Shine, p.14
Shine, page 14
So when Father asked Yaya to go home and wait there, in case Kat decided to return, I heard every word of their whispered conversation in the hall.
‘If she’s acting strange, just humour her, Yaya,’ Father whispered. ‘You know what humour means?’
‘Of course I know how to humour. I humour you all the time, don’t I?’ Yaya snapped. ‘But is she dangerous?’
‘Only if you don’t humour her,’ Father snapped back. There was a pause, and when he resumed talking I could hear the effort he was making to sound calm. ‘But if she turns up, don’t waste any time. Make an excuse, go to the kitchen and phone me, yes?’
Yaya made a huffing noise and left.
But Kat never did return. It was as if she’d waved a magic wand and made herself disappear into thin air.
When the police arrived, their energy had been cinematic. In an instant they were everywhere, prowling about. Yaya hurriedly wrapped a scarf round my neck and stood close, like a super vigilant guard dog.
But the police ignored me as they jogged up and down our road and examined the trees and bushes.
They found nothing. No sign of Kat in the village. No sign of her on the beach.
They could barely contain their glee when they forced open Kat’s suitcase and discovered it was full of gifts for Father, carefully wrapped in glistening paper with beautifully penned dedications. Men’s cologne, an expensive leather belt, shirts, a jumper made of Merino wool, a shiny wristwatch. There was no passport, no wallet, no credit cards, no plane ticket. No personal items like clothes and toiletries. No clue of what she was planning to do.
Then the emergency people arrived, brisk, efficient. They made little comment about the Calm.
As they were bundling me into the back of the ambulance, I heard Father explaining to the chief investigating officer that Kat was his dead wife’s sister.
‘Oh,’ the officer said, looking instantly sour and disappointed. ‘A domestic disturbance. Ah well. We get a lot of those.’
Later, at the hospital, Father told me that was the precise moment when the police lost interest in investigating the case. All their energy suddenly dissipated and barely minutes after my ambulance departed with Yaya riding shotgun, the police simply packed up, turned off all the blinking lights on their vehicles and drove away.
After Yaya left for home, Father came back into the room looking exhausted. He sat on the chair next to my bed, his head thrown back.
‘Sorry about this, darling,’ he said. ‘They just want to be sure you’re all right, I suppose. I’m certain they’ll send you home tomorrow. You look perfectly fine to me.’
It’s OK, I signed.
‘Good girl.’ He sighed and closed his eyes. He looked wan, lying back like that. There were deep lines etched into the corners of his mouth that I swear weren’t there before. A deep snore escaped from his lips and he startled awake.
‘Oops.’ He rubbed his jaw. ‘I am so tired. I haven’t slept.’
Come, I signed. Lie here. In my bed.
I jumped off the bed and tugged at Father’s arm. He allowed me to guide him to the bed and settled back with a groan. I sat down in the visitor’s chair.
‘Thanks, sweetheart,’ Father said softly, his eyes already heavy lidded. ‘I . . . I’m sorry . . .’
I held up a hand to stop him. We were all sorry enough as it was, I didn’t want any more apologizing for who did what when.
Father yawned. ‘When I got to the hospital this afternoon, I stopped by to see your friend. You really ought to visit him.’
Friend? What friend?
Father smiled. ‘Your friend . . . Danny.’
Danny! I’d totally forgotten about Danny. How many centuries ago was it that we’d revealed our real names to each other? How many millennia had passed since we decided to meet?
‘He knows you’re here. I told him you might drop by,’ Father smiled. ‘Go on. Danny’s probably just as bored as you are. He’s just around the corner. Room 214.’
There was a mirror in the hallway outside Room 214. I stared at myself. The nurses had not insisted that I wear a hospital gown. But still, I wasn’t exactly in my best jeans and my T-shirt was old and faded.
Stop that, I told myself sternly. You’re Stroppy-weather and don’t you forget it.
The door was ajar. Cautiously I peeked in.
There on the bed was Danny sipping a glass of water.
