Split Second (11 page)

‘Tuck your chin in,’ Louise said.

‘Since when were you the expert?’ Ruby asked, altering her stance and doing a sidestep and slide.

‘You look like you’re straining, that’s all, like a nervous chicken.’

‘Mum!’

‘Suit yourself.’ Louise went into the kitchen. ‘Soup or soup?’ she called.

‘Soup – tomato.’

‘Right first time.’

Shrek 3
was on the box. Louise had a shower and sat with Ruby to watch the second half. Ruby was texting every few minutes. Her phone trilling with each reply.

‘That Becky?’ Louise asked.

‘Yeah, she wants me to go over Boxing Day, sleep over.’

‘Good idea.’

‘I don’t know,’ Ruby said.

Louise wanted Ruby to have a break, escape the tension and tedium of hospital visits. She was aware that Ruby was worried about her, was keen to be there and help, but Louise wanted her to have a chance to relax with her friends, the freedom to set it all aside for a few hours. ‘Hey.’ She waited for Ruby to look at her. ‘I’ll be fine, it’ll do you good.’

Ruby wrinkled her nose.

‘Don’t you want to?’ Louise asked.

‘I suppose.’

‘Say yes, then.’ Louise turned back to the film. The donkey talking a mile a minute. There was something of that donkey in Luke. The irrepressible energy, the impulsiveness.

‘What the hell did you do it for?’ she’d demanded of him after the fireworks palaver. Luke had bought contraband Chinese fireworks, mortars, and set them off in two wheelie bins. Destroying both bins and setting the nearby fence alight, triggering a car alarm and waking half the neighbourhood.

‘To see what’d happen,’ he said. And then a glint dancing in his eye at the memory. ‘It was awesome – like a bomb.’

‘Jesus, Luke. It was dangerous, that’s what it was – and stupid. You could have taken your head off.’

‘No, they’ve a long fuse, there was plenty of time,’ reassuring her.

The police had cautioned him and warned her. They used all the clichés:
off the rails
and
slippery slope
. One of them did the talking, with the other just chipping in now and again, a cold face on him and a lick of malice in the cast of his eyes, the curl of his lips. She marked him as a bigot. Probably disapproved of her, prejudiced against Luke. Single mother, mixed-race kid.

She’d lost track of the number of times complete strangers had tried to have a cosy little chinwag with her bemoaning immigration and the flood of Pakis/Poles/blacks into the area stealing jobs/shops/school places, assuming she shared their Little Englander views. A different matter when she had the children with her: sleeping with the enemy then. She saw that there were issues for Luke and Ruby caught between two cultures, two identities. Ruby had come home from school in tears aged nine after being called a coconut (black on the outside, white inside) in the playground. Louise did all she could to inform them of their backgrounds, but that was hard when neither of their fathers were around and they didn’t have access to their extended families.

‘I’ve been thinking about my hair,’ Ruby announced.

‘Never!’ Louise said in mock surprise.

Ruby squeezed her knee, just where it really tickled, and Louise yelped.

‘I think I will get a wig. Make it a bit Lady Gaga,’ naming the flamboyant pop star with her theatrical costumes.

‘Fine. There’s that place on Oldham Street.’

Louise heard the ‘thwock’ of the letter box and went to investigate. A manila envelope with her name and address. Inside she found another envelope: Louise Murray c/o Care24, and the agency address. She pulled out a notelet, a painting of violets on the front, and opened it. Crabbed writing, the letters misshapen and crooked, trailing down the page at an alarming angle. She translated.

Dear Louise,
I was so very sorry to hear of your recent misfortune
and wish your son a most speedy recovery.
With very best wishes.
Yours sincerely,
Mrs R.M. Coulson

She shook her head. It would have taken Mrs Coulson most of an afternoon to write the note, her hand shaking uncontrollably, her eyes peering at the jumble of shapes that insisted on moving about on the page. Then she would have had to find a way of getting the card to Louise, asking the carers to help. Louise put the card on the side to take to the hospital.

Mrs Coulson had actually met Luke once, though Louise doubted she would remember. He’d been excluded from school and Louise didn’t want to leave him at home unsupervised. She decided he could accompany her on her day’s work, see what she did to earn a living for the three of them. Some places, where a new face might have caused confusion or upset, she made him wait in the car, but she took him in to Mrs Coulson’s, where she had to prepare and serve lunch and check on any errands or shopping that were needed.

