Where the Moon Isn't (18 page)

What does that even mean?

I’m not playing dumb. I honestly don’t have a clue what that means. Is it what I’m doing? Am I engaging in writing behaviour? I draw pictures too. Is that drawing behaviour? Between you and me, I might take a shit in a bit. Is that engaging in shitting behaviour?

All I know is what The Pig says. We say it together, like a mantra, like a special handshake. We open a fresh can, and as it froths over our fingers, The Pig snorts, ‘You might not beat the wankers, Lad.’

Then we tap our cans together and shout as loud as we can, at the night, at passing traffic. ‘But you can’t stop fighting!’

I know it’s stupid, but it kind of helps.

Anyway, I have to go.

Denise has just appeared at the end of the corridor, ‘Whenever you’re ready, Matt.’

I’d usually keep her waiting. Keep on fighting. But she looks stressed out, and to be honest, I can’t help but feel a bit sorry for her. I’m serious, you could cut it with a knife here today. You could cut it with the crappy blunt scissors they give us in Art Group. Something definitely isn’t right.

open wide

We watched EastEnders on the big green couch.

Mum and Dad and me sitting together, which is how it always was because Simon preferred to sit cross-legged on the carpet – with his face right up close to the television.

This was the episode when Bianca left Walford, but it was a long time ago. I only remember because Simon had a crush on her. It felt poignant, I guess. Or just sad. Impossibly sad. This was our new family portrait – the three of us, staring at the space where Simon should have been.

I already told you this.

I said how EastEnders was a ritual, that we videoed it if we weren’t going to be in. I didn’t mention it again though, because the episode when Bianca left was the end of the ritual. It was the last time we watched EastEnders as a family, and it was the last episode I watched, full stop. Until nearly a decade later. I had finished my tobacco. I had taken my last PRN. There was nothing to do, but sit in the patients’ TV lounge, in one of the stained and sunken armchairs, trying to ignore the nausea, headache, hunger, stiffness, and exhaustion caused by two white tablets, twice a day.

The TV lounge was busier than usual. Extra chairs had been brought through from the dining room, and a couple of nurses hovered at the door. This was an episode everyone wanted to watch.

He was in the theme tune, somewhere. He was in the map of London, as the camera twists and lifts away.

Sometimes the whole world can feel like the small print you find at the bottom of adverts, so everyday stuff like a smile or handshake becomes loaded with conflicting messages. This wasn’t a smile or handshake, but an episode of EastEnders. It was the episode where after nearly ten years’ absence, Bianca finally returned. She had red hair and freckles.

I could have told myself it was a coincidence, these things happen. People are forever telling me to look for evidence, to think about what is likely and what is unlikely. I could have made my hands into fists, pushed knuckles hard against my temples, and searched my thoughts for a rational explanation.

It would have been hopeless though, because even now, I can’t quite believe he wasn’t trying to tell me something.

That night I couldn’t settle.

I must have walked the corridor a hundred times, my bare feet getting cold on the floor. Each time I’d see the nursing assistant with his bunch of keys and his tattered red clipboard. Sometimes he’d be sitting in the bright white light at the front desk, other times he’d be lurking in the shadows, peering through the viewing slats into patient bedrooms. Occasionally he’d raise an eyebrow in my direction, and scan his list for my name.

The staff took turns on observation duty – checking the whole ward every fifteen minutes to make sure nobody had done a runner, or worse. I know this because I observed. They observed me. And I observed them.

When your big brother is calling, when it’s finally time to go and play, if you need to escape from a psychiatric ward – the first thing to do is observe.

The next morning I stood sweating into my dressing gown, whilst the nurse selected my tablets from the trolley, popping them through foil and dropping them into a little plastic pot.

‘Here you go, Matt.’

‘Will you tell me what they’re for?’

‘Why don’t you tell me?’

‘I can’t remember.’

‘I think you can, if you try.’

I was getting to know this nurse quite well. Her name was Claire, or maybe Anna.

