Visions (11 page)

17

Carrie later informed Morgan, ensuring that she understood how important it was that this information remain confidential, that Ms Carr had turned up at the hospital alone, with her wrist in a cast. The local hospital had not provided any x-rays nor supplied any medical treatment so she must have been treated elsewhere, and Ms Carr hadn’t volunteered any information despite being asked by the police. All she would say was that it had nothing to do with anyone else; the injury was caused by a fall and it was her fault alone. When she was asked where Collins was, she snapped at them, “We don’t live in each other’s pockets! I don’t know where he is every second of the day!”

              In fact, Carrie said that when she spoke to Ms Carr, it was eerily disturbing to see just how emotionally detached from her own daughter she seemed to be. All this information served to make Morgan and me even more determined to visit Amelia at the soonest opportunity, considering how alone she must feel. We went out and bought cards for her that evening after work. Standing in the supermarket together, we scoured sombrely through the cards. Both of us completely ignored anything that was even slightly humorous and we opted for very simple cards. Morgan informed me that Amelia liked animals so I chose a sweet one with a cat on, wearing a cast on its paw. Morgan stuck with a traditional teddy bear holding flowers.

              At school, I told my year elevens about the card and said it was

optional to sign. Each one of them wanted to and George asked whether he and some of the girls in the class could send her a teddy bear if they brought in the money. I realised they were asking me to go to the shops for them. The majority of them had severe learning difficulties and George in particular, with his easily distracted and confused nature, was probably not allowed out without parental supervision despite being nearly sixteen years of age.

              “That’s a really lovely idea, George. How thoughtful of you!” He beamed at my words and some of the other pupils came over to see what was going on. George became too embarrassed to explain, so I told them about his idea myself and they all agreed to bring in a small amount so we could buy her a nice big teddy
.

              “You don’t think that Amelia will think it’s babyish, do you, Miss? Sometimes the others say I’m a baby, but Amelia has always been dead nice to me,” George said after the class had finished. As I looked at him, I realised that even though this child was never going to get A grade GCSEs, or even Cs for that matter, he was always polite and well-behaved. You could tell that his parents were proud of him because he was always well-turned out. What went wrong with Ms Carr’s parenting instinct?

              “George, I think it will brighten her day and when she knows it was your idea, I think Amelia will be very grateful for your kindness!”

              George left the classroom with a big giddy smile across his face, and I wondered whether he wasn’t quite as immature as some of the others thought, after all.

              We were able to go and see Amelia on Thursday evening, but I’d been getting daily updates on her progress from Theo, anyway. The staff working with her had realised that he was taking a personal interest and sent him any news as it happened. She was awake for most of the day now, though heavily drugged on painkillers. Luckily, her shoulder had not needed surgery to get the broken bone back in place. I remembered how long mine had taken to heal even as a simple break, and felt more sympathy for her. She wasn’t going to be allowed to forget this attack in a hurry. Perhaps the worst thing was that her jaw was broken, so she was being fed solely on a liquid diet. She was communicating by murmurs and writing, however, , so the police had been in to speak to her, though that information had not been forwarded to the hospital staff. The only thing they’d been told was not to let Stuart Eckells anywhere near the ward.

              When we arrived, there was no-one else there to see Amelia, which surprised me. The visiting hours only allowed for two hours in the morning and two in the evening. Given her condition, I would have assumed there was somebody in her family who would have wanted to be there. Amelia made an effort to smile when we walked into her room, but her jaw was wired shut so it almost looked like a grimace. Her face was swollen, purple and blue. Her shoulder was held in position by a cast and despite being covered by a thick blanket, her frame looked obviously emaciated.

              “Hi Amelia. It’s good to see you,” Morgan said, walking over and gently rubbing the top of her hand. I couldn’t help tears springing to my eyes.

              Amelia looked at me and grunted.

              “Don’t be crying, Miss Gordon,” Morgan said, light-heartedly. “We’ve come to cheer our little friend up, not make her feel worse!” She held the envelope holding the get well soon card from the form in front of her and opened it so that she could see. Patiently, she then pointed to each contribution, read it for Amelia and also told her something about how each person was doing and what they had said. I sat down on the visitors’ chair and wiped my tears away with a tissue, regaining my composure. When Morgan finished, I was recovered enough to be able to do the same with the card from the class. Her eyes lit up when I showed her the large glittery gift bag that was concealing the biggest, fluffiest teddy bear I’d been able to find. It was brown with a red bow and very traditional looking.

