Never Ending Page 17

  No answer. He was there, on the balcony – Shiv could see his feet resting on the wooden rail. Declan had skipped breakfast altogether this morning and finally appeared on the balcony after the rest of them had retreated to the poolside for what Mum called “a lazy last day” of the holiday. After yesterday’s truncated trip to the fort, and what followed, none of them was in the mood for going anywhere or doing anything as a family.

  “Leave him be,” Dad said. With Dec it was always “leave him be” but whenever Shiv acted like that it was “let her sulk”.

  She disliked hating her brother. Or hating herself for hating him, which was much the same thing. They’d had their bust-ups before but nothing on this scale, or so malicious. Because that was what she’d felt: pure malice towards him. For ruining everything with Nikos. For saying what he’d said in the car on the way to the fort. She had wanted to say something to get back at him. To hurt him.

  Well, she’d done that sure enough.

  Shiv continued to stare up at her brother’s feet, the white soles stark against the tanned insteps. The rest of him was obscured by the towels draped over the rail to dry – or that he’d put there to hide himself away from them all. From her.

  One more afternoon, one more evening, one more night. This time tomorrow, they’d be on the flight home. The thought sank a deadweight of sadness into her.

  It was all she could do to stop herself climbing out of the pool and jogging out to the road to flag down a car to take her to the harbour where Nikos and his father ran their boat trips. Instead, Shiv pushed off and swam – length after length after length.

  Declan didn’t join them for lunch. He didn’t eat the plate of food Mum took up to him.

  “Can’t you go up there and try to make peace with him?” Mum said.

  “Me? He’s the one who said I’d been shagging Nikos.”

  “Shiv.”

  “His word, not mine.”

  They were sitting in the shade of the tree at the far end of the pool – Shiv, texting Laura and Katy about meeting up when she got back; Mum playing patience, the cards warped with heat and moisture. Dad was inside the villa, having a nap.

  “Who are you texting?” Mum asked.

  “Not Nikos, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

  Her mother turned a card over. The Jack of Hearts. She looked at it as though she’d never come across that card before. “You know, Shiv, saying that to Dec…”

  She let the sentence trail off.

  “He lied about me,” Shiv said, aware how sullen she sounded. She didn’t want to think about the look in her brother’s eyes after what she’d said to him.

  “Look, you have strong feelings for Nikos,” Mum said. “I can see that.”

  “Can we not talk ab—”

  “But Declan is your brother, Siobhan.” She paused to let that register. “He will be your brother for the rest of your lives – long after me and your father are gone. And long after you’ve forgotten Nikos.”

  Shiv stared out over the olive grove. The solitary goat was there as usual, lying in the shade beneath one of the trees. Across the bay, the windsurfers were out, their sails like scraps of bunting torn loose by the breeze.

  She recalled Declan’s face when Nikos rescued him from the rip tide. She had never seen him so happy – so besotted, now she thought about it.

  She’d been too wrapped up in Nikos to notice that Dec was as well.

  He will be your brother for the rest of your lives.

  “I’m going for a dip,” she said, the lounger creaking beneath her as she got up.

  Mum started to speak but Shiv wasn’t listening. She was in the water before her mother finished the sentence and before her own tears had properly begun.

  She swam till her breath was ragged and her whole body tingled.

  Flipping onto her back, exhausted, Shiv spread her limbs and floated like a starfish. Her brother’s feet were still there. Gazing up at the balcony, drifting, she had the illusion that she was the one remaining still while the building spiralled away into the sky like a gigantic villa-shaped helium balloon, carrying Declan away.

  Shiv was sitting on the edge of the pool, legs dangling in the water, the heat of the afternoon sun on her shoulders, when she spotted the tennis ball among the shrubbery. That first day of the holiday, when Dec had surprised her with a wet splat in the head, seemed an age ago. They’d got each other a couple of times since then.

  Shiv glanced up at the balcony. Those feet, that screen of towels.

  Retrieving the ball, she leaned over the side of the pool to give it a good long dunk, smiling to herself at the idea of the sodden ball making Declan jump half out of his skin. If he was asleep, better still.

