To Die For (19 page)

We heard a noise and turned and saw the girl creep in. I glanced at Browne. He glanced at me. It was the first time she’d come into that room when both of us had been there. Browne made an effort and sat up straight.

‘Are you all right?’ he said.

She watched him for a while, like she didn’t know what to make of him. Then she turned to me and it was like everything that had happened to her had gone from her mind. There was a blank look on her face, empty, like she was sleepwalking. Yes, she’d been hurt.

‘Talk to her,’ Browne said to me.

I couldn’t think of anything to say. I tried. I said, ‘I knew someone once who had hair like yours. Braided like that. She wanted to be a beautician.’

I waited for her to turn around and walk out or run out and upstairs. But she didn’t. She just carried on looking into me, looking for something. I don’t know what. I never knew.

After a while, the laughter on the TV got her attention and she turned towards it. She looked at the idiots on the box as they fell about and argued with each other. And then she smiled, and for a moment she was like a child again, with eyes that glowed, lit by something that had managed, for a while, to fill the nothingness that usually spread throughout her.

I had to remind myself that she was a child, not just like a child. She should’ve been playing games with friends, or learning something in school. Instead, she was on the run from whatever shit she’d had to live through. She wasn’t a child, though, except in age. To have a name like Kid, that was the joke.

She came forward and climbed on to the sofa, next to Browne. He didn’t say anything, didn’t move. He pointed his face in the direction of the TV. Whenever the girl laughed, Browne laughed. I don’t think he had any idea what the programme was about. When the girl was quiet, me and Browne were still, as if a movement of the air would destroy her.

So we all sat there. We were a happy family – Browne slumped, trying to focus his eyes on a swimming television, me trying not to bleed too much, the girl forgetting her horrors.

When the doorbell rang, we turned our heads as one.

‘I’m not expecting anyone,’ Browne said.

We sat there and waited for them to go. Instead, the doorbell rang again and we heard the flap of the letter box open and snap shut.

‘The lights are on. They’ll know I’m home.’

‘Leave it,’ I said.

The doorbell rang again. Browne drummed his fingers on his leg.

‘I’d better go see,’ he said. ‘Might be a patient.’

‘You don’t have patients.’

‘I’ve got a few elderly ones, from the old folks’ home. I help them out a bit with small things. I need the money, Joe.’

He pulled himself up and padded out to the front door. I heard a woman’s voice drift in. The girl was listening carefully.

‘I hope I’m not disturbing you,’ the voice said. ‘I wasn’t sure you were home.’

She had one of those posh accents that made her sound like she was ordering her servants about.

‘I was out back... doing something.’

‘It’s been such a long time since we saw you last. Weren’t you supposed to pop in yesterday?’

‘Was I? Oh, I was busy. Tomorrow would be – ’

‘Anyway, I thought I’d come by, see if you were all right.’

‘I’m fine, thanks. I’m a bit busy at the moment.’

‘Can’t have our doctor getting ill on us.’

The voice got nearer. The front door closed.

‘What I wanted to say was that Mrs Clarke’s hip is giving her some problems. She won’t have it seen to, for some reason. I don’t think she likes the idea of an operation. I thought you might have a word with her. I – oh – ’

She came into the room then, followed by Browne. He wiped his hand over his head. She saw me and her eyebrows went up. She looked at the girl and her eyebrows went up some more.

‘I didn’t realize you had company,’ she said, turning to Browne. ‘Am I interrupting?’

‘Well...’

She walked further into the room, smiling thinly at me, and sat herself on the edge of a chair. She wasn’t old, probably in her fifties, but she looked old. Her hair was straggly and grey, and her lips were thin, as if she’d spent too much of her time quietly pissed off with the world.

‘It’s so rare I venture this far,’ she said to me.

Her knees were together when she said this, and she leaned forward a bit like she was getting ready to spring up and run out. She held her handbag closer to her. Then she looked at the girl and smiled. The girl watched her blankly.

‘Hello. And what’s your name?’

‘Her name’s Ebele,’ Browne said.

‘Ebele? Is that African?’ The girl nodded. ‘And how do you know Doctor Browne?’

‘I’m looking after her,’ Browne said. ‘For a neighbour.’

‘And this gentleman?’ she said, looking at me, smiling nervously. ‘Are you looking after him too?’

