Heartstream

by Tom Pollock

  She tails off and clicks on the TV. It’s showing football. She makes a throaty tch sound and rewinds it. As a consequence, the first news I see of Charlie is a surrealist nightmare of him being unloaded in reverse out of an ambulance by paramedics who walk solemnly backwards.

  I stare at the remote. If only I had one of those that worked on real life. Rewind or fast fucking forward, though, the blood seeping through the bandages wrapped across his eyes is very visible, and very red.

  “I … I think some of the glass from the window must have got in his eyes.” Polly’s voice is desolate. “They can do wonderful things these days; I’m sure…”

  Thankfully she stops before she can say I’m sure he’ll be fine. Otherwise I’m fairly certain my response would have sprayed both of our internal organs over the walls in a fine red mist.

  They can do wonderful things these days; I’m sure she’ll be fine. I’ve heard that mantra from well-meaning people so many times over the last year I’ve all but ground my teeth to dust.

  I picture that locker full of tumours. I force myself to hold it in mind. Well, Amy, you can’t say you weren’t warned. It’s all very well claiming you’re prepared to sacrifice your privacy, but it’s never just your privacy you’re sacrificing, is it?

  Oh well, they were only his eyes; he wasn’t using them for anything.

  I picture the paintings in Charlie’s room. Hot acid sweeps into my throat. I feel a sudden, mindless impulse to gouge my own eyes out. I stifle it, but still, my thumbs twitch a couple of inches into the air.

  Don’t be an arse, Becker! I snap at myself, lowering my hands. Charlie has no more use for a blind sister than he does for a wet fart. Stop making this about you. What he needs right now is someone to love and take care of him.

  Which brings us back, as ever, to every captive’s first order of business:

  Escape.

  I feel the familiar numbness steal over me. It’s so often been my refuge in these last few months and I eagerly climb inside it once again. Feelings: pause. Practicality: play. Make the best of it, even if the best of it is still so awful you want to dig your fingers under your skin and pull it off in scraps. Do the work.

  Do.

  The.

  Work.

  Polly’s talking. Her eyes plead with me, but it takes me a moment to tune in to what she’s saying.

  “… so, so sorry,” she says desolately. “I never meant for this to happen. You do believe that, don’t you?”

  I let the question hang. It’s not even an act of deliberate cruelty; I just can’t summon the will to make her feel better. Eventually I put my hand on my lower abdomen.

  “Sorry, I’m not feeling too well. Can I go to the loo again?”

  As soon as the door’s locked with Polly safely on the other side, I scrape Mum’s illicit clone of Dr Ben Smith’s phone out from behind the loose tile. Whatever the reason for Polly’s eruption into my life and her mysterious obsession with my mother, there must be a clue here somewhere.

  I stab the mail app open and type Becker into the search bar. No results. I try again with Mum’s first and then maiden name, but nothing comes up then either. I type in Polly, but that also yields no reward.

  I chew my lip, throw a nervous glance at the door and consider trying to make a plopping sound with my mouth, but decide against it. I start to scroll down through Dr Ben Smith’s emails, painfully conscious that there are – according to the counter in the corner – more than fifty-six thousand of them. Dr Smith is apparently another of the never-throw-anything-away brigade – and I don’t have a prayer of making it through even a fraction of them before Little Miss Bomb Vest boots the door down and demands to inspect a stool sample.

  I read the first couple, then I start to skim, not really sure what I’m looking for, but with a growing nausea because I’m sure I don’t have time to find it. Dr Smith’s emails are a mess of file requests, shopping lists and notes to himself stuffed with medical terms I don’t understand. I flick faster and faster, barely even reading any more, frustration, anxiety and finally fear taking bigger and bigger bites out of my innards. Tears blur the screen. There has to be a clue here, something somewhere, but—

  Hang on.

  I jam my thumb onto the glass, but not fast enough to keep the words that snagged my eye from flying off the screen. I scroll back frantically, half certain I’ve imagined it.

  But no, there, in the From column, sandwiched between emails from Riley, Susan, and Bharath, Vikram, is a message from one Hatter, Mad.