  Underarm or overarm? Underarm, she decided.

  Shiv positioned herself beneath the balcony, the tennis ball streaming water onto the flagstones, took aim, and sent it high into the air. Too hard. She’d thrown the ball so far it cleared the balcony altogether and hit the front edge of the pantiled roof … then rebounded and dropped onto her target. The yelped expletive told her all she needed to know.

  She did the clenched fist thing, the yesyesyes! thing.

  On the balcony, nothing. Silence.

  Everything returned to the way it was before she threw the ball, except that the feet had disappeared from the rail. Dec could still have been hiding up there, or maybe he’d slunk off indoors. The thrill, the sense of fun, ebbed away. It’d seemed like a good idea at the time. Now, she couldn’t have said for sure why she’d thrown that ball or what she hoped might come of it.

  Did she really believe things would just click back into place between them?

  Shiv looked over towards Mum at the far end of the pool, still playing patience. She’d paused mid-deal to watch the goings-on. “Talk to him,” she mouthed. But Shiv wouldn’t go up there. She had made her gesture of conciliation and she’d been ignored – left standing there like an idiot.

  Turning from the balcony, she headed along the side of the pool towards the patio doors. Go in, out of the sun. Make a start on packing her case.

  “Did he give you that?”

  Shiv started, almost dropping the baby turtle. She hadn’t heard her mother’s footsteps on the stairs or had any idea she was standing in the doorway. “Yeah,” Shiv said. She was sitting on the bed, a half-packed suitcase yawning open beside her.

  Mum came over. “Can I see?”

  Shiv handed over the turtle’s tiny corpse. Mum asked if it was the one from the boat trip and Shiv said she supposed it must be.

  “Poor little chap,” Mum said, returning it.

  Shiv wrapped it up again, stowing it between layers of clothes in her case – for protection, but also to hide it from Dad. And from Declan, for that matter.

  “That was a lovely day on the boat, wasn’t it?” Mum said.

  Shiv nodded. “Uh-huh.”

  She’d half turned away but Mum noticed her crying even so. “Oh, sweetheart,” she said, pulling Shiv into a hug – Mum standing, Shiv sitting on the bed, face pressed against her mother’s stomach. Her shoulders, her whole body shuddered with sobs. “Let it out,” Mum said, stroking her hair. “Let it all out.”

  “I love him, Mum.”

  “I know, I know.”

  “I do. I really do.”

  They were going out for dinner, Mum and Dad. Mum had tried to talk him out of it – in the circumstances, she’d said, perhaps it might be best if they stayed home? Dad wasn’t having any of it.

  “I’m not letting her spoil our anniversary.”

  Shiv had eavesdropped on the argument. It had been obvious her father would win. Now, there they were, ready to go out: Dad, in the doorway, keeping an eye out for the taxi; Mum, putting the finishing touches to her make-up – talking to Shiv but aiming the words at her own reflection in the mirror by the foot of the stairs. We’ll be back about eleven-ish… I’ve got my mobile with me… There’s pasta in the cupboard and cheese in the fridge that needs usi
ng up. That sort of thing.

  Shiv was sitting on the sofa, surfing Greek TV channels with the sound muted. Dec was upstairs, somewhere.

  “Taxi’s here,” Dad said.

  “You sure you two are going to be all right?”

  “Mum.”

  “Right, right – we’re going.”

  Once they were gone, Shiv mooched about for a bit before deciding to give it another go with Declan. But when she went to the landing and called his name, asking if he wanted her to knock him up something to eat, she got no answer.

  “Dec?”

  Silence.

  “I … I’m sorry, Dec.” She paused, listening hard at his bedroom door. He was in there, she could tell. “For what I said, yeah? I shouldn’t … have said that stuff. And –” she puffed out her cheeks – “I’m really sorry.”

  Still no response.

  “Dec, please. Please don’t be like this.”

