A Rush of Blood Read online

  ‘Is she on there?’ I asked, nodding at the phone. ‘Could you see? She’s got a big family and one of them might say if she is OK.’

  Sian looked at me like I was simple. ‘I haven’t got her number.’

  ‘No, Facebook. Are you friends?’

  Sian pulled a face. ‘I hardly use Facebook. It’s for old people.’

  ‘But Meda does. She said so. Said she uses it to talk to her grandparents back home. She likes putting on photographs of animals and did a video of herself talking about why you shouldn’t wear fur.’

  Sian blew out through her sticky lips and eyed her yoghurt. ‘What’s her proper name?’ she asked at last, behaving as if she were doing me the biggest favour ever.

  I shuffled about, looking at the clock on the wall, as Sian played with her phone like she were a hacker from a movie. We tried a few spellings of the family surname but everything we managed to find was in some language that looked like it should have been carved into the wall of a cave and the few pages that were in English were of super-pretty teenagers with big boobs and white teeth.

  ‘She’s not on it,’ said Sian, shrugging.

  ‘Try the Believerz page,’ said Paulette, who had lumbered over and joined in the conversation. ‘There were the pictures that Sylvie stuck on after the competition. Loads of families put on nice messages for Reena. Maybe somebody commented.’

  Sian handed me the phone and picked up her banana. ‘You do it,’ she said, exhausted by it all. ‘But don’t look at my selfies. I haven’t edited them.’

  I found the page in moments. Most of it was devoted to pictures of Sylvie and her favourite three dancers, beaming for the camera and striking perfect poses. I opened different pages at random and eventually found an album titled ‘Putney/Reena’. I spotted a few pictures of myself in among the hundred or so snaps of our troupe giving our all. I looked like I knew what I was doing, though my face was all red and sweaty and if you looked closely you could see that the label of my leotard was sticking out. I lingered for a moment on the pictures of poor Reena, laying there like a starfish as we danced around her and the parents urged the paramedics to push their way through. Then I started flicking through. I’ve always been a fast reader and it didn’t take me long to scroll through the dozens of comments from family, friends and witnesses who were all wishing Reena a speedy recovery. Among them was a comment from a Rita Cicenaite. It was in a reply to a suggestion from one of the other dance mums that the girl who had failed to catch Reena should feel ashamed of herself. Rita was defending Meda. Her observation was simple. ‘If you have nothing helpful to say, keep quiet. She feels awful.’ I touched the screen and brought up the girl’s profile. She was in her late teens and much prettier than Meda. She had nice green eyes and pinkish lips and had taken her profile picture in front of a brick wall at a funny angle. She was being followed by 113 people and she had four friends in common with Sian. The top post on the page had been written just three hours before.

  Feeling so helpless. Why can’t the world be nice to the nice ones? I love you, cuz.

  The words captioned an image of a girl, aged around five or six. She was lying on the back of a huge, shaggy-maned white dog, grinning for the camera with a mixture of teeth and gums. There was no mistaking Meda. You could tell from the picture that she was already big for her age and the dog didn’t look as though it was going to take her cuddles without complaint for very much longer.

  Underneath the picture were a variety of other messages written in another language. A dozen different people had commented on her words. The screen filled with consonants and accents and a jumble of emojis. A teenage boy called Matas had left pictures of teardrops. A blonde called Renata had included a link to a song by Coldplay. Atia had left question marks and a picture of a little posy of daisies. I felt hot and cold all at once, as if I was running through melting snow. The buzz of a dozen different conversations seemed to turn into a drone of static and jet planes. All I could think of was some desperate need to grab somebody who spoke Lithuanian and demand they translate the mass of pointy gibberish into an explanation about my friend.

  ‘Time,’ shouted Sylvie, and she turned the music back on. My grunt of frustration was snatched away on a wave of techno and Sian took the phone from my hand.

