Whatever You Love (11 page)

I turn my back on the rotting flowers and the blue teddy. To my right is the way back home along the main road and to my left, the sharp corner where Fulton Avenue becomes Fulton Road, the road that Betty’s school is on. I close my eyes. The cold air washes over my face. In my head, I see a large black car with bull bars come swinging round the corner, Willow being flung sideways on to the verge, Betty flying straight up into the air. I hear the brakes, the thump.

When I open my eyes, I am on my knees in the middle of the road. A light rain is falling. I can feel the rough tarmac and tiny stones against my bare legs. I am making a screeching sound. A yellow rectangle of light snaps on in the flat above Ranmali’s shop. A curtain moves. The screeching sound continues. A small figure rushes towards me. Ranmali bends to lift me up from the road and my fists swing at her. I think I manage to hit her but the blows are so wild and she is so small and soft I have the sensation that I am beating the air as much as her. I can hear her husband shouting. Hands grab at me. I continue to flail at the black air and screech. A car approaches, slowly it seems to me, the blue light on top spinning elegantly, with all the gentle grace of the starfish light that I have left swirling on Betty’s bedside table. It makes an interesting pattern on the sheet of corrugated iron that Ranmali and her husband have nailed across what used to be the window of their shop. A second or so later, a van pulls up behind it. As the men in uniforms approach, I suck in air to scream again. They are moving slowly and carefully, it seems to me, as I thrash around on the ground. Slowly and carefully, one of them kneels next to me, then lies down and takes me in a bear hug, a parody of a love embrace, holding me firmly against him and talking to me softly all the while. Ranmali and her husband have melted into the dark. The other policeman is standing waiting, looking down at me and his colleague. He is holding a small, thin canister in his hand, which I later identify as CS spray. His colleague clutches me tight, my face against the shiny yellow bulk of his high-visibility jacket, and continues to talk to me, over and over, his voice low and soft, ‘Easy now, it’s okay now, easy…’ He has a deep voice, coaxing, but I carry on howling and thrashing – lost to myself and fighting them because they want to bring me back, kicking and struggling all the way down the long, dark tunnel into which I am so ready to fall.

I am of average height and slender build but it still takes two police officers to get me into the back of the van – once we are in, one of them pins me down on the floor of the van, lying on my side, while the other places his hand underneath my head, to cushion it. When we get to the emergency admissions room of the psychiatric unit, they help the orderly hold me down while the duty doctor gives me 10 mg of Diazepam – I check it on the notes the next day because I am interested in how fast it works and how quickly it wears off, after about five hours – 10 mg is quite a large dose, 5 mg would be more normal.

The next day, I am tired but coherent and the first thing I say to the psychiatrist who interviews me that morning is that I won’t take drugs. Why don’t I try a course of Venlafaxine? asks the psychiatrist, a young Asian woman with a wary air, clearly uneasy about dealing with another professional. Later, I hazard a guess that she has discussed my stubbornness with other staff members on the unit because that afternoon, when I am back on the ward, a nurse comes and sits next to me and says, ‘You know, there’s nothing shameful about admitting you need a bit of help, now and then. Think about what you would say to yourself if you were one of your patients.’ When I don’t reply, she rises from her stool with a sigh and mutters resentfully, turning to go, ‘If you were diabetic you’d take insulin, wouldn’t you?’ They think I am refusing because I am wallowing in grief or just proud or some vastly annoying combination of the two. Perhaps they think I am doing it to spoil their day, to make them feel less successful. I don’t bother telling them that when you have watched your mother disintegrate after many years of dopamine you develop a passionate hatred of long-term medication. Besides, I have a new resolution. Everyone thinks that after many weeks of coping, I have finally imploded but I know the reverse to be true.

Eventually, they send in David.

I am sitting in the day room when he arrives. As soon as he comes through the door, I announce that they have agreed to discharge me. I have been brought in on an emergency section but am now a voluntary patient. They have suggested I stay but reluctantly conceded I may leave.

David looks like he is in pain. He draws up a straight-backed plastic chair and sits down next to me. I am seated on a high, orthopaedic armchair, designed to allow infirm people to lower themselves and rise again. It feels throne-like. The day room smells perceptibly of cigarette smoke even though nobody is allowed to smoke in here. In the far corner, an elderly man sits in a chair similar to mine, talking to himself. Most of the time his words are no more than a mumble but every now and then he hollers a phrase that makes it clear he is having an argument with a long-dead wife.

Every time I see David I think he looks older – but if that were true he would look ancient. Perhaps it is simply that, between times, I forget how old we both are now and it is a shock to be reminded. I look at him and feel empty of emotion – no, not empty, but my feeling for him is no more than a background note, a slight, dull, pointless aggression. I would rather talk to Toni than him, any day. He rests a hand on the arm of my upholstered chair. ‘Look, I know you really want to go home. I know you must be desperate to see Rees.’

