Chosen (15 page)

When she turns back, Rebecca has her head against John's chest. ‘We let him die,' she murmurs.

‘Yes,' Dodie comes close and looks. Rebecca's skin seems so buoyantly alive besides John's. Pale, but with a glitter in it. The blood is flaking off. Dodie scrubs at her own forehead with her sleeve. Washed in the Blood of the Lamb.

‘It's what he wanted,' Rebecca whispers. She lifts her head from John's chest. Her lips are white. Her eyes pale and luminous green, the tea-leaf fleck standing out as if in relief. She puts her hand to her mouth, looks round wildly and makes for a basin and vomits.

‘I'm leaving.' Though Dodie's voice clogs, she will not cry. But she will leave. And she will make Seth come with her. This is not acceptable. ‘Rebecca, we just let a man die.' She looks uneasily at John, not John, just the body of John.

Rebecca cups her hands for a slurp of water, wipes her mouth on one of the paper towels. ‘I know but –'

‘No buts,' Dodie says. ‘Come with me.'

‘Shh,' Rebecca hisses.

The door opens and Hannah comes in, maskless. Rebecca touches her lips with her finger, eyes hard on Dodie. Hannah glares at them both, grasps Rebecca by the upper arms and stares into her eyes. ‘Dodie has been sent by Satan to try your faith,' she says. ‘You must be strong. Let it go, Sister.' Rebecca's eyes close in a prolonged blink and together she and Hannah hum, a two-tone vibration that rattles Dodie's teeth.

Hannah leaves Rebecca and walks across to John. She picks up his wrist, feels for a pulse, drops it. The hand falls open on the sheet like a blown blossom. She sees the way Dodie and Rebecca stare at her, and turns back to the body. ‘God bless you,' she says. She brushes a perfunctory kiss on his forehead and dabs her mouth.

‘I'm leaving now,' Dodie says, suddenly absolutely clear and resolved. ‘Just give me my stuff, and let me out. I'm sorry, Rebecca,' she says. ‘Come too?'

‘So, Satan speaks,' Hannah says with a narrow smile. ‘Come, Rebecca.'

‘No.' Dodie shakes her head. ‘Rebecca. It's not Satan. It's
me
.'

‘Shut your ears, Sister,' Hannah says. ‘Come.' She takes Rebecca's arm and yanks her out of the room. There is the click of the locking door.

Dodie stands exactly where she is. John's eyelids have lifted. A fly buzzes. How did it get in? It hums wearily around the light fitting and Dodie sees that there are other flies caught inside it, dead. There's no air in the room and she's forced to inhale the smell of vomit and the smell of death. It's only John, she tells herself. The air around her is thick but it seems to stir and ripple. Gooseflesh rises on her arms as she feels a sudden chill. She backs up against the wall, staring at the body. It's only John. It's only John. She likes him, liked him. A sort of growl comes from him and she screams, crouches, heart thundering against her thighs. Please God, please God, she finds herself saying, and even though she believes nothing she promises she will believe if only this could be over. She just has to get out of here then she'll leave. Somehow she'll get Seth and they'll run, sod the clothes, the watch, she'll find the police or the British Embassy or whatever and they'll run out in their pyjamas and run and run. And Jake, Jake, Jake, she will be home.

The door opens and Hannah stands framed. ‘Scared?' she says.

‘There was a noise,' Dodie says. She straightens up and flattens herself back against the wall.

‘Wind in the guts,' Hannah says, ‘or air in the lungs. He's gone. Can't hurt you.'

‘I know.'

‘It's not John you should be frightened of,' Hannah says. ‘Satan has really got to you. How have you let him in?'

‘I want Seth and I want to leave. Now. Don't try and fob me off or –'

‘Don't you want to see Rod, and Jake?'

‘
What?
'

‘Rod and Jake.'

Dodie's mouth falls open.‘What do you mean?'

‘They're here.'

‘They're
here
?'

Hannah smiles smugly. ‘Come along.' She grasps Dodie's arm and pulls her out into the corridor. The door bangs shut on John.

‘But –' Dodie starts.

Hannah swings her round and holds her by the tops of her arms; she leans in, her eyes so close they seem to blur into one. ‘Let it go,' she says, ‘blink and hum, come on, with me, hum.' And they stand by the shut door and hum, but even the hum will not drive away the turmoil of grief and anger and excitement and disbelief and Dodie's heart hammers painfully against the pitch of the humming and Hannah's hands are pincers on her arms.

