Split Second (18 page)

Driven to distraction, she thought, that’s what it feels like: everything’s popping up and zipping about and none of it is important any more. Too much clutter in her head, and all that mattered was Luke and Ruby.

She looked at Carl, the broad cheekbones, the honey colour of his skin, blond hair, his eyes, cat-like, wonderful eyes, and sighed. ‘I think we should give it a break – us, I mean.’

He looked dazed. ‘Really?’

‘It’s not you, Carl, it’s me, Luke, everything.’

‘But I want to help.’

‘There is no help.’ She turned her glass to and fro on the table. ‘It’s all I can do to give Ruby the time she needs, with work and hospital.’

‘You make it sound as if I am work for you,’ he complained. She saw petulance in the set of his jaw.

‘I don’t mean to.’ She didn’t want to get into it. Her mind was made up and nothing he could say would shift it. She didn’t want to pick over it, analyse it. Or hurt him any more. ‘You’ve been really good. I’m sorry.’ She frowned, pinched at the bridge of her nose.
Now please, go.

‘You want us just to be friends?’

Did she even want that? ‘Yeah,’ she answered. Though she couldn’t really imagine it.

That tightness in his jaw again, then he cleared his throat. ‘Very well,’ he said, stiffly, formality his way of coping.

‘Please take these.’ She pushed the bottle and the cigarettes his way.

‘No, they are yours,’ he objected, getting up.

She stood too, awkward now, not knowing whether to approach him, to thank him. A farewell hug. He made no move, and she took her cue from him.

She was relieved when he had gone. She’d always known that she and Carl were a time-limited affair. Had realized that it would not lead to them moving in together or, God forbid, babies. She thought he had too, but perhaps he’d harboured hopes for more.

There had never been that wild, desperate attraction she’d felt for Roland, and later for Eddie. She’d been misguided with Roland, but she’d have married him in the blink of an eye if he’d asked. And with Eddie it was pure joy, as the dizzy, chaotic sensations of being in love settled into a deep love and respect, a delight at being together. She wondered if Roland had married his African fiancée, and if he’d stayed true. Perhaps he had taken other wives, as was legal in his part of the world.

Would it have made any difference to how Luke had turned out if he had known his father? Would letters or a clutch of meetings have been enough to temper his alienation from school, his waywardness? Occasionally Louise had Googled Roland’s name, but she never found any reference to him. She had asked Luke directly when he was twelve or so, ‘Would you like to try and find your dad, make contact?’

‘No,’ he’d replied, his lip twisting with derision. ‘What for?’

Her attempt to prolong the discussion had led to him walking out of the house.

Had Roland ever given a second thought to the child he’d left in Manchester? He knew she’d been pregnant, but had already left when Luke was born. He never knew whether he had a son or a daughter, or even twins. She found it hard to conceive of that level of indifference. And given how he had treated her, at the end of the day perhaps it wasn’t unreasonable to assume that Roland in Luke’s life might have made things worse, not better.

She picked up one of the packets of cigarettes. It was only half nine; Angie would still be up.

‘I’m just popping next door,’ she called up to Ruby.

‘’Kay.’

Louise looked at the vodka, then changed her mind. She’d regret it tomorrow if she started on that. Another time, she promised herself.

The first day back was the worst. It was like an obstacle course, with each encounter a negotiation of sympathy and reassurance, a battery of questions or an exchange of platitudes. Andrew spent much of the time clamping down on his emotions, on his empathy: setting his teeth against colleagues with teary eyes or faces stark with embarrassment; tensing his muscles against pats and strokes and even hugs.

The clients, most of whom didn’t know him from Adam, and hadn’t made the connection between him and the city’s latest tragic murder, came as a blessed relief. With them he could immerse himself in the business of work. The woman who had had a stroke, the post-op cancer patient and the car-crash survivor: he was there to help while
they
were the victims of misfortune, lives suddenly altered beyond recognition, changing course, tacking out into the unknown. With him they could regain the use of muscles, tongue and teeth, remaster breathing and vocalization, practise the mechanics of talking, learn to speak again. With each patient he would assess where function had been lost or compromised and create individual treatment plans including exercises to be done at home, or in hospital, between his sessions. He liaised with medical and physio staff too around issues of diet (those whose condition left them at risk of choking), emotional and psychological barriers to compliance and the impact of medication on recovery.

