Try Not to Breathe: A Novel Page 12
Okay, thought Alex, I’ll leave you for now, Jenny. But anyone that reacts so fiercely has something to say.
Alex nipped upstairs to use the loo and slip her pajamas on. Back down at 12:01, she unscrewed the bottle of very nice Pouilly-Fumé and let it trickle gently into the delicate, tall glass. She still enjoyed the romance of a cork, but this was certainly more efficient. She spun the cap back on and popped the bottle into the fridge door, turning it slightly so all the labels lined up.
Phone off, computer clamped shut, she picked up a book she’d been trying to read for months and slumped into the corner of the sofa. Within a few lines she knew she wasn’t absorbing a single word and flicked the TV on with the remote. A rerun of a rerun of a rerun of Columbo. Alex smiled; perhaps she would pick up some tips.
Jake’s socked feet dangled off the end of his single divan. Downstairs, his parents rowed in sharp little bursts. No yelling. Flurries of words, scrapes of bottles, ice being smashed out of trays and into glasses. The sound of the conservatory doors sliding open as his mother stepped outside for another of her poorly hidden cigarettes.
Through the wall, Jake could hear the sound of Tom’s Game Boy. Jake lay back and let his eyes fall closed as the sounds blended. A ding from Super Mario here, a hiss from his mother there. He’d given up trying to listen to music. Every song he played reminded him of Amy. He wasn’t even that bothered by music anyway, most of the CDs that he’d bought had been to impress his girlfriend.
His girlfriend.
Did he still have a girlfriend?
Boyfriend and girlfriend stuff was hard enough to work out when everything was normal, let alone now.
It had been twenty days since he’d left the house. Seven since he’d washed. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d spoken to either of his brothers. One had left gladly on some worthy trip that had never really interested Jake, the other scuttled into his room and slammed the door whenever he heard Jake coming. Jake didn’t blame him, he didn’t have anything to say back either. How could a thirteen-year-old boy understand this any more than a fifteen-year-old?
At one point, he’d asked to call Rob and Dave from school, but his mum said it was a bad idea. Besides, they’d not called him. No one had.
Another scrape of the conservatory door. His mother’s voice was louder than usual, and Jake rolled over to face the wall, picking lethargically at the wallpaper seam.
There were exactly twelve miles and eight hundred yards between Amy’s bed and his. He lay still and imagined himself raised up two feet higher in the air, stiff pillows under his neck and machines all around, beeping and whizzing. Probably a blood bag thing as well. He’d not seen her, his mum had said no, absolutely not. So he had to imagine what she looked like based on hospital dramas on TV. He imagined a room as white as heaven, with more plug sockets than anyone could ever need.
Part of him just wanted to get to her, to crawl on his knees if that’s what it took. To stride downstairs and say to his mother, “I love Amy and she loves me and you can’t keep us apart.” He’d snatch up the keys to the Ford Fiesta and say: “Either you drive me, or I’ll drive myself.”
The bigger part of him was anchored to his bed, eyes raw. He wouldn’t do any of those things. He wouldn’t stand up to his mother, or demand to see Amy. He wanted to see his Amy, the one who loved him, not the bashed-up unconscious girl twelve miles and eight hundred yards away. And he probably couldn’t remember how to drive the car now anyway. It had been years since he and Tom had been shown how on the old air strip, and he’d barely got out of first gear then. He’d gone so slowly, Tom had been able to run alongside the car, laughing at him. His eleven-year-old legs flying.
Where was Tom? Jake strained to listen for Game Boy sounds but all he could hear now was muffled talking that was getting faster and louder. His mother’s soprano rising up through the floor far sharper than his father’s deep baritone.
“We sent them back to school far too quickly. Louise said—”
“Who is Louise?” murmured his father’s weary voice.
“Louise Waters, Jake’s form tutor, she said he struggled. Couldn’t focus on the work, looked close to tears all the time. She said there was lots of whispering and finger-pointing.”
“That stuff will pass, Sue. By the time they go back in September, there’ll be something else to talk about.”
“Really, Graham, you really believe that? You honestly think that something will happen in the next six weeks that trumps this?”