When she introduced them, Mrs Coulson had looked startled. ‘Your son?’ she’d repeated.

‘Yes.’

‘I see,’ she’d murmured, and kept an eye (not as beady as it had once been) on Luke throughout, as though he might morph into a burglar and make off with the silver. As they were leaving, she’d called Louise back. ‘Is he adopted?’ she’d hissed.

‘No.’ Louise tried not to laugh. ‘No, he’s mine.’

Mrs Coulson made a little ‘I see’ sort of noise and her eyebrows twitched.

Stick that in your pipe and smoke it, Louise had thought. She wondered if Luke remembered that day. If he had any memories left. Was that where he was now, lost in the labyrinth of past times? Reliving his jaunts with the Woodcraft Folk or play-fighting with Eddie, climbing into his great-grandad’s lap for a story or snorkelling by the caves on their holiday in Ibiza. What if he was trapped with bad memories? The sad times after Grandad died, after Eddie’s sudden, shocking death; the miserable days eked out in detention or the occasions when Louise had lost her temper, taken him to task for missing school again.

When he woke up, what would he remember? What would be forgotten? Would he still know her? Love her? Her heart swooped with fear. He would surely. Surely he would.

‘Hello, Luke.’ Louise put the bags down, shucked off her coat. She moved the chair where she could talk to him, leant over and kissed him, stroked his face. ‘It’s Christmas Day, Luke, Happy Christmas.’

‘Happy Christmas,’ Ruby echoed, unrolling the scarf from her neck.

‘We’re going to open our presents here. We’ve got yours too.’ Louise no longer felt self-conscious talking aloud like this, though she did worry sometimes that she might get too babyish in what she said, treating Luke as a helpless child instead of a boy close to adulthood. She did not want to infantilize him, turn him into some travesty of the real Luke.

Personality could change with brain injury. She’d seen it with some of her clients, people who had become quite unlike themselves after a stroke: more fearful and suspicious or alternatively more easy-going and cheerful. But all that really mattered now was that Luke woke up.

‘Right.’ She sat down and rummaged in one of the carriers. ‘This is for Ruby.’ She passed her the rectangular parcel and her daughter thanked her, tore the wrapping off. ‘Yes!’ she breathed. New hair straighteners with various extra tools and attachments.

‘And this.’ Louise passed her an envelope. She’d saved since summer to give them each some Christmas money, both of them at an age where they liked to choose their own gifts.

‘Thanks, Mum.’ Ruby came round and hugged her. She smelled of sweet cherry hair conditioner and some new rose and jasmine perfume she’d taken to wearing. But like Louise she was showing signs of the strain, her skin dry and ashy-looking round her eyes.

‘And here’s yours, Luke.’ Louise picked up his hand and folded it round the small parcel. ‘It’s what you asked for,’ she said, ‘the new phone in the black.’ Would he ever use it? The treacherous thought darted through her mind. The police still had his old one. He might have to change his number. Or would they let him use the old number on the new one, even if they still had it as evidence. No one had said anything to her about whether they had found anything of importance on his phone, anything to help piece together what had happened that night.

She nodded to Ruby.

‘This is from me.’ Ruby mimicked her mother, placing Luke’s other hand on the soft, bulky package. ‘It’s a T-shirt, TK Maxx, like your old one, but in white.’

‘You could say thank you,’ Louise teased him, ‘instead of just lying there.’

‘And this is yours, Mum.’ Ruby brought the present to Louise, who made a show of opening it.

‘A pashmina. That is so soft. It’s lovely.’

‘And you like red?’

‘I do, my favourite. You asked us enough times.’

Ruby laughed.

Louise draped the scarf round her neck. ‘What do you think?’

‘Cool. Needs lipstick, though.’

Louise smiled.

‘You going to try?’ Ruby asked her. Meaning try and wake him.

‘Bit later. Sing him your piece.’

‘They might not like it; it’s pretty full-on.’ Ruby nodded to the door to the rest of the ward. Some of the patients were meant to have as much peace and quiet as possible. Overstimulation being a concern with a fragile brain.

‘Sing it quietly. Go on, be good practice.’

‘Okay.’

Louise settled back, savoured the sound. Ruby never faltered. Her confidence clear, her breathing controlled, pitch-perfect.

