Approaching Zero (4 page)

At home she went to bed anytime between 2 a.m. and not at all. She had got into some interesting habits since breaking from her job. She would always get up at a reasonable hour, though, because there was always so much to do and it wasn’t going to wait for her to catch up with lost sleep. The jury was out as to whether she missed the nine-to-five grind. There were certain clients that she definitely missed. As she snuggled down into the blankets and gave a good show of being a model patient, she allowed a few of them to parade through her mind. The one that she would never forget was a young man, Tom, who had lost both of his parents in a house fire when he was a child. The biggest tragedy was that the fire was his fault. He was only six when it happened and was trying out a cigarette, trying to be just like his dad. He hadn’t known to put it out properly and the only saving grace of that fateful night was that he had managed to get out alive. He lost everything and had to carry the burden of knowing that it was his fault, but he was so memorable because she was able to make a difference to his life. They worked together for years, talking, playing, drawing, crying, and growing, and he emerged with his head held high. He would never be able to fully absolve himself of blame or accept the loss of everything he loved, but because of their sessions he had a chance of leading a productive life. No, Kathy corrected herself, it was more than that; he would thrive because of their time together. He had even talked about how he could help other people who had had similar experiences to him and he was building a life for himself. As to where he was now, Kathy had no idea.

He’s probably in a gutter somewhere,
the little negative voice in her head informed her, which she always tried so hard to drown away with positivity. But thoughts like this had gathered momentum since her work with people like Tom had ended, after she started getting more and more clients with problems that were more difficult to work with. It was true that she had entered the profession because she believed that she could use her psychic abilities to help people. And it was also true that, because she could only hear twisted, negative thoughts, her work was actually far more successful with less-desirable clients: those who committed terrible crimes or at least thought about such heinous acts. So it was in this area that her reputation developed and she was eventually requested to unravel the barbed souls of murderers, rapists, paedophilesalways paedophilesthieves, violence junkies, and generally nasty people. And, of course, she was good at it because she could hear exactly what they were thinking. She could clear pathways into their truths in a way that astonished her superiors. Inevitably, the Toms became fewer and her days were subsequently filled with grime. Eventually, everything around her became grimy and then everything she touched was coloured with the same murk until something had to give. But she didn’t have to think about that right now. It was the last thing she needed to think about; she had as much time as she wanted now away from the nine-to-five and wasn’t going to waste it looking back.

Kathy sighed deeply and turned over; her body had started to relax toward something resembling drowsiness. But then a mighty crash shook her back into the room. Some kind of instrument table had been knocked over and the noise dragged her out of her pondering. She was now wide awake again, on her back, and had pulled her arms out of the blankets before sulkily huffing them down on either side of her body. She was now in a position in which she would never be able to sleep, but it would show any passing nurses that she wasn’t happy with being put to bed in this way. However, she could only maintain this protest for a few minutes and, before she knew it, it was silent again and she had slipped onto her side and pulled the blankets high.

Her mind began to fill with more of those early clients, the ones who actually deserved her help, before drifting her back to her childhood—so much for not wasting her time by looking back! In her mind she was nine years old and in her classroom at junior school. There was no teacher in the room so the noise was deafening: a few of the boys had jumped up onto the desks and were doing the Running Man in unison. Everyone else, including Kathy, was either clapping or slamming their desks in time with the dancing. And then other boys started throwing books and pens at the lads, and then at each other until the whole room had descended into the inevitable chaos of unattended nine-year-olds. Predictably, Brady was in the center of it, lobbing books into the air, trying to get them to land on the beams above her. And then everyone was stunned into silence by the arrival of a strange man in a brown suit and his booming voice. “What the hell is going on in here?”

