Unspoken (8 page)

The hospital is busy and noisy. Doctors and nurses are rushing around and patients are shuffling along the polished floors. I look back at the entrance – a cluster of dressinggowned women are smoking outside. One of them catches my eye and turns away. Her dressing gown is as bright as the tumour on her leg. Already I am regretting agreeing to this. I don’t need any tests. They won’t find anything.

We wait in the neurology department for my appointment. Julia talks to me but I don’t hear her. My ears only pick up fragments of sound – shattered remnants of other people’s lives. She mentions cuts and guilt and suddenly, even without hearing her words, I know exactly what she is talking about. She says she will perhaps visit Grace while we are in the hospital. I think of Julia discovering the girl and wonder how much more my daughter can take.

‘Mrs Marshall?’ I leave it to Julia to reply. I hope she tells them I never married; that I’m
Miss
.

‘It’s my mother,’ she says, gesturing to me. ‘Come on, Mum. Our turn.’ She pulls me upright and I go dizzy.

It’s hard to believe that I’m shuffling like an old woman when two weeks ago I was chasing the chickens around the yard and repairing the goats’ pen. My previous foster child had returned to her family and I was looking forward to getting on with my next challenge – Brenna and Gradin. I was convinced I could help them; certain I could make a difference. Instead, it’s my life that’s pulled inside-out. Julia leads me into Mr Radcliffe’s office.

I don’t like doctors. My skin prickles.

‘Well, Mrs Marshall. Dr Carlyle has referred you to me as an urgent case. I’ve known him personally for a long time and we chatted at length about you. He’s extremely keen for you to be assessed as soon as possible. I’m going to ask you a few questions and most likely refer you for some tests. How does that sound?’

He is speaking to me like I am a child. His desk is laminated, not real wood, and there is a snag of cotton on the edge where someone has caught their clothing. The carpet is a medium blue, worn near the door but otherwise serviceable. ‘Mrs Marshall, do you understand?’ I wish he’d call me Miss. The spider plant on the corner of the desk has trailed miniature plants right down to the floor. A slice of winter sunlight cuts across the room and dust motes hover, swirling and lost.

‘Mum,’ Julia says, although she knows I won’t speak. ‘Shall I answer for you?’

I would like to nod, to glance at her, to smile even or twitch my finger, but I can’t do it. There is simply nothing there. Julia’s boots have a rim of pale mud around the sole and the heel is a little worn. Brown leather, crinkled at the ankle, with a zipper up the side. Warm boots. Julia’s boots. I recall fighting with her to wear sensible shoes as a child.

‘I’ll answer for her, Mr Radcliffe. Will that do?’

‘Under the circumstances, it will have to. Dr Carlyle explained to me about your mother’s mutism. He said . . .’ Radcliffe trails off, leaving me wondering exactly what was said about me. ‘Look, selective mutes can be surprising. They’ll talk to some people and not others.’

Does he think I
selected
this?

‘Are you suggesting that Mum is choosing not to speak? That she could if she wanted to?’ Julia sounds angry.

‘If she is a selective mute, then yes, to a certain extent she can choose who she speaks to. But I’m more concerned with the neurological side of things – her brain, to be precise – in case she doesn’t have a choice.’

‘You mean like a tumour?’ Julia is always direct.

‘That’s one possibility. We need to look at everything. When did Mrs Marshall stop speaking exactly?’

Julia pauses and I know she’s looking at me. I can feel the burn of her stare on my face; the plea in her eyes for me to become normal again – the pair of us, mother and daughter, invincible against the world. ‘That’s hard to tell. We chatted on the phone a few days before Christmas, and then when I visited her on Christmas Day, she was . . . like this. So it must have happened any time in between, I suppose. Dr Carlyle said . . .’ When she says his name, her voice turns to double cream.

‘Dr Carlyle didn’t seem to think she should go to hospital straight away. I think he was hoping that with rest and close monitoring, she would recover. As if she’d just had a big shock.’

‘And has she spoken a single word since, or even made any kind of vocal noise? A grunt or squeal perhaps.’

I don’t grunt or squeal, I yell in my head so it aches. My farm animals grunt and squeal.

‘She whimpered when I lifted her out of the chair on Christmas Day. I think I hurt her arms. But nothing else. Not a sound.’

Julia glances at me, praying I’m suddenly going to join in their repartee. They are talking about me as if I’m not here, which certainly makes my feeling of not being real all the more tangible.

