Someone to Watch Over Me (25 page)

‘You are such a brave boy,' she said, stroking his hair off his eyes. ‘I don't think any boy could be braver than you are.'

‘You're a brave mummy too,' he said, and he put up one gentle hand and stroked the hair away from her eyes. It was such a tender, almost adult gesture that it made her eyes fill with tears. She got up, took a long drink of water and then looked around the room to see what she could use to pull the nailed wood away from the window.

Carrie stayed at the hospital until very late. Jen kept up a constant stream of chatter from the chair by Tom's bed, getting up periodically to touch his face and stroke his hands or to walk from one side of the room to the other. By three in the morning there had been no change in Tom's condition and Doctor Boris, who at this hour, and after a double shift was beginning to look as if he might slip into a coma himself, suggested that the women go home.

‘I'll get someone to ring you if there is any change,' he said, rubbing his eyes and then straightening his back with a jerk as if readying himself for the next five, pallid hours until he was finally released back to his flat and a narrow bed that never got made. Carrie tried to persuade her friend that she was serving no useful purpose remaining at the hospital and that it would be more sensible to get some rest so that she would be better able to cope with whatever the next day would bring. But Jen wouldn't be moved. She had the same stubborn look she got when Carrie told her to brush her hair, and Carrie finally gave up the fight and crept out, leaving her curled up on the armchair in the corner of the room, her eyes fixed on Tom as if the sheer force of her vigilance would keep him alive.

Carrie left the hospital and walked across the frost-slicked car park. Looking back at the bulk of the building with its vaguely sinister chimney she saw that many of the rooms were still lit up and thought about the stories unfolding behind the regulation blinds. All the everyday miracles and the everyday tragedies played out time and again. All that joyful and sorrowful breath filling up the corridors. On the way home the roads that were so well known to her seemed unfamiliar and threatening, dimly lit in most places and then suddenly brighter, discolouring a wall or catching a stretching cat on the edge of a roof.

At the last minute, just as she was turning into Mill Road, she changed her mind and drove on. She knew she was unlikely to go to sleep now and the prospect of sitting flicking through late-night TV wasn't appealing, although she had a soft spot for those channels selling cheap jewellery. For some reason she found it soothing watching the glitter-dusted hands pointing the fake diamonds to the studio lights, trying to generate a counterfeit sparkle. It seemed to Carrie that however miserable she might be, there was always someone much worse off, sitting in a studio, having to keep her voice enthusiastic whilst selling ugly rings to insomniacs.

It only took her a couple of hours along deserted roads to get to the beach. She parked in the empty car park and walked past the cement block toilets and the shuttered kiosk that sold plastic spades and cans of Coke in the summer. The night was only just holding the day at bay and she could sense rather than see the dim beginnings of light. At the opening in the dunes she turned right along the beach, the way they had always walked. She knew her way in the dark as well as she might have done in daylight. She judged the tide to be high because she could hear the sea shifting restlessly. She walked for an hour or so, until the sky had lightened enough for her to make out the dunes and the jagged stumps of rotting groynes. Pulling her coat around herself to protect against the damp sand, she sat down facing out to sea, her arms wrapped around her knees. When Charlie first went, his absence tormented her so much that she didn't have the space to think about anything else. She was filled up with the pain of losing him. But as time had passed she had become increasingly aware that she had nowhere specific she could go to mourn him. There was no gravestone or ashes sprinkled in a well-loved spot. She had not been given what was left of him to lay to rest in safety. He had slipped through her fingers; faded out like a dream. Carrie thought about what Simon Foster had said about worlds overlapping and she had the same feeling she had had when she had woken the day before that he was near her. She had a sudden dizzying sense of the world flattening out and of sound and sensation being vivid and loud. She could feel the wind on her skin and her heart was light and beating with something that might have been joy. He was in the fresh breeze and in the salty spray. He was running as he had that day, with his hand holding up his shorts. He was in the moment she had first seen him after his birth, with his wrinkled, starfish hands over his face. He was in the man he would have become, walking down a dusty street away from her.

