There's Been a Little Incident, page 13
He held his hands up in the air like he was trying to stop an impending accident. Sheena smiled and felt her heels rise from the ground in her usual unwitting bounce.
People thought that Sheena was tall but on second glance she was just athletic. They thought she was tall because she was all limbs and couldn’t help but bounce as she moved. She bounced on the wards, she bounced around the town at home, she even bounced on the tube where people looked at her like she had lost her mind. At twenty-five, her ponytail still swung like a little girl. She swung, and she bounced and swivelled on the balls of her feet until she stopped. Until the last few weeks when she couldn’t get any distance at all between her and the hard ground.
It started with the baby. She had treated babies before. She had even treated a baby in the ICU before but not like this. Not so close to saving her. The baby girl was out of danger. She had made it. After weeks of watching her like a hawk all through Christmas, weeks of excruciating near-misses and incredible catches, the baby had survived. She would be fine. The baby’s beautiful mother who looked like death at the end of three months on the brink would sleep again. Her handsome dad who slept on the floor outside the ICU because he was too tall for a chair could go home. They were all going home, until they weren’t. Until Sheena came in for an early morning shift after New Year’s to find the baby dead. Dead and gone and no trace of her or her ghostly mother or her aching-backed dad and instead a chart of new patients equally as dire. The Christmas lights were still hanging up but the period of hope was over. Sheena wasn’t the baby’s mother. She wasn’t even her aunt or her cousin. She couldn’t fall apart. She had to help the five year old who had come in in the early hours of the morning with meningitis and now might not live through the day. All her life she’d wanted to be a nurse but now she was here and maybe she just couldn’t do it. Maybe she just wasn’t able. But who would she be if she wasn’t a nurse?
‘It’s nice that people think I’m happy.’ Sheena felt her shoulders release. ‘Not think. I mean, I am happy. Sorry, god, long shift.’
‘Tell me about it. If you ever want to grab a coffee, that’d be really nice.’
Sheena looked up at him in surprise. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d done anything other than work, sleep or shower. The doctors always seemed so old, but Roscommon Conor couldn’t be much older than thirty. And he had suggested a coffee. Not a drink in a bar that she’d have to try to stay awake for. Maybe she could talk to him. Maybe she could tell him about baby blue. Roscommon Conor was reddening even further like he was holding his breath and she realized she hadn’t answered. She let out a laugh.
‘Yes. Absolutely. Yes, I’d like that.’
Her ponytail swung as she walked away from him, his number in her phone. She smiled for the rest of the shift. She was in bed drifting off to sleep that night before she remembered the sleeping tablets in the breast pocket of her uniform and the line she’d inexplicably crossed.
24. MOLLY
Postmarked Bangkok, March 8th 2019
Arrived in Dublin one month later, April 8th 2019
Dear Uncle John,
I hope that you and the family are well.
As you know, I’ve been running for a long time now. I think that while I moved from place to place, I could pretend on some level that Mum and Dad weren’t fully gone. That maybe Dad was still stocking his wardrobe from the lost and found at school, rolling up the sleeves on his latest fleece to show me on the map where Greenland was, smelling of green tea and chalk. That Mum was still driving around Dublin singing ABBA at the top of her lungs. That her face would light up if I came home like it did when I got back from school every day. I could imagine that I still had a home to go back to.
I’ve been trying to find a way to stop running for a while and I think I might finally have found one. It means being away from you all for a bit, but that’s OK. I’m OK. Or at least I think I will be. You don’t need to worry about finding me anymore.
Love always,
Molly x
25. BOBBY
British Airways Flight, April 13th 2019
The other passengers would have been hard pressed to guess that the six Irish people on the British Airways flight from Heathrow to Bangkok were travelling together. Lady V was in first class. She claimed she got randomly selected for an upgrade when they saw her broken ankle, but she arrived at the airport with a pillow, an eye mask and a carry-on bigger than Uncle John’s checked-in bag. She was in a foul mood because Mike had abandoned her to his family and was making up for it with complimentary gin. Down the back of the plane Uncle John had accidentally overdosed on Xanax. Ironically this induced a panic attack in Anne who feared John might die from the Xanax and, on the other side of the aisle, B was indulging an air stewardess who claimed to be his BIGGEST fan.