At the sound of Rees’s name, I feel a stab of pain. ‘How is Rees?’ I say. I don’t want him to see me in the ward. It would frighten him.

David pulls a face that indicates,
okay, sort of
. Rees will not be traumatised by his stay with his father. He has done it often enough before. At least he will have regular meals, distractions.

David grimaces. I know you so well, I think, and I know you are building up to something.

‘Laura,’ he says. ‘You left the door open.’

I look at his hand on the arm of my chair. I think, he has put it there as a substitute for putting it on my arm. He is gripping the chair tightly. He looks at the floor. In the far corner, the old man shouts, ‘Jezebel! Harlot! Cunt!’ An auxiliary wanders in with a watering can and tops up the water in the vase of fading tulips on the windowsill.

‘When you left the house in the night,’ David continues, ‘you left the front door open. Anyone could have walked in. Rees was asleep upstairs, Laura. He stayed asleep and the police came and got me so I was there when he woke up in the morning but what if he’d woken up? Laura…’

It comes again, the stab of pain at the mere thought of Rees, of my inexcusable desertion of him, not just that night but ever since Betty was taken from me. Something inside me folds inwards and I feel a dark, maternal panic – I close my eyes briefly and squash the feeling down. I cannot allow myself to love Rees, to even think of Rees, I cannot, or the separation from him will be unbearable. I give a deep sigh. I look at my hands and pick at some rough skin around my right thumbnail.
But nobody did walk in, I want to say to David. Rees didn’t
wake up. Rees is fine. He’s fine with you and Chloe.

David draws breath and says, ‘I want you to let Rees stay with us for a bit, just for a bit, Laura. I can take him to nursery on the way to work and Julie has said she doesn’t mind having him after like she does now. Chloe is happy to do the other afternoons. She’s got her mum around a lot to help anyway. If you don’t like that then I’ll do short days for a bit. I can ask for whatever I like at the moment.’

So that was what he was anxious about. ‘Of course,’ I say, turning my face away. ‘Of course you can keep Rees for a bit.’ I don’t need to be looking at him to feel his relief. It radiates from him, like body heat.

‘What about you?’ he says, tenderly, and lifts his hand from the arm of the chair and places it on mine. ‘I’m so worried about you. We all are.’

We? Which ‘we’ is this, then? He doesn’t sound all that desperate to me. He sounds relieved. He has got what he came for, custody of Rees. ‘Well, Toni seems to be keeping a pretty close eye on me.’

He presses his lips together. ‘She’s good, isn’t she? I didn’t know they did that.’

‘Liaison, it’s called.’

‘Even so.’

‘Well, there probably isn’t much call for it round here.’

David shakes his head and speaks with what seems to me to be unwarranted bitterness. ‘Christ, I don’t know how you can say that with everything that’s been going on.’

You’ve got what you want. You can leave now
, I think as I rise, but what I say is, ‘Better go and clear out my locker.’ The old man in the corner is quiet now, staring toward the window. His lips are moving methodically but they make no sound.

*

Back home, I toss my handbag and a plastic bag of clothing on to the bottom of the stairs and run up to change and shower. David offered to drive me back but I had to wait to be seen before I could be discharged and in the end he had to leave, so I got a minicab home.

I have been alone a lot recently but this is the first time I have not had to think of and prepare myself for Rees’s imminent return. I realise what a weight it has been, having to perform for him. As I pass his bedroom door on the way to my room, still wet and wrapped in a towel, I feel a pang of guilt as I glimpse a collection of trucks lined up neatly on his bedroom floor. Rees likes to have all his trucks ready to be driven at any moment. He drives each one in turn, methodically, pushing it around the room before returning it to its place. I have overheard him talking to them, explaining why they have to take it in turns. Will he be missing me? Will he be confused? Not yet, I think; it’s only been two days, and anyway, he is robust. If I have learned anything since Betty went away, it is how robust Rees is. I will make it up to him, one day, I think vaguely. If I have the opportunity to miss him, maybe I will be capable of doing that sooner. As I dress in fresh clothes, I try to analyse my briskness. Am I really so indifferent to how my son is managing without me? No, it is simply that I know that at the moment David and Chloe can look after him better than I can, and I have plans.

I clatter down the stairs. I toss the plastic bag towards the kitchen and check my handbag for keys, purse, mobile phone. I lift the car key from its hook by the mirror. I slam the door shut behind me as I go.

