Sleepwalkers (16 page)

‘Alright, Miss.’

‘Does he have a big white cat on his lap?’

‘If you joke about it, then none of it could possibly be real. I’ll say things that make sense; you take the piss.’

He said none of this with any acrimony and it made her feel a little childish. He typed on, and Anna was about to challenge him again when several files popped open on the screen. Anna and Terry leaned forward, their eyes scanning the information in front of them. These documents were school files and reports about Toby. They were quiet for a while as they read them.

‘Well, there’s nothing that odd,’ said Terry. ‘Four schools in five years, but that’s because his dad’s work has forced them to move.’

Anna shook her head. ‘Toby said he got moved whenever he asked for help.’

‘Well, there’s no mention of anything like that in the reports. They don’t mention anything bad at all. See? Hang on …’

A similar thought struck them both at the same time and instinctively they both looked more carefully at the words.

‘This doesn’t sound like the kid you described to me.’

‘No. They make him sound normal and happy.’

Terry’s fingers raced across the keyboard and more documents appeared.

‘In each report, they all use the same language,’ noted Anna.

‘Yeah. Like they’ve all been written by the same person. It’s also very neat.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Well, normally, when I go after someone, like when I stuck all of that porn onto Mr Turnbull’s computer—’

‘THAT WAS YOU?!!’

Terry smiled, unabashed. ‘Yeah, so when I was pulling all of his details off the web, it came in a jumble … bits here and there, discrepancies, errors, you know. But when you dig
for stuff about Toby, you get it all neat and tidy. Like it’s meant to be read.’ He leaned in closer. ‘I wonder how far back this goes.’

He started to type again, faster. But Anna pushed her chair away from the desk as though the information had a life of its own. She wondered if Terry’s computer had its own camera which was also watching them. Terry dug deeper and asked questions that could not be answered. When she left his flat, late that night, Anna had caught his fever and she ran all the way to the car. She slept fitfully, her dreams tormented by faceless, laughing men with grips that couldn’t be broken.

The next day, she drove to Toby’s house and waited. She saw him come out with his mother and followed their car as they drove off. She parked discreetly in the supermarket car park and trailed mother and son as they wandered around the aisles. It wasn’t long before Toby was tasked with finding a particular item and went off alone to find it. Anna followed him, looking back over her shoulder to be certain that his mother was far enough away before she grabbed her chance.

Toby was peering at a stack of cans, reading the labels when she came up next to him and said his name softly, urgently.

‘Toby.’

‘Oh, hello Miss.’ He was clearly surprised by her presence. He glanced around him, a little nervous, then pulled a can of beans from the shelf. ‘How are you?’ he enquired with bewildering politeness.

‘Me? I’m fine. Are you okay?’

‘Yeah. Mum’s making a big chilli con carne.’ He held up the can.

‘That’s … nice.’ He seemed so normal. She noticed that one of her shoelaces was undone, and her hand went to her hair to straighten it, to calm herself down.

‘Do you need beans too?’ he asked.

‘No. I’m here to see you.’

‘Mum says I shouldn’t worry about all that other stuff so much. She thinks I make it worse that way.’

‘Listen, before she sees me—’

‘She said—’

‘
Toby
. Just, just listen. Please. This is going to sound a bit odd. A lot odd. But, look, what’s your earliest memory?’

‘Huh?’

‘I’ve been trying to find out about you, work out what’s wrong. And everything about you, every fact I can find about you just stops before you’re three. There’s nothing I can find about you before you were three years old.’

‘That’s weird.’

‘It is.’ She looked nervously about her. ‘I want you to think. Think back to when you were little. What’s the earliest thing you can remember?’

‘I dunno.’

‘No. Think, Toby. It’s important.’

‘I dunno, I …’ he blushed, self-conscious, like he was back in the classroom. Anna waited, her eyes glued to his mouth. She noticed a tiny scar that ran from his bottom lip to his chin. ‘I mean, there’s that teddy bear I guess, but, no, that’s not right. Duh!’

‘Tell me.’

‘Well, there was this big guy and this teddy and he’s holding it up above his head … but I’ve, like, I’ve never had a teddy.
A teddy, how weak is that?’ He laughed and looked away, embarrassed. ‘Anyhow, you don’t really need me—’

But Anna had turned and slipped into the next aisle. She heard Toby’s voice drift off as he realised she’d gone, then heard his mother’s voice call out to him.

