Tattletale

by Sarah J. Naughton

  ‘If you continue to be disruptive I’ll ask you to leave.’

  ‘No you won’t,’ the lady replies. ‘I’m her legal chaperone.’ But she settles nevertheless, literally shaking herself down like a fat pigeon after a rainstorm.

  The girl glances behind her at the door. Why didn’t Mum come in with her?

  ‘A condition of the caution is that you will issue an apology to the boys involved.’

  ‘Oh fuck off.’

  ‘Watch your language, Mrs Obodom.’

  ‘She’s not apologising.’

  The policeman turns to the girl, smiling. ‘You ever been to a prison, young lady?’

  She shakes her head.

  ‘Some of the women there, well …’ He looks her up and down and shakes his head.

  ‘You aren’t seriously doing this? You do know her history?’

  His smile slips. ‘I’ve read the file.’

  ‘So don’t threaten her, or it won’t be just the IPCC I’ll be going to. It’ll be the press. They won’t have forgotten her.’

  The policeman pushes his tongue into his bottom lip. Finally he says, ‘Because of what you’ve been through in the past we’ll waive the apology, but if anything at all happens like this in the future—’

  ‘Come on, sweetheart.’ The lady gets up. ‘We’re done.’

  Mum and Dad are waiting for her outside. Mum is crying. Dad’s face is as grey as his suit. He steps forward as she emerges.

  ‘Mr Goddard.’ The lady shakes his hand. ‘Mrs Goddard.’ But her mum won’t take the proffered hand. She presses her tissue to her eyes as if she can’t bear to look at it.

  ‘There’s her stuff,’ Dad says.

  The girl looks in the direction he’s pointing. She recognises the red suitcase they took to Majorca in the Easter holiday.

  ‘If there’s anything we’ve left out we’ll send it on. Email us, please. No phone calls. I won’t have my wife being upset.’

  ‘You’re doing a good job there, then.’

  Multicoloured ribbons flutter from the handle of the case. She and Mum tied them on to make it easier to spot on the baggage conveyor belt.

  ‘Let’s not draw this out any longer than necessary. You got the papers I sent last week?’

  He’s asking the lady, but she’s just staring at the girl.

  ‘You did tell her, didn’t you?’

  Last week was when Felix was staying with his Auntie Carol and she was in the house alone with her parents. Up in her room mostly, listening to the creaks and ticks of the silent house, trying to breathe air that seemed to have less oxygen, as if it had all been used up by the shouting and crying.

  ‘I’m … sorry …’ It seems like it’s difficult for him to say the word, like his tongue has suddenly stiffened. ‘… it had to end like this. Goodbye, Mrs Obodom, and we really do wish her the very best of luck in the future.’

  She wonders who he’s talking about, because he isn’t looking at her.

  He turns then and clasps his wife’s arm, but she shakes him off.

  ‘Let me talk to her, David, please.’

  He makes an angry noise as she moves past him. Her face looks so weird, all red and swollen, and her eyes are crusty and half closed. She takes the girl’s hands and the trembling passes into her own arm.

  ‘We had to choose.’

  ‘Mrs Goddard, please be mindful of—’

  ‘We had to choose and he was our son.’

  ‘I’m your daughter,’ she says, her voice rusty from disuse. ‘Aren’t I? That’s what you said.’

  ‘Helen, let’s—’

  ‘GET OFF ME, DAVID!’

  It’s the first time she’s ever heard Mum raise her voice. The foyer of the police station falls silent. Even the drunk on the bench stops humming to himself.

  Her dad’s face goes tight and pinched up. ‘Tell her whatever you need to. I’ll be waiting in the car.’ And without a backwards glance, he stalks out through the police station door.

  The lady waits until Mum has finished talking, and then she takes the girl’s hand and helps her over to the bench. The girl watches her mum’s blurry figure, haloed by sunlight, as she opens the door and follows her husband out into the warm afternoon. A moment later the car engine starts. The girl remembers the way the car always smelled of boiled sweets and Felix’s trainers.