In the middle seat of the middle aisle, Bobby was attempting to practise extreme mindfulness but it wasn’t working, so when Anne jumped out of her seat to apologize for Uncle John stretching his legs over the stunned elderly couple sitting next to him, Bobby slid out behind her, with no plan other than to be anywhere on the planet except in seat 32E. In an alcove between the bathroom and the galley Bobby sank into a squat and felt the blood rush to his legs for the first time in hours. He placed his head against the plastic window and closed his eyes.
The Black family had countless flaws. They were nosy and judgemental. Their collective sense of direction was so poor that more than one of them had gotten lost on the way to their own home. They cared about the stupidest things and thought you did too – did you know there are roadworks on Leeson Street? What do you think they are for? Did you hear sirens today? Where did you think the guards were off to? Did you know that Martin down the road had a triple bypass? Ah for god’s sake, of course you know Martin. You’ve known him all your life, albeit not well, but you know he has the red car and the wife with the dog and the hairdo? Well, he nearly died anyway. What do you make of that? You didn’t make anything of it. All you wanted to know was whether it was the wife or the dog that had the hairdo.
The Black family didn’t stop talking. They didn’t stop meeting. They didn’t stop phoning. They were insufferable. They never left you alone. But that was the point. They never left any of their own alone so how had this happened? Nobody had taken Molly’s disappearance seriously. Nobody was genuinely worried. Until the letter. Molly’s letter had sent shockwaves through the family. The letter was postmarked five weeks ago – she could be anywhere by now.
Bobby had gone over and over her words in his head since the letter had arrived, trying to understand what it meant. She had said that they didn’t need to worry about finding her anymore as if she was a burden to them, as if their long struggle with her was over. Bobby had heard about people disappearing. About places in India and Thailand where you go to live with spiritual leaders and renounce your identity. Molly didn’t really want to disappear, did she? And if she did, how had things gotten this bad?
Naturally, the first thing each of the Blacks did when they read the letter was make it all about themselves. Uncle Mike wanted to call her in like a defective product recall. He spoke about her like a cat with an RFID chip in its collar and got completely irate when there was nobody he could call or no cheque he could write to miracle her back. Aunt Angela held a prayer circle in Glenmalure and Bobby’s dad Even-Stephen analysed the letter for hidden messages in case Molly was under the influence of ‘malign forces’.
They all spoke about the possibility of her joining a cult like it was just a matter of time. Bobby’s mum Frances was only sorry she’d never had the chance to join one herself. But under all their bluster, an unspoken thread of fear coursed through the aunts and uncles. A sense that they’d been here before. They had just about pulled Uncle Danny from the brink and the older generation seemed wracked with fear that they’d lose Molly too. And for the first time Bobby saw that they might.
Bobby knew about grief. How it tricked you. How it sat deep inside you then came for you just when you weren’t expecting it. Molly had spent the last ten years on the run. Somehow, now, her parents’ deaths were catching up with her. Molly had saved Bobby from his grief. Where had he been when she had needed him? He had been so wrapped up in his own crisis that he’d let her slip from him. Molly had no parents, no siblings. The mismatched group of loons behind him on the plane were her safety net. They were all she had.
*
‘Are you the pilot?’
Bobby had turned to face a small boy in a pilot’s uniform and hat.
‘Of course not. Clearly you are.’
The boy smiled widely and shook his head.
‘Inna pilot but not this plane.’
‘Oh I see, you’re just a passenger this time?’
‘Yeah. Inna passenger this time.’
A woman with hair sticking to her face at all angles scooped the boy up in her arms.
‘I’d like to tell you that he got away from me, but I’m so exhausted I will happily allow my two-year old child to talk to strangers. On a plane at least.’
‘His verbal reasoning skills are incredibly impressive for a two year old.’
‘Parent?’
‘Teacher.’