‘Have you got them, love?’

The voice sounded maternal, kind and warm.

‘You bet,’ came his reply. Sometimes he sounded so much younger than his fifteen years, she thought. Like he’d been stopped from growing up. But then she thought about the way he would look at her and he felt a million years older.

‘We’ll need two tins,’ his mother continued. She heard the cans drop into the metal trolley. They were walking away now. ‘Tell you what, after we’ve got this into the car, why don’t we stop off at that cafe – get a croissant and a hot chocolate? Doesn’t that sound fun?’

Anna watched them pay for their items and load them into the car. Toby seemed so happy. Terry had made everything seem crazy and dangerous – a world of cameras and despotic control. She couldn’t marry the image of this goofy kid with the paranoia he had fed her. But even after they had driven away and left her behind, even when she found herself flicking through a magazine near the check-out, still she found that her heart fluttered with fear of something unknown; something she was creeping towards without enough knowledge to do so safely.

‘Don’t moan about the heat, for fuck’s sake. Moaning about the heat’s like moaning about the food, you dickhead.’

We scrabble over the loose rocks and reach the top of the hill. It’s so bright, the sky feels white, not blue. I’m dripping with sweat. I look down – everyone else is wearing boots, but I’m wearing sandals. My toes are cut to ribbons. The guy next to me is laughing. There are four of us, my good mates. One of them takes off his helmet and I wonder why I don’t have one. Jacko pats me hard on the head and everyone laughs again.

Jesus, I don’t have anything. I don’t have water or food or proper boots or anything sensible, and it’s only half nine and it’s so fucking hot I’m going to die out here.

This is a dream. Come on. Wake up.

I do. I pull the sheets off and rush to the small dressing cabinet where an open diary waits for the latest entry. It’s already half-full and each time the writing is scrawled, hasty, messed up by sleep. I write down as much as I can remember and then sit back. I stretch and yawn, then flick back through the diary. Jacko.

I find his name again in another dream. My scrawl describes him standing over me in a dark cave somewhere. In that dream I was a little scared of him. This morning I remember him as a mate. I flick through other pages – some bad drawings, lots of question marks and underlinings. It looks … insane. As I close it, there’s a knock on the door.

It’s Edward, still in his pyjamas, unshaven (a thin, patchy mass of white dander), with a tray of breakfast: two boiled eggs, some toast cut into triangles and two glasses of port. He grins.

‘Morning, Ben. Sleep?’

‘Yes, well, thank you.’

‘I’m starving. Out the way, squire.’

He pushes past and dumps the tray on the desk while I move the diary to safety. He sits on the edge of the bed and tucks into his egg. This is the way each morning begins.

‘Dreams?’

I nod. I’ve told him a little about my position and as a result he’s become a confidant of sorts. I guess I couldn’t hold it in any longer. Everything has been boiling away inside and he seemed as good a person as any. Better. He and I are loners and he’s so bloody odd that no one would listen to a word he says. During my time here, we’ve had no visitors. The phone has never rung. I had to check it one day, assuming we must be disconnected, and was surprised to hear a dial tone.

Edward makes a routine trip to the supermarket where he buys discounted goods. He eats fruit that I would have chucked out weeks ago. His drinking is unpredictable. I once found him sleeping in the kitchen at five-thirty in the evening, a saucepan of baked beans charred on the stove. He’s what posh people would call ‘a character’.

‘So. Go on, tell,’ he barks, as he scoops up his egg and slurps the yolk down. I describe the dream and he laughs as he listens. ‘You been abroad much?’ he asks.

‘Seems like it.’

