Whatever You Love

Muscle has memory; the body knows things the mind will not admit. Two police officers were at my door – uniformed, arranged – yet even as the door swung open upon them, which was surely the moment that I knew, even then, my conscious self was seeking other explanations, turning round and around, like a rat in a cage. Muscle memory – not the same thing as instinct of course, but related: pianists know about this, and tap dancers, and anyone who has ever given birth. Even those who have done nothing more physical than tie their shoelaces know it. The body is quicker than the mind. The body can be trusted.

*

It has taken them longer than it should have done, to come to my house with the news. Betty was not carrying any form of identification. When the policewoman explains this she does so gently, neutrally, but I choose to hear criticism. I am sitting on my sofa, perched on the edge. The gas fire is on. On the carpet before me, a magazine from the previous weekend’s newspapers lies open where I left it – I was reading it this morning, crouched before the fire. The more junior of the officers, a young man, thin and pale, is standing by the door. The woman in charge – older, blonde – has sat down next to me but her body is half turned to face me. I have invited them in. I have asked this news across my threshold.

I am trying to understand what they are telling me, the larger picture, but I seize upon a detail. They weren’t carrying identification.

They. She was with her friend Willow. Willow and Betty.

‘She’s nine,’ I say.

The policewoman is taking in my stare, drinking it like water – I see it in the way she stares back, assessing. She has been trained to meet my gaze, if circumstances warrant it. She will not falter. Her male colleague is the discreet one, looking at the floor. They are a team but I can pick whichever one I prefer to fasten upon. I have chosen her.

‘She’s only nine,’ I repeat. Nine-year-olds do not carry credit cards or driving licences. My nine-year-old doesn’t even have a mobile phone.

The policewoman mistakes my meaning. ‘I’m very sorry,’ she says.

At this point, Betty’s younger brother Rees bursts into the room. He is clutching a stapler in his right hand. He flings himself at my lap, then thumps his forehead into it, a gesture born of fury and affection in equal measure and a wordless reference to the fact that I promised him an unspecified treat if he did some colouring in the kitchen while I spoke to the man and lady in the sitting room. I am overwhelmed with the feeling, distinct and self-conscious, that I love my son. I clutch at his shoulders, pulling him forward on to me, but clumsily. Sensing my desire outweighs his, he wriggles away then stands looking at me, waiting. The policewoman leans towards me, getting between me and Rees, and puts her hand out until it hovers an inch or two above my shoulder. Although she is not touching me, I find this intrusive.

‘Mrs Needham, Laura, I’m sorry, but can you tell us how we can contact Betty’s father?’

*

Our bodies often act of their own accord. They do it all the time. I should have failed my driving test, for instance – I stalled twice just trying to pull out of the test centre – but as we drove down Clarence Road, my hands gripping the steering wheel, the examiner said, ‘When I tap this newspaper on the dashboard, I want you to perform an emergency stop. I want you to brake just as hard as you would do if a child ran out in front of the car.’

After he had brushed his hair back from his face he said, ‘Thank you, Miss Dodgson. I will not be asking you to repeat that manoeuvre.’

*

Betty’s father and I separated three years ago, when Betty was six and Rees still an infant. He and his partner Chloe live with their baby in the new development towards West Runton, the one they drained the estuary for. Controversial, that development, but the bungalows are bright and spacious, just right for people who are making a new start. I bought them a card when their baby was born.
May your new arrival bring you much joy
read the inscription, in flowing italics.
Love from Laura, Betty
and Rees
I wrote beneath, in biro. I got Betty and Rees to draw pictures of their new baby brother and put them in with the card. When their father came to pick them up to visit the baby, I gave him a basket of toiletries I had bought for Chloe, from the Angel Shop on the esplanade. He took it with a look of surprise. The items in the basket were all white; white soap, white body lotion, a fluffy white flannel – with a broad white ribbon tied over the cellophane. He glanced down at the toiletries then back up at me, with a slow, appreciative look on his face.

I could not meet his gaze. ‘Make sure you look after her now, won’t you?’ I said.

