Try Not to Breathe (19 page)

T
he sun streamed through the window into Alex’s bedroom, dappling her crisp white duvet with playful sunbursts and shards of rainbow. A few little dewdrops clung to the window and she could hear children playing nearby.

She sat up slowly, expecting her brain to slide against her skull at any second, but the headache didn’t come.

For the first time since she started this pet project, she felt like she might actually be getting somewhere. She had tugged at the pieces of thread and finally one of them had been attached to something.

Jake.

She half smiled at the memory of his words. Such sad words. As she played back the recording from her iPhone, she allowed the smile to become a full-blown beam.

Jake. Jacob Arlington. The sitter. And he might have told her far more than he realized.

It was still early, way before visiting hours, and Alex knew she was trying her luck. But she had nearly two hours to kill before her doctor’s appointment and was desperate to make headway with her investigations.

She stepped out of the big gray lift and strode confidently to the Bramble Ward door, rapping on it loudly.

The door opened ajar and a nurse she didn’t know peered out. “Can I help you?”

“Hi there, I’m writing a story about your patient Amy Stevenson and I have a couple of questions.”

“I’m sorry?” The nurse creased her forehead as if she didn’t understand a single word.

“I’m a journalist, my name’s Alex Dale.”

“I’m not sure about this. I’ll have to speak to Dr. Haynes.”

Alex swallowed hard and tried to ignore the fragments of memory. Peter Haynes buying a round of drinks. Peter Haynes in her bed. The awkward weight on top of her. His tongue poking out of the side of his mouth as he concentrated on what he was doing.

“Well, I really do just want to check one thing with you, I’ll be really quick.”

“Wait there,” commanded the nurse. Alex stepped back, leaning lightly against the pale pastel wall. Flyers for self-help groups and fundraisers fluttered by her ears as she waited. She could hear one half of a conversation, the nurse sighing. “You’re the boss,” she said, wearily.

The door opened wider and the nurse ushered her inside.

“I’m not very happy about this,” she said to no one. “So then, what do you want to know?”

“How far back do these go?”

“I’m not sure.”

“Might they be archived somewhere?”

“I doubt it. They’re probably just shredded.”

Alex flipped the heavy pages to the first lined entry, just over three years ago.

“Could I take this to the café to look through? I’ll bring it back before visiting hours.”

“I’d sooner you didn’t. You can sit here for as long as you like though.”

It took sixty-seven pages of records to find what she was looking for, but when Alex saw it, a bolt of excitement whipped her spine.

Afterward she sat in the car and scribbled urgently, too scared to drive straight to the GP surgery in case it all seeped away before she had a chance to capture her thoughts. That feeling was back, for the first time in who knew how many lost years. The feeling she’d get when she found that killer line. Or the shock-and-awe setup, or that zinger of a wordplay. That perfect point. How she’d chased that feeling. It became ever harder to catch. She would get closer and closer to deadline until the paper was due to be off stone in mere hours and Alex was still sipping wine from a plastic cup and ignoring her desk phone.

She couldn’t remember getting this feeling when sober for many, many years.

“Alexandra.” Dr. Evans peered over his glasses. “I’m glad you’ve come in. Looking at your notes, we don’t have the luxury of time.”

“I’ve cut down a lot,” Alex told the doctor. “And I’m a lot more in control than when I was last here.”

“My dear, it’s not a case of cutting down. Cutting down was what needed to happen years ago. You need to stop altogether. And if you cannot stop—”

“I can stop.”

“If you cannot stop by yourself, it’s a case of getting some help to stop. And as fast as possible.”

“It was only in the early stages when I was tested, and it wasn’t that long ago. I feel fine, I’m pretty fit and active so—”

“Are you incontinent?” the doctor asked, cutting her off.

“Well, I mean, I have the odd accident but I drink a lot of water.”

“Are you still having periods?”

“My periods have never been regular,” Alex replied quickly.

“And sleep? How is your sleep?”

“I fall asleep easily,” Alex said.

“But do you stay asleep? Do you feel rested in the morning?”

“Who does?” Alex tried to smile.

“Do you have nausea throughout the day?”

“Well, yes, I mean…” Alex trailed off.

The doctor took off his glasses and looked directly into her eyes. Heavy bags tugged his lower lids toward his whiskered mouth.

