The Whiskerly Sisters (27 page)

It is a sad, but unfortunate, fact that people with Down’s syndrome have a shorter than average lifespan and here too Ali was no exception. As he grew into his thirties, the chest infections and fevers, that had started to improve in his teens, began to make a comeback. His breathing became ragged, he began to suffer from palpitations and he found himself trekking backwards and forwards to the local surgery, returning home with various forms of medication and increasingly frequent hospital appointments in an effort to improve his health. Throughout it all, his spirit never flagged and, despite his steady decline, he remained steadfastly cheerful and unstintingly unselfish towards the people who crossed his path.

Sly was sitting in his office, working at yet another set of figures, trying to work out how to reduce staff costs whilst improving ward efficiencies when the hostel rang him on his mobile to tell him that his brother had stopped breathing and was on his way to the hospital. After years as a nurse, Sly had schooled himself to stay calm, even in the face of the worst kind of emergencies. It was this inner strength that kept him going over the next few hours. He immediately stopped what he was doing and ran down to the Emergency Admissions Department where he stood outside its large double doors by the wide parking bay to wait for the ambulance that would bring his brother to him.

It was too late. Despite all the advances of medical science, Ali had died on the way to hospital. All the adrenaline, cardiac massage and electric shocks in the world had not been able to save him. Still, the emergency team tried their best to bring him back, working at it until the Team Leader agreed there was no more they could do. The Ward Sister gently removed Sly into a side room where she kept him company until his parents arrived. He refused her offer of tea.

When his family at last gathered together in the little room, Sly insisted on giving them the news himself. Afterwards, he gently took his mother in his arms, allowing her to cry loudly into his chest as he stood beside his father and watched him twiddle his cap between his fingers just as he’d watched him through the ward window on that far away day when Ali had been born.

He instructed the nursing staff not to prepare the body, telling them he wanted to do that himself. At first, they protested, arguing that it was not his job, that he was too senior to undertake that duty. He was too numb to understand that his colleagues simply wanted to protect him or to, at least, take away some of his pain but, in the end, they were forced to leave him to it. As Head of Nursing, he outranked them all.

A while later, having convinced his parents there was nothing they could do, he put them in a taxi and sent them home with a promise to call round later. Alone now, Sly was finally able to turn his attention back to Ali. As he entered the shaded room in which his brother lay unmoving beneath a blue, cotton sheet, he found that all the materials he needed were to hand. The junior nurse, sitting beside the body, offered him a wan smile, rose and softly tip-toed out of the room. There was nothing to be said.

As Sly slowly and carefully washed every inch of his brother’s body, the staff outside on the concourse could only wonder at the choice of song he was heard brokenly singing to himself, “That’s my brother! Who? Thylvetht! Got a row of forty medals on his chetht. Big chetht! He getth no retht.”

No one could have loved or been more than Ali, his little monster.

T
he weekly meeting of the Whiskerlies was in full swing, evidenced by friendly banter, the occasional raised voice, peals of laughter and several empty bottles of wine. Bex sat quietly in a corner chair and watched the proceedings with an almost maternal air. The girls were feeling highly delighted with themselves, congratulating one another on their inspirational solutions and, despite a few bumpy patches, the continuing success of each mission. Bex, however, was aware that things were moving swiftly towards the final, crucial stages and the team would need every ounce of nerve to soar over the last few hurdles. If anything was going to go wrong, it would be now and the stakes, for some more than others, were high. She comforted herself with the promising news of progress on each front. Where there were obstacles, these were debated until there was a range of solutions on the table, any one of which might be used depending on the final circumstances. It was up to each team member to decide how she wanted to play out her own end game but, as leader, Bex was there to assist with the final decision making.

She felt immensely proud of her girls. They had shown themselves to be strategic, ingenious even and, best of all, they refused to accept failure. Bex sighed. They would need to keep that thought in their sights in the days to come.

She turned her attention to Izza, sitting cross-legged on the floor, pouring over a set of photographs and in the midst of an argument with her mother and Celia. The noise level was beginning to soar as the women passionately debated whatever issue it was. Bex reflected on how far the girl had come in such a short amount of time. It was as if she had had a personality make over. She looked relaxed, focussed and determined to get her point across. Gone was the sulky, disinterested teenager of a few months ago. She was vibrating with health and glowing with happiness. Bex was delighted for her.

She looked across the room and caught the eye of Tiffany, who smiled at her. Despite still being overly self-focussed and dating losers, she had become integral to the success of the group in many ways. She had done an amazing job trailing Charley’s moonlighting neighbour. It had to be admitted that without her working knowledge and ability to source the right information at the right time, some of the stings would have been very difficult to pull off. She was heavily and enthusiastically involved in most of the projects despite the evident risk to her career. She had turned out to be a selfless team player.

