Authors: Julie Cohen
Tomorrow he’d go back to Petra’s and finish listing Lee’s stuff on eBay. They’d drink coffee and tell stories. Tonight he
was in another hotel room, just like all the hundreds of hotel rooms he’d stayed in all over the world. And just like he’d done in every one of them, every time for the past two years, he put down his own phone and picked up the room landline. He dialled nine to get an outside line, and then, from memory, he punched in Alana’s number. All except for the last digit.
It was a zero. For the past
two years, that zero had seemed to sum up an awful lot. Maybe that was why he’d never punched it.
Or maybe it was because he was, plain and simple, a coward who couldn’t ring his ex-wife and ask to speak to his daughter. Who couldn’t send a birthday card. Who would always have the connection, but couldn’t connect.
He put down the phone and watched creatures on the screen, shambling after brains.
IN THE DESERT
, time passes differently. I open my eyes and it is hot, so hot, and Quinn is there looking down at me. He’s blurry, but it’s him. He came.
So that’s all right. I’m safe.
I close my eyes again. When I open them, some hot time later, Lauren is there, eating from a bag of grapes. ‘Hey,’ she says. ‘You look like hell.’
She’s not the one who’s supposed to be here.
My mouth is dry. There is a nurse.
‘Can you tell me your name, love?’ she says.
I have to say something important to Lauren. It’s far back in the corner of my head, and my head hurts. Something about trees. No, something that’s made out of trees.
‘Can you squeeze my hand?’
‘Paper,’ I say.
‘You’re doing really well,’ says the nurse. ‘Can you tell me what month it is?’
‘Head hurts.’ I close
my eyes and when I open them again, the nurse and Lauren are still there and the grapes are all gone. There is something else missing. Someone is missing. I try to see beyond Lauren and can’t.
‘Papernews,’ I say. There’s more than that, but that’s the word. That’s the thing. No, it’s backward. ‘Newspaper.’
Lauren smiles at me as if I’ve been gone for months. ‘Hello, Fliss, it’s good to see you.
How are you feeling?’
‘Rotten. Dry. Is my heart still here?’
‘Is she supposed to be able to speak properly?’ Lauren asks the nurse.
‘She’ll be confused until the anaesthetic wears off.’
‘I’m not confused.’
‘Of course not, Fliss. Not any more than Dalí.’
‘Melting clocks. In a desert.’
Lauren says, ‘That’s it. You’re going to be absolutely fine, I can tell.’
My head is stuffed with cotton
and sand and platinum, little springs that pound against my skull. The newspaper is missing, not the newspaper, but, ‘Quinn.’
Lauren takes my hand. ‘Quinn was here to make sure the surgery went well. He rang me and asked me to be here when you woke up properly. We had no idea you were so ill, darling.’
‘Where is he now?’
She exchanges a look with the nurse. ‘Just rest, okay?’
‘I’ve got some
tests first,’ says the nurse cheerfully.
Please tell me your friend’s name, please tell me the month, please follow this light, please open your mouth so we can take your temperature
. It tires me out and I need to sleep again. It is not a blank; I am in the desert. The sun bakes my feathers and penetrates my skin. Far away, across the world, Quinn rings Lauren to be here when I wake up because
he will not be here. Because he is still in the forest. Because I’ve flown away from him for ever.
When I wake up, I’m sobbing.
There’s a cool hand on my forehead, the cool hand of a stranger, a new nurse. ‘You’ve got a little post-operative fever – it should come down soon. We’re giving you antibiotics. It’s nothing to worry about. You’re doing fine. The neuroradiologist says the coiling was
a complete success.’
‘Where …’
She gives me a glass of water with a straw. I drink half of it; it tastes like the tears on my lips. ‘Your friend said she’d be back later. She doesn’t want to tire you out.’
Outside the window, it’s getting dark. ‘It looks like rain,’ I say, and I’m rewarded with an approving nod.
‘That’s good. You’re talking. You’re going to be fine. Yes, my garden will be
glad of it.’
She gives me a tissue, smooths my sheets, checks my lines, dims my light, tells me the doctor will be coming soon to give me a full check. When she leaves me I see what I couldn’t see before: there is a newspaper, carefully folded, on the chair beside the bed.