              “I can’t take credit for this,” I admitted. “It was George’s idea, but all the others in the class wanted to put money in to get it for you, too. In fact, every single one of them put something in the pot. They are all thinking about you and send their love.” I could see tears in her eyes now. She gestured for the pad and paper on her cupboard. On it, with her left hand, she scrawled ‘tank you.’

              I smiled, ignoring the spelling mistake.

              “Is there anything we can bring in for you?” I asked.

              She wrote, ‘u sure?’

              I nodded in response. “Of course,” I replied, hoping she wouldn’t ask for anything too extraordinary. The hospital weren’t going to let me bring in a kitten.

              She pulled the notepad towards her and began to write. When she’d finished, she slid it across. I read the list aloud to ensure that I got it right. Being right-handed and now having to use her left hand, her writing was even less neat than normal and spelling had never been her strong point.

              “A hairbrush.” I glanced at Morgan, who looked equally surprised. Surely her own mother had thought to bring these things in for her? “I can do that,” I carried on, quickly recovering. “Mouthwash, a sponge and any book? Well, that’s all easy enough to get hold of.”

              “Sure! One of us will bring it for you tomorrow evening. Can’t have you being

without a book to read now, can we?” Morgan agreed.

              Amelia underlined her ‘tank you’ and pointed the pen’s nib at it. We both smiled. Morgan started to tell Amelia about one of the girls in their form and how she was planning a massive birthday party, which she insisted Amelia simply must attend or it would have to be postponed. Amelia stared at her, enchanted and seemingly content.

              As she was talking, I heard a ruckus on the corridor. The commotion got louder and all three of us heard Amelia’s name said by one of the high-pitched nurses whose voice seemed to carry above all the others. I gestured for Morgan to carry on and headed out towards the nurse’s station, where there seemed to be a crowd gathering. The crowd was made up of staff who were trying to block a young man from getting on the ward. He had spiky black hair which I assumed was dyed to fit in with the emo craze that seemed to be sweeping our teens, thick rimmed glasses and was so slight, his frame was almost feminine.

              “I’m telling you that I didn’t and would never hurt her. Please, I just want to know how she is. Please?” he pleaded. I knew this person must be Stuart Eckells and he did match the photograph we’d been shown. It was just the age that didn’t seem to match. He’d been described as a young man but if I hadn’t known any better, I would have taken him to be a maximum of sixteen year of age. He wasn’t much bigger than Amelia herself. The photograph had been misleading in that regard, putting many of the teaching staff on their guards. I doubted he would have been physically capable of the attack on Amelia.

              “I’m telling you now that if you do not leave immediately, the police will arrest you,” one of the older nurses screeched. “We have to call them at any rate, now that you’ve been silly enough to turn up here, so you might as well go and prepare yourself for a visit from them.”

              Stuart laughed at her words; the laugh sounded desperate and hysterical.

              “You really think I give a shit about what the police are going to do? I don’t care about me. I just care about her.”

              Knowing that I would probably regret what I was about to do, I moved into the crowd and adopted my best teacher voice; calm but stern. “Stuart, come outside with me now and I’ll tell you how Amelia is doing.” Before waiting for a response, I started walking towards the entrance to the ward and straight out to the corridor. After I’d marched at least ten feet, I turned and saw that he was following me. He looked puzzled. When we got outside, I sat on a wall but rather than join me, he slid down with his back against it almost into the foetal position and started to sob loudly.

              “I just wanted to see her,” he wailed. “I wouldn’t hurt a single hair on her head, but it doesn’t matter how many times I tell these people, nobody believes me.”

              “I believe you,” I said. Wiping mucus and tears away with his sleeve, he looked up. “Do you love her?” I asked.

              He stared at me, clearly not sure what to think. “Who are you?” he asked.

              “I’m one of Amelia’s teachers. Do you want to go over to that café? I’ll buy you a coffee.” He nodded and we made our way over the road together, him taking unsure, sideways glances at me and me wondering what the hell I was doing.  

18

Seated at the small coffee table on hard chairs, Stuart and I studied each other. Looking at the man across from me, even without having seen Amelia beaten by her stepdad in my vision, I would have felt instinctively that this was not her attacker. Admittedly, he looked a bit rough round the edges with his faded, fraying hoodie and spiky hairstyle, but in his eyes there was nothing but distress and despair. I tried to think how to start the conversation as he stirred his fourth sachet of sugar into his coffee.

