Before You Die

by Samantha Hayes

  He rubbed his eyes. What was he thinking? He couldn’t tell anyone, not after what had happened to Dean. His mum couldn’t handle it, and neither could Lana’s mum, Sonia. If he just kept quiet, he reckoned, stayed strong and resolute, it would probably, eventually, go away.

  He opened his desk drawer, reached to the back and felt around among the mess of pens and exercise books. The blade was still there, encrusted brown with the dried blood. But it was still sharp; it would work well enough.

  Then his phone vibrated on his desk. He read the message and closed his eyes for a moment.

  The old hut, Blackdown Woods, 2morrow, midnight.

  Freddie made sure the door was shut tight and rolled up his sleeve.

  6

  THEY DON’T KNOW I’m here. It’s what I do – hiding, watching, spying. It gives me a funny feeling inside, but I have to take care of them. It’s dark outside; light in there. Invisibility for me. The window is open a sliver, just enough for me to get a whiff of the end of their chicken meal. I made my own food tonight because Sonia says women like an independent man. It was pizza from the freezer and some parts of it were still hard and cold when I bit into it.

  My hands are itching to write my name on the dusty glass. Gil. But I won’t. I don’t want them to know I was here. It’s my secret. Taking care of things.

  ‘Lana,’ Sonia says, ‘aren’t you going to eat that? You’ll waste away.’

  Sonia is collecting up the plates, slotting them into the dishwasher. I could help, I think. I’m good at washing up. I know how to do it. She slices her way about the kitchen as if she’s on roller skates. I’ve been roller skating before. With my friend.

  ‘I’m not hungry,’ Lana says. She sounds sad tonight. She has crescents under her eyes the same colour as a sepia photograph. I wonder if any boys at the shelter are being mean to her.

  They all want her. I’ve seen it in their eyes when she’s peeling potatoes or shaking out their beds.

  Lana stands up and goes to the refrigerator. I see her take a bottle of beer when her mother’s back is turned. Then her father comes into the kitchen and she stares sadly at the pair of them. Sonia is bending down to the dishwasher and doesn’t notice. I’m watching all this and they don’t even know. Tony doesn’t say anything until his daughter slides past and leaves the room.

  ‘What’s wrong with her?’ he says.

  I duck down. They’ve come close to the window. There’s a tap running and then the smell of warm lavender handwash comes wafting up from the drain at my feet. I always wash my hands because you can catch germs otherwise.

  ‘She’s been acting really odd this last month,’ Sonia says. ‘I’m worried for her.’

  ‘It’s probably stress,’ Tony replies. Tony is a doctor in the hospital. ‘She’ll be OK once she gets her exam results.’

  Then there’s a kissing sound and a little moan from Sonia. To me, it sounds as if she wants to get away, but I don’t do kissing as I’ve never had a girlfriend. I cover my eyes even though I’m staring at the ground and it’s all black and earthy and I’m standing in a flowerbed and it’s not my fault and I don’t like these noises because it’s revolting.

  It stops. There are more low voices.

  ‘I got angry earlier and I shouldn’t have, it’s just a computer,’ I hear Tony say. ‘I shouldn’t have shouted at you in front of Lana.’

  ‘It’s my fault for borrowing it. I was going to ask but you weren’t here and I didn’t know what to do.’

  Then there’s more kissing so I creep away. Spying on people doing those things isn’t right. But sometimes I can’t help it.

  It’s a nice evening for a walk. I walk and walk lots, all through the night if I can’t sleep. I know my way around every inch of everywhere. Probably the whole planet. Tonight is a very good night for a walk. The security light flashes on when I go round the side of the house, but that’s OK. I know where they all are, how not to set them off if I don’t want to. No one will notice this one.

  I look up. Lana’s bedroom light is on. I imagine her sitting cross-legged on the duvet, her computer open in front of her, beer bottle in her hand, her long hair spilling over her eyes, tapping stuff into Facebook. I’ve seen her do this many times before. My mouth starts watering so I swallow it back down. I’m getting a stiff neck from staring up at the window.