After he had left with Betty and Rees, I made myself a cup of coffee and sat at the kitchen table with it and a packet of biscuits, ripped open, staring out of the window. A salty coastal wind swept to and fro across my garden. The wind is like sandpaper round here. I stared and stared at nothing, at the bluster of the day. Twigs from the cherry tree outside our back door scraped and scratched, as if a neglected pet was demanding access. That tree should never have been planted so close to the house. Ten pounds, four ounces, thirty-two hours of labour followed by a ventouse delivery. I wondered if they did an episiotomy or let her tear. Episiotomies used to be routine with the ventouse but the tide has changed on that. I tore badly with Betty, so badly that with Rees I tore again, along the scar tissue. Unlike muscle, scar tissue cannot recall what it has done before. It is hard and stupid.

*

Neither my ex-husband nor his partner answers their phone. I imagine Chloe standing above the phone, the baby on one arm, seeing my number come up on the dial register and deciding not to pick it up. This happens. I hang up without leaving a message and call David’s mobile but it goes straight to voicemail.

The policewoman’s male colleague fetches my neighbour Julie to take care of Rees. Rees goes to nursery with Julie’s young son Alfie and knows her well but as soon as she steps through the front door, he looks at me, then at the police officers and, as if noticing their uniforms for the first time, bursts into tears. Julie has to carry him kicking and screaming from our house. She does not look at me but as she leaves, I see that tears are streaming down her face too. I worry that she is upset about something and it is a terrible imposition to ask her to have Rees at this moment. Then I realise why she is crying. I realise it, but I still don’t know it. My brain seems to be on some sort of loop. I am very, very calm.

I go to the kitchen and pick up my handbag from the table, which is still scattered with plastic plates of rice and peas – all Rees will eat right now – and a distressed heap of crumpled paper and gel pens, Betty’s gel pens, her new pack in neon colours. Rees has been taking advantage of his big sister’s absence in the hope of prompting a diplomatic incident when she returns. I turn the light off as I go back into the hall. I take my jacket from the coat rack at the bottom of the stairs. I am keen to be efficient about leaving the house. I want to get into their vehicle as swiftly as possible. I want to get to Betty.

I get into the back of the police car and clip my seatbelt, dutifully. I notice how clean it is inside – it is a car that does not habitually transport children – and part of my mind not only registers but appreciates this. It is only as we are turning out of our road that it occurs to me to lean forward and ask, ‘What about Willow? How is Willow?’

‘Willow is in the High Dependency Unit,’ the policewoman says. ‘She was thrown clear.’

‘I’m going to be sick,’ I say, and the policewoman glances in her rear mirror to make sure that nothing is behind us as she presses on the brake and brings the car to a swift, efficient halt. I pull on the interior handle but the child lock is on; of course, to stop people escaping. I feel a moment of dizzying panic but the young policeman unclips his seatbelt with one quick movement and, as soon as it is safe to do so, leaps out and opens the door for me. I make it to the gutter.

*

One thing I feared and it befell
…
My mouth convicts me. I am
good
. The Book of Job: I remembered it then, as I gagged and spat. The school common room: grey and white. Jenny Ozu.

*

It is a twenty-minute drive to the hospital, a red-brick, low- lying building. All the buildings round here are low-lying, as if the storm clouds that squat along this stretch of the coastline are too heavy to allow high-rise. The truth is, land is plentiful, although it often requires drainage to use. Not many people want to live here. We are thirty miles from the nearest decent- sized town and the drive is across flatlands of mud relieved only by the occasional onion field.

As we drive through town in the dark, rain begins to slant across the car – rain rarely falls vertically in this town. The policewoman must be new to the district because she goes down the esplanade when it is quicker to take the one-way system. The shops on our left are shuttered and dark. The only light spills from Mr Yeung’s, the chippy, where boys lounge in the window on high stools, heads lolling on the triangles they have made of their arms. On our right, beyond the railings, the beach melts into a wall of blackness, the waves a herd of sound. As we reach the end of the esplanade, a lone dog-walker makes his way along the pavement, bent into the wind. He looks like John Warren, a patient of mine in his late seventies who is partially blind and has calcification in both shoulders. I feel a flash of concern that he is out and about on his own in the dark.

