Cat Step, page 16
‘Gobby,’ I said.
I showed June a picture of me and Robbie that I kept on my phone. The two of us standing side by side in the crew bar, our heads close, nearly touching.
‘That’s nice. He never grew much taller did he?’
‘I’ve always been taller than him.’
That was all she said. No memories of him as a boy as I hoped she’d share. No insight into the newspaper clipping Emily had found. Perhaps she didn’t know anything. Perhaps she was retired by then. I put my phone away and leaned back in my seat to look out of the window. I wondered if Robbie had made this same journey as a teenager with a tenner in his pocket for a McDonald’s or a cinema ticket. The motorway merged with another motorway, two gas towers loomed and then almost as soon as we were past them the bus was indicating left towards the city.
‘I used to come to the town for the dancing,’ June said and while I was remembering her rebuttal on the first day I met her – I never took to dancing – she said, ‘He wants to meet me in Glasgow. He’s going to stay in a Travelodge.’
‘Your son?’
‘Yes.’
We were in the city now with the high glass college buildings either side of the road and the construction sites and cranes and traffic lights. Crowds of people crossed the junction where our bus had stopped. Emily put her fingers and face to the glass and looked out.
‘Why isn’t he staying in Lennoxtown?’ I asked.
‘He doesn’t associate Lennoxtown with anything good anymore.’
‘Why not?’
‘And to be honest, I think I’ll handle him better away from Campsie. Neutral territory. He might feel like less of my son, if you know what I mean.’
I didn’t, but I put Emily’s coat on her as the men and women in yellow jackets guided the bus into its stance at the terminus. I helped Emily off the bus – she jumped – and we turned to watch June’s careful steps in her small leather shoes and then we were wandering through the shops like any family, Emily touching everything she saw and June refusing anything I offered to buy her with Audrey’s money. She held Emily’s hand and distracted her while I bought a doll that came with a carrycot and an extra set of clothes, for her birthday. That was helpful.
In the food court June let me buy her lunch. She asked for fish fingers and chips and a coffee, which I bought her happily and the three of us sat with our meals but Emily didn’t want to eat. I’d given her too many snacks.
‘This is your lunch,’ I said. ‘There’s nothing else.’
‘I’ve got a headache.’
‘Just eat your nuggets then.’
‘I’ll eat one.’
‘Eat one then.’
She took a tiny bite and put the nugget down. I had to look away. She was making me mad. I couldn’t let it go. ‘Have another bite.’
June put her hand over Emily’s. ‘You just take your time, pet,’ she said.
‘Are you afraid of your son?’ I said.
‘I’ve got a headache,’ Emily said again.
June scowled. ‘That’s a personal question.’ Then, ‘I don’t know if I like him anymore. You seem wound up, Liz.’
‘Why not?’
‘Mummy, my head is really sore.’
I put my hand on Emily’s forehead and it was hot. I noticed her red cheeks and told her to drink some milkshake.
‘If you don’t want to see him just tell him not to come. You’re a forthright woman.’
‘I’ll see how I feel nearer the time.’
Emily pushed her nuggets away from her and knocked over her milkshake. June caught it. I looked again at Emily’s flushed face.
‘Is your head still sore?’ I asked.
‘Yes.’
‘How’s your heart? Is it beating fast?’ I felt her pulse. It seemed fast to me. This would not do.
I told June it was an emergency. We grabbed our bags, left our food on the table, and I carried Emily down the escalator to the street. I yelled at the first taxi I saw.
‘A&E,’ I said, not knowing how near or far the nearest hospital was.
‘Is the wean okay?’ the driver said.
‘No, she’s not.’
‘Will I take her to the new hospital?’
I looked at June. She said, ‘Aye.’
‘Mummy, we’re in a taxi,’ Emily whispered. She sat as still as she’s ever sat.
‘How are you feeling?’
‘Fine.’
It was my heart that was beating fast, my breath that was ragged, my head that had pins of panic all through it.