*

I park in the car park at the back of the High Street and stay in the car for a moment. I can feel my energy, my courage, begin to fade. I need coffee before I go in – I get one to take away from Gregg’s on the High Street and then walk slowly back through the car park and into the atrium of the modern building that houses the council offices, sipping the coffee through the tiny hole in the lid which makes it burning hot and plastic-tasting. The library is on the second floor of the council offices and I take the stainless-steel lift, just as I used to when I had Rees in his buggy. The lift doors open directly opposite the glass doors into the library and I will be able to see immediately who is behind the Enquiries desk.

I know one of the librarians quite well. Naomi has children at Betty’s school and works in the library part-time. Her youngest was in the same year group as Betty but a different class. I have avoided other parents from the school successfully up until now. I can’t go in if Naomi is working today – this way, if I see her, I can press a button quickly and stay in the lift.

The lift doors open. There is a young woman I don’t know behind the desk. I step out of the lift, clutching my Styrofoam cup. The coffee is not allowed inside, of course, so it gives me a good excuse to hover in the hallway while I finish it, glancing through the wide swing doors. No sign of Naomi behind the Loans and Returns desk either. Good. The coast is clear.

There is no bin, so when I have drained my cup I squash it and stuff it into my coat pocket. As I push through the swing doors, a man in an electric wheelchair approaches so I hold the door for him. ‘Do you want me to call the lift?’ I say as he passes through.

‘I can manage,’ he snaps in reply.

I stride past the Enquiries desk. To the right of it is the children’s books section. I have spent many an hour there over the past few years. The section I want is at the back, just past the encyclopaedias.

The library doesn’t keep back copies of the national newspapers but it keeps copies of all three of the local papers – the broadsheet for the whole region, its trashier, tabloid rival, and a free paper for the town which has some news on pages one and three but is mostly advertisements for local shops and restaurants. Only the broadsheet is available online but even if they all were I would still have wanted to come and see the hard copies. It is layout I want, photos, column inches and size of headings. What has happened to Betty has ended my world but the world has not ended; the world is still going to school or work, eating, sleeping, watching television. I want to know what the end of my world means to the rest of the world. I am ready for that now.

The newspapers are filed the old-fashioned way, in wide wooden drawers, in reverse date order, the most recent edition on top. I move swiftly, knowing that if I stop to think about it I will lose the ability to do it. I pull open the drawer for the broadsheet. The most recently filed paper is last week’s – this week’s will be lying on a table somewhere. The headline is about plans to build a new secondary school on the edge of town. I lift the papers one by one, turning back the clock. Working this way, the first glimpse I see of my girl – and it makes the breath catch in my throat – is a small headline in the bottom right-hand corner of the front page:
Council probes road safety.
I know it is a follow-up story about Betty and Willow because in the first sentence I catch sight of the phrase
double tragedy.

I work backwards and as I do, the girls spread and populate the front pages. They gain importance. I carry on past
Second
Victim Dies
. Willow is resurrected. I pass over,
Hit and Run:
Man Arrested
– I will come back to that one later – until I reach the day when the news broke. There is my daughter. It is a large school photo, not the most recent one. They must have got it from David. My eyes swim and my vision blurs.

It takes me a moment or two, then I lift the papers, one by one again. I extract the relevant half dozen and lay them on top of the drawer unit. Then I turn to the drawers for the other papers.

When I have selected the ones I need, I peer carefully around the unit. There are chairs grouped around a set of tables in the open area in the centre of the library but that is far too public an arena. I could go and ask for a key to one of the three carrels by the windows but that would be drawing attention to myself. In the end, I sit down on the floor, out of sight, behind the units.

I read methodically, and I discover that a nine-year-old girl was killed instantly on Fulton Avenue on 18 February at 4.35 p.m. She had left school late after her Capoeira club and was on her way to a tap dance lesson at the Methodist Church Hall on Holly Road, where her mother was waiting for her. It was the first occasion she had been allowed to walk round on her own. Her friend, who was crossing the road with her at the time, was injured and is being cared for in hospital but is expected to make a full recovery. The driver of the vehicle stopped after the accident but then drove off. He later attended the local police station where he was arrested. Police are appealing for any witnesses to the incident.

It is only after Willow’s death that the local papers gave free reign to an angle they must have considered from day one. The driver was a recent immigrant to the town, aged fifty-four. He lived in the caravan park on the clifftop that sprang up five years ago to house the migrants who work mostly on the industrial estate beyond Eastley: there is a pet-food processing plant there that takes local fish waste, a sofa factory, a packaging centre, enough businesses to replace the industrial agriculture that used to make our town viable. I can’t remember whether the businesses came first or the migrant workers. There has been some bad publicity about enmity between different groups of workers, the Koreans versus the Eastern Europeans, I seem to remember. One report refers to a statement from the Upton Centre.