The Shadows in the Street (4 page)

‘You make a difference as a GP. Don’t underestimate yourself.’

The dishwasher had finished its load and stopped humming. The kitchen was quiet.

‘When Chris died, I said I would keep things ticking on. No big changes, no decisions. I think that was right. I couldn’t have functioned at all if some of it hadn’t been automatic. But now I’m not sure how much longer I’ll want that – things just ticking on.’

‘Follow your feelings.’

‘Yes. My mother always said that.’

Judith smiled. ‘By the way,’ she said, ‘Felix was sick.’

Cat groaned.

‘And Hannah said she felt sick. I’m not entirely sure if she did.’

‘Hmm. Sam?’

Judith frowned. ‘No,’ she said, ‘Sam wasn’t sick. And if he felt sick he didn’t say so.’

Sam. More silent than ever. Closed within himself, oyster-like, private. Thin. Too thin.

‘I wish I knew what to do,’ Cat said. ‘I can’t make him talk – really talk. I can’t get through to him at all. He lives like a sort of shadow in this house, he’s here and yet somehow … he isn’t. What did he do tonight?’

‘Some homework. Maths. Watched
Doctor Who
. Then he went upstairs. I looked in after I’d sorted Felix out. He was lying on the bed with his book but I don’t think he was reading. I asked him if he was all right and he said, “Yes, thank you, Judith,” in that way he does – rather formal. I so wanted to go and give him a hug, Cat.’

‘But you couldn’t. I know. He prickles if you go too near.’

‘I think so long as he knows that it’s there when he wants it …’

‘The hugs.’

‘The hugs, the love. The listening. All of it. So long as he always knows.’ Judith stretched. ‘I’m going up. I put Felix’s bedding through the wash and it’s dry and folded. Hannah has a bowl by her just in case. I didn’t dare suggest a bowl to Sam.’

‘Thanks, Judith. I couldn’t function without you.’

‘As I said – don’t underestimate yourself. Goodnight, my dear.’

Cat sat on, sipping her wine, stroking Mephisto. She felt peaceful. Wondered if any of her children would be sick in the night or if whatever bug Felix had brought home from nursery had run its course. Wondered if Cassie Porter would die tonight. Thought that soon she would change something, she would decide something.

Move on. She would never say it, never even think it. She would not move on, because moving on was moving away, from Chris, from Chris’s dying and death, from their life together, their marriage, the past, and how could she bear to do that? How could she leave Chris behind?

‘No,’ she said aloud, ‘no. You’ll come with me. You will be as close as breath for the next ten or twenty or fifty years.’

She realised suddenly that she could make changes and yet not move away, not leave him behind. The realisation made her smile.

Sometimes, when she asked Chris a question, the answer would come at once. She talked to him about Sam almost every day, told him what troubled her, asked him what he thought she should do, and now, locking the door and switching off the lights, ‘putting the house to bed’ as Hannah called it, she talked to him about it again. Sam. What to do, what to say, how to help him. Sam.

‘He’s always talked to Simon,’ Chris said. She might as well have heard his voice, aloud in the quiet kitchen.
He’s always talked to Simon
.

She stood still. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘You’re right there.’

Sam might talk to Simon again. If he did, she would stop worrying.

If Simon were here.

Four

The worst thing you can do is run. That warning floated in her head when she heard the footsteps behind her, crossing the canal bridge. ‘The worst thing you can do is run.’ Who said that and why and were they right? Why not run? Because in your high heels you could slip over and fall? Because if you run he’ll run too, only he might run faster?

The other thing was: don’t look round. But when Abi got to the other side of the bridge, she did look round and then she groaned slightly, no longer from fear but because of who it was, the last person she needed. She wanted to get home. She’d got nearly £200 in her pocket. She didn’t need this.

‘Wait,’ he said.

Beanie Man.

She hesitated. £200 could be £250 but she hated him not having a car, or if he had one, not letting them go in it, hated having to go into one of the shelters on the rec or break into a shed on the allotments. Once, it had been the cemetery, the place where they put stuff, mowers and bins for dead flowers. She’d been scared witless, terrified he’d want them to lie on a grave. She had never been past the cemetery again.

Here, there were just wooden benches. It was cold. Too cold.

Beanie Man.

