Lullaby

by Claire Seeber

  But he wasn’t there, wasn’t anywhere. Eventually they managed to get the porter on the phone. Shiny nodded, um-ed and ahh-ed like she was ever so important, then hung up with a flirty ‘Swing by later if you’ve a mo.’ I tensed my fists in my pockets.

  ‘Eddie brought him down,’ she announced conspiratorially, ‘but then Mr Finnegan said he’d rather walk from the lift. Wanted to stretch his legs. Said he’d see himself to the ward. Eddie was late for the O.R. so he let him go.’ She looked round as if expecting applause. ‘Well, Mr Finnegan’s a grown man, isn’t he? I mean, Eddie can hardly be blamed in the circumstance.’ She checked her watch, sunken beautifully between rolls of fat. ‘Only about forty minutes ago, Eddie said. He’s probably gone for a little wander, pleased to be back on his feet, you know. They get cabin-fever, some of our boys.’

  Any minute now she was going to break into a pompous rendition of ‘We’ll Meet Again’.

  ‘Thanks.’ I headed swiftly for the door again. ‘Just—can you ask him to ring me as soon as he appears.’

  I stood at the lift with a sickening sense of déjà vu, the old Clash song reverberating round my dazed head. Should I stay or should I go? Should I search the hospital for Mickey, or should I just cut my losses and leave, trust that he was getting coffee, reading the paper somewhere, relishing five minutes of normality? Should I just get on with looking for Louis?

  In the end, of course, Louis won out. He always would.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Shirl’s car was gone.

  ‘For fuck’s sake!’ I shouted, to no one in particular, to the pale blue woolly sky, to the ugly concrete ground. Why would anyone nick such a dodgy old banger? The car-park attendant hurried towards me, a ferrety little man. He wanted to commune with me over my loss-those bloody tow-trucks, he began. Smiling grimly, I fled.

  I was like the water building up behind a hosepipe’s air-lock, suddenly unleashed. Propelled forward by an unseen force, launched out into the street, pushed by an almighty hand, driven by fury and longing. I contemplated calling Leigh to collect me, to keep me company, but it’d take her too long to get here, so I hailed another cab, climbed in, realised I didn’t know where to go. My impulse was to return to Sussex—I didn’t know why, but something drew me there. I would go home, borrow Leigh’s car, drive down, find Louis, I decided. I was muttering to myself, the cabbie caught my eye in his mirror, looking hastily away. He thought I was mad, I suddenly realised, and I nearly laughed hysterically. Perhaps I truly was.

  My phone rang, shocking me back to reality. It was Shirl.

  ‘Listen, Shirl,’ I started, ‘I’m so sorry, mate. I’ll get the car back. I just haven’t—’

  ‘It’s Mickey,’ she said baldly.

  ‘What?’ My heart flipped over and withered. He was dead, I was sure. That was it. I tried to breathe. ‘What’s happened?’ I croaked.

  ‘He’s here.’

  ‘What? Where?’

  ‘Here. At home.’

  A pause while I absorbed this.

  ‘In your house, stupid.’ She was impatient now. I didn’t understand.

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Sure I’m sure. Char, man, I haven’t even had a spliff yet today. Get your arse back here now. He don’t look well, Jess. Not well at all.’

  ‘Put him on the phone,’ I begged.

  There was another pause; I heard her calling his name; doors were banging. She was back. ‘I would if I could get him to sit still. He just keeps muttering about Louis, running about he is. Get home, Jess. I’ve got to go to work, I’m late already—but he’s acting—kind of odd.’

  ‘Shirl,’ I said, very firmly, ‘get him to ring me back. I’ll be there as soon as I can.’ I tapped on the glass divide. ‘Can you go any faster please?’ I said.

  ‘It’s not The French Connection, love,’ he muttered wearily.

  ‘Yeah, I know that. But it is a matter of life or death,’ I implored before slumping back in my seat.

  When I got home Shirl was standing by the open door, agitated. I fumbled with my change, calling over my shoulder to her. ‘Where’s—’

  ‘He’s bloody gone. He said he tried to ring you, but he couldn’t get through.’

  I swore loudly, running into the house as if my feet were on fire, but of course it was true. He wasn’t there.

  ‘What was he doing? Where’s he gone?’ I demanded frantically.

