Alice and the Fly (19 page)

The wake was at the Prancing Horse. There was a table in the corner with a ‘Reserved’ sign and a buffet of finger sandwiches – ham, egg, cheese and pickle. Gretna was sitting at the table, chatting to two old ladies. Gretna’s sister was standing at the buffet, peeling back the sandwiches to study their fillings.

Gretna waved us over. She said, ‘Wasn’t it a lovely service?’ and Mum said, ‘It was.’ The old ladies smiled up at us. Gretna’s sister returned from the buffet and Gretna introduced her as Molly. Molly invited us to help ourselves to a drink at the bar, there was a tab. The old ladies and Gretna and Molly were all drinking pineapple juice but Mum said we’d need something stronger. She ordered us both a cosmopolitan, which is a type of cocktail. I said maybe I shouldn’t, what about my medication?

‘Just one won’t hurt,’ she said.

We took two stools at the reserved table. At first Gretna asked about my age, my school, what I wanted to be when I grew up. Mum said I was very good at English and Gretna asked if I was going to be an English teacher and I nodded and smiled and sipped my cocktail. It tasted like cranberry juice.

For a while Gretna talked about her life on the road. She’s a Heaven’s Angel. The Heaven’s Angels are a Christian biker gang. They travel the country, trying to recruit other Christian bikers. Gretna never said what would happen when they’d recruited enough Christian bikers. Molly was also a Heaven’s Angel. They both had leather jackets hung over their chairs, a picture of a smiling Jesus stitched to the back. They held hands under the table. I couldn’t help but doubt what Mum had said about them being sisters.

Mum ordered us two more cocktails, margaritas this time, which tasted like lime juice. Then Mum began to tell Gretna and Molly and the old ladies about the kitchen she’s planning, how she’s going to knock through the lounge and extend the back of the house to make room for it, how we’re saving for an Aga cooker. She’ll probably need planning permission and so Gretna might have to sign something at some point, ‘But it’s not going to be unsightly or anything, don’t worry.’ Gretna nodded and smiled and sipped her pineapple juice. I ate an egg sandwich. It was gritted with shell. I washed it down with more margarita.

I kept an eye out for you. I thought I might catch a glimpse of you in your Marigolds but I didn’t. I’m not sure if you even work at the Prancing Horse any more. It didn’t matter too much, tomorrow is Goose’s party. Tomorrow we’re going to run away together and I’ll see you every day then. It’s strange to think I’ll probably never see Mum again. That’s why I kept drinking those cocktails with her. Some of them were disgusting but I didn’t want Mum to know that. I figured it was a good memory she could have of us. A good way to say goodbye.

The rain was heavy when we left, even heavier than it’d been all day. We planned to make a run for the car but as soon as we set off Mum tripped in her heels. She kicked them off and tucked them under her arm and the two of us sprinted across the car park. Mum squealed at the icy rain on her toes. I tried to protect her with the umbrella.

By the time we reached the car we were shivering. Mum set the air-con to HEAT, lifting her feet to the dashboard. There are floor heaters in the BMW but Mum doesn’t know how to turn them on.

‘That was pretty fun,’ she said. ‘For a funeral.’

We listened to ‘Are You Lonesome Tonight?’ again. Mum sang along. She started the engine and pulled out of the car park. It was dark by now. Even with the wipers on full it was hard to see through the blur of the rain. I put my seat belt on. Mum said she was going to make Singapore slings when we got home.

‘Have you ever had a Singapore sling?’

I shook my head.

‘They’re fabulous.’

We pulled out of the square onto the dual carriageway. Mum started to tell me about Singapore slings, how you shake everything up with the ice before serving, how you have to be careful not to add club soda until after it’s been shaken or else it explodes all over the kitchen. We’d just passed the canal bridge when we heard the squeal. The car bounced a little.

‘What was that?’

I shrugged.

‘The tyre?’

Mum frowned in the rear-view mirror. She pulled into the bus stop and stared over her shoulder.

‘What is that? Can you see that? In the road?’

I told Mum I couldn’t see anything.

‘Wait here.’

She opened the umbrella and stepped out into the rain. The hazard lights clicked and flashed and clicked and flashed. Rain hammered the windscreen. I closed my eyes.

Next thing Mum was back, knocking on my window.

