DEATHLOOP (45 page)

Veronica had been moved to another more optimistic ward and it took Zack a little while to find it. He knocked at her door, entered, crossed the room and stood at the end of the bed. She looked more beautiful than ever as she slept, so slight beneath the covers, her red hair spread out over the bright white pillow case like glossy seaweed.

Zack’s eyes panned across the flowers, the cards, the small teddy bears, facile confirmation that people cared. He was just about to sink into a chair when she stirred. He waited for her to notice him and to throw him a smile maybe, heralding forgiveness, heralding another new start. But when she saw him, a hint of recognition, then she drew back and let out a wild scream.

“What have you got on your back!”

“What?” he said, turning slightly.

“Your back! What’s on your back!!!”

The door flung open framing a young nurse, glancing from Zack to Veronica, quickly assessing the situation. “Veronica, what’s the matter?”

“Look! Look at his back! Can’t you see them?”

By now the stumpy matron had pushed in, very put out at the noise.

“What on earth is going on?”

“Look at his back! Why has he got wings on his back?”

The matron moved towards Veronica and at the same time indicated for Zack to step outside. He was about to object, but a quick glance at the combined disapproval of the three women and he thought better of it.

“
He’s got wings on his back! Didn’t you see them? You must have seen them!
” was the last thing Zack heard. As he crossed in front of the nurse’s station eyes flicked in his direction, curious as to what he’d done to the poor girl now, and they remained with him, following him all the way to the door.

Along the corridor Zack dived into the gents and stumbled towards the mirrors. Preparing himself, he brought his eyes up to the glass, noting in the harsh fluorescent glare his dingy skin, a yellow tinge in his eyes, a few grey hairs. He turned slightly, stretching his hand up behind him, sweeping it across his back, but there were no wings, not that he could see anyway.

Two hours later, Zack was in Brighton. Not the town itself with its smart Regency terraces and its antique lanes, but deep in the sullen suburbs. Rows of dreary houses faced each other in a narrow street. Children played amongst parked cars as an old ice cream van dawdled, bringing a dog out to bark fiercely at its jolly chimes. He knew he would remember the house, the cheap paving slabs criss-crossed with weeds that led up to the porch, the number 13 daubed in chipped blue paint on grubby pebble dash next to the plastic framed window. Zack knocked. A curtain flickered somewhere, then footsteps sounded louder as they stopped on the other side of the door which was finally tugged open.

Joan Partridge, the middle aged woman who peered out at him was morbidly obese and struggling to breathe. She was wearing a thin kaftan pock marked with splashes of food, her fat feet stuffed into bursting slippers.

Zack said: “Is… Angie here, Joan?”

Joan stared, a repressed sense of fury about to gush out of her. “You come here after all this time, after what you did? What do you want?”

“I want to see her, that’s all, and I want to see my daughter…”

“There
is
no daughter,” she said as if the very idea disgusted her.

Zack heard the words, but there was a delay while he took them in. “Why? What happened?”

“An
abortion
, that’s what happened,” she said in celebration, revelling in the way the words hit Zack like a blow to the face.

“I didn’t know, I didn’t realise…” he said winded, heaving from the stench of the place that had wafted out onto the step and was threatening to gas him.

“Well you wouldn’t would you? You didn’t stay around long enough to find out, fucking off like a fucking thief in the night.”

“I know,” said Zack, “I’m sorry, but… I was young,” he said lamely, “I was just starting out…”

“Not as young as she was! You’re lucky they didn’t lock you up!”

“Is she here?”

“Don’t be stupid.”

“An address maybe, I could write.”

“
An address
?” said Joan, as though the very thought of such a thing was above their station. “Well you could try Kings Cross, ten quid’s her going rate, and the state she’s in she’s lucky to fucking get that. You started her on all that
sex business
…
you did!”
said Joan, spitting contempt, “she was decent before she met you!”

“Yes, she was,” said Zack, after a hesitation, “I know that, she was perfect.”

Surprise flashed across Joan’s bloated face, her eyes popping out of her head in indignation. “
Well not anymore
,” she said, with an unexpected catch in her voice, “not anymore.”