‘That must be rewarding.’
Bobby stood.
‘It is. It really is. Thanks.’
He didn’t know why he added the thanks, but he felt unnaturally grateful to this stranger for understanding. He followed her back into the body of the plane. Up ahead he could see his unlikely congregation. Uncle John seemed to have awoken from his self-induced coma and was describing Bangkok’s sex trafficking trade to the couple he had just stretched his legs across. The words PIMPS and OPIUM echoed loudly across the plane. The elderly lady’s face was turning a pale green. She was gripping her husband’s arm and saying his name over and over again.
‘Listen, Stanley, what do you make of ISIS?’
Armed with the man’s name, Uncle John turned in his seat to lean in closer to Stanley. A rush of panic filled Bobby from head to toe but he was caught behind B’s biggest fan as she doled out peanuts. He bounced behind the air stewardess to incite her to speed up, but she continued even-paced and cautious, like she was administering IV drips to patients and not peanuts to passed-out passengers. From the other end of the plane, Uncle Danny emerged from behind the curtain.
When Bobby had agreed to go to Thailand, the trip had seemed like a comparative break from the funk he’d been in. But now he saw that the so-called extraction team consisted of nothing but liabilities. The line-up was an irate aunt with a broken ankle, a vacuous vlogger who Bobby had actively avoided for twenty years, a heavily sedated uncle on the verge of a pro-terrorism diatribe, a nervous wreck who could only grasp concepts which existed as functions in Excel, and at the last minute – and the absolute pièce de résistance – they’d had to replace Mike, the one reliable member of the team, with a long-term alcoholic.
‘You’ve got to hand it to the ISIS lads. They made significant progress in a short space of time, didn’t they? What do you think they are up to now?’
John went full whacko just as there was a hold-up at the peanut trolley. A couple wanted to understand the origins of the product. B’s biggest fan was only too happy to oblige. By the time Bobby reached the scene, John’s seat was empty. Up ahead, Danny was unevenly ushering John down the aisle expounding the importance of not getting a blood clot. Bobby was overcome with relief. He slipped into Uncle John’s seat to give Stanley and his wife a break.
Glancing up, his uncles looked entirely out of place – two cumbersome beige figures bumping down the narrow aisle. However, despite their oddities he was suddenly filled with love for them. They were imperfect. But they were here. Trying to find the person they’d all accidentally let fall through the cracks.
26. LADY V
Bangkok, April 14th 2019
V closed the door to her suite and locked eyes with the minibar. Normally she would never do something so stupid. Minibars were the world’s longest running scam. She had spent years inculcating the fear of god about them into her sons, who were now reluctant to even be in the same room as one, for fear of incurring some sort of cost. But V knew about self-preservation and right now she knew that she would only manage to keep sane if she was in a bath drinking something alcoholic. And since she was breaking a lifelong rule anyway, she reached for the mini-Champagne. Throwing her crutches on the bed, she changed into a robe. She was careful to avoid looking in the mirror.
Starvation wasn’t how she remembered it. She used to rock up to shoots sustained only by Champagne and chewing gum. Now she was faint and furious. And was she imagining it or, without the exercise, was she already beginning to put on weight? In the bath she threw her cast up over the edge of the tub and let out a long deep breath. The flight was over. The treacherous taxi ride through the streets teeming with people and pelleted by rain was over. She had been extricated from the Blacks who did not, it seemed, travel well. Between the plane and the terminal building John had turned beetroot and begun to evaporate through his linen suit. She hoped that the outfit was an anomaly and that the rest of his luggage was more low-key. He had arrived at Dublin Airport yesterday resembling a British colonialist having tea on a lawn in Delhi in 1926.
V took a swig of Champagne and it oozed into her system like liquid gold. It was worth every penny of the million dollars it probably cost. Still, her shoulders were hard as rocks and she had the added burden of knowing that she had to reassess her plan.