‘Greg,’ she cried. ‘Get out, Greg.’

I climbed out of the car. The rain washed over me. It flattened my hair. It soaked my sweater. It ran down the collar of my shirt. I hunched, as if hunching would keep me dry. A river of rain cascaded over the street, flashing red in the hazard lights. A white feather floated by, disappearing under the car.

Mum was standing in the middle of the carriageway. The umbrella lay beside her, filling with rain. She was staring at a white fluffy ball in the road.

It was a mallard. Its neck was flattened, worms of what looked like mince smeared in all directions. One of its legs was pressed into the tarmac, the other flapping wildly in the rain.

‘What is it?’ Mum said.

I told her it was a duck.

‘What the hell’s it doing here?’ she screamed. ‘Out on its own? Don’t they emigrate?’

I told her I thought they did. I thought they had.

‘Should we kill it?’

I didn’t know.

‘We can’t just drive off,’ she said. ‘We can’t just leave it.’

The rain soaked through my jumper. It snaked my back, gathering at the lip of my boxers. My fringe was starting to curl. I was surprised how little blood there was, just feathers and meat.

Every few seconds the duck let out a squawk. It sounded like it was coughing.

‘We’ve got to do something,’ Mum said. ‘What if I reversed over it?’

The rain lightened. Spitting. Its hiss died.

Everything went quiet.

‘What do we do?’

Extract of interview between Detective Sergeant Terrence Mansell (TM) and Gregory Hall’s mother, Mrs Deborah Hall (DH).

TM: Let’s talk about Greg’s condition.

DH: OK.

TM: He’s schizophrenic.

DH: Apparently.

TM: You don’t believe he is?

DH: Sometimes. Sometimes I’m not so sure.

TM: Why?

DH: That doctor, he … he just assumed that’s what it is, straight off. That first time we saw him. And there’s no proper test. It’s not like they can ever know for sure. I … I don’t know. It just seems too easy.

TM: Easy?

DH: It’s like a cop-out. Like, an excuse for the way he is, rather than an explanation.

TM: But his hallucinations? His episodes? This would suggest schizophrenia?

DH: He sees things, yes. Things we can’t see. Sometimes I think he’s making it up, but then sometimes I think maybe he’s just overreacting because he’s actually seen something, a cobweb or something, and it’s sent him into overdrive. I don’t know. I think maybe it’s a bit of both. He doesn’t know, when he sees something, whether it’s real or not. I mean, to him it is real. I guess it doesn’t matter.

TM: But that’s what schizophrenia is, right? Paranoia? False beliefs?

DH: I suppose.

TM: You’re still unconvinced?

DH: There’s no proper test. That’s all I’m saying.

TM: How old was he when he was diagnosed?

DH: Sarah was four at the time, so he must have been, what, six or seven.

TM: That seems young.

DH: It is young. Very young. Dr Hughes said it was the youngest he’d ever seen.

TM: But he was certain it was schizophrenia?

DH: He was determined. Mind you, almost everyone since has agreed. We have check-ups less regularly now, but at first we were going back every couple of months, not always to the same doctor. The only person who ever even considered another possibility, who ever considered Greg could be cured, was my psychiatrist, Dr Filburn.

TM: What about your husband? What does he think?

DH: I don’t know. At first he thought Greg was just doing it for attention. Now, I don’t know. You’d have to ask him.

TM: But he is a doctor?

DH: Not any more, he’s a surgeon.

TM: But presumably he was? Presumably he went to medical school?

DH: Well, yes.

TM: And he didn’t notice anything? Any signs? Before the diagnosis?

DH: I think he was hoping it was just a stage. I don’t know. He was thinking that it was, you know, attention.

TM: It must have been hard.

DH: It is.

TM: Not just for Greg, but for you all. There’s quite a stigma.

DH: We kept it private. We keep ourselves to ourselves. We’re that sort of family.

TM: What was it that made you get him checked out in the first place?

DH: It was Sarah. How he was with Sarah.

TM: They didn’t get on?

DH: They got on fine, at first. He was fascinated by her.

TM: In what way?

DH: Well, when we first brought her home he’d stand at the end of the cot for ages, staring at her. It was like he didn’t believe she was real. It was only when she got older he started acting up.

TM: How?