My heart leaps. The newspaper seems an impossible distance away. Slowly, I move one leg to the edge of the mattress and
over. There is a pain between my legs, a stabbing. It’s where the instrument went in. I remember. My head doesn’t hurt so much, only an echo. My other leg follows, and I use my arms to push up my upper body. The ward swims in front of my eyes, but my mind is clear. It has one object. I focus on the newspaper.
I reach. It’s not far enough. I have to stand, propping myself up against the side of
the bed, the floor cold enough to make me shiver, a plastic line attaching my arm to a bag of fluid. If the newspaper is here, I have a chance. He will wait for me after all. He’s been sitting here while I slept, watching over me.
My fingers brush it, grasp it, gather it to me. The headlines are about Syria and suffering pensioners. It’s a two-day-old
Express
.
He hasn’t come back.
HIS BLOODY BIKE
was missing again. The wall it was supposed to be leaning against was empty and the garden gate was ajar. Quinn ran to the road, hoping to catch a glimpse of Cameron Bishop as he rode it round the corner, but it was empty.
‘Bugger,’ he said. He’d have to walk round there now, and steal his own bloody bike back, and if Cameron wasn’t home yet he’d have to walk all around
the village looking for him. Last time, the boy had been with a group of his friends, all with their hoods up trying to look tough and failing miserably. Still, it was a pain. More than a pain, it was disrespectful and dangerous, and he’d have to speak with Lisa and she’d speak to Cameron and it wouldn’t do any good, and so Cameron’s mother would end up feeling inadequate, and his bike would get stolen
again. And again.
Quinn kicked the wall of Hope Cottage, where his bicycle should have been. Some of the rendering fell off and he kicked it again.
She’d looked dead. Worse than he’d ever seen her, even in the middle of the seizure because at least then she’d been moving. When she’d opened her eyes she didn’t recognize him. It was as if there was no one inside her. But the neuroradiologist said
she was fine, the neurologist said she was fine. They said she was going to be as good as new.
He kicked the wall again, hard. The toe of his shoe was gritty and white, covered with flakes of rendering. There was quite a hole there now. Whoever had rendered this exterior wall hadn’t done it properly, like everything about this cottage. Damp and mouldering, it was going to fall down any minute.
It was a wonder it had lasted five minutes, let alone three hundred years.
‘Bugger!’ he yelled, loud enough so that it echoed.
He’d been angry for days.
He hit the wall with his fist and nothing came off it. It was more sound at chest height than it was below, evidently. He hit it again, and again, and then with his left hand too. All the bloody hopes. Everything he had ever wanted.
‘Darling?’
His mother came round the side of the cottage, holding a canvas shopping bag and a rake. She had her gardening clothes on.
‘Darling, what are you doing? You’ll hurt yourself.’ She put down the bag and hurried over to him. ‘Your poor hand, look.’
‘I’m fine.’
‘You mustn’t hit the wall, that’s just silly. Let me look at it, we can take you inside and get you bandaged up. I’ll make you a nice cup
of tea.’
He jerked his hand back. ‘Stop fussing! I’m a grown man!’
Molly took a step back. ‘I didn’t—’
‘You can’t make it better! So just stop. Stop! Leave me alone.’
Quinn turned and hit the wall again, this time hard enough to split the knuckles on his right hand and leave a smear of blood on the white.
‘Quinn?’ said his mother behind him, in a small voice.
She would be surprised. She
would be shocked and concerned. They didn’t do this: swear and yell and batter at buildings.
‘I’m so angry,’ he said to the wall. ‘And I hate being this angry, and I hate her for making me feel this way. I hate her for being ill and I hate myself for not being able to go to her when she needs someone. I hate that everything matters so much.’
She didn’t say anything, and suddenly he was sick
of it. All the silence, all the smoothing over, all the fear that if you said the truth, that everything would tumble. He’d been sick of it for a long time. He turned around.
‘How did you do it?’ he asked. ‘When Dad had the affair? How did you get through it?’
The colour dropped out of Molly’s face all at once. He reached for her, certain that she was going to faint, but she steadied herself
on the fence. Quinn watched as she put her hand to her mouth, as if to keep the words inside.
God. What was the use of asking? In a minute she’d be talking about tea again.
‘Dad didn’t have an affair,’ she said.
‘Mum. I know about it. I know something happened, at least. I remember all the arguments. I know it was a long time ago, and that we’ve never spoken about it. But I know it happened.’