  My mind flickers back to the fragments of the shattered teapot, the Hatter in pieces, face down in drugged English breakfast blend.

  Could be a coincidence, I warn myself as I stab the email with my thumb. It’s not like she was the world’s only Alice in Wonderland fan.

  The email is titled Our Agreement, and is brief, almost to the point of poetry.

  “Adherence advised. I advocate absence of activity.”

  Puzzled but intrigued, I filter for other messages from the mysterious Mr Hatter. I find only one and stare in frank incredulity at the date.

  The first and only other email was received the better part of two decades ago.

  Baffled, I gawp at the phone for a few seconds, feeling the bite of the loo seat set off pins and needles in my thighs. Two messages, and two messages only, sent years and years apart: what the fuck kind of relationship does that point to?

  I open the earlier message. If anything, it’s even more brusque than its belated follow-up; there are no words at all, just a mobile number I don’t recognize and a JPEG attachment. I press the little paper-clip icon. The circle fills and an image pops up.

  “Huh.”

  I don’t know what I was expecting, but it wasn’t that.

  I’m no expert – I consider myself an enthusiastic amateur if anything, very much part-time – but nevertheless I’m fairly sure that the object currently filling the screen is a man’s erect penis.

  It’s a white guy’s, of moderate size (I think; again, I’m no expert – I don’t have charts or anything) protruding straight at the camera from a nest of wiry brown-grey hair. There’s a blur of out-of-focus scrotum at the bottom of the shot, and a purplish, kidney-shaped birthmark on a hip right at the top.

  I sit back against the chilly porcelain loo tank.

  “Mum, what were you doing?” I whisper, but a knot of dread is tying itself in my guts, because I think I already know.

  The alias, the anonymous phone number. A menacing nude photo. You can’t be even a semi-famous girl on the Internet and not know what all that adds up to.

  I eye the kidney-shaped birthmark, the temperature seeming to drop further every second. The threat implicit in that image is very specific. Mr – or shall we say Ms – Hatter isn’t going to just stick this up on some blog somewhere. The kind of greasy skidmark who publishes stolen nudes online for all to see doesn’t warn you like this; they just go ahead and post for kicks and clicks. It can’t be a revenge porn thing, either – the photo doesn’t include the face, so the subject could always just deny it’s him. No, this image has been carefully selected so that only someone already intimate with the man in it could identify him from it. Mad Hatter has a very particular audience in mind – a husband or a wife, the mother of Dr Smith’s grinning be-braced twin daughters, perhaps – who might be prompted to ask awkward questions about who he’s been showing his junk to.

  Our agreement. Adherence advised. I advocate absence of activity.

  Mum’s voice swims back into my head: And is your relationship administrative, amorous or purely adversarial?

  There are 8.5 billion people on our dear planet Earth, so the odds are pretty good that someone else is that alliteration-happy, but a Lewis Carroll obsessive who just happens to be emailing a man whose cloned mobile was hidden in my mother’s deathbed? A woman who just happened to have the professional expertise needed to crack his cloud accounts like an egg, and rummage in them for incriminating material
?

  As much as I might want to believe it, I don’t think it’s a coincidence any more.

  Our agreement. Adherence advised. Those four words are a threat.

  I hope I’m wrong, but the only sense I can make of this is that Mad Hatter was Mum, and she was blackmailing this guy.

  Something in me rebels. A wave of self-disgust crashes against the inside of my skull and I almost throw the phone down. My mind holds up the image of Mum, withered and watery-eyed, moaning with pain every time I tried to touch her. Haven’t you failed her enough? How can you even think this?

  I exhale hard. Emotions: pause. Practicality: play. If I’m wrong, no one will be more relieved than me, but I have to follow this where it leads.

  Let’s just say Mum was trying to coerce the unfortunate Dr Smith. Coerce him into doing what?

  I advocate absence of activity.

  Or not doing what?

  A thumping on the door jerks me out of it.

  “Amy?” Polly calls. “Are you all right in there?”

  “Fine, just a bit … blocked up.”

  A long pause.

  “Oh… Anything I can do to help?”

  “Like what? Come in here with a crowbar?”