“We know that the organ started to lose function some years ago, Alex. This started even before your loss. The loss tells me you’re not able to stop because you would have stopped before then. I’m sorry to be blunt.”

He passed her a thin tissue.

“And even if you have reduced your alcohol intake, you are still drinking, which will be accelerating your condition. As your doctor, I have to urge you to seek help.”

“I am seeking help, that’s why I’m here. And I’ve already cut back and my work is improving. I’m still running most days, I have bags of energy.”

“Here is a list of local meetings. If you don’t manage to stop, coming around the corner will be hair loss, sickness, jaundice, memory loss, confusion—”

“Confusion? Do you mean dementia?”

“No, similar but not the same.” Dr. Evans had been her mother’s doctor. “You may start to stagger when you walk. You could even get ascites, where fluid builds up in your abdomen until you look heavily pregnant. Really, Alex, you need to take this seriously.”

“How far off are these new symptoms?”

“Don’t obsess about those because those aren’t the main issue here. You need to understand that you are facing a potentially fatal condition.”

“How long do I have?”

“That depends on whether you make some significant changes.”

“I’m a journalist, I deal in deadlines.”

“Okay, Alex, here it is. If you don’t stop drinking, you’ll be dead in a year.”

Alex sat back in her chair and exhaled deeply.

Dr. Evans spoke softly and slowly. “This leaflet has details of all the meetings in the area. They are completely anonymous, and they’re free. And most importantly, they can work. But you have to take that first step.”

“I thought I had.”

I
still can’t quite believe it, but Jake’s mother came to see me today.

My heart was thumping like a drum when I heard her voice. I instantly felt like I was in trouble. I don’t know if it’s the school secretary thing or the fact that she seems to despise everything that I say, do and am, but either way I was in bits by the time she left.

I think she might have wanted to say something important but bottled it. I think she wanted to warn me off Jake, to be honest. To tell me that he was too good for me or that I was distracting him and she could make things difficult if I didn’t bow out graciously. She didn’t say that though. She said in her haughty telephone voice: “Amy, I’m sorry to say…” and that was it. She stopped dead.

Sorry to say what?

Eventually, she started up again but she just made pointless chitchat. She said something dull about the weather and about Jake’s dad’s train being canceled due to the weather and about choosing the wrong coat for the weather. And when I woke up again, she was gone.

I don’t know if she’s coming back. I can’t believe my mum let her in and didn’t check if I was okay while she was here. She could have said or done anything and no one checked. I don’t know what’s up with my mum anymore, nothing seems right.

J
acob hadn’t wanted to meet when she called, but Alex had him by the crutches and they both knew it.

He’d arrived early to grab a table as far toward the back of the station café as possible. His heart raced as she walked in, ordered a cappuccino and sat down lightly in front of him.

“Hello,” she said.

“Hello,” he said.

The distant fizz of bacon fat thickened the air, the chinking of cups and tinkling of glasses softened the silence. Alex wore a hard stare, blowing lightly on her coffee and holding Jacob’s gaze.

“Jacob,” she began, before taking a sip, “thank you for meeting me.”

“I didn’t really have a choice.”

“I meant what I said, I won’t go to the police about the break-in. I know you were there out of fear.”

Jacob didn’t smile. Not even with relief.

“Jacob, you said you were the only person who visits Amy now, didn’t you?”

“I said that I thought I was. As far as I knew…” His voice trailed off but his heart was charging like a horse.

Alex took a sip of her coffee and smiled slightly. He couldn’t tell if she was trying to be reassuring, or smug.

“Don’t worry,” she said, “we’re on the same side. I’m not trying to screw you over. I really feel for you.” The fingers on her spare hand flickered. He wondered if she was considering laying a reassuring palm over his far bigger hand. But the hands stayed where they were.

“Jacob,” Alex carried on with a softer voice, “I have a feeling you already know what I’m about to tell you.”

He stared at her bony hands as they twitched again.

“I asked to see the visitor records for Amy’s ward. I didn’t know exactly what I was looking for until I found it.”

“My mum.” Jacob looked at his hands.

“Your mum,” Alex said.

Jacob had known for some time that his mum had visited Amy. He’d found out the same way Alex had, his mother’s careful signature in the logbook, curling perfectly on the line. Because this wasn’t television and because he was his mother’s son, he hadn’t said a word.