  The lady hands her a tissue but her hands are so numb she can barely hold it.

  Thursday 17 – Saturday 19 November

  36. Jody

  It’s three days since you passed on. I can’t bring myself to call it anything else. I have to believe that you are somewhere. That one day, perhaps, I might reach you.

  Every minute takes forever to crawl by. I watch the shadows in the flat creep across the floor and then up the walls where they spread out like ink in water. I sit in the darkness. I’m still sitting there at dawn.

  I haven’t washed or brushed my hair or cleaned my teeth since I got back from the hospital. I suppose I must smell.

  It’s so quiet.

  Nobody hammers on the door any more. Nobody orders me to open up and explain myself. Even the baby has stopped crying. They’ve gone, she and her mother, back to Albania. The husband never came home.

  Your sister pushed a note under my door.

  I’m returning to the US. Have the decency to go to the police and tell them what you know, for Abe’s sake. Mags Mackenzie

  I watched her through the spyhole as she let herself out of your flat for the last time, in her masculine suit and tight ponytail. Her high heels clip-clopped down the stairs and then the front door banged closed and a moment later there was the sound of a car engine. Her taxi? Or the man I had seen her with that night?

  Now I’m alone up here at the top of the church. Tucked away in the space near the roof. If St Jerome’s was still a working church the congregation would be sitting in their neat rows far, far below, heedless of my existence. Just the way I like it. You were the only one who ever made me want to be noticed. Now I will fade into the background again. A grey girl in a grey dress in a grey city, living a grey life until it’s my turn to pass. Will I see you then?

  Yes.

  You loved me.

  You gave your life for me, Abe, and if that’s not love I don’t know what is.

  I didn’t need the pills when I had my love for you to keep me grounded. Now I do. I took the ones I had left but they ran out and the next morning I felt like going up onto the roof and throwing myself off. I could see myself lying spreadeagled on the tarmac of the car park, utterly still and peaceful. The image brought such a sense of release. But what if it went wrong? I’d end up like you did, or worse. And with no one there to hold my hand.

  Oh God, I can’t keep thinking like this.

  In desperation I call Tabby and she organises for a prescription to be left for me at the chemist on the high road.

  It’s so cold now. The sky a dense white with no sign of the sun. We must be nearly in December. Christmas is coming. The mere thought of that is enough to make me want to step out in front of the bus passing the corner of Gordon Terrace. Helen will send a card, maybe even a pair of slippers or a set of bath oils that I will give to the charity shop. Tabby will buy me chocolates and her daughter will bake me another cake that will only make me feel more alone.

  I cross the road and go into the chemist.

  The pharmacist starts to smile when I go up to the counter, but then she looks me up and down and her face falls. She asks for my name then hurries into the partitioned section where they dish out the pills.

  I wait by the window, looking out over the high road.

  Cosmo is busy with lunchtime office workers. I close my eyes and picture the two of us there, sitting at our favourite table at the back, where we can hold hands and kiss without anyone noticing. I picture us chinking glasses as we talk about the wedding. You want a big one – you are proud of me, you want to show me off – I want to keep it small. Just one or two special people, because
really I can only think of inviting Tabby and her daughter and maybe the lady from the charity shop.

  I am smiling when I open my eyes.

  The smile freezes.

  You are there.

  You are inside Cosmo.

  Standing in the shadows at the back, the customers and staff milling around you heedlessly. If I didn’t know you by your build, by your clothes and hair, I would know from the intensity of your gaze. I’m pinned to the spot, unable to breathe.

  ‘Miss Currie?’ says the pharmacist. ‘Are you OK?’ I tear my eyes away from you. She’s holding out a paper bag. Hurrying to the counter I snatch it from her and go out.

  The road is as busy as usual and I’m stuck on the pavement, dancing from foot to foot as I wait for a break in the traffic.

  Eventually I dive out between a bus and a minicab, ignoring the angry beeping.

