The Half Sister Page 28

‘You’ve got no history there then?’

  ‘None, as far as I know.’

  ‘The duty sergeant reported that he had a lot to say for himself when he was taken in, shouting about this, that and the other that had happened in the past, but don’t worry, Sir Edmund, you shouldn’t hear another word out of him. Oh, and the DV team reported that all was well with the lad at that time although they had no direct contact.’ He double-checked. ‘That’s not best practice, to be honest. They should actually speak to the kids if there’s been a domestic. Talking of which, can we try a chat now?’

  The conversation, if you can call it that, went like this.

  ‘We’ve been looking at the computer, Michael. Did you use it when Edmund was away?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Do you know why there are all these searches about prisoners?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Can you tell us more?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Were you afraid while your uncle was away?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What were you afraid of?’

  Shrug.

  ‘Were you afraid of Diana?’ asked Edmund.

  ‘We try not to ask leading questions, sir.’

  Mikey looked at Edmund before he replied. ‘Yes,’ he said as he left, dragging the dog behind him.

  The police offered the opinion that he appeared to be a very unhappy lad, for sure, bottling everything up. As if to prove the point, Mikey appeared on the other side of the study window, between the glass and the dry and flowerless branches of the light-starved side of the wisteria. It was difficult to disagree with the police’s conclusion that something pretty disturbing went on while Edmund was away, and given the state of Mikey’s room, not to mention the incriminating evidence on the computer, it seemed likely that Diana had indeed locked him up at some stage, for an unknown length of time. The best thing to do in the circumstances was to wait and see if there was any improvement to Diana’s condition in the hope that she herself could provide some answers.

  Just before they left, the policewoman spoke with Mikey directly.

  ‘You know that man who came to visit when you were here alone with your aunty?’

  Mikey nodded energetically.

  ‘I know you were very scared because the policemen who came said you were hiding upstairs and too upset to come down. I want you to know that the bad man is not allowed to come here ever again and he’s not allowed talk to you. That’s the law, the judge told him. If he tries to get in touch, even on the internet, you must tell your uncle immediately and we’ll deal with him.’

  Bursting into tears, Mikey ran back inside; they could hear him sobbing from where they stood awkwardly on the drive. The policewoman opened the car door. ‘That’ll be relief,’ she said.

  Solomon. Valerie told Diana something about his being Mikey’s unofficial guardian angel, that if anything happened to her, he’d always be there for the boy. But he hadn’t shown that much interest, had he? Even if he was in prison he could have written or something.

  Later, when Edmund tucks Mikey up in bed, he asks if he can give him a hug. His pyjamas hang loose like a jacket on a scarecrow, he has lost weight in the last few weeks. Abused. Victim. These are words Edmund is sick and tired of hearing on the news. He thought half the stories were probably made up to get attention and the other half were blown out of all proportion, and on top of that there was often some absentee father who appeared out of the blue, mourning and accusatory, and Edmund would shout at the TV screen, if you loved him that much, why didn’t you stick around to look after him? Yet Solomon had stuck around apparently. The social worker’s words return to him: ‘Solomon would have made a wonderful father.’ He imagined him searching, finding Wynhope, walking up the drive between the heavy summer oaks. A solitary black man. Edmund sees him as a man who came to reclaim what was rightfully his, and what truth was it he discovered when he finally got here? No one will pay attention to Solomon’s version of events; he has been truly gagged and bound. It is all too complicated to say anything to the boy, so Edmund decides to let bygones be bygones. Besides, what would be the use of a criminal for a father, in and out of prison all the time?

  The police visit drops poison into the well from which Edmund has been sustaining whatever love he has left for Diana. Now when he visits he has to reconcile the abuser with the wife, the hands that locked the child in with the hands that sometimes helped him be a man again, the hands which he had taken such care to bathe. When he drives home, let her live, let her die beats in time with the windscreen wipers until he is so mesmerised he has to pull over. He turns off the engine. Let her die. As a child, he was never able to admit to anyone that sometimes all he ever wanted was for his mother to die and for the waiting to be over. A man hangs out of the passenger side of a scaffolding lorry and calls him a wanker for blocking the bus lane; he sees an old woman struggling to put out the rubbish.

