tears filled my eyes.
‘I know.’ I replied, and we stood there a long time, our bare feet cold on the kitchen tiles, warm in the embrace. I miss you, I added, into a small silent place in my head.
Then he pulled away. ‘Oh, I forgot, I got an email.’ He went to his study and came back carrying his open laptop, which he thrust at me. The email was dated the week before.
From: Billyboy8792
Subject: Trial details
Date: 18 October 2016
To: EdNaismith56
Hi mate,
As requested, here’s a brief outline of the Phase 3 clinical programme of the drug galdonimene in layman’s terms for you to put the good lady wife’s mind at rest. Completely understand that it’s a decision the two of you should make together and if Lynn would like us all to meet, of course that is fine. I am away though (medical conference in Singapore then holiday) for the next three weeks, which isn’t ideal timing because, as you know, I’m keen to get the trial underway ASAP. One of my colleagues can monitor you until I get back, if you decide to go ahead without my initial input. We are thrilled to (probably!) have you on board!
As I explained to you on the phone, the trial is for the pharma company Biogenetics and you have been approved for the ENGAGE Study (the parallel one being EMERGE). It is split into two phases; a placebo-controlled phase, and an optional long-term extension phase after eighteen months. In the former, you will have a two out of three chance of receiving the investigational medication, and a one in three chance of receiving a placebo. Study medication or placebo will be given in a monthly intravenous infusion to be carried out in my office in Chelsea (contact details below), or, for the examinations, at a local private hospital (depending on their available facilities). You will need to visit once or twice a month and I will arrange transportation there and back for you on each occasion. You are a somewhat unusual case as all the other participants are in the early stages of Alzheimer’s rather than Pick’s, which makes your cooperation all the more valuable.
The email continued over a couple more pages, detailing how Bill or one of his colleagues would monitor Ed’s health for any changes, including interviews, blood and urine tests, ECGs, MRIs, vital signs, and so on, with a few paragraphs detailing how trials of galdonimene on mice had attacked and actually removed the amyloid plaque on their brains and, if it had the same effect on human subjects, would be a huge leap forwards in a successful treatment of dementia.
‘You’d have to have MRIs,’ was my first comment.
‘I know.’ Ed looked tense. ‘I suppose they can sedate me first.’
‘I’ll come with you.’
‘You’ll probably be at work.’
‘Can’t you do it on one of my days off?’
He shrugged. ‘I’d have to do it when he’s free I suppose. You can come if you’re not working, if you want, but I’d rather do it on my own.’
I flicked to the end of the email to see what Bill’s office address was – so far I hadn’t even gleaned his surname – but it stopped at the bottom of the third page, mid-sentence.
‘Where’s the rest?’
Ed looked surprised, so I pointed at the screen. ‘Look. It’s not signed off at the end. There must be another page with the contact details and so on.’
‘Oh yeah. Must have accidentally deleted it.’
I tutted with frustration. ‘Why hasn’t he written it from his professional email address? This one is clearly his personal one. There isn’t even a phone number on here!’
‘Email him then.’
‘I will,’ I said.
It seemed both plausible and simultaneously vague as hell. I scanned through it again. ‘But it says there’s a risk of brain swelling.’
Ed stroked his stubbly chin contemplatively. ‘And if I don’t do it, there’s a much higher risk of becoming a vegetarian.’
I was momentarily puzzled until he clarified: ‘A vegetable.’
‘Oh Ed, don’t say that. I can’t bear it.’
That night I fussed over Ed so much that he snapped at me. But I couldn’t help it. The key to the spare room door was burning a hole in my jeans pocket, making me feel so aware of being a jailer that I might as well have had twenty-seven other heavy iron keys on a massive ring chained to my waist.
When I went in to say goodnight he had cheered up again, snuggling down in the spare bed like a child on a sleepover. I kissed him and resisted the temptation to tuck the duvet in around his shoulders as he lay there innocently, his eyes small and helpless without his glasses, but with a smile on his face.
