Cath Staincliffe - Blink of an Eye

The doctor says, ‘And how are you in yourself?’

‘Not so bad,’ I lie.

In myself I am a total fuck-up.

Mum brings me tea and toast if I’m not up in the morning. She tries to talk to me, invites me to go shopping or offers to treat me to a haircut. She goes on and on, like a fish on a hook, flapping this way and that until I want to push her out of the room. Push her down the stairs. And then I feel so horrible for even thinking like that.

The only escape is sleep, but I can’t sleep enough, not as much as I want to. I wake too early, still tired, when the house is cold, and I lie there trying to force myself back under, but my mind won’t be quiet. Or I go to bed and lie awake for hours, the tension setting in my arms and back like concrete, my skin itching, the sheets mashed up as I toss and turn. I did try listening to music on my iPod, but so much of it makes me cry.

I miss Alex. It was the right thing to do: why should he be saddled with me after all that has happened? Besides, it could have tainted his reputation at work, too, couldn’t it? Like when we first got together and I wanted to put him on my Facebook page. He was okay with that but he said if there was anything dodgy there like drunken pictures or stuff about drugs it’d be better to take it down because he has to be squeaky clean if he wants to be a solicitor. It’s like those teachers who put totally inappropriate stuff up there and then their kids at school find it and they end up being disciplined or sacked or whatever. Alex needn’t have worried – I’d nothing scandalous on there. But if we’d stayed together? Status: it’s complicated – partner in prison:-(

Carmel

Naomi’s behaviour was getting worse and I was more and more worried. I tried to broach it with her again. ‘Evie’s given me a number, someone you can talk to.’

‘Mum…’ she began to object.

‘Try it, please, one session. If it’s crap, you don’t have to go back.’

‘No,’ she said. There were tears standing in her eyes, and her hand shook as she picked up her phone.

‘What are you frightened of?’ I asked her.

‘I don’t want to talk about it,’ she shouted and walked out. I don’t know if she meant she didn’t want to explain her refusal to me – or that she didn’t want to talk to a therapist about her feelings.

On the Saturday night, the shop alarm went off. There were sporadic outbursts of attempted break-ins; sometimes Phil’d be called out three times in a week, then things would calm down.

I always hated it when the call came. Worrying about him, what might happen if the burglars were still there. If he might be ambushed and forced to let them into the shop.

I lay awake, my mind circulating round our troubles, rolling them over in my mind like a millstone, a great lump of granite, dense, unyielding. Then I heard the sound of the car and him coming into the house. In our room, he shucked his clothes off in the dark.

‘Hi,’ I said quietly. ‘What was it?’

I heard him expel air, then a hesitation that made my senses prick up. ‘Phil?’ I saw the security grilles, the windows smashed, the walls bare, stripped of guitars and saxophones and clarinets.

He grunted. ‘They’d kicked the shutters enough to trigger the alarm, bent one corner.’

‘They didn’t get in?’

‘No. Graffiti, red aerosol.’

‘Great. I suppose you could paint the lot red. Would it still roll up?’

He didn’t answer. The air in the room felt heavy, as if a storm was coming and the pressure had surged. I switched on my bedside light. He winced in the glare, stretched his neck as though trying to ease the exhaustion. He said in a tired voice, ‘They’d written: Guilty – rot in hell. ’

I was half a beat, half a breath behind. Naomi, a message about Naomi; someone had made the connection between Naomi Baxter, charged with causing the death of Lily Vasey, and Baxter’s the shop.

‘Oh, Phil.’

He held out his hands. ‘What can we do?’ Climbed into bed.

The fallout was pervading everything, corrupting everything. Even the shop, a place I still thought of as a haven, a little nursery of creativity, now sullied and made dirty by association.

Phil and I made regular visits to Suzanne and Ollie, even though her moralizing stance was so hard to take. She was nearing the end of her maternity leave but faced her return to work with equanimity. They’d been viewing nurseries and interviewing nannies and I was shocked when she told us how much they’d have to pay for either. Wouldn’t a childminder be cheaper and just as good?

‘No,’ Suzanne set me straight, ‘the nurseries are better, more structure. Though if we went for a nanny we could expect her to do a little light housework too.’

‘A little light housework?’ Phil’s lips twitched.

‘Like your dad does?’ I said.

A moment’s levity. After a lurch of guilt, I realized it was okay, it was healthy. Whatever happened to Naomi, we had to function, to stick together and not crumble. And perhaps a little bit of normal banter was a salve for our wounds.

Naomi

It’s hard to keep warm. I’ve moved my bed up to the radiator, and when it’s on, I can lie there with my back and bum pressed up against it and my skin gets hot, but it never reaches the cold, shivery core deep inside.

‘Just go up to the shops,’ she says, ‘or round the park. Exercise will help, or I’ll drive you to the gym, if you like.’

I can’t face the gym.

‘You need to get out.’ She is really pushy.

‘I’m fine.’

‘You’re not. Are you frightened of going out?’

She thinks I’m becoming agoraphobic. ‘No,’ I tell her quickly, so then I sort of have to prove it. ‘I’ll go to the park,’ I say. ‘Satisfied?’

She gives me a cross look. I can tell she’d like to shout at me for being awkward, but she holds back. ‘I can come with you if you like,’ she says.

I shake my head.

It’s horrible outside. The sky’s a shitty grey and there’s a wind blowing and it’s spitting rain and there’s dog shit on the pavement. At least I don’t see anyone I know, and the old man I pass ignores me. At the park the ducks are all noisy, swiping at each other with their beaks and squawking. The pond has scum on top and by the railings some crows are pecking at a piece of meat. Who feeds meat to ducks? Then as I get closer the crows fly up, flapping their wings, making me start, and I see it’s a cat, torn apart, its guts like revolting sausages and its teeth bared so it looks like it’s yowling. Sickening.

I go straight home, but I wait in the garden for a while so Mum will assume I’ve been out longer.

I can’t stop thinking about the cat. It’s like I was meant to find it. A message for me.

Carmel

My mother sits off to one side in the lounge, away from the row of high-backed chairs, as she no longer watches television and her interaction with the other residents and staff is minimal.

In the early days we used to visit in her bedroom and have some privacy, but as her mobility deteriorated along with her personality, I gave up on that. The nurses use medication to buffer her agitation and the accompanying aggression. It makes her sleepy. Now and again there’ll be flashes of lucidity of a sort, when she’ll wake and speak; nothing illuminating, though, more like the static of a dicky fluorescent strip light than a ray of sunshine, usually accompanied by a nasty retort.

I pulled a chair up to sit beside her and spoke in a low voice. There was nothing wrong with her hearing. ‘Hello, it’s Carmel, your daughter, Carmel.’ I reached out and put my hand on hers. At eighty-one, her hands were lined but not deeply wrinkled, not shrivelled like those of the oldest residents.