Just What Kind of Mother Are You? (22 page)

Joanne squeezes her tea bag against the side of the mug with a spoon. When it doesn’t look strong enough, she drops Jackie’s used bag in there as well. ‘Yeah, yesterday,’ she shouts back. ‘That’s why I was late home. Pressure’s really on – we need to find something quick.’

‘You missed seeing Nanna.’

Wednesday evening, they both visit Nanna at the nursing home. Well, she’s
Joanne’
s nanna, she’s Jackie’s mother. Jackie’s always called her Nanna, though. Probably since her own son was small and it was less confusing for him to know her just by one name.

‘How was she?’ Joanne asks as she comes into the lounge, spilling her tea slightly as her foot catches on a rumple in the carpet.

‘The usual, coming on like she didn’t recognize me.’

Nanna pulls this trick if they visit when there’s a particular programme on she wants to watch.

They’ve learned to ignore it.

‘Does she need anything?’ Joanne asks. ‘She all right for talc and stuff?’

‘She could do with some new slippers if you want to get her a pair when you’re next near Marks’s; size three. And you owe me twelve quid for the hairdresser. She had a perm last week.’

Joanne and Jackie split the cost of sundries. Joanne’s mother is supposed to contribute as well but, since she’s been living in Lanzarote for the past four years, it’s not worth the hassle trying to get her to pay her share. Thank God the state covers the nursing-home fees is all Joanne can say. At four hundred quid a week there’s no way she and Jackie could manage it, and the alternative would be to have Nanna living with them … not really doable.

Jackie stops chewing and looks at Joanne straight. ‘You having that breast reduction, then?’

Joanne looks to the ceiling and sighs. ‘Does nothing get past you?’

‘Sylvia saw you in the doctor’s on Tuesday, and since you were keeping it to yourself, I thought that’s what you must be going for.’

‘He’s referring me to a consultant. I’ve got an appointment after Christmas.’

‘You’re a bloody fool.’

‘In your opinion.’

‘Not my opinion. Fact.’

Joanne says nothing. She knows Jackie’s thoughts on the subject well enough. She really doesn’t want to go through it again right now.

Joanne’s phone vibrates in her dressing-gown pocket. She pulls it out and checks the screen.

It’s Ron Quigley.

‘Joanne,’ he says, wheezy-sounding and short of breath, like he’s running up the station steps. ‘Get yourself to Troutbeck soon as you can, love. That Riverty woman’s only gone an’ tried to top herself.’

28

T
HEY SAY TIME IS RELATIVE
.

Slow time is waiting for the birth of your baby when you’re twelve weeks pregnant; watching the hands move around the clock face on Christmas Eve when you’re seven years old; it’s waiting for the paramedics to come when your friend has tried to kill herself and the roads are slick with ice.

The longest minutes of my life.

The waiting was torture, because there was nothing I could do for Kate. Her body was stinking and lifeless, her breath barely there, her pulse shallow and erratic, and there was absolutely nothing I could do about it but stroke her head, helpless.

I hadn’t realized when I’d first found her but as I tried to turn her into the recovery position I noticed her pyjama bottoms were filled with diarrhoea, and it spilled out all over the marble floor tiles. So I cleaned things up as best I could. Then I turned the radio off and I waited.

The first person to get here is a lone paramedic in a Land Rover emergency-response vehicle. I know the guy in passing; I’m used to seeing him around Windermere, picking up a sandwich, or at the HSBC. He has a kind face with a nose pushed to the side where he’s taken a punch. Probably rugby. He’s the right kind of build for it. He tells me there’s an ambulance on its way but he’ll get started with Kate because—’ He pauses, says the next part apologetically: ‘It’ll be a struggle for them to get up here.’

‘How long d’you think?’ I ask, my voice shaking, and he shrugs, his expression again rueful. Hopefully not too long, he tells me.

He gestures towards the pill bottles on the kitchen table. ‘That all she’s taken?’ And asks me to check upstairs, in the bathrooms, in the medicine cabinets, to see if I can find anything else she might have swallowed. They really need to know, he says.

The pill bottles on the table contained antidepressants. Amitriptyline and phenelzine. I’m familiar with the names, because my mother used to take them. I’d pick up the prescriptions for her if she needed me to. What’s shocking to me is that Kate is on antidepressants and has been for long enough to stockpile them and then to go and do this. The date on two of the bottles is August; the other is October.