In surprisingly few moves, the class assembled itself into something resembling a learning group; books were placed back on shelves, dancing was abandoned, and screeches were lanced in the middle so that the man was presented with immediate silence. Not a single sound could be heard until a sudden retching noise caused everyone to turn their heads to the back of the room, to Kathy. Her face had turned the colour of the kind of snow that should never be eaten and she was lurched over her desk. Just as every eye had made its way to her, she projectile vomited down onto the floor until there was nothing left inside of her. Thinking about it now, the one thing that Kathy remembered was the smell—that smell. It was the first time she had smelt it, and she had no way of knowing what it was—what kind of evil was festering inside of this substitute teacher. This was the very first time that it had happened—the creeping, festering attack of the senses that would literally turn her stomach.

Every day that week she was sent home sick, only to recover, return the next day and face the same smell and sickness.

“Why can’t anyone else smell it?” she had begged anyone who would listen. “Something’s gone bad in school. I’m not making it up.”

But everyone around her put it down to a bug or something she had eaten or the fact that her life had been a bit difficult of late. And then everyone around her no longer had to put it down to anything because the teacher left; the vomiting stopped and was quickly forgotten. It was years later, when Kathy was maybe thirteen or fourteen, that she put two and two together and realised that this was where it all began when she read a news report about the sub.

More former students come forward as Mr Weslake goes to trial.

By this time she had started taking vapour rub with her wherever she went to put into her nostrils and had worked out the cause of the stenches that accompanied certain people. She was also beginning to hear the murmurings of their perverse minds and other harmful thoughts. The only person she told about it all was Brady, who thought that it was the most amazing thing in the world. She still thought it was the most amazing thing in the world to this day.

“But it’s like someone pouring a mix of off-milk and orange juice down my throat and rotten eggs and meat that’s been eaten by someone else and vomited into my face.”

The description made a thirteen-year-old Brady smile. “But don’t you see,” she told her friend, ignoring the temptation to laugh. “We can go after them. We can get them.”

“Yeah, with our massive muscles and guns,” Kathy shrugged dismissively.

“Don’t take the piss. I’m serious.”

Kathy looked Brady in the eye and could see that she was deadly serious despite the beaming smile on her face. It was a smile of determination that told Kathy they were going to take a great big bite out of the world together, chew it up and spit it out.

As a teenager, Brady looked very similar to the way she would look as an adult: bushy, unruly black hair gathered into a high ponytail; caramel skin; dangerous eyes that glowed and challenged everything they looked at; it’s also quite likely that she was wearing combats on the day of this conversation, as she would for most of her adult life. While most young girls were finding out which shade of foundation matched their complexion and how to make the most of a reluctant bosom, Brady was pumping iron, drilling with cadets and generally hatching outrageous plans like this one.

By contrast, Kathy didn’t look much like her adult self at all. She was much plumper and had longer hair that she let fall haphazardly around her shoulders. She tried the makeup and the outfits that the other girls seemed to get such a kick out of, but it all left her a bit cold. Looking back, it’s easy to see that she was in a strange kind of limbo, waiting for some kind of identity to emerge. And as she waited, she was happy to shade herself in Brady’s massive personality. 

“Okay, what, so we just go around attacking paedos?”

“Pretty much,” Brady agreed, not quite sensing the doubt in her friend’s voice. “The next time you get a whiff of one just let me know.”

“I’m not doing that.”

“But –”

“No, Brady. You’re nuts!”

“And you’re a chicken.”

“So we just attack them?”

“What, am I speaking French?”

“Hmm!” Was it possible? It was the stuff of novels. They were only kids really, even though Brady was convinced she was Sylvester Stallone.

“Just need to take your temperature, Miss Smith.”

“Brady?”

“Shhh! You were dreaming.”

Kathy suddenly opened her eyes and looked around her, expecting to see anything but the ward of sleeping women. “I wasn’t asleep,” she said harshly and her tone seemed to momentarily crush the young nurse, but she bounced back quickly. She looked just the same as the nurse from earlier, but surely nurses either worked days or nights, not both. Maybe they were cloning perfect nurses in a shadowing theatre in the basement of this very hospital.

