Borderliners (18 page)

My host is not all that she seems. Buried in the best hiding place of all, her community, wielding power and darkness in the name of something else, she escapes the notice of those who might poke and prod. I cannot quite work out who she really is. She seems to tread a fine line but that’s life: fine lines, ambiguity and grey areas.

Today I paid up. I went to the bank with Julia as agreed. The three of us drove through the village to the nearest town five miles away. Julia parked up and got out, leaving Iain in the car. Then, she strode down the high street so briskly it was hard for me to keep up with her. Her black leather boots enhanced her authority and she kept her head down, greeting no-one along the way. I noticed several people had to either stop in their tracks or jerk out of her way as she marched along. It occurred to me then, that she never speaks favourably about the neighbouring towns. It seems she prefers to keep her life enclosed within the village boundaries.

We entered the bank and were shown into a cubicle almost straight away. It was only then that Julia took down her hood. The bank manager appeared nervous, his eyes darting uncertainly from Julia to me as he fired up his computer. When I was ready, he handed me the transfer documents. Julia was pleased. I watched her hands tremble as I signed them. In a few more minutes the deed was done, the money transferred from my father’s inheritance to Julia and Iain’s bank account.

Julia smiled but the bank manager merely eyed her. ‘This is the third person to transfer money to you this month,’ he said, handing me a final document to sign. I looked up in surprise, but Julia just ignored him, turning instead to push the remaining paperwork into my hands.

‘Thank you for doing this,’ she whispered, her Scottish lilt more pronounced than usual, the beauty in her singsong tone mesmerising. The official picked up the phone to a colleague and she took this as a cue to lean further in to me. ‘We’ll cement this on the night of the 31
^st
as per tradition.’ I felt cold and clammy as it occurred to me the 31
^st
October is also All Hallows Eve. I told myself this didn’t matter, that I had nothing to fear. After all, I trusted my new community, didn’t I?

We returned to the car, where Iain was waiting for us in the back seat, cutting a shadowy and silent figure as usual. As we drove back home, Julia explained I would need to smarten up for the ceremony. I dislike smart clothes and convention, but she was in no mood for argument.

‘I will take some money from our fund - the one you’ve kindly contributed to - and buy you a fine tuxedo. You’ll brush up very nicely, I don’t doubt it.’

‘Oh, but I don’t really do ceremonies,’ I said.

There was a silence before Iain spoke from his vantage in the back. ‘I think you’ll do this one.’

‘Why?’

I received no answer from either of my hosts. Instead, Julia started to tap the car interior next to the gear stick with her long nails, which were the colour of dark, congealed blood. All of a sudden I could see blood everywhere. Oozing from the hinges of the car doors, from the seams of the seats, the dashboard and dripping slowly down the glass of the windscreen. I covered my eyes.

‘You’ll need more medication when we get home,’ remarked Julia from somewhere far away, but I didn’t dare open my eyes in case the blood reappeared. When the car came to a halt, I removed my hands from my face but before I could muster up the courage to open my eyes, a sharp gust of air hit me and an arm pulled me out of the car.

‘Time for your treatment,’ said a rasping undertone.

I opened my eyes to see the front door rise up ahead of me, Julia’s dark willowy shape framed in the doorway as she unlocked and pushed it open. The hand grasping my arm belonged to Iain, and as I turned to look at him he gave me one final shove through the doorway. I landed on the wooden floor in the entrance hall.

‘Oh, did you trip?’ he said, in a monotone.

Julia appeared by my side with a bottle of tablets. ‘I think you need some of these.’ She unscrewed the lid, her blood-red fingernails ripping the bottle top open with one violent twist and flick. My eyes tracked downwards to the label.

‘But those are for when I’m unwell,’ I protested, as I caught sight of the name of the drug. I didn’t want to be sedated.

A sigh preceded another flick of the wrist as Julia emptied out two or three of the tablets into her other hand. Iain grasped me with both arms, pinning my hands behind my back and pulling my head back and my mouth open.

‘Sleep well, my friend,’ he breathed, somewhere behind me.

