Her Living Image (7 page)

Dear Mum,

Please don’t be upset. As you know I’m feeling a bit mixed up at the moment. I need some time on my own to think things over. So I am going to stay with a friend for a bit.
It’s Clare, the girl from the next bed. She’s said I can stay in their spare room. She shares a nice house with two other girls so don’t worry. I hope you and Dad don’t
mind. I think I’ll be better at deciding what to do, on my own. So don’t worry about me, and I’ll come and see you soon. Thank you for visiting me every day and for
everything.

Meg was given the letter by Martinet when she arrived at two o’clock to take Carolyn home. She had taken the afternoon off work. But Clare had been and collected Carolyn
that morning.

Clare had led Carolyn along endless humming corridors, whose walls were punctuated by closed doors. Fluorescent lights shone down on dull red rubbery floors, making a pinkish
reflection on the walls, and at intervals the passages were interrupted by semitransparent plastic flapping doors, like valves in a vein. At last they emerged into a wide entrance hall, where a
porter was loading a trolley, and two receptionists sat like bottled specimens in glass cages by the wall. On the opposite side, daylight shone through glass doors. Clare, who was carrying
Carolyn’s suitcase, leaned against a door to hold it open for her. Carolyn rushed out, almost falling down a flight of stone steps.

The sharpness of the cold made her cough and brought tears to her eyes. It took a long time to focus and get rid of the swimming water. The light. It was so bright and sharp. It was spiky as
spilt pins. And the cold air – like getting a different substance into your lungs, water or another element. She could feel it, thick and cold in her chest, like something she’d
swallowed; as if before she hadn’t been breathing air at all. The atmosphere was still and very quiet. Sounds from specific distances moved across the silence, footsteps in the gravel,
voices, traffic. But the clog of sound she had never noticed in hospital was removed, as if a plug of cotton wool had been taken out; that constant humming buzz of the working building like a
machine or a living body around her. Now she was outside.

Clare was staring at her. She propelled her to a low wall and sat her down beside her suitcase.

“I’m going to get a taxi. You don’t look fit to walk. Wait here. OK? Just sit here till I come back.”

Crunch crunch Clare walked quickly over the gravel. Carolyn stirred it with her foot. She could feel the separate movements of hundreds of small pointed stones through the sole of her shoe. Now
the patch she had stirred was darker grey. The gravel was damp underneath. Beneath her bottom the brick wall was hard and penetratingly cold, with a sharp edge that cut into her thighs. On the
other side of the path stood a sapling. It was bare, its straight grey branches raised like arms to the cloudy heavens. It was as simple as a naked body. Above the tree, about a quarter of the way
up the sky, the sun was an opaque light behind layers of grey cloud, eye-wateringly white.

She stood up carefully, feeling the cold air move across her exposed face and hands, and turned around. Behind her, beyond a patch of raw dug earth, was a car park full of brilliantly coloured
cars, red yellow and blue. Their shapes seemed as dear and familiar as friends’ faces, she wanted to pat their cold metal bonnets.

Then Clare took her by the elbow and led her along the path which suddenly went through a gate and stopped. There was a lot of noise. The road. Clare helped her into a black car that stood by
the kerb with its door open.

Meg returned to the hospital early next morning. It had been Arthur’s brainwave in the night; they must know Clare’s second name, and address. Meg went up to the
familiar ward hoping against hope to find Carolyn back in her bed again. She walked past the nurses’ cubicle unchecked. There didn’t seem to be anyone around. It wasn’t visiting
time. She walked in and around the corner, and her heart leapt to see someone in Carolyn’s bed. But it wasn’t her, she realized, as she stepped nearer and faltered. It was a little
grey-haired old lady, propped up on cushions and staring intently at something Meg couldn’t see. Meg hesitated and turned round, searching for a nurse. She spotted one just going into the
cubicle.

“It isn’t visiting time, you know,” she told Meg as Meg knocked on the open door.

“No, I’m sorry, I just wanted to see a nurse. I’m Mrs Tanner, Carolyn’s mother.”