All the way back to London Zack brooded on the grim irony of his conversation with Joan. He had wanted to make this journey for so long, but every time his courage had failed him.

Angie had been in love with him once, but as feckless as a marauding sailor on shore leave he had caused his usual heartbreak, leaving her three months pregnant, scared, and barely sixteen. He had many regrets, but this was the King Lear of regrets, this was the big one. He had often imagined Angie trying to do her best by their child, trying to make a life for themselves somewhere. Angie had probably long since stopped hating him and moved on, but he carried the torch, because he had continued doing the hating for her.

“It was an hallucination of course,” said Clarissa later that night in the kitchen at Baker Street.

“Well obviously…”

“Wings on your back for Heaven’s sake…”

“I know, I know, crazy.”

“Enough already,” said Clarissa finally, “don’t let’s go there.” Clarissa glanced across at Zack as she struggled with Sam’s antique corkscrew, but unusually, he didn’t step in. “What’s wrong?” she said, giving up on the wine and the corkscrew and handing them over.

“Nothing,” he said, a little too quickly, heaving out the cork straight away with a satisfying pop.

“Let’s go and sit down, shall we?”

They took the wine and glasses and left the kitchen. In the living room Clarissa made for the Chesterfield and patted the seat beside her. Zack walked to the window instead, looking out of it as he spoke.

“Something happened, Clarissa, years ago… I went to Brighton remember, not long after Cambridge, I spent the summer there working in a bar. I met a girl, Angie her name was. She told me she was sixteen but she wasn’t, she was almost sixteen, she also told me she was on the pill.”

Clarissa took a deep breath, and sat back, preparing herself for the worst.

“She was, and still is the most beautiful girl I have ever seen, and that includes Veronica. She was just exquisite, and bizarrely, the offspring of the ugliest woman on earth. We fell in love, and she got pregnant, and I left her, because that’s the short of shit I am.” He stopped speaking for a moment, then continued. “I knew it would be a girl somehow, and every day since, I’d look for her, my daughter, making her own way in the world. And sometimes if a kid met my gaze I’d wonder if it was her. Would I know her? Would I recognize her straight away? But I found out today how fruitless all that was because she doesn’t exist, she was aborted, and Angie is eking out a living in Kings Cross at ten quid a throw. So there I was, beating myself up about it for all these years… no doubt the flagellation was appropriate, but unnecessary as it turns out, although there’s Angie of course, and my part in her downfall.”

There was a silence, and when he turned back into the room he could see Clarissa struggling with all this, trying to dig up some encouragement from somewhere. “Maybe I should go there.”

“Go where?” said Clarissa, alarmed.

“Kings Cross of course, and try to find her.”

“No, that’s absurd.”

“Why is it?”

“And say what?”

“Well, I don’t know,” said Zack, turning towards the door.

Clarissa leapt up and physically restrained him. “And what will it achieve? I’ll tell you what it will achieve, more guilt that you will struggle to deal with. Zack you just do not need this right now.”

“You think I’m mad, don’t you, you and Sam think I’ve flipped.”

“Zack please, just think about this for a minute.”

“I’ve got to put things right…”

“How can you? By offering her money… by seeking forgiveness… what? What good will it do? It won’t do
you
any good at all… you’re in pieces,
can you not see that
?”

“Let go of me, Clarissa!”

“No,” she said, tightening her grip.

“Don’t do this… why are you doing this?”

“Because you’re at sea, Zack… you need a lifeboat if anything and this girl is anything but.”

Zack smiled as he finally managed to tug himself free. “Thanks for the warning,” he said, “I’ll bear it in mind.”

Zack had seen the kind of girl Joan was talking about loads of times, angling for punters, itching to score themselves a bit of crack. He felt confident that he would find Angie somehow, and although he hadn’t worked out what to say, he was sure he would think of something.