  In the end she gave up and returned downstairs to the kitchen. While the pasta was cooking, she checked her phone again. Nikos wasn’t talking to her either.

  As last evenings of holidays went, they didn’t come much more crap than this.

  She ate on the terrace, citronella candles scenting the air. She tried not to think of Nikos, just along the coast, at the beach party that marked the start of his brother’s wedding. She wasn’t particularly hungry. In the guttering light from the candles, the penne looked like severed fingers. She speared one tube after another, robotically placing them in her mouth and chewing, swallowing, sipping from the glass of white wine she’d snaffled from the nearly full bottle in the fridge.

  Dad might notice some was missing, but so what? She could hardly be in his bad books any more than she was already.

  Not that she got to finish her drink.

  Because, at that moment, a yellow tennis ball landed on the wine glass, glancing off the rim, knocking the glass over so that it shattered against the dish and spewed wine and broken shards all over the food, the table – all over her lap too.

  “Oh, yyyeessss,” came a voice from the balcony.

  14

  “Go on, Shiv! Do it!”

  How does she hear him when he is so far below her, way down at the base of the tree, his tiny figure waving up at her, beckoning? But, somehow, Declan’s voice reaches her, perched on her impossibly high branch.

  “Go on!”

  Jump, he means, because there are no lower branches by which to climb down. All she has to do is lean forward, let gravity do the rest. If he got down OK, then so can she. She imagines herself floating like a leaf, spiralling gently to the ground where her brother is waiting, arms outstretched, to catch her.

  “Shiv! Do it!”

  She does. She shifts her weight, loosens her hold on the branch. Drops.

  The fall lasts for ever and yet it is over in seconds and, although she knows she is plummeting at great speed – can see the ground accelerating towards her – Shiv has no sensation of movement. So the impact, when it comes, surprises her. Literally takes her breath away.

  Water.

  What she thought was solid ground is water and she is plunging into its depths.

  Then, bursting to the surface once more. Swimming for the shore. Calling out to Declan to help her.

  “I’m here, Shiv. I’ve got you.”

  She turns towards the voice. “Dec?”

  “This way.” Hands reach into the water, pull her out, drag her on to the muddy bank at the base of the tree – a face looming into her field of vision as she blinks the water from her eyes. A boy’s face. Not Declan.

  “Mikey?”

  He smiles. “You’re safe now.”

  “Where’s my brother?”

  “There.”

  Shiv turns to glimpse a figure floating on the surface – limbs disjointed, neck at a strange angle, clothes soaked in blood – and she sees that the water is glass. A great sheet of glass, shattered to a thousand pieces.

  To reach him she must—

  Frantically, she starts to repair the damage; picking up one glass fragment after another and trying to fit them back together like pieces in a jigsaw puzzle. It’s no use. Her hands are bleeding and the bits of broken glass refuse to attach, to reform into their once-smooth, flawless surface.

  Shiv looks up at Mikey, standing over her, watching.

  “Help me!” she cries. “Mikey, please, you have to show me what to do.”

  Most of her nightmares are like this, now. A terrifying mix of old dreams and new, garbled flashbacks to her brother’s death and the surreal images of her unconscious, with Declan and Mikey so interchangeable she can’t always tell them apart.

  In some of the nightmares, the dogs are there: chained up, barking, snarling, trying to get at Shiv or at whichever boy’s body she’s stooped over this time.

  The visions come while she’s awake too. More and more, they come. They’re worse at night though. So bad, so real, she’s petrified of letting herself fall asleep.

  Dr Pollard has spoken of residents reaching a “tipping point” in this stage of the programme. A point where, instead of staring down into the blackest abyss, their faces begin to tilt – slowly, hesitantly – towards a bright blue sky.

  The mind can only take so much darkness before it demands light.

  So she would have them believe.

  If this is a tipping point for Shiv, it’s not the kind the Director imagines. No gradual rising up towards the heavens but more like a sudden plunge over the edge, into the depths of hell.

  She knows the darkness for what it is now. Knows herself for what she is.

  He can’t move, she puts in her notebook in Write.

