Truly Madly Guilty(84)

Fifteen compressions and two rescue breaths. They were doing it right. They were doing it exactly right. They were following the rules, Paul, so why was Ruby just lying there, why wasn’t she responding, Paul, you hateful, stupid, red-faced, finger-clicking man?

‘… thirteen and fourteen and fifteen and one …’

‘Where is the ambulance?’ said Sam. ‘I can’t hear a siren. Why can’t I hear a siren?’

Erika pinched Ruby’s nostrils together again, bent her head and exhaled a silent scream of fury into Ruby’s body. YOU DO AS I SAY, RUBY. YOU BREATHE. It was her mother’s voice; her mother at her most manic and vicious and terrifying, her mother when she caught Erika trying to throw something out. YOU BREATHE RIGHT THIS INSTANT, RUBY, HOW DARE YOU IGNORE ME, YOU BREATHE, NOW, RIGHT NOW.

Erika lifted her head.

Ruby’s chest jolted. Water spewed up from her mouth. Oliver made a high, startled sound of surprise like a dog’s whimper and lifted his hands.

Got it in one, said Paul in Erika’s head, with a click of his fingers, and Erika turned Ruby’s head to the side, just like they’d done with the rubbery-tasting plastic mannequin, and Ruby vomited more water, over and over, while Clementine sobbed and heaved as if she were being sick too. The long, thin wail of an ambulance pierced Erika’s consciousness as if it had been there all along, and together she and Oliver turned Ruby onto her side, into the recovery position as they’d been taught.

Good girl, thought Erika, and she ran her hand gently over Ruby’s head, brushing the wet strands of hair from her eyes as she continued to vomit water. Good girl.





chapter fifty



‘Erika?’

‘Mmmm.’ Erika fidgeted and focused on the rain falling outside Not Pat’s window. Was it easing perhaps?

For the first time ever, she was longing for her session with Not Pat to end. Normally, she found therapy such a soothing process, like getting a massage, a lovely self-validating massage of her ego, but today Not Pat was just annoying her. She’d latched onto the subject of Erika’s friendship with Clementine like a little rat terrier with a bone.

Each time Not Pat said Clementine’s name Erika felt like she was being pinched, very hard.

Look, she was paying for this. She didn’t have to put up with it.

‘I don’t want to talk about Clementine anymore!’ she snapped.

‘All righty,’ said Not Pat in her folksy way, and she wrote something down on her notepad. Erika had to restrain herself from reaching over and grabbing the notebook from her lap. Did she have a legal right to demand access to Not Pat’s notes? She would find out.

In the meantime she distracted Not Pat by telling her the story of Ruby’s accident.

‘Oh my goodness me!’ Not Pat’s hand rushed to her mouth.

When Erika had finished Not Pat said, ‘You know, Erika, it’s perfectly understandable if your memory of that afternoon feels disjointed. You suffered a shock. It would have been a traumatic event.’

‘I would have thought that would have made my memory clearer,’ said Erika, and in fact, there were some parts of her memory that were frighteningly vivid. She could feel the shock of the water around her legs as she leaped into the fountain, the plumes of water drenching her like rain.

‘Why do you think you’re so concerned about your memory of that afternoon?’ asked Not Pat.

‘I have this feeling there’s something important I’ve forgotten,’ said Erika. ‘It almost feels like there’s something I’ve forgotten to do. Like when people talk about how they start to get this niggling worry they’ve left the iron on when they leave the house.’

‘I know that feeling,’ said Not Pat with a wry smile.

‘But that’s my point, I do not know that feeling!’ said Erika. ‘I’m not that sort of person. I have perfect recall! I never forget anything like that.’

She never worried that she’d left the iron on because she knew she’d never do such a thing. Once, Clementine had left her house with two hotplates on at full strength. ‘The house didn’t burn down!’ she’d said happily, as if it had been a fascinating experiment. ‘Nothing burned at all!’ Another time she’d gone out with the front door wide open. ‘An open invitation to the neighbourhood burglars,’ said Sam. ‘Come on in, boys, and help yourselves to my three-hundred-thousand-dollar cello. It’s just lying here on the bed for you. Great place for it!’

Clementine’s excuse had been that she was ‘deep in thought’.

‘About your music?’ asked Oliver, respectful of her talent, and Clementine had said, ‘No, I was trying to work out why Caramello Koalas don’t taste as good as they once did. I was thinking: Has the chocolate changed or have I changed?’ Then she and Sam had got into a discussion about Caramello Koalas, as if it mattered. There had been no consequences for Clementine’s negligence. There never had been a consequence for Clementine’s negligence until that Sunday afternoon, and Erika had never wished for that.

Just a financial penalty maybe. Sunburn. A hangover. Clementine never even got hangovers.

‘I just need to get it clear in my head,’ she said to Not Pat.

‘Well, as I said earlier, you could try going back to your next-door neighbour’s backyard, if you haven’t already done so, and some relaxation exercises might help. You could try some of those self-meditation exercises I’ve given you in the past. But honestly, Erika, you might be fighting a losing battle when you consider the medication you took that afternoon combined with the alcohol. It’s possible you’ve remembered as much as you ever will remember. It may even be that you’re subconsciously protecting yourself; that part of you doesn’t want to remember.’