Alarm Girl (16 page)

Dad was already on the phone to the police when we came inside. My whole body was shivering and I couldn’t stop my teeth from chattering. Nan gave me my hoody but every bit of me couldn’t stop shaking. When Robin heard Dad say to the police he had no idea who the intruder was he looked at me and said Was that Zami’s sister’s husband? I didn’t know. Robin told Dad how we had been to Zami’s sister’s house. Dad said You went on the bus by yourselves? I said No, we were with Zami. Nan said she felt sick. The police will be here any minute, Dad said to Robin, you need to tell them everything you’ve just told me. As for you, young lady, you’ve got some explaining to do. You can either tell me now or when the police get here. I said You’re the one the police will be interested in and he said What do you mean, Indy and he made his voice go all gentle like when we were little. His gentle voice made tears gush out of my eyes and the words came tumbling after. I said How about you? You’re the one with explaining to do. How could you do it? How could you do it? Dad said Do what, Indy? I don’t know what you’re talking about. He wanted to hold my hand and Grandad wanted to
get near me too but I wouldn’t let them, I just stood in the middle of all of them like I was on my own and they were the world. There was a confused look on all the grown-ups’ faces, like on the sacrificed chicken’s and like on poor Tony’s. The thought of Tony made me cry even more and once I started I couldn’t stop. It all came out: how I killed Tony and Dad killed you. The words came out of my mouth as fast as the tears out of my eyes. I said Nan, why didn’t you tell us? How can you keep something like that a secret? You know it, Grandad knows it – why did you make us come to South Africa to live with a murderer? Robin said What are you talking about so I shouted at him Don’t pretend you don’t know but he just looked at me and his face was all twisted up.

Everyone was really quiet when I stopped saying it and they were all looking at me. Dad said Christ, Valerie. Everything was calm then. I felt calm too, even though it was the worst night of my whole life, even worse than the night of my birthday when you weren’t there because you were dead.

Dad put both his hands on my shoulders and looked at me right in the face. I could smell his breath. Then he let go and he said something to Nan and Grandad about the trouble with not telling me and I could tell by their voices that they were talking about you. Grandad said I was too young to understand. His voice was even quieter than normal. Then Dad’s voice got quite loud. He said Look what she thinks instead! He held my
shoulders again, really tight this time and said But not really, eh, Indy? You don’t really think I killed Mummy, he said. I didn’t say anything back because he called you Mummy not Mum and that made me cry.

Nobody talked to me or came near me. There was a space around me, as if I had a disease that was catching. There was a disgusting feeling all around, a bit like at your funeral when I felt car-sick the whole time even though I wasn’t in a car. The disgusting feeling was because of the night and the lemony smell of the mosquito candles and because of the stick man fighting Zami and because of Tonyhog. Sometimes when the feeling in the room isn’t right I just want it to be normal but now I wanted it to stay like it was because it felt right to feel so horrible. Everything was horrible and everyone was feeling horrible so it was good that it stayed that way even though the feeling itself was horrible.

KAREN DROVE TO THE
outskirts of the town. The bus stops were deserted, even though it was only ten o’clock. She drove over the roundabout and into the industrial estate. The woodland flanking the darkened buildings was still and quiet. The supermarket glowed like a citadel, its luminous twenty-four-hour petrol station tinting the night sky yellow.

Inside the shop she trawled the aisles, filling her trolley at a leisurely pace. A packet of biscuits was
balanced on top of the other items in her trolley, and something about the way it teetered on the pile moved Karen. The image on the packet showed the different coloured icing on wafers, and the inadequacy of the representation, coupled with the certain knowledge that the biscuits themselves were no better than the picture, winded her. The paleness of the yellow icing and the indeterminate nature of the pink were too insubstantial to tolerate. The biscuits could only disappoint, and, as she stood in the brightly lit supermarket aisle, this seemed true of everything.