              He beat me to it. “Why do you believe me, then?”

              “I just do. I don’t think you look like the kind of person who would hurt a young girl, but obviously there is some link or she wouldn’t have come to you twice.” I tried to deflect his question by turning the attention back to him.

              “You asked me whether I love her. I do. So much. Who are you?” He blew into his coffee cup.

              “I’m her English teacher,” I repeated. “I’m friends with her form teacher and…I guess I just care…It’s hard to explain, but I believe that you didn’t hurt her.”

              “No. I didn’t and I wouldn’t. I know what people think, though. The police think I’m her boyfriend and that I lost my temper with her. They think I beat her up because she cheated on me or something. One of them even used the word paedophile, but I’m not the monster. Even if I wanted to, I wouldn’t touch her like that. I kept repeating myself over and over again, but they wouldn’t listen,” he ranted. “They’re looking for him now, though, and they’ll get him. They have to. When they find out what really happened, they’ll owe me an apology!”

              “You mean Collins?”

              “That’s the bastard.” A young mother pulled her child towards her and gave Stuart a disapproving look. “Sorry, love,” he said to her. The woman nodded, accepting his apology, and let her child move away again. “I swear he’s evil. What should I call you? Miss?”

              I couldn’t help but laugh. “Gill will do just fine!”

              “Ok, Gill. I’m Stuart, but I’m guessing you already knew that. He definitely did it, though. She told me. I wanted to phone an ambulance for her, but she was sobbing and crying; she begged me not to. I knew there was something wrong with her jaw from the way she was struggling to form her words.” As I listened to Stuart, I realised that despite his appearance, he was an intelligent man.

              “How do you know Amelia?”

              “She’s not my girlfriend like everyone thinks. Her mother knows the truth, but she didn’t say anything to the police about it. She just let them take me in. That’s why they had to go into our records and check everything I’d told them. They thought I was lying about it to cover myself. When Amelia was seven years old, her dad died. From what Amelia has told me, they weren’t ever the best parents on the planet, but her dad was more loving towards her than her mum. He was a drinker and had been for years. The doctors had warned and warned him about his drinking, but every time he tried to give it up he would last a few days and then hit the bottle even worse than he had before. He fell on his way home from the pub one night, bumped his head on the pavement and killed himself.

              “Amelia’s mum fell to pieces. She stopped feeding Amelia; she stopped feeding herself and just lay around doing nothing but crying. Eventually, Amelia was taken and put into a foster home until her mum got herself together. It was only supposed to be temporary, but it would have been much better if she was still there now.” He paused as though remembering.

              “She must really trust you to tell you all this,” I commented, wondering whether Amelia’s feelings for Stuart were romantic, even if he didn’t return the notion.

              “Some of it she told me and some of it I overheard from conversations. She was taken in by the same family that looked after me from the age of three. We lived together for four years and I loved her like she was my little sister. I’m five years older than her so I could read with her and help her with her school work. I taught her to ride a bike because she’d never had one of her own. My parents, Mollie and Gordon, loved her like she was their own from the second she arrived. I even remember them telling me she was coming. They took me to the shops and I chose a doll for her, with yellow wool for hair, because I thought girls would like that kind of thing. A present to welcome her. She’s still got it.”

              “What happened? Why did she go back?”

              “Her mum went on anti-depressants and they deemed her stable enough to have her child back. Honestly, I think the only reason she took Amelia back was for the increased benefits she’d get. I don’t think she really cared about her. The kindest thing she could have done was to leave her with us where she had a comfortable, warm home, was well fed and looked after properly. They even took her to swimming lessons and horseback riding
.
She smiled all the time and never mentioned her mother at all. I cried my heart out when she went back. I was seventeen years old and felt like I was losing my little sister. Mollie spoke to Amelia’s mum and they agreed that we could write letters to each other and phone each other, too. We did for a while but then her mum put a stop to that. She got Facebook when she was older and contacted me through that but she has no Internet access at home and isn’t allowed a mobile phone.

              “When she was old enough, we would meet up for fifteen, twenty minutes after school and chat, then she would race home and say she’d been kept back in detention. She told me her mum always says she doesn’t want to live in the past when she brings the subject of me up. She’s so thin now. I still like seeing her but I want to help and I can’t.”

              “So you have your own place now and she comes there when she’s in trouble?”