Silence. His father’s unique brand of silence. Jake flipped over onto his belly and sniffed his pillow deeply. How many pillows did Amy have in intensive care? Did they bother, if she was unconscious anyway? His own bedding had been changed several times since Amy last sat here with him. He was desperate to smell her cherryade scent once more. He started to cry again.
“It’s not your tennis buddy we’re talking about here, Graham. He’s safe and sound, he’s doing what he wants. We need to focus on the little ones now and I know what’s best for these boys. Jake will not be going back to that school, Louise can send his work for him and I can help him with it. We need to find somewhere safe for Tom, somewhere with no distractions and no bloody girls.”
Alex walked the staggered corridor to Bramble Ward. She carefully opened the door, hoping to avoid that busy little nurse.
No luck. The reception was unmanned but the office door was open and Nurse Radson bustled out at the sound of Alex’s shoes.
“Can I help you?” she asked, looking Alex up and down.
“I hope so. I came before, I’m not sure if you remember me?”
“What can I do for you this time?”
“I was wondering if I could sit with Amy Stevenson today?” Alex asked.
Nurse Radson stayed silent for a couple of moments, then looked over at the roughly closed cubicle in the corner—Amy’s cubicle. Alex, who was standing farther into the ward than last time, had a clear view of the curtain. Under the gap she could see the sitter’s shoes and the denim of his jeans.
Nurse Radson turned back to Alex. “I can ask. Again.”
“I don’t want to trample over anyone’s feelings; I know that guy doesn’t want to talk to me, but I’d really like to sit with Amy. I don’t mind waiting for him to finish.”
“Well, he tends to sit with them for a while and he’s only been in there a couple of minutes.”
“Does he sit with all of them?”
Nurse Radson paused, heaving her expansive bosom up and down and breathing deeply. “Yes, he sits with all of them.”
“So has he sat with all the others yet today?”
“No, not all of them. Can I take your name again?”
“It’s Alex, Alex Dale.”
Alex was still sounding out her surname as Nurse Radson bustled across the ward toward Amy’s bed and wrenched back the curtain. Alex saw the man recoil in surprise as the nurse stuffed her head in like a bear ransacking a picnic basket.
The nurse and the sitter talked with their heads close together for under a minute before the nurse marched purposefully back to where Alex was standing near the office.
“I explained how keen you were and he’s agreed to move on to a different patient so that you can sit with Amy.” The nurse handed over the visitor’s badge like the key to the city.
Alex glowered at the striped blue uniform in front of her. “Okay, thank you.”
The nurse insisted on writing Alex’s name on the log herself in curly round lettering, and buzzed back into her office. Alex waited while Amy’s cubicle spat out a tall, sandy-haired man. He stood blinking for a moment.
Rubbing his eyes and surveying the beds, he plonked down with an audible “oof” on the chair next to a blond female patient a few meters from the reception desk.
He had short, scruffy hair and was wearing a V-neck T-shirt of the slightly “distressed” type Matt used to buy in All Saints. The sitter’s jeans sat low on his hips, like a school uniform at the start of term.
He was within earshot of Alex, and she stayed rooted to the spot, waiting to see how an experienced sitter opened their monologue.
Alex realized the sitter was probably waiting for her to move away. As she stepped gently toward Amy’s bed, she heard him exhale, followed by a gentle, “Hello, Natasha, how are you today?”
Natasha did not answer but Alex was too far away to hear the man’s follow-up patter.
Alex reached Amy’s cubicle, where she had stood so intrusively just a few weeks ago. Back then, when Alex saw that “ghost” for the first time, she could remember very little about the woman in the bed. Now Alex wondered, with a shiver, if there was a chance she knew much more about Amy Stevenson than Amy herself did. Maybe more than Amy ever could.
Taking her cue from the sitter, she sat down on the chair and pulled the curtain to an almost-close.
She picked Amy’s hand up cautiously. For its tiny size it felt cold and heavy. It was too much. Alex couldn’t bear the intimacy of their touch, a touch Amy had no say in. She placed the little hand back down and instead clasped her own clammy hands together.
