The dinner supervisor stops them, takes one look at Mikey’s injuries and orders him to see the nurse.
“Only if she comes with me,” Mikey says, with a jerk of the head towards Shiv.
In the medical room, he won’t let Nurse Zena touch him, so Shiv gets the job of bathing his hands, using liquid soap and the softest of sponges.
“Go easy,” Zena says, as Shiv lowers the first hand into the warm water.
Mikey hisses, stiffening like he’s been electrocuted, and fires off a volley of swear words. “Sorry, Mikey,” Shiv says.
He stands rigidly, jaw clenched, trying so hard not to cry it’s pitiful. The washing reveals the extent of the damage to his hands – swollen, scored with cuts and grazes, popped and unpopped blisters, flaps of shredded skin; like something from the gift shop in a horror museum.
“Sweet God,” Zena says under her breath, “what’ve you done to yourself?”
The nurse sits him down with a soft towel on his lap and Shiv dries each hand as gently as if they were newborn babies. Strangely, given how much it’s hurting him, Shiv finds it soothing. Pleasant. When she’s finished, Mikey finally agrees to let Zena take over.
“You’re not going to like the next bit either,” she tells him.
Shiv grips his shoulder but by the time the nurse is through with dabbing antiseptic on the wounds, Mikey has given up on holding back the tears.
The following morning, the familiar Wake Up buzz on the intercom signals the end of another night’s Shut Down. Shiv is dressed when Caron appears at her door, her hair still damp from the shower, for their routine of heading down to breakfast together.
Caron gives the subtlest of nods along the corridor. “Meltdown,” she mouths.
Leaning out, Shiv sees a pile of stuff outside a door at the end. Desk, wooden chair, armchair, bedside table, lamp, sheet, duvet, pillows, curtains. Another item lands on the heap – a red vase, tossed out of an open doorway to spatter the wall with water and bits of flower. A moment later, a lightshade spirals through the air.
Mikey is struggling to shove the wardrobe across the room when Shiv and Caron appear in the doorway. The bandages on his hands are working loose, stained with blood.
“Hey, Mikey,” Shiv says.
He gives her a nod. Gets back to work, even though the piece of furniture is too heavy for him. Apart from the bed and its stripped mattress, his room is bare.
“Need a hand with that, mate?”
Docherty. The commotion has drawn Lucy and Helen, too. Mikey says he can manage but Docherty eases past Shiv and Caron and takes hold of the other end of the wardrobe. The boys manoeuvre it through the doorway to join the rest of the stuff. Assistant Webb arrives just then, too late; all he can do is stand and look.
Caron surveys the room. “Nice one,” she says. “Like a bloody prison cell.”
Shiv nods. “Exactly.”
At Walk, Shiv doesn’t try to think about her brother. She has found that the surest way to let him enter her head is not to force things but to clear her mind, to think of nothing at all. To create a space for Dec to fill. Or not.
Crossing the rough pasture behind the main house, the single file of Walkers are still finding their rhythm. Shiv shutters her eyelids, leaving enough of a crack to see Caron’s green boots directly in front. She shuts out everything else, synchronizing her footsteps with those of her friend. One by one, she lets the distractions surface: Mikey, stripping his room; his bandaged hands; the spider’s web tattoo on Docherty’s elbow; the chafing of the jumpsuit against her skin; the smell of stale sweat from the Salinger T-shirt; an aftertaste of breakfast – each thought neatly parcelled and set aside.
Her mind gradually empties of everything but the placing of one foot, then the next, on the ground, in time with the drawing of her breath.
Minute after minute after minute.
After a while, Dec is there. She’s aware of his breathing, the scuffing of his red Converses in the thick, dewy grass, feels his right hand in her left. They never held hands, that she can recall. Even as small children walking to primary school, Shiv would hold one of Mummy’s hands, Dec the other.
Shiv wraps up this thought as well; removes it.
His grip is casual. Ironic. He is making a game out of holding her hand. This is fun and we are unembarrassed. Playing along, Shiv squeezes his fingers. Don’t worry, Dec, I’ve got you. How she longs to give a sideways glance. She daren’t, though – afraid that the touch of his skin, the swish of his feet, the whisper of his breaths, will disperse on the morning air like so many specks of pollen. Besides, she can’t be certain which Declan it is:
The one in her memory.