H
annah takes her to the parlour. ‘Wait there,' she says, and leaves Dodie alone in all the flounce and floral fakery, the sickly sweetness of air freshener. Feels like years since she was here. The fussy smell of material, pelmets, valances, silky flowers. Dodie paces, frowns. Jake? Rod?
Really?
Her heart hammers and the hum sticks in her head like interference and she can't make her mind go in a straight line and John is dead. She rubs her arm, shivery with the sensation of his life shimmying away, a wild man, dangerous once . . . but now he's dead.

Rod and Jake, Jake: is this some sort of trick? She looks down at the ridiculous lilac clothes and runs her fingers through her wildly tangled hair. She must look a sight. This is a trick, she's sure of it, don't get too excited, all the times they said Seth would see her. Maybe Seth isn't even here at all? What would Rod be doing
here
? What, what? Mind too jittery to think. Body too jittery to sit, she paces, paces round the coffee table and the sofa into the room with the deep soft bed, round the coffee table where she ate the carrot cake, pacing, pacing.

She remembers the tiger when they took Jake to the zoo, much too young. He slept through most of the visit and she stood before the enclosure, the precious scrap of meat slumbering in his buggy, and watched the way the tiger paced, muscles rippling under the glossy stripes, tail swishing the dust, eyes focused on the distance continents away – and
she'd felt small, had felt like nothing before his trapped magnificence. She snorts at the ludicrous comparison of herself and the tiger, but still she paces.

And then she hears a shred of a child's voice from the corridor, and the door opens on Rod with Jake in his arms. Rod fills the door, squared shoulders, brown eyes searching out her own and Jake shrinking back against him. Hannah pulls the door shut behind them.

‘Here we are,' she says, as if they are a gift for her to bestow, but Jake won't look at Dodie; won't look out from Rod's brown leather jacket that he's worn summer and winter ever since she met him. She knows the feel of that jacket, knows its waxy, animal smell when you bury your nose in it as Jake's doing now.

‘Jake,' Dodie says. ‘Jake, it's Mummy.' But he just screws his face against Rod.

‘Hi,' she says to Rod, and he puts his head down for her to graze her lips against his stubbly cheek. The smell of him – outdoorsy, smoky, leathery – sets up such a turmoil inside her that she has to step backwards.

‘Hi,' he says shortly. She tries to force a smile into his eyes but he jerks his eyes away.

‘Sit down, I'll get some tea.' Hannah goes out, leaving them alone. Rod undoes Jake's hands from his jacket and puts him down but Jake clamps himself round his leg, face still hidden. He looks bigger; he has a new coat – puffy, silver – not what she'd choose, maybe Jeannie bought it for him, cold up in Inverness.

‘Sit down,' is all she can think of to say. Her throat tightens. Jake will not even look at her. Give him time; give him time. Rod lowers himself on to the sofa and she sits beside him. Must not waste this time alone.

‘God, it's really weird to see you here!' She tries to smile, but her teeth are dry and her lip sticks grotesquely.

‘Didn't have much choice, did I?' Rod glowers at his knees. ‘Not putting off my trip any longer and Martha or, no, the other one, suggested I bring Jake and leave him here.'

‘With me?'

‘I
think
you're his mother.'

‘Don't be like that.'

Rod raises one eyebrow at her.

‘You're still going then?'

Though he still clings to Rod, Jake peeps at her – but when she smiles he turns his face away. Give him time. Let him come to you.

‘What the fuck are you playing at?' Rod says.

His harshness is out of place; she'd forgotten that about him. He looks puffy, pouchy around the eyes. And he sounds stupid.

‘I'm not
playing
at anything,' she says. ‘I was about to leave. I'll take Jake home.'

‘Poor little sod. Didn't take to intercontinental travel,' he says, looking at her properly for the first time, frowning at her clothes.

‘I
know
,' she says, lifting a flap of lilac T-shirt.

He laughs and she laughs and the tension eases. His forefinger and middle finger are nicotine yellow; has he been smoking in the house, smoking around Jake? But then what can she say? Jake looks at her again, longer this time, allowing a meeting of the eyes.

‘Hi, Jakey,' she says.

He hides his face, then gives her another shy peep. Looks like his cold's better.

