Someone to Watch Over Me (23 page)

She reached out and gave Max's shoulder a squeeze. She could see that his teeth were chattering convulsively.

‘Don't worry. It will be OK,' she said, trying to smile at him. The three of them started walking back towards the house.

Carrie rang Damian to talk about what Simon had said, but found him unresponsive, even cold on the phone. He still refused to countenance the fact that the medium could be communicating in some way with Charlie and was impatient with her for even thinking of it as a possibility.

‘Come on, Carrie, this is me you are talking to. This is the real world, not some parallel universe generated by hysteria and misery,' he said, not even listening to what she was saying.

‘But Damian, he was talking about that story Charlie loves … you know, the one about the dog he used to make me read him twenty times a night.'

‘There's any number of ways he could get hold of that sort of information. You probably told him yourself. I think you should stop this right now, Carrie, before you get any more involved. Promise me you won't have anything more to do with him. I'm really worried by what is happening to you. Getting ill and everything. I've been really tied up with work, but I'll be there at the weekend. We need to talk about things. Real things, I mean, not this rubbish.'

‘Won't you just come and see Simon with me once? It would really help me if you would come too.'

‘No Carrie. I won't. I think you are going to end up hurting yourself with all of this. We need to talk about us and where we are going. That's what I am interested in.'

After Carrie had rung off she felt the same kind of loneliness she had felt when Charlie had first disappeared and she and Damian had faced their loss so differently. Whilst her grief had been messy and all encompassing, his had been no less keenly felt, but he had managed to re-channel it into useful action. She knew Damian would never allow himself to believe in the possibility of Simon having communicated with Charlie. He was a man who liked to know the limits of things and to be clear about where he stood in relation to the rest of the word. Carrie had escaped the isolation of being an only child by inventing a city that existed beneath her bedclothes. It had been an extraordinarily well-realised place that could be conjured up by the simple action of pulling the sheet over her head and although as a woman she had long given up creating imaginary places, she had remained a person who was open to the possibility that what she knew was only a fraction of what there was. It was surely in keeping with the splendour of what she
could
see, to believe that there was much more of it out there, beyond the boundaries of her imagination. Charlie had been so vivid in the world, had filled so much of it for her, that it didn't take too much of a leap for her to believe that he couldn't just have ended like a road tipping off a cliff or a bird silenced mid-song. He must be somewhere, shining, her love made manifest.

Despite her doctor's instructions to stay away from work until she was a hundred per cent better, Carrie decided to go into
Trove
for a while to give herself something else to think about. In any case there was no peace to be had at home. Her mother was reclining on the sofa in an inappropriately tight powder blue polo neck, the only thing moving one languid hand that dipped periodically into a carton of chocolates. Nothing was more guaranteed to make Carrie feel restless than watching her mother at rest. A couple of hours of soothing stocktaking would at least offer some relief. She felt guilty that she was so easily irritated by her mother, particularly since Pam had been very kind to her the night before. Nursing a large brandy that she had poured for herself without asking Carrie if she wanted a drink, she had sat on the armchair by the fire, her legs tucked under her in a supple, girlish fashion.

‘Men are such prosaic creatures,' she had sighed when Carrie had explained that Damian seemed angry with her for seeing Simon Foster. ‘They mostly just want to follow the path of least complexity. You can't expect him to be able to make the leap. He just doesn't have it in him.'

‘What do you think about what Simon is saying about Charlie? Do you believe it?' asked Carrie.

‘Why not? I've always felt close to the shadowy side of life,' Pam said. ‘I think I have a touch of the psychics myself. I have stopped at least twelve watches absolutely dead. Your F.A.T.H.E.R. used to be convinced that I did it on purpose so that I could get myself a new one, but I think it was my magnetism interfering with the mechanism.'

‘I can't believe you still spell out the word father after all these years,' said Carrie.

‘I may be of the opinion that there is only a thin veil between life and death, Carrie, but there is a rock-hard wall between right and wrong.'

Carrie forestalled the inevitable conversation that she knew would follow by offering her mother another drink. She knew every detail of her short and unhappy marriage to Carrie's father and wasn't keen to hear it all again. He had left them when Carrie was four and all that she could remember about him was walking around the room with her small feet on the top of his enormous boots and the way he threw his head back once so hard when he was laughing that his hat had sailed off and landed in a river. She had never seen him again. As an adult she could look back on her childhood and understand Pam's almost frenetic activity in the years after he had left. She could see now that it had been grief that had made her mother so unreachable, but as a child she had simply felt abandoned.

