Blink(8)

As far as Harriet was concerned, she was a proper teacher and that’s exactly what she told anyone who asked what she did for a living.

‘But you’re not a teacher, you’re a teaching assistant,’ her mother was fond of pointing out. ‘That’s like the difference between a fully qualified doctor and his auxiliary who empties the bedpans.’

She had asked her mother to stop saying that but the request had fallen on deaf ears.

Harriet taught the children in her care. She gave them valuable insight about themselves, insight they wouldn’t find anywhere else in a world that pandered to their every whim.

Her mother didn’t have a clue. None of them did.

All she wanted to do was help people, couldn’t they see that?

But she hadn’t got this far by taking unnecessary risks. She picked her children very carefully; she knew exactly what she was looking for.

She pulled the new term’s class admission papers towards her and glanced over the names again. Yesterday, Harriet had logged into the pupil database, printed it out and made pencilled notes alongside each child.

This term there was a girl admitted from down south. Single mother, father deceased. They’d just moved into a property on Muriel Crescent. Harriet knew it, just off Cinderhill Road in Bulwell, not a million miles away from her own house.

According to the database, today was their moving-in date, their first proper day in the area. She smiled to herself, wondering how they were settling in.

Harriet turned back to the medicine organiser and snapped the lids firmly closed, pausing to stare briefly out of the kitchen window.

Steel-grey and fluffy white clouds butted up against each other as if they were battling for control. She watched as they scudded across the sky, burying the last bright rays, until not a single glimmer of sun remained.





7





Present Day





Queen’s Medical Centre





Beep, hiss, hiss, hiss, beep.

This is the sound of my life. What’s left of it.

I drift in and out of consciousness – not sleep exactly, just nothing. No dreaming, no turning over or shuffling to get comfortable. Just a sheet of darkness that falls without any warning.

Then suddenly I find myself back again, staring at the ceiling and trying to make sense of what has happened to me and when it might go away. When I might move and speak once more. So I can tell them about Evie, tell them what happened and how it was all my fault.

When I am conscious, I try to use every second to remember. Snatches of memory drift by my staring eyes like elusive wisps of cloud. I pluck at them, missing some but pulling others in, so that they turn like small, shimmering snow globes in my mind’s eye.

Old memories don’t always make a great deal of sense but they sometimes bring me comfort.

Today, the prize won for sifting through hours and hours of thoughts was recalling the softness of Evie’s hair, like spun gold that laced around my fingers as I stroked her head during those long nights she would sob herself to sleep. And the smell of her damp skin after a bath, new and fresh, like morning dew.

The door opens, tipping me into the present, and I brace myself. I know the doctors can’t just switch me off, but one day, that time will arrive.

Inside I am screaming, thrashing, punching. Anything to let them know I am very much still here. Surely they have some way of knowing, of telling whether someone is alive or dead?

But the room remains perfectly silent and I remain perfectly still. I am trapped in a vacuum that exists between life and death.

I wait for the familiar voices, the medical terminology. The terrifying jargon that barely conceals the fact they are planning to murder me.

Because that’s what it would be. If they turn off the machine, they will kill me.

But the familiar voices do not come. Instead, I hear a new voice.

‘Hello, I’m looking after you, just for today. I’m doing temporary cover, you see.’ A beaming face appears above mine momentarily. She surprises me and my eyes struggle to focus. ‘I don’t know if you can hear me but I’ll carry on as if you can.’

None of the other nurses speak to me and I have never seen any of their faces.

She disappears again and I hear her humming something tuneless, busying around the equipment, taking her readings and making her evaluations.

‘It’s a nice day outside,’ she says. ‘Sunny, but not too warm, just how I like it. I’ll be going down the allotment for a couple of hours when I finish my shift. Nothing like being in the garden, is there?’

Another memory slips down and I manage to grab it.

From the first day Evie began playing in the garden at the new house, I made it my priority to keep a careful eye on her.

Being so unfamiliar with the estate, I had carried out a bit of a recce on moving-in day, walking around the exterior of the house and through the surrounding streets to get an overview of how secure the small, cramped garden was.

Unfortunately, the answer was not very.

The new house was at the end of its row. A four-foot fence surrounded three sides of the grassy back yard with a gate that did not lock. A ragged hedge separated the space from next door.

The gate led directly onto a narrow path that ran the length of the row of houses. This path in turn led onto the busy main road. The joined-on neighbours were a rough-looking family, a wretched looking woman . . . I reached for her name but it was gone . . . with her two grown up sons who seemed to spend their entire day smoking weed, if the smell leaking from the open windows was anything to go by.