He gasps and disappears back under the bed and I am left standing there next to my older sister who is half sitting, half lying down, roughly propped up against the pillow, her long, curly hair falling over her shoulders in long, looping waves. She is almost a grown up, so much older than me. She knows lots of things, is cleverer than me. Far cleverer that I will ever be.
Kim makes to speak, a half sound escaping from her throat, then stops as a noise comes from behind us. From another room. The creak of floorboards, the slow shuffle of feet as they move along the landing, coming closer and closer.
Her head swings towards me, her voice like the buzz of an angry insect. ‘Now look what you’ve done! Get back to bed, Grace. Get back to bed, now!’
Behind me, the door opens, a voice rings out in the darkness, low, inquisitive. I turn, see the outline of a figure I recognise and walk towards it, arms outstretched…
I’m choking. I bend over, grip my stomach and press hard as if the act will help to push more air into my lungs. The wheezing from my chest echoes around the bedroom – Kim’s old bedroom. I am standing next to the place where her bed used to be, on the strip of floor next to the window that now contains a small, narrow bookcase. It’s dark, still. Unnerving. Nothing moving inside or out. I am in my pyjamas, my feet bare, hair askew.
The air in the room is too thin. This is what it must feel like to drown, to be unable to get enough oxygen in your body. I take a couple of seconds, try to regulate my breathing, to right myself and start thinking clearly. To bat away the fear and confusion, see things rationally.
At least I’m still in the house, not outside. Not in the garden. Not in the middle of the street. That’s got to be a positive. And yet I am disordered, muddled. Desperation wells up inside me. In the corner of the room is a chair. I drop down on it, lower my head to ease the tension, to try to think. My head throbs as I attempt to force myself back to that night.
I was here that evening, the evening Simon was skulking under the bed like a frightened rabbit. I remember it now. I had stumbled into Kim’s room after finding his bed empty. He was here, shoved in a small space in the darkness. Put there by Kim. He looked scared. She was angry. Why? Was it the night he disappeared? I don’t think so but can’t be sure.
Myriad thoughts, most of them too awful to consider, crowd my mind. I squash them, refusing to think about them. Kim may be many things but she would never harm me, nor would she ever hurt Simon. Never. Would she? So why was he in her room, being forced to hide under the bed? He was clearly terrified. She was clearly angry. I disturbed them, stumbled in on whatever it was that was taking place there that night.
My face heats up. I touch my cheeks, feel the cooling sturdiness of my palms as they press against my face. Why had I forgotten that it had happened? Why does my brain conceal these memories? Memories that are important. Too important to forget. And yet I had done just that. I let this one slip from my mind.
I was young, that’s why. A lot took place at that point in my life. I am allowed to let things slide. So much unhappiness from that time. So much unhappiness and misery. So much death.
I stand, turn on the light, look around, hoping more images from the past will filter in. Just a glimpse, a fleeting picture of the past. That’s all I ask for.
The images don’t come and I am not surprised. A boulder has filled my mind. A huge, jagged rock that blocks out the light, stops anything else from presenting itself. It remains there, the rock, a monstrous obstruction, refusing to budge.
My God, what is wrong with me? My past is controlling my future, often putting me in dangerous situations as I walk the streets at night, robbing me of all control. Sometimes in the house. Sometimes not.
I press the heel of my hands into my eyes, let out a trembling sigh. Maybe I’m going mad, having a delayed breakdown brought on by Warren’s death. Do people who are having a mental collapse know they are falling into a void? Do they have that sort of insight? Or perhaps this is all a manifestation of grief. Everybody copes in different ways, their light escaping through the cracks without them even knowing. Maybe this is my light seeping out, leaving me groping about in the dark. I lost my husband and moved house – two of the most stressful things, according to psychologists, that a person can endure, barring living through a war.
What was Kim doing with Simon? Is this why she refuses to talk about it? The world tilts around me at the thought of her being somehow involved with his disappearance. She can’t be. It’s nonsense, terrible and disloyal to even consider such a thing. For all her faults, she is still my sister and even though she drives me half insane, I cannot entertain such thoughts. Ever.
My head aches. Sleep will help. Undisturbed sleep, not wandering around the house in a somnambulistic haze, half awake, half asleep, my body on the move, never resting, never properly replenishing itself, moving continually until I am so tired, I could curl into a ball where I stand and sleep for a hundred years. I need proper rest. Solid, unbroken time out from all my worries.
