White Death (6 page)

April 2007

‘Look, I’m sorry, Trish, I just don’t know what more we can do,’ said Virginia Lyons as they came out from morning surgery after getting the results from the skin clinic. ‘The specialist agrees with the other doctors. He says it’s something called vitiligo. It’s nothing serious and it’ll go away in its own good time. Unfortunately, there’s nothing they can do to speed it up so you’ll just have to persevere until it does. I know you hate it, sweetie, but hang on in there, huh? Let’s just be grateful it isn’t something more serious.’

‘You don’t know what it’s like,’ mumbled Trish.

Virginia looked at her daughter with a lump in her throat. She hated seeing her so unhappy. ‘I could write and ask Miss Neilson if you could be excused gym classes until it clears up?’

Trish nodded.

‘When’s your next class?’

‘Tomorrow.’

‘I’ll do it tonight. You can take the letter with you in the morning.’

Virginia came home next evening to find Trish sitting at the kitchen table in tears. Her shoulders were heaving, her head resting on folded arms. Wrapping her arms round her made matters worse for a few moments until cuddles and soothing words finally did their job and she was able to get some sense from her daughter.

‘They made me do gym.’

‘What?’ exclaimed Virginia. ‘But what about the letter I gave you?’

‘Miss Neilson said there was nothing physically wrong with me so I’d need a letter from a doctor before I could be excused. Everyone was laughing at me.’

‘Give me strength,’ murmured Virginia, entertaining notions of flattening Miss Neilson with a hockey stick. ‘All right,’ she said. ‘If it’s a letter from a doctor they want, a letter from a doctor is what they’ll get. I’ll go round to the surgery first thing in the morning. When’s your next gym class?’

‘Friday.’

‘Plenty of time.’

‘Frankly, Mrs Lyons, I’m inclined to agree with the school. There is no physical reason why your daughter shouldn’t take part in gym classes,’ said James Gault in response to Virginia’s request. ‘I’m very reluctant to take sides in this sort of thing.’

Virginia took a deep breath. ‘It’s not really a physical reason we’re discussing here, Doctor.’

‘Ah, we’re moving into the realms of popular psychiatry, are we? Underlying psychological issues and all that?’

‘No, we are bloody not,’ replied Virginia, her patience coming to an abrupt end. ‘We are attempting to move into the realms of common sense but obviously failing. Kids don’t see things the way adults do.’

Gault seemed shaken at the outburst. He paled and swallowed before digging in and saying, ‘I have no intention of referring your daughter to a child psychiatrist over a little bit of skin discolouration.’

‘But that’s the whole point. Trish doesn’t see it as
a little bit of skin discolouration
. It’s making her whole life a misery. I’m not asking you to refer her anywhere. I’m asking you to write a simple bloody letter which anyone with a modicum of imagination would understand the need for … but not, apparently, you.’

Gault swallowed again. ‘I think we may have come to the point where a change of doctor …’

‘Would be most welcome,’ completed Virginia.

‘I’ll get the forms,’ said Gault, getting up.

‘That’s going to take time. Trish needs help now. I’d like to transfer within the practice to Dr Haldane; Trish seemed to like him.’

Gault looked as if he had just encountered a nasty smell under his nose. He took his time replying and Virginia surmised he was weighing up the pros and cons of full-scale confrontation as the alternative to giving in to her request. She decided to push him. ‘Then we could call this just a clash of personalities and there would be no need for me to write a letter of complaint to the relevant authorities about what I see as your complete lack of sensitivity towards my daughter.’

‘I’d have to sound out Dr Haldane about such a change.’

‘Then please do.’

Virginia remained seated in Gault’s surgery. She could feel a nervous tremor in her fingers. She stared out the window behind his empty swivel chair, watching birds come and go in the branches of a tree in the garden – the one she could see above the frosted lower pane. A group of children passed by on the pavement and, in the silence of the room, she could hear their laughter. She wanted Trish to be like that, carefree and happy, but it was getting to the point where she couldn’t remember the last time she’d heard her laugh and it was all very reminiscent of the trauma she’d undergone at the time of the divorce. She and Andrew had done their best to shield her from unpleasantness but a split was a split whatever way you looked at it from a child’s angle. There had to come a point where it seemed logical for the child to ask, ‘If you still like each other so much, why are you breaking up?’