It looked huge in his hands. The bed looked massive too. The pillows loomed like cliffs above his head. A plaster the size of a large white cream puff perched on his brow. His face was a peanut with huge jug ears and a forest of standing-up black hair. The nurses had taken away all his safety-pin piercings, his ripped jeans, his shoes. Above his head a bottle of colourless liquid drip-dripped down a thin hose cabled to his wrist.
When did Danny turn into this scrawny little thing in a hospital gown made for an elephant? When we were still bantering on the computer, I had imagined him taller, wider, with more meat on him.
I took one step into the room, then stopped, wondering if it was too late to turn round, run away.
He put the glass down on the side table. There was a twinkle in his eye. His hands began to sign, the tube pulling at the drip so hard I winced. But the hose was taped firmly enough to his wrist.
Wow! He winked at me. This is like a BLIND DATE!
Annoyance flared hot and pointy in my chest. The cheek!
You should be so LUCKY! I scowled, my hands throwing the words at him like darts.
He burst out laughing, his thin shoulders shaking under the voluminous hospital nightie.
What was so funny? I clenched my fists, a red fog descending on my head. Making contact with Danny on the Internet had been a mistake. Wanting to meet him had been a mistake. Visiting him here in the hospital was a gigantic, humongous mistake. What an idiot you’ve been, Rosa. Look at that moron. He’s shown you up for a gullible, stupid fool!
I grabbed the glass of water on his night table and poured it over his head and down his chest. His braying stopped abruptly and he gazed with stupefied eyes at the spreading map of dampness on the sheet and gown.
I grinned. Funny enough for you? I signed.
He burst out laughing again, and this time I joined him – I couldn’t help it; his laughter was so infectious, lighter than air. I’d never laughed like that before. Our laughter filled the room like a balloon, pushing out all our cares and worries and all the bad things that had gone by. We were buoyant, floaty things and we drifted up and up and up.
I thought we would never stop laughing, but we had to when a nurse marched in and lectured us about manners in the hospital and oh no, what happened to the sheets, and you young people should really know better.
And then she made Danny get out of bed while she changed the sheets. We stood side by side, watching – him next to the drip in a nightdress that revealed skinny, hairy legs, the tattooed snake peeking out at the collar, and me alongside with a hand over my mouth to stop the giggles. Two unrepentant naughty children.
No, it wasn’t at all like a blind date.
More like a reunion of dear friends.
Danny refused to see anything weird about him stalking Father and me stalking him and us stalking each other.
I like your dad, he signed, shrugging. I wanted to know more about him.
Creepy! I signed back.
Crafty! he replied. I like your dad. Honest! And from the way those twinkly eyes suddenly looked so earnest, I knew he meant it.
When he found out that I was Doc’s own daughter, Danny said, it felt like a fringe benefit. In fact, he used the word bonus, spelling it out with his fingers with such a smirk I almost emptied another glass of water over his head.
He confessed that he had been planning for our first meeting long before I revealed my true location. It involved a picnic on the beach, a sunset, a box of chocolates, a shared flask of sweet milky tea, his camera on a tripod to capture the momentous occasion. I was blushing so hard I thought my cheeks would explode from the heat. I waited for him to snicker sarcastically, turn it all into a joke. But his eyes were big and sincere as a puppy’s.
I’d spoiled all his plotting by insisting that we meet on the self-same evening. He sounded just like me. Excited and terrified and worried about his terrible Frankenstein secret. And what if I didn’t like him, what if I screamed and stuck a pitchfork into him, what if he was too ugly, what if I was too good to be friends with him?
So he decided to stop at a bar at the edge of the village. Fortify himself with a little alcohol.
You drink? I signed, distaste in the curl of my lip.
That’s the problem, he signed sheepishly. I DON’T drink.
He was ready with Plan A and Plan B in case the bartender refused to serve him because he was underage. But the barman didn’t even give Danny a second glance. He just pulled the beer and took the money. Danny immediately retired to the darkest, most out of the way corner of the bar, the better to stay invisible.