‘Liz, I don’t think there’s much wrong with her,’ June said as the taxi took us alongside the river through a city I’d barely seen.
‘She could be very ill but you can’t see it,’ I said.
The taxi driver didn’t charge me. June tried to give him money but he didn’t take hers either. We raced from the taxi into the A&E waiting room and I shouted, ‘Help! My daughter needs help!’
A triage nurse sat her down. ‘What’s the matter?’
‘It’s her heart. You need to check her heart. She’s not well.’
The nurse was too slow. Over-kind. He talked to her, not me, and Emily answered him quietly. He put a plastic thimble over her thumb and hooked her up to a monitor. He checked her eyes and ears and took her temperature.
‘Her dad died because of his heart,’ I hissed into the nurse’s ear, not wanting Emily to hear me. ‘Sudden death.’
‘How’s her breathing been?’ he asked.
‘Bad.’
‘How do you mean bad?’
‘All over the place.’
‘Has she described any pain?’
‘Yes.’
‘Where?’
‘In her heart.’
Emily looked up at me.
‘What about her skin?’
‘Sweaty.’
‘What colour?’
‘Grey. Red.’
Emily looked at me again. She must have known I was lying but I couldn’t stop myself.
The triage nurse took Emily’s hands and held her fingers. He leaned towards her, bouncing her fingers up and down in his. He was about to speak.
‘You need to check her out now. Get her an ECG. Get a cardiologist. Get her looked at.’ I wasn’t going to have him tell me to sit in a waiting room. ‘Her dad,’ I hissed again. ‘This is an emergency. She might have his heart. We’re not leaving.’
I know. I wasn’t myself. And I was frightening Emily who sat still, swinging her legs underneath her chair.
‘Liz, you need to calm down,’ June said, and she put her palm to Emily’s forehead. ‘She looks all right to me. Are you better now, Emily?’
But I didn’t stop until we’d passed through to the doors of the emergency ward and they’d hooked her up to a machine and sent a paediatric cardiologist to look at her. She said she could see no anomalies on Emily’s ECG: ‘Show me, show me the ECG.’ I said. Her fingers traced the triangles on the printout, showing me everything was normal. They would send Emily an outpatient’s appointment and she would come back for an echocardiogram. Belt and braces, the doctor said. I looked into her eyes and saw that she was attempting to reassure me. June nodded and said, ‘See, she’s fine.’
‘Are you Gran?’ the doctor said.
‘No,’ June said, but she took charge as if she was my mother or my grandmother. Again, I was glad of her.
It was June who noticed the doctor and a colleague talking outside the cubicle then going together to lean over a computer screen.
When she came back the doctor said, ‘We’d like you to stay here for a little longer. I’m going to re-examine you,’ and she removed Emily’s leggings and inspected her legs, then rolled her on her side and lifted her top so the soft skin of her back was revealed. ‘Shouldn’t be much longer,’ she said as she closed the curtain on her way out.
‘I’m hungry,’ Emily said.
‘She was checking for bruises,’ June whispered to me.
‘They’re getting a social worker aren’t they?’
June stood up. ‘Get her dressed, put her shoes on, and when I tell you, we’ll go. This is an outrage.’
At June’s word we burst from the cubicle and ran without looking back. We struggled with one door until Emily noticed the green push-button which released the lock and we didn’t stop running until we reached the row of bus stops on the other side of the hospital. Emily thought it was a game.
‘She didn’t have any bruises,’ I said and cradled Emily’s head in my hands, pulling her body to my body. Emily looked up, exhilarated, breathing heavily in an exaggerated way. ‘They saw that there were no bruises, didn’t they?’ I said again.
‘Of course they did. But you’ll be on a red flag or some such. We’d have been hours in there waiting for a duty social worker to let you go. No way.’ She looked as if she was going to say something else but closed her mouth.
The electronic displays on the bus stops showed numbers of buses to places I’d never heard of. ‘Where are we?’
‘Govan.’
‘Where’s that?’
