The Flask (18 page)

Although we have been waiting for the call all day, we still both jump when the phone rings. Gran nods at me to pick up, as if some part of her cannot bear to know what we have waited so long to know.

“Jess?” Si is bleary with exhaustion. “They’re back on the ward, Jess.”

They’re back on the ward.

They are.

They.

“They’re back on the ward,” I shout at Gran. “Both of them are back on the ward! Told you. Told you, told you, told you!”

Gran lifts her hand to her chest, crosses herself.

Si is silent. Si is not joining in the jubilation.

“What?” I say.

“Richie’s good. Richie’s doing really well.” He pauses.

“And Clem?”

“The next twenty-four hours,” says Si, “they’re going to be critical for Clem.”

“But he’s going to be fine,” I say. In my pocket is the flask. It’s still a brilliant, gorgeous green. I’ve checked every five minutes since we returned from Gran’s. I check again. “He’s going to be fine.”

“I wish I had your confidence,” says Si quietly. “Now, can I talk to Gran?”

I hand over the phone and Gran listens and listens and says nothing. After what seems like a lifetime she finally speaks. “Tomorrow then,” she says. “We’ll come early. We’ll be there as soon as we can.”

“What?” I say to Gran. “What?”

“Clem,” she says.

“I know Clem,” I exclaim. “But what?”

“The operation went really well, better than they expected. No hitches at all.”

“So?”

“So they can’t explain it. Why Clem isn’t doing better than he is.”

I can’t explain it either. The snow babies exist. The flask is green, both seed fishes are swimming. Both of them.

I ring Zoe. “Can you come round?”

“It’s late,” she says. “Really late.”

“I know.”

Zoe comes around.

“This is a bit late,” says Gran.

“It’s important,” Zoe and I say together, not a breath between our words.

“It may be…” begins Gran. “But people have to sleep.”

“I’m not sure I’ll be sleeping tonight,” I say. “Will you?”

Gran lets Zoe in.

We go to my room. I put the flask on the bureau.

“What do you see?” I ask.

“Not much, I’m afraid,” she says.

“But does it look the same, the same as it did before?”

“Brighter possibly. With a tinge of something.”

“Tinge of what?”

“Colour?”

“Green,” I say. “It’s green.” I tell her about my day, about the park and the green and the song and how everything has to be OK, only it isn’t.

“He’s critical,” I tell Zoe.

“Have they said that?”

“Yes. Good as.”

Zoe picks up the flask.

“Pity it can’t talk,” she says. “Then it could tell us what to do.” As she turns the flask about in her hands, her fingers seem to tremble, or else she’s just clumsy, and the flask falls, it falls out of her grip.

“No!” I cry.

But of course, the flask doesn’t fall far, it’s only an inch or so to the desk, so it simply skids a little, knocks into one of the wooden pillars that stand either side of the arch that houses ScatCat and the friendship bracelets.

The pillar wobbles.

“Oh – I’m so sorry,” Zoe says, grasping the perfectly strong flask and righting it again.

“Did you see that?” I ask.

“Of course I did, it was me who dropped it,” she says.

“No,” I say. “The pillar.”

“What?”

I stretch out my hand, and touch it. It moves again.

“Loose bit of wood?” says Zoe.

But I know it isn’t and actually she knows it isn’t either. At least it is a loose bit of wood, but it wobbles not as if it’s broken, but sturdily, as if there’s a purpose to its wobbling. My heart gives a little thump, just as it did when I discovered the too-short drawer which hid the flask. I put my hand up to the curved wooden surface of the column and I pull. I expect it to give way immediately, but it doesn’t.

“Let me try,” Zoe says. She jigs with her fingers, pushes her nails, which are longer than mine and painted a vivid red, into the gap between the pillar and the surrounding surfaces. And there’s the answer: it’s not just the pillar that’s loose, but the apparently solid piece of mounting behind.

“You do it,” she says suddenly.

Is she afraid? Beautiful, bold Zoe?

My smaller, quieter hands get to work. I readjust my grip and pull. This time, pillar and mounting come straight out, revealing themselves as the front end of a small, perfectly crafted compartment about one inch wide and eight inches deep. The sort of place you might hide a document or a letter. Thrum, thrum, thrum goes my heart. And from the look on Zoe’s face, so does hers.

But the slim wooden box is empty. I turn it upside down and tap it on the bottom, just to make sure. There’s nothing in it at all, not even an old button or a pin.

“Oh,” says Zoe, somewhere between disappointed and relieved.

I’m already turning my attention to the second pillar. Of the bureau’s two ‘matching’ drawers only one actually concealed a secret space, so it I shouldn’t expect the second pillar to move…

But it does.

It wobbles just like its twin.

Its twin.

A little pair of pillars. Joined.

“Oh, oh,” says Zoe again.

I pull out the second pillar. It conceals an identical one inch by eight inch secret space. Only this box isn’t empty.

“What is it?” says Zoe.

“Don’t know.”

Thrum. Thrum. Thrum.

It contains an envelope.

I shake it out on to the desk and it lands upside down, so I have to turn it over to read the writing.

For Rob
, it says.

Am I surprised? No, I am not surprised. Nothing surprises me any more. Especially when it’s part of a pattern. You think things end, but they don’t, they begin all over again. Like summer follows winter or night follows day.

“Don’t open it,” says Zoe.