‘Mm,’ he nods, taking a swig of his port. ‘At least you weren’t naked. Dreams like that, you always end up naked. Anxiety something, isn’t it?’ He finishes the port and reaches for the second glass. I smile – it’s never for me, we both know I wouldn’t drink at this hour, but he likes the delicacy of a big hit in two smaller glasses. ‘Did I tell you the time when Martine ended up naked outside the house? Went to get the milk, trapped her towel in the door, it slammed shut and ripped right off her.’ He starts to laugh, remembering it. I grin as his laugh gets louder and faster. He’s always like this. ‘And then, oh Jesus, apparently the door wouldn’t open cos it had got wedged shut – was the wind or something, so she couldn’t get herself decent and people were walking past with their eyes on stalks!’ The laugh is a barking wheeze. He raises one hand to the sky, as though he can balance himself back into control. ‘She had a fine body, my darling, before the years got to her … oh dear, I remember her telling me all about it over dinner that night and the kids were hooting and she went red just recounting it, my sweet little …’

The laugh is fading and his eyes are red. Every story ends like this. Sadder than its start. This is because he is talking about a family that has abandoned him. The laugh and the wheeze end and he finishes the port before sighing. He pats the sagging bed as though it were a faithful dog. I look down, a little embarrassed, still not sure how to deal with these moments. He’ll talk about the family that left him so honestly
and with so much self-hatred that I don’t know what to say or where to put myself.

As far as I can work out – Ed’s stories seem to contradict themselves at times so I have to pay attention – Ed was a happily married man: father of two and proud husband of Martine. But then he did something too shameful to speak of. Whatever it was (I think he must have got drunk and hit her, but maybe there was another woman), the family then upped sticks and left. And now he lives on his own, having sold everything but the house to keep afloat. The house itself is bare but for his family’s rooms which are still tidy, awaiting their return, desperate for a sign that he has finally been forgiven. He writes to them once a week, posting the letters to the same address but never receiving a reply. I wonder if they live there any more.

I’ve started doing odd jobs for Edward around the house. I stopped paying hotel ‘bills’ – he stopped asking – and so try to make myself helpful to make up for it. I cook (occasionally and badly) and mend things which have worn themselves out. The wallpaper in his daughter’s bedroom is today’s task. I open a window before I start and pause to glance around the room. There is little personality here. No children’s drawings on the wall or faded photographs. Just a girl’s name (Tabitha) stencilled to the door (the letters have been touched up over the years), a bed, a pink beanbag and a desk with some old books lined neatly across it.

I reattach the wallpaper without too much difficulty. Smoothing it back with my hand, I find my mind pulling towards Emma. The desk we bought her came flat-packed in large cardboard boxes and took an afternoon of swearing to
assemble. Tabitha’s desk is older and far sturdier. I imagine Edward’s little girl sitting here studiously finishing her homework. I remember Emma holding crayons like daggers, her tongue touching her top lip as she scratched formless shapes on scraps of paper. I wonder if she is still there.

Suddenly I find I’m about to cry. I miss my children. I miss my wife. I miss my old, dull, average life and I don’t understand why I have suddenly been shunted into this weird, never-world. If I just went back, just said I’d gone on a bender, apologised, squeezed my eyes shut and went on as I was then I’d be able to rub my face in my little girl’s neck. I’d be able to squeeze little Joe so tight he’d squeal with laughter. And Carrie would put her arms around me and hold me tight. If I went back.

I’m a crumpled mess when Edward walks in and finds me. He’s carrying a small milk jug with fresh flowers in it – thin, delicate stems that have been snatched from the overgrown back garden. He places them on the desk and stands back to admire the effect. The pretty flowers are out of place, but he seems happy. His fingers twitch with pleasure.

‘She won’t see ’em, I bet, but you never know,’ he grins. Of course she won’t see them, they’ll have wilted by the end of the day. I wonder how old she is now. Although Edward is cagey with the details, the family feel like they’ve been gone twenty years, at least. Does he not realise that his daughter will now be a woman? His little girl will never come running to the front door with a gummy grin and open arms. She’ll stand by the car, a cold glare and a handbag full of recriminations.

‘Yeah, you never know,’ he says. ‘You look like dog’s mess. What’s up, feller?’

He makes me laugh. I tell him I miss my kids and he puts an arm around me and nods, then pats my shoulder as he gets up to leave.

‘I thought I’d do sausages tonight.’

‘Nice.’

‘You don’t need any of those fiddly vegetables, do you?’

‘They’re for fancy dans, I thought.’

‘Quite right. Get your vitamin C from the ketchup.’

‘Dinner of champions,’ I say, and as I say it someone starts banging hard at the back of my brain. Edward doesn’t notice. He just waves a goodbye – a hand flung vaguely in my direction.