‘It didn’t.’
He clenched his fists again. ‘Can’t we stop this? This pretending that everything’s all right, all the time? Because I pretended and I pretended with Felicity. I learned it from you. And it doesn’t work. It doesn’t work at all.’
‘I’m not pretending.’
‘But you are, Mum! Every day! But you must still be angry, like I’m angry. Otherwise why would you have screamed at Felicity?’
‘It wasn’t Dad who had the affair,’ she said. ‘It was me.’
He saw his mother nearly every day and he very rarely saw her. But he saw her now: the grey in her hair, the lines on her soft face, the way her shoulders were rounding. How age had layered over the young woman holding the babies in the photographs, the woman who had existed before he did.
‘It was a mistake,’ she said. ‘A horrible, foolish
mistake. It was me thinking I could—but I couldn’t.’
‘Thinking you could do what?’
She shook her head. ‘I don’t even know any more. Have something different, I suppose. The sort of thing you read about in books. But that sort of thing doesn’t last. It doesn’t, Quinn. Not like what I have now.’
‘Who—’
‘It doesn’t matter. What matters is that in the end, I chose your father. I had a home and
a family, and those were more important. And we got through it because your father is such a good man.’
‘But all the arguments?’
‘It was a horrible time. But he forgave me, and we don’t talk about it. It’s forgotten, a long time ago.’
Except it was happening all over again, in his life. Maybe because he’d learned as a child how to smooth everything over, not talk about the difficult things.
If he’d asked Felicity and kept on asking, would she have told him long ago about how guilty she felt about her mother’s death, and would they have been closer because of it? Would she have confided to him that she was having strange feelings about someone else? If he’d asked the right question, at the right time, instead of being afraid of the answer?
‘I have been thinking,’ his mother said,
‘that I shouldn’t have spoken to – she was ill, and I – only I saw how much pain she had caused you, and I remembered that I had – and it hurt me. To know I too had caused so much pain.’
She fluttered her hand over her mouth again, and then drew herself up.
‘Anyway, that’s in the past,’ she said.
‘I’m not certain that it is.’
‘Yes, yes it is. It’s all finished now, and it doesn’t do any good
to talk about it.’ She lowered her chin. ‘If it’s helpful to you to punch the cottage and make yourself bruised and bleeding, Quinn, then go ahead. You’re a grown man with your own decisions to make. I’ve only come because I thought your garden could do with a bit of tidying up.’ She patted his shoulder, and kissed him on the cheek. And he didn’t feel like a grown man. He felt like he wanted to
crawl into her arms and trust her to make it all go away.
She’d done this thing. And yet she was still his mother.
‘I don’t know what to do, Mum.’
‘You will, darling. You’re so much wiser than I ever was.’ She stroked his cheek where she’d kissed it. ‘Wiser and braver. I’m proud of my boy.’
He gazed at her, trying to see her. When he was a child, he’d believed she’d known everything. Could
do anything. Could heal all of his hurts. But this was who she’d been all along, someone flawed and hurting, someone much more like him.
She cupped his chin in her hand and smiled at him.
‘I’ll get started on the deadheading, shall I?’ She picked up her bag and went off, busily into the garden, as if nothing had changed.
THEY SAY THE
surgery was a success. They say I’m cured and that after I’ve recovered I’ll be as good as new. I’ll need to have regular scans, and stay on anti-seizure medications for some time just in case, but otherwise I can go on with my normal life. Lauren has taken me back to Canary Wharf with her. She’s cancelled her meetings in Belgium so she can stay in London, and
has ignored all of my protests that I will be absolutely fine on my own. When she has to go out to work, she arranges for friends to call on me.
I feel nothing. Lauren feeds me high-protein shakes, lean meat, soups stuffed full of vegetables. She even cooks some of it herself. None of it has any flavour. ‘The antibiotics,’ she says. ‘They mess up your system.’ She gives me small plastic bottles
of drinking yoghurt full of good bacteria. I drink them in front of the television, where I’ve made a nest for myself so I can watch
Cash in the Attic
and
Bargain Hunt
. All these programmes about selling old things so as to be able to buy new things. Clutter and baggage. It exhausts me. Drinking yoghurt exhausts me. Changing my socks exhausts me.