“Hello, Amy,” she said, “how are you today?”
Alex paused for an uncomfortable moment before plunging in.
“Amy, I’m a journalist. I saw you in here a while ago when I was speaking to Dr. Haynes and I wanted to get to know you better. I grew up in Tunbridge Wells and we probably went to a lot of the same places because we’re about the same age. I’ve spoken to Bob and read a lot about you and I sort of feel like I know you. I know that you can’t answer me, but I was hoping to ask you some questions, as I don’t really know what else to try.”
Did Alex just imagine the tiniest flutter of an eyelid? Perhaps it was an involuntary twitch. It was enough to elicit a shiver of expectation, however absurd and illogical that was. She remembered what Peter Haynes had told her, that there was brain activity somewhere deep down. That Amy recovering was highly unlikely, but not impossible.
“Amy, can I tell you what I’ve found out so far?” Alex felt conspiratorial, almost whispering the words. The two women were close enough to smell each other’s breath. Alex wondered if Amy could still process smells.
Amy had been laid out on top of the blankets, her patterned gown fanning over her knee-high DVT socks. Alex had often wriggled similar socks up her mother’s thinning calves. On Amy, they created a disquieting schoolgirl image.
“What did I do first?” Alex asked herself. “Well, I came here to talk to Dr. Haynes about his work for an article I was writing. I asked him a little bit about you but he couldn’t tell me very much so I also spoke to my ex-husband, because he’s a policeman. He’s called Matt.
“He’s the same age as us so he wasn’t in the police force when you went missing. He didn’t want to do too much digging around and get into trouble, but he’s found out a few things.”
Alex paused, it felt so unnatural to just talk and talk and talk like a relentless radio DJ. She realized that she was skipping over moments where the other person would normally ask for clarification like “who is that?” or “what do you mean?”
In the silence, Alex studied Amy’s face through the tiny pieces of dust sparkling in a sunbeam.
Fine lines around Amy’s nude eyes showed her thirty years, but other than that she looked exactly the same as she had at fifteen. And, Alex thought, if Amy could hear anything, she was listening as a fifteen-year-old. She was not really a thirty-year-old, dashed into her third decade along the rocks of heartbreak, work fatigue and parental decay.
“So Matt,” Alex continued, in the same hushed, conspiratorial tones, “he got me a few details about the main…er, the main suspects.”
Alex realized that if Amy could hear, down at the bottom of her well, this could be the first time she’d heard talk of “suspects.” If there was anything of her in there, did she remember what had happened? Was there a chance she could ever name her attacker, somehow?
“I mean,” Alex faltered, “the people that the police thought might know what happened to you, and why you’re here now.”
Alex couldn’t help but talk in a singsong way, like she was soothing a child.
“The police found out that one of your neighbors liked to do mean things to children, but he was too old and frail to do anything mean to you.”
Not a flicker. Amy’s breathing stayed the same: thin and slow. Alex wondered if this was a “sleep state” and how anyone could really know.
“And they looked into the youth club that you went to,” Alex continued. “And they found someone there who had told a few fibs, but they didn’t think he’d hurt you at all.”
Nothing, Amy’s eyelids were closed and their creamy skin lay still.
“And the day that you were found, they, um, they arrested Bob.” Alex paused, holding her breath in anticipation of…something, she wasn’t sure what. But Amy’s breathing stayed the same, her eyelids stayed smooth. Alex took a breath as she noticed a tiny sliver of moisture curling in the corner of Amy’s left eye. A tear? No, that was silly, her eyes probably watered all the time in this cloggy air.
“Well, they let Bob go really quickly, they knew he hadn’t done anything wrong.
“I met him recently, Amy, and he was so sweet. He loved talking about you and your mum.” Alex realized too late that she’d mentioned the one person she hadn’t wanted to bring into this.
Amy’s eyes moved, there was no doubt about it, both her eyes moved the tiniest, tiniest of twitches and before she had a chance to stop herself, Alex had jumped up and knocked over her plastic chair.