One of the girls had said he was mad, but Abi knew better, knew that it was an act. Sone punters did that. They put on an accent, Scottish or Irish, and they kept touching their hand to their face, half hiding it. As if you’d ever know them again in daylight, even if you walked into a shop where they stood behind the counter, or a pub where they were barman, or a bus and they were driving it. You didn’t look at them, tried not to, you blotted them from your mind even when you were with them, they left no trace. Except Beanie Man, because he was never without the black wool beanie, pulled low over his forehead, even in summer. He tried to act daft, but you could see through the act like you could see through the Scottish and Irish voices. They were thinking: if you ever see me you haven’t seen me, you don’t know me. And you wanted to say: don’t fucking flatter yourself.

‘Abi.’

She stopped. There was a moon, washing the stone of the footbridge pale, making the canal black silk.

Abi shrugged. ‘OK.’

She put the carrier bag with the box of tea bags in it on the ground under the bench.

Forty minutes later, letting herself in through the door of her room, she found Hayley smashed out on the bed and Liam throwing up for what looked like the twentieth time. She reached for the short bread tin on the top shelf, stuffed the money inside, put it back. The room smelled of dope and sick.

She went over and started to pull at Hayley, by the arms, by the hair, to shake her until she mumbled and sat up, eyes all over the place.

‘Cow!’ Abi screamed at her. ‘Cow. What did you say, what did you promise me?’

‘I’m OK, I’m OK.’

‘You are – what about them? Liam’s been sick everywhere, he’s crying, he’s filthy, he could have choked. Look at him.’

Hayley rolled off the bed and half knelt on the floor. ‘I’m sorry, I’m OK, Abs, it’s OK …’

‘Oh, get out, go on, leave Liam here, you’re in no fit state.’

‘I’m sorry, it’s OK.’

‘Shut up.’

The anger subsided as exhaustion hit her. But she cleaned Liam up, gave him a drink and an old clean T-shirt of her own to wear, then put him down again. His face was still white. Frankie and Mia had not stirred.

She undressed, sluiced her face and hands in cold water. She’d put money into the meter tomorrow.

‘God, Hayley, I thought you wouldn’t do this to me. Now sleep it off.’

She threw a cushion down. But it was cold. A cushion wasn’t enough. She got up again and found the knitted blanket.

‘Here.’

‘Thanks. Thanks, Abs. I’m OK.’

Abi switched off the lamp and pushed her feet down into the bedclothes. It was only later, waking as a dawn like sour milk seeped into the room, that she remembered she had left behind the carrier with the tea bags.

Five

The last patient left and Bronwen, the duty receptionist, tapped on the surgery door and came in.

‘Cat, here’s that note from the orthopaedic consultant and I’ll bring your coffee, only the thing is …’

Cat groaned. Her surgery had booked double the usual numbers, and there were seven patients to ring – Lafferton’s norovirus epidemic was in full spate.

‘I know, I know, but can you see one more?’

Bronwen had a sixth sense when it came to who to let in and who to send away, and Cat trusted it.

As the girl entered, carrying one child and leading another by the hand, Cat thought: I’ve seen you, I know you.

She glanced at her computer screen as the name and address came up, but they were not familiar.

‘Abi Righton? Hello I’m Dr Deerbon. Come in.’

She was worryingly thin, pale with dark hollows under her eyes, bad skin. Her denim jacket, short skirt and trainers were not adequate for the bitter weather outside, but her children were well wrapped up.

The screen showed the record of her last visit, two years before, and to Chris.

The consultation was straightforward enough – both children had the winter vomiting bug, the boy an ear infection as well. The young woman got up.

‘Thanks, Doctor, thank you. I’m sorry. I know I didn’t have a proper booking, thanks. Say thank you, Frankie, you got medicine to make you better, go on …’

The boy looked unhappy and turned his head away.

‘Frankie …’

‘Don’t worry. He’s feeling rotten. Keep him indoors and warm, won’t you?’

The girl heaved the now sleeping toddler onto her other arm and opened the door.

‘Abi …’

She glanced round. It was a child’s face, a prematurely old child, anxious, wary, masked in worldliness. But a child.

Cat remembered.

‘Are you looking after yourself? I know how it is when your children are ill … Are you eating properly?’

‘I’m fine, I haven’t had it, can’t afford to, can I? Anyway, it’s the kids get these bugs, it’s all around them. He goes to a playgroup, he got it there.’