I am both a channel to the otherworldly and a fine line. I am a borderline, like life itself, like the community and its people. I tread the dividing line between both heaven and hell. My studies have drawn me into another world. I feel as though I’m being pursued by invisible forces and I’m not strong enough to resist them. Who knows how long I’ll last? Or how long I’ll be able to continue this branch of my studies? My mind tracks backwards and forwards through the past, present and future aimlessly and I can’t control it. The tinnitus doesn’t help. When I want to think clearly, it just rages at me and I’m no good at stilling it these days.

My first appointment of the day didn’t turn up. As I sat in my consulting room staring at the notes on my screen, I reflected that in recent weeks Linda’s attendance had been intermittent at best. Casting my mind back to our encounter at the health club, I decided this was no coincidence. I’d seen her outside Julia and Iain’s place on a couple of occasions, her small frame hunched and furtive as she padded, pigeon-toed, past my house to get to theirs. Always alone. The last time I’d looked twice at her, she was dressed in ill-fitting clothes and her hair was dirty and stuck up at the back as if she hadn’t bothered to brush it after getting out of bed. It seemed she was getting worse rather than better and I couldn’t let a missed appointment slip.

I decided to chase it up, and balancing the receiver between my ear and my shoulder, I dialled her number. ‘Linda?’

‘No, this is her sister, Kate.’

‘Hello Kate, this is Dr Lewis, your sister’s therapist. She’s missed her appointment today. Is she there?’

‘She’s not up. But I’ll try and wake her.’ She sounded like she would rather not, but I waited. ‘Hold on whilst I just go and look.’

After a couple of minutes the phone clicked and a thin, rasping voice came on the line.

Linda’s sporadic attendance of her treatment had been bothering me ever since I’d run into her in the health club. She’d appeared in my mind’s eye on several occasions since, deathly pale, always wearing the same glacial expression as her eyes stared out from dark sockets. Every time, her skin appeared slack and rancid as it sat, translucent, against the bones of her face. It was like looking at a person who was already beyond the grave.

She had slid rather than drifted into the state she was in now. It hadn’t taken long. Only a year ago, she had still been attending her sixth form college. I remember seeing her around, a laughing, jolly girl dressed in clothes from her favourite second hand shop. But she had changed dramatically in a short time into the washed out waif who came to me for treatment.

I went through to the main reception area of the surgery to slot in an alternative appointment for Linda and was greeted by the usual ambivalent atmosphere. Neither Lucy nor Louise returned my greetings and Dr Gostik was standing by the receptionists’ computers with a frown on his face. ‘Dr Lewis, can you come in here a minute?’

‘Yes?’ I noted that Lucy and Louise were already smirking from behind the reception glass.

‘You know of our security checks?’ His thick, white eyebrows beetled disconcertingly above his beady brown eyes.

‘Yes, why?’

‘Ah ok, that’s alright then. You see we found the door to your consulting room unlocked and ajar over the weekend. That’s a bit of security risk, you know,’ he continued, his self-righteous tone ringing out across reception.

I stopped and put a hand to my mouth. My first thought was that I must have left the fire door open. But it was odd, I really thought I’d locked it behind me. I always did.

‘Who found my door open?’ I was curious to know. ‘I’d like to thank them. Looks like I had a bit of a “blond moment”,’ I joked, unable to make the smile reach my eyes as I caught sight of Louise’s impudent grin.

‘Oh, we have Mrs Smith’s eagle eyes to thank for that!’ answered Dr Gostik, slapping Louise appreciatively on the back. ‘Don’t we, my dear?’

Louise smiled sweetly at Dr Gostik whilst I glowered at her from the doorway. ‘I make it my business to check everything is secure,’ she beamed and I wondered if she made it her business to go nosing around in my consulting room after hours.

At lunchtime, as the rest of the world ate, slept or otherwise continued its business, the surgery shut. For once, nobody was on a patient round, on call or at the local hospital. The GPs were all in one place for their monthly team meeting, which I’d asked to join. Although I rented a room in their building, we weren’t really connected, and I was surprised they had agreed for me to go.

