Losing Me (10 page)

“About bloody time. Perhaps he’s starting to get his act together.”

“Maybe. It wouldn’t surprise me if it had nothing to do with music journalism though.”

“What makes you say that?”

“Dunno. I’ve just got this feeling that since the band broke up, the taste has gone out of his chewing gum. Of course, he denies it.”

“I guess all we can do is wait.”

He asked her if she’d had any thoughts about where she went from here, job-wise.

“Tutoring, I guess.”

“Makes sense. Three kids at what—fifty quid a time? A hundred and fifty quid a day. You’re sorted.”

“No, Frank, I’m not
sorted,
” she said, sitting up. “I might be able to find work, but that doesn’t alter the fact that my career is over. Why can’t you see that?”

“I do see it, and I’m truly sorry about what’s happened, but we have to be practical. Look, we’re both knackered. Let’s have a proper talk tomorrow.”

“’K . . . Oh, I didn’t tell you—one of my kids came to school today covered in cigarette burns. He’s meant to be on the at-risk register. I don’t get it. . . . Why doesn’t anybody do their job anymore?”

“Let me guess: the mother’s boyfriend. And don’t tell me you got straight on to Child Protection and read them the riot act.”

“Of course I did. What else would you have me do? A kid’s life could be in danger. And I went round to see the mother to see if I could help.”

“And could you?”

“Not really. The boyfriend’s done a runner.” She paused. “Please don’t be angry, but he stole her money and she had no heat or food. So I gave her sixty quid.”

“Fine. Why didn’t you make it a hundred? According to you, there’s loads in the tax pot.”

Barbara described the cold, desolateness of the flat, the bruises on Tiffany’s body. “You’d have done the same—admit it.”

Her husband grunted. “Maybe.”

“Frank, who’s going to do this stuff when I’m not there?”

“What, hand out wads of our cash to the needy?”

“You know what I mean.”

“You know what your problem is?”

“I toot my own horn. I know.”

“Not just that. You think you’re indispensable.”

Frank said he really was too tired to talk anymore and turned over. He was snoring in a matter of minutes. Barbara still couldn’t sleep. It didn’t help that on top of all the other emotions she was feeling, she was still angry with Frank for not making an effort to come home at a reasonable time tonight. It wasn’t often that she asked him for anything.

Outside the night had turned wild and stormy—the tail end of some Caribbean hurricane, apparently. She lay there listening to the howling wind, the rain beating at the old sash windows making them rattle.

Pathetic fallacy. It had come to her—the phrase she’d been trying to remember in the playground—the literary term for when physical surroundings echoed a character’s mood.

Chapter 4

T
he bald woman in the photograph was smiling a wan but courageous smile. She held up a placard:
My
last chemo. “Like” if you hate cancer
.

So if she didn’t click on “like,” Barbara thought, did that mean she loved cancer? That she actively supported it? The picture had been posted by some women’s group calling themselves “Feminists Against Cancer,” which seemed to imply there were some feminists out there who were all for it.

Barbara was sitting at her kitchen table in her dressing gown, getting her usual early-morning caffeine and Facebook fix. She carried on spooling down the page. She reached her own status update from the night before. Nine people had “liked” it. She’d just announced that she’d lost her job and nine people seemed to think it was reason to give her a thumbs-up.

Pam had commented,
When the Lord closes a door, somewhere He opens a window—Maria, The Sound of Music.
Other people had left messages of condolence and fury at the government cuts, which she appreciated. Jean had commented:
Bastards. Shame on them. They’re losing a talented and truly committed teacher. Love you. xxx

Barbara “liked” all the comments and posted a general thank-you, saying how much people’s support meant to her. She felt guilty that Jean had heard her news via Facebook. She should have called her last night. What had she been thinking?

She was about to get off Facebook, but instead she went back to the picture of the smiling cancer woman. “
Like” if you hate cancer
. Barbara had no idea if the directive had been designed to instill guilt, but it had succeeded. If she ignored this woman, Barbara would spend the rest of the day thinking she was a bad person. She hit “like” and went upstairs to take a shower.

She was just leaving the house—Frank had left before she was even awake—when her cell rang. It was Jean.

“Jean, I’m so sorry you had to find out on Facebook. I should have called you last night.”

“Don’t you dare apologize. You were probably in no fit state to talk. Listen, I haven’t got long. I’m at work, grabbing a quick break. I just wanted to check how you’re holding up.”

“Yeah, I’m OK, I guess.”

“How about I pop round when you get back from school? I’ve got to dash now. I’ve got a geriatric primigravida down the corridor who’s fully dilated and screaming blue murder.”

“OK, go. See you later.”

As soon as she got to school, Barbara headed for the lunchroom. This morning, probably because it was so bitterly cold, a few more kids had turned up for breakfast. She helped herself to a bowl of cornflakes and looked round for Troy. She wondered if Sandra had gone through with her threat to exclude him. She hadn’t. He was sitting at a table on his own, struggling to get the top off his boiled egg. Rigid as Sandra could be when it came to school regulations, she had clearly come to the conclusion that this was the safest place for the child.