‘I think you should do it,’ I said quietly.
‘Do what?’
‘The drugs trial.’
He nodded. ‘So do I. It’s not like I have anything to lose, is it?’
I went back for another kiss, overcome with pity and affection for him.
‘Goodnight then Nurse Ratchet,’ he called as I finally headed for the door, and I laughed uncomfortably. ‘Don’t!’
I turned the key in the lock on the other side, leaning my forehead briefly against the wooden panels of the door.
As I climbed into bed I was assailed by the strangest mixture of emotions – the ever-present guilt, relief at having the bed to myself, excitement at the thought of an uninterrupted night’s sleep and the hope that this drug might help him.
14
I felt my phone vibrate just as the coach finally pulled out of Fairhurst’s driveway. Slumping back against the grubby velvet headrest, I extracted it from my handbag, feeling exhausted already. It was only 8.20am. Alvin had warned me it would be a long, tiring day, but it wasn’t just work affecting me. The stress of Ed’s illness was giving me nightmares and what could only be described as lucid dreams.
The night before, I could have sworn I woke up to find a man looming next to my bed, staring at me in the darkness. In my dream I’d seen his silhouetted bulk so clearly that I’d rolled over and buried my head under the pillow in fear. I’d woken up properly with a sudden gasp, feeling like I was suffocating.
And the night before that, I found myself standing by the window, staring out between the curtains at 4am, convinced I’d just seen the glow of a cigarette end by the front gate. In my half-dream state I’d been sure that it was Mike out there, smoking.
This morning I’d unlocked Ed’s bedroom door at six, just before I’d left for work. It was the third night he’d spent in the spare room with not a word of complaint. I felt horribly guilty – even with the bad dreams, it was such a relief to be able to sleep without fear of physical attack.
At least work was keeping my mind busy though. Since arriving at Fairhurst House, I’d been helping load timpani, djembe drums, music stands and choir robes into the coach’s dark underbelly, then ticking off my list of student performers as they shuffled aboard, looking so peaky and zombified it was hard to imagine that they would be singing and playing to an audience of five thousand parents and relatives at the graduation ceremony at the Barbican in just a few hours’ time.
My gut twitched with anxiety as I looked at my phone and saw I had five missed calls from Ed, as well as five voicemails. I couldn�
�t go home now! I imagined having to stop the coach, find a cab, race back, how Alvin would have to shepherd the eighty students on and off stage himself, as well as conducting them. He couldn’t – I had to be there, to line them up backstage, check that their concert dress was appropriate, that the choir all had their music in black folders, that the drummers had sticks and the string section had bows…
I clamped the phone to my ear to drown out the coach’s engine and the sleepy chatter of the students, and dialled my voicemail. There was a pause before the message began and I braced myself for whatever fresh hell he was about to impart. But he wasn’t panicked, shouting about being locked out or injured or confused; he was singing. Not an accidental bum-dial where I’d just happened to electronically eavesdrop on him cheerfully singing along to the radio like he used to, but a low, breathy, intentional song. The tone of it made me grip the phone so hard my knuckles turned white and my own breath caught in my throat:
‘Some-body’s watching youuuu.
Some-body’s watching youuuu.
Some BODY is WATCHING you.’
Over and over, with such spat emphasis on ‘body’ that the word felt like a knife through flesh. There was a tune, of sorts, sounding vaguely familiar. It was some song from the eighties, perhaps. Or maybe he’d made it up. His voice was like the middle of a lake at night, so dark and cold that I felt my organs recoil inside my belly.
It went on for several minutes, chilling in its dogged repetition. I wanted to hang up but I couldn’t, I was transfixed by the sinister words.
The coach stopped in traffic on the A3 and I saw a woman putting on her bra through a first-floor window in a block of flats. She looked up, locked eyes with me and glared, then smiled flirtatiously without covering her breasts, and for some reason this spooked me even further. I was watching her. She was watching me.