‘Have a go,’ she said. ‘They’re your tablets, not mine.’

‘Did you watch EastEnders?’

‘Sudden change of subject—’

‘Did you?’

‘When?’

‘Yesterday. Did you?’

‘I don’t follow it. Was it good?’

‘I’m not sure.’

She handed me the pot of tablets, and filled a second pot with water from a jug.

On psychiatric wards the nurses don’t look like nurses. They don’t wear uniforms like we did at the care home, and they don’t run around carrying straitjackets like you see in films. Claire-or-maybe-Anna wore a pair of jeans and a cardigan. She had a lip-ring, and streaks of purple in her hair. She can’t have been more than a few years older than me.

‘It’s important you talk,’ she said at last. ‘If you don’t open up, say how you’re feeling, how can anyone know how to help?’

That’s the kind of thing they were always saying. Mostly I wouldn’t respond, but this time I did. ‘My tooth hurts,’ I said. ‘Where I chipped it. Mum keeps going on at me. She says she wants my smile back. If you’re not too busy—’

‘You want to go to the dentist?’

‘Only if you’re not too busy.’

It wasn’t like me to ask for anything, and she was clearly pleased that I had. These are the moments they call progress; something to write up in their notes. I know this because I observed. They observed me. And I observed them.

‘Of course we can go. Absolutely we can. Are you registered with a dentist?’

I shook my head and turned away – not wanting to lie out loud, not wanting her to see my thoughts.

‘Not to worry,’ she said. ‘There’s the Emergency Clinic by the train station. We can sometimes get a slot there. Do you know what, Matt? The policeman who brought you here felt so bad you hurt yourself on his watch, he wanted to take you to the dentist himself.’

‘Why didn’t he then?’

I sort of asked that in an angry way. I didn’t mean to, but that’s the way it came out. I’m no good at long conversations. I could feel myself sweating, feel it soaking into the back of my dressing gown.

Perhaps Claire-or-maybe-Anna was sweating too. ‘Well, they’re not— It doesn’t— It doesn’t work that way because of you being on a section. And you were so confused, it was important you came here first. But he was seeking assurances we’d go as soon as we could. And, well, look, why don’t you get dressed, and I’ll see what I can arrange as soon as I’ve finished up here?’

I stood at the sink, watching myself in the mirror.

I hooked a finger behind my tongue and scooped out the chalky mush of tablets, making myself gag. Then I swilled the evidence down the plughole.

It was turning into a bright morning. The curtains in my room were really thin and didn’t properly reach down to the window ledge. I kept an ashtray on the ledge. We weren’t supposed to smoke in our rooms, but I’d started to anyway, and they weren’t being too strict about it. I’d borrowed the ashtray from another patient, in exchange for a few cartons of Kia-Ora. It was one of those heavy cut-glass ones that you used to see in pubs, and the way the morning sunlight hit it, chunks of rainbow were cast across my bedding.

I took off my dressing gown and lay naked on my bed, letting the rainbows fall across my skin. My restless night was catching up with me. I was drifting into the colours, thinking how beautiful they were, when I heard a sort of growling noise.

‘Hello, who’s there?’ The noise growled again. It was coming from under my bed. ‘Who is that? Stop it. Answer me.’

Then it broke into a giggle, and I knew exactly who it was. I didn’t get out of bed, I just leant over the side and slowly lifted the overhanging sheets. The giggle turned to a squeal of delight.

‘I knew it was you.’

His face was painted orange with black stripes, and the tip of his nose was a smudge of black with lines drawn for whiskers.

‘I’m a tiger,’ he grinned. ‘Do I look like a tiger?’

‘The best one ever,’ I smiled.

He growled again. Then he wriggled out on his belly across the floor, ‘I look like a tiger, but I’m slithering like a snake.’

He always struggled with the letter S, a lot of his time in Speech Therapy was spent on that. He’d got slithering like a snake pretty good though, and I knew he’d want to hear it.