  The flat roof just below it is a good place to watch, peek inside Lana’s bedroom. I look at the trellis and the drainpipe. They are waiting to be climbed, urging me up. I know where all the footholds are. But what if I get told off again? What if Tony catches me doing it? He might send me away once and for all like he said last time.

  Gil, I do my best for you. Honestly I do. But this can’t carry on. The authorities have places for people like you.

  I hear a noise. Something rustling nearby, under the bushes and close to the wall.

  ‘Smudge?’

  Smudge comes stalking out of the undergrowth and I pick him up. His paws rest on my shoulder and his claws sink a tiny bit into my skin as I walk off with him.

  ‘We’ll look after her, won’t we Smudge?’ I whisper into his fur.

  He purrs back, and we both know there’ll be no more watching tonight.

  7

  LANA FROWNED. IT wasn’t like her mum to miss a shift. Her first thought was that she was trying to scupper her plans, that she didn’t want her to hang out with her mates. It was clear she disapproved of them. But when she saw the way her mum’s eyes had become small and pebbly, pressed into the soft dough of their puffy sockets, she knew she’d been crying.

  ‘Of course I’ll take your shift for you, Mum,’ she said, putting a hand on her shoulder. ‘Are you ill?’

  She watched her mum tip a couple of pills into her hand, take them with a glass of water. She hated that she was using them to mask her grief. She’d always been so fit and healthy, filled with a zest for life. Ever since Simon, things hadn’t been the same.

  Her mum nodded, mustering a smile. ‘Will you give this to Frank?’ she said, handing Lana a file. ‘It’s the fundraising plans.’

  Frank was good with the hands-on side of things but useless when it came to keeping the charity’s paperwork in order. He’d be lost without her mum. She was the treasurer and one of his most dedicated helpers.

  ‘Tell him I’m under the weather today,’ she finished.

  Lana imagined her mother trapped flat under a snow drift, washed away by the rain, shielding herself from the desert sun, or beaten to the ground by a great wind. It wasn’t far from the truth.

  Before she left, Lana texted Milly and Dan. She wouldn’t be coming bowling with them today. She knew they would understand. She was always cancelling plans.

  When she started her car, Smudge shot out from between the front wheels. ‘One of these days . . .’ she called out to him. The cat leapt on to a brick wall but his back legs didn’t quite make it and he flopped on to the gravel. He gave himself a few brisk licks.

  Lately, Lana had taken to driving the slightly longer route into Wellesbury, wanting to avoid the spot where she knew the crisp, sun-dried blooms were still tied to the tree at the end of Devil’s Mile. She’d known Dean well and it was still too upsetting. She couldn’t understand why he’d take his own life. Last time she’d seen him he was telling her about his plans, his ambitions, and how he’d been applying for jobs. He’d told her he’d got a girlfriend.

  She recalled the funeral – a small affair, with no family members present, just a handful of friends from New Hope. The local paper hadn’t run anything about his death, not after what had happened last time, but her mum inserted a few words in the obituaries section of the Tribune. No one else would have bothered otherwise.

  Five minutes later, Lana drew up outside New Hope. Parking wasn’t always easy, especially if there were a few local residents home, their cars shoe-horned into the available spaces outside the terraced houses. She eyed the double yellow lines, not wanting to risk it, so all she was left with w
as an awkward slice of tarmac behind Frank’s white pick-up, blocking him in. She hoped he wouldn’t be cross with her.

  Suddenly, the parking sensor on her Ka changed to a continuous tone and she felt a crunch. When she got out to look, she saw that Frank’s tow bar had left a dimple in her bumper.

  ‘Bugger,’ she said, just as Frank appeared through the back gate. He was holding a bag of rubbish and she didn’t think he’d seen what had happened.

  ‘Language,’ he growled, almost playfully, even though it didn’t sound right coming from a man like him. Lana had been scared of him at first, told her mum he was the kind of man she’d cross the road to avoid.

  ‘Hello, Frank,’ she said, locking her car. ‘This is from Mum.’ She held out the file.