  ‘Changing his clothes. Getting money or something. He’s gone to look for Louis, he said. I think—I thought he was, you know, off his head. Feverish, he looked. I tried to get him to sit down and have a drink, to wait for you, but he just kept rushing round.’ She was pulling on her poncho now. ‘To be honest, Jess, I was a bit scared. He looked kind of—crazed.’ She put some lip-gloss on, talking to my reflection in the mirror. ‘Look, I’m really sorry, but I’m going to have to go. I’m so late already, and I’ve got my first client at midday.’

  Then she stopped, shiny stick poised above her generous mouth. ‘Why were you in a cab?’ she said slowly. ‘Where’s my motor?’

  I flushed guiltily.

  ‘Jessica?’

  ‘Ah,’ I said, playing for time. ‘Umm—I was trying to tell you on the phone but I got a bit, you know, distracted. It—er—it got towed at the hospital. I didn’t park it very well,’ I confessed.

  ‘Jess! You bloody fool!’ She slammed her gloss back in her bag.

  ‘I’m really sorry,’ I said imploringly, ‘I’ll get it back. Look, get a cab and I’ll pay for it, okay?’

  I was talking to her back now as she swung her oversized bag across her shoulder.

  ‘I’ll take your bike. We’ll sort it later,’ she said. Heading out to the garage, she looked back. ‘Just find Mickey, Jess, quickly. He isn’t well.’

  I flopped down on the stairs and tried to think. My mind was spinning like a rabid hamster in a wheel. I’d better call the police about Shirl’s car; should I also let the hospital know about Mickey? I was just wondering when the house-phone rang. I jumped, then rushed down the hall to snatch it up. It was Mickey, thank God.

  ‘Jessica,’ he said, and his accent had gone all IRA, which meant the stress had finally conquered him. ‘Jessica, I’m sorry I rushed off. I couldn’t wait. I’ve just got to find our boy.’

  He sounded like he was standing in the middle of a motorway, but he couldn’t be, could he—he’d only just left the house.

  ‘Where are you, Mickey?’ I asked. ‘Shirl said you didn’t look well. Come back and we’ll go together, yeah?’ It felt like trying to talk someone down from a bad trip.

  ‘Jess, I’m going after—’ The bloody phone started breaking up, his voice fading in and out. ‘—I don’t—’ but he’d gone again.

  ‘What? Mickey?’ I said urgently. ‘You’re breaking up. You’re going after who? Just tell me where you are.’

  ‘I’m on my way to—’

  I heard the back door creak very slightly. The hairs on my neck stood up; I glanced behind me. ‘Shirl?’ I called.

  There was no one there. A gentle breeze sighed through the hall, wrapping itself round my trembling legs.

  ‘Mickey,’ I said again, ‘just tell me where you are, okay? I’ll come and meet you—’

  There was a footstep in the kitchen. I froze.

  ‘Who’s there?’ I whispered, and goose-pimples appeared all pointy up my arm. Mickey was talking now, saying something about knowing Louis would be okay, but I wasn’t listening properly, I was on tenterhooks, straining to catch the noise again. Someone was in the house.

  ‘Hang on, Mickey, there’s someone here I think,’ I croaked, and I was about to turn again when I saw a shadow fall down the hall past my own. Then I felt a blow, deafening pain upon my head. I cried out, my neck crumpled to my chest and I was going down—I was spinning—spinning—spun.

  When I woke I couldn’t think where I was. My face was stuck to something; when I moved it made a noise like fresh bacon peeling from the packet. I was dr
ooling like an idiot, a pool of something warm and sticky cradling my cheek. Why was it so dark? I tried to raise my head, but it pounded so hard that I collapsed back down again.

  After some time, I tried again. I realised I was lying on the floor; my hall floor—and the darkness was the heap of coats that had fallen on me as I’d pulled the coat-rack with me as I went. I put my hand to my cheek and brought it away, trying to focus on the wet that stained it. Some of it was dark. Some of it was blood.

  There was a phone ringing somewhere very far away, and then the answer-phone clicked on and there was my jolly voice again, my falsely jolly voice accompanied by Louis’s little gurgle, and then Deb was talking in the distance, asking me to ring her; why hadn’t she heard from me today? She was worried. There’d been developments—I must call her when I heard this.