Browne did his best to laugh. His eyes flicked over my shoulder, trying, I guessed, to see if the bandages could be seen beneath the jumper I was wearing.

‘Oh, I’ve known Joe a long time,’ he said, relaxing a bit. ‘He popped in to visit.’

‘And where do you know Doctor Browne from?’

This she said to me. I shifted in my seat.

‘An old patient,’ I said.

‘Nothing serious, I hope,’ the woman said, laughing for some reason.

‘This is Sue,’ Browne told me. ‘Sue runs the old people’s home – ’

‘Nursing home, doctor.’

‘Yes. Nursing home.’

‘Unusual,’ she said. ‘For a patient to visit his old doctor, I mean.’

‘Is it?’ I said.

‘One occasionally becomes friends with one’s patients,’ Browne said, eyeing me. ‘All sorts of people.’

‘The empathy, I suppose.’

‘Empathy. Exactly.’

The chit-chat died out. We all waited for the woman to get the hint. Instead, she looked around at the TV, the carpet, the ceiling. Most of all, she looked at the girl. Her eyes kept going back to her, making the girl edgy. Browne saw it too. The girl’s shoulders were hunched, her hands tightening into little fists.

‘Where in Africa are you from?’ the woman said.

‘Would you like some tea?’ Browne said to the woman.

‘I do not know,’ the girl said.

‘Don’t know?’

‘I don’t think she understands you,’ Browne said. ‘English isn’t – ’

‘She seems frightened,’ the woman said, looking over at me.

‘I do not want to go back,’ the girl said.

‘Back?’

Browne moved his feet about and wiped his head.

‘Tea?’ he said.

‘She said she doesn’t want to go back,’ the woman said. ‘Back where?’

‘To Africa,’ Browne said. ‘It wasn’t nice for her, was it, darling?’

The girl moved her head from side to side. The woman’s eyes went from Browne to me then back to the girl.

‘Why don’t you want to go back?’

‘She thinks you’ve come to take her away,’ Browne said.

‘Why would I want to do that?’

‘Immigration,’ Browne said.

‘Oh. I see. Don’t worry, dear, I won’t – ’

She reached a hand out to the girl. The girl flinched and backed away.

‘Sue, I hope you don’t mind, but I really – ’

‘I am sorry I shot him,’ the girl said suddenly.

‘Shot him?’

The girl pointed to me and the woman peered at me like I was dying there and then.

‘I want to stay here,’ the girl said.

‘Vivid imagination,’ Browne said, ‘children.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘Please,’ the girl said.

Browne was sweating. He said, ‘It’s just her way, Sue. She’s a little flighty.’

‘She said she shot him.’

‘Sue,’ Browne said sharply, ‘if I might have a word with you?’

The woman stood slowly. Browne led her out of the room. There was some muttering, mostly from Browne. At one point, the woman said, ‘I understand completely, doctor.’

I looked at the girl and she looked at me. Then we heard the front door open.

‘Whenever you can,’ the woman said. ‘It would be much appreciated.’

‘Certainly.’

The door closed.

Browne came back into the room.

‘Bloody woman,’ he said.

He collapsed into his chair. The girl scratched her nose and went back to watching the TV.

‘Is she a problem?’ I said to Browne.

‘Problem? She’s a bloody nightmare. Nosy old cow. Nobody’s safe. I pity those old folks. None of them have any privacy, you know. She knows more of their medical history than I do. Damn it. She’ll hound me for months over this.’

‘Will she call the police?’

Browne shook his head.

‘I told her that Kid had come from a war zone, was still traumatized by it all. Not far off the truth, really.’

‘And me?’

He hesitated.

‘Did you know I was a prison doctor once?’ he said.

‘Right. An old patient.’

The girl laughed at something on the box. She was sitting back in the chair, kicking her feet.

‘You were a big bloody help, by the way,’ Browne said to me. He wiped his head. ‘Bloody woman.’

We went back to watching the TV. After a while I heard snoring. Browne was asleep. The girl was asleep next to him, her head on his lap. I watched them for a while. Then I closed my eyes. She hadn’t run off to her room this time, and she wasn’t having nightmares.

So we carried on like that for a while. I was healing, Browne was staying sober, and we watched the girl get closer to us, like an animal inching its way forward, afraid but starving, edging slowly towards the hand of some stranger, ready to bolt if it was startled.