When she got home she listened to her messages. There was one from Jen saying that Tom had not yet come round. Her voice sounded muffled as if she was talking through cotton wool. Carrie phoned her back and left a message saying that she was to take as much time away from the shop as she needed. She had an hour before the shop was due to open, so on an impulse she rang Simon Foster and asked if she could come and see him straight away. She had a rudimentary shower, dressed in a tightly fitting maroon jumper and bottle green pencil skirt and pulled on brown stack-heeled boots. After a slice of toast and cup of strong black coffee she navigated her bike out of the shed and along the alleyway. She noticed that the phantom vodka addict was back. Always at his most prolific at this gloomiest time of year, the path was littered with empty half bottles. She wondered about the identity of the secret drinker; one of her neighbours perhaps, slipping out for swigs in between making the beds and arranging tea for the scouts, or maybe it was the local greengrocer, who always smiled at Carrie a little too much. Perhaps he hid the half bottles in his waxed jacket pocket to swill on the sly between the narrow fences. She gathered the bottles and put them in her bicycle basket to put in the first bin she came across.

She cycled quickly, taking advantage of the fact that the rush hour was yet to hit. Little Bo Creep had started his perambulations, and the bench outside the Co-op was already occupied by Fred who operated on the same principle as German holidaymakers and made sure to spread his skanky mac over the seat before anyone else could get there. The Wire Man had already been hard at work, his open rucksack bristling with his finds and his fists full of copper bouquets. What was left of the snow had gathered in slushy brown lines in the gutters and Carrie knew that the back of her coat would soon be splattered with dirt. The roads and sky had the leaden, lowering look that she associated with the deepest part of winter. There was nowhere else to go now but up again on the long climb to spring.

Simon made her tea and sat her in the usual place on the sofa. She almost smiled as she reflected how quickly she had become accustomed to this little ritual. He sat down in the chair and looked at her carefully.

‘I've broken two rules this morning,' he said in his precise, low voice. ‘I don't usually see people before nine o'clock and I never see people more than once a week. I think it's too much.'

‘Thank you for breaking your rules for me,' said Carrie, noting that even though it was early, Simon had dressed with his habitual care, white shirt collar over dark sweater, and trousers ironed into sharp creases.

‘I think you are at a point when you need to be able to move on,' said Simon, ‘and I want to help you if I can.'

‘I don't know if this is something that you do. But I thought I would bring this,' said Carrie, and she opened her handbag and took out Charlie's yellow shorts. They were still in the cellophane bag that the police had sealed them in, but she opened the bag, took them out and handed them to Simon. Without saying anything, he took the shorts and held them. Being in this flat always gave Carrie the sense of time standing still and today that impression was reinforced by the view through the balcony window of two boats stationary on the river. Presumably they had stopped to begin a race or perhaps to get instruction from the man on the bank, but they looked frozen in the undisturbed water.

‘He's here. Carrie,' said Simon, ‘He's singing …
and I seem to find the happiness I seek, when we're out together dancing cheek to cheek
… he says that he loves you more than anything. He wants you to be strong … I'm sorry, his voice fades out from time to time … he says he wants you to know that the sea came quicker and deeper than he thought it would. It went faster than a galloping horse … he couldn't run fast enough … it pulled him under and it wouldn't let him go … there were cold bubbles and he breathed them in and then for a long time it was dark.'

Carrie stood up and walked over to the balcony door. The boats set off down the river suddenly, as if released. That was it then. He had drowned. He was nowhere in the world waiting for her or wanting her or beginning to forget her. Not missing. Not taken. No chance that he might on some unmarked morning walk through the door. She would never again feel the touch of his hand on her face or hold him in her arms. The best of her was gone and all that was left was this interminable pain. She felt the little heart she had left break, and everything twisted and bent under her and she fell to the floor. She came to with Simon bending over her, looking anxiously into her face.

‘Are you alright?' he asked. ‘Let me help you up.' And he led her back to the sofa. Carrie looked at him in bewilderment.