An hour later, Louise set aside her sewing, stood up and stretched. She shifted her chair back and took Luke’s hand in hers, patted the back of it and spoke clearly in his ear. A command and a prayer: ‘Wake up, Luke, open your eyes, come on, wake up now.’ She watched. Pinched the flesh between his thumb and forefinger, squeezing hard. He remained limp, made no response.

She felt the disappointment keenly; it didn’t get any easier. She fought the impulse to yank him upright, as if she could shake him awake, as if with enough vehemence she could break through the cocoon and free him. She closed her eyes for a moment, regaining her balance.

Ruby gave a rueful shrug and pulled out her phone. Louise imagined teenagers the length and breadth of the land texting over the Christmas turkey, causing ructions.

She got the wash bag from her carriers and pulled out the nail-clippers. His nails were longer than her own, smooth, with a gentle sheen, the half-moons clear, the cuts on his knuckles healed now. She wondered when the bandages would come off his head; if his hair would grow back the same, or if there would be bald patches where they’d opened him up.

She went home every Christmas. What else could she do? Her mum loved to have her there and did her best to make it cosy. Always made turkey and all the trimmings, even though there were just the three of them.

This year Emma was ill. The cold had broken overnight, her raw throat giving way to a streaming nose and thumping head. The journey was a nightmare. An earlier train had been cancelled, so this one was full of people squabbling about seat reservations and advance bookings and there weren’t enough seats. The only place Emma could find to settle herself was in the corridor outside the toilets, surrounded by her bags. It stank. Even with a blocked-up nose she could smell it. There was something wrong with the heating too, like it was set at boiling point, and she was sweaty and thirsty and it just wasn’t possible to fight her way through to the on-board buffet.

She was feeling so cranky and weary by the time the train squealed into New Street that she got a taxi rather than wait for a bus and blew sixteen pounds on that.

‘Ey up.’ Her father took one look at her. ‘It’s Rudolph! What a conk; you could light your way home with that.’ The very first thing he said.

‘I’ve got a cold,’ Emma said.

‘Never!’ he said sarcastically. ‘Come on, bring your bags in, don’t stand there like a sack of potatoes.’

Her mother usually tried to smooth things over, to cajole him, but he always had the upper hand. One time he’d derided Emma’s choice of winter coat.

‘Makes you look twice as fat.’

‘It’s padded, that’s the style,’ her mum had said. And she had got black, not the white, which was nicer but less practical. Black was meant to be slimming.

But he wouldn’t stop. ‘Marshmallow Man!’ he crowed. ‘Like in
Ghostbusters.
’

‘Roger, please!’ her mum scolded. ‘Stop going on at her.’

That made it worse. ‘What? I’m not allowed to comment on what my hard-earned wages are spent on?’

‘If you can’t say anything nice . . .’ her mother started, but there was a pleading quality in her voice.

‘I’m not going to lie to the girl. I don’t know what you were thinking of. She looks a bloody sight.’

He would often laugh as he said these things. Not the sort of laugh that was infectious. A cold, barking laugh so you’d see his teeth, but his eyes looked furious. One time when he told her she couldn’t learn piano because it was a waste of money and she’d as much musical talent as a tone-deaf ape and they’d no piano to practise on anyway, Emma had gone to her mother. Rounded on her really, the wildness coming out of her and saying awful things about him:
I hate him, I wish he was dead.

‘No you don’t, that’s silly talk.’ Her mother had calmed her down and Emma stopped crying.

‘Why don’t you tell him, Mum? Make him stop.’

‘Look. He loves me, and he loves you. He never swears, he’s never violent. He’s never laid a finger on me, never would. He’s a bit sharp-tongued now and again, but that’s just how he is. Que sera sera. There’s a lot worse men, I can tell you. Now, go wash your face and I’ll make us a drink. Can you manage an eclair? There’s still two left.’

On the rare occasion that Emma did look to her mother for a sense of shared grievance, of solidarity, it was always the same: her mother quick to mollify her. ‘It’s just his way; he loves you, he doesn’t mean anything by it.’ Did he love her? Of course he did, she knew he did, and she loved him; she just wished he wasn’t always finding fault.

Other times, he pretended he was only joking. He’d accuse Emma and her mum of having no sense of humour, of not being able to take a joke. Usually it was Emma he picked on, but sometimes it was her mum. Her mum would go very quiet and then just disappear upstairs, if she could, and Emma thought she had a cry, but when she came back you couldn’t tell. She hadn’t got red eyes or a husky voice.