Gault returned and stood holding the door for her. ‘Dr Haldane will speak to you when he can. Perhaps you’d care to wait in the waiting room?’

Virginia had thumbed her way through three long out-of-date copies of
Scottish Field
before Haldane was free to see her. He welcomed her with the same broad smile she’d remembered from the time before. ‘I’m so sorry about this,’ she began. ‘I know this must be causing you all sorts of problems but I’m so worried about Trish and Dr Gault doesn’t seem to take me seriously. I’m at my wits’ end.’ She told Haldane about the school forcing Trish to take gym classes when she was so self-conscious about her skin disorder. ‘They call her names like “Patch” and I know it seems trivial but it’s not to her and it’s what goes on in her head that really matters, don’t you think?’

Haldane smiled and said, ‘It’s all right, you don’t have to make out the case to me. People like to pretend that kids are just mini adults but they’re not. They follow the rules of the jungle until they’re taught differently. I take it you’d like some kind of official letter for the school?’

‘Yes please,’ said Virginia with real gratitude in her voice.

‘Do you think that will be enough or do you think Trish might need some sort of counselling or …’

‘No, really, I think the letter will be enough. If she doesn’t have to expose her “difference” in public, I think she’ll soon start to be seen as one of the herd again and when that happens, who knows, the damn thing might start to fade and we can all get back to normal.’

‘Has Trish noticed any change in the rash since I last saw her?’

‘Dr Gault said it wasn’t a rash,’ said Virginia.

‘And technically it isn’t,’ said Haldane with a smile that conveyed to Virginia some sympathy with her views on James Gault.

‘She hasn’t mentioned anything. Fading, you mean?’

‘No … just anything.’

Virginia shook her head.

‘If she does, let me know, will you?’

Virginia waited again in the waiting room while Haldane wrote the letter and finally delivered it to her in a sealed envelope marked, ‘To Whom It May Concern’. She left the surgery with a lightness in her step. She was going to be late for work again but she had the letter and Trish would be pleased. They could have an evening free of fretting and angst. She started planning a surprise trip to the Dominion, their local cinema. They might even have a burger afterwards – if only to spite the medical profession.

May 2007

‘What’s up?’ Virginia asked Trish in response to her silence.

‘It’s not getting better,’ said Trish.

‘The doctors did say it might take some time.’

‘Mum, they’ve no idea what it is let alone how long it’s going to take to clear up.’

‘But they said it was vitiligo.’

‘I looked it up on the net. They’ve given it a name but they’ve no idea what it is or what causes it.’

‘You don’t want to believe everything you read on the net, love. It’s full of half truths and downright lies.’

Virginia could see that she was not getting through to Trish who seemed to be on a worrying downward spiral.

‘I think it’s getting worse …’

Virginia was alarmed. ‘You mean it’s spreading?’

‘Spreading … and changing … my skin feels funny …’

‘Let me see.’

Virginia examined Trish’s arm but couldn’t see anything different. She didn’t want to say this to Trish so she said, ‘Dr Haldane said we should get back in touch if you noticed any changes. I’ll make an appointment first thing in the morning.’

Virginia couldn’t get an appointment for Trish until the evening surgery session. She hoped to get away sharp from work but it was ten past five before she was finished and she was out of breath from the run home from the bus stop when she opened the front door. ‘Trish, I’m home. Did you think I’d got lost?’

There was no answer. ‘Trish? Are you in?’

Virginia was puzzled. She had expected to find Trish ready and waiting to go round to the surgery. She looked in the living room and then Trish’s bedroom before realising that she could hear a gas burner on in the kitchen. ‘Trish?’ she said, pushing open the door.

Trish was on the floor. She was sitting at a strange angle with her back propped up against one of the cupboards. Her arm was bare and livid flesh was peeling off it from where she had obviously suffered severe burns. The gas flames from a front burner on the hob and the pot lying on its side on the floor beside her told a horrifying tale of boiling water.