  The window of Cosmo is a flat reflection of the street scene in front of it. To see inside I have go right up to the glass, ignoring the strange looks of the customers on the other side as I peer in.

  You’ve gone.

  If I’d just mistaken you for someone else and that person had left the restaurant I would have seen them walking up the high road, but no one has left, I’m sure of it. Ours is the only empty table in the whole place.

  I know what Tabby would say – that I imagined seeing you because you’re on my mind so much.

  Perhaps she’s right.

  I try to put it out of my head as I turn for home.

  I wake up in the middle of the night.

  This is wrong. The pills are supposed to help with insomnia. But I realise that something specific has woken me when I hear it again. A woman’s cry, like a wail of grief.

  It’s coming from close by. One of the other flats on this floor, surely.

  I sit up in bed, staring into the darkness.

  Is it Mira? Has she come back from Albania? Has her husband found her?

  But it’s not a cry of distress. It’s a woman singing the blues. Now I can hear the words.

  I get up and go into the living room. Street light spills through the window to form orange puddles on my bare feet. I breathe shallowly, listening to the words I know so well.

  It’s one of your favourites. You would play it late at night, when you came back drunk. I’d watch you through the spyhole weaving unsteadily to your door, blundering your key against the lock. And then you’d go inside and the music would come on, lullabying me to sleep when the pills couldn’t.

  And now it’s playing again. How?

  I creep down the hall and, as quietly as possible, turn the latch and step out onto the landing. The woman’s voice streams out of your flat, echoing down the stairwell.

  I grip the banister rail and look over the edge. Unless another listener is standing down there in the darkness, I’m alone. Can no one else hear this? Is it all in my mind?

  The lino is cold beneath my feet. My breathing is quick and shallow with fear, and something else. Excitement? Then it catches in my throat.

  I can smell your aftershave.

  The black spyhole on your door glitters as I pad across the landing.

  I press my ear to the wood and listen.

  But the music is too loud to hear if there is any movement inside.

  Then it hits me. All the flats come with two sets of keys, but I only found one of yours: the one I gave to your sister, that she must have sent back to the housing association.

  Who has the other?

  Are they in there now? Playing your music? Wearing your aftershave?

  ‘Hello?’ I say clearly and loudly.

  The music shuts off and the darkness throbs with the sudden silence.

  For a moment I’m paralysed with fear. Was it all a trick? Is some stranger going to wrench open the door and drag me inside?

  Is it him?

  Somehow I get my feet moving. I run back to the flat, slamming the door behind me and curling up into a ball on the floor. I stay there until the sun begins to come up, but your flat remains utterly silent. Finally I creep back to bed.

  Nothing’s working any more.

  My vision is blurry.

  I keep tripping over and dropping things. I scalded myself with a cup of tea and a large blister, tight and red and fragile, has come up on my right thigh, making me too scared to wear jeans in case it pops.

  My stomach churns and I have to dash to the toilet three or four times a day.

  I go into a room and forget why I went there.

  My hair is falling out.

  I went to the charity shop to buy some books to try and distract myself, but when the woman behind the counter tried to talk to me I felt the first stirrings of a panic attack and had to run out.

  I know that some of these are side effects of the pills, but I’m scared that something else is happening to my brain.

  I’m seeing things.

  Ghosts.

  Your ghost.

  I try to tell myself that it’s all in my mind, keep my head down, stay indoors, don’t talk to anyone, don’t look out of any windows. But sometimes I have to leave the flat for groceries, and it’s then that you come.

  Checking the instruction leaflet in the pills I see that in the side effects section under Rare: fewer than one person per ten thousand it says hallucinations.

  But the thing is, unless I’m imagining this part as well, other people can see you too. I watch them adjust their course to let you by. I see them standing on a full bus when you are seated in front of them. I see them serving you in cafés – but when I go in you’re gone.

  You’re always moving away from me. On a bus or walking just too fast and too far for me to catch you up.

  Tabby phones. She says the pharmacist has been in touch with my doctor, saying they’re worried about my state of mind. Am I all right?