The one in the images projected onto her wall each night.
The one she sometimes glimpses in the grounds of Eden Hall.
Worst of all would be to turn her head and see none of these three but the dead brother from her most terrible nightmares.
At some point near the end of Walk, he is gone. Shiv panics, has the urge to call his name – wonders if she actually has. But none of the others seems aware of her; they plod on, lost in their own worlds.
She tries (by not trying) to lure him back. No use. She wants him too much.
At break a couple of days later – Day 13 – Shiv flops down on the ground beside Caron and watches Hensher make his circuit of the clearing, doling out water and muesli bars. When he reaches them, Caron, as usual, tries to wind him up.
“Assistant Hensher, can I ask you something about these snack bars?”
“Go on, then.” He sounds resigned to his role as the butt of her daily joke.
“Are they made with hamster food – or the scrapings from their cages?”
“Scrapings,” he says, deadpan.
“Told you.” Caron nudges Shiv, as though they’ve had a bet.
“And it’s rats,” Hensher adds, “not hamsters.” With that, he moves away.
Shiv looks at what she thinks of as Mikey’s Hill. Not that he comes here any more – other than during Walk. When Dr Pollard heard about the state of his hands from the log-hauling, she ordered him to be supervised during “free” time.
That suits him just fine. He wears the yellow jumpsuit all day – not just for Walk and Make. His prisoner’s uniform, he calls it. The staff keep putting his room back the way it was but, each morning, he strips it bare.
“Are you trying to make them discharge you?” Shiv asked him one time.
He shook his head. “If they won’t fix me, I’ll fix myself.”
As usual at break, Mikey remains standing – turned away from them all on the far side of the clearing, hands behind his back, head bowed.
“What is it with him?” Caron asks, impatient.
“He thinks he should be punished, not treated. Says it’s what we deserve.”
“We?”
“Helen, Docherty, Lucy – you and me – we’ve all got off way too lightly for what we did.”
“Our messed-up lives – you call that getting off lightly?”
“They died because of us. Melanie, Declan, Phoebe—”
“’Zuss, girl, you think Mikey’s right?” She fakes a swoon. “I need to sit down.”
“You are sitting down.”
“Then I need to stand up so I can sit down.” Theatrically, she does.
“Caron, I’m trying to have a serious conversation here.”
“So, what – you going to turn your room into a cell too? Dress like a convict. Shave your head. That would look quite cool actually.”
There’s no reasoning with Caron when she’s like this. She steers them onto safer topics, tries to lighten up; all the while, though, Shiv is aware of Mikey at the edge of the clearing. It’s so black and white for him. So uncompromising. Caron might be more laid back, but Shiv knows that this is an act. For all that Mikey is four years younger than Caron and about a hundred times more uptight, there’s an honesty to him that cuts right to the heart of things.
This is what I did. This is who I am. Don’t tell me any different.
It’s the voice Shiv has been hearing in her own head and the voice she came here to silence. How else is she meant to live with herself?
In her first two weeks at the clinic, that voice has begun to quiet. Or be drowned out by the “noise” of her treatment: the hum of DeclanDeclanDeclan that envelops her and which seems designed to erase her brother’s death, replace it with the illusion that he’s alive, and with her, walking beside her every step along the path to recovery.
“Are you going to eat that?” Caron indicates Shiv’s muesli bar.
Shiv manages a smile.
“What?” Caron asks.
“Dec was always doing that – troughing up anything I didn’t eat.”
“I do not ‘trough’, thank you very much.”
“Anyway, it’s hamster scrapings, isn’t it?”
“Rat. That’s an entirely different snack-based concept.”
Shiv hands her the bar.
“You sure?” her friend says.
“Go on. I’m not hungry.”
Actually, the idea of food sickens her all of a sudden. Along with the thought that, in a moment, she’ll have to head to Make, then lunch, then Talk, then Write, then dinner, then another night with Declan on her bedroom wall.