The Midnight Child Read online

  I peek my head inside and flick on all the lights before slamming the door behind me and locking it. Smears of blood cover the tiled floor. I grab at a scarf, place it next to my feet and stamp on it then turn the soles of my feet upwards to inspect the damage. They are red and sore, small lines of blood settling in the creases of my skin. I prod at a larger circle of scarlet, wincing as I check for any embedded pieces of grit.

  One of the few upsides of living alone is that I can do whatever I want whenever I want. I turn on the radio, run a hot bath and sink down into the white bubbles, my toes and the undersides of my feet buzzing as the warm water laps over them. It will help me to sleep, to take my mind off the horror of what has just happened. How I managed to sleepwalk, leave the house and wander down the road in the dead of night. Even the hot water can’t stop the chill that runs through me at the thought of what could have happened out there. Yet it didn’t. I rest my head back, try to think of different ways to stop this happening again. Tomorrow I will use the top bolt on both doors, perhaps even hide the key, putting it out of reach. My mind, clouded with sleep, surely won’t locate it. There are ways to stop this weird occurrence, ways to make sure I don’t end up out there again. It’s a form of self-preservation. I have to do it. I need protecting from myself.

  I lather myself down, gingerly dabbing at my feet with the bath sponge, relieved that the cuts and bruises will heal. No lasting damage. Part of me wishes there were. At least it might stop me from heading out again. Pain has got to be a sure-fire way of stopping any future sleepwalking, hasn’t it?

  Exhaustion envelops me. I stand up, wrap myself in a towel, empty the bath and switch off the radio. The sudden silence is like being plunged underwater. I’m meeting Kim later. I will have to be in the right frame of mind to deal with her and my mother. What I need to do is to climb into bed and sleep soundly so I can wake rested and ready to face them both with a clear head.

  The bed is cold as I slide in. I curl into a foetal position, shivering against the cool sheets, my brain still full of images – Simon’s small face staring at me, my mother’s wails as we searched for him the following morning, my father’s arms pumping furiously at his sides as he ran from house to house knocking on doors, calling out to neighbours, asking if they had seen him.

  His bed was empty this morning when we went to wake him up!

  Those words will stay with me until the day I die. Those cold terrifying words that left a lasting impression on my mind and a hollow carved deep in my heart that will never be filled.

  Then Kim refusing to come out of the bedroom, her sullen face staring out at us from above as we searched the garden, pulling shrubbery out of the way, opening the door to the old coalshed. I stood and watched, my chest swelling with terror as she stared over into the garden next door where Mr Waters lived with his family before pointing an accusatory finger and stepping back out of sight.

  5

  I am greeted by a wall of heat as I step into Cherry Tree Home where Amanda, the deputy manager steps aside to let me through. ‘Your sister’s already here. She’s in the lounge with your mum, who, incidentally, is having a really good day today.’

  Relief blooms in my chest. I guess that Amanda, as skilled as she is, knows how much visitors long to hear this and is keen to pass it on to put everyone at ease. Going to visit Mum is always an unpredictable and sometimes frightening experience.

  On a bad day, I can hear her shouts and protestations from the car park, am aware that behind closed doors, staff are working hard to calm her down and reassure her that they are not trying to kill her.

  And then on a good day, she will sit peaceably, her hands folded in her lap, eyes twinkling with happiness as she reminisces about the past. Her own childhood past, not the near past, our childhood. Sometimes she speaks of Dad and Simon, her words tearing at my heartstrings. I try to jolly her along, steer her away from the obvious, knowing she is in no fit state to cope with those sorts of memories, her mind too fragmented to handle them or make sense of them. I struggle with memories of that time in our lives. For her it’s almost an impossible task.

  More often than not, she will speak of growing up with her siblings, how they all had to share a bed, how they would play out in the street from dawn till dusk with no fear of strangers or traffic. How they would hear the air raid sirens going off and make the terrifying dash to the shelter, covering their ears from the explosions, the crashing of buildings as bombs hit them leaving nothing behind but piles of dust and rubble.

  It’s only when I hear this that I realise how brave she is, how much she had to endure; all that terror finally behind her after the war ended only for her to lose a child later on in her life; her boy, our brother who disappeared into thin air. Nobody deserves that. Nobody.