It seems that every time I think a person has got things sorted, every time I think a person has got everything under control and is holding their life together in far better ways than I could ever hope to manage, they turn out to be taking antidepressants. It seems I am very naïve about these things.

I am standing in Kate’s beautiful kitchen, looking at her lifeless body, thinking, ‘Why the hell was Kate taking them? Why, when she had
everything
.’

Of course I can see why she’s overdosed, with the chance that Lucinda’s now dead. I can understand that. But why were they necessary in the first place?

I am starting to comprehend that what I think I know about a person and what is in fact true are poles apart. And yes, I know lots of women take them. But why was Kate?

‘What will they do with her?’ I ask the paramedic before going to check for any more empty pill bottles around the house.

‘If this is all she’s taken, they’ll give her charcoal, through a nasogastric tube. That’s usually it … if we’ve got to her in time,
that is. Depends on the complications. Is there anyone you need to call?’

‘I need to let her husband know, but I haven’t got his mobile number.’ I wring my hands helplessly. ‘He should be here … I don’t know why he’s not … they—’ I start to tell him about Lucinda and all that’s happened to this poor family, but then I stop. I need to check upstairs first before the ambulance arrives, and I’ve just had the bright idea of calling Kate’s mobile to find where it is in the house. Guy’s number will be on that.

And that’s when time speeds up.

I’m in Kate’s en suite, calling her mobile from mine, but there’s no ringing sound coming from anywhere in the house. I’m scouting around, going as fast as I can, because I know the ambulance will be here soon and I need to hurry.

I open the bathroom cabinet and get an instant uncomfortable insight into their lives. As well as the antidepressants, Kate is also stockpiling Canesten Duo for thrush, glycerine suppositories – something I had to give Sam once when he was really backed up – and three bottles of Regaine hair restorer.

Guiltily, I poke between the bottles to see if there’s anything else hidden, all the while perplexed by the Regaine, because Guy’s hair is not thinning in the least. He’s got that thick, floppy, luxurious hair and can often be seen tossing it back from his face in one movement. Like Michael Heseltine used to do back in his prime.

It’s a strange thing to see these people’s lives displayed in this way, a hidden insight into the real workings of the family, but I suppose that’s what happens after a catastrophic event such as a child going missing. Or an overdose. The layers of respectability and properness are removed and, in an attempt to get to the truth, the family is stripped bare. Left exposed for all to see.

I pick up a bottle from the bottom shelf, something for nits
that I’ve used on the kids in the past, something that doesn’t work one bit and—

All at once I shiver; my body goes numb.

Fergus
.

Kate’s son, Fergus. Where is he?

How could I have forgotten about him? Christ, what if he’s here and wakes up and wanders downstairs, only to see his mother in the state she’s in?

On finding Kate, I’d clean forgotten about Fergus being in the house.
Please let him be with his Aunt Alexa
, I’m praying as I move along the hallway towards his room. Please let him be with his daddy. Please—

I flick off the light in the hallway so as not to send a sharp shaft in there and startle him, and I open the door to his bedroom as quietly as I can. My hand is shaking. I pause for just a moment and sigh out, trying to steel myself.

Then I push the door slowly.

He’s there, asleep on his bed. His duvet has managed to rearrange itself horizontally across the single mattress so that his feet are poking out the end. It’s so warm in here, though, that he’s unaware. I loiter in the doorway, unsure what to do. I could go in and wake him, try to keep him here and protect him from the scene downstairs. Or I could close the door again and hope he remains asleep until they’ve taken her away.

I don’t know what to do.

Fergus moans gently and turns on to his side, facing away from me.

I need to make a decision.

Short of a better plan, I take the key out of the lock from the inside of the door and lock it from the outside. This is not ideal, I know. If Fergus wakes in the next ten minutes, he’ll panic when he can’t open the door, and I hate the thought of this quiet, thoughtful child panicking.

Suddenly I’m filled with rage at Kate for putting me in this situation. Couldn’t she have killed herself when Fergus was at school?

Then I stop, telling myself that she wouldn’t have been thinking at all. To get to the stage of suicide, I imagine she wasn’t really in a place for rational thought.

