Dead Girl Walking (4 page)

She checks her watch. ‘We’re almost out of time.’

‘That doesn’t help,’ I say. ‘Whenever I get comfy in this chair you turf me out.’

‘I don’t make the rules, I’m afraid. Perhaps, at your next appointment, we can make better use of the time we have by exploring your feelings more honestly and trying to put the self-pity to one side? It will be a long hard road, and I know you find it hard to believe right now, but people do come out the other side of these sorts of traumatic life events.’

I nod. Though it doesn’t seem quite that simple.

I wait for the woman at the desk to put the phone down. Does she do anything else but yak on that phone all day? It’s like the surface of the sun in there again, but this time I keep my coat over my arm until I’m done. I take in my surroundings while I
wait for her. Magnolia painted walls, grubby handprints at toddler level where the box of dirty toys sits. I wouldn’t let a kid of mine anywhere near those salmonella traps. A couple of watercolour paintings of some insipid landscapes, a rack of leaflets and a pin-board with curled, yellowing notices. There’s only one other person in the waiting room. My gaze is drawn to him and he quickly looks away, as though caught in a guilty act. He looks about my age. Dark hair, deep brown eyes, cheekbones like razors. His hands twist around each other and I can see his nails are bitten down to raw finger ends.

‘Miss Brown?’

I turn to face the receptionist. She knows me by sight already? I’ve only been twice. Then I remember. Why wouldn’t she know me? I’m the freak, the walking dead – they must all know about me.

‘Same time next week?’ she asks, her polite smile a mask of professionalism.

I hand the card over for her to mark the appointment. She scribbles rapidly and then hands it back.

‘Bye, then,’ she says, her attention immediately drawn back to her computer screen.

As I leave I hear her call: ‘You can go in now, Dante.’

He gets his first name and I get Miss Brown. Just how long has he been coming here? Or maybe she already knows him from somewhere else.

I glance behind to see him get up and cross the room with a heavy sigh. He doesn’t walk, he creeps, like he’s afraid of everything.
Dante
, like the painter. What’s your problem, Dante?

I open the front door to the sound of the phone ringing again. I slide the bolts into place on the door and drop my bag, ignoring the call. My foot slips on something and I look down to see letters waiting on the floor. Bills, I suppose. I take them to the kitchen and drop them in the bin before clicking the kettle on and pulling the box of cornflakes from the cupboard. As I munch on a handful I think about Gran. I haven’t been to see her for ages, not since she gave me a tongue-lashing about self-pity. In fact, I have no idea how long ago that was. Days all seem the same now. But it’s easy for her to preach. When the Grim Reaper comes calling for her she’s bound to stay dead. Sometimes I don’t even know whether I am actually alive or now inhabit some weird after-death alternate universe.

The kettle clicks off. I grab the nearest mug and rinse it out, dropping a teabag in and filling it. The teabags are almost gone, along with everything else. I’m used to black tea but no tea at all sounds weird. I suppose that comes from Mum. No matter what else we ran out of in the cupboards, she only ever freaked if we ran out of tea. I know I need to get some stuff but the idea of a supermarket fills me with dread and I don’t seem to have the patience for online shopping these days.

My gaze travels to the window and something catches my attention. A dead fly on the sill. It’s the middle of winter, so it’s weird enough that it’s there, but I wonder why I never noticed it before. I put down the cornflake box and go over to nudge it with my fingernail. It’s nothing more than a husk, and even my small sigh sends it skittering along the surface. I pause for a moment. Then I touch it.

There’s nothing. A release of breath and I count as my heartbeats slow again. It doesn’t work on everything then. Questions crowd my head. How far does something have to be up the food chain before the flashbacks come? Can it be any person I touch or does it have some weird, as yet unknown, rules?

The phone makes me jump. Doesn’t that man ever give up? I listen to it for a while, poised on the balls of my feet, uncertain. If I give him what he wants will he leave me alone? Or will it open the floodgates for everyone else to come and check out the freak? Just as I decide to answer it, the sound stops.