‘I wasn't a good mother,' said Pam as if she was reading her thoughts. ‘You were a much, much better one, my darling,' she said and her face suddenly crumpled into grief at the memory of this loss and others. Carrie felt her eyes fill with tears at her mother's words. She was so used to her brisk selfishness that she felt this unexpected tenderness catch in her throat. Pam sobbed, childlike, into her cupped hands. When Carrie bent over to comfort her, she noticed that her mother's scalp was visible through her hair.

As she came out of her front door to head for the shop, Carrie saw that Oliver Gladhill was just coming out of his. Because she was still feeling less than robust and because he tended to have an unsettling effect on her, she tried to duck out of sight behind the hedge, but she wasn't quite quick enough and he saw her and crossed the road. She noticed that the royal blue scarf he was wearing went uncannily well with his eyes. She found herself torn between admiring his dress sense and castigating him for his vanity.

‘Hello Carrie!' he said. ‘I haven't seen you for ages. Where have you been hiding?'

‘Nowhere … I've been ill for a few days …' She trailed off, suddenly inexplicably close to tears. He looked closely at her.

‘You do look very pale,' he said, his voice unexpectedly gentle. ‘Where are you going? Will you let me take you for a coffee? I've finished work for the day.'

Carrie wasn't sure if she really wanted to go with him or whether she simply was too exhausted to think of a credible reason not to, but she found herself walking with him down Mill Road and into a little café that sold wonderful coffee and generous slices of cake. There were bright paintings all round the walls and a window too clouded to see out of. Sitting there with her hands cupping the warmth of her coffee, Carrie felt more relaxed than she had for days. Oliver meanwhile was thinking what a beautiful mouth she had, curved in just the right place and fuller in the bottom lip than the top.

‘I know you've told me, but sorry, what is it exactly that you do? I think it was something to do with wildlife …' said Carrie, aware of his scrutiny and wanting to find a neutral topic of conversation.

‘I'm a wildlife consultant,' he said, ‘which is a grand way of saying that I spend a good proportion of my time crawling around in the mud and getting cold feet.'

‘Do you work locally?' asked Carrie, looking at his hand, which was resting on the table – long fingers with clean fingernails despite his avowed claim to roughing it in the countryside.

‘I work all over, but just at the moment I am working for a private wildlife trust who are trying to establish a population of bitterns in an area of wetland near Ely.'

He anticipated her question. ‘Bitterns are birds that have become almost extinct because the type of terrain that suits them best isn't as available to them any more. I'm trying to get that right and hopefully have ten more male bitterns in the next couple of years.'

‘Your job would explain how easily you handled the hurt bird,' she said. Carrie could see no trace of his habitual flippancy in the passion with which he talked about his work. The man might be a womaniser, but he clearly had hidden depths, not to mention very blue eyes, a firm chin and the physique of a man who was no stranger to the gym or at least to exploring inhospitable terrain.

‘But listen,' he said, ‘the bitterns can wait. Will you tell me what is making you so sad? If you want to that is, you can tell me to piss off if you would prefer.'

Carrie hesitated because she knew that what had happened to Charlie affected the way people treated her. Even Carrie's close friends avoided talking about their children in front of her, even though she had told more than one of them that hearing about their children wasn't going to make her feel worse about the loss of her own. It was Charlie she wanted back, not anybody else's child. But for some reason, she didn't mind telling Oliver. There was something about him that made her think he would be able to handle it and so she began to talk about what had happened and found, to her surprise, that the words came easily. He sat in silence, only occasionally making the sort of encouraging ‘tsking' noise that she imagined he might employ with his bitterns.

‘It's only very recently,' she said, ‘that I have even begun to countenance the fact that he might be dead. I think for the last three years a big part of me has been expecting him to be found. And every news story I read of families discovered in bunkers, or children turning up on the other side of the same town in which they disappeared, just reinforces the hope.'

‘So what's made you accept the possibility? What has changed?' Oliver asked, making no move to console her or to commiserate. She appreciated his restraint. It made her think that he had had experience himself of grief.

‘This is going to sound completely off the wall, and believe you me a month ago I would have dismissed it as the ravings of a lunatic,' she said, ‘but this man I went to see seems to be getting messages from him.' She looked at Oliver, fully expecting him to laugh or worse, patronise her, but his expression didn't waver.

‘How does it make you feel?' he asked, and Carrie wondered why Damian hadn't thought to ask her that, and then felt disloyal for thinking like that about him.