  ‘Here she is,’ Mum says, her face lighting up as I head towards them. ‘It’s the woman from next door. Have you brought us any cake?’

  Kim is perched next to her on the tiny velour sofa. She rolls her eyes and smiles at Mum’s words. On my last visit I was her sister, Denise, and the time before that I was an intruder who was trying to steal all of her money. I’m a shape-shifter, transforming and morphing with every consecutive visit.

  ‘Hi, Mum,’ I say tenderly as I lean down to kiss her cheek. She smells of lavender and old talcum powder. Her skin is soft with a fine layer of downy hair that covers her sallow cheeks.

  ‘Who’s your mum? Is she here? I’d like to meet her. Don’t mind if I do.’ She narrows her eyes and stares at Kim. ‘And who’s this pretty young thing, eh?’

  ‘It’s me, Mum.’ Kim sighs, her patience evidently wearing thin. She will have been here for all of ten minutes, and is already itching to leave. ‘And I’m not exactly young.’

  ‘Me mum? Who’s she? Don’t think I’ve ever met her. Nice, is she? Not like that Dorothy at number 26. She was a right gadabout she was, always out and around town with different men who couldn’t keep it in their trousers.’

  I laugh. Kim joins in, her tense posture relaxing as I sit down and take Mum’s hand in mine. It lessens the load, two of us here talking with her. My thumb strokes her fingers, straying over her parchment like skin, tracing the deep grooves that line her palm.

  ‘How are you doing, Mum? Everything okay with you?’

  She turns away from me and I feel the air shift, sense the mood tilt, spiralling downwards, a barely discernible movement but it’s there all the same. I have to suppress the usual anxiety that settles in the pit of my stomach. I want to be wrong. Perhaps I am. I hope so. She remains rigid, her back straight, the muscles in her neck twitching and jerking beneath her pale papery skin as her mood and temper fluctuates. I’ve only just arrived. Please don’t let this be happening. Not now. I wanted more time with her. More time with the gentle happy lady she used to be. Not the unrecognisable demonic creature she will become.

  The face that turns back to stare at me tells me everything I need to know – that I’m right, she has changed, her affable self now absent, only to be replaced by her other self. The one that we struggle to contain. The one we struggle to control. It’s in her eyes, that look, that flint-like stare. Probing, resentful. Full of malice. Dread coils within me, furling and unfurling. She had been doing so well, was happy, looked settled. It was short-lived. Now we’re faced with this. In a matter of seconds, she has turned into someone I fear, an unrecognisable being whose anger and bitterness is endless.

  ‘Who are you?’ She leans forward. Her finger is almost touching Kim’s nose. She waggles it about, sneering, bubbles of foamy saliva gathering at the corners of her mouth, her yellowing teeth bared in anger. ‘I don’t know you. I don’t like you. Get away from me!’ She is hissing. Her voice is low but her irritation is unmistakable. I know it as well as my own features, my own thoughts, and wish it away. Pray for her to stop, to calm down.

  ‘Mum, please don’t do that.’ Kim sighs, her voice containing traces of near boredom. She moves away from Mum’s bony finger, blinking, turning to me with an eye-roll and a curl of her lip.

  My stomach clenches. I shake my head for her to stop, try to shuffle closer to keep the two of them apart. Kim’s apathy will only rile Mum, turning that key in her back, setting her off like a clockwork doll. Mum isn’t stupid. Demented yes, stupid no. She senses intolerance and takes an instant dislike to it, reacting badly like a spoilt child.

  ‘Mum? Don’t mum me, you little bitch. I’ve met the likes of you before, devils all of you!’

  I pluck a packet of sweets out of my bag, my emergency stash for occasions such as this. She stops with the insults, greedily eyes the packet, and before I have a chance to open them, snatches it out of my grasp and throws it across the room. It lands next to the feet of an elderly man who immediately snatches it up, rips open the packet, and starts shoving handfuls of pink candy into his mouth like a ravenous animal.

  ‘Devil food for devil people. Leave me alone! Just leave me alone, all of you!’ Her voice has risen a full octave to a shriek. She drools, globules of saliva hanging from her mouth, her chin, the flesh on her face the colour of candle wax as her anger drains every last bit of energy out of her frail body.