The clattering of the chair bouncing along the floor snapped Alex out of her daze. She sat the chair up, smoothed down her vest and rearranged the waistband of her jeans. Clearing her throat, Alex sat back down and held her breath before continuing, embarrassed.
“I spoke to your friend Becky Limm too. She was nice. She works in London now and she wants to be a journalist so I’ve tried to help her with that. She told me that you’d wanted to be a writer. She said you wrote brilliant short stories.
“Amy, I don’t want you to be upset but I’m just going to say it and stop beating around the bush. I know that you’d had sex before you were attacked. And I know it wasn’t with Jake.”
Amy’s breathing stayed level and shallow, her eyes stayed relaxed.
“I’m wondering if you met someone when you were walking home…”
No reaction.
“I think you went somewhere with him but the situation changed…”
A tiny, tiny ripple spread across the top of the nose, almost like Amy’s skin was trying to shake off a butterfly that had perched there.
As Alex stared intently, suddenly Amy’s mouth smacked open and closed, open and closed like a beached fish.
In the blink of an eye the curtains were open and a small group of angry faces rushed in as Alex realized too late that she had just screamed at the top of her voice.
I’ve been trying to look down but I can’t get my stupid head to move. I just want to know what I’m wearing, because I don’t remember choosing anything. Did I go out last night? Was I at The Sleeper? I need to talk to Jenny because I’m having a massive blackout. I hope I didn’t make a fool of myself, I’m not very good when I’m drunk. I get louder and louder until I throw up. It’s like I can see it’s going to happen, but once I’m on that path I know I’ll follow it to the end anyway.
I must have just slept funny, cricked my neck or pinched a nerve or something. It happened last summer too, maybe that’s my summer thing. Maybe I’ll have to work around a few days of paralysis every summer for the rest of my life. That’ll make it hard to book holidays when I’m older. “I’d love to elope with you, Jared Leto, but it’ll have to be in August, I’m stiff as a post in July.”
Last year it happened just before the summer fete. I woke up early and tried to sit up and I’ve never felt pain like it. Mum reckoned I’d pinched a nerve in my back. Bob had to carry me to the toilet, I’ve
never been so embarrassed. He’d plop me down and turn around while I went. Mum would come in and wash my hands for me and then Bob’d carry me back to bed while Mum flushed the chain behind us. I’d hold it for so long that I’d feel like an overfilled hot water bottle ready to burst. I barely ate or drank for two days.
Jenny had rung while I was in bed and my mum told her what had happened so by the time I turned up back at school, shuffling in painfully to make a grand entrance at the fete, Chinese whispers had declared me a full-blown wheelchair-bound cripple.
I was the talk of the school for a few hours, and I’m not going to lie, I totally milked it. But it was just a trapped nerve. Maybe that’s what I’ve done this time, but at least my bladder doesn’t feel like it’s bursting. That’s something to be grateful for.
Fuck. It was her again. Alex Dale. Jacob felt her eyes boring into him, as if she was scanning him for data, taking down his vitals. What did she know? Why had she wanted to talk to him before, but didn’t want to talk to him now? Had she found something out since he last checked? What game was she playing?
Jacob had been scared for so long. The fear he had when Amy went missing had never fully gone away, it had just ebbed and flowed into new places. He had been so scared that he would be arrested, and then he was scared that no one would be arrested. He’d been scared to see her and then he’d been scared to stop.
Fear was the undercurrent, always threatening to whip his legs from under him. Fear was a secondary heartbeat only he could hear, which could get so quiet it was almost imperceptible or so loud it drowned everything else out.
But it was always there.
It was there on his wedding day.
It was there in the seconds before he first saw his gray splodge of a baby on the sonographer’s screen.
It was there today as he plunged his right hand into his pocket and fingered the worn corners of the business card, the details of which he knew by heart.
Jacob really hated journalists, almost as much as the one person he hated above all else. Journalists had taken unbearable pain and printed it over and over again, thousands of times. Lies about Amy, accusations about her poor dad, photos of her in her school uniform, to be gazed upon and speculated about. Day after day. And then dropped when the next lost schoolgirl came along.