The police car slows to turn into the main road. As it does, I glimpse a group of dark figures huddled together at the top the concrete steps that lead down to the beach. A couple of them turn as we pass and our headlights light their faces, pale and staring – migrant workers, Eastern European. The policewoman and her colleague exchange a glance as she turns the steering wheel. There’s no cockle-picking round here but gangs are sometimes brought in for scrap-collecting. It’s low tide, there’s no immediate hazard, but it’s a filthy night to be out and any beach is dangerous in the dark. The policewoman shakes her head.

*

We pull into the hospital car park, the place I come so often for work. Normally I drive around to the small courtyard at the back, where the Rehab & Therapies Unit is. The policewoman parks near the main entrance and her colleague jumps out quickly and opens my door. For a moment I think he will offer his hand to help me out but he stands back respectfully, looking down at the wet tarmac, face closed. As I rise out of the car, the wind whips my hair across my face. I clear it with one hand and walk firmly towards the entrance, my escorts falling in, one in front and one behind, as if I might make a break for it and run into the sea. I pray that no one I know will be on duty, for then my private bargain will unravel. Until I see her, there is hope. It is the only way I can put one foot in front of the other.

We enter through the white, low-ceilinged hallway of A & E. Instinctively, I glance around to see what injuries are waiting. There is only one group of people on the plastic chairs – an extended family, five or six women, three children. They all have thick dark hair and pale faces, like the migrant workers we saw on the esplanade. They probably come from the mobile-home park up on the cliff – another local controversy. In the midst of their group is a boy of seven or so clutching a wad of dressing to his forehead. It is soaked in blood and a line of blood stripes his cheek. As we sweep past, the group looks at us accusingly, as if we are jumping the queue. Behind the desk, the duty nurse is talking quietly to a doctor, indicating the group with a palm-upwards gesture of her hand.

*

We turn left through the swing doors and down a corridor that is painted creamy-white and hung with paintings by local artists, very bad ones, blue seascapes with cheery boats a-bobbing and gulls wheeling in the sky. The sea has never looked like that round here. Through another swing door, the pretence of cheeriness falls away to reveal dull brown walls that lead to the administrative offices. We are going a roundabout route to wherever Betty is.

I have never realised how long this corridor is. I feel as though I have been walking along it for days, noticing things I would never normally notice. We pass office doors, all closed, numbered, with nameplates of people I know, but the people are not here while Betty who should be at home is here, somewhere in this endless interior which is confusing and familiar as the landscape of a dream. That must be it. That would explain everything; the gulls in the paintings, the faces on the esplanade, the Book of Job. I am not here. I am asleep, twisting a damp duvet around my legs as I shift restlessly from side to side. Eventually, we reach a consulting room. The policewoman knocks lightly and then enters without waiting for a reply. The policeman gestures for me to follow in behind.

Sitting behind the desk is a doctor I do not know. I am grateful for that. He is an older man, nearing retirement I would say, with thin-rimmed glasses. He is writing a report. He closes the file as we enter and stands. ‘Mrs Needham, please…’ he indicates the chair in front of his desk. ‘I’m very sorry,’ he says, looking at the floor, clearly ill at ease with his task, mortified by it, in fact. He sits again, opens the file, glances at it, clears his throat. ‘Right,’ he says, then, in a tone of voice that makes it clear he is at the top of a list, begins, ‘Er, multiple internal injuries…’

The room swings wildly. ‘Oh!’ I exclaim, bending forward in my chair. I close my eyes as I go down, so do not see his reaction. I take a deep breath and force myself to look up.

The doctor is staring. The policewoman steps forward and rests a protective hand on my shoulder, trying to steady me. I force myself to sit up straight. ‘I want…’ I say, gulping air so that my voice will be firm and clear… ‘I want to see her.’