Would she know who he was? Probably, he hadn’t changed much by all accounts, but the idea of the beautiful young girl he knew trawling the streets for bunk-ups just to get by in life filled him with despair. Was he really responsible for that? Perhaps the effect of him leaving her and the abortion did for poor Angie. Perhaps, like Zack himself she had never quite got over their brief relationship and the emotional fallout that went with it, but then perhaps it would have happened anyway, a consequence of her lousy upbringing and a mother who would never allow her out of the house to go to school even, pretending she was a chronic invalid to prevent it.

Zack circled the station and parked up, then walking back he bought a coffee from a vendor and studied the activity in the street. Not one girl anywhere that he could see. He wandered into the book shop and parked himself at the window. Since Eurotunnel had been operating from St Pancras the area had enjoyed something of a revival, and as tourist attractions go, crack addicted prostitutes didn’t come too high up on the list, so maybe a new broom had swept them off somewhere out of sight.

Ten minutes later Zack left the shop, crossed the street and headed for the amusement arcade, heaving with young boys. They looked across at him as he stepped inside, and one or two made obvious eye contact. No girls though, not one, and feeling very uncomfortable, Zack walked straight out again. He knew of a few hotels that had a reputation in the area, so he headed up to the square.

Pulling out a very old photograph of Angie he asked at each reception desk if anyone had seen her, but everyone shook their heads with barely a glance. Returning to the car, he drove up and down York Way a few times but eventually he came to the conclusion that he was on a fool’s errand and he made his way back to his flat. As soon as he got there he called Clarissa.

“I’m sorry, Clarissa.”

“And did you find her?”

“No.”

“Well thank God for that.”

“Is it stupid to want to go and look do you think?”

“You know it’s stupid Zack, it’s stupid to even ask.”

“Doubly stupid then…”

There was a pause, then they burst out laughing.

“I’m all right Clarissa, I know you and Sam don’t think so, but I’ve turned a corner, I’ve survived.”

“Good, that’s what we like to hear.”

When Zack signed off he wasn’t sure if Clarissa believed him or not, because he was far from all right, he knew it and he suspected that Clarissa knew it too. Veronica’s hallucination had thrown him to such an extent he had driven down to Brighton to clear something up he had been unable to deal with for nearly 18 years. He was aware that Veronica’s outburst had motivated him to do that, but why he couldn’t say. Barbara Quinn had put the idea into his head, encouraging him to try and make amends, but why he had chosen to do it that very day was unclear.

He had called the hospital and was told that they had given Veronica a mild tranquiliser, but they warned against him coming back in for a while. They needn’t have bothered, he didn’t dare go back, after all it was one thing for
him
to have hallucinations, now it looked as though the damn things were contagious.

Three days later, Veronica called, apologizing, and asking to see him. Zack made his way back to the hospital and up to her ward his body tense with apprehension. At the nurse’s station he smiled and turned his back. “Check for wings would you?” he said, making them laugh.

Veronica was out of bed today sitting in a chair, dressed in running gear which, despite everything, Zack found rather amusing considering the circumstances.

“Okay?” he said, pointing behind him.

“Stop it Zack, don’t be an idiot, have you got any idea of the amount of pills I get through in a day.”

Zack perched on the bed, took her hand and kissed it. “Come on then,” he said, “what do you want to know?”

“Well, let’s start with Susan shall we?”

“Right, let’s do that. Everything that has happened with Susan is down to me, it’s my fault. I saw, came, conquered and pissed off in that charming way I have, and Susan decided to get her own back, and in many ways I don’t blame her. It’s true I didn’t trust you enough to share this with you because I thought you would take her side. I don’t trust women you see, any women, therefore I don’t trust you.”

“God,” said Veronica, visibly taken aback, “cut me a bit of slack, here, won’t you…”

“You don’t know the half of it, I told you I’d been a bastard and when you’re properly on the mend I’ll give you all the gory details.”

“Do you have to?” she said, weakly, beginning to wish she hadn’t embarked on any of this.

“Anything else and we’ll be forever milling around in half-truths and it won’t last and I want it to last, I want to stop holding back.”

The following day Zack and Clarissa went to St Johns Wood to pick up Sam.

“I am not a number, I’m a free man!” shouted Sam from the back window as the Mercedes swung out of the parking bay and set off on the short journey to Baker Street.