And how was your beer? I signed.
He made a sour face. The beer tasted so foul he couldn’t bear to take a second sip.
By that time it was pouring hard outside and the bar began to steam as it filled up with burly working men and tall teenagers dressed in sports sweats.
‘Hey, the rain’s stopped,’ someone yelled. ‘Here comes the sun!’
Everyone gave a loud cheer, even though Danny could see through the bar’s clouded windows that it wasn’t true, and anyway it was way past sundown. But the thought of the weather turning launched a ripple of banter up and down the crowd. They started joking about Mirasol’s miserable weather. And then they were joking about ghosts. And then they were joking about all sorts of stupid supernatural creatures. Yaya would have felt totally at home.
And then someone shouted, ‘Look out, there are monsters about!’ A bunch of boys pretended they had the Calm, pointing at their necks and groaning and staggering about and grunting with bulging eyes like the zombies from that Michael Jackson video. It got everyone else going, and suddenly the entire bar had turned into a scrum of sweating bodies, all pushing and shouting and raucous laughter.
It was friendly enough . . . but there was a dangerous, scary edge to it and Danny realized that he ought to get out before things went beyond good-natured.
But he was too late.
When he got up to push his way through the mêlée the play-fighting had already escalated into a hard shoving. Danny found himself sucked into the middle of a blind scuffle, men grunting and laughing as they grappled. He was caught in a vortex of hands pushing and pulling and grabbing and dragging.
And then his scarf was on the floor.
He dived to pick it up. Too late.
There were horrified shouts and bodies recoiled. The laughter in the room faltered as the men stepped away, forming a wide circle around Danny, their fists clenched.
Danny could smell their fear in that crowded room, sharp and pungent.
They set upon him.
‘Monster!’ the scrum panted in one voice. ‘Monster!’ Someone’s knuckle connected painfully with his eye. He tried to curl up into a ball, arms over his head, to give them less to kick, but even the most wildly aimed blows made painful contact. Two rugby types picked him up and swung him hard against the wall.
In the end he managed to lock himself in the bathroom. But when he climbed out the window they were waiting for him.
When he opened his eyes again, he was lying under a night sky, the rain spattering around him. He was lying in something thick and oozing. There was a putrid stench, like dead things mixed with lavatory unmentionables. He could feel tiny feet scampering about near his head. Giant cockroaches? Rats? He was so addled that it took him a while to figure out that he was lying in a large, open sewer. Then he remembered the brawl in the bar. And then he remembered that he was meant to meet me on the beach.
He dragged himself out of the muck and staggered his way to the promenade.
And when I was not there, he stumbled to our house.
Maybe those knocks he’d received on his skull had turned him stupid, or maybe he was confused by the darkness, or maybe he never had any good sense to start with – but the only thing on Danny’s mind was that he had to turn up.
He didn’t want me to think he was the sort of friend who would let me down.
34
THE HOSPITAL ONLY kept me for twenty-four hours and when they sent me home, I found that Father had launched an enquiry of his own. He drove all the way to Mirasol International to ask questions, double-checking the short report that the police had grudgingly given him. What time had Kat’s flight arrived? What time did she call a cab? Could she have boarded a plane returning to London?
He got up in the wee hours to make calls to England, trying to find out more about Kat’s life. Where did she live? Where did she work? Who were her friends?
‘Doc, you are a medic, not a detective,’ Yaya chided him. ‘And you are definitely not getting rich making all those overseas calls!’
But Father just shrugged, saying, ‘I need to know.’
Which was good. Because I needed to know too.
The broken, obsessed creature who had made Father and Mother’s lives hell all those years ago was not the same person he discovered in his investigations.
After she deliberately took herself away from her sister, Kat had become a specialist nurse at a neurology hospital – and she was good at what she did. Her colleagues described her as efficient, sensible, unflappable. She had even won an innovation award for her excellent work.
