Never Ending (27 page)

“What’s up?” Shiv asks, her voice whispering off the blank walls.

“Nothing’s up.”

“Then … what?”

She’s aware of a hardness in her tone with him that wasn’t there before. She knew it would be tough, shutting him out after she’d gone to such lengths to win his trust. She expected him to make it harder still for her. But he hasn’t. When he saw the way it was between them after she resumed treatment, he appeared to accept it as the natural order of things.

She apologized; told him she had to look out for herself from now on. He just nodded and said he had to do the same.

Now, here they are in an echoey corridor, the reflection of the light off the walls casting a sickly green veneer over Mikey’s complexion. The jumpsuit is more grey than yellow. He looks at her as though
she
is the one wanting to speak to
him
.

She’s about to ask again what he wants, when he says, “Don’t tell nobody nothing.”

At first she thinks he’s misquoting the Salinger T-shirt. “What d’you mean?”

“Don’t tell about me. The stuff we talked about – before, yeah? About Feebs.”

“Tell who?”

“Anybody.”

Shiv frowns. “Mikey, why would I—”

“You can go back now.” He nods at the Rec Room door. “I’m all done.”

With that, he peels away and walks off down the corridor. At the end, before he rounds the corner and disappears, she’s sure he’ll turn to give her a small wave.

He doesn’t.

“Don’t think about him,” Caron tells her, as they say goodnight outside their rooms.

“It was like he was trying to tell me something important.”

“Shiv, you’re not responsible for Mikey.”

“No. OK.”

“You and Declan is all that matters.”

“I know.”

They hug. “See you tomorrow, yeah?” Caron says.

Tomorrow. Their last full day here. Forty-eight hours from now, this clinic, these people, will be part of her past. As though each day she lives, everyone she knows, every place she leaves, everything that happens to her – everything she
does
– can be switched off like a light.

17

When the alarm jolts Shiv from sleep, her first thought is: Wake Up. But it can’t be morning already, can it? The room is still pitch dark.

Not yet fully awake, she fumbles on the bedside table for her watch, squinting at its luminous hands. Ten past ten? No, ten to
two
.
Jesus
.

The alarm continues to ring out. That isn’t the Wake Up buzzer – it’s too shrill – and it’s coming from outside her bedroom. In the instant she notices this, the sound changes to a much louder, intermittent two-tone wail she recognizes right away from the weekly test.

Fire alarm.

Emergency lighting comes on. A dull, greenish glow from a panel above the door – enough for Shiv to see what she’s doing as she stumbles out of bed and yanks on jeans and a top. The voices start then. Shouting. Banging doors and hurried footsteps. She shoves her feet into her shoes and heads out into the corridor, half expecting to find it filled with smoke.

It isn’t. What it’s filled with is people – Caron, Helen; she can see Docherty and Lucy too, and a night-duty orderly jogging towards them from the head of the stairs. He’s calling to them. But it’s impossible to hear a word above the fire alarm and, now, the additional din from all the alarms tripped by the residents opening their bedroom doors during Shut Down. The orderly has to yell in their ears to tell them to evacuate the building.

They assemble in the yard behind Eden Hall, rows of blank windows looking down on them like so many expressionless eyes. Assistants Hensher and Sumner have joined the residents outside. Nurse Zena is here, and a security guy. The cacophony of alarms is loud even out here, overlapping like some piece of experimental music. Docherty is shirtless, Lucy and Helen still in pyjamas and slippers; Caron’s dressed but pretty much asleep standing up.

Sumner, her frizz of blond hair a mess, face greasy in the wash of security lighting, organizes everyone and begins a headcount.

“Where’s
Mikey
?” Shiv asks.

At this moment, Assistant Webb appears from round the side of the Hall, out of breath, speaking into a walkie-talkie. He lowers the handset. “There’s—”

“Mikey’s still inside,” Sumner says.

Shiv, like everyone else, is looking up at the building, as though expecting the boy’s face to appear at a window wreathed in flames and smoke.

“I’ll go in,” Hensher says, making for the rear door.

“No.” This is Webb. “There’s no fire. It was Mikey who triggered the alarm.” He indicates the walkie-talkie. “I just spoke to Steve in the CCTV room.”

Apparently, Mikey tripped the first alarm by leaving his bedroom, then could be seen sprinting to the end of the corridor, where he smashed the fire-alarm panel on the wall. By the time everyone else started emerging from their rooms, Mikey was already downstairs and letting himself out through one of the emergency exits, setting off a third alarm.

“He’s in the grounds,” Webb says. “This racket is a diversion.”

On cue, the alarms all cut out at once, leaving a ringing silence that makes the night seem instantly darker and colder as well as shockingly quiet.

“I’ve messaged Dr P.,” Webb tells Sumner, then turns to Zena and instructs her to return the residents to their bedrooms. The remaining staff are to grab torches from the utility room and form a search party. He points. “The last time CCTV picked him up he was heading for the Walk woods.”

“I know where he’ll be,” Shiv says. She
does
know, with absolute certainty, the one place Mikey will have gone. And what he intends to do there.

“Where?” Webb asks.

“The lake.”

Before anyone can stop her, Shiv starts running.

In the lustre of a half-moon, everything is made of grey plastic. Lawn, grass, shrubs, flowers, trees – nothing looks real. It might be a park in a model village, with Shiv and those in pursuit shrunk to the size of toy figures. Her breath scorches her throat. Her feet, her legs, her entire body tingle as though with static electricity.