  My heart pounds, my breathing quickens. Kim is up on her feet, looking around for assistance. In my peripheral vision I see Amanda shuffle towards us, her movements showing no indication that she is concerned. This is her job. She is accustomed to it; accustomed to Mum’s temper tantrums, her unpredictable ways, her sometimes violent behaviour and I don’t think for one minute that my mother is the only resident who is prone to such outbursts.

  ‘How about a cup of tea, Sylvie? Two sugars, just how you like it, eh?’ She bends down and tries to catch Mum’s eye.

  ‘Bitch. Tart. Go back to your own country.’ A pulse thuds
in my neck, wincing at Mum’s words and her new-found love of being racist. I wasn’t aware she even knew of such insults but this is where we are at, here in this cloistered environment with my mother, the once kind and gentle soul who is now a foul-mouthed, bigoted, demented old lady who appears to hate everyone for reasons known only to herself.

  I turn and mouth a heartfelt apology to Amanda who waves it away with a flap of her hand and a genuine smile. She touches my shoulder, squeezing it softly and I find myself having to fight back tears of shame brought on by the individual before me, the lady that I once knew. The mother who is now back in her infant years with no decency, no barriers to her bubbling fury. Once the adult, twice the child.

  ‘I’ll do to you exactly what I did to him! Don’t touch me. Don’t you dare touch me!’

  A huddle of bodies appears as if out of nowhere; surrounding Mum, trying to placate her, to soothe her. I have no idea how they do it, these people, how they can care for somebody who can change so suddenly and without warning, her moods permanently on a cliff edge. I have tried to work this out, to look for triggers, anything that can tell us why she randomly turns from a contented being to an intense whirlwind of anger in a matter of seconds, whether it be smells or sounds or the odd stray word, but it evades me, leaving us permanently bemused.

  ‘They all died, you know. The men are all gone. He’s better off dead. We’re all better off without him.’

  A silence descends. She has stopped with the screaming and is back to hissing at us, her spine arched as she bucks and fights before sliding down into the chair, spent. The bodies part, moving away from her. They recognise the signs, know her better than she knows herself.

  ‘The boy and the man. All gone now.’

  Her face softens, her lids drooping, her glassy eyes flickering before closing completely. Her head flops to one side, a small snore escapes from her pursed lips. I marvel at how quickly she can fall into a deep sleep, her energy levels depleted after an explosive outpouring of raw emotion.

  ‘Well, that wasn’t too bad, was it?’ Amanda says triumphantly, a small smile forming at the corners of her mouth. ‘We’ve had far worse, haven’t we, ladies?’ The assistants nod in agreement and amble off elsewhere, the moment forgotten as if it never even happened.

  Except it did. And I haven’t forgotten. Those words, her words – they stick in my mind, clinging onto my brain like glue. Even when Mum is rambling, barely coherent, downright furious, her words always have a grain of truth in them. She has dementia, has forgotten a lot of things but she isn’t an idiot.

  She doesn’t wake. Kim and I sit for over half an hour, waiting, speaking about inane topics – the weather, my latest book, how her family are getting on – all the while avoiding the obvious. Guilt bites at me as I listen to Kim talk about her life, her children. I don’t see enough of Luke and Olivia. Aside from the odd text or comment on Facebook, we barely communicate. That has to change. They are family after all. For all Kim annoys me, her domineering manner overshadowing everything I say and do, she is still my sister. Her family is my family. We are all as one.

  ‘How’s Greg keeping?’

  Kim shrugs, juts out her bottom lip. ‘Same as always. Busy at work.’

  Greg’s job pays well. I would guess he earns more in a month than most people do in a year with his web design business that he set up many years ago when most of the population barely knew how to turn on a computer. He took a gamble, had a vision and it paid off. Kim seems to have forgotten that. My sister seems to have forgotten a lot of things that should be remembered.

  ‘Shall we go now? I think maybe we need to talk about what Mum said earlier.’ I scrutinise Kim’s reaction to my words.