              “I told her she could. I don’t really care what the police think if it means she’s safe. I mean, obviously I don’t want them to think I’m a paedophile, but I’ll take the flack if it means she doesn’t get hurt. Besides, I tried to tell the police, if I were her real brother, they wouldn’t bat an eyelid.” I’d done the math while he’d been speaking and worked out that he was twenty years old. He may look more like a boy than a young man, but he was able to express himself better than most.

              The whole story seemed so sad. These two people had both had access to the same family life, but Amelia’s mother had taken the chance of a normal upbringing away from her and now look at where she was. I wondered whether social services would have to remove her from the home again or whether they would prosecute Collins and send Amelia back into the care of her mother.

              “I told Mollie that she comes to see me,” Stuart continued. “Mollie says it could be dangerous and that I should wait until she is sixteen to have her round just in case people talk but she never stops me when I talk about her. She wants to know how she is because she still really cares about her. Mollie’s like that. We don’t tell Gordon much, though, because it breaks his heart. He absolutely adored Amelia. He made her a dolls’ house once. He painted it and made loads of wooden furniture. I wonder whether she still has that. I bet she’s too old.”

              “She’s lucky to have you, Stuart. A lot of people’s blood relatives don’t take the time to show they care as much as you do,” I said, thinking not only of Mrs Carr, but also of Morgan and Bronwyn. “She’ll get through this and the police will find Collins. Trust me, this will work out.”

              “And you know that like you know I’m innocent, do you?” he said, smiling. I knew he was mocking me, but it wasn’t cruel.

              “I wish I did but this time, I’m just going on my instinct.”

              Stuart chatted about his time with Mollie and Gordon until he’d finished his coffee. He told me about how supportive they had been when he’d wanted to go to college to do graphic design and how Gordon had taken time off work to drive him to interviews when he had qualified, waiting outside to congratulate him or ensure that he had someone to commiserate with. He told me about how even though he’d moved out a year ago, Mollie still insisted he went over for Sunday dinner every week and sent him home with a container full of homemade vegetable soup. When our cups were drained, I offered him another. I knew that really I should go and see where Morgan had got to as she was my lift home, but I was enjoying listening to Stuart talk. He was articulate and pleasant, probably because of his lovely upbringing. I wondered whether Amelia might have a different personality all together if she’d been able to stay with Mollie and Gordon.

              “Thank you, but no. It’s been good talking to someone who doesn’t assume I’m guilty, but I’ve got to get back. I work at a take-away at weekend. My main job isn’t very well-paid, as you can probably tell,” he said, gesturing to his tatty hoodie.

              “Ok. Look after yourself, Stuart.”

              He smiled and gave an awkward wave before walking away.

              I checked my phone, realising that it had been on silent while we were in the hospital and I hadn’t turned the ringer back on. Morgan had texted twice. The first message said that she was going to leave the ward soon and the next said the nurses were kicking her out. Quickly, I dialled her number.

              She answered before it even had a chance to ring. “I’m in the car. Come and fill me in,” she said, putting the phone down.

              The look on Morgan’s face the second I started talking showed that she disapproved of my conversing with Stuart at all, but she heard me out. “Briggs wouldn’t like the fact that you’ve talked to him, Gill. You heard what he said.”

              “That was about journalists,” I replied, defending myself.

              “He also said that we were to phone the police immediately if Eckells came anywhere near the school. I’m pretty sure that somewhere in that statement, there’s a hidden message about not talking to the man!”

              “No, I get that, I do. It just felt like the right thing to do at the time and we know he’s not dangerous.”

              “Based on what? A vision that you can’t actually explain?” She glanced up at me, realising her words had been quite harsh, but I was far from offended. She was right. There didn’t seem to be anything scientific about the visions, therefore we could not take them as being one hundred per cent accurate. “Sorry, Gill. I’m actually quite relieved by what you’ve told me. I mean, not about Amelia’s background; that’s just crap. I’m relieved that there isn’t anything sexual going on between her and this Stuart. In fact, it’s good to know that she has someone who cares about her like family should. She needs that.” I smiled, feeling exactly the same.

              For the rest of the car journey, we talked about Amelia and how harrowing it

had been seeing her in such a state. Morgan told me that she’d tucked the teddy in with Amelia like you would with a much younger child, and that Amelia had seemed to appreciate the affectionate gesture. She’d promised to return tomorrow evening with the supplies that Amelia had asked for. It would do Amelia good to have visitors whenever we could make it. It didn’t look like her mum was going to be turning up any time soon.