  I barely paid any attention to what came after. I sleepwalked through the choreography and barely even looked up when Honey slipped on some squashed banana, pulled a box split she wasn’t expecting and needed to go and lie down on the bench and moan into the wood. I kept making fists with my feet inside my shoes. I got jittery every time I sat down. Something had happened. Somebody was worried for Meda and, as her friend, that meant I should be too. By the end of class I was convinced that Meda had changed schools or moved back to Lithuania or that she was dying of one of the illnesses that strike you like lightning and leave you lying out cold and bare beneath a white sheet with tubes coming in and out and flowers dropping their petals on your feet.

  I needed answers. I needed to make sure everything was OK. I needed Mum to put things right.

  And I’m still so bloody sorry for what I began.

  MOLLY

  Molly leans back against bricks the colour of rotten wood and luxuriates in the fantasy that she is a soiled dove – the gentle name for a Victorian whore. The rain is coming down hard and the sky has turned the same shade of bruising that she imagines her character would display upon her sore forearms and knees: all indelicate hand marks and imprinted cobbles mottling her grimy skin.

  She can see her reflection in the dark glass of the blue van parked with one wheel half up on the kerb. She enjoys being able to look at herself. She is still wearing her Jolly Bonnet clothes and the cold night air has leeched the colour from her skin, accentuating her red lips and dark lashes. She experiments with her position. Places one boot upon the wall behind herself – forming a neat figure-four with her legs. She pulls down her blouse a little and pushes up her breasts, pouting at her reflection. She wrinkles her nose, dissatisfied with the presence of the van. It is an anachronism she cannot fantasize around. She would prefer to look upon the black lacquer of a coach and horses, embossed with a tasteful gold crest and plum-coloured plumes. She has passed a pleasant twenty minutes here, comfortably inconspicuous in the gap between the two circles of light that spill from the streetlamps overhead.

  For a time, she imagines herself to be called Alice. She came to London with her father and four sisters. Perhaps Irish-born. Welsh, if not. Sought work in a city where there was no comfort or succour to be had. Married a gin-soaked brute who spent what little money she had saved from her work as a glover’s assistant and who beat her mercilessly before, during and after their brutish couplings on their stinking straw mattress in their one-room Spitalfields hovel. She imagines that Alice would take comfort in gin, but not to the extent of the other girls who offered to spread their legs for the price of a quart of ale. She imagines a quiet defiance in her eyes – an intelligence and intensity that would continue to burn even as a procession of rough-handed men slipped coins into her hand. She enjoys being Alice. Decides that when she and Hilda get back to work she will start work on a new cocktail in honour of this new Victorian alter-ego. Starts thinking up possible names for the tipple and giggles to herself as she imagines writing the name ‘The Whore’s Drawers’ on to the blackboard behind the bar.

  Suddenly she hears feet slapping hurriedly along the wet pavement. Hears a name she has never really grown used to being called.

  ‘Mum. Mum, it’s Meda. She’s not at dance. I’ve been on Facebook. I know you said I shouldn’t but I was worried and I really think there’s a problem. Can we go check? I know where she lives. And you’ve got her mum’s number. Could you ring? Have you been out here all this time? Why didn’t you go to the burger place? It’s freezing. You’re soaked through …’

  Molly drags herself from her fantasy and looks at her daughter. Her sweat has frizzed her hair at the temples and her face is at once pa
le and flushed. Her coat and bag are both slung over one arm and she has a look of real concern in her eyes.

  ‘Sorry, sweetheart, I was miles away. How was dance? Did you do OK? How’s Meda?’

  Hilda seems ready to stamp her foot with frustration. She locks her jaw and takes a breath. She stands still as Molly reaches out to take her hand.

  ‘Mum, listen. I just said. Meda wasn’t there. She hasn’t been at school. And I went on a Facebook page and there were all of these people saying stuff in Lithuanian about something happening to her …’

  ‘You went on Facebook? You’re not allowed on there. You’re too young. And you lost your phone …’

  ‘Mum, you have to listen!’

  Molly looks at her daughter and realizes she is being serious. She feels bad at once for being too lost in her own flight of fancy to give Hilda her full attention. She softens her expression and spreads her hands. For an instant she feels like a police officer again – using expansive and welcoming body language to persuade a child to divulge a secret about what they have just seen. Out of habit, she begins to reproach herself, then realizes that such an avenue of introspection will again cause her to stop giving the child her concentration. She forces herself to focus.

