Approaching Zero (2 page)

She touched her backpack to make sure that it was there, the list. This had become her life’s work and she let out a sigh of relief to feel that it was still with her.

“Right!” she told herself, her voice full of determination, and pushed off, but before she had travelled a full metre, her phone rang and the handlebars wobbled in her hands as she made a poorly balanced emergency stop. “Son of a…” She let the words trail off. There was a time when she wouldn’t have dreamt of swearing, but now it seemed a small thing in the grand scheme of things. In fact, maybe a great big swearing session was exactly what she needed. Maybe she should just go home now, shut herself in her bedroom and paint the room blue with all of the F’s and C’s that she could think of. Maybe it would be just the release she needed, and she wouldn’t have to be doing this. She would feel relaxed and restored and somehow the world would be a better place. That’s what other people did, wasn’t it? They got upset about something, had a swear or a cry, talked it over and went back to their lives. This was doubly true of the big problems in life—homelessness, poverty, organised crime, terrorism—the list was endless and anyone imagining that they could do anything to combat the big issues was deluding themselves. We are all powerless. Best to swear in a room and then go back to your little life and the little problems that are easily solvable by contrast. But not everyone could smell the smell and hear the thoughts—hear the disgusting, depraved, inhumane, monstrous thoughts of the evil people. It’s not quite as easy to ignore when it’s throbbing in your veins, oozing from your pores and marring you with its filth.

Kathy just about steadied herself and took the phone from her pocket. It was a phone that was too old not to be laughed at by the children who were about to break up for the summer holiday and too new to yet fall into the category of retro cool, but close. She flipped it open and the tinny ringtone ended. Her phone didn’t allow for photos or a designated tone for different callers, but the name flashed up as ‘Brady’. She quickly forced it to her ear and spoke. “Brady, I’m–”

But her friend interrupted with a pure mix of joy and excitement in her voice. “Have you done it yet?”

It was this contagious energy that had first attracted Kathy to Brady, although she was too young to articulate exactly why she liked being around her. At five years old, she just knew that Brady was the kid in the class that ran around with a huge smile on her face and although she didn’t do a single thing that the teachers asked her to do, she was so endearing that they could only laugh with her and let her get on with wreaking whatever havoc was on the menu for that day. By contrast, Kathy was a quiet girl who was fearful of doing anything to draw attention to herself or get into trouble. The thought of being told off by the teachers terrified her until she saw her young friend shake it off as if she were the mini queen of everything and the teachers could kiss it. They were now thirty-two (Kathy two months older) and had been inseparable ever since. The fact that Brady had been in active service on and off since they left school hadn’t damaged their relationship; it just meant that they saw each other less. This phone call was coming from Malaysia, at least that was where Brady had been posted six months ago—something to do with aiding the transition of peace post-Taliban. Kathy didn’t know any more than that and didn’t want to. Equally, she didn’t worry about her friend. She had been to Afghanistan and Iraq and come back without a single scratch. Kathy had a vision of her friend, strolling through no-man’s land in just jeans and a T-shirt, no weapons, helmet or protection, while bombs went off around her and bullets flew past her head. She just smiled and carried on walking. Sometimes she would catch a bullet and eat it, which is when Kathy would stop imagining because it had all gone a bit weird.

“Have you done it?” Brady repeated impatiently.

“I’m just about to, Brade, if I can just get off the phone. You’re okay, aren’t you? You’re not hurt? I’m just about to do it.”

“Well, call me afterwards.”

“
Are
you okay?”

“Of course I’m okay, so stop chatting and get on with it. It must be kicking-out time your time by now.”

“It is. They’ll be out in a sec.”

“Why aren’t you doing it then?”

“Because I’m on the phone to you.”

“Hang up then.”

“But why are you calling?”

“For fucks sake, Kathy.” Brady liked a good swear, too.