“I have to.” The loopy black writing is Aunt Edie’s. “It’s from my aunt.”

“From her, but not to you,” remarks Zoe.

“It’s not stuck down.” And it isn’t. It’s one of those old-fashioned envelopes you have to lick. “If Aunt Edie didn’t want anyone looking in this envelope she could have licked it up. But she didn’t.”

“Even so,” says Zoe.

“Look,” I say. “It was you who said ‘pity you can’t talk’. Well, maybe the flask just did.”

“OK,” says Zoe. “Do it.”

She’s talking like the envelope is an unexploded bomb. And it is, in a way, or so I find when I tip its contents out.

There’s just one sheet of pale cream paper without an address.

My darling, darling boy
, it begins.

“Read it out,” says Zoe.

So I do.

My darling, darling boy

You will never read this – one of a lifetime of things you’ll never do – so I don’t really know why I’m writing it. Except I have to talk to someone and the only one I want to talk to right now is you.

It’s just four hours since they took you out of my arms. They didn’t want me to hold you at all, they said it would be ‘easier’ that way. Easier not to hold my own son?

You just looked asleep, a baby snuggled in some blankets having a nap. You fooled me with your beautiful face and your perfect little lips. You’d wake at any moment, I thought, wake and open your eyes and look at me.

That’s why I couldn’t leave you alone in the cot, even when I had to go to the bathroom. I couldn’t bear the thought of you waking alone, waking when I wasn’t there.

When they came to take you away I didn’t cry. I didn’t scream, not out loud anyway. I just thought, as the little white shawl of you disappeared through the door: I should have unwrapped you. Why didn’t I unwrap you? I never saw you naked, never held you skin to skin. Never saw your feet.

And now I’m back home, sitting at my ordinary desk, writing with my ordinary pen. Writing to you. But perhaps you already know that? Because now I’m not so sure you’ve gone after all. I can still feel you, really close. I can feel the breath you never took on my cheek. So do you know what I think, darling boy? I think one day you’ll wake after all. And when that day comes, I’m going to be right beside you still.

Until then, my darling boy, keep safe.

Love you for ever.

I pause. I can barely say the last word.

“What?” says Zoe.

“
Mummy
,” I read.

I’m wrong about not being surprised any more. My head is zinging with surprise. I see (as if she was in the room) Aunt Edie holding her dead child in her arms. Because that’s what it means, doesn’t it? That Aunt Edie had a son, Rob, a baby born dead.

“That’s so sad,” Zoe says, all ghostly quiet.

“Yes,” I say, zinging. “And no.”

“No?”

“Well, yes – of course
yes
.” The very idea of Aunt Edie holding her dead child is enough to tear my heart out. “Sad then – but not now.” I pause. “Don’t you see?”

“What? See what?”

I hold up the shimmering green flask. “This. What this could actually be?”

“A soul, you said a soul… oh, my gosh,” Zoe says.

“
I can still feel you really close
. That’s what she said. All those years ago.”

“No.”

“Yes,” I say. “It has to be.”

“But what’s that… that thing got to do with Clem?”

“Everything. Remember when I was out in the park, when I put the flask between the snow babies? You remember? And it sort of slipped, or Clem took it, under his arm. And it looked like the flask
belonged
somehow, and I thought that Clem was saying something, or the flask was saying something…”

“What? Saying what?”

“Zoe – if you were a soul, a lost soul, the soul of a little boy who died, what would you want?”

“A body.” Zoe’s whispering. “I’d want a body.”

“Yes. Of course. Which is why it must have kept coming back to the bottle, to a thing that looks a little like a ribcage, to the only place of safety it could probably find. But inside this hard hard glass, you’d never give up looking, would you?” I think of all the times the breath sat on the window sill looking out. “You’d be wanting, yearning… searching for your real other half, your perfect match…”

“… your twin,” says Zoe.

“Yes.” We hold each other’s gaze a moment. “And Clem,” I go on. “Think about Clem.” My mind is rushing again. “Why do you think nothing’s making any difference? The doctors, the medicine?
It all went so well.
That’s what Gran said. So the doctors can’t understand why Clem isn’t doing better than he is.”

“Because he has something missing too.”

“Yes. It has to be. Richie always had more of everything. He was – he is – the bigger twin. He didn’t have the damaged heart. He had a greater share of the liver…”

“And now they’re separated,” Zoe says, “you think Richie’s got the greater share of their joint soul?”

“Yes. Or all of it maybe. What if Richie has all that life force pounding in him and little Clem has nothing?”

“Which is why he’s fading…”

“Yes. Exactly. Because it’s not just a body that makes us alive, is it? Whatever Pug says about Mrs Nerg. We’re not just blood and bones.” I hold up the shining flask. “We’re something more.”

I come to a breathless pause.

“You have to get to the hospital,” says Zoe. “You have to go right now.”

I run into the corridor where Gran is making preparations for bed.

“We have to go to the hospital,” I shout at her. “We have to go now.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” says Gran. “It’s nearly eleven o’clock.”

“No, you don’t understand. We have to go now.”

“We’re going tomorrow, first thing. That’s time enough.”

“It isn’t, he won’t last that long.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

I hold up the flask. I’m talking about holding the hope of Clem’s life in the palm of my hands.

“You should be getting along now,” Gran says to Zoe.

Which is when the phone rings.

It’s Si.

Si says we need to get to the hospital right now.