The original idea was that since she couldn’t work because of her ankle anyway, V would come to Thailand with Mike for two weeks. The first week she’d put her feet up in the Shangri-La while Mike and the Nancy Drew crew found Molly. The Black family would stay in some budget hotel far away. V would of course see them. Once they found Molly, she would personally invite them to the Shangri-La for dinner on the outdoor terrace to celebrate. By the end of that first week, V would have a light glow from lounging by the riverside swimming pool and all the treatments she would avail of in the spa. She would order cocktails for the table and come across as generous and compassionate. Then she and Mike would fly to the Four Seasons in Koh Samui for the second week, packing the Nancy Drew crew off home.
The first spanner in the works had been the US delegation. At the last minute Mike had been called in to meet a major client from the US. But that wasn’t even the worst of it. It turned out that B had made some sort of deal with the Shangri-La to do a live demo from their rooftop restaurant and in return the rest of the Black family could stay in the hotel for next to nothing. There was no choice now. V was part of the Nancy Drew crew.
Her phone beeped and she lunged for it, thinking perhaps it could be Mike checking in. Instead, it was a news alert about the doctor. V zoomed in on the picture. He was short and nowhere near as good-looking as the Griffith girl. Maybe he thought because he was a doctor, he might have a shot with her. V submerged deeper into the bath. She felt strangely protective of this girl she didn’t know and vitriolic towards this predator stalking her. V’s anger at the doctor was so strong she knew it was a lightning rod for other things too. Anger towards Molly for running away, for bringing them all out here on a wild goose chase. But the anger was laced with fear too.
V wasn’t involved in finding Danny. She didn’t get the late-night phone calls, she had never driven around cities in England looking for him, but she knew enough to know that when the others had found him it had been bad. So bad that John had become hyper-protective of the rest of them, behaving like a teacher on a school trip – constantly taking headcounts of them all.
No one ever talked about what had happened to Danny, what he would do for the rest of his life, if he’d live with his mother forever, if there was any future for him. They all just hoped against hope that he would somehow keep his head above water.
V stared momentarily at the marble surrounding her. She had to remember – Molly wasn’t Danny. Molly was a spoilt millennial who made a habit of running away. Molly had them following her around the world, questioning themselves, spending a fortune. She needed to be yanked back to reality. And V knew she was the one to do it. The Blacks were soft as brie.
Leaning lightly on her cast she hopped her good leg out of the bath. This time she forgot to avoid the mirror. The bathroom was covered in glass and all she could see was flesh. Her sharp hip bones and elegant clavicle had disappeared. Round and succulent, she looked like a hunk of meat. She shivered as she reached for the rest of the Champagne, dosing herself like she had dosed her children with Calpol – for general unease.
She hobbled into the bedroom and began unpacking one-pieces and sarongs she’d have no use for now. At the bottom of her bag she found the tattered red diary she’d thrown in at the last minute. She looked at it for a long time. She hadn’t read it in years, and she had no idea if it would help Molly or make things worse. To V, the diary was a reminder of a time of pure terror. It sat there in the bottom of the empty bag like a foreboding totem, a reminder of what it felt like to be completely out of control. V drained her Champagne glass and threw the empty bag into the bottom of the wardrobe. She needed to get out of there.
At the spa, several ladies got to work on her at once, one soaking her good foot, another manicuring her fingers and a third massaging her shoulders. In the calm of the Urban Retreat, she began to formulate a new plan.
27. LADY V
Dublin, 1999
She was in the middle of a shoot when it happened first. Later she would become used to it. Later still she would become a complete expert in it – getting a physiotherapist to train her in pelvic floor exercises and setting up classes in the gym specifically to help pregnant women. But right now, with the bright lights melting her make-up and her fake husband’s beard itching her cheek, she visibly jumped when she felt not just a trickle but a burst of urine escape her bladder. She hadn’t even realized she needed to pee. The set was dusty from all the woodchip they were pretending to put together in their pretend house which they’d just got a pretend mortgage for. She’d sneezed and abruptly felt a surge of water coming out of her like a dam breaking on a river. No warning drops. No polite heads up. A FLOOD. A DELUGE. The inspiration for Noah’s Ark. She stood stock still, unable to move.