His mum had disliked Amy in a way that he’d never seen from her before or since. His mum wasn’t a hater. She was a worrier, overprotective perhaps. She could seem haughty to outsiders, but she wrapped her family in unstinting love and affection. When Amy came on the scene though, Jacob had seen something new in his mum’s expression. Amy had been convinced of Sue’s hatred, and would rarely come to the house if his mum was there.

“I just don’t know what I’ve done!” Amy would say, alternating between welling eyes and outrage. “Is it because she thinks I’m common? Or thick? Because I’m at the grammar school too! And we don’t have a lot of money, but my mum raised me to know how to behave. It fucks me off so much, Jake!”

And he’d go red. Because he knew that Amy was right, and he didn’t yet have the words to reassure a girl.

For all that, his mum had been devastated when Amy was attacked. Perhaps Amy’s fate had reduced her back down to size, leaving his mum hollow with guilt. Jacob had watched her fumbling in her handbag not long after it happened. “I’m just popping out to the car,” she’d say, before sliding into the driver’s seat, lighting a cigarette with clumsy fingers and leaning back to exhale.

She’d come back in, sucking an Everton mint, red blotches circling her eyes.

Until Amy was attacked, he’d never seen his mum smoke. In fact, she had never admitted that she did smoke. Not to this day.

“Did your mum not tell you she’d visited Amy?” Alex asked.

“No, she didn’t tell me.”

“Why do you think that was?”

“I don’t know.” He turned around to look out of the window and shook his head. “I guess she wanted Amy to stay in my past. She didn’t want me to dwell. She’d told me to move on almost as soon as it happened. I guess she couldn’t say that and then openly wallow in the past herself.”

“Was Amy close to your mum?”

“No. They didn’t like each other. Amy thought my mum was stuck up and looked down on her. My mum thought Amy was a bad influence.”

“Perhaps your mum felt guilty about that?”

“I don’t know, maybe.”

“Why did she stop visiting?”

“As far as I know she only went a few times, and not for years now. I always cast an eye over the book but I’ve never seen Mum’s name again.”

“She’s visited occasionally by the looks of things, the last time was two Augusts ago.”

“That’s when I got married. Perhaps she was sure I’d moved on enough.”

“Perhaps. But what’s really puzzling me is why she took your brother Tom with her.”

Jacob woke early with a dry throat. Next to him, Fiona lay on her side, snoring. One of the less endearing traits she’d acquired in pregnancy, but he was grateful for it this morning. The low rumbles told him she was still at the bottom of sleep’s well.

He sat up and swung his good leg and then his bad leg out of bed. The sun had just started to appear along the bottom of the blinds like an orange frame but the day had barely started.

He had always struggled to get up in the morning, a trait his brother Tom didn’t suffer. They were Jack Sprat and his wife in that respect. Tom bounding out of his room at first light, crashing soon after dinner; Jacob lying frustrated and twitchy until the early hours, then heavy-lidded until late morning.

What the hell were you doing there, Tom?

He wished they had the kind of relationship where he could just grab his brother, give him a wedgie and all the secrets would come tumbling out. Secrets they could just laugh off.

They’d been best friends once upon a time. And then Jacob just dropped him like a wet stone when Amy came along. Instead of playing with Tom like before, Jacob had spent his afternoons and evenings in his room, listening to music and trying, failing, to write a note in reply to Amy’s love letters.

Those love letters. Jacob wished he’d had the balls to keep them but he’d thrown them away as soon as he read them, like James Bond destroying MI5 briefing notes. Except in his case, he wasn’t hiding spy stuff from the enemy, he was getting rid of anything of which his mum might disapprove.

Before Amy disappeared, Jacob would often hear Tom rustling around in his own room, playing his Game Boy or doing his homework. Sometimes Tom would knock on Jake’s door and stand there expectantly. Sometimes Tom would nod at the paper on the bed and say things like, “Are those from
her
?” or “I s’pose your girlfriend’s coming round now that Mum’s gone out?” but he rarely said any more. Jacob would wave him away and Tom would walk off, looking wounded.

He didn’t remember Tom or Amy saying more than two words to each other. She was nothing to Tom, nothing more than his brother’s inconvenient girlfriend. She wasn’t ever that comfortable in their house, becoming agitated when she thought an adult was due home. So they hid in Jacob’s room and shut the rest of the house out. They’d only sneak onto the sofa if they knew they were alone.