Virginia’s throat went into spasm and for a moment she couldn’t speak as she fell to her knees beside Trish, her mind a whirlpool of shock and terror. ‘Oh my God, Trish … oh my God …Trish, speak to me …’

Trish appeared to be in shock. She was staring unseeingly into the middle distance with glazed eyes. She seemed frighteningly calm when Virginia expected her to be writhing in pain. ‘I didn’t feel …’

Virginia completed the sentence in her head …
I didn’t feel I could stand it any more
… Her daughter had tried to burn the rash off with boiling water … She got up and punched three nines into the kitchen phone on the wall with a shaking forefinger and without taking her eyes off her daughter. She almost screamed her request for an ambulance but the calm voice of the operator talked her into giving all relevant information.

Virginia was only vaguely aware of well-meaning neighbours asking what was wrong as she followed the stretcher bearing her daughter downstairs to the ambulance. ‘An accident …’ she murmured. ‘Trish has had an accident …’

Virginia was an hour into her vigil at Trish’s bedside when she became aware of someone appearing at her shoulder. She glanced up and saw that it was Scott Haldane.

‘How is she?’ he asked.

‘Sleeping. They sedated her. They’re not sure yet about her arm … how did you know?’

‘When you didn’t turn up at the surgery I popped round to see what was wrong. The neighbours told me about the accident.’

‘Accident?’ murmured Virginia bitterly.

Haldane felt his blood run cold. ‘What are you saying?’ he whispered hoarsely.

Virginia didn’t take her eyes from her sleeping daughter. ‘Trish decided to treat the rash in her own way …’

Haldane shook his head in horror. ‘No,’ he protested. ‘Trish is a perfectly level-headed girl. She was upset but she wouldn’t do anything like that …’

‘It’s what she said,’ interrupted Virginia.

Haldane shook his head. ‘Tell me exactly what she said.’

‘She said she didn’t feel she could go on.’

Haldane shook his head again as if unwilling to believe what he was hearing and then a thought seemed to occur to him. ‘Tell me again,’ he said. ‘Her precise words, nothing else.’

Virginia looked at him as if he were making some kind of a mountain out of a molehill but rather than argue she took the easiest course of action and said, ‘She said, “I didn’t feel …” She didn’t have to say any more. I knew what she meant. I’m her mother.’ She looked up at Haldane and saw the questioning look on his face. ‘What is it?’

Haldane behaved as if he hadn’t heard her. He gave her a preoccupied look and mumbled something about having to go.

FOUR

Marlborough Court
LONDON
July 2007

Dr Steven Dunbar opened his eyes at the ring of the alarm and let out a groan. He could have done with another hour in bed but he had to be at the Home Office by ten. Normally, a summons to the Home Office with the prospect of a new case to investigate would have had him fired with enthusiasm and champing at the bit but a slight over-indulgence in gin and tonic the night before had taken the edge off this and left him with a nasty headache instead. He made some strong black coffee and used it to wash down three aspirins before taking a shower and lingering longer than usual in the soothing spray before he revisited his problem.

Steven’s problem was Jenny, his nine-year-old daughter, and her new-found skill in manipulating grown-ups.

Steven’s wife Lisa had died of a brain tumour many years before and since that time Jenny had lived with his sister-in-law Sue and her solicitor husband Richard in the Dumfriesshire village of Glenvane in Scotland. She had been brought up as one of their family along with their own two children, Robin and Mary, with Steven making a point of visiting as often as he could – usually every second weekend, at least for a week in the summer and with special efforts being made at birthday time and Christmas.

In the early years, Steven had seen the arrangement as being temporary – he just needed time to get back on his feet after the nightmare of losing Lisa – but as time had gone on, reality had struck home and he had come to accept that there was no way he could do the job he did and bring up a daughter on his own. Apart from that Jenny was happy and settled with Sue and Richard and their family and they had quickly come to love her as one of their own.

Sue had been very close to Lisa and often remarked that she could see so much of her sister in Jenny as she grew up. Steven had noticed this too and it could bring a lump to his throat. The thought that Lisa lived on in Jenny gave him something to cling to in dark moments when he found himself dwelling on his loss – something that still happened from time to time, even after all these years.