‘And what about your mother’s movements? Does her physical ability seem impaired in any way? Does she limp? Is there any sign of paralysis?’

Julia pauses and thinks for a moment. In my head I interrupt, try to whisper the truth, but she can’t hear me. Frustrated, I turn to Radcliffe and silently mouth the answer he requires. Like Julia, I doubt he will believe me.

To begin with, Doctor, my mobility was perfectly normal. After several hours had passed, I somehow got myself home from Dr Carlyle’s surgery. It wasn’t until it all . . . sank in . . . until I understood what was now going on . . . that my joints gradually stiffened and my tendons creaked as they slid across my bones. Once released, the poison that I’d worked hard to contain for thirty years spread quickly through my body. It reached every part of me. Several days later, my eyes became gritty and dry, my heart barely beat in my chest and my skin started to peel. Walking crushed every joint in my body and eating felt as if I was swallowing thorns. Tell me, Mr Radcliffe, what is wrong with me?

‘It’s so weird. Mum’s always been full of energy. She’s fantastic for her age. She eats healthily and keeps fit on the farm. So to see her like this, it’s impossible to say she hasn’t been affected physically. Of course she has. Whether she’s capable of moving more, well, I don’t know. My guess is no, she is not choosing to be taken to the toilet and bathed by me. If she could do it, she would. Whatever it is has hit her entire body.’

My entire soul.

 

‘Mr Radcliffe said the MRI scan is booked for Monday, Mum. That’s good news, isn’t it?’ Julia is driving me home. ‘We just have to stop by Nadine’s house to pick up Alex and Flora.’ She’s being how I used to be with her – patient, understanding, driven to the ends of the earth with exasperation.

I think about the MRI scan. The doctor explained that I will be slid into a tube, where the machine will image my entire body, map my brain, my internal organs and trace the path of my blood vessels to make sure they are not bleeding inside my head. I will be slammed by noise as the machine goes about its business, probing a magnetic field into parts of me that no one has ever seen. Mr Radcliffe will study the results and report back what’s wrong. What they don’t yet know is that the scan, the precision picture of my entire being, will not show up a thing.

Outside Nadine’s house, Flora and Alex climb into Julia’s car. They smell of Coke and sticky sweets. Normally I would remind Julia to tell her sister-in-law not to fill my grandchildren with junk. She would eye me in a way that told me not to interfere, and then explain why Ed and Nadine enjoy spoiling their niece and nephew. Later, we would laugh about it and I would apologise.

But things are far from normal, and as we drive back to Northmire, Alex bombards his mother with news of Ed’s new case. The boy is clearly obsessed by his uncle’s job and talks nonstop about how he has to make sure no more women are hurt.

‘Uncle Ed is in charge of the case, Mum. He says I can go down to the station and interview the officers for a school report.’ I can’t see him sitting behind me but instinctively I know that he is beaming, already planning the questions. Alex is set on joining the police force when he is old enough. He looks up to Ed almost as much as to his father. Then I’m thinking about Murray and wishing he was here for Julia; to hold her and support her through the inevitable, because I can’t. I see an abyss so deep that when she is at the bottom, no one will hear her call.

‘Alex, you shouldn’t ask your uncle so many questions.’ Julia’s voice is shaky, like her driving.

‘Oh, Mum,’ he moans. ‘Uncle Ed says I can. He’s going to find the man who killed Grace.’

‘Grace is not dead,’ Julia retorts. She sighs and pulls the car straight after hitting a pothole on my drive. ‘She’s very poorly, though, and I sincerely hope that Uncle Ed catches whoever did this to her.’

‘I want Uncle Ed to catch him otherwise it might happen to you or Grandma or Flora.’

‘Enough, Alex!’ Julia explodes, as if being in the neurology department has stripped all her nerves raw. ‘Inside, kids, while I help Grandma.’ She paces her movements with short, sharp breaths, each one taking her to the next minute.

As Julia helps me out of my seatbelt and leads me inside, I think about what Alex said. How can I tell him it’s already too late?

There was no point in the world trying to hide my mistake. We could have died, I admit. With not a speck of air left in the cabin from the hungry furnace-like stove, Alex and Flora had heaved open the heavy wooden hatch of
Alcatraz
and stepped out on to the rear deck to gasp lungfuls of icy night air. Their bodies hungrily drew in the oxygen and I was saved only because they left the hatch open.