I take my bitter black tea into the living room and flick the TV on. Not because I want to watch, but because it makes me feel less alone. I recognise the regular presenter on the local news – something about how earnest he looks always used to make me and Tish laugh, like he thought every story he read out was going to change the world. The idea makes me smile as I watch him now. A photo flashes up of a young girl. They say she’s been murdered and they’re linking it to another murder from last October. This must be the one Gran was stressing about. The girl’s pretty, but even in the smiling family photo she looks sad, as if somehow she had guessed her fate and was only pretending to be happy. I shake away this melancholy thought. I seem to see sadness in everything these days. I guess I’m spending too much time alone. The sound on the TV is low and I turn it up as I nestle into the corner of the sofa, but the report is already wrapping up and then the reader goes on to announce something about job losses at a local factory.

Seconds later, my mobile buzzes in my pocket. I think about ignoring it, like I ignored the house phone. After all, there’s only one person I think it’s likely to be, but something, some unnameable instinct, makes me reach for it.

‘Yes?’

‘Cassie. It’s Gail…’ there’s a pause. ‘From Meadowview,’ she adds as if I need clarification.

‘Hi Gail. Is everything alright?’ It’s a redundant question. There’s an urgency to her voice that tells me something is very wrong before she gives me the answer.

‘It’s your gran. She’s been rushed into hospital.’

By the time I get through the huge glass doors of the hospital entrance my toes are numb and my nose dripping from the cold. I scan the tired foyer looking for assistance as nurses and porters and people in uniforms I don’t even recognise hurry by, until I spot a sign that says:
Welcome Area
, though I’m not sure
welcome
is the right word. A long, grubby counter sweeps outwards from a corner of the reception and it smells of a weird mix of dust, urine and disinfectant. The computers that the scowling admin staff are working on look older than me. It’s like someone was supposed to demolish the whole building and forgot.

‘Can you tell me where ward seventy-eight is?’ I ask a doughy-faced woman behind the desk.

‘Lift, first floor, it’s signposted after that,’ she says, barely looking up from her paperwork.

‘Thank you,’ I say very deliberately and wait for her to respond, but there’s nothing.

I head for the lift and press the call button. I step inside. There’s a strong smell of bleach masking something else. Vomit, maybe, but I try not to dwell on it. The lift groans and clanks as it chugs up to the first floor and then shudders to a halt. The doors screech open and I have to cover my ears. My thoughts are pulled in all directions as I make my way to the ward but one thing is constant: I can’t lose Gran, she’s all I have.

She is sitting up in bed on the main ward. The building is old – Victorian, I think. I seem to recall hearing somewhere that there’s a new hospital being built a few miles down the road and soon this will all be dust. I suppose that explains the scruffiness of everything. Gran’s ward is lit by large windows, the daylight showing every dirty crack on the walls, every grubby, chipped bit of lino. Her skin is grey and paper-thin but she wears her favourite flowery nightie and she looks cheerful enough.

‘What happened?’ I ask as I cast around for a seat.

‘Over there.’ Gran nods at a spare chair a few feet away. I drag it over next to the bed and sit down. She raises a questioning eyebrow at me. ‘No grapes? I’m supposed to get grapes and flowers, at the very least a box of Animal Biscuits or a bottle of Lucozade.’

‘Ha ha,’ I reply, but it doesn’t mean I don’t feel bad that the idea of bringing a gift never crossed my mind.

‘I’m bloody starving too; the food in this place is awful. Earlier they came round with cottage pie; it was like diarrhoea in a bowl.’

‘Gran!’

‘It’s alright for you, you’ve got all your lovely food at home,’ she mumbles.

‘I know, sorry. I’ll get you some grapes tomorrow.’

‘I suppose I’ll have to make do with your taciturn company, then,’ she says. ‘Although I could have murdered some Turkish Delight.’

‘So?’ I say, shrugging off my coat and folding it onto my lap as I carefully ignore her jibe. ‘What happened?’

Gran shuffles to get comfortable. ‘I had a funny turn and I fell.’

I narrow my eyes. ‘A funny turn doesn’t land you in hospital.’

‘It wasn’t just funny, it was hilarious.’

‘Ha ha,’ I frown. ‘Now that
is
hilarious. So tell me what actually happened.’

She shrugs. ‘I don’t really know. I was pottering around in the dayroom, next thing I know I’m on the floor.’

‘You must have some idea,’ I reply. ‘How did you feel just before?’

‘I can’t remember.’

‘What have the doctors said to you here?’

She shrugs. ‘Not much.’

