‘I knew you’d be here.’ Shortie sticks her head out the window.
She climbs out onto the turret roof, takes my hand. She’s chewed her nails off. Her fingers are stubby and raw. She tries tae put her arm around me. I’m rocking, just enough to hold the shrinking back.
Down in the car park, the resuscitation equipment is brought out. They put it away and the ambulance waits with its back doors open. One of the medic guys is talking to Joan. He smiles and pats her on the arm. The ambulance looks like some square metal ladybird — throwing its wings right back, ready to fly away.
Shortie clenches and unclenches her fist. Her jaw is white and tight. That lump in my throat is so big I cannae breathe. I’m wheezy. There’s a knot in my gut that’s been there how many years? It’s moving up as well. I lean forward and retch. I retch and retch, but it’s just liquid. Shortie holds my hair.
Police arrive and the next staff team drive down in their cars. There’ll be a changeover now. Today’s team will inform the relief staff of Isla’s death. Her social worker will arrive soon. They will write down words on files. Isla will lay in the morgue on her own and we will not be allowed to go and hold her hand.
28
SHORTIE COMES BACK from the shop with a wee bottle of Bacardi.
My mouth tastes of bile. I accept the bottle and drink half of it straight.
‘This is gonnae break Tash’s heart when she comes back,’ she says firmly.
Dinnae say anything, not one word. Shortie begins to cry. We sit up here, away from everyone — lunch comes and goes. Eventually we smell dinner cooking. Cars are pulling in and leaving downstairs. More police arrive, then the lab woman.
‘That’s the one that done my swabs.’
‘They always call her in,’ Shortie says.
Sun pulls itself across the fields. Stars come out and we throw our crisps at the wood pigeons nestling in the eaves. They’re right fat bastards. Noisy as well. I can recognise three new birds on sight. The small tawny owl, starlings and a kestrel. The kestrel’s out just now. It hovers over the farmer’s field, then swoops.
Shortie climbs back in the window and disappears down the turret. I stand up on the edge of the ledge and look down. That’s all it takes — just one step forward.
‘Here, Anais, take this.’ She re-emerges, panting, and shoves her duvet out the window.
I take it off her and wait until she climbs back out, then I wrap it around the two of us like a wee nest tae snuggle in. She giggles.
‘What?’
‘We’re like two fucking chicks, waiting for somebody tae come along and feed us.’ She grins, then she’s crying again and I hold her in as close as I can.
The staff are shouting for us outside. Angus has not told them that we keep escaping up here. He’s a good guy, one of the best I’ve met in care. Downstairs Brian is slinking out the front door, then he’s away — running over the fields.
‘What’s that?’ Shortie’s looking out.
‘What?’
‘Listen.’
I listen. It’s a hoot, just faint, then another. Britney glides across the fields, her white-tipped wings are glowing in the moonlight. The staff are still shouting and the wind is picking up.
‘We better go back in,’ Shortie says.
It’s even more baltic in the turret — I touch the stone wall and it’s like going back in time, like this building has always been here and it doesnae care. It’s freezing: our breath curls out, wisps like ghosts, curling away from us. We stand staring at them for a second, then Shortie leans forward and kisses me on the mouth, and I kiss her back. We scuff downstairs holding hands.
In the main room the blue light’s already on, and the night-nurse is on duty.
‘Up to your rooms then, girls, it’s past bedtime,’ she says.
We follow her up the stairs, and Shortie’s crying again. We walk past Tash’s bedroom door, then Isla’s. Someone has stripped Isla’s bed. Her posters are still up on the walls, though.
We don’t want to let go of each other’s hand, we just stand at my bedroom door and the night-nurse looks at us, then she has a quick scan downstairs.
‘Just for tonight, until things settle down,’ she says, and she ushers us both into my room and pulls the door almost closed behind us.
I give Shortie an old T-shirt — she hauls it on and curls up at the bottom of my bed like a wee cat.
There’s a spider with a steel web; it weaves quickly, and Isla is in the middle — stuck. Each steel wire slices her. The spider casts out more and more threads of steel in an intricate pattern. I want to kill the spider, but she’s got my head. She rubs her legs together ready tae spin my body further in. She will cocoon me; my legs are still twitching, but soon they will be paralysed.
I wake — drenched, my heart batters off my chest. Shrinking. Shrinking. Shrinking. I’m a wee fucking pinprick.
The curtains sway to and fro on the wall. I am still falling and the floor is swaying — everything is swaying, and this isnae a flashback, it’s the other side. The veil’s getting thinner. Every year it gets less hidden, that other world — it’s always there, waiting, until eventually we see it.
There’s patterns all over my walls, Victorian swirls with delicate bars across them. Tash and Isla are in there — wrapped in each other’s arms. Isla reaches out from the wall. She wants me to know that this pain is good, that I have to feel it.
Peel my top off and push my legs down and hit something soft. It’s Shortie; her chest rises and falls. She’s so wee, and her skinhead is growing in — her fringe is all tufted up. I brush it back. Her forehead is hot and her skin is clammy. She took some of Pat’s Valium earlier, to stop her shaking.
There’s a lump in my throat, a pressure pushing up, that’s been there for how many years? Sobs begin in my whole body, spasms head-tae-toe. I clamp my hands over my mouth so I dinnae wake Shortie. My mouth is wide open, and I’m crying so hard I begin to silently retch. Hours pass. The sun comes up. I cannae see. My face is swollen and I cannae stop sobbing. Shortie’s still asleep. I nudge her. Nothing.
‘Are you asleep?’
I’m shrinking to a tiny pinprick, I’m so wee that I can hardly hear my voice as it says something I have never, ever heard it say.
‘I just want my mum.’
Shortie bolts up. Just like that. Like she’s waited there quiet all fucking night, knowing I had to say something and I’d never fucking say it if anyone else was there to hear it. She knows just like I do, this is the only time in my entire life that I will say those words out loud.
‘It’s okay,’ she says, pulling me in close and holding me, while I sob.
29
‘WHY DOES YOUR room smell of vanilla?’ Joan asks me.
‘I don’t know.’
‘Is it a perfume?’
‘Probably.’
‘You took vanilla essence from the kitchen, didn’t you?’
‘Nope.’
Joan is jittery — they cannae get me to speak half the time lately, but she knows I want the rest of my clothing allowance, so now she’s pushing me for conversation. She’s not fucking stupid. I need more cash, I’m getting out. I am not leaving here in a body bag, not here, not John Kay’s. Not anywhere.
If I can get the rest of my clothing allowance then I’ll have three hundred quid. Click, click, click. Jay wants me to go out there in about an hour; we can get totally and utterly fucked up. I’ve already started on Pat’s wraps.