Only once before in her life has she ever run so fast.

How much of a head start did Mikey have? Not much. But long enough to be in the water by now.

Webb catches up with her fifty metres or so before the lake. She expects him to grab her, make her stop, but he falls in alongside her, stride for stride, like this is a long-distance race and he doesn’t want to hit the front too soon.

“How d’you know?” he asks, panting, the words fractured by his pounding feet.

Because of Phoebe
.
Because of how his sister died. Because he tried to say goodbye to me yesterday evening and I didn’t listen
.

She doesn’t have to say anything though. Almost as Webb asks his question, the lake sweeps fully into view over the crest of the lawn and Mikey is plain to see, silhouetted in the spill of moonlight across the surface of the water.

Webb slows as they near the gate, with its
DANGER: DEEP WATER
sign. “How did he get the other side of the fence?” he asks, pulling out a bunch of keys.

Shiv doesn’t bother to dilute the sarcasm. “Maybe he
climbed
it?”

The real question, though, is what Mikey’s
doing
.

He’s turned away from them, walking along the shore – on all fours, it looks like – loading something into a bag, then continuing on his way, feet crunching and clicking on the shingle. More shadow than figure; Shiv could believe he’s a figment of her imagination. Another confabulation. For once, he isn’t wearing the jumpsuit but is all in black, with a hooded top that mostly obscures his face. If he has registered them, he gives no sign.

“Mikey!”
she shouts.

He carries on with whatever he’s doing, with greater urgency.

Assistant Webb is still searching through the keys for the right one. Sumner reaches them, gasping for breath. Before she can recover sufficiently to ask what’s going on, Webb finds the key to the gate and inserts it. At this moment, Mikey straightens up, hoists the bag – a small, black rucksack – onto his back and makes for the old wooden jetty. The rucksack looks heavy; with a lurch in her gut, Shiv knows why.

“Stones,” she says.

By the time Webb has swung the gate open with a metallic shriek, Mikey’s at the end of the jetty.

“No one comes near me!” he shouts, turning to show his whitewashed features in profile. He aims a finger at them as though it was a pistol.

They stop where they are, although Shiv can tell Webb is itching to go after him – can almost see him calculating the odds on reaching Mikey in time.

“I’m going to him,” Shiv says.

Webb puts out a hand to stop her. “I can’t let you do that.”

“I’m the only one he’ll talk to.”

“No way are you—”

“She’s right,” Sumner says. “Let her go.”

“Are you
kidding
?”

“Clarence, if that boy goes in—”

“He said
no one
,” Webb says. “That means you as well as us, Siobhan.”

“So what do we do?” Shiv says. “Stand and
watch
?”

Webb looks at them in turn. Shiv doesn’t wait to hear what he has to say, just pushes past him and through the gate.

“Hey,” she says. Mikey doesn’t turn round.

“One more step.” The warning is clear enough.

Shiv is at the start of the jetty, her feet firmly on solid ground, the lake spread before her like so much spilled ink. She’s holding on tight to one of the lifebelt posts, the splintery wood biting into her palm.

The dead-of-night hush hangs over everything like an outcast spirit.

Shiv is shaking. She focuses on Mikey, fixing her gaze on him, sitting right at the end of the jetty with his feet dangling in the water.

“Is this what you were trying to tell me last night? Is this what you were planning all along?” No reply. She’s conscious of Webb and Sumner creeping closer to the jetty, watching. “Can I sit with you, Mikey? I won’t do anything.”

He doesn’t say no; doesn’t warn or threaten either.

It isn’t the sea, she reminds herself. No rocks, no waves – no sudden surge to sweep her off her feet, or dash her against a cliff, or drag her down into the swirling depths. The water is perfectly calm. In the moonlight, it might not even
be
water but a second silvery-charcoal sky unfurled beneath the one above.

There. Her first step. Her second.

She has to pause a moment. Mikey sits a little straighter, a little stiffer, that’s all. The
water
moves though. Laps at the shore, slaps the posts that support the jetty, with its aged, gappy planks. She tells herself it’s a gentle sound: a whispering breeze in the treetops; the trickle of a tap filling a basin. It isn’t a sound to be scared of.

Shiv’s breathing slows. Her heartbeat steadies.

One painstaking step at a time, testing each board like a tightrope walker – eyes on Mikey all the while – she makes her way to the end. Tentatively, she sits down beside him – not too close. Cross-legged. No way is she letting her feet hang over the edge like his.

“Don’t think you’ll stop me,” Mikey says.

“Have I tried to stop you doing anything before?”

“I’m just saying.”

“Mikey.” This is Webb, closer still.

“Tell him to shut the hell up! Tell him to get
back
.
Tell
him!”

Shiv doesn’t need to relay the warning to Webb – Mikey screamed it so loudly he startled the waterfowl in their night-time roosts; a squabbling of unseen ducks, coots and geese that might be the lake itself protesting at being woken up.

She waits for their noise to subside; gives Mikey time to calm down.

“Did you hear what Sumner called him just now?” Her voice is low.

Mikey sniffs, swallows. “What?”

“Clarence.”
Shiv laughs. “How has he kept
that
a secret for so long?”

She can’t see his face for the hood but senses him trying not to show that he finds Webb’s name funny. He shifts his stone-filled rucksack into a more comfortable position. The water is up to his shins, setting up eddies with the motion of his feet.