‘Very good,’ I said. ‘You’re getting really good, Simon.’

He beamed with pride, then pounced, throwing his arms around me. I let myself fall under his weight. It felt so good to hold him, I could hardly breathe.

His face scrunched up, ‘What were you doing at the sink, Matthew?’

‘Were you spying on me?’

He nodded, making his nods deliberately too big, bending from the waist, laughing, ‘I saw you! I saw you!’

‘Then you know what I was doing.’

He was over at the sink now, peering down the plughole. He could move anywhere in a blink, he could hurtle through time. ‘Why did you spit out your medicine? Won’t you get sick?’

‘You want us to play together, don’t you?’

He looked at me, his expression the most serious I had ever seen. ‘Forever,’ he said. ‘I want you to play with me forever.’

It frightened me a bit, how serious he looked. I felt a shiver of cold and pulled the blanket around myself.

‘I’m eight,’ he said out of nowhere. He counted out eight fingers in the air. Then with deep concentration, his tongue sticking out, he lowered two of them. ‘So you’re six!’

‘No. I’m not six any more.’

He stayed staring at his fingers, confused. I felt guilty for getting older, for leaving him behind; it was hard to think of what to say. Then I had an idea. I reached into my bedside drawer for my wallet, and carefully took out a photograph that I keep.

‘See,’ I said. ‘Do you remember?’

He climbed beside me on the bed, his feet not quite able to reach the floor. He kicked his legs excitedly, ‘At the zoo! At the zoo!’

‘That’s right. See. I’m a tiger too.’

We went to Bristol Zoo for my sixth birthday party and had our faces painted. Nanny Noo took the photograph of us, our cheeks pressed together, we’re both roaring at the camera. She carried it in her purse for years, but when I once mentioned it was my favourite she insisted that I took it. There was no arguing with her, she absolutely insisted.

I had something else in my wallet too, but I didn’t want to show him it. I didn’t want to build his hopes up in case things didn’t work out. It was a folded sheet of paper, tucked away behind my cash card. The ward receptionist had printed it off the Internet for me a few days before. She was a nice lady, forever chewing gum, proudly chatting to the cleaners about her daughter; the latest piano grade she was going for, how she was a talented tap dancer too.

I’d waited for a lull in their conversation, which didn’t come. She didn’t even pause for breath before turning to me and asking, ‘Can I help you with anything, lovely?’

‘I need an address,’ I said. ‘Can you look something up for me on the computer?’

‘Uh-huh.’

‘Um— It’s a holiday park. A caravan park. I can’t remember where it is exactly. I think it’s in—’

‘What’s it called, lovely?’

‘Sorry. Yeah. It’s called Ocean Cove. Well, it used to be. I suppose it might have—’

Her long red fingernails were already tapping at the keys, quick as a machine gun. ‘Ocean Cove Holiday Park in Portland, Dorset. Is that the one?’

Dad drove the Ford Mondeo Estate, with Mum feeding him crisps and bites of apple.

Simon was asleep, with a Transformer hugging his knees. I played on my Game Boy until the batteries died. Then we played a game of who would be first to See the Sea. My parents let me win. Mum blew a kiss into the rear-view mirror.

Dad pressed the button to open the sunroof. He said how good salt air made him feel.

As we rolled over a speed bump at the entrance gate, Simon was shaken awake. His eyes widened, he clapped his hands, unable, as always, to find the right words.

‘Is that the one, lovely?’

‘Yes. That’s it. That’s where—’

She clicked her mouse and Google spat the address out, with a small grainy map.

If she’d asked what I wanted with it, perhaps I would have told her the truth. This is where I abandoned my brother, and it’s where he needs me the most.

Maybe that would have shaken her from her trance; she’d tilt her head sympathetically and say, ‘I’ll tell you what, lovely. Why don’t you wait here a minute and I’ll go and see if any of the nurses are free to have a chat with you?’

But she didn’t do that,