“Hey, Troy, mind if I join you?”

He looked up briefly. She took that as an invitation and sat down next to him.

“Why don’t you let me show you how to do that?” She demonstrated how to bash the eggshell and take the bits off with the spoon handle. “Or you can use your fingers like this.”

She watched him break into the egg white with his spoon and scoop up the yolk. Once again she was overcome with the urge to wrap this sad, vulnerable little scrap in her arms. She wanted to make him feel safe and cared for, but she couldn’t. Over the years there she’d taught dozens of children like Troy. She’d wanted to rescue them all. Frank accused her of having a Mother Teresa complex. Barbara agreed that she probably did. At the same time, she thought it was a bit rich coming from a man who thought TV journalism could save the world.

“So how are you feeling this morning?”

“OK,” Troy said.

She reached for a butter knife and cut his toast into soldiers and handed him one. “See, that way you can dunk the toast into the yolk. It’s really good.”

He dunked and ate but refused to make eye contact, let alone engage in conversation.

“Troy, do you know if anybody called round to speak to your mum yesterday?”

“Dunno.”

“OK. Not to worry. Tell you what, when you’ve finished breakfast, how’s about we go to the sickroom and put some more antiseptic on your arm.”

“It’s fine. I mustn’t show anybody.”

“Who told you that?”

He carried on eating his egg.

Just then Sandra appeared and beckoned Barbara over. “I decided to let him back because he’ll be warm and safe here and he’ll get two decent meals. But that doesn’t mean I’m not worried about the other children.”

“OK, tell you what,” Barbara said. “Why don’t I keep him with me for the day?”

“You sure?”

“Positive.”

Barbara asked Sandra if she could use her office to put in another call to social services. “I’m not sure anybody’s called round to see Tiffany. I need to find out what’s going on.”

“Sure. I’ll watch Troy.”

It turned out that Jan, the woman she’d spoken to yesterday, wasn’t due in until after lunch. Barbara was put through to her boss—a woman called Maureen Taylor. Barbara introduced herself and gave a brief summary of her conversation with Jan. “I was expecting a social worker to make an emergency visit, but I’m not sure if anybody’s been.”

“Sorry. When did you say you called?”

“Yesterday morning.”

“And it’s Mrs. Stirling from Jubilee Primary?”

“Yes.”

“Well, I’m looking at the log, and there’s no record of your call or any notes.”

“I don’t believe this.”

“Let me see if there’s anything on Jan’s desk. Bear with me for a sec. . . . Right . . . No, there doesn’t appear to be anything. . . . No . . . wait . . . hang on. . . . There’s a Post-it note. Got it. Sorry. It was buried under her papers.”

“So she lost it.”

“Oh, I’m sure she would have found it.”

“When? Next week? Next month? By then we could have a dead child on our hands. Why have you people got no sense of urgency?”

“Look . . . I appreciate your concern, but getting angry isn’t very helpful. Of course we have a sense of urgency. But my team is overloaded with cases. They have to prioritize.”

“And Jan decided not to prioritize Troy.”

“It’s not like that.”

“Then what is it like? Tell me.”

“Mrs. Stirling, you need to calm down. We are doing our best. I assure you that somebody will visit the family.”

“But when? I’ve talked to his mother. Her boyfriend has been physically abusing Troy. His arms are covered in cigarette burns. He seems to have done a runner, but I’m not convinced he won’t be back.”

“OK, I’ve made a note. Tell you what. I don’t usually do home visits, but this situation worries me. I’ll call in on my way home.”

Maureen’s appreciation that the situation was urgent and that she was prepared to go out of her way to visit Tiffany and the children threw Barbara. She’d been ready for a fight, and now that the wind had been taken out of her sails, she didn’t quite know what to say.

“Right . . . well . . . thank you. I really appreciate that.”

•   •   •

At twelve thirty, Barbara took Troy back to the lunchroom and sat him down at a table with Baillie and Kane. She needed a few minutes’ break to eat something and drink a cup of coffee, so she asked the young, newly qualified teacher on lunch duty to keep a special eye on Troy and to watch out for kids calling the group “retards.” Baillie and Kane would probably retaliate with no more than a few “fuck yous.” Despite being hyperactive, they were good-natured kids and rarely violent. Troy was the one likely to go nuclear.

Once Troy was settled, Barbara took herself up to the staff room. People were sitting around, eating packed lunches and reading the papers. At Jubilee, staff only ever read the tabloids—the more down-market and outrageous, the better. They provided much-needed light relief.

“Here, listen to this: ‘Bigfoot kept lumberjack as love slave
.
’”

Barbara joined in the laughter and took a bite of the ham and mustard sandwich she’d brought for lunch.

“No . . . wait . . . Get this . . . ‘Severed leg hops to hospital.’”

While the room erupted, Barbara sat rubbing her chest. She assumed the pain she was feeling was indigestion. She put down the sandwich. The pain was getting worse. What was more, it didn’t feel like that familiar sharp, bubble-of-air sensation. This felt like somebody had put a belt around her chest and was pulling it tighter and tighter. Her heart was racing. Suddenly she was struggling to breathe. She darted to the window and threw it open.