She was well liked, had a large circle of friends and acquaintances that she saw regularly. She loved the cinema, one of her friends told Father. She even attended a film club. It formed a large part of her social life.
No, not a sad, crazy loner.
But then, over the past year, her friends noticed a change. She became quiet, suddenly secretive. She began missing film club meetings, stopped attending socials. At work, she became unreliable. Missed appointments. Turned up late for work.
And then she resigned from her job altogether – ‘for personal reasons’ her letter said.
It had taken her years to build the walls that kept the delusions at bay. But that piece about Father in the Medical Journal had undone her in an instant. Her delusions were back with a vengeance. Systematically she had telephoned every hospital in Mirasol until she found Father’s clinic. After that, it hadn’t been very hard to extract Father’s home address from a hospital clerk too awed by the overseas phone call from London to resist.
And when she got the address, she didn’t hesitate. She resigned from her job. Cancelled the lease to her flat in North London. Closed everything down. Put all her belongings into storage. Bought the plane ticket. Flew to Mirasol.
‘So . . . where has she gone?’ Yaya asked after Father told us the story, her voice brash in the hushed room.
‘Well . . . the police think she’s probably done what she did before, which was get herself as far away from us as possible, for her sake as well as ours. But she hasn’t gone back. Nobody’s heard from her. Her things are still in storage apparently.’
‘It’s good you do this investigation,’ Yaya declared. ‘Just in case she goes crazy again, comes back and does something terrible to you.’
Father folded his arms across his chest. Our eyes met. Yaya was right, it was entirely possible. But that wasn’t why Father had gone through all the effort of finding out what Kat’s life had been like.
‘Oh, Doc. You are sad,’ Yaya tutted. ‘Rosa, look, he’s sad.’
‘I’m not sad,’ Father said.
Yaya rolled her eyes. ‘Yes, you are. You’re sad about that crazy woman.’
‘I . . . I . . .!’ Father sputtered, glaring at Yaya. ‘You wouldn’t know how I feel. I’m not sad. Why should I be?’
But looking at him, what else but sadness could have cut those deep lines into his face and turned down the corners of his mouth?
I feel it too, Father. Somehow, we both lost something.
35
YOU STUMBLE ON the broken promenade. Your breath is coming in gasps and I can hear the thump thump of your heart. You’ve been running.
It’s a beautiful day. The sky is high and not too wet, the sea is broad, the sand white and untrodden, and the mountain gazes greenly over everything like a contented matriarch at the end of a long family table.
Thump thump. Your heart is beating strong and fast. It reminds me of that time when we lay side by side on our shared bed, dreaming about the future.
You were talking up a storm, Kat! Building this massive, detailed fantasy of us living in adjoining houses, sharing one big garden where our children would mingle and play and sometimes forget which mother belonged to whom. We would share a great big dining room, you said, and our families would always, always, sit together for every evening meal.
And then you stopped talking suddenly, covered your face. I was alarmed, but then you looked up, your eyes wet. ‘I’m so excited,’ you said. ‘My heart is so full I’m afraid it might burst.’
And I put my hand over your heart and you put yours over mine and we listened to the drumming of each other’s hearts.
You stand on the promenade, your eyes staring into the distance and it is only when I look more closely that I realize. Your sleeve is torn, your face bruised, and tears shine on your cheeks. Oh, Kat.
And then you smile.
Such a beautiful smile. It transforms your face. All the cares vanish instantly and a sparkle appears in your eyes. You whisper something and it’s such a soft whisper I have to lean closer to hear.
You had a baby, you whisper. A little girl. Rosa.
And I can see now how full of gladness you are. You’re happy for me. Happy that I had the life I’d wanted. Husband. Child. Home.
We’d spun that dream together, hadn’t we? We were girls, hands entwined, imagining things in the moonlight.
Beautiful girl, you whisper to yourself. And in your eyes I see my Rosa, fresh-faced, open – the spitting image of us, Kat! Our girl, with all her tomorrows ahead of her.