She started talking, too, but not about that night in Dalston, not about anything that was important. I let it go. Browne had warned me not to push it and I didn’t think his loyalty towards a wanted criminal would stretch too far.

She told us something about her family in Africa, but it was always small stuff, never anything personal.

‘My father worked in a field,’ she would say. ‘He used to grow cowpea and sorghum. My brothers helped him and my mother and my sister. I helped him sometimes.’

‘Hard work,’ Browne said.

‘Yes. Hard work.’

Or she would tell us about her teacher and the things she had learned at her school. Browne had the idea of fishing out an old atlas he had and showing it to her, getting her to show him what she knew. The atlas was a couple of decades out of date, still had the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia, that kind of thing. The girl pointed to places and told us what she knew.

‘The Mediterranean Sea is here, it looks like a crocodile’s head. And Italy looks like a foot. Paris is the capital of Italy where the Pope lives.’

Browne laughed at that, but he smothered it and didn’t correct her.

‘That’s very good,’ he would say. ‘You know a lot.’

‘Yes,’ she would say. ‘And Scotland is here, I think,’ she’d say, pointing to Ireland.

‘Near there, honey. Near there.’

We both realized pretty quickly that she couldn’t read much English. It didn’t seem to stop her. She must’ve been pointing to the places from memory or sheer guesswork. This is Africa, here is the Nile, like that. Here I was born, here I died.

‘What would you like to do when you get older, darling?’ Browne asked her one time.

‘I would like to be a doctor,’ she said.

For some reason, this brought a tear to Browne’s eye and he had to excuse himself and go get a drink or three. When he came back, he was carrying an armful of anatomy books and medical equipment. He showed the girl how to use a stethoscope, how to take a pulse. He gave her a book to look at, full of pictures of skeletons, organs, that kind of thing. He pointed things out to her and told them what they were, what they did. She listened, nodded, repeated it back, but we could both see she didn’t understand what he was telling her. He carried on, though, for some reason.

I watched all this, waited for her to talk about something useful. She didn’t.

Browne tried once or twice to talk to her about her family or about her time here, but she’d clam up. It was plain that she wanted to forget whatever had happened to her here, in London. Browne finally got the message. When he talked to her after that, it was about his sister’s cat or his boyhood in Scotland. Since he’d done his dance, she’d become interested in all that.

‘I did not know people danced in Scotland,’ she said.

Browne brought out his old kilt and told her about the tartan and the sporran and that kind of stuff. He tried to explain about the clans and the history of Scotland. She didn’t understand him, but she listened and he was happy with that. He showed her some of the dances, but he couldn’t go too long without needing to sit down and refresh himself, as he put it.

On the third day, or the fourth, or maybe the fifth, we went shopping, the three of us. Browne wanted to buy some more of that African food and he wanted the girl to show him what to get. Or so he said. He’d been scouring his recipe book and had made a list of stuff. The list was two pages long. He went to the library and used the internet to find a shop in Crouch End, so at least we didn’t have to trawl all the way over to west London.

The girl needed clothes, too, and other things. I needed some stuff, but Browne wouldn’t get it for me, said it would do me good to get out of the house. So we went shopping. I had to fork out the money for it all because Browne was ‘cash-poor’, as he called it.

Browne waddled out of the house first, I followed, still a bit weak, and the girl came last, running to catch us up. Christ knows what people thought when they saw us swaying down the road. Browne lurched right, I lurched left, and the girl ran between the two of us, holding our hands, trying to keep us from falling over completely.

We had to use a bus because Browne was about three thousand times over the limit and I still couldn’t drive. The girl told us she’d drive, but Browne wouldn’t have it. I suppose it would’ve looked a bit iffy, but I had the feeling that wasn’t Browne’s reason for not allowing it. I had the feeling he wanted to get the girl out in the fresh air, as if he was introducing an animal to the wild for the first time. I think that was the real reason for the whole shopping trip. Anyway, we went by fucking bus.

Browne got carried away in the African food shop and bought enough to feed us for a month. Every time the girl pointed to something, he bought it. What did he care? I was paying for it. I think he forgot about my arm, forgot I couldn’t carry all the shopping. By the time we’d finished getting everything, we had half a dozen bags between us. Browne struggled along with a couple of bags, his face red and shining with effort. The girl tried to help and ended up carrying his Scotch. Browne suddenly decided the buses were too unreliable and we got a cab which dropped us off at the corner of his road.