March 2018
‘I don’t want a drink,’ I said.
Still, Angela splashed brandy into two crystal-glass tumblers. ‘Well, you look as if you do,’ she said, thrusting one towards me.
I took it and placed it on a silver coaster on her coffee table, my eyes skittering around the room – so cream, so clean. Impossible to believe anyone actually lived here.
‘I’m guessing it’s the loss of your mum that’s getting to you,’ she continued, as we sat down on the sofa. ‘It’s understandable.’
‘No, and yes,’ I said, rubbing my temples with outstretched fingers.
‘It’s such early days, Rachel. Give it time.’
‘How can I when so many odd things are happening?’ I picked up the glass, took a sip, and winced. Alcohol was the last thing I needed. ‘I can’t make sense of any of it. I think I’m going mad, if I’m honest.’ I thumped the glass back down on the table.
‘The friend requests?’
‘Yes, and now there are two Mr Snookums and a fucking gnome.’ It sounded funny – ridiculous – and I expected her to laugh. But she didn’t.
‘You’ll need to explain that, I’m afraid,’ she said, with a concerned smile, pressing her hand down on my knee before taking a long gulp of her drink.
‘Mr Snookum was my toy rabbit when I was a kid,’ I began. ‘There was one at Mum’s care home when I visited a while back, and then I found one in the loft. But the one in the loft somehow ended up in my lounge. I have no idea how.’ I was talking too fast, making little sense. ‘And, God, I know this sounds ludicrous,’ I went on, ‘but now there’s a bloody gnome on my doorstep. I can’t help thinking this has something to do with Marcus McCutcheon.’
‘The bloke in Ireland who collects gnomes?’
‘Mmm.’ Tears weren’t far away. ‘I’m so shaky, look.’ I held out my hand. It wobbled, as though made of rubber. ‘I’m a mess, quite frankly. And I wasn’t going to mention it, but I think someone followed us home from Suffolk.’
‘Oh my God.’ She took another gulp of her drink.
‘Someone’s trying to send me crazy, Angela.’
‘But why would anyone do that, sweetie?’ She gripped my hand and squeezed.
‘I don’t know.’ I shrugged helplessly, a pang of guilt rising that earlier I’d been snooping around, making phone calls about her. ‘I should have gone to the police before, but then Mum died, and now things are getting worse.’ I pulled my hand away from her, and buried my face in my palms. ‘I don’t know what to do,’ I said through my fingers.
‘Perhaps it’s the way you’re feeling at the moment. Perhaps the grief is making your mind spin out of control. It happens. Take my word for it.’
It was as though she was talking from experience, and I looked up and met her eye. She’d clearly had a shower since she arrived home, and was make-up free. Broken blood vessels speckled her pallid skin, and her eyes were puffy. And maybe it was a distraction from my own worries, but I needed to know what her problem was. Had she been a surgeon? What had gone wrong in her life that made her drink, take antidepressants – see a psychotherapist?
She gulped down her brandy, finishing it.
‘Is everything OK, Angela?’ I ventured.
Her eyes widened. ‘Of course, sweetie, why?’
‘You know you can tell me anything. I’m always dumping my troubles on you.’
She stared at me for a long moment, and I leaned forward and placed my hand on her arm. ‘I know there’s something. You told me you were an administrator at the hospital, but you were a surgeon, weren’t you? Why would you lie?’
Her eyes widened further. ‘Who told you that?’
‘It doesn’t matter – the point is, it’s obvious something is haunting you. Perhaps sharing it with a friend will help.’
Her eyes filled with tears, and she looked ahead of her, seeming lost in another place.
‘You can tell me,’ I said.
She turned to look at me. ‘I’m fine. Maybe you should go, Rachel. I’ve got a bit of a headache.’
‘OK, yes, sorry. I didn’t mean to push you,’ I said, rising. ‘But if you need me, I’m right next door.’ I padded across the room towards my shoes.
‘It’s the guilt,’ she said, slamming her glass down on the table, and suddenly sobbing into her hands. ‘It’s all-consuming.’
‘Oh, Angela.’ I turned and raced to sit by her side. ‘Whatever’s wrong?’ I said, rubbing her back.
‘Nothing helps, Rachel.’ She grabbed a handful of tissues from a box on the coffee table, and mopped her cheeks.