  ‘I’m fine.’

  A pause.

  ‘You must miss him a great deal.’

  I cannot stop my breathing from thickening.

  ‘Just remember, that though they’re gone from our sight, the dead are always with us, Jody,’ she says gently. ‘In our hearts and our memories.’

  How can that ever be enough?

  ‘I think you should start going back to the group, and stick with the pills – they’ll take a couple of weeks to work after a break. I think that will help any negative thinking or … delusions.’

  I want to tell her that you aren’t a delusion. If it was all in my head would people be moving aside to let you pass them? My whole life I’ve been told that what I’m feeling or thinking isn’t real, that I can’t trust myself. Tabby was the only one who ever believed me, and now she’s doubting me too.

  I get her off the phone, saying I’ve got an upset stomach. It’s not a lie. Though I don’t want to have to see the woman who’s been reporting me to my social worker, I need to go back to the chemist for something to settle it. I walk quickly, head bent so low all I can see are people’s feet, and even then my heart lurches every time a pair of Converses or brogues steps into my line of vision.

  The pharmacist doesn’t try to talk to me this time, or slip any more leaflets into the bag when she hands me the medicine. I’m trying so hard not to look in Cosmo that I open the door without looking and almost walk straight into a young woman. At her gasp I turn and apologise, and it’s then that I see you. Standing on the corner of Gordon Terrace. From this far away it’s hard to see properly but I think you’re looking back at me. Waiting.

  I’ve spent such a long time trying to convince myself that these visions are wrong, something to be ashamed of, something to fear, that for a moment I don’t move.

  Then a wave of love and happiness so powerful washes over me that I think I might collapse. A woman looks you up and down as she passes and then I know for sure. I’m not imagining you, Abe. You’re here. You’ve come back to me to show me that, whatever anyone else says, our love was real.

  I run.

  But by the time I’ve c
rossed the road you’re nowhere to be seen. I stand on the corner, panting, waiting for the dizziness to pass, my eyes pricking with tears.

  As I trudge back to St Jerome’s the youths peel out from the shadows, but do you know? I’m not scared at all any more. The worst thing has happened to me – I’ve lost you – and now I don’t care about anything else.

  They ask me the time but I keep walking. One of them steps out in front of me and says that his friend asked me a question so I should have enough respect to reply.

  I stare at him, dull-eyed. Do what you want.

  He looks me up and down and wrinkles his nose in disgust. Then he lunges for my bag. There’s nothing in it of value: the few pounds change from my shopping, my keys, a couple of tampons, but I cling to it like it’s bursting with fifties. I squeeze my eyes shut. I know why you’ve come back, Abe – to tell me that you’re waiting for me. Well, I’m ready.

  ‘Give me the bag.’

  I hold on tight.

  ‘Let. Go. Of. The. Bag. Bitch.’

  I hear the rasp of a knife being taken from a pocket, and the flash of light, reddened by my eyelids.

  It’s time. I’m ready.

  ‘Hey!’

  I open my eyes. A middle-aged man with a Staffie stands at the corner of the high road, his legs spread as wide as his dog’s. He might have been muscly once but it has all turned to fat. Under the football shirt his stomach is broad and squarish, like the shell of a tortoise.

  The youths smirk as they look him up and down, but when he sets off at a fast stride towards us, the dog loping along by his side, they disperse, catcalling and gesticulating as they go. The man stops at the edge of the grass, panting, perhaps with the adrenaline rush of a narrow escape, or maybe just because he’s fat.

  I set off across the waste ground to the church.

  ‘Don’t fucking thank me, then!’ he calls after me.

  I turn, suddenly angry. Thank you for what? I was ready! But he’s already stomping back to the high road.

  I watch from the window of the flat as the light drains away and the remaining street lights on Gordon Terrace buzz on. I’ve microwaved a plastic tub of lasagne, but find I have no appetite. Instead of the usual aroma of cooked meat and cheese, the food smells sour, like bad breath. I guess that’s the pills again.