‘I'm sorry for your loss,' said Simon with an oddly formal intonation.

‘He really was the most perfect, beautiful boy,' said Carrie.

Sometimes when I'm going to sleep I get this really hot tight feeling in my head. I feel like a big puffed-up ball spinning down a hill. I get faster and faster until I can't stop. I feel like that in the day now too. Mummy almost got the cover off the window but then my daddy came home. We heard the car coming. My mum tried to lean against the window so he wouldn't see, but he saw just the same. She worked and worked to get it off. She used some scissors to get under the wood and she tried so hard her hands got blood all over them, but we had plasters so that was OK. When we heard my daddy coming we got quiet again and I sat on my chair. My mummy had the scissors in her hand and when he came close to her she tried to jab him, but he is a Wise Old Fox and he caught her hand really, really tight. He squeezed her hand until she dropped the scissors on the floor. I tried to put my foot over them, but he saw and kicked them away. I don't know what has made my daddy so angry. He even smells angry. He smells like our green bin does after hot sun has been on it and you open it just a tiny crack and let the smell out. Toffee sits on the green bin because it is the cosiest place in the house or garden. That's because rotting vegetables and fruit make gas. Bananas make the most gas of all. I was a bit sick in my mouth when my daddy hit Mummy. I told him to stop but Mum said to be quiet with her eyes so I did. She can do lots of talking with her eyes. When he hit my mum her eyes went empty. He hit the talking out of her. It was almost morning when he took us out. I could see the shapes of things and the ground was hard and glittery. I would have shouted really loud like they told us to at school if a stranger asks us to come and look for his puppy or if he offers us sweets, even if he is a person we think we know. But there wasn't anyone to hear. I left a message though. Charlie told me where to put it and so I did it quick while Daddy put Mummy in the car. He put some string round Mummy's neck and tied it to the metal bit where you put your head. He drove so fast I was scared we would go into a ditch. It makes me feel funny in my tummy when I think of the car going into the water. The way we would be moving around on the inside trying to get out and outside would be still and dark and wouldn't notice us. I would get Mummy's string off first before anything else, even if I only had a tiny bit of breath left. We drove for a long time and then we went off the smooth road and onto a very bumpy road. I think it had some stones in. The car stopped suddenly and Mummy cried out because I think the string strangled her a bit. But my daddy cut it off and he got us out of the car and we walked for a long time and then he put us in a building, which is where we are now. It's not a house. It has no furniture and it has wet bits on the floor and on the walls. It has no lights. He locked us in the dark. My mummy asked for some food and a torch and my asthma puffer but he said no. I sat very close to Mummy on the floor. It's so cold. Mummy gave me her jumper but I'm still cold. I think there might be rats. I can hear noises. I'm trying to think of something happy. I'm trying to think of Three Reasons To Be Cheerful. One. Mummy is here. Two. We didn't go into a ditch. Three. I can escape into my head because Charlie showed me how.

Oh I love to go out fishing in a river or a creek, but I don't enjoy it half as much as dancing cheek to cheek … Heaven, I'm in heaven … And my heart beats so that I can hardly speak and I seem to find the happiness I seek, when we're out together dancing cheek to cheek.

Carrie left Simon's flat in a daze. He had tried to make her stay for a while and recover from what she had heard, but she was adamant that she wanted to leave. She pushed her bike over the nearby bridge and then started walking along the path by the river. She didn't really know where she was going but was possessed by the need to keep moving, to be alone so that she could think about what had just happened. After wandering along unseeingly for a while, she remembered with a start that she was supposed to be at the shop and phoned Paul to tell him she would be late in.

There was no longer any doubt in her mind that her son had been talking to her through Simon. If someone had told her a few weeks ago that she would find herself accepting this most outlandish of notions, she would never have believed them. It seemed to her that if she could have come around to this, then what everyone believed in and chose to act on was simply decided by what they happened to stumble on, a sheer accident of circumstance.