She and Ian had travelled the world. They had climbed Kilimanjaro and swum off the Great Barrier Reef. Yet she had brought them back to this ugly little corner of the planet. She put the biscuits more securely in the trolley and tried to carry on. There were good reasons why she was shopping at a late-night supermarket in the middle of a dull industrial estate in England. It was her daughter’s birthday the next day.

She couldn’t help glancing at the biscuit packet again. The brown icing was bad, too, like the worst cup of coffee possible in icing form and suggestive of all that was weak and bitter in the world. She knew it was foolish to be so affected by a food packaging design but she felt powerless in the face of what it implied about the sheer hopelessness of human enterprise.

She looked up to the ceiling, wanting to burn out her eyes in the glare of the overhead strip-lighting. If it were daytime she would go outside and stare into the
sun. She gripped the supermarket trolley and pushed it forward a few feet, trying to resist the force pressing against her skull from the inside and trying to think about beautiful things. But the woodland walk of only a few weeks ago was forgotten. The delicate winter light forgotten. Her children’s vigour as they thrashed through undergrowth with sticks in the pale afternoon, forgotten. Her husband’s tenderness as he took her hand on the path and later that night as he caressed her, all forgotten.

She made a mental list of beautiful places she had been but could only think that she was too ugly for those places. She was the ugliest entity on the planet – not wicked or cruel, but possibly something worse: a negative, draining what was positive around her. In a bid to remain rational, she dared to recall attempts of hers over the years to locate the origins of this feeling of unworthiness. A doctor she had seen suggested that it might be a purely chemical issue, an imbalance in her brain chemistry. That was Ian’s theory too. He had been immeasurably patient and loving, urging her to accept her condition. ‘Don’t fight yourself,’ he said. ‘You won’t win.’ She was frightened she might have transferred her curse to Robin and Indigo, via the placenta or in a poison secreted along with her breast milk. Even if they had managed not to ingest it, she thought, they would feel its impact, especially as they grew older. Her negative would drain their positive – there was no escape.

She loosened her fingers from the plastic of the trolley and sank to the floor. It was comforting to lay her cheek against the smooth, cool surface. A woman bent to address her.

‘You alright, love?’

‘I’m fine.’

‘Want me to fetch someone?’

Karen got to her feet.

‘Felt a bit faint, did you?’ the woman asked.

‘A bit, yes.’

‘Happens to me all the time,’ said the woman. ‘My blood pressure’s terrible.’

The woman moved off. Karen turned in the other direction. She walked briskly through the supermarket, leaving behind the iced biscuits in their incriminating packet. She walked past the cashiers chatting at their tills and into the black night.

THE POLICE CAME AND
we had to tell them everything that happened. What about Tony, I said, and Dad said Never mind about Tony, Tony’s dead. He made it seem to the police that Zami had done something bad by taking me on safari so late at night even though it was my idea. Robin told them about us going to Zami’s sister’s house. Nan was shaking her head while he was telling them. I told them how some African people think it’s good luck to bury a baby under their new house and maybe the
stick man was Zami’s sister’s husband and he wanted her baby as a sacrifice but the police didn’t think so.

When they left, Dad asked who wanted a drink – hot chocolate or something stronger? Robin said something stronger. Nan started making hot chocolate but she was dropping things so Dad told her to come and sit down. He made everyone sit on the two sofas facing each other. Nan and Grandad were on one; me, Robin and Dad were on the other. Dad’s hands were brown with Tonyhog’s dried blood and his blood was on Grandad’s shirt too. I asked if they were sure Tonyhog was dead and Dad said it was definite and we would have to bury him before the jackals came but he didn’t want to talk about Tony, he wanted to talk about you.

Dad said You know Mum was ill and I said Yes. He said it was more of a sickness really. I don’t know what’s the difference between ill and sick, I said. I heard a noise outside that I thought might be jackals but Dad got angry and told me to forget about the bloody jackals. I couldn’t forget about the jackals, though, and I couldn’t forget about Tonyhog. He said you had a kind of sickness in your brain that meant you didn’t feel normal and made you think you would be better off dead. I said At least she got her wish then but Robin shouted at me She killed herself you idiot.