  ‘Right, tell me the lot. I’m all ears.’

  When Hilda has finished, Molly gives a nod. She isn’t quite sure what to think but instinctively she feels an urge to minimize the situation. Often she feels like this is her main role in life; that it is her duty to modulate every new occurrence, whether it be a poor mark at school or the loss of a favourite toy, all the way up to the end of a relationship and complete financial collapse.

  ‘I’m sure you’ve got the wrong end of the stick,’ says Molly, and the face she pulls suggests the gentle scepticism favoured by doubtful parents the world over.

  ‘Did you not hear me?’ demands Hilda. ‘And don’t say I’m being dramatic. I’m worried. There were flowers, Mum. A little emoji, and all these words of sadness and all sorts.’

  ‘She’s probably got the flu,’ says Molly, kindly.

  ‘The flu?’

  ‘Or maybe she’s having to go away or something. Or her dog died.’

  ‘Her dog died? The only dog she knows here is the homeless man’s. Banky. Nice man, she says. I wonder if he has seen her. She buys treats for his dog sometimes. He lives in a sleeping bag in a park. He’s nice. Scottish. Do you think we should find him?’

  Molly rubs her thumb and forefinger over her eyebrows. She would like to be back in 1889, waiting for a date with Jack the Ripper.

  ‘What is it you’d like me to do, Hilda?’ she asks.

  ‘Call her mum!’ says Hilda, and Molly notices that she is opening and closing her hands as if squeezing a ball. ‘You’ve got her number. Just check. Please, Mum.’

  Molly is about to say no when she realizes that she has no good reason for doing so. Behind Hilda she can see the other girls trooping out of the blue door in the old brick building. Most are getting into waiting cars, huddling inside their hooded tops. A few other parents are waiting on the pavement, extending hands to take bags and coats and sweaty palms for brisk walks to Tube stations and taxi ranks. Meda’s mum should be up ahead, all sharp cheeks and pinched features and too-blue knock-off jeans. She should have just finished her cleaning job near St Paul’s and have the look of somebody desperate for a bag of chips and a sit-down. Molly has only spoken to her a handful of times but she knows Meda well enough that she does not think it so great an imposition to call and see whether the child is poorly. She realizes she is worrying about whether there is some cultural impediment to ringing. That she is worried, on some level, that in Lithuania it would be an act of gross insult to call an acquaintance and enquire about the wellbeing of an offspring.

  ‘Text her if it’s easier,’ says Hilda. ‘Or a direct message. I can show you how to use WhatsApp …’

  Molly sighs. She knows she will give in to her daughter’s demands. She pulls out her phone and scrolls through looking for the right number.

  ‘You’re making a mountain out of a molehill,’ she grumbles. ‘I’m going to look like a right bloody bell-end.’

  ‘You always tell me it’s better to be safe than sorry,’ says Hilda, and while she falls short of putting her hands on her hips, she looks as though she is considering it.

  ‘Right, got her,’ says Molly, ignoring her daughter. ‘I don’t know what I’m going to say …’

  She listens to the phone ringing and her mind is filled with imaginary pictures of Meda’s life. She sees a brood of brothers and sisters; cigarette smoke and vodka; a flat-screen TV and furniture still packed in plastic. She feels bad at once and wonders whether Meda’s mother would presume that her own house be all mock-Georgian sideboards, stuffed stag-heads and grandfather clocks.

  ‘Nobody’s answering,’ says Molly, after a time. ‘If it goes to voicemail, I’ll just leave a message, and …’

  ‘Kas po velnių yra?’

  Molly almost swears, biting back the curse at the last moment as the gruff male voice startles her.