‘They must have given you some sort of diagnosis.’

‘They’re still waiting for tests. It could be blood pressure.’ She sighs. ‘I’m old, Cassie. Old people fall over.’

I mull over what she’s said. She’s not telling me everything, I’m sure. And if I know Gran, she has no intention of telling me everything. If I can catch one, I need to talk to a doctor before I leave.

‘Besides,’ she says in a meaningful tone. ‘Got you out of the house, didn’t it?’

‘Don’t tell me that’s the reason –’

‘Of course not, silly girl,’ Gran chides. ‘Have you been out this week?’

‘Yes,’ I reply pouting. ‘If you must know I went to see the counsellor today.’

‘Nonsense… counsellor indeed. You need to pull yourself together. We never had such namby-pamby ideas as counsellors in my day and we got along just fine.’

‘No,’ I fire back, ‘you were all screwed up just the same as us but you didn’t talk about it.’

Gran tuts but doesn’t argue. ‘You look thinner than ever. Are you eating properly?’

‘Yes,’ I lie.

‘Don’t give me that –’

‘Gran, we’re supposed to be talking about you. I’ve just done my psychoanalytic stint with the counsellor.’

‘Fat lot of good it’s doing.’

‘I have a fast metabolism.’

‘You never used to have.’

‘Yeah, well, I do now. I’ve been walking a lot too, keeping fit…’

She is silent for a moment, casting an appraising eye over me. Mum always used to say that if Gran had been dead when I was born she would have sworn I was her reincarnation. We’re so alike that I know Gran sees through my every lie because they’re the same lies she would tell in my place. But she doesn’t comment on it.

‘Have you washed your hair?’

‘What is this? I came to see you because I was worried, not so you could slag me off! Yes my hair is dirty, yes I’m still wearing my old doc martins and I have no intention of getting rid of them until they fall apart on my feet and I know they make my legs look like pipe cleaners with clown shoes attached, yes I still have cold sweats and palpitations all the time and, no, I don’t feel like eating all that often. Happy now? Is there anything else you want to pick on while I’m a captive audience?’

Gran seems to shrink back into her pillow. ‘I’m saying these things because I’m your Gran. Your mum wouldn’t have wanted you to be like this.’

‘I’m sure my mum wouldn’t have wanted a lot of things. She wouldn’t have wanted to be dead, but we don’t always get what we want, do we? I’m struggling and all you do is pick at me.’

‘We’re all struggling, Cassie. I’m rotting in an old people’s home.’

‘At least you have people looking after you there.’

‘In the end we’re all alone,’ she replies in a quiet voice. ‘I know things have been hard for you these past few months. I’ve watched you trying to come to terms with what happened and it breaks my heart. But in the end you have to accept that life goes on. It’s been hard on me too – I’ve lost my daughter, my son-in-law and my granddaughter. But I have another granddaughter who is very much alive and I care that she’s throwing away a second chance and I sure as hell am going to try to change that.’ She leans closer and her voice drops to a rasping whisper. ‘Nobody has ever been gifted what you have. You’re here for a reason.’

‘So you keep saying.’ I grit my teeth and look towards the windows at the darkening sky. ‘It doesn’t feel like a gift right now.’

‘If I was younger I’d slap you.’

My eyes widen as I stare back at her.

‘You can look as surprised as you want, Cassandra, but you must know what a drama queen you’re being.’

‘I’m what?’

‘You should be out living not wishing you had died.’

‘I don’t wish I had died…’ I swallow the lump in my throat. ‘I don’t wish it at all and that’s the problem.’

‘Then stop insulting the memory of your family by not making the most of the second chance that they didn’t get. Do you think Tish would have been behaving like this? Tish would have been rebuilding her life, thankful for still having it.’

She’s right. Tish would probably have been out volunteering somewhere, saving lives or souls, working in a soup kitchen or for the Red Cross in some war-torn country or something equally meaningful. But then Tish was always the light to my dark. My eyes sting with unshed tears, but that feeling of weakness for showing emotion grips me again, fills me with an impotent, inward turned rage that I’m unable
to fix myself, that I can’t be more like my sister. I pull my coat on. ‘I don’t need this, Gran.’

She stares at me as I stand up. I wait for her to say something, to persuade me to stay, but she carries on fixing me with that silent, disapproving gaze.