I rub at my arms, my flesh prickling as a chill sets in. This can’t go on – this whole bloody mystery, the sleepwalking, my useless attempts at investigative work on a forty-year-old cold case. It’s exhausting. I am exhausted. Totally consumed by it.
As I climb back into bed, I think that perhaps I should stop. But if I do that, it will always plague me, that need to know. That need to find out what Kim was doing with Simon. Why she forced him to hide away. Where he went after that.
I sit up. Pain shoots up my spine, stopping at the base of my skull, thudding away like a metronome. Was it because of me? Was she hiding Simon from me because I scared him? Surely, his fear of me wasn’t that acute? And if so, why not take him in bed with her? Pushing him underneath the bed rather than soothing and reassuring him is downright cruel.
Dear God, I am tired of this. So very, very tired. I am going around in circles and getting nowhere. All I have to show for my efforts is a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach and the ache of sadness that I have carried around with me for as long as I can remember. It’s always been there, even in better times, just varying degrees of it. Sometimes in lighter pastel shades that are tinged with grey, other times in great strokes of black, thick and glutinous like tar. A permanent stain on my soul.
I did not hurt Simon.
Kim did not hurt Simon.
The words roll around my head until fatigue wins and I fall into a deep and weightless slumber.
It’s an instantaneous thing, a reflex, me reaching out and slapping at my phone. I just want to stop the noise. Did I set the alarm? I rarely do. It falls out of reach. I lean down, grapple with it, my fingers semi-dextrous, numbed by sleep. It slips out of my grasp, spins across the floor. The alarm continues, a shrill, piercing sound, rhythmic, pulsing. An assault on my ears.
My eyelids are glued together, still weighted with exhaustion. I haul myself out of bed, widen my eyes, grab at the phone, staring at the screen, a sudden realisation hitting me, a sinking sensation in my gut.
It’s not the alarm. It’s a call. 7 a.m. and somebody is ringing me. Not somebody. Mum’s care home. The name flashes up on the screen – Cherry Tree Care Home.
A wave of dread hits me. This is an important call. It’s early. It’s serious. I need to focus, to shake off the shackles of sleep and rouse myself. Prepare myself.
‘Hello?’ Even the simple act of speaking makes me nauseous, my stomach clenching, my muscles locking as I brace myself, waiting for the inevitable. Mum has passed away in her sleep. That’s what they will tell me. They tried to wake her this morning and found her unresponsive. It was peaceful, they will say. She looked happy. No signs that she struggled. It’s how we would all want to go, they will murmur softly, a note of sympathy and regret in their tone. Peacefully. No pain. For all of her troubles, in the end, she passed away quietly.
‘Grace, it’s Amanda. Sorry to call you so early, but we’re having a bit of a struggle here.’
‘A struggle?’ My head pounds. I wince, narrow my eyes against the solid slice of pain that travels up my neck, swirling around beneath my collarbone, streaking across the top of my skull.
‘I’m afraid so. We’ve had a bit of a torrid time here with your mum during the night.’
I sigh, try to stifle it, my exasperation, to not appear cold, uncaring. She’s not dead then. This isn’t going to be easy. I should have known. Her condition is only going to worsen, more sorrow and distress due to come our way. Dementia is a bastard. A cruel, hard bastard. Pernicious and unrelenting. Have we not suffered enough?
‘What’s happened?’ My voice is surprisingly light, deliberately so. I refuse to be dragged down by this, whatever this is. ‘What can I do to help?’
‘I called you as a last resort. We don’t want to get her sectioned but we’ve not been able to get hold of the duty emergency team and unless we can get a family member to calm her down, then we might not have any choice…’ Amanda’s voice trails off.
I can visualise her as she speaks, her eyes flitting about the room nervously, readying herself for my complaints about her ineffectiveness and ineptitude and a general lack of care. It happens. If I were to do such a thing, I wouldn’t be the first and I won’t be the last. No amount of money could ever convince me to do Amanda’s job.
‘I’ll come straight down,’ I say, shoving my feet into my slippers, trying to work out how long it will take me to get there. No breakfast. No shower. I don’t have time for those things. This sounds serious – must be serious to warrant such an early call.
‘If you could. We’d really appreciate it.’
A stone drops from the base of my belly to my feet. Amanda is the consummate professional, always capable of managing Mum and her ever-changing moods. Amanda has dealt with it all – every high and low, every situation imaginable. What is so bad that she is now unable to cope?