  No response. I can almost feel the heat of her blush through the wood of the door. Hopefully her embarrassment has bought me a few minutes.

  On a shot to nothing, I try googling Dr Ben Smith but get the inevitable eleventy-jillion results and close the browser.

  For Christ’s sake, Mum, couldn’t you have found a doctor with a weirder name to put the squeeze on? Professor Facsimile Hornswoggle, for example? Cardinal Dresden Butterfield?

  Of course, there basically aren’t any real people with properly unique names: culture plus the natural human inclination to mimic plus the aforementioned 8.5 billion folks guarantee that, if anyone actually went by that kind of name, it would have to be a pseudonym …

  … just like Hatter, Mad.

  The loo seat clunks as I shift position. A little lighter flame of excitement kindles at the base of my throat. Mum used a fake name, sure, but what if that didn’t work? Dr Ben Smith was presumably smart enough to get into medical school, and he had years to investigate. What if he managed to uncover the identity of whoever was sending him threatening pictures of his own dick?

  I remember exactly when Mum died, not just the day, but the minute. I watched it happen, I’m sure of it. I was just walking back into that wretched room with the pretty folio edition of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland under my arm. Charlie and I had given it to her for Christmas years ago, and when she’d asked me to bring it to her, I’d almost cried. I opened the door, and my eyes met hers just as her face, already sagging and skull-like, took on its final pallor. I remember slamming the door and holding Charlie back while our mingled tears soaked my collar – another choice I denied him.

  And then, eleven minutes after his wracking sobs had quietened enough for me to slacken my grip on him, I pulled my phone from my pocket, opened Heartstream, and made it public.

  10:27 a.m. on 25 June.

  Had Dr Ben Smith been eagerly following my feed, knowing he’d finally be out from under the thumb of his tormentor? And, if so, what did he do when he found out he was?

  I go to the Sent folder in his email account and filter the date for 25 June. There’s only one email sent out that morning, at 10:51. I open it.

  To: Ingram, Jennifer E.

  From: Smith, Benjamin P.

  Jen – bit urgent I’m afraid, hon – could you bring me a patient file? Catherine Canczuk. You’re a star.

  B

  Anticipation pinching the back of my throat, I stick Catherine Canczuk into Google. The results are the usual hotchpotch of Facebook and LinkedIn profiles. There’s a professional ice hockey player for the Calgary Cormorants, and an academic whose thesis Choo-Choo Pain: Torture and Punishment in the Universe of Thomas the Tank Engine is available in full online.

  My eye, however, is drawn to the row of image search results displayed at the top of the screen. The second from the left is a girl about my age: glasses, ginger, curvy, smiling shyly behind a hastily raised hand. She’s almost unrecognizable.

  Almost, but not quite.

  You can see it in the nose, and the shape of the jaw, although the amount of weight she’s lost in the years since the photo was taken nearly disguises it. Above all, though, it’s the green-grey eyes that give her away.

  I exhale hard and my breath fogs the screen. I wipe it clear and stare into the screen, and Polly – half a lifetime younger, but Polly nevertheless – stares back.

  The picture is from an ancient Tumblr account called Hippolyta the Hypocrite. I hit the link and start to read.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Cat

  Dear @WildWhiteHorse. Stop lying. Just. Stop.

  What a shock. The delusional @WildWhiteHorse is a fat, sad white girl.

  There is no @WildWhiteHorse. Management made her up.

  “@RickLover545 This must be breaking @RealNickLamb’s heart. Hope you’re fucking satisfied @WildWhiteHorse, you bitch.”

  His contract forbids it. They’d sue him into oblivion.

  “@CyberSally “Why doesn’t @RyanRichardsOfficial speak out and debunk this baby crap?”

  Come on, guys, we can totally get this to number 1:

  “@Rainin_Lou: Sings *I don’t want a lot for Christmas, there is just one thing I need, @WildWhiteHorse cut open, just so I can watch her bleed*”

  Dear @WildWhiteHorse. Stop talking. Just. Stop.

  I’M S C R E A M I N G.