“Oh yes Mrs Tanner. How is she? Getting along all right now?”

“I – I don’t know. I need – she went – another girl took her home. Called Clare. She was in the bed next to her. Can you tell me, what’s her address? I
don’t know where she’s taken Carolyn.”

The nurse made a funny sucking noise with her lips and stared at Meg. “Um, I don’t think I can, really. I mean, a patient’s address is confidential.”

“But –” Meg was speechless.

The nurse continued to stare disapprovingly.

“But my daughter’s gone. I don’t know where she is. She could have been kidnapped for all I know. She didn’t even tell me herself – just left a note –
anything could’ve happened to her.”

“I’m sorry Mrs Tanner. I don’t know what to do. We’re not supposed to give patients’ addresses. It’s confidential – I mean, you wouldn’t like it
if we gave out your address would you?”

“But it’s my daughter – !”

“Yes, I know. Look, let me ask Sister. Can you wait here? No, sorry, you’d better wait outside.” She took Meg out into the ward, and to Meg’s humiliation locked the
little cubicle before disappearing.

The bossy sister confirmed that it wasn’t possible to give an address. Meg realized she’d been a complete fool. She could have said it differently. If she’d said Carolyn had
borrowed a book from Clare and wanted to return it, they’d have given her the address. It was only because they saw how much she wanted it that they weren’t telling her. It had been the
hope which had kept her going through the dawn and early morning. Falling heavily into the one chair in the cubicle she began to cry hopelessly.

The sister watched her for a while, then sent the nurse on an errand.

“Mrs Tanner – Mrs Tanner, please –” Sister crouched beside her. “We really can’t give you her address. But I’ll tell you what I could do, if you
like.”

Meg paused in her sobbing.

“If you wanted to write a letter to your daughter and give it to me, I could address it to Miss – to Clare for you. How would that be?”

Meg nodded. She couldn’t stop crying now to save her life. It had been like this last night. She thought she’d cried herself out. It was the sense of dread, the awful dropping away
with fear of her stomach, that was worst. It had happened, something terrible. After all her vigilance, all her care, still, it had happened. “I was always meant to lose her,” she had
sobbed to Arthur, who tried to comfort her with cups of tea and brief, common-sense reassurances. The chink in the sister’s armour now made her cry the more.

Half an hour later the sister had her organized at a table in the day room, with writing paper and pen and a cup of sugary tea. Meg sat over her letter for nearly an hour, crossing out line
after line, and neatly copying her final version like a schoolchild. The sister wasn’t in her office when she went back, so she left it in the middle of the desk: “Miss Carolyn Tanner,
care of Clare”. I won’t hear from her until the day after tomorrow, she told herself. Even if she is all right. She doubted her own ability to survive that long.

The house was an awful place, Carolyn thought. It was huge and bare and dirty, and smelt of damp plaster and old food. They all stood around staring at her and smiling
awkwardly, as if she was embarrassing. She asked Clare if she could go to her room. It was at the top of the house, and very big. At first she thought it was like a watch-tower, because the roof
sloped down to the tops of the two windows, making them the most important things. If she looked down she could see the wilderness that was this house’s garden. There was a high brick wall
around it. It backed on to a big grey building like an overgrown garden shed, with no windows. A factory, she supposed. To the right was a road which she couldn’t see because of the height of
the wall, but she could see the tops of buses and lorries, travelling along it. Over the road were roofs – endless rows of them. Above them, like low cloud, she could see far away, an outline
of hills. She could see for miles.

In the room each bit of furniture seemed to be too far away from the others, as if they had been dropped there as markers, but the space was eroding them. The bed, tucked in under the corner
where the roof sloped down, looked small and safe. But there was a huge old-fashioned wardrobe marooned against the back wall, and an old armchair with square arms and greyish padding showing
through the brown cloth, in the exact middle of the floor. That was all, except for a little box by the bed covered with a beautiful silky blue and green scarf with long black fringes. Carolyn sat
on the bed, which she noticed was low and very soft, and fingered the silk. The room made her think of the children’s game where the floor is the sea and full of sharks, and you are only safe
on the furniture. In her Mum and Dad’s house you were so safe there wasn’t much point in playing – there were so many bits of furniture crammed into the room. Here the game would
be terrifying. The carpet itself, old and threadbare with strange geometric patterns on it (like the flying carpet in one of her childhood story books) floated like an uneven raft on the knobbly
floorboards, which it was too small to cover. The rough boards and window-frames were painted dark blue, and the long walls were clean and white and empty.