  His eyes were ice-cold blue and his mouth puckered open through the thicket of his wiry grey beard. What she thought might be a smile set Lana’s heart pumping. Frank had once said he hadn’t been to a dentist in decades – hence the blackened teeth – and claimed never to have been to a doctor in his entire life. With his check shirt, tattered jeans tucked into black Doc Martens, and the old oily cap he usually wore, Lana thought he wouldn’t look out of place playing the part of a redneck in a hillbilly movie. She decided not to tell him about bumping his tow bar.

  ‘Mum can’t make it today,’ she explained. ‘She’s . . .’

  Frank squinted at her. A group of kids charged past on scooters, spitting and yelling obscenities. He roared at them to clear off.

  ‘She’s busy.’

  ‘Always doing something, your ma,’ he responded, with the same open-mouthed expression. ‘There’s a lot of spuds to be peeled if you’re offering.’

  He disappeared into the small courtyard, and Lana followed him through the back door into the kitchen, where she saw that he’d already made a start on the meal. The chipped Formica worktop was strewn with cuts of unidentifiable meat and a load of out-of-date vegetables they were often given free by the supermarket.

  ‘Get this on then,’ he said, tossing an apron at Lana.

  It was dirty but she put it on anyway.

  ‘Who stayed last night?’ she asked tentatively, grabbing a potato.

  ‘The usual crowd. One or two haven’t gone out since this morning. They’re ill, so they say.’

  Frank grabbed hold of a large piece of red meat with a bone poking out of one end and thumped it down on a wooden block. He then took an old cleaver and brought it down hard, cracking the bone in two. He did this over and over until it was hacked into stew-sized pieces.

  Lana swallowed and looked away.

  ‘Did Lenny come in?’ she asked after a short while, taking another potato. She knew her mum had been concerned about him recently, had been worried about his cough. She’d wanted to keep him in, but New Hope had a policy of turfing out its guests by nine a.m. sharp so the volunteers could clean up as well as giving everyone a fair chance of getting a bed later. The queue began to form about three in the afternoon, earlier on winter nights.

  ‘No sign of him,’ Frank replied. ‘Oddly,’ he added slowly.

  He threw the meat into a huge pot and wiped his hands across his face. He looked as if he’d been in a fight, had a nosebleed.

  Lana instantly heard her mother’s voice: Consider deficiencies, trauma, blood-thinning medications . . . Check blood pressure, platelet count, Vitamin K . . .

  Frank took the meat scraps out to the dustbins and Lana sighed, getting on with the peeling. But a moment later she heard sobbing coming from the main hall. She went to investigate and, on one of the nearer bunks, she found someone cocooned and writhing in a sleeping bag. Whoever was in there was caught in a jet of sunlight streaming in through the tall arched window opposite.

  ‘Are you OK?’ she asked, tentatively touching their shoulder and catching a whiff of sickness and despair.

  Always get involved with the guests, her mother had told her. Find out their stories, see what makes them tick. It’s good for your CV. You’ll get interviewed about your work experience! Actually, she’d been wrong. Her CV, honed to perfection by her mother – eighteen years broken down into eleven straight A stars at GCSE, the same superlatives predicted four times over at A level, Grade 8 piano with distinction, Gold Duke of Edinburgh Award, and enough work experience for Lana to qualify as a doctor without even going to medical school – hadn’t prompted any of the four university interview panels to ask one single question about her work at New Hope.

  Lana tried again. ‘Are you OK? Do you need help?’

  The thing was, even though the interviews were over, even though she’d got an offer to study Medicine at Imperial College London if she got the A grades in her exams, Lana still kept coming back to New Hope. Sometimes she wondered whether she was trying to assuage some of the guilt she still felt over Simon’s death. She wondered if her mother felt this way too.

  She patted the shoulder of the pupa-like wrapping. A mass of sweaty hair emerged.

  ‘No.’

  Lana recognised her voice. ‘Cup of tea?’

  More wriggling, and then a hand came out of the sleeping bag, followed by a face.

  ‘Abby, you don’t look well. Do you want some water?’