What had Tom done instead? Jacob remembered him spending more time with Simon, passing the Game Boy back and forward or watching TV in silence. The age gap was big enough that there was no competition, just straight-up hero worship. But then Simon had gone too.

Jacob and Tom would probably have grown closer again, had Amy’s abduction not derailed everything. As it was, Jacob then had new reasons to lie in his room without talking. By the time he surfaced, his brother was no longer a cheerful thirteen-year-old, but a full-blown teenager. He wore black eyeliner and a long leather jacket that smelled like a charity shop. He listened to Nine Inch Nails and read gloomy books like
Catcher in the Rye
. From being peas in a pod, they were suddenly night and day. And Jacob barely noticed it happen.

Tom hadn’t known Amy properly though, they didn’t have any shared friends and didn’t hang out. They were civil, that was as far as it went.

Jacob stood in his kitchen, drinking tea and watching the orange light creep through the garden toward the house.

Tired from his early start and with half of his lunch still languishing on the plate, Jacob looked up decisively.

“Fi?”

“Yeah?”

“I need to go out for a bit.”

“Where?”

“I just need to clear my head.”

“Why do you need to clear your head? You needed to go out to clear your head yesterday too, so what’s up?”

“Please don’t interrogate me, I’m finding this really hard.”

“This is hard for you?” Fiona pushed her plate away and sat back. “Okay.” She nodded to herself. “You’re in a world of your own and all I’m trying to do is help you…”

Her head sagged as Jacob held his breath. When she lifted it again, tears were pouring freely and silently.

“No,” she said quietly. “No.”

“Fi—”

“No.” She swallowed hard. “Enough.”

Fiona struggled to stand up from her stool and rested a wobbly arm on the breakfast bar. “I can’t do this anymore. I can’t do this. Fuck knows, I’ve tried.”

“Why are you being so dramatic? I just wanted some fresh air.”

“I’ve tried and tried to push this over the line, but I can’t do it anymore. This isn’t who I am.”

“What are you talking about now?” Jacob struggled up after her and tried to grab her hand but she snapped it away.

“I said I would never be one of these women. Not me, no fucking way. Yeah, you’re a liar. You’re a cheat and a liar—”

“What the fuck? Is this about the other night again? I told you where I was, I
told
you.”

“Don’t! Don’t you dare.” Fiona took a deep breath and closed her eyes. “There’s the other night,” she said, her voice wobbling. “There’s the fictitious present buying—”

“I did buy you a present! The bracelet, remember? You’re wearing it right now, I can see it.”

“Yeah, J, but you bought it the day after you said you had. From a shop in town, not online. I saw it on our statement.”

“I tried to buy one online but I—”

“Jesus, Jacob, stop. Please. You’re making this way worse for both of us. You’re a liar and I’m pretty sure you’re a cheat and that’s on you.” Tears trickled freely down to her jaw. “But I’ve played my part too,” she sniffed. “I didn’t see it, did I? I didn’t see what was right in front of me until it was too late.

“I overlooked stuff, I tried to see the best in you. I fussed around you like you were a wounded animal, but you just carried on retreating, shutting me out and lying to me. I can’t do this anymore. You need to go.”

Jacob winced and tried to find a better resting place for his leg. He leaned on the suitcase next to him while a sports bag acted as a slapdash leg rest in the footwell. Jacob wiped his eyes, pinched his temples and wondered what Fiona had shoved in the case for him. He was almost too scared to look.

“Just here—thanks, mate.”

His mum’s car was in the drive as the taxi pulled in, his dad’s car was gone. Probably at the court, as usual.

“Darling!”

“Hi, Mum,” Jacob said, leaning on his suitcase on the doorstep.

Sue’s smile dropped. “Oh,” she said.

“Mum,” Jacob started, swallowing tears away, “do you think I could stay for a few days?”

“Of course you can, but what’s going on?”

“We’re just having a few problems, Mum,” he said, and his face folded.

“Oh, J.” Sue pulled Jacob down to her level, hugging him to her chest as he crouched awkwardly on his crutches. “I’m so sorry,” she soothed. “We’ll work it out though, don’t worry. We’ll work it all out.”