  It was Grace’s idea that letting Mikey visit the hospital might relieve some of his anxiety. She didn’t know the half of it and Edmund didn’t intend to tell her, but Mikey’s insistence won the day. Now Edmund is full of doubts as to the wisdom of that decision. The head bandages are off and a line of stitches mark where her skull has been prised apart for the operation. Even if you haven’t seen Frankenstein, it is a shocking sight.

  ‘You needn’t come all the way to her bed, if you don’t want to,’ Edmund told him, but now they’re here, Mikey wants to know everything. Transfixed by the inert body of his aunt, the boy studies every artificially enhanced breath, registers every monotonous bleep of the machines. Of course, the last time he saw her he must have thought she was dead or dying; wasn’t there something about a blanket and a cup of water? Perhaps his presence will trigger some visible response in Diana. Are her lips moving? Whatever the medical facts, it is undeniable that the room changes, something between the hypervigilant child and the comatose body on the bed, as if Mikey, like Doctor Frankenstein, might become the monster maker and spark her into life, or that in some as yet unwritten script, Diana’s hand might reach out and unplug the boy.

  At the window, Edmund peers through the blinds at the ambulances queuing outside A&E. Beneath them ventilation shafts are sucking the germs out of the wards and pumping them back out into the low grey sky, round and round, round and round. Beyond the hospital is the rain-streaked concrete and glass of the 1960s town centre; the crane brought in to rebuild the multi-storey car park is still there, a solitary skeleton of a prehistoric bird bent over the civilisation which succeeded him. Strung across the dual carriageway, the banner which declares the town open for business is torn at one end and flapping. Is it for this she is clinging to life?

  Mikey joins him at the window and pulls on the nylon cords.

  ‘I don’t know if we’re meant to open the blinds,’ says Edmund.

  ‘Maybe they keep them shut for a reason.’

  Returning to the bed, Mikey pinches Diana’s wrist, picks up her hand, drops it, picks it up again, drops it, eyeing the monitors like a scientist in his laboratory. Resisting the urge to stop him, Edmund tells himself it is natural for a child to want to make sense of this living death, most nine-year-olds would be fixated with the technology, but he also feels profoundly uneasy, witness to some communication he cannot understand, and he dare not ask for a translation for fear of what it might tell him.

  ‘We’ll be going now. I’ll come again the day after tomorrow. Mikey will come again one day, won’t you, Mikey?’

  ‘Yes,’ says Mikey.

  ‘Did you hear that, Di? Mikey’s talking. That’s something, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes.’ Mikey repeats as he skips away. ‘Yes, yes, yes.’

  By the nursing station, he finds a whiteboard and a marker.

  ‘Don’t scribble on there,’ says Edmund. ‘It’s got important information on it for the nurses.’

  A young doctor grins and tells Mikey to carry on, if he has something important to say.

  When i
s Diana going to start talking.

  The boy reads over what he has written then adds the question mark.

  When is Diana going to start talking?

  Edmund understands: if Diana can talk, then she can confess. As for the doctor, her apology that they do not know the answer to the question is obviously unsatisfactory and when she adds that Diana might not be able to talk but there are other ways to communicate, and then tells the miraculous story of a very famous man who wrote a whole book just by blinking, Mikey rubs out the message with his sleeve and heads for the exit.

  ‘My question,’ says Edmund as they get back in the car, ‘is when are you going to start talking?’

  ‘Now,’ says Mikey and sits in silence the whole way home.

  It isn’t a lie. There is a steady increase in a number of monosyllabic words Mikey chooses to use. Yes and no, as before, but now a lot of questions, as if he is a toddler again. When? Who? Where? What? And most often, why? When he thinks no one is listening, he speaks to the dog or to the bronze boy or to his plastic gorilla, at length and in sentences. But even though he now insists on accompanying Edmund to the hospital every time he goes, he never again talks in front of Diana. Edmund quite likes having his company on these visits. They develop a silly little routine of stopping for a drink and a pastry at the coffee shop and then treading the line painted on the hospital floor like tightrope walkers, one foot in front of the other and arms out wide, all the way back to the other side.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  The radio is a blessing. Edmund is grateful for anything which serves as a distraction on the journey.

  ‘Was that Elvis?’ asks Mikey.

  ‘No. Cliff Richard.’

  ‘What woman is he singing about?’