  Another shake. In fact, all of her was shaking.

  ‘I’ll get you some.’

  When Lana returned from the kitchen, Abby was sitting up in bed scanning the jobs section of the local paper. She took the drink and shoved something into her mouth from the palm of her hand. It got washed down.

  ‘Are you staying for lunch?’ Lana thought she could do with a good meal.

  ‘Dean would have loved that job,’ she said instead of replying.

  Lana could hear Frank in the kitchen, grumbling that he’d been left alone to prepare the meal.

  ‘What job?’

  ‘Vet’s assistant. He liked animals.’

  Lana turned her head sideways and read the job description. She fought the curl of pain in her stomach. ‘It’s the kind of job that vet sci students might apply for in the holidays.’ For a second, she heard her mother’s once-keen voice sounding within her own.

  ‘What’s vet sci?’ Abby said, turning her dark eyes on Lana. Her voice was thin and bitter, like the rest of her. Apart from her expanded pupils, she was barely there.

  ‘It’s short for veterinary science,’ Lana said. She didn’t want to say that Dean would have had no chance of securing a job like that, that you needed qualifications, ambition. ‘Simon was going to be a vet.’

  She froze for a second as she realised what she’d just said, then turned and rushed back into the kitchen.

  ‘Who’s Simon?’ Abby’s thin voice somehow filled the entire hall.

  But Lana was peeling potatoes again, fighting back the tears, incapable of an answer.

  Gil appeared at the window, making her jump as she washed her hands at the sink. One side of the kitchen window still had chipboard nailed to it, waiting for the glazier to fix it; Gil was peering in through the unbroken side, his face looming like a large moon.

  Lana put her hand on her heart. ‘Jesus, you scared me. Where’s Dad? Did he bring you?’

  Gil held up two black dustbin sacks stuffed full of clothes. ‘He’s waiting in the car and he said I have to bring these to you.’

  Lana snapped off the rubber gloves and opened the back door.

  ‘Has Mum been having a sort out?’ she asked, but Gil was already shaking his head.

  ‘Mum’s nowhere to be found,’ he said.

  Lana smiled, guessing she was tending to the horses. Gil often got muddled, sometimes even forgetting that he was her uncle or that Tony was his elder brother.

  He handed the bags to Lana just as one split open. An assortment of male clothing puddled at her feet, as if their wearer had magically disappeared from inside them. And when Lana saw the rugby shirt with the stitched-on name label at the breast, she realised that was kind of true.

  ‘Bye then,’ said Gil, and headed for the door.

&nbs
p; ‘Wait.’ Lana bent down to retrieve the rugby shirt and ran her finger over the embroidered name. Simon Hawkeswell. It was the second time in five minutes that she’d been faced with her dead brother. ‘Whose idea was it to get rid of this stuff?’

  ‘Tony said to bring them he said they were in the way. I tripped over.’ Gil rolled up the leg of his long shorts to expose his kneecap. It had the red crown of a fresh bruise.

  Think patella, her mother said in her head. Consider X-rays. Cartilage. Hair-line fractures. Reduce the swelling. Immobilise and ice . . .

  ‘Ouchy,’ Lana commented.

  She knew the tack room had been used for all sorts of dumping over the years, not least for Gil. He’d been moved out there not long after Simon died, when his artwork took over the house. Her dad had got fed up of all his mess and converted the little outbuilding into a place for his brother to enjoy some independence. Lana had felt bad for him at first, as if he was an unwanted possession, like Simon’s things – stuff that no one had the heart to get rid of completely but didn’t want in the house.

  ‘He likes it out there,’ her father had said.

  ‘He’s perfectly happy,’ her mum had agreed.

  And Gil did seem content living in the tack room. It had a wood-burner, a kitchenette with a couple of cupboards from Ikea, an old sofa and an ancient boxy television rigged up to receive all the channels. There was no bathroom so Gil used the gardener’s toilet and washed standing up by the kitchen sink. Lana always knew when he’d sneaked into the house for a bath because of the earthy scent he left behind.