Robin knew. He used to hear you crying. I never heard you. I never saw you.

I said to Robin Why didn’t you tell me and he said What was I going to say – Mum’s upset, go and make her better? Yes, I said but Robin just shook his head like I was some dumb kid.

Dad said no one could make you better. Your sadness was a feeling that nothing could stop. You had it for a long time. You got some medicine from the doctor but it didn’t help. Nan said Well the tablets helped for a while, Ian, and her mouth went into a straight line after she said it. You’ve changed your tune, Valerie, Dad said – you were against antidepressants in the beginning. I saw how they helped her, Nan said. They didn’t though, Dad said, not really. But she couldn’t stop crying before, Nan said. She couldn’t function! No one said anything and then Dad told us that you took medicine to make you better but the medicine made you feel like someone else instead of making you feel like yourself. When it made you better you stopped taking it but then you felt too much.

Grandad’s face was covered with his hands. His shoulders were shaking. Nan was sitting next to him but she wasn’t looking at him. I wanted to go over to him but it felt like I wasn’t allowed to move from where I was.

Dad told us that he was in a group of people who were accusing the company that made your medicine because when you stopped taking it you felt even worse than you did before and you didn’t want to feel like that again so you killed yourself. Grandad made a weird
sound and Nan said Doug, you’re upsetting the children. I went and sat next to him and he put his head against my shoulder and he accidentally called me Kaz, which was his name for you, I know. Robin came over and Nan had to move along because we were all squashed on one sofa. The other sofa was completely empty.

Dad said you tried to kill yourself when you were a teenager, too, when you were older than Robin but younger than a grown-up woman. Some people have that feeling inside of them all of the time. Luckily you were saved because you took too many pills but not quite enough. Grandad found you and saved you. Dad wasn’t there because you weren’t married and he didn’t know you then.

Grandad was leaning on me really heavily and his crying was making my hoody all wet. It was like he was a different person because we had never seen him cry before. People look and sound like they’re completely different people when they cry. Their crying self is a private one that no one sees and I had never seen Grandad’s, not even at your funeral when I saw Dad and Nan and your friends crying. Me and Robin and Grandad were the only ones who didn’t cry.

Dad crouched on the floor next to me and next to Robin and he said that we were different people from you and him and there was no reason why we should feel the same as you did when you were young. I asked how you did it, did you take enough pills this time? Nan said Yes but Dad said No more secrets Valerie
and he told us you went to some woods and strangled yourself.

Grandad sat up and wiped his face when Dad said that. Him and Nan looked straight ahead, like they were statues. I tried looking at what they were looking at but it wasn’t anything. They were just staring straight ahead. Dad was looking at me and it was as if he was looking for something but I didn’t know what.

It was late at night, Dad said, with not many people about, and it was dark in the woods and you had a rope. You hanged yourself from a tree. A man was walking his dog the next morning and he found you hanging from the tree.

I didn’t look at Robin when Dad was telling us and he didn’t look at me. I asked what the man’s name was but Dad didn’t know who I was talking about. I meant the man who found you. Dad said he didn’t know his name. I asked if he was at your funeral but Dad said no, he wasn’t. He didn’t know you. He was a stranger. It was the night before my birthday when I was nine and you went to the supermarket to get all the things for my party – all the party food and the paper plates – but you had a rope as well. It was in the car in case it broke down. You said to Dad that you were going to the shops and those were the last words anyone ever heard from your mouth.

Dad said there was nothing anybody could do about you dying and it was nobody’s fault. He said he certainly didn’t murder you and he didn’t know where
I got that idea. This was the problem with not speaking about stuff, he said, and Robin said Why didn’t you tell us? We knew already and Dad said I’m very very sorry about that, Robin, I made a mistake.

I didn’t know.

I was thinking If only you hadn’t died on my birthday. I started crying because I was thinking about the policewoman who came and did some drawing with me on that day and I was thinking about my red bike and how I never rode it much and how it was probably too small for me now.

THE PILOT GREETED
his passengers and announced the temperature in Cape Town.