‘Well, I’m here for you,’ I said. ‘Talk to me, please.’
She grabbed my hand. ‘OK,’ she said. ‘OK. If you’re sure.’
It was a few moments before she began again. ‘I guess it all started unravelling when my husband left me for someone else. I can’t blame him. I was never there. I even let him take our son, Adam.’
My mind drifted to the photograph of the boy I’d seen in her purse.
‘He was six at the time, and I put my career first.’ She moved her finger along her lower eyelid to catch a straying tear. I waited for her to go on. ‘As time went by,’ she continued, ‘I knew I’d made a mistake letting my husband take him. I wanted Adam back. But I’d started drinking by then to cope with the pressure of my job, and Adam didn’t want to spend time with me – always wanting to call his dad. Asking how long it would be before he picked him up.’ She wiped a tear from her cheek with the back of her hand, and sniffed. ‘In the end, he stopped coming,’ she said slowly. ‘I thought I was losing the plot at the time. It turns out I was.’
‘I’m so sorry,’ I said.
‘And then, just over a year ago, I made an unforgiveable mistake.’ She caught me in a gaze. ‘They couldn’t prove it was my fault, but they all knew I’d been drinking. Staff banded together, told management they could often smell drink on my breath. That they knew I operated when I’d had a drink.’
‘But you didn’t, did you?’ I wasn’t sure I wanted to know the answer and was beginning to wish I hadn’t opened the box marked ‘private. ‘Please say you didn’t operate when you’d had a drink.’
‘I can’t, Rachel.’ Her face contorted with grief. ‘I wish to God I could.’
I let out a gasp. ‘Oh God, how could you?’
She shook her head. ‘Don’t you think I ask myself that every day? I suppose I thought the occasional snort of gin or brandy wouldn’t hurt. I know now I should have resigned.’
‘And the mistake?’ My heart thudded against my ribs. Do I really want to know?
‘A little girl – Stacey – a straightforward procedure … but …’
‘She died?’ Oh God, please say she didn’t die.
Angela shook her head, tears shimmering in her eyes. ‘She’s brain-damaged, Rachel. She was only four at the time.’
I covered my mouth with my hand.
‘After that I tried to see the child, desperately needing the family’s forgiveness, but they wouldn’t let me near her – I was an absolute wreck.’ She dabbed her face with the tissues. ‘Then I moved in next to you, and tried hard to move on. I was drinking far less, and loved looking after Grace, having you as a friend; I even tried to meet someone who might love me despite my past. But, even though a nagging voice told me not to, I contacted the child’s family again a couple of months ago. I just wanted to know how Stacey was.’
I glanced at the slippers Grace had worn – had they been for Stacey?
I looked back at Angela, who was still drinking. She must have looked after Grace while intoxicated, and I couldn’t help a flood of despair that she would operate on a child with alcohol in her blood. And even now she was making no attempt to stop. It must have shown on my face.
‘I knew you would hate me,’ she said.
I rose. ‘I don’t hate you, Angela. I just …’
‘Can’t believe I would do such a thing.’
‘Something like that.’ I paused for a moment. I didn’t know the woman in front of me at all. ‘Was the man at your door Stacey’s father?’
She nodded. ‘He doesn’t want me near his daughter, and who can blame him?’
A tear rolled down her cheek, as she got up to fill her glass. ‘I’m on tablets; I’m even going to the clinic where you used to work. But at the end of the day, what I did was unforgiveable.’
‘And yet here you are still drinking.’
‘It’s not that simple. I’ve tried to give up. It’s an addiction, fed by guilt.’
I so wanted to help her, say she wasn’t at fault, comfort her – but I couldn’t bring myself to. Instead, as she perched on the edge of the sofa, sobbing and dragging her fingers through her hair, I said, ‘We’ll talk tomorrow,’ and closed the door behind me.
I raced from her house, my eyes coated with tears. At the end of my path I stopped suddenly, a feeling of being watched washing over me. I turned and scanned the road – the parked cars, the people, the houses – hating that I felt so vulnerable.
After I’d thrown the gnome in the bin, I spotted another friend request on Facebook. My stomach heaved, and my heart pounded. The picture was recent, taken in the grounds of the care home, and a familiar face smiled from the screen. Mum.
There was, as there always seemed to be, just one status update: