Crossing the Line (22 page)

‘Comfier here.' She patted the mattress, then my hand, lifting it to examine the hospital bracelet. Bored of that,
she reached for my notes. ‘Says here you have a month to live. D'you want Robbie Williams as they're carrying you out, or is that a bit of a cliché?'

‘Ha fecking ha,' I said.

‘Sorry.' She gave me a smile, her eyes brown and sparky behind her blunt fringe. You wouldn't think they could turn so scary and black.

‘Allie,' I said. ‘Why did you stop?'

‘I didn't stop.' She laughed, light and gurgling. ‘Mickey stopped.'

There was a note of satisfaction in her voice that made me shiver. I remembered her saying that about Aidan.
He stopped.
And now Mickey had, too.

I pressed her. ‘You stopped after you crossed the tracks. That was stupid, Allie.'

‘Well, Aidan told me to. I hated leaving you but he –'

‘Allie …' I said. There was a chill at the base of my spine.

‘He knew it would be OK.'

‘How? How did he?' My voice rasped, growing higher-pitched. ‘What if he'd told you to stop on the tracks?'

‘He wouldn't do that,' she said kindly. ‘And he knew what to do and he knew it would be fine. Because Mickey said it himself.'

I stared at her.

‘Mickey said so, remember?' she told me. ‘He never forgot a face.'

‘Don't,' I shouted. The man in the opposite bed shook
out his paper and glared at me. ‘Don't,' I whispered. My voice shook. ‘Don't say that. Don't say any more.'

It was too much delusion, or it was Allie at her most manipulative. I wouldn't ask her again; I didn't want to hear any more of this. But how had she made Mickey stop? Just by doing what he least expected? Just with the dead glare of her frightening eyes? Yes. Yes. Because there wasn't any other reason he would stop. There just wasn't.

Even if he never forgot a face.

She looked at me, and nodded kindly. She didn't say it.

‘Kev's recovering. Did you hear? He came out of the coma.'

‘Yeah,' I said. ‘I'm glad.'

‘Believe it or not?' She smiled. ‘Me too.'

I fiddled with my hospital bracelet, which was making my wrist itch. ‘Dad came earlier,' I told her. ‘
Again.
'

‘I know. You're the next thing to Mahatma Gandhi, you know. You're JFK meets Nelson Mandela. You're the Prodigal Saint, I haven't got a look-in. He's back home slaughtering the fatted lentils.'

I grinned. ‘God help me. See that horrible smell? That's the food. Can you sneak me in a cheeseburger?'

‘I'll bring you anything you want,' she said seriously.

‘Orla Mahon,' I said.

She looked at me sadly. Allie knew fine Orla hadn't been to see me. Not once.

I loved her, all the way. I remembered thinking that when I thought I was going to die. I loved her all the way
in to my bone marrow and beyond, and I'd only not-slept with her once, and I'd wanted to do it for ever. Leaking life into the weeds by the tracks it had seemed like the biggest regret of my foreclosed life. I didn't want co-star billing any more. I didn't want to be Kev-shaped or, God help me, Mickey-shaped. I didn't want to be a boy who carried a knife. I wanted to be a boy who pissed off his girlfriend by talking through a film.

Six weeks I'd been watching the grumpy old bugger in the opposite bed read his paper. Six weeks I'd been stuck here waiting for her, bored out of my skull, lovesick to my wounded innards. I wanted to see Orla more than I wanted my own mother, but she hadn't been near the place. She hadn't been near me. I guess that was that, then.

Thinking about Orla actually made me wince with pain, and Allie bit her lip anxiously. She glanced at my belly. ‘Does it still hurt?'

‘Terrible,' I said. I was planning to milk this for as long as I could. ‘No Robbie Williams, get that?'

She laughed and stroked my hand. ‘Oh, Nick, don't worry. You're going to live to be such an old fart.'

‘Oh, yeah?'

‘Yeah. Believe me, I know. I just know.'

For some bizarre reason I did believe her. ‘So, Mystic Mentalcase. Am I going to get any more shagging with Orla?'

If I didn't have a laugh, you see, I was going to cry, but
Allie shook her head reproachfully. ‘What d'you take me for? Psychic or something?'

‘Yeah,' I said.

‘Well.' She tapped her nose as she slid off the bed and stood up. ‘There's limits. I'm not a frigging hypnotist.'

‘I'm bored,' I whinged, desperate to keep her with me.