DH: There were incidents.

TM: Like what?

DH: We found him in her room a couple of times, at night.

TM: Doing what?

DH: Watching her. Crying.

TM: Crying?

DH: He said it was, you know, ‘them’. He said she had them all over her. This was the first we heard about ‘them’. To start with I didn’t know what the hell he was talking about. By then she’d be crying too. This was when she was about eighteen months and he used to scare her, doing that. So I’d lift her out of bed and I’d lift her pyjamas up to show him how clean she was, show him there was nothing there, nothing on her, but it made no difference. He’d just keep crying, telling me I had to help her. Telling me I had to get them off her.

TM: So what did you do?

DH: I didn’t know what to do. I wasn’t sleeping much. I was working at the salon then. Howard was still planning the surgery, so it was a stressful time. I was the one who always had to get up in the night. But I figured it was a stage, it’d pass.

TM: But it didn’t pass.

DH: It got worse when she was about four. That’s when he started scratching at her.

TM: Scratching?

DH: Well, she had eczema. Really bad eczema. She was always scratching, always covered in scratches anyway, so we didn’t know, at first, that he was doing it too. Then we were at the supermarket one day and I heard her screaming and turned round and she was cowering from him, and he was over her, standing over her, clawing at her. He was six so he was bigger, a lot stronger. He started saying it again, the same old stuff, that she had ‘them’ all over her. That he had to get them off.

TM: He thought they were something to do with her eczema?

DH: He’d muddled the two things in his mind somehow. He’d sit there watching her scratch, saying stuff like, ‘Help her. Get them off her. They’re all over her.’ And I’d try and explain there was nothing there, but he wouldn’t listen. They were real. To him they were real and that was that.

TM: So you took him to the doctor.

DH: Howard didn’t want to. I don’t know why. We never talked about it all that much, he just told me not to be dramatic. Told me it was just attention-seeking. He didn’t witness it first hand, though, and it was hard to explain how … how horrific it was. How obvious it was that Greg really believed in them. Believed that they were real. Until Finners Island.

TM: Finners Island?

DH: That was when he crossed a line. When I decided to split them up.

TM: What happened?

DH: We don’t know, exactly. [Sighs.] Look, I feel I’m giving the wrong impression. He’s not … violent. He’s a very peaceful person, very calm. It’s just his condition. He can’t seem to help it.

TM: What happened on Finners Island?

DH: He had some kind of episode. It was out on the water. Sarah always loved the boats …

TM: The boats?

DH: There were these boats you could go out to sea in. These little inflatable things. What are they called?

TM: Dinghies?

DH: Yeah, like rubber dinghies. Anyway, we wouldn’t let her out in them because she was only four. But she really wanted to, she kept going on about it. Then one morning Howard and I went into the woods for a walk. My parents were with us and they were supposed to be watching the children.

TM: Are these the grandparents Greg went to live with?

DH: Yeah. Don’t get me wrong, they were reliable, usually, and responsible. But they were old, even then, especially Herb. I think those holidays took a lot out of them. Anyway, they must have both fallen asleep or something because when we got back the kids were gone. Mum and Herb were frantic, obviously – we all were. We had no idea where they’d gone.

TM: They’d gone out in a dinghy.

DH: Yeah. Though they weren’t in the dinghy any more by this point. I just saw this splashing, something splashing out in the water, and then Howard was gone, running out across the beach like something from one of his
Baywatch
videos.

TM: He saved them.

DH: He was the hero, yes. Sarah was unconscious but Howard brought her round. He had to resuscitate her. That was the worst moment of my life, watching him do that. You know, that thing with the hands? The kiss of life? She was too young for all that. Her body was so small. It seemed absurd. It was only when we got back to the hotel we realised she was all scratched up. Greg was throwing up in the reception, into a bucket from this bucket-and-spade set we had. Sarah was bleeding quite a bit and it was obvious he’d been scratching at her. That he’d had some kind of episode, out in the boat.

TM: That’s why you sent him off, to live with your parents.

DH: I had to be sure he wouldn’t hurt Sarah. I had to protect her.

TM: That’s understandable.

DH: I didn’t want him to be away from us. I didn’t want to only see him once a week. I just … I had no choice. I took him to the doctors. Got him diagnosed. Got him on medication.