‘You need to look after yourself as well, Abi.’ She glanced at the white bare legs. ‘Keep warm.’

Her eyes were defensive. ‘I’m fine. Thanks anyway, Doc.’ She sailed out, head up, the boy hanging on to her hand. Cat looked at the address. How had she got here? It was a good mile’s walk from the bus route. She would have to get the child’s medicine, trail home.

And it had been her, Cat was sure, crossing the road at the traffic lights, looking out for punters. Where had the children been then?

Bronwen’s instinct had been right. Cat needed to have Abi Righton on her radar.

And the others, she thought, going through to the receptionist’s office. Because there were others, too many others, on the streets, at risk.

‘We don’t know the half,’ she muttered. Bronwen nodded, understanding, keeping her counsel.

Cat went back to her room, Abi Righton’s notes were still up on the screen. They were sparse enough. Both children had been born in Bevham General and she had moved to her present address in the same month in which she last visited the surgery, when Chris had prescribed an antibiotic for a chest infection. She had attended the antenatal clinic once only, the mother and baby clinic for immunisations, but not otherwise. It was a thin record but probably not one to ring any alarm bells. All the same, Cat picked up the phone.

‘Lynne? It’s Cat Deerbon. Can I just run a name past you?’

Lynne had been the practice health visitor for over nine years, until the team had been split up. She now worked with the other community nurses out of the social services department, her workload doubled, her colleagues fewer and mainly young and inexperienced.

She came back to the phone. ‘Abi Righton doesn’t ring any bells with me and there isn’t anything on the SS register about her or her children. What’s worrying you?’

‘Nothing specific … just a hunch.’

‘Usually worth following.’

‘I know.’

‘I’ll make a note. I would say I’d call and see her but random visits for no reason aren’t part of the job any more. How are you?’

‘Fine,’ Cat said. She wanted to mean it, did not want what Judith had once called a ‘widowhood conversation’.

‘You?’

‘Counting the days.’

‘Sorry?’

‘I’m taking early retirement – didn’t you know? Can’t stand it any longer. Let’s meet sometime. I have to go but I’ve flagged up Abi Righton on my system.’

‘Thanks.’

Another one the NHS could ill spare, Cat thought, closing down her computer. Another reason for looking hard at where she herself stood. She picked up her list of visits. Once, she would have spent three hours or more on house calls, now they were discouraged as not cost-effective. Russell Jones did almost none, thought them rarely necessary. But the three elderly, frail patients she was going to see now would not dream of wasting her time, and would be better, emotionally as well as physically, for her visit. In her book, that was reason enough.

As she headed for the grid of streets known as the Apostles, though, it was Abi Righton who stuck in her mind. Abi Righton, thin, pale, malnourished, trying her best with her children, and working, Cat was sure, as a prostitute. It troubled her.

Six

Abi had a cappuccino, Marie a strong tea. Frankie and Mia were asleep in the double buggy, Frankie still pale. She had given him the prescription medicine straight away, in the chemist, expecting him to throw it back up, but he had turned his face to the inside of the buggy and slept.

‘There’s a load of girls go to the new place,’ Marie said, looking round Dino’s, which was crowded, steamy and small. ‘They meet up there, every morning nearly.’

Abi had seen them. The ‘new place’ was in the Lanes, dark wood tables and chairs and polished floors and about a hundred different kinds of coffee.

‘Yeah, well, I don’t know how they can afford it, believe me, two fifty, three quid a coffee? Anyway, I don’t know them.’

‘You do – there’s Sandy, there’s Melanie Liptrott, there’s …’

Girls who had been in their year at the Eric Anderson. Yes, she knew them. Only she didn’t.

‘Well, I like it here. You go if you want.’

Dino’s was friendly. They didn’t make you leave the buggy outside and the coffee was one pound ten a big mug. If the kids had toast or a bun, they’d get a drink free. Besides, nobody looked at you in Dino’s.

The coffee machine hissed.

‘Jonty’s back,’ Marie said.

Jonty. He beat Marie up, he drank, he did coke, he sent her out to work when she felt like death, he threw a fiver at her and expected a three-course dinner every night for a week out of it. He’d been inside twice since she’d met him five years before. He was a lowlife and if he was at the caravan Abi wouldn’t go there because he tried it on with her if Marie turned her back.