Chairs clattered and scraped as we filed into their little staff room. Louise and Lucy had tidied up the long wooden table in the centre of the room, and put a plate of shortbread in the middle of it. On a side table they had prepared a coffee urn and some cups. Much as I disliked them, I was heartened by this. Having once again forgotten to bring any lunch, I attacked the biscuits straight away as I sat down, munching on them as I stared over at the GPs coming in. They were all older than me by quite some margin. Dr Vaizey, at forty-five, was the next youngest, although his thick, dark beard gave him the appearance of an older man. He raised his eyebrows briefly at me before sitting down across the table from me. He was followed to the table by Dr Gostik, who was counting the days to retirement, often making it clear he was tired of practising medicine. Curly, white hair framed his face and contrasted his dark, eccentric eyes, which were never still as they darted about furtively under the white of his messy fringe. I sometimes wondered what patients made of him. Lastly, Dr Rushden came in, a grey-haired woman in her early fifties whose dancing brown eyes were at odds with the rest of her. She appeared disarmingly friendly and naive to the extent that most people were completely unaware of her scheming nature. I suspected that, contrary to appearances, Dr Rushden had low opinion of almost everybody outside of her small circle of family and friends. To make matters worse, she exerted an unnaturally strong influence over the antics of Lucy and Louise.

‘Where are the practice nurses?’ Dr Gostik said to nobody in particular, as everyone sat down.

‘Oh, they aren’t coming Terry,’ answered Dr Rushden, her voice crisp. ‘Someone has to hold the fort, just in case.’ Her eyes twinkled but warned off any argument. ‘I’m not sure they need to be involved in this discussion, anyway.’

I stared over at her.

‘Shall we get going?’

‘Yes Sian,’ answered Dr Gostik. ‘Let’s start.’

Dr Rushden rustled through her papers before peering over the tops of them at me.

‘Elena, my dear, I understand you wanted to discuss with us the death of Joan Munford, which occurred here in the surgery. It’s a most puzzling case - don’t you think?’

‘Well, I’ll cut to the chase,’ I said. ‘I was treating Joan for mild depression. With talking therapy.’ I paused, wondering if I should just come out with what was worrying me, or dress it up a bit. I pressed on. ‘She was becoming increasingly anxious and I felt she was vulnerable. Although this isn’t your concern as doctors, my analysis of what she told me brought me to the conclusion that -’

‘Yes indeed, Elena,’ cut in Dr Gostik. ‘We treat the symptoms, but often we can’t do anything about the cause.’ The others nodded their agreement.

‘I’m not sure I agree.’

The other three doctors looked up at me.

‘I do think Joan’s death could have been avoided. As I was saying, what she told me led me to believe she was being bullied and intimidated, maybe even threatened, by her community.’

‘Hang on, wasn’t she with the Charismatics?’ asked Dr Vaizey.

‘Yes, that’s right, James,’ I nodded.

There was a silence. I glanced around the table.

‘Look Elena,’ said Dr Gostik finally. ‘You’ve done very well to get to the position you’re in, you’re well qualified, well respected and so on, but you’re still very young, my dear. Although I’m not religious and I don’t approve of some of the activities that go on in this village, I’ve seen a lot of cases like this in my time. People can sometimes fall out of favour in small communities and they can make themselves quite ill over it. But we’re doctors, that’s all. We are here to treat the symptoms. Whatever is wrong in society, it’s not our place to try and change it.’

‘Well, if you really must, then you can do that with your off-duty hat on,’ laughed Dr Vaizey in agreement.

Dr Rushden remained silent.

‘I was wondering if there was a case for talking to social services,’ I said, seeing an opportunity. ‘I’m treating others who I’m worried about, too. For example, I know of one other person who has mental ill health which appears to be very much exacerbated by membership of that community.’

‘Yes, Elena, but people get up to all kinds of things we wouldn’t approve of, and we then have no choice but to treat their ill health. Are there children involved?’

I met Dr Rushden’s level gaze. ‘No, no children that I know of.

‘What about anyone whose responsibility is diminished by their ill health - anyone under public guardianship, that kind of thing?’

‘I don’t think so.’

‘Well, concerning though it is, I’m not sure what we can do.’

‘We can keep an eye on it?’ suggested Dr Vaizey. ‘I also have a few patients I’m concerned about, and although I hadn’t checked the link with that community as thoroughly as Elena has, now that I come to think of it, there might well be one.’