  “@Cybersal: I know a nurse at the clinic where @WildWhiteHorse went to get her ‘pregnancy’ checked out. Guess what fake name she used? HIPPOLYTA RICHARDS.”

  Dear @WildWhiteHorse. Why do you hate Ryan and Nick so much? Why don’t you want them to be happy?

  Dear @WildWhiteHorse. Why do you hate gay people so much?

  Ding-Dong the Witch is Dead #BabyFake

  “@RickYouUpAndDown: Result! [Search text = “WildWhiteHorse” User not found.]”

  Hey! Guess who found her FB and private Twitter? @CatCanczuk Facebook.com/Catherine.Canczuk.1598

  Dear Mrs Canczuk, you don’t know me, but I just wanted to know how you feel about raising a lying, homophobic slut for a daughter.

  “@CatCanczuk: Please, just leave me alone. Leave my mum alone. Please. I can’t sleep. Please.”

  Dear @CatCanczuk, we’ve got eyes on you.

  “@BabyFakeandBake: So, here’s a photo of @CatCanczuk a heroic Ricker took while she was changing at school for gym. She’s tubby, sure. But pregnant?!?! [WhiteHorse.jpg]”

  Needles ready!

  “@CatCanczukReallyNeedsToFuckingDieNow: OK, so now we know what school she goes to. Who’s up for paying her a little visit?”

  Fic Title: Merry Christmas Rickdom! Category: Comedy. Summary: @CatCanczuk gets kicked in the head until her delusional brains ooze out of her ears.

  Dear @CatCanczuk, why don’t you and your white trash fake baby just die in a fire?

  Dear @CatCanczuk…

  Dear @CatCanczuk…

  Dear @CatCanczuk…

  Dear @CatCanczuk, stop breathing.

  Just.

  Stop.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Amy

  She isn’t waiting for me when I unlock the door. I pad out into the hallway, and then I see her, framed in the doorway to the kitchen. She’s slumped in her chair like a boxer between rounds, staring into space.

  My mouth is suddenly dry and I struggle to swallow before I speak. “Catherine?” I say tentatively. “Catherine Canczuk?”

  For a moment she doesn’t react at all, and I wonder if I’ve got this all wrong. Then she shakes herself, blinks and straightens. Her whole demeanour changes as she turns to look at me, as though “Polly” is a dream she’s waking up from.

  “My friends called me Cat,” she says.

  Are we friends? I wonder, eyeing the flickering green reflection
of the bomb light in the hollow of her throat. And then I remember her saying, a mere handful of hours and blood and screams ago, Because I’m your friend, Amy, and it occurs to me that she thinks we are, and I need to work with that, if I’m ever going to get out of here.

  “Cat, then,” I say, coming into the kitchen and perching on the edge of the table. “Where’s your kid, Cat? Wouldn’t you rather be hanging out with them than holed up in here?”

  If she’s shocked by my sudden wealth of information, she doesn’t show it. It occurs to me that, for all the unpredictable outbursts of childlike delight and fury, there’s an inner core of this woman that’s locked down like a submarine at full dive.

  “I lost the baby,” she says distantly. “The stress. The doc said I couldn’t handle it.”

  Did you lose someone? I remember the expression of distant pain when I asked her that.

  “Oh, I’m … I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be. It was hardly your fault, was it?” The pleasant, vague smile returns.

  “What happened?”

  “Since you’re suddenly so well informed, why don’t you tell me?” An edge enters her voice, but I don’t take the bait. I just wait. When she exhales, and starts to speak again, I’m not surprised. People need to talk about painful things; lonely people doubly so.

  “The dad was famous; I’m guessing you know that?”

  I give a curt nod, but don’t speak; I’m not going to interrupt her if I can avoid it.

  “He had a lot of fans, including, at one time, me.” A rueful smile. “When word got out he’d knocked me up, those fans didn’t take too kindly to it, including pretty much all of my friends.”

  She turns my phone over and over in her hands, then holds it up.

  “Window to the soul, right? Well, what did mine show me when I looked into it? A bitch. A liar, deluded or plain faking it, who couldn’t handle being just another teenage pregnant fuck-up and didn’t have the guts for an abortion.”