She flicks the piece of card, holds it squarely above my eyes. A photograph, of Evie. Her beautiful face is older; eyes like azure pools of sadness. The strawberry-shaped birthmark is partly visible on her neck.
It has been three years since I saw her, when she was five years old. In this photograph she looks about eight.
A force rises up from my solar plexus, I feel the thrust of it travelling up through my body, chest, throat and suddenly it’s there, filling my head like liquid explosive.
And I blink.
I actually blink.
Above me, her face freezes and then sort of collapses. She steps back in shock.
‘They said you couldn’t move, they said—’
Her voice falls away and she steps forward again. Her face looms in front of my eyes. She thinks she might have imagined it and she is checking me again.
I really did blink. I try to do it again and nothing happens.
I squeeze my eyelids together, or I try. But they are glued apart, and once again I am moving only in my head.
I blink repeatedly. Fast, hard, squinty blinks, one after the other.
Nothing happens.
I don’t know what I did that time, how or why it was different. I don’t know how to blink again.
The door opens and she gasps and looks round.
‘Ms McGovern?’ I hear Dr Chance’s voice. ‘The nurses said you were here.’
My heart seems to leap up into my throat.
Tell him! I cry out the words. Tell him I just blinked.
‘Yes,’ she says, turning away from me. ‘Pleased to meet you. I’m her sister.’
‘I take it someone has spoken to you about your sister’s current condition?’
I haven’t got a sister.
‘Y-yes.’ Her voice breaks with emotion. It’s an impressive performance.
‘We’re very concerned there has been no sign of any movement whatsoever. Your sister can neither breathe nor swallow independently. There will need to be’ – he pauses – ‘some important decisions made, quite soon.’
Tell him I blinked. Please tell him.
‘Of course, I understand. It’s so sad,’ she says and I hear sniffling and the swish of a tissue being whisked from a handbag. ‘I’ve been here talking to her and watching her and there’s nothing at all, no reaction. I don’t feel she’s with us anymore. It’s like she’s already gone.’
‘Indeed,’ Dr Chance says softly. ‘And perhaps it is kinder to think of it that way.’
I am here, I shout. I am still here.
‘If you’d like to come with me, Ms McGovern, we can go to my office for a chat. Dr Shaw, my colleague, may be able to join us.’
The door opens. And closes.
And I am alone again.
The room is silent in between the tick tocks and the rasps, which I hardly notice anymore.
The light is fading. The sun has moved round to the side of the building, leaving my room cold and clinical.
The blur of leaves sweeps to and fro across the glass as the wind picks up, lifting the branch to the window. On my face they would prickle and scratch, but from my bed they sound muted and soft. Like Evie’s breathing at night.
I stare at the white, glossed ceiling with blurred eyes and try to blink. Nothing happens. The sensation of an explosive fullness in my head has gone now. I feel completely hollow, devoid of life.
I project the photograph of an older Evie onto the ceiling above me. She dangled it in front of my eyes for mere seconds but it was long enough. I have it now, here in my mind. I conjure up Evie’s smooth, plump cheeks and the soft gleam of her hair cascading onto the shoulders of the red tartan dress with the white lace collar. I block out her never-ending tears, captured by the flash.
I try to un-see the fear and sadness in her eyes, but it is all I can ever think about.
I repeat her cutting words: ‘You just had one job that mattered, and that was to look after her.’
I know I am totally to blame for what happened to Evie.
It was all my fault.
39
Three Years Earlier
The Teacher
Harriet Watson had entertained certain suspicions about Evie Cotter’s mother, but now she was utterly convinced that her suspicions were correct.
It had begun when Harriet noticed Mrs Cotter’s odd drowsiness, evident on the day she visited the family home. During their tea and conversation in the kitchen, there had been a second or two, just here and there, of distracted silence on the other woman’s part.
Perhaps the unpaid bills and maxed-out credit card statements had something to do with that. Toni had soon whisked them away when she realised she’d left them on the table.
Still, Harriet hadn’t been completely certain of Toni Cotter’s dependency.
But today on the telephone, the woman had clearly been slurring her words. It had been pronounced enough that Harriet herself had hesitated on the call, waiting for Toni to explain why she was having trouble speaking.
There had been no explanation. Toni had simply fallen silent herself until Harriet began speaking again. She was obviously completely unaware of how she sounded. Which is what had given her away. As the call continued, Toni became emotional, eventually teetering on the edge of tears, so Harriet had hastily finished the call.
She replaced the phone in its cradle and sat down on a breakfast stool. Staring out of the kitchen window, her eyes settled on the damp rot of next door’s fence.
From this vantage point, she could see the two odd socks that had been hanging on their neighbour’s line for months and months, through all weathers. The cotton had started to unravel; soon there would be nothing left.
At least fifteen years ago, the house next door had been converted into four separate student flats with communal kitchen and lounge areas. But Harriet could still remember when Mr and Mrs Merchant lived there and everything had been shipshape. Fences regularly treated with creosote and not a sign of the tangled, weed-strewn flowerbeds that now encroached onto the narrow front path.
Keeping the house and garden in order seemed to be a dated pastime for many these days, Harriet thought. Even that shoebox of a house that the Cotters had moved into looked in dire need of sprucing up.
If her suspicions proved correct, then Harriet doubted Toni Cotter was actually capable of organising a good, thorough clean up and providing a stable home for her daughter.
Harriet continued to stare through the rain-spotted glass, but she had stopped seeing anything now. Her mind had begun to ponder other concerns. What was little Evie getting up to while her mother was mooching around in a drugged haze? Who was the GP who’d been dishing out sedatives like Smarties to an obviously healthy young woman?
Harriet took her responsibilities seriously, and, as she had already made the decision to take Evie Cotter under her wing, so to speak, she would be unable to turn a blind eye to her mother’s behaviour. It was obvious she had stumbled on a rather unusual situation. You might say the mother was as much in need of Harriet’s guidance and support as her child was.
Harriet would make it her job to find out exactly what was happening when the door of 22 Muriel Crescent swung closed to the outside world.
In Harriet’s opinion, it amounted to the worst sort of neglect.
40
Three Years Earlier
Toni
I didn’t hear anything at all from Mum on Saturday. She called my mobile while I was upstairs and Evie answered and spoke to her briefly. I wasn’t worried; sometimes she was just best left to get over her strop in her own good time.
I refused to lie around feeling sorry for myself all morning, so I decided I’d take Evie into Hucknall.
‘Do I get to see where you work, Mummy?’ Evie asked, delighted. It was a pleasant change to see her smiling and upbeat.
‘That’s right, poppet,’ I replied. ‘And you’ll get to meet Mummy’s work friends, too.’