  He can’t run.

  He can’t swim.

  He can’t throw balls, can’t climb trees, can’t dive off a springboard.

  He can’t see.

  He can’t hear, smell, taste, touch.

  He can’t think, can’t speak.

  He can’t laugh or cry.

  He can’t drink. Can’t eat.

  He can’t feel anything ever again. Love, hate. Pain, comfort. Joy, sadness. Hope, despair. Nothing.

  He can’t breathe.

  He can’t grow up, grow old.

  He is nothing. He is nowhere. For all eternity.

  I. DID. THIS. TO. HIM.

  The passing of time has become difficult to track – she counts the days in “sleeps”, like she did when she was a small child.

  Three sleeps since she woke from another nightmare to find her bed soaked in urine. Two sleeps since they showed her the film of Nikos, hands under Dec’s armpits, lifting her brother back onto the boat. One sleep since Shiv retrieved her old Walk jumpsuit from the utility room and started wearing it instead of her regular gear.

  Dr Pollard will want to discuss all of this at their next one-to-one. She is concerned about Shiv. “You seem to be straying off course,” she said, the last time they spoke. Four sleeps ago? Three?

  “Whose course?” Shiv asked. “Yours or mine?”

  Shiv stops eating.

  Once she’s thought of it, the decision seems so obvious she wonders why it has taken her till now. So, from here on, she will eat nothing, drink only water.

  Day after day, this is what she does.

  There’s something purifying about going without food. With each hour that passes, she grows more acutely conscious of the toxins leaching out of her body. Out of her mind too – the poisoned thoughts slowly draining away. Right after Declan’s death – in the days on end when Shiv forgot to eat, or skipped meals, or left food unfinished – she was starving herself out of neglect or inertia, because eating (along with everything else) seemed so pointless. This time is different. Now, she’s doing it deliberately: cleansing herself, emptying herself, focusing herself.

  Punishing herself.

  It’s tough, at first. Really tough.

  But by the third day she is learning to ride out the hunger, and how drinking lots of water can fool her stomach i
nto feeling full. She knows to clasp a pillow to her belly to ease the cramps that sometimes double her over and, when she stands up or moves about, she takes care to hold on to something until the dizziness passes.

  She has to be clever, of course. Devious. No clinic lets a patient starve.

  At mealtimes, she helps herself to the smallest portions then sneaks some of her food onto Mikey’s plate, or Caron’s, while the dining-room supervisor isn’t looking. She leaves as much as she can get away with or hides bits in her pockets to dispose of later. When it’s OK to eat lunch outdoors, she’ll take a sandwich into the garden, away from prying eyes, and feed it to the birds that gather near her bench. The little food that does pass her lips, she makes sure to puke back up as soon as she can.

  At the daily activities, she wears extra layers of clothing to hide her weight loss; rubs her cheeks to make them less pale, less gaunt-looking. In front of staff, she forces herself to act like nothing’s wrong, to move and speak and behave normally.

  Mikey understands. But Caron tries to talk her out of it, threatens to tell. So Shiv has to conceal her fasting from Caron too; difficult, but not impossible.

  Shiv ought to be wiped out. But she has never felt so alert or so energized. At PTU, the photos and film footage are sharper than ever; in Talk and Write, she gets straight to the heart of things – she speaks, writes, listens brilliantly.

  “The monks fasted,” she tells Mikey. “The ones who lived here back when this place was a monastery. It brought them closer to God.”

  “Is that what you want?” he asks.

  “No, I’m just saying.”

  “I don’t believe in all that.” Does he mean fasting, or God? “One of my aunts, right, she comes up to me after the funeral and takes hold of my face in both hands and says, ‘Phoebe is playing with the angels now.’” Mikey sniffs, swallows. “Is that what you think – that your brother’s in heaven, waiting for you?”

  Shiv shakes her head. Pulls the pillow into her belly. They’ve been in her room most of the afternoon – another Sunday with no sessions, nothing to do. They haven’t spoken all that much. Sometimes it’s enough for them just to sit in silence.