At lunch he steered clear of the canteen, avoiding the risk of running into more well-wishers; bought a sandwich and a drink from the machines instead and ate it in his car. He rang Val to see how she was faring, and they compared notes.

‘I’ve decamped to one of the meetings rooms,’ she said.

‘And I’m hiding in the car.’

‘I might be late,’ she said.

‘That’s not like you,’ he teased her.

‘Someone’s cocked up the environmental health training report. I need to rescue it before it gets sent out.’

‘Can’t get the staff.’

She gave a little laugh. ‘See you later.’

‘Yeah, bye.’

He sipped his coffee and watched the parade of cars prowling around hunting for a parking space. It cost him an arm and a leg to leave the car, and though he might be able to cycle the five miles to work, the prospect of cycling back at the end of the day kicked that idea into touch. One car paused to the back and side of his, its owner making motions with his hands, translating as:
You coming out?

Andrew shook his head, mouthed:
Sorry.
Sat there until his break was over.

* * *

His final patient that afternoon was a young man, early twenties, whose long-term abuse of solvents had left him with damage to the throat and vocal cords. Andrew read his notes carefully and made his own examination: feeling the patient’s throat and neck and jaw, looking inside his mouth, where he saw the scar tissue on the lining of the mouth and throat, and also the badly decayed teeth, the enamel now translucent, grey, the dentine destroyed.

‘You getting any rehab?’ he asked.

The man shook his head. The skin around his mouth was crusted with a virulent rash.

‘Are you on the waiting list?’ Andrew asked him.

He nodded.

‘Because any more abuse like this and your cords’ll pack up for good, yeah?’

The patient shrugged, and Andrew felt a flash of anger. This lad destroying his health, mistreating his own body, no idea how precious life was. He turned away, pretending to study his notes, waiting for the fierce emotion to ebb away and rational thought to return. As in – maybe he doesn’t see his life as precious: low self-esteem, shitty background, his life a burden half the time, something he only wants to escape from.

‘Put your lips together,’ Andrew said. ‘Good. Now open them, not too wide, right. Sit up straight. Now, do that again, but first take a breath down here,’ he indicated on himself, below the diaphragm, ‘and as you open your mouth, push the air out, like so: “Pah! Pah!”’ The man copied him, then grinned sheepishly. ‘What we’ll do,’ Andrew said, ‘is build up a way of speaking that minimizes the strain on your vocal cords. A lot of it is about relaxation.’

At the end of their fifteen minutes, he sent the man away with a copy of exercises he had to do, with no idea whether he’d be back at the same time the following week or if that was the last he’d see of him.

He caught up with his emails, and the online newsletters he subscribed to for work. There was a piece inviting papers on selective mutism. People, usually children, who stopped speaking, or never started, not because of any physical impediment but due to psychological factors, in particular acute social anxiety or phobia. Most children eventually developed coping mechanisms and so learned to communicate in public. Because Andrew dealt with adults, he’d never worked with a patient like that, though in his training he had shadowed a therapist treating a four-year-old girl who had become mute once she started school. The name for the disorder had changed in recent years, from elective mutism to selective. Reflecting the understanding that people suffering from the condition did not choose to stay silent but were physiologically unable to speak in certain situations.

He thought of the people on the bus, the people who had sat dumbly while Jason spoke up. If only one or two of them had found their voices and backed him up, echoed his sentiments, then it all might have been so different. Luke safe, Jason alive.

He waited until it was dead on 5.30, then went to the office, where the clerical worker, Harriet, had her coat on. ‘Can you check a record for me?’

‘Don’s waiting.’ Harriet got picked up at 5.35 on the dot by her husband Don, which saved the couple car-parking fees. Harriet believed she was overworked and underpaid and behaved as though she was the only person in the NHS with that cross to bear. Everyone else was living the life of Riley and exploiting her.