After she had quietly performed the necessary checks, she left Kathy alone and as much as Kathy tried, she couldn’t remember what she had been thinking about. In the same way, she tried to place her hands where they had been before the nurse interrupted her but it had become an impossible puzzle. She would have to start all over again, find a new comfortable position and a new train of thought to steam her away from the hell of enforced sleep. She considered asking for some kind of sedative, but she didn’t want to give them any excuse to hold her for another day. And so she shut her eyes again and this time an ex-boyfriend popped into her head—or perhaps it was two boyfriends merged together, because however hard she tried she couldn’t remember his name and they hadn’t been together long anyway. This face, or a variation of it, would often pop up in the dark hours and she was able to relive a smile, a “You’re beautiful, Kathy,” or a kiss. However, in the cut and thrust of her day, far from missing being in a couple or the companionship, the sex or the laughter, there was a part of her now that felt it was all irrelevant. What was the point in any of it? She certainly didn’t have any needs that she couldn’t fulfill herself and her life was too full for a man to even fit into it. And then the psychologist in her spoke up.
So why revisit the memory if it’s all irrelevant?

Good point
, she silently conceded and then her eyes suddenly sprang open with a sudden realisation; the man in her mind tonight was wearing a leather jacket, black t-shirt, and jeans.

“Weirdo!” she quietly said to herself and then beckoned the nurse over to her. The nurse smiled warmly as she walked towards her and leaned over the bed to hear Kathy’s whispered request. “I don’t suppose you’d have something to help me sleep, would you?”

Chapter 4

The time was approaching 8 a.m. and thirteen-year-old Kathy’s dad shouted up the stairs, “Kathy! It’s getting late! Don’t make me come up there!”

Predictably, his raucous shout was followed by muffled words from her mother that Kathy could only just hear. “Leave her alone, Jeff. There’s no need to shout at her.” It was the same every morning.

Kathy hadn’t the will to pull herself out of bed and turned away from her dad’s calls, but she was awake now and there was nothing she could do about it, so she eventually turned to face the day and couldn’t help smiling at the sight of the few posters that her mum had let her put up recently: a few rock bands and psychedelic mind swirls, alongside the Disney throwbacks that her mum had persuaded her keep, layered over the My Little Pony wallpaper, which she could only now appreciate ironically. One corner of the room still housed a collection of teddies that had accumulated a thin layer of dust, but she had gradually stamped as much of her developing character on the room as she could: on the bookshelves, with fiction and non-fiction way beyond her reading age, and with her pride and joy—the phrenology head that she would learn to understand as she embarked on her academic psychology career in the years to come. She sighed as she began to fully awaken.

“Kathy, Breakfast!” This was still her dad, but his voice was softer. Yes, Mum had definitely got to him.

Kathy dragged herself out of bed, skipped the look in the mirror—she really didn’t need to know how many new spots she had acquired overnight or how the thick grease in her hair had matted it—and began to dress in the grundy green uniform that she dreamt about burning. She dragged a brush through her hair and tied it back the best she could then threw a few things in her bag. And then she stopped. She was fully awake now and suddenly remembered what today was—what she and Brady had decided to do today. She grabbed the vapour rub from the high shelf and threw that in her bag with her exercise book and pencil case, which had been so new and full at the beginning of term and now barely contained a workable pen and had ripped at the seam. A ripple of excitement danced through her as she made her way downstairs—today was the day—but she had to contain it. She had to deal with her mum first of all, if she was even going to be allowed out after school.

“Special treat today,” Kathy’s mum greeted her as she walked into the kitchen with her bag slung over her shoulder. The kitchen smelt of home cooking—bread or cakes—although there was no sign that any had happened; perhaps it was a trick of the décor, which included wallpaper with a food motif and framed pictures of banquet scenes. “Your favourite,” she continued, “Weetabix with sliced banana.”