CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Animals
People die alone. That’s what they do. Like animals, they wander off and die alone. People are like animals after all. They are more like animals than animals. It’s not always possible to catch them before they leave.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Shock
There’s a doorbell in my memory . It’s never stopped ringing. It cuts through the mist, playing notes I don’t understand. From a scale of no known key.
Then there’s me. Eighteen years old. Lying flat on my back - watching the ceiling – hypnotized by the residual activity up there. Shapes hopping, darting, buzzing in and out. Just like the picture you used to see on the screen when you fiddled about with the aerial on an old telly. I’m coming down from an acid trip. There’s some vague recollection about a place I should be. Work?
The ding dong of the doorbell comes in a little floating score. Minims and semibreves. I watch the notes climb up to the ceiling to join the dying throng. A tinny sounding rattle from somewhere far away becomes a trail of semiquavers floating upwards.
‘Anyone in there? ‘ A male voice echoes out. Then the rattle becomes rap rap rap. It’s the letterbox. I jump up, grab the ashtray . There’s half a joint left in there so I sling it in the bin. I scan the table and pocket a lump of hash. .
I can hear a key turning in the lock. It’s amplified, followed by the thud of the door swinging shut.
‘Anyone upstairs?’
The voice is familiar, Garner, the landlord.
I clock a bag of blues, on the floor , grab it and shove it underneath my jumper. I can hear Sherry stumbling up and clinking empties in the front room. I glance at the clock on the wall. 8.55am , I’m gonna be really late for work, but it seems not to matter. . As I get to the top of the stairs, Garner is staring up at me.
‘Police are here Stephanie. They need to talk to you.’
‘What ? The police? What for?
‘I don’t know. They’re outside.’ Shit.
‘Ok one minute…’ I dash back into the toilet and flush the blues and hash. A couple of blues remain floating in the bowl so I grab a wad of toilet paper and shove it down , then flush again. A wave of panic hits me. They are gonna know I’ve been tripping.
When I get downstairs there are two uniformed officers, a man and a woman, standing in the doorway. The female officer speaks.
Miss Wheeler?
‘Yeh’.
There’s a silence . It seems to stretch out too far. I can’t place her expression.
‘ ...I am sorry to have to inform you that we have some bad news’. More silence. She looks down at her shoes, then up again.
‘It’s about your brother Riley.’
‘What do you mean? What’s wrong?
‘I am afraid we have to tell you that he has been found dead’.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Being heard
Although I could see the words on the family’s statement in my hands, it weren’t till I heard them out loud that this warm and tingly sensation got born in my guts.
‘….. we feel let down by the hospital. We don’t believe we’re being told everything. We believe there has been a cover up …’
Cover up. Let down. So they had been thinking along those lines. Maybe Lottie did take note of that text I sent, getting on for a year ago. The one where I clued her up on what wacko places do when they are shitting themselves that a finger might point their way. Their habit of coming up with barefaced lies. How the staff back each other up and ditch the truth so they’re all lilly fucking pure white. How if it’s their word against a diagnosed nutter, the nutter is by definition, nuts, and therefore has got it wrong. Leaves them in the clear, every time.
Problem with this is that there’s another way of defining things which is permananetly shoved under the carpet. A diagnosis is by definition a diagnosis. It’s never a fact.
When Radford screwed up and didn’t let Dolly’s parents know their daughter was in hospital, dying, they had to think of a get out clause. Had to come up with some convincing bollocks as to why they never contacted her mum or dad. They were right on it, with the first crap that came into their heads.
Casey told us Dolly had no relationship with her mother.
That shifted it in my direction. Layla already blamed me for the death and then there was that on top.
She’s seen through that smokescreen now though. So it’s one less thing for me to bother about. Their family statement makes it clear who she blames now.
They knew Dolly. And they knew enough to know that what they’ve been told didn’t add up.
After the family’s statement, mine was next. I wrote it not long after Dolly died, so I was a bit hazy on the details. There was the last time I saw her. On 15th December 2014. The baggy clothes to cover up the pounds she’d shifted. You couldn’t help but notice though. I knew straight off she was anorexic again. She kept saying about not wanting to go in the kitchen with the other girls. She was getting abuse from other patients coz she was a Wiccan. Religious intolerance she called it. She’d been punched and kicked by one girl and the staff weren’t interested. Then there was the last phone conversation. How I opened up my gob like a moron, asking her if she’d eaten. The stupid texts. Except the one I left out of my statement. The last one. From her. A gigantic, flashing beacon which only a total muppet would not have got, loud and clear. I must be a really cold, callous bastard.
I’m better at deciphering dog signals than human ones. When I meet a set of paws in the street, I know the suicidal ones straight off. They’re always on a tight leash. They never stop, or sniff or pull. Like Oatley. I saw him on the narrow path over the bridge the other day. He’s never off his lead. He’s pretty repressed down to that. When his owner clocked that there was no room to pass me and Beany easily, she reversed Oatley and straightened him up like she was parking a flippin car.
‘Hi how are you?’
‘ uhh Great ……… except I’ve just been rolling around on the floor gnashing my teeth.’
‘Oh good.’
‘No its … not really .. .. you know .. its .. you know like some people get mental health problems … .’ She stiffened into a perfectly blank slate.
‘Okay. Come on Oatley.’ She tugged at his lead. Oatley’s snout was stuck in a patch of turf. She raised herself up onto her toes and down again and stared at her white and gold sandles
.I had forgotten the so called modern ‘awareness’ is only online and has sod all to do with acceptance. People want to talk about mental health. They don’t want it living next door.
As it goes, I never used to say this ‘how are you shit’, not when I was a junky. It weren’t in the street bible. It was just. Can you do us one brown, two whites. Sweet mate, cheers. But I made this huge effort to re-learn the basics at around forty plus. There was so much I hadn’t got a scooby on. Stupid things. Like when I was in a posh cafe one day , not long after I’d cleaned up and I got this coffee which had the filter on top of the actual cup. I didn’t know what I was supposed to do with it. Had to ask the waitress. She gave me this look like she didn’t know whether to laugh or roll her eyes. I guess I asked for that one.
Most times though, if I try and open a conversation, on the street. I get this blank look, they don’t hear, they don’t need to.
Dolly heard. When we kissed goodbye for the last time ever, it was on Plymouth station concourse. I got this impulse to get on the train with her. I should have, could have, would have.
I’m gonna visit the past one day. It’s a shit hot place. One of those places that you need to visit over and over, coz each time you find sparkling gems that you must have missed before. Shiny new avenues, all leading in one direction . And its always the right one.