‘How
could
you, Murray? They could have suffocated. You’re irresponsible and selfish and useless and . . .’ Julia screamed at me from the deck, her barrage dissolving into the freezing night. She didn’t set foot inside the cabin, which smelled like a distillery and blew out hot, dry air from the over-coked stove that I had lit to keep my children warm. That was all. I’d not wanted them to go back to Julia and complain that Daddy had let them shiver. But I’d drunk Scotch and fallen asleep on the floor with my neck bent crooked and the empty bottle between my knees.

It was eleven fifteen when Julia, reeking of Dr Nice, finally stormed back down the towpath, dragging our bemused children with her. They were
sure
, I heard them tell her, that they had seen three giant pike lurking in the light of the moon. When I looked up – Julia’s cross words still ringing through the night – I saw that the moon was obscured by cloud. Had the children imagined the pike, just as I’d imagined I could take care of them?

 

I’ve made it into work today. Odd, considering my head feels like a demolition ball has crashed through it, and also odd because I’m about to lose my job. Any sane person wouldn’t have bothered showing up under the circumstances – pride or shame or simply the hangover keeping them away. Me, however, I’m desperate, and turning things around is what I have to do. If I can keep my job, there’s a chance that I can keep my family.

‘French!’ Sheila Hanley – boss and all-round demon – is in my office snapping orders. ‘Do these. Today.’ A pile of files lands on my desk, the thud of them sending shockwaves through my body. I wince. ‘And get yourself some coffee. You look like shit.’ A fiendish smile slices up her face and she ruffles my hair. ‘You know how much I love you.’

‘Good morning to you too, Sheila. You look . . . as beautiful as ever.’

She shakes her head, and I realise flattery will get me nowhere. Her lacquered hair doesn’t budge. The neck of her crisp cotton blouse is open a little too low for a woman of forty-five, and her waist is unfeasibly trim. Her heels are high and her lips are red – always bright red. Somehow Sheila Hanley, senior partner of Redman, Hanley and Bright, carries off the look.

‘There’s a road traffic accident, a matrimonial case and a debt recovery for you.’ She pats the files as if they are her children. ‘Nothing too hard for you today, eh, darling?’

It’s what I was expecting. The bottom of the pile. Then, just when I think it couldn’t get any worse, the last face in the world I want to see pokes into the cupboard that is my office. Suddenly, I am a sideshow. ‘Hey, Frenchie, it’s been a while. They let you out of rehab, I see.’

I breathe in and quickly count to ten. ‘Dick,’ I reply, dragging out the syllable although that’s not strictly his name. I don’t bother looking up. I open one of the files and pretend to read while concentrating on sipping my coffee without my hand shaking. I flip through the papers.

‘Where did you park the boat, then? In the multistorey?’ Dick squeezes into my office and stands beside Sheila. They loom over my desk. This is one cruel hangover.

The shakes come and I put the cup down just in time. I take off my reading glasses but it doesn’t help. My vision is still blurred ‘Richard.’ I nod my head. ‘Very clever. As usual.’ Sheila is waiting for me to crack.

‘Then how did you get to work? Didn’t I hear that you lost your licence?’ Dick presses on.

‘No, you didn’t.’ Not quite. ‘As it happens, I came on the bus. My car is in the garage being fixed. How did you get to work? In a spaceship?’

‘In my new Porsche, actually. I could give you a ride home later, if you like. As long as you don’t throw up in it.’ He smiles broadly.

‘I can’t guarantee that, Dick. The bus will be fine.’

‘Suit yourself.’ And Dick Porsche strides off to the partner’s office that would have been mine – the one with the extra-large desk and the view over the city – if I hadn’t decided to become an alcoholic instead.

‘So,’ Sheila says, closing my door. ‘What’s going on in Murray-land?’ I know when Sheila is serious, and this is one of those times. Her eyelids semi-close – an almost feral expression – and her arms fold around her body. She perches on the edge of my desk. In the five years that I’ve been working for Redman, Hanley and Bright, I’ve never quite managed to figure her out. Mostly she’s indomitable lawyer, courtroom queen, but occasionally she’s quiet and reserved – usually before an explosive outburst – and sometimes I’ve witnessed her almost maternal with the young female staff. Sheila’s most reliable quality is that she’s unpredictable. If I didn’t respect her so much, I’d hate her.