“Okay, I’m doing it. Chat later,” Kathy told her friend and slammed her phone shut. “Right!” she repeated, with a heightened determination that Brady always brought out in her. She was actually going to do it; she had to do it—everything had changed. They couldn’t just threaten or report these men anymore; action needed to be taken and she pushed off again. Her body was immediately overtaken with the adrenaline that was so familiar from her childhood, when she had done all sorts of things that terrified her with Brady—from jumping out of trees, off shed roofs and in front of cars, to nicking sweets from the corner shop and camping in the park with the wild animals of their imaginations. There was not one of those things that Kathy regretted and she wasn’t going to start now, so as the bike hurtled down the hill and the wind thrashed her face and tooted in her ears, a massive smile spread out over her face. She stood up on the pedals and pedalled as hard as she could so that the handlebars were jarring quickly from left to right and the slightest bump on the pavement would send her flying. In fact, in that moment, she could have been a ten-year-old again, playing out with Brady, taking on a hill that even the boys her age feared, both girls screaming and giggling as their bikes propelled them ever on, out of control. What a rush! Brady would always be out in front, but Kathy eventually learnt to take the hills without pumping the brakes, without fear. And here she was again, thirty-two years old, no fear, no brakes. As she passed the school gates, she could hear the alarming shrill of the final bell and a dull rumbling of children’s feet and expectant chattering and laughter. She was supposed to have done it by now. They would be out in a few minutes, but there was no time to dwell on it. This was it, and she was travelling at such a speed that the posts of the school fence were strobing, air popping in her ears between each one, making ‘whooping’ noises and almost forcing her off the bike. But no, there was no stopping or turning back now. This was it!

She could see that Malcolm Scott had turned to acknowledge her fleetingly, but he hadn’t moved from the spot. The fact that the children had been unleashed from the school was clearly keeping him too busy to pay too much attention to the woman on the bike hurtling toward him. And now the smell was unbearable. The fridge door was wide open and there was rotten chicken crawling with maggots and bowls of unidentifiable, pus-filled fur. Just as Kathy was about to throw up, she took a deep breath, now just metres from the pervert, and shouted, “No brakes!” The fact that she was still pedalling hard would forever go unnoticed.

With no time to react, Malcolm could do nothing but throw his hands out in front of him, as if they were going to offer some kind of protection against the wild woman on the bike on course to hit him head on. An animal-like noise also burst out of him, which offered equally little protection, and then he was hit. The bike took his legs out from under him with such force that the sound of his head cracking on the pavement rang out over the din of the children. A thin trickle of blood crawled out of his ear, but this was the only movement left in him.

Kathy had imagined this moment for days, but it all happened too quickly for her to enjoy or see anything of the actual smash. In her mind, she had been an observer; up close, she was just as vulnerable as her prey and her grip was useless against the force of the collision. As the front wheel buckled under, her fingers slipped off the handlebars and she would swear that they came alive, rose up and smashed her in the face. It all happened too fast to know more than this. In reality, her body performed a manoeuvre that would have been a perfect gymnastic ten if not for the lack of finesse and the terrifying crack as the dismount was landed. And then everything went black.

Chapter 2

Kathy didn’t want to open her eyes. She could hear the beep, beep, beep of the heart monitor machine and knew that it was serious. So she remained in the darkness and mentally assessed the damage. Starting at the bottom, her feet felt fine and they were covered in a cool cotton sheet; she was definitely in hospital. She wiggled her toes and mentally shifted her focus up each leg. The muscles all the way up responded as she clenched and then she moved up to where the vital organs lived and took a deep breath. Surprisingly nothing hurt. Heart, liver, kidneys all seemed to be absolutely fine, unless, of course, she was paralysed and her movements weren’t movement at all but figments of her imagination. And then she was hit with a sudden surge of something resembling guilt, but not quite; it was more of a dawning sensation that she had actually done it and the thought made her stomach lurch. A hundred questions fluttered out of that sensation. Should she have done it? She knew the answer to that one. What kind of condition was he in? She knew what she hoped the answer would be. Was it really her place to go around running people over? Just how many children had she saved by taking that sorry pervert out? Why hadn’t she thought of the danger she was putting herself in? Just what was the damage of her mission? Suddenly she had the urge to open her eyes, to get a realistic picture of her injuries, but as she began to move the muscles in her face, a razor-sharp pain cut into the bones there. This was actually a relief: if she could feel the pain in her face then the absence of pain in the rest of her body was probably also real. But then there was the constant beep, beep, beep. They didn’t bring out the heart monitor unless it was serious.