‘I'm not sure. It makes me feel scared and confused. It makes me think I must be going mad. But I want to have everything that I can have of him. I know that people who are grieving latch on to every scrap of comfort. I've seen people swallow stuff that clearly makes no sense because they want to believe and I'm probably no different from them, but this man knew things. Things he just couldn't know any other way …'

Carrie noticed that it had become dark outside. They must have been sitting there for a couple of hours but she hadn't been aware of the time passing.

‘God is that the time? I've really got to go. I need to go to the shop and see what's been happening in my absence,' said Carrie, gathering her coat and the scarf that had ended up on the floor under the table.

‘Could I take you out to dinner?' asked Oliver. ‘Wednesday night perhaps? I've enjoyed talking to you so much.'

For a moment Carrie hesitated, thinking about Damian and how things were tricky enough already without adding a further layer of difficulty, and then she thought about spending the evening alone endlessly going over what had happened with the medium.

‘I'm actually seeing my ex-husband at the moment, it's all a bit complicated,' Carrie broke off awkwardly.

‘It's just dinner, Carrie,' said Oliver. ‘Not a date … unless you want it to be.'

‘OK thanks, that would be nice,' said Carrie, and she was surprised to see the pleasure that her acceptance clearly gave him. They parted company outside the café and as she hurried to get to
Trove
before closing time, Carrie reflected on how much better she felt for having been able to talk honestly to someone who would just listen and not feel bound to take a point of view. She was astonished that it was Oliver of all people that she had chosen to unburden herself to.

Daddy doesn't look like my daddy any more. He looks all tight and angry. Once when we were sitting outside a pub we put some beer at the bottom of a jar and caught five wasps in it and they made so much noise you could feel it on your hand when you touched the glass. That's what my daddy sounds like when you shut your eyes. My mummy is as quiet as can be. Quieter than a mouse when Toffee is sniffing near. I think she knows that Daddy would not like sudden moves. Sudden moves will make Daddy lash out. Lashing out is what people do when they are angry and surprised. Lashing out is what people do when they are in a tight corner and afraid. Euoplocephalus – Power Rating 96, Intelligence Rating 53 – used the bone in its tail to lash out at its enemies. It had a kind of bommyknocker at the end of it. That's what Daddy said it was called. He showed me a picture of a knight in armour with a bommyknocker at the end of a chain.

Daddy used some string from the kitchen drawer to tie Mum and me to chairs. He used the dining room chairs from the safe room. He put the string around our ankles and the legs of the chair and also on our wrists and tied them behind us. He tied my leg ones really, really tight and I can feel the string digging in through my socks. I don't think I am bleeding though which is good because if I start bleeding I will need a plaster to stop the blood coming and I don't think my daddy knows where the plasters are kept. Mum is very still but I can see that she is trying to smile at me with her eyes because she can't use her mouth. I think she is trying to keep my spirits up like she does when we have to go on long walks and I'm really tired. When we are on long walks she sometimes sings the song about soldiers marching and gets me to swing my legs and that helps time pass. I feel very thirsty. Daddy put some soft stuff in my mouth and then used a tea towel to keep it in. I can smell chicken on the tea towel. My mummy has some torn-up sheet around her face but I can see her eyes. Daddy is making lots of noise around the house. I think he is packing for a trip. He has two big bags and he is putting things into the bags and I am counting all the things that go in like I do in the car when we play aunty goes shopping. My aunty went shopping and brought back a cow. And then you say my aunty went shopping and she brought back a cow and a turnip and then the next person thinks of something else like a hat or a globe and adds it to the list. Once I got up to twenty-three things before I got confused. I think my daddy has put more than twenty-three things into the bags. He put a hammer in and some nails and the silver tape from the garage and some candles and lots of other things I couldn't keep track of. I don't think things are going our way.
Something tells me things are not going our way
. That's what the Colonel said in a film I watched. The enemy were approaching and they were trapped against a cliff and the Colonel said:
Something tells me things are not going our way,
and he said it in a voice that sounded very sad but firm, then in the nick of time he quickly remembered a tunnel and they rolled a rock away and there it was and they ran down it and it had bats in it but they didn't mind because they were free. I'm not mad on bats. Charlie doesn't like bats either. Charlie told me bats were bad luck and creepy because they slept hanging upside down and there was a sort of bat called a vampire bat that fastened itself to a pig's bottom and sucked all the blood out. Daddy knocked over my mum's chair because she tried moving it when he was upstairs getting the towels. Now she is lying on the floor and I can see that her arms behind her are hurting her because she is on top of them. But she is not crying because she is brave like the Colonel. It's very late which means I have stayed up all night without hardly going to bed at all because I don't count that first bit when I had my day clothes on under my pyjamas to fool my dad but I think he knew all along.