‘You're getting out soon. And I'll come again tomorrow. It's Saturday.' She hesitated. ‘Nick?'

‘Uh-huh.'

‘He's gone now, Nick.'

‘Oh. Has he?'

‘He's not coming back,' she said. ‘This time he really isn't.'

I wanted to believe her. I so did.

‘Hey, Lola Nan.' I kissed her withered cheek.

She gazed at me blankly. I expected her hand to tap thin air, but it didn't. She sat very still, looking so terribly lost a bolt of guilt went through my stomach. That hurt, I can tell you. I gritted my teeth, and made the grimace into a sort of smile. She wouldn't know the difference.

At least she had her own room. There were sepia pictures of Granda in an army uniform, and an old primary school picture of me and Allie, Allie solemn and dark, me scowling, my arms round my sister. Not the best picture we ever had taken but probably the age she best remembered us at. Mum thinks of things like that.

The place smelt of cabbage and pee and Dettol. It reminded me of the hospital, and I found it unsettling, but Lola Nan didn't look unhappy. The floor was lino, streaky-patterned like blue bacon, and the bed was all
white sheets and metal bars, except for the pink fluffy hot-water bottle we'd bought her last Christmas. There was a red alarm cord. Several, actually: one by the bed, one by the basin, one near the shiny PVC armchair. I wondered if she'd ever have her head together enough to pull any of them. I peered out of the window. Below me was a patch of grass and a flowerbed that had been emptied for the winter, bare and loamy. Between the gables of the roof you could see quite a lot of sky.

I sat down beside her, laid my hand on her chair arm. Smiling sideways at me, she rested her hand on mine, then began to pat it, rhythmically. I stared down at her hand bouncing off mine, not knowing why it made me so uneasy. Then I smiled back.

Her brow creased. ‘You're Nick,' she said, her eyes brightening.

‘Yes.' I felt absurdly flattered and happy. ‘I'm Nick.' And even if she never recognised me again, that was fine. Somewhere in that pinball-head was Lola Nan, and she knew me.

‘You said you'd visit me,' she said.

‘I'm sorry, Lola Nan. I've been, um … I haven't been well.'

‘Oh.' She rocked a little in her armchair, patted my hand. Pat, pat. ‘Oh dear.'

We sat in silence for a while. It was fine.

She said, ‘What happened to that boy?'

‘Who, Lola Nan?'

‘The Boy.'

‘Me, Lola Nan. That's me. I'm here.'

‘No, no, no.' She clicked her tongue. ‘The
Boy.
That boy who always talked to me. Fair hair. Tall. Lovely manners, so he had.'

There were spiders running up and down my vertebrae. I was watching her hand, the one that was patting mine. You know what? If my hand was invisible, it would look like she was patting a cushion of air. I curled my fingers round hers to hold them still.

‘He always talked to me,' she said, nodding. ‘Lovely boy. Where's he gone?'

I found my voice. ‘I don't know, Lola Nan.'

‘Is he coming back?' She tugged her fingers out of mine, began patting my hand again. Pat, pat. ‘I wish he'd come back.' Pat, pat.

I hoped not. I pulled my hand away quite violently. ‘I have to go, Lola Nan.'

Her fingers hovered, then she clenched her knobbly fist and looked at me sadly. ‘He won't come back, will he?'

‘No,' I said after a small hesitation. ‘But I will. I'll come back and visit. I promise.'

Her eyes sparked and she smiled at me.

I closed the door of her room as softly as I could and then I got out of there, fast as I could. I wasn't much use at running yet but I tried. At least she was on the ground floor.

The big front door was too far away and I was in pain
again. The sick-yellow carpet advanced and receded before my eyes; I needed to breathe air that wasn't sodden with chemicals and cabbage and body fluids. Now. I fumbled at the fire door.

When I clanked the security bar down and shoved out into the street, sucking in great breaths of fresh air, the weather had turned. Autumn wasn't autumn any more, I thought as I stared at the lacework of stripped trees against an ice-blue sky. I'd only been in Lola Nan's overheated cell for half an hour, but winter had set in while my back was turned.

Oh fine. Yeah. It was
winter.

And that would account for the frost in my spine.