‘South of the river.’
‘How will we get home?’
‘I need a wee,’ Emily said.
There was nothing but roads and paving and landscaped grounds, nowhere to conceal a small child as she peed outside. I was afraid to return to the hospital but we went back because Emily would have wet herself, I know she would. I left June outside the door to the toilets and made sure that Emily sat on a toilet seat with no piss on it. When she was washing her hands in the wash room’s ultra violet light I felt suddenly so tired of it all. I called Paul. ‘Can you help me out?’ I said.
‘Has your plaster cracked?’
I couldn’t play along. ‘No. But we’re miles from home.’
‘Give me half an hour. Tell me where you are.’
Emily asked me to lift her up to the mirror so she could see her face in the strange light.
Perhaps it was the slowness of my walk when we came out of the toilets or the limp way I held Emily’s hand, but June stepped towards me and put her arms around my shoulders and I bent my head to be embraced. Emily joined in too.
‘I would get yourself out of Lennoxtown,’ June said to me. ‘You’ve done your bit. Go home now.’
I said nothing. We sat down outside to wait for Paul. God knows what detour he made to pick us up but he got to us within half an hour.
‘What’s wrong with her?’ he asked when he’d strapped Emily into his daughter’s car seat. June sat beside Emily in the back, a plastic ball and a McDonald’s toy still in its wrapper at her feet.
‘My heart,’ Emily said.
‘Your heart?’
‘Mummy said it hurt, but it didn’t.’
Paul turned round in his seat and I wished he would keep his eyes on the road.
‘What’s wrong with your heart?’
‘Mummy thought it would be like Daddy’s.’
‘Oh.’
He looked at the road and drove on.
‘I’m hungry. Is there something to eat?’ Emily asked. She’d taken her shoes and socks off.
I had no snacks left. June gave her a mint.
‘There’s an orange in the glove box.’
‘I don’t want an orange.’
‘Can I have it?’ I said.
I peeled the orange and ripped the skin into tiny pieces as I told Paul about Robbie’s heart and how his condition could be hereditary. I told him I feared for my daughter. June and Emily spoke quietly in the back seat. Their voices were soothing. Emily began to sing ‘Five Currant Buns in a Baker’s Shop’.
‘You’re an unlikely friendship,’ Paul said to me.
‘Me and June? We have an understanding, don’t we June?’ I called over my shoulder to her. It was more than an understanding. It was an affinity.
She didn’t answer.
‘You’re not Michael McDermott’s mum are you?’ Paul said.
‘I am, yes. You can drop me wherever’s convenient. I’ll pick up some shopping in Kirkintilloch.’
‘I’ll drop you to your door.’
‘No, no. Drop me in Kirky if you please.’
We drove slowly and in silence: slowly, because the motorway lanes were clogged with traffic, in silence because Emily was near sleep, June had turned her head to look out of the window and I had nothing to say. Paul checked his rear-view mirror frequently and I think he was checking on June. When I looked at Emily, her mouth was pursed around another mint and I wanted to ask June to take it from her in case she choked but was afraid Emily would get angry. I watched the gas towers go by and felt my pulse. I think my heart was still racing.
Paul took the turn-off to Kirkintilloch and his car growled along the fast roads through the fields with the half-built new houses, the Campsies ahead of us yellow in the afternoon light. In Kirkintilloch June chucked Emily’s cheek and said to her, ‘Feel better soon,’ and to me she said, ‘Get an early night. That’s some day you’ve had.’ She set off with her turned out feet and swinging arms to goodness knows where.
‘How old is June?’ Emily asked, after she’d gone.
‘I don’t know, maybe seventy-five, I don’t know.’
‘She has lines all over her face.’
‘She’s had a long life. That’s what happens.’
‘I want another mint.’
‘You’ll have to wait till you see her again.’
‘I want another mint!’
‘Don’t start, Emily.’ She didn’t.
Paul said, ‘You know who she is, don’t you?’