Was Ed watching me? Someone else? What the hell did he mean?
The coach pulled away with a change of engine noise. The woman waved sardonically at me – although then I became aware of snickering from the seats behind me, and realised that it was only my paranoia, thinking she was looking at me. She’d been showing off to the entire coach full of predominantly male students.
This snapped me out of it. Ed was a very sick man. I checked the time of the message – half an hour earlier.
I rang him, needing to hear his voice as it usually was, not as a ghoulish chant.
‘Hi Lynn. How’s it going?’ He sounded utterly normal and my heart slowed down a few beats.
‘Fine. We’re on the coach, on time to get there by half-nine. Set up and rehearsal, then the ceremony’s at one o’clock. What are you up to? Did you sleep OK?’
‘Yes, like a – a hog. Just put a wash on. Might go for lunch with Mike.’
‘Great … Ed?’
‘Yeah?’
‘I just had a really weird message from you.’
‘From me?’
‘Yes. You were singing down the phone on my voicemail.’
He laughed. ‘Singing? Singing what?’
‘I don’t know. Some creepy song about someone watching me.’
There was a brief pause.
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about. I haven’t even rung you today.’
I sighed. What was the point in arguing? He’d forgotten already.
‘OK. Well, as long as you’re all right. I’d better go. I’ll let you know what time I’ll be home – make sure you have some lunch, won’t you? There’s salad stuff in the fridge. Suzan’s next door if you need anything.’
I terminated the call and stared out of the window at the exhaust-grimed walls and faded roofs of South London, houses worn down by the ever-passing traffic. I felt pretty eroded myself, and not just by the early start and physical exertion of the day so far. This was only the beginning.
I deleted Ed’s message from my voicemail but I couldn’t delete the words from my head, where they were repeating in a loop, breathy and threatening: ‘Some-body’s watching youuuuu…’
15
The following hours were far too busy to dwell on the sinister voicemail and what it represented for me, or Ed. I had to assist Alvin at the rehearsal as he worked with the orchestra, chorus and djembe ensembles, practising cues and onstage positioning. The phrase ‘herding cats’ came to mind several times. The students were giddy with excitement at performing to a huge audience in such an iconic venue and, as Alvin had warned me, there was the usual quota of tears, vomit and lost items. But eventually everything was set up, everyone was at least meant to know what they were doing, they’d had their sandwich lunches in the dressing rooms, and the ceremony was about to begin. I finally had a bit of time to myself.
I sat for a moment in the girls’ dressing room, surrounded by brown paper bags and detritus from the packed lunches the venue had provided. At one o’clock exactly I heard the opening bars of Zadok The Priest strike up through the tinny speaker of the show relay. My phone rang and when I saw it was Ed, I lifted it to my ear with great trepidation.
‘Hi darling?’
‘Hi Lynn.’
Thank God, he still sounded normal.
‘Everything OK?’
‘Yes, fine. Just calling to say hello and see how it’s going. Are they all behaving themselves?’
‘Yes, mostly. One of the sopranos was sick in the corridor but fortunately I didn’t have to clear it up myself. The ceremony’s just started so I’ve got a bit of time off now.’
‘What are you going to do?’
I looked around the messy, windowless dressing room. ‘Not sure. Find a sofa and have a kip, probably.’
He laughed. ‘Why don’t you go out and get a bit of fresh air? Actually – I meant to say, while you’re there could you pick up a, you know, directory of stuff going on in the Barbeque?’
Until that part, Ed had sounded like there was nothing wrong with him at all. I had a pang of yearning for the days when we’d plan theatre and cinema trips to the Barbican, a meal and a film, the last train home, some drunken sex and a tender goodnight kiss … I missed it.
‘OK. You’re right, I could do with a change of scene. I’ll go and get an event calendar from the foyer.’