It felt strange, being out in such a crowd, and I wasn't sure I liked the press of bodies, but I wasn't scared or anything. I just wasn't used to normal life. I hadn't gone far from the house in the weeks since I'd got home from hospital. I'd forgotten that people gathered in jostling hordes, laughing and swearing, sparklers fizzing and sputtering in their hands, fundraising buckets rattling hopefully. Just visible beyond the black mass of bodies was the glow of a massive hellish bonfire, throwing whirls of sparks skywards. Above us was a Hallowe'en sky, ominous clouds floodlit by a now-you-see-it-now-you-don't moon, while beneath my feet the park grass was turning to beaten mud. From the burger van drifted an overpowering fried-onion smell, nauseating and enticing all at once.

Looking round for Allie, I saw that Shuggie was with her. They were too far away to hear, but Shuggie was
keeping up a stream of consciousness in her ear. Allie seemed to be ignoring him, then she rolled her eyes, shook her head, hid her grin. After a bit she laughed, then dug him in the ribs. I never knew anybody could look as smug as Shuggie did then.

The raging bonfire, the eerie glowsticks, the moonlit sky: all were abruptly eclipsed by an explosion of light. Another rocket went up, and another, filling the sky with red and green fire, and the jostling and cursing melted into oohs and aahs and applause.

My eyes stung with the awe and wonder of it. Fireworks. So ordinary, so prosaic, so once-a-year predictable. So beautiful. How did somebody think of fireworks? I bet it was somebody who nearly died.

A hand on my arm. ‘Hello.'

I stopped looking at the fireworks. ‘Hello, Orla.'

‘I'm really sorry,' she said, as if she wanted to get it out quickly.

‘What for?' I said. I was going to be cool about this. Definitely. Very cool.

Besides, I couldn't get out more than one syllable at a time.

‘I never came to see you.' Withdrawing her hand she folded her arms, looked over my shoulder.

‘Why did you never come?' So much for being cool. I sounded like a whipped puppy that could speak English, just.

She stayed silent for ages, staring past my shoulder. It
gave me the excuse to watch her face and feel the love that went down to my bone marrow. It was a cruel sort of love: it liked squeezing my scar, too. Ouch. Oh, so what. I'd get over it. If I watched that hard beautiful face long enough I'd get sick of it. For sure. Even the nose ring.

Not yet, though.

Orla opened her mouth once, twice. At last she got it out.

‘It was kind of like Aidan. Kind of the same. And I thought you were going to die. That's why and I know it's not an excuse and I'm sorry. Right?'

‘Right,' I echoed.

‘Anyway, I think I'm bad for you. I make you feel bad 'cause of Aidan.'

‘No, you don't.' Oops, uncool. ‘Whatever.'

She tugged angrily at her platinum flick of hair. ‘I mean, when you feel guilty you do such fecking stupid things, you. So it was kind of my fault.'

‘Not,' I said.

The rockets had stopped exploding in the sky, the moon had sailed back into view, and now white curls of light whooshed close to the ground, squealing and whooping. Bored with the lesser spectacle, a toddler on its father's shoulders started whingeing, and the man jiggled it up and down so hard I thought it was going to fall off him. I pretended to be fascinated, because I'd changed my mind: anything was better than looking at Orla.

‘See if you'd died –' she said suddenly, and clamped her
lips together.

I never got to find out, because the boring fireworks faded out and the rockets started up again, bigger and better than before. The child shut up and goggled at them.

‘Allie says my brother's gone,' said Orla, folding her arms and bouncing up and down on her toes as if she was trying to keep warm. It wasn't the least bit cold.

‘So she says.'

‘Maybe it was because he saved Allie,' she said, ‘so he had to look after her.'

‘Or maybe the other way round,' I said. How fanciful. I blushed. ‘Sort of.'

Another silence, punctuated by explosions of light in the air, applause, the giggling shriek of a girl. I wanted Orla to go away, and I desperately wanted her to stay.

‘Did it never occur to you to wait for the police?' she barked at last.

‘They wouldn't have come. Not fast enough. Even Shuggie knew that.' I chewed hard on my lip. ‘Even when Shuggie got them, they didn't know where to start looking.'

‘Neither did you, you eejit.'

‘I did when I thought about it.' Shrugging, I said mechanically: ‘Anyhow, you've got to look after yourself.'

‘So why don't you let people do it?'

I blinked. ‘What?'

‘You. You're always looking after people.' She sounded kind of angry about it. ‘Allie, Kev, Shuggie. You can't
trust yourself to turn your back on them, can you? Can't trust
them
.'