‘What about Seth then?' Rod says.

‘Haven't seen him.'

Rod's eyebrows shoot into a steeple; he starts to speak, then changes his mind, rubs his eyes. ‘Christ almighty,' is all he says. His fingernails need cutting. There's a grubby plaster on his middle finger.

‘I've tried to see him,' she says. ‘And tried.'

‘You can't have tried very hard.'

There's another silence. ‘You finished your chairs?' she says.

‘Martha said –' he starts.

‘Oh yes, so you've been talking to Martha about me?' she breaks in. ‘You told her about my . . . my bad time.'

‘Thought she should know. Anyway,
you
wouldn't talk to me.'

‘Not
wouldn't
, I –'

The door opens and Hannah comes in with a tray of mugs, a teapot and a plastic cup of juice.

‘Does he like juice?' Hannah manoeuvres the door shut and puts the tray down on the table.

‘Yeah,' Rod says, harshly, and Dodie holds back the objection that neat juice is bad for the teeth, that it's dangerous to put the hot teapot where Jake can reach it.

‘Rod,' Dodie says, pleadingly, and she looks at him for a sign of love, for a sign he's pleased to see her – but he will only meet her eyes for brief scowling seconds.

Still anchored to Rod, and loudly sucking three fingers, Jake swivels his body so he can see her.

‘Did you have fun at Granny's?' Dodie says. Her arms ache; her fingers itch with the need to touch him. Someone has cut his hair in a straight fringe above his eyes; he seems less a baby, more a little boy with that straight blue gaze that makes her heart flip.

‘She likes to be called Grandma,' Rod says.

‘Grandma,' Dodie says. ‘Did you go and see Grandma?'

‘Big fish!' Jake says, a wide bright grin bursting across his face so that she can see a new tooth.

She looks to Rod.

‘A ride outside the Co-op,' he says. Jake lets go of Rod and edges towards Dodie and she holds her hands stiff on her lap. Don't reach for him, don't grab.

Hannah pours the tea – proper brown tea with milk. ‘Are you going to stay for a bit?' she asks Rod.

‘Big fish,' Jake says, he's talking to Dodie now; she could touch him if she wanted.

‘No, my flight's tonight.' Rod takes the tea and blows on it, in so much of a rush he can't even wait for it to cool. ‘Ta anyway.'

Now Jake is close, leaning himself against her leg, the soft weight of him in the puffy coat. He looks hot. ‘Shall we take your coat off, Jake?' she says. He stares up at her and
she quails at the pureness of his gaze. ‘Mumma?' he says, and it's a question; he isn't sure, he doesn't even know her any more.

‘Yes, Mumma!' she says, injecting bright into her voice.

He pats her knee one, two, three times. ‘Mumma,' he says, satisfied.

She unzips the horrible silvery nylon. He's wearing dungarees she made from an old pair of jeans and a jumper that's miles too small; fancy bringing him all the way to America dressed like that! She dares now to lift him onto her lap, his back against her chest and she feels the flow, her love for this child is like electricity, her heart dances and plunges in the current. Her hands rest on the rise and fall of his round belly, and never will she be parted from him again, not until he's too grown up to want her and that is so far in the future she doesn't even need to think about it. She puts her nose into his hair, sniffs the warm, biscuity scent of his scalp – complicated by the smell of Rod's tobacco.

‘I'll come to the airport with you. With Seth. Will you fetch Seth?' she asks Hannah. Surely she won't dare refuse with Rod here.

But Hannah ignores her. ‘How was your journey?' she asks.

‘Bit of a struggle,' Rod says, ‘keeping
him
under control. And mad security at the airport.' He smiles for the first time. ‘They looked in his nappy! Got more than they bargained for!'

‘His nappy!' Dodie says, her hand treasuring one of Jake's.

Rod grins and shrugs. He sips his tea.

‘Nice, isn't it? The tea,' she says. God, so inane, all the things they should be saying, but how can they say them with Hannah here and even if she went out the constraint between them is mortifying, stultifying. He is supposed to be her love and there is nothing she can do to reach him. But Jake. As she tightens her arms round him, he struggles as if he wants to get down and she has to let him go – but instead of getting down he turns and wraps his legs and arms around her like a little bear, face pressed against her
chest. He never did that before, he was never so clingy. Is this what she has done by leaving him?