Fresna had absented herself from the meeting. She had chosen to spend some quality time with Verity. Sam and Sly were heads together preparing for the sting on Alex and so mother and daughter had decided on a girlie twosome, complete with onesies, depilatory cream, mudpacks and nail varnish. Bex was certain that there would be at least a couple of bottles of ‘grape juice’ to wash down all the fun. It had taken Fresna some time to come to terms with the bitterness and rage she felt towards the guy who had jilted her so long ago and who now seemed to expect a bit of a leg up (not to mention over) from the family he had ignored for years. With Verity back in the country, Fresna seemed to have reclaimed her inner joy and was focussing her attention on her family and her future.

Jax was glowing, sitting contentedly on the floor, back against the sofa, arguing happily with her daughter. Under the patient tutelage of Fresna, she had mastered the internet and was confident she would breeze through her own final stage. Bex let her gaze linger over her friend and sent up a little prayer that she would find what she was looking for on one of the dating sites but, from what she understood about them, Bex didn’t hold out much hope.

To everyone’s surprise, Celia had drastically cut down on the alcohol. Whilst she was not tee total, she no longer seemed to need it in the way she once had. The strain had left her face, the little lines around her eyes had eased away and she was looking fresher than she had for years. Given that she had a pretty tough day ahead of her, she was looking mighty confident. In a few short hours, she would be walking out of that damned factory forever with the promise of a new career on the horizon. She had come so far and had been so brave. “Go Ceals,” encouraged Bex silently and raised her glass in the direction of her friend.

Nothing much had happened for Charley since she had held her afternoon soiree. The DGs were still in residence and, even though the property developer had visited them, the noise was still almost as bad. Whilst it was true that the evening drilling had stopped and the parrot seemed to have shut up, Bex felt that improving Charley’s situation might well turn out to be their only dud since they had little control over the outcome. They were going to have to hand that one over to others and pray for the right result. Bex sincerely hoped that Charley could remain patient long enough for things to turn out well.

Turning inwards, Bex reflected on her own personal situation. Things at home had turned sour. Her petty malices towards Malcolm had lost their bite and no longer offered her the satisfaction they once had. She had begun to feel quite uncomfortable with herself and her lifestyle. She had decided something had to give and, after turning it over in her mind for many weeks, she had at last made her mind up what that something was going to be. Still, she did not need to do anything in a hurry. There was no need to rush. For the time being at least, she would continue to lead and support her friends as they each worked through the final stages of their stings.

Leaning quietly back in her chair, she took a sip of wine and sat quietly, serene as ever, watching over her friends and giving nothing of her plans away. No one needed to be told anything yet so her secret was safe. Still, she wondered how her friends would react when they finally got to learn of her decision.

B
ex had been feeling restless and unhappy for weeks. Her former easy serenity seemed to have deserted her and gone walkabout on its own. She was finding it increasingly difficult to glide through the days, content in the knowledge that if Malcolm kicked off, she could hand out a small, devious retribution. Somehow her ulterior justice had lost its shine, its bite, its flavour. She pulled her gaze from contemplation of the rhododendrons, just beginning to lose the best of their soft pink bloom, and forced herself to concentrate on lining up the dustbins before Malcom’s return home.

Since the gala dinner at the golf club, things had taken a serious downhill turn. Malcolm had become insular, watchful and afraid of his own shadow. The worst of it was that he had increasingly begun to become overly dependent on her, seeking reassurance at every turn, constantly asking for her opinion and second guessing both of them. His surrender to her game had caused him to turn from an obsessive-compulsive, arrogant, blustering bully into a lily-livered, weak-kneed, delusional neurotic.

They were watching him! They were following him! They were out to get him! Christ alone knew who ‘they’ were!

He had resigned from the golf club. The utter humiliation he had experienced in front of his cronies and their wives had seen to that. He found no joy in playing with his Beemer and he had taken extended sick leave from work due to stress. His fussing had increased alarmingly and he rarely left the house. As a direct consequence, Bex found she was spending more and more of her time tending to him. She had no time for herself, no time for the gym and, worst of all, no time for her little assignations with David. Her only respite came when he took himself out for yet another unproductive visit to the doctor.

No wonder Bex was beginning to feel depressed. Sweet revenge had turned against her. The little paybacks for Malcolm’s errant behaviour had all fallen flat. The former pleasant taste of her poisonous paybacks had turned inward and now lay heavy and sour in her stomach. There was little pleasure to be had in that direction. In fact, if she was honest, there was none at all. She had become wet nurse to the paranoid hypochondriac Malcolm had become. Life had become tedious and her days, which had previously seemed to fly by, were turning out to be endless. She was fed up to the back teeth of sitting at home all day with nothing much to do but clean the already spotless house or sit by her husband’s side while he watched yet another of his terminally boring documentaries about transport, bridges or the history of war.

She sighed. The situation was hopeless and so there was no choice. It was time for a change of direction.

Sitting in the kitchen of the house that had been her home for longer than she cared to remember, nursing a cup of rooibos tea, Bex looked around and felt a deep sadness envelope her. This was not a home, it was a museum; a place where you looked but saw nothing; where you touched, but felt nothing; where everything was kept in little plastic boxes behind oak fronted cabinets.