Not that there was any point, I thought. By the time I got it home, Ed would doubtless have forgotten not only that he’d asked me to pick one up, but probably also what the Barbican was. And he certainly wouldn’t sit through a play anymore.
‘You sound a bit…’
‘What?’ I tried not to be irritated.
‘Sad.’
A huge lump stuck in my throat and I tried to swallow it down. ‘I’m fine, sweetie. Just tired. It’s been a long day and we’re only halfway through. It’s the thought of folding up fifty music stands and carrying them out to the coach again later … I’m too old for this!’
‘Get them to help you.’
‘Yeah. Will do – if I can tear them away from their smartphones long enough. All right – I’m going to go and get a coffee. Thanks for ringing, Ed. It’s good to talk to you, honey.’
I made my way through the maze of corridors and staircases out of the backstage area into the main foyer of the Barbican, despair clouding my eyes and making my heart feel weighty as a bowling ball. The future seemed to be simultaneously stuck and unravelling in front of me, a tangled, knotty ball of wool rendered unusable. Like the plaques in Ed’s brain. I couldn’t remember ever feeling so negative.
The vast foyer had the jittery abandoned feel that a big inside space has when crowds of people have recently vacated it, as if they left their energy behind when they took their seats in the auditorium. It was a relief to be out of the backstage area though. I wandered over to the nearest coffee outlet and was gazing absently at the menu board when I became aware of someone staring at me.
I glanced up and his eyes caught mine. He was a tall, thin man in a grey beany hat and a Gore-Tex anorak thing, open over a suit. He looked familiar and at first I thought he must be an actor, someo
ne off the television. I looked away again quickly, hoping he wouldn’t assume that I wanted a selfie or an autograph.
‘Waitsey!’
My heart froze then twitched a couple of extra beats, making me feel briefly nauseous.
‘It is you, isn’t it?’ He came over to me and grasped me gently, one hand on each of my upper arms. When I looked at him properly I couldn’t believe I hadn’t recognised him at first.
‘Adrian? What are you doing here?’
He didn’t answer, just enveloped me in a hug that at first made me stiffen, but then I laughed and hugged him back.
‘Have you got time to sit down for a coffee?’ he asked, releasing me and scanning my face with a smile so broad I could see a gold filling gleam in one of his back molars. ‘I’m supposed to be at my niece’s graduation ceremony. But I missed the train and now I’m so late that I think I’ll have to catch them afterwards instead. I’ll pretend I sneaked in at the back; my sister will never know. The main thing is that I’m here. What about you?’
‘Your niece is at Hampton Uni? No way! I work there, in the music department at Fairhurst House – I came up with all the student musicians on a coach this morning. So technically I’m free for the next hour or so … but hadn’t you better go in? It only started about ten minutes ago. You’re not that late.’
I stared at him and laughed. It was more than nine years since we’d last seen one another but he looked exactly the same, just a few grey hairs in his stubble, and his teeth were slightly nicotine-stained – this was either a more recent development, or a flaw I’d overlooked back in the days when I used to wear the rose-tinted specs.
‘I’d much rather catch up with you,’ he said, shaking his head in disbelief.
We ordered coffees – that he insisted on paying for – and sat down on leather cubes around a café table. Adrian took off his coat and beany and rubbed his head, which was when I noticed he was no longer wearing a wedding ring. I wasn’t sure how this made me feel. Regret, for a second. If I’d known his marriage would eventually break down, perhaps I would never have given up on us. Never met Ed, never agonised over my decision to marry him, never have had to listen to my beloved husband singing threatening songs to me down the phone and punching me in the head … In another timeline, it might have been Adrian and I arriving together to go to his niece’s graduation, sitting in the audience watching Alvin conducting the orchestra and choir singing Zadok the Priest, us giggling about what a weird-looking dude he was with his mad hair and pipe-cleaner limbs. We wouldn’t have been late, either, because I’d have made sure we didn’t miss the train…