  We both know what Mum meant, what it was she was referring to. We know it. Whether or not my sister will choose to speak of it later is anybody’s guess. Kim’s responses are often unfathomable when it comes to discussing our past, preferring to stonewall me whenever I try to bring up the subject of Simon and Dad.

  Mum’s face is cool as I lean down to kiss her goodbye, her breath a thin trail of warm air that caresses my skin. Where has she gone, the woman that used to tuck me in at night, the lady who used to stand at the kitchen sink, singing softly as she prepared our food and washed the dishes? Is she still in there, clawing to be free, screaming out to be heard, for her story to be listened to? Or has she simply melted away, her other non-demented self; floating off into the ether never to be seen again?

  Before her mental decline, Mum used to speak about Simon, forever claiming she had somehow let him down. I have no idea why she thought that. She was a wonderful loving mother, a selfless parent. She did the best she could.

  ‘Bye, Mum.’ Kim has already started to move away, as if the indignity of being associated with this scenario is too much for her. No kiss goodbye, no whispered reassurances into Mum’s ear that everything is going to be okay. Just her heels clicking on the hard white flooring as she brushes past me, her coat catching the back of my hand, its rough tweed texture causing me to recoil as if burnt.

  ‘I’ll meet you in the car park,’ I say, my tone sharper than I intend it to be. ‘I need to ask you something.’

  She doesn’t reply. The sound of the door closing as she exits the large lounge, the warm rush of air she leaves behind are all that is left of her.

  I pat Mum’s hand, tell her we’ll be back soon, give her another kiss goodbye and follow Kim downstairs.

  6

  ‘What did she mean by that – I’ll do to you what I did to him? And He’s better off dead.’ We are standing opposite one another, our stance anachronistic in the sprawling car park, like a pair of duellers ready to do battle. Kim’s expression is edgy, tension and annoyance apparent in her closed fists, the tic in her jaw, her darting eyes.

  I try to keep my voice gentle. I don’t want her to back off, to flee like she usually does whenever this subject is brought up, the subject of Simon and Dad, scarpering like a frightened rabbit as if the past catching up with her will somehow send her life toppling down around her, her carefully balanced Jenga stack collapsing and ruining everything she has worked hard to maintain.

  ‘Grace, Mum has dementia. She says all sorts of things that are utter nonsense. What on earth are you getting at?’ Her teeth are gritted, her jaw rigid as if it’s too much of an effort to reply properly, the motion of her face wasted on me.

  ‘You heard her, Kim. You heard what she said, and if there’s one thing we know, it’s that Mum’s words always mean something. They may be disjointed and sometimes incoherent but if you look at them closely, analyse them in enough detail, it’s apparent she is trying to tell us something.’

  ‘What, so you’re a psychologist now, are you? Or are you a consultant specialising in Alzheimer’s?’

  I blink away the hurt, ignoring the pinpricks of heat that cover my skin as she speaks to me in that way, as if I am an errant child, my opinions worthless. Everything I planned on saying melts away, my thoughts suddenly turning to liquid in my brain.

  ‘Look, Grace.’ Her words stop me as I start to walk away. ‘All I’m trying to say is, don’t let her get to you. She’s in safe hands in there and she isn’t the same person anymore. Clinging onto the past and trying to link it with what Mum says is pointless. You’ll tie yourself up in knots doing it. Once she wakes up, it will all be forgotten. The only thing on her mind will be what she wants for her lunch and how many puddings she can have afterwards.’

  Part of me knows this is true, and yet another part of me can’t forget what she said. Mum’s past is also my past. It is also Kim’s past but for some reason she has chosen to shelve it, pretend it never happened and push ahead with her life. That is her choice. Trying to work out what Mum meant is mine. And if it means doing it on my own without her support, then so be it.

  I tell her she is right and that I’m being overemotional. It’s what she wants to hear so I’m not doing anything dishonest. I am simply pacifying her, letting her think I’ve forgotten about it, that I will move on to other more important things that don’t involve Mum or Dad, or Simon, and where he disappeared to, or how Dad met his untimely end. Kim is the only other person I can share my thoughts with about that period in our lives, the only other person who would understand and know how I feel, and her refusal to speak about it leaves me stuck in a moment, trapped and unable to move forward.