  And then I realised there was knocking in my ears, someone was knocking, and I tried to get up, but it hurt so bloody much it nearly made me sick. I pulled myself to sitting, and after a while I croaked out ‘Hang on, I’m coming,’ and I got there after an eternity, I sort of limped and I sort of crawled and when I got as far as the front door I used the handle to pull myself up, and I managed to open it—but the doorstep was empty.

  Wheezing, I slumped down again and I knew I should try to reach the phone, tell someone what had happened, but I really couldn’t face the pain that thudded across my head each time I moved.

  And then I heard the back door creak open once more, and my guts went to water. I promised a God I hated that I really would behave now if he could just protect me. Shuffling as fast as I could towards the phone table, I had some vague thought of picking up the lamp that stood there, of arming myself and hitting back, but the kitchen door swung ajar a little before I could even get there, and a shadow tumbled down the hall.

  Then, finally, the door opened enough to let me see that standing above me, towering over me where I cowered, stood Agnes.

  Agnes wanted to call the police, but I wouldn’t let her yet. I had some questions of my own first.

  ‘How did you get in?’ I asked her, groggy and puzzled as she helped me up.

  ‘I looked through the letterbox when you didn’t answer; I saw you lying on the floor. I went around the back, and it was open, thank God.’ My weight made her stagger in her stilettos as she pulled me up to sit on the hall chair. ‘I used to live here, remember?’

  How could I ever forget?

  ‘What happened, did you fall?’ she asked, and then looked at her hand, horrified. ‘My God, you’re bleeding!’ She was so near I could see the tiny flecks of mascara beneath her eye.

  ‘I don’t know.’ My head was swimming and I bit my lip with pain. ‘Someone—someone must have hit me, I think.’

  She looked at me like maybe I was making it up, and I started to doubt myself. I was desperately trying to collect my thoughts, which was proving horribly hard. Agnes said she’d put the kettle on, so then I called Deb, though it took me a long time to find the number, to think where it would be, where Deb would be, whether it should be her or Silver I should ring. When I did get through, Deb was in a meeting, so I left a message.

  In the downstairs loo, I leant against the basin for a long time to stop myself from being sick. Then I attempted to wash some of the blood off my neck, and found some painkillers in the cupboard. I swallowed them thankfully, and went to face my nemesis.

  She made me a cup of tea in my own kitchen—the kitchen that was once hers. The way she moved around it—almost balletic she was, moving on the balls of her high-heeled feet—you would have thought it still belonged to her. The thing that unnerved me most was the way she knew where everything lived: the teabags, a spoon, the cups. I made a mental note to change things round immediately.

  Perhaps it was my confused state, but she seemed a little less perfect than last time we’d met; tired and dull beneath her slick make-up and her suntan. I sat on a kitchen chair and asked for three sugars in my tea. I was still shaking. All the time I could feel her brain ticking as if she was about to say something—and then she’d change her mind again. But finally it came out.

  ‘I want to see Mickey,’ she said, keeping her back to me. ‘Would you mind?’

  ‘He’s not here,’ I said dully. I didn’t exist past this raw and sickening pain deep in my skull.

  ‘No, I know that. In the hospital. I need to speak with him, Jessica.’ She plopped my tea down ungraciously before me. ‘I can’t really tell you about what.’

  ‘Well, I wasn’t asking actually,’ I retorted. I stirred the black liquid round, and thought vaguely about milk. ‘But you’ve already seen him in the hospital, haven’t you?’

  She washed up a teaspoon vigorously. A delicate pink stained her cheeks. ‘Yes, okay, I have. But he was sleeping. We did not talk.’

  ‘Oh,’ I said. ‘Well, I don’t know where he is, actually.’

  For the first time, she sort of smiled. ‘Has he—have you left him?’

  ‘No, I haven’t bloody left him,’ I snapped. ‘He’s gone to find our son. I don’t know where Mickey is, he’s not at all well, though, and—’ My head gave an almighty throb, and I gasped in pain. She looked worried, stepped towards me, but I recoiled. I couldn’t bear the thought of her smooth flesh near mine.

  ‘I’m fine,’ I said, ‘honestly,’ but my eyes kept watering, and we both knew I was lying. ‘Why are you asking my permission anyway?’ I asked in between the throbs. ‘You weren’t bothered before.’

  ‘Because I have met you now. Because I—I respect you, Jessica. As a woman, as Mickey’s new wife. I see you as a person now; before you were just a shadow in my life.’