Somebody called out to her to shut the window because she was causing a draft.

“Can’t breathe. Chest hurts. Going to faint.”

A moment later she was surrounded by alarmed faces. Instructions seemed to be coming from every direction. “OK, keep calm. . . . Come and sit down. . . . Somebody fetch a blanket. . . . Try to breathe. . . .”

“But I can’t bloody breathe.”

“That’s because you’re panicking.”

Of course she was panicking. This was how her father died. Somebody made her sit down and put her head between her knees. Somebody else called 999.

The ambulance seemed to take forever but in reality probably took only a few minutes. It rolled into the playground, blue light flashing. The paramedics gave Barbara oxygen, checked her blood pressure and bundled her onto a stretcher. Since it was still lunchtime, the kids were in the playground. Despite the best efforts of the teachers on playground duty, they swarmed around the stretcher. “Miss . . . You ill, miss? Is it your appendix, miss?. . . Miss . . . did you get stabbed?. . . You going to die, miss?”

Sandra offered to come with her to King George’s. “No. Stay with Troy. My friend Jean works at the hospital. I’ll get somebody to page her. If you could possibly call Frank?”

“No worries.”

•   •   •

Twenty minutes later Barbara was lying on a bed in the ER. She was wired up to an ECG monitor and wearing a hospital gown that gaped at the back. Not that this concerned her. She was too busy thinking that she was about to die. A chirpy young nurse had taken some blood and left her with a blood pressure cuff around her arm. This automatically tightened every few minutes and gave a readout. By now the pain in her chest had eased and she didn’t need the oxygen mask, although the nurse insisted she keep it on. Barbara was anxious to make contact with Jean. “I was just wondering,” she said, pulling off her oxygen mask, “if there was any chance you could call the labor ward and leave a message for a friend of mine to say I’m in casualty. She’s a midwife. Her name’s Jean Bishop. She’s probably really busy. Tell her not to panic.”

The nurse said she would do her best, so long as Barbara kept her oxygen mask on. Barbara duly replaced it, but as soon as the nurse disappeared, she took it off again. She tried calling Frank, but as usual, he wasn’t picking up. She left a message. “Frank, I’m in casualty at King George’s. I think I might have had a heart attack. Please can you come?”

Fifteen minutes later, the ECG complete, the nurse tore off the ticker tape.

“How’s it looking?” Barbara said.

“Sorry. Above my pay grade, I’m afraid. I’m not allowed to say anything. One of the doctors needs to take a look at it.”

“Do you know how long that might take?”

“Could be a while. The ER’s heaving right now.”

The nurse disappeared with the readout. Meanwhile her blood pressure and heart rate were still being monitored. She tried closing her eyes but couldn’t. Even though the pain wasn’t so severe, her heart was still pounding. She had to stay awake and vigilant in order to stop herself dying. Every so often the cuff would tighten around her arm. She studied the pointy peaks and troughs of her heartbeat on the monitor. Any minute now she would flatline. Her father had clearly passed his crap genes on to her. Once her heart stopped, an alarm would go off and doctors would come running with electronic paddles and shots of adrenaline and attempt to bring her back. Meanwhile, she would be setting off on her journey down the tunnel of death that she’d read so much about in all those tabloid articles on near-death experiences. Her spirit would float down the tunnel, towards the bright light. She would be met on the other side by all her dead relatives. Knowing her luck, though, her dad wouldn’t show up on account of his agoraphobia, which naturally had continued into the afterlife. The only person to make the effort would be her smelly aunty Minnie (who, amazingly, would still be smelly).

Barbara was still in the midst of her death reverie when a junior doctor stopped by to check her vital signs. He hadn’t checked her ECG readout—a more senior doctor would be doing that—but her blood pressure and pulse seemed fine. There didn’t appear to be any immediate cause for concern. What was that supposed to mean? Either there was cause for concern or there wasn’t. Christ. And why hadn’t Frank called?

“Right, Mrs. Stirling, what we’re going to do next is get a chest X-ray, just to check your heart and lungs look normal.”

•   •   •

Barbara shuffled forward until her skin was pressed against the X-ray plate. She found herself apologizing for the size of her breasts. “They won’t get in the way, will they?” The kindly woman radiographer assured her they wouldn’t. She gently shifted Barbara into the exact position before disappearing behind the screen.

“OK, my love—deep breath now and hold it . . . hold it. . . .”

She couldn’t begin to express the extent to which she didn’t want to die. Her eyes started to fill up. “And just one more for luck.” She wanted to see her kids successful and thriving. She wanted to dance at her grandchildren’s weddings. Her life couldn’t end here. There was stuff she still needed to do. So much she wanted to achieve.

Once she was back in her cubicle in the ER, she tried calling Frank again. Still nothing.

Then Jean appeared in her blue midwife scrubs, her face full of concern. “I just got your message. They said you came in by ambulance. What on earth happened?”

“I had this terrible chest pain and I couldn’t breathe. It may have been a heart attack. Jean, I’m really frightened. I think I’m going to die.”