But still …

Kate, what the fuck were you
thinking
?

Blue lights are now bouncing off the wall opposite and I walk over to the window. Kate has this area dressed with a window seat, like a lovely reading corner. There’s an overstuffed, striped chair angled tastefully in the corner and a bookcase to the side. Someone – must be Fergus – is reading
Swallows and Amazons
by Arthur Ransome; it’s been left open and placed downwards to keep the page. I tried to get James to read that one, but he gave up two pages in and went back to his collection of Wimpy Kids. I’d consoled myself at the time with the notion that boys don’t really like classic books, but it seems as though I was wrong.

I watch from above as a paramedic makes her way along the front path. I need to hurry.

I’m at the top of the stairs as she comes through the front door. She looks up. She has a lovely face and, fleetingly, I think about how many people must have looked into that face when they were scared, or perhaps dying, and gained some comfort.

‘She’s in there,’ I tell her, gesturing towards the kitchen.

‘Nice house,’ she remarks absently, and I agree. ‘It is, isn’t it?’ I say.

There’s something about the presence of paramedics that makes a frantic situation almost normal. They go about their business in such a controlled manner that, for a time, you forget you’re dealing with life and death.

I follow her into the kitchen and stand back so as not to get
in the way. The man on the floor with Kate greets the pretty paramedic, saying, ‘Roads a bit tricky, eh, Megan?’

‘Just a bit. How’s she doin’?’

He brings her up to speed as another paramedic comes in carrying a stretcher. ‘Not safe for a trolley,’ he remarks to no one in particular.

‘I’m her friend,’ I tell him, and he nods grimly.

‘Have you checked the house for anything else she could’ve taken?’ he asks, and I tell him yes, I’ve found nothing. I’m about to tell him I can’t be entirely sure, though, because there wasn’t time to do a thorough check, when we hear urgent banging coming from upstairs.

I close my eyes.

When I open them they are all looking to me for direction. ‘It’s her son,’ I whisper sadly. ‘Any chance you can get her out of here quick?’

By the time I get to the top of the stairs, Fergus’s desperate hammering has turned into more of a bored, methodical tap.

I hate the idea of Kate travelling to hospital on her own, without someone she knows, but that’s the way it has to be. I don’t know Alexa’s number off the top of my head, and since I don’t know how to get hold of Guy—

I unlock Fergus’s door and plaster a smile across my face, a smile my own children would be instantly suspicious of, but it will have to do.

I decide to go for the half-truth option. I haven’t got it in me to concoct some sort of elaborate lie to spare this poor child any further trauma, so I simply say: ‘Fergus, I know you weren’t expecting to find me here this morning,’ and I give a nervous kind of laugh, ‘but your mummy has become unwell – in fact, she’s had to go to hospital … She asked me to look after you for a bit. Is that okay? How about we go and get you some
breakfast?’ His eye has flared up again. His left one. It’s bloodshot in the corner and the lid is swollen. I’ll have to apply the drops Kate uses.

At times, I find Fergus odd. Strange. And I’m used to boys. With two of my own, there have been loads of boys round at our house over the years. I’m used to the hyper ones who can’t sit still and wreck your bathroom if you don’t keep an eye on them. I’m used to the ones who won’t eat anything except hot dogs or cream crackers or sour Haribos. I’m used to the ones who don’t speak at all, the ones who if you put them in front of a DVD go into a trance and don’t come out of it again until the credits run. I’m even used to the ones who say ‘fuck’ and ‘shit’ and ‘crap’ and ‘bastard’. For some reason, hearing a seven-year-old use the word ‘bastard’ has always been particularly amusing to me.

But, as I said, Fergus, I find odd. I don’t know what to do with him.

I can’t find a way in. It’s as if the more I try to connect with the child, the more he stares back at me blankly, as if I’m getting it all wrong. So I’ve kind of stopped bothering. Sam and Fergus have only ever been friends probably under duress, I see now, because Kate and I are friends. It’s suited us for the two of them to play together. But now that they’ve reached seven, the differences in the two boys have become more pronounced and – well, I can kind of see why Sam was charging Fergus a higher rate to play with him. Because he’s what you’d call hard work.