Despite the pain in her face, which seemed to begin in the back of her eyes, dance over each of her teeth individually and then down her chin, she slowly heaved her eyelids open. A clinical light immediately attacked her, but she was determined to keep her eyes open and battled on until the fierce, bright white began to give way to the shapes and shadows. Very soon she had a clear picture of the hustle and bustle around her. Contrary to the ideas she had had, of an operating table and doctors and nurses fussing to maintain her health, or a private room where the staggered beeps counted each strained breath of her ephemeral existence, it was like feeding time at the zoo. She was on a ward with nine other women and at least eight of them were surrounded by children. The beeping, which had sounded so urgent just minutes before, was actually coming from the hand-held game of the little boy beside her, who didn’t take his eyes off it for the remaining fifty minutes of the visit despite the fact that his poor mother was desperate for some affection from her son. In fact, as Kathy looked around, she saw that none of children were paying attention to their poor mothers, who were laid up with a range of conditions, from visibly cast and bandaged bones, to secret illnesses that made visiting times silent and sombre. Husbands and boyfriends were attentively chatting with their partners, but every one of the children looked so excited to be somewhere new, yet bored that this somewhere new offered no real opportunities for play, that they were making their own entertainment: dancing, chasing each other, staring at iPads, but mostly playing games of their own making where the only objective seemed to be to make as much noise as they possibly could. If they were Kathy’s she would put them across her knee or ground them or whatever other punishment all of these parents were clearly too inept to implement. How hard could it be to be a parent? Kathy smiled at the thought, realising how harsh she was being and knowing that it’s so much easier to judge from the outside, but the smile was short-lived as the pain cracked in her face again. Having a child in her life would be an absolute nightmare, let alone the tribes of little critters that these parents had managed to accumulate. She smiled again at the irony of this thought, considering that it was protecting ‘these little critters’ that had landed her in hospital with a broken face, and again she was pained into keeping her face still. But the pain didn’t completely leave her. Every shriek and laugh and cry tore through her damaged face. And then a child seemed to come flying through the air, running backwards to catch a funny-shaped ball and almost landed on top of her. He shifted around quickly, was clearly going to smile but then saw Kathy’s face and provided a mirror of honesty of which only children are capable.

“Bloody hell!” he shrieked, unable to take his eyes off her damaged face and then ran away to continue his game.

“You’re no oil painting yourself, you little shit,” she said quietly—she didn’t want to draw attention to her face or her filthy mood—then closed her eyes again. She was in hell, a living hell. And nobody had even noticed that she’d woken up. They’d just plonked her in with a load of other women and their families and then what? Was she supposed to nurse herself now? Take out any stitches she may have had? Take herself to x-ray? Go and make herself a cup of tea? Had the NHS become a self-service type of setup now? What exactly was she paying her taxes for if this was…?

“Miss Smith?” a gentle voice interrupted her mental rant.

Slowly Kathy opened her eyes and saw that a nurse, who looked about fifteen years old, was looking down on her. Despite her youth, or because of it, she was a perfect model of nursedom with her immaculate uniform, neatly swept-back, blonde hair and modest makeup. Her sweet expression and the concern in her eyes immediately diffused the frenzy that Kathy was whipping herself into.

“How are you feeling?” As she spoke, the young nurse set about gathering her own evidence, touching Kathy’s face, taking her pulse, blood pressure, and temperature and sizing her up with the in-built medic-o-meter that all nurses seem to develop at nursing school.

“It’s a bit noisy in here.”

“Yeah, sorry about that. It will settle down in a bit when visiting time’s over. Does it hurt when I do this?”