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ she says, sounding suddenly a lot more English than she had when speaking to her daughter. ‘Yes. Forgive me. This is Molly Shackleton. I’m Hilda’s mother. From dance class. Erm, my daughter …’

  ‘Kai anglų kalė. Aš atsikratyti ja,’ says the man, and though she cannot understand the words, she fancies that he is talking to somebody else. She hears her name, rendered almost unrecognizable by the thickness of the accent.

  ‘Look, if this is a bad time, it’s not that important …’

  ‘Molly?’ asks a female voice, and the ‘l’ at the centre of her name sounds impossibly extravagant in the thick Slavic tongue. ‘This is Meda’s mother. Meda not able talk right now. I sorry. I can’t …’

  Molly listens as the woman dissolves into a slur of sniffs and strangled syllables. She hears the male voice, brusque and businesslike, before the phone goes dead. Molly looks at the phone for a long moment before turning to her daughter, who looks at her with wide eyes.

  ‘Well?’

  ‘She couldn’t really talk,’ says Molly, trying to make light of it. ‘I think they had people there.’

  ‘Who was it who answered? That didn’t sound like her mum.’

  ‘He didn’t say. Maybe her husband or somebody. Honestly, you’ve got ears like a bat.’

  ‘We have to go round there. Meda’s mum sounded like she had been crying. I know something’s wrong. Please, Mum …’

  It takes them twenty minutes to reach the property, huddling into their clothes as the rain sluices down from a sky that seems to contain all the motion and shapes of an angry ocean. The Stauskas family live in an apartment on the first floor of a soulless block of maisonettes on Portelet Road. The ground-floor properties enjoy gardens front and back but the homes above are half the size and can be accessed only through a communal entrance block and an angular staircase that smells of damp dog and takeaways.

  ‘It’s that buzzer,’ says Hilda, wrapping her arms around herself. She is soaked to the skin and her lips look swollen with the cold.

  ‘I know,’ says Molly, jabbing her finger on the intercom and suppressing a shiver. Her make-up has run and her hair is plastered to her face. She will not make it back to work without first going for a hot bath, a hot chocolate and a couple of tequila slammers.

  ‘Do it again,’ says Molly, over the sound of a lorry rumbling by on nearby Globe Road. She steps back from the panel of buzzers and looks up at the flats above. To her left and right, most of the front doors are encased behind metal shutters and even the bicycles left out on the second-floor balconies have been chained to the drainpipes. There are lights on in most of the windows. Many seem to be illuminated by a bright, unshaded bulb, spilling out a harsh light into the wet, dark air.

  ‘Should I press again, Mum? Should I?’

  The clouds alter their shape as Molly looks up through the rain in the direction of the maisonette.
For a moment she sees a curve of moonlight before the ragged clumps of mist reassemble themselves into a collection of scallop shells and broken feathers.

  ‘Ar Jūs bandote man galvos skausmas?’

  ‘Mum, they’ve answered. They’ve answered.’

  Molly hurries back to the intercom. She is too cold and damp and grumpy to care about propriety and her voice is flat as she speaks.

  ‘Yes, sorry, I think we got cut off before. I’m Hilda’s mum. Is Meda there, please? We’d like to take her out with us if she’s well.’

  The impromptu greeting is met with silence. Molly strains to hear but there is only the empty static of the line.

  ‘Buzz again, Mum. Buzz again …’

  ‘Stay there,’ comes the male voice that Molly recognizes. ‘I’m coming down.’

  Molly turns to her daughter. The child looks thoroughly bedraggled and her skin has gone ghostly. Molly opens hers damp coat and wraps it around her daughter. She kisses the soaking crown of her head and smells the strawberry of her bubble bath and the sweat of her exertions at dance class. She hopes that in a moment they will be holding hands and running through the rain towards the Tube, laughing at what silly scatterbrains they were and joking about all the things they had been imagining before they received some reassurance that Meda was absolutely fine.

  A light flicks on inside the hallway and Molly steps from the shelter of the door and back on to the pavement. A dark outline forms into the silhouette of a tall, broad-shouldered man. The door opens and the light reveals his face. Molly is overcome by a sudden sensation of familiarity but the feeling is quickly overcome by anxiety as she sees the cold intensity of his stare.