It took away her breath, a little. But the windows were the main thing. She sat in the armchair and looked out of the window. She didn’t know what. But it was all right sitting here. She
wanted to sit here, and stare at this view, which was much better than hospital. She was pleased not to have to do anything. She didn’t have anything to do. At home – her mother would
–

She concentrated on the clouds, which moved quickly and smoothly as a train across the top of the hills. She wanted to sit here all day. She didn’t want Clare or those others to come in.
She wanted to be left alone.

As it got dark in the evening she became scared. There was something by the shady side of the wardrobe that made a noise. As darkness intensified it seemed to grow. It leaned forward to try to
reach her. She had to stay on the chair, to be safe. If she sat very very still, it would forget she was there, and recede. But if she got pins and needles and had to move, it woke with a jump and
crept forwards again. There were other things in the room too. Something under the bed moved softly, rustling like a woman walking past in long skirts – or a soft breeze in high trees. It
wasn’t unfriendly. But it was better not to anger it by sleeping on the bed. And a more frantic presence was trapped behind the skirting board. Suddenly in the silence of the small hours its
patience would break and she listened rigidly to its scrabbling attempts to break out. It had claws like an eagle – talons; she could hear them shredding and splintering the wood. The only
defence was to sit very still, to be invisible; to fade right into the shadow between the arms of the big square armchair.

As the dawn came she was weak with exhaustion and relief, watching and willing the first barely perceptible lightening of the sky.

But then a different kind of terror came in daytime, starting on the second day. It was worse. She could not glare at it or protect herself by clutching at the chair’s arms. She could not
hold in a corner of her mind the rational knowledge that this was purely childish. It was a terror that started in herself, instead of attacking from outside. It was as if, somehow, she became a
telescope. At first she was closed, then gradually she was pulled open, extended to a great length, leaving an awful hollow giddy sensation in her stomach. Once extended her own eye was pressed to
the lens of the telescope that was herself (was it her own eye’s lens she was looking through the wrong way?) and she saw herself at the other end. But not only did she see herself, small,
sitting there; she also saw through herself (because the telescope, with its hollow inside, was her) and she saw that she was hollow. She was terrified by her own existence.

In a way she saw quite objectively, a person sitting on a chair, afraid of shadows – someone who was probably mental. “Get on, get up! Stop moping! Get on with something!”
cried the Meg in her. But it was equally obvious, to the impartial eye at the lens, that there was nothing else to do. What shall I do? Here I am, replied the person she could see in the chair.
There she was. What was she to do?

She was scared. When it happened, when she was pulled out like this, she felt sick, giddy and unbalanced. She might even fall into the telescope lens and go crashing down upon herself. What
would happen then? She tried to think of things to do. She didn’t know what. She didn’t want to meet any of those people. Wait till they’re out. Go and make a cup of tea. Look in
the paper for a job. Wash some knickers. But it didn’t seem as if doing any of these things would help.

Clare thought Caro didn’t look fit to come out of hospital. She was pale and unsteady, and moved maddeningly slowly. Clare got her back to the house, and introduced her
to Bryony, Sue, and the kids. They made her a cup of coffee.

“Sit down, make yourself at home.” But Caro stood by the table and didn’t move. She seemed terrified.

“How do you feel? It’s good to get out, isn’t it?”

“Yes –” Carolyn’s frozen face became animated. “It all looks so brilliant – so – like everything’s deadened, in there. Muffled. It’s
really – I really –”

“Yup,” said Clare. “Brave new world. It’s funny how quickly you forget what it’s like out here.”