  Blimey. Too much therapy, I’d hazard a guess. I watched, horribly fascinated, as she gazed distractedly into the garden.

  ‘I love those roses, don’t you? The white ones. I planted those when we first came. When I had such hope for everything.’

  I really didn’t want to hear about the lovechild flowers of Mickey and his ex; about the hopes they’d shared. A magpie bounced across the lawn—one for sorrow-beady eye set far into its blue-black skein as it searched for all that glittered. I willed Agnes to go now.

  ‘You must miss your baby very much, do you?’ She didn’t look at me.

  ‘Of course. I can’t really,’—I can’t really function— ‘I can’t really think of anything else. Until I find him again.’

  ‘I wish I could help you.’ She kept staring at the roses, then she turned and smiled at me. She really was a beautiful woman. Just a little, sort of—hollow.

  ‘Thank you.’ I tried to smile back. ‘Look, I’ll tell Mickey you want to see him, okay? Frankly,’ and I realised it was true, ‘frankly, Agnes, I don’t care if you talk to him. For whatever good it does you. All I care about,’ I clutched my pounding head, ‘all I care about, actually, is getting Louis back. So,’ with some great effort I hoicked myself from the chair and stood, ‘if you don’t mind, I should get on. Thanks for the tea,’ I finished rather lamely. The phone started to ring, but by the time I found it the caller had hung up.

  She stood too.

  ‘Yes, I should go,’ she said. I nodded with relief, trying not to throw up as my skull cracked with pain, concentrating hard on a tiny scratch just by her left eye.

  ‘Good luck with everything,’ she said formally, and she was almost awkward. She picked up her bag and took out her car-keys, gestured to my head with an elegantly tapering hand. Any minute she’d start pirouetting across the hall, arms in demi-bras. ‘You should get that looked at. It must be very painful, no?’

  ‘Yeah, it is. Very bloody painful. I will.’

  And then she was gone.

  Deb was absolutely horrified at the cut on my head, and whisked me straight to Lewisham A & E, where I was X-rayed and patched up. ‘A touch of concussion,’ they said to Deb, as if I were a child, ‘don’t leave her alone for long,’ and they gave me painkillers so strong I felt like I was flying.

  Back at home, Leigh arrived with
the girls and stuck them in the sitting room with Harry Potter and some Happy Meals. My sister’s standards were slipping: the tracksuits, this fast food, the streaky tan, all meant deep, unspoken stress.

  ‘I’m staying here tonight,’ she said, compressing her mouth until it all but disappeared. I was secretly pleased; the kids brought me some kind of comfort as I watched them fighting over their chips.

  I went upstairs to change, idly activating the answer-phone as I passed it. First Deb’s old message from earlier played out, then, halfway up the stairs, someone new, whispering quite frantically. I stopped, and turned, and rushed back down. I pressed replay, and listened again. That mewing I’d heard the other day suddenly became clear. It was seagulls—of course it bloody was. And those frantic tones—my little brother Robbie.

  ‘Where are you, Jess? Answer the phone. I know where Louis is,’ he said. ‘I know where he is, Jessica.’

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  I was pacing the hall floor when Silver screeched up outside—it’d all gone a bit Sweeney suddenly—and I snatched the door wide open, and for a split second, we stared at one another without words. I fought the impulse to fling myself into his arms; I felt like we’d come so far, and finally this was it. He’d tried to protect me, despite the ups and downs, he’d done his very best. But I just said, ‘Well come on then,’ grabbing my bag, and strode out to the car.

  Kelly was sitting in the vehicle behind, and I waved a funny little wave—we were old mates now—and he waved back, and almost smiled. Then I climbed into Silver’s front seat. Deb came out before him, and I hoped she’d get in Kelly’s car—but she slid in tight behind me, and inwardly I couldn’t help but groan.

  And my sister was on the doorstep, hugging her youngest daughter to her side, biting her lip and calling out, ‘Good luck, we’ll be waiting. Call me as soon as you’ve got news, won’t you?’ and Silver patted her arm soothingly as he passed; then we were off.

  The light was falling as we travelled through the suburbs; the clouds glowering across the motorway said that summer’s card was marked. My tummy was jumping, rolling like fighting puppies did. I was rather breathless, and I clutched my inhaler in my pocket; I thought of Louis and I smiled. Then Silver was talking, cutting through my daydreams; wanting to discuss exactly what Robbie had said, again.