‘I need it now, really,’ Andrew complained. ‘Just had a referral from surgery.’

She looked like she might spit at him.

‘Just log me on,’ he said. ‘I’ll find it.’ He tried to sound exasperated at her lack of co-operation, and prayed she wouldn’t smell a rat.

‘I’m not supposed to,’ she said.

‘You do it then,’ he challenged her.

She tutted loudly, inserted herself between him and the computer terminal, booted up, sighing pointedly every three seconds, and then typed in a password. ‘Make sure you log off and close down,’ she said, and stalked out, her heels clipping the lino.

Once in the system, he began to type:
Garrington, Thomas.

It was a training day. Something to do with improving customer service and team communication. Emma hated anything like that. You never knew what was going to happen. They’d had one just after she was made permanent and they’d had to play games in a group. Variations on stupid kids’ games like musical chairs and blind man’s buff. She’d read there were places in Japan where the workers had to sing together at the start of every day. She shrivelled at the thought of it.

This training involved the junior staff and another ten people from the Liverpool office. For Emma it started badly and got worse.

They sat on chairs in a big circle and the trainer, a man called Vernon, with one of those funny little goatee beards, asked them each to introduce themselves. But instead of just saying their name, they had to talk for thirty seconds and tell as much of their life story as possible.
Not me not me not me.
Emma prayed fast and hard, but he asked her to go first. Her face burned and she felt sweat prickle under her arms. Now she’d stink all day too.

‘I’m Emma and . . . erm . . .’ Some spit caught in her throat and she coughed. Someone laughed and Emma felt her mind blur, the sense and the shape of the words dissolve. They were all looking at her.

‘Keep going,’ said Vernon cheerily. He had a timer that was counting down the seconds.

‘I’m twenty-one.’ She looked at her hands. She could feel everyone’s eyes poking holes in her neck and her belly and her forehead. ‘I’m from Birmingham,’ she said.

‘That’s great, Emma. Speak up a bit,’ called Vernon. It wasn’t great, it was pathetic. She could feel the embarrassment hanging like a pall in the room, saw her own knee tremor, her foot dance on the carpet. ‘I’m from Birmingham,’ she repeated, glue in her mouth, trying to find her thread. ‘I live in Manchester now, in East Didsbury.’ She didn’t dare raise her face, wouldn’t look to see what Laura and the Kims were making of her feeble efforts. What was she talking about, supposed to talk about? Her mind was blank, full of grey wool. She felt the sweat run down into her bra. The bra was pinching her; the underwire felt like it was trapping her left breast. She bit her thumb hard, trying to find some sensation, something to jolt her back on track. Should she tell them about her tropical fish? Or that she’d seen the people who killed Jason Barnes? Been close enough to touch them. She glanced at Vernon. ‘Sorry,’ she mumbled.

‘And time’s up! Always tough going first,’ he said, pretending she hadn’t just made a complete dick of herself.

‘And next, Damon, go!’

Emma sat still as the exercise proceeded, hoping to be forgotten. Wishing she could disappear. When they divided into groups of four, she found herself with three friends from Liverpool and could barely follow the banter that they shared in their Scouse accents. She smiled when they did, hoping that would suffice, nodding puppet-style through the discussion about which qualities had highest priority when dealing with customers.

After feedback came coffee. Emma hid in the toilets for most of the break, nipped back and ate three biscuits and drank half a cup of tepid coffee and took her seat again without exchanging a word with anyone.

Then came role play. She wondered if she could fake a heart attack, or whether she’d have one anyway. Vernon paired her with Little Kim. They watched several couples act out scenarios outlined on index cards that Vernon passed round to the ‘claimants’. The person playing the claims officer never knew what they were going to be faced with. Some of the people were very funny, ad-libbing. They could have gone on the stage.

The card Vernon gave Emma said:
Irate customer complains about her accidental damage claim being refused
.

They sat on chairs in the middle of the circle. They each had an old phone with a wire trailing from it, as a prop. That was stupid anyway, thought Emma; the people who dealt with calls wore headsets now.

‘Okay,’ said Vernon, ‘off you go, Kim.’