  ‘No woman in particular,’ says Edmund slowing down, looking for the turning to the school.

  ‘He is. He says she’s the devil.’

  ‘Oh for goodness’ sake.’ Edmund turns off the radio. ‘Five minutes and we’ll be there.’ But the rest of the journey takes place to the soundtrack of Mikey’s personal version of the iconic hit single and Edmund wishes he’d never heard it again in the first place, songs like that stay in your head whether you want them to or not.

  Edmund doesn’t know who is more nervous, him or Mikey, but he is glad he spoke to the local authority and asked for help. He never did think that Diana’s policy of keeping all professionals at arm’s length was a sensible one, although he can see now she had her reasons. School is necessary for all sorts of reasons, not least the fact that, although Grace is a godsend, he does need to get some work done and find his way back to the office and everyday life.

  ‘Westerhaven. Healing. Learning. Thriving.’ They have arrived.

  In terms of architecture, this may be a school for children with emotional and mental health problems, but it looks remarkably like Wynhope. Even so, he can’t leave the 4x4 in front of the pillared porch, so Edward follows signs to the visitors’ parking. Fire assembly point signs are erected at the entrance to what must have been the old kitchen garden, keypads are bolted on the doors to the converted barns, and the windows in the main house looking out on the playing fields have neither curtains nor shutters and look curiously ashamed of themselves. Edmund’s instinct that it is a terrible thing to do to a listed house is confirmed as they wait in a reception area where history and character and art and style and beauty are all trumped by function: plastic chairs are pushed up against the oak panelling, decorative floor tiles covered by carpet designed for ‘high traffic areas’. In the brochure it recounts how the house was handed over to a charity by the last heir, who himself had a troubled childhood. A bell interrupts Edmund’s uncomfortable thoughts about the current state of his will and the place comes to life like a show. Children thunder down the grand staircase, others bundle in from the wings, bringing with them fresh air and basketballs, a tone-deaf band strikes up to their left in what must have once been the drawing room. Sound. Movement. Energy. Essential components of what you might call life.

  ‘It’s a bit like home,’ he whispers to Mikey who fidgets beside him.

  ‘Yes and no, yes and no.’ Mikey mutters the mantra as he touches everything around him, the visitors’ book, the exit button, the fire alarm.

  Working through the home life questionnaire, Edmund wants to lie, but the truth is it is a relief to tick boxes and write comments which lay bare in plain English what a strange boy he has inherited.

  Self harm? Yes. He circles ligatures and head banging, hesitates over cutting. There is a recently healed scar across Mikey’s finger which he refuses to explain.

  Isolative? Yes. Spends hours sitting in a cardboard box (but can be sociable, cuddles up on the sofa, loves fishing with me, holds hands on the way home, adores the dog).

  Uncommunicative? He is going to put no – after all Mikey is starting to talk – but the man on the Clapham omnibus would certainly not consider a few monosyllabic words and a whiteboard the living language of a healthy tribe. Yes.

  Physically aggressive? Yes. Kicks people and property (but doesn’t bite, much, any longer).

  Stealing? No. (There was the thing with keys, but that seems to have stopped.)

  Verbally aggressive? No. Unless you include silence. You should include silence.

  ‘I know it sounds silly’ – Edmund is handing over the form – ‘but this doesn’t feel like Michael to me. He’s had some terrible things to cope with.’ Will he be forced to tell them everything? Not now. ‘Most of the time, he’s fine with me.’

  ‘It was mainly with your wife then, before her accident . . .’

  On the guided tour, Westerhaven reminds him of his prep school but without the price tag, the parents and the pressure that went with it. He doesn’t share this thought with the headteacher who undoubtedly has already identified him as an idle, rich bastard.

  ‘What do you think, Michael?’ asks the head at the end of the tour. ‘Do you think you could give it a try?’

  ‘Yes and no.’

  ‘Is that more yes than no?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Good.’

  When Mikey starts going to school, it is as if there is a signpost in the house pointing in the direction of normality and the road ahead looks passable. Grace irons Edmund’s shirts and Mikey’s shorts. Edmund loads his laptop into his case, Mikey packs his school bag. Every morning Edmund tells Mikey to be good at school and Mikey tells Monty to be good while he’s gone. Edmund doesn’t achieve so much, but Mikey comes back with gold stars and certificates; it turns out the problem child is not only good at things, he can also be very good.