Emily kicked the back of my seat.
‘Yes.’ I thought he was talking about her brief affair with Robbie’s grandad and was suddenly devastated for my private and fierce friend whose story must have been known by the whole village. ‘She knew Robbie’s family,’ I said.
‘She’s Michael McDermott’s mum.’
‘Oh.’
‘Your man Robbie, he used to knock about with Michael McDermott.’
Michael McDermott. I recognised the name now.
‘Are you all right?’
I wasn’t. ‘They did something didn’t they?’ I said. ‘Michael McDermott and Robbie. They were in trouble.’
‘You’d have to ask someone who knew him.’
We drove through the fields, the Campsies lit up and dazzling, beautiful spring leaves on trees emboldened by the new sun. I pulled down the visor to shield my eyes.
‘I thought you didn’t know Robbie,’ I said.
‘I didn’t. But Georgia did. She knew him.’
‘Why didn’t you tell me?’
He slowed as a van took a corner too fast.
‘It’s not really my business. Is Emily awake?’
‘I think she’s asleep,’ I said and turned to check. She lay with her head against the car seat, her fists clenched in her lap. I stretched as far as I could stretch and took the last of the mint from her mouth and, because I had nowhere to put it, put it in my own mouth.
‘They were at primary school together. He was a lot older than her.’
Paul told me that Georgia remembered him kicking a football in the playground and was aware of him as they grew up in the way that kids know who has come before them and who will go first into adulthood.
‘She told me she felt sorry for him. But I didn’t want to tell you that. He was your big love wasn’t he? No one wants to hear that about their big love.’
He turned left onto the road into Lennoxtown.
‘I’m quite tough you know,’ I said.
‘Still.’
He was decent, Paul, when I think of him now: ready to accommodate my life thus far and expecting I would do the same for him. He said, ‘She was probably talking about his parents. He lost his anchor when his dad died. You would, wouldn’t you?’ I didn’t say that Robbie shored himself to me and used to tell me plainly that apart from his brother, I was all he had. I was happy with that.
When Paul cut the engine and we parked outside Audrey’s house the birdsong was loud. It was a pretty street in the sun.
‘Shall I help you in with Emily?’
I turned to see her sleeping. ‘Can you lift her straight upstairs to bed?’
Paul unbuckled Emily from her car seat then scooped her sleeping body into his arms.
‘She’s still hot isn’t she?’ I felt her forehead and walked in front of them to the door. ‘What about the toilet?’ I said to Paul. He paused, holding Emily. ‘She did one at the hospital. She hasn’t drunk since. I’ll risk it,’ I said, and he nodded.
I followed them up the stairs and went to the bathroom to find a clean towel to put under her bum in case she had an accident in the night. Paul was sweeping the duvet across her body when I went into her bedroom. We stood for a couple of seconds looking at her as she slept.
‘That’s a nice age, four,’ Paul said.
‘Nearly five,’ I said, and felt a ripple of worry in my stomach and then it was gone, in much the same way I first felt her moving in my womb; a bubble of something that stopped no sooner than it came. I wondered if I should take my pills again. The ripples were becoming more frequent.
‘What did Michael McDermott do?’ I asked Paul.
‘You should speak to your pal June about that.’
‘But do you know what he did?’
‘No.’
‘Do you want to stay?’
‘I’d better not. I should go and see Holly. But I’ll come back.’
‘Tonight?’
‘If I’m allowed.’
‘Yes please.’ I presumed he was asking my permission, not anyone else’s, so I answered that way.
8.
Before I could see June, I was housebound with Emily. She was flushed in her face not because of her heart but because her tonsillitis had flared up again. Even I, with a spoon on her tongue and only the natural light from the bathroom window, saw white spots at the back of her throat. We got more antibiotics and I kept her off nursery. I phoned the estate agent and cancelled a second viewing and we had two slow days where we didn’t leave the house. We slept for hours at a time and watched CBeebies cuddled under a blanket on Audrey’s sofa.