  ‘I did singing.’

  Edmund has learned not to overreact. ‘Are you any good?’ he jokes.

  ‘Yes.’

  Once he settles, the school say he is ready to start therapy again.

  Again. ‘Do you remember the name of the therapist you used to see on Thursday mornings? I can’t find it anywhere,’ Edmund asks Mikey.

  That inscrutable look.

  Edmund persists. ‘You went to a therapist in Twycombe on Thursday mornings with Diana, remember?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘No what? You don’t remember? You never went?’

  ‘Never.’

  ‘Don’t be silly. I know you went with Diana in the car. Where did you go if you didn’t go to counselling?’

  ‘To the library.’

  Sometimes Edmund wonders where he was living for the past six months, although in truth he knows the answer: he was hiding, buried away in London, turning up at meetings where he wasn’t really needed, long lunches at the club, streaming videos at the flat having ‘missed the last train’, anywhere but with Diana at Wynhope. He knew a long time ago that Diana had not made good on her promise to get help for herself – he let sleeping dogs lie on that one – but to deliberately deceive him about Mikey’s therapy as well? She had more than enough reasons to be paranoid about a child trusting a professional. It isn’t just the thought
of what she did to Mikey that provokes a fierce anger in him, it is the way he himself has been given the fool’s lines to learn. Hours he spends in the yard when Mikey is at school, splitting wood, letting the axe fall on the splintering logs with a terrible force, stopping only when he can trust himself to be tired; it is what he does when he’s not in the City and it is what he does when he should be visiting Diana.

  When Edmund’s mother was in hospital, he was not allowed to see her. His father drove there and back every day, followed by door-slamming homecomings and whisky-sodden evenings. He could spend time with Mummy when she came home, they lied, but when she came home, on New Year’s Day, they sent the wrong lady by mistake. They had shrunk her, sucked away her cheeks and shaved her head, painted her face and dried it out, green and grey like her alligator shoes, and it was hard for him to touch her in the way he used to. And the solution after her death? Boarding school. Naturally. On his last night at home, he hid on the landing, looking down between the banisters onto the balding heads of unfamiliar grown-ups in the hall, and eavesdropped.

  ‘It must be awful for him, having a son who’s the spitting image of his dead wife.’

  What was awful about that? The promise that the two of them were in it together, that he would be as much a comfort to his father as his father would be to him, that turned out to be an eggshell April Fool, tap it and it splits into emptiness. Out of sight, out of mind. Five days late for the start of term he returned to school. No hook left in the hall for his outdoor coat and the trials for the Under 11s over and done with, he became the boy who took the oranges out at half-time. For the first time for a long time, Edmund allows himself the thought that his father’s grand gesture was far from being a selfless act.

  When he does force himself into the Intensive Care Unit, Edmund sits at Diana’s bedside scratching constantly at the scab of their relationship. Other relatives tell him how the ones they love are still there, just locked away for a while, but when he slides the grille to one side, he has no idea who it is behind the cell door. Another questionnaire is given to him by the speech therapist; this time it’s all about Diana. It seems he is required to spend his life summing up people with yes and no and the numbers one to five. Apparently, it helps to have a record of what the patient was like before the accident so they can have meaningful communication, if and when that becomes appropriate. Edmund couldn’t agree with them more, but their questions are more mundane than what he has in mind. Favourite TV programmes? Pets? Car? Work? Friends? People often get together when they are young, like him and Marguerite for instance. You have time to create your own shared footpaths of the mind, but God knows before he and Diana even met they both had years of mud tracks stamped across the wasteland, thick with brambles and nettles, and neither of them ever really wanted to retrace their steps or share the view. But even on this short walk they have undertaken together, he has been losing sight of her for a long time, since the earthquake anyway, catching glimpses of her round the next corner or loitering behind in the valley – and now she is nowhere to be seen. The other option, of course, is that he can’t find her because he doesn’t want to. The path is too narrow for two, so why should he walk hand in hand with a woman who locks children in their rooms and researches how long it will take before they try to kill themselves? Surreptitiously he leaves the form blank on the end of the bed; they’ll probably assume he is too distressed to bring himself to complete it.