Chapter 11
11
Had she reflected on it, Fiona would have probably considered it a sad state of affairs that, on autopilot, she headed directly and without hesitation to the office. At least within those four walls, she could exert some control over events.
She opened a window. Last night’s rain had dispelled the humidity and added a crispness to the air. After a double shot espresso and an aimless rifle through her cupboards, she opened up her computer and stared at the screen. Thirty minutes later and she was still staring.
This level of unproductivity was unheard of. Admittedly it was the weekend, but she’d just had a full week off. There was the VertX presentation for Dominic on Monday, ahead of the conference in two weeks’ time. She could check that, of course, but she didn’t feel focused enough to deal with something so important. And, as good a friend as Dominic had become over the years, she needed this presentation to be top-notch.
Sighing, she flicked on the Internet. An image of Octavia Lovett-Rose popped up. Fiona often set alerts for news of her clients. That way, she didn’t miss anything important going on in their lives. For Octavia that week, it was a guest spot on breakfast television and ‘stepping out’ at a gala, in an almost-identical dress to the Princess of Wales, followed by an online poll of ‘Who wore it best?’
Shaking her head at the absurdity of what was considered news, she switched to a more serious site. A short video clip captured her attention.
‘The mammoth exercise, involving three tug boats, has begun to drag the ten-metre sperm-whale carcass closer to a bank of the Thames, where it can be loaded onto a trailer and transported to the Institute of Marine Life and Conservation in Plymouth. Volunteers have been working around the clock to ensure this is dealt with as quickly as possible.’
Aerial footage showed various netting and buoyancy devices being placed around Martha’s body. One of the boats rammed into her side. Fiona gagged. They backed up, only to ram into Martha again. Enough . Fiona clicked off the screen and staggered across the room to pull a bottle of water from the mini fridge. Finishing it off, she felt the room getting hotter and hotter. She had to get outside again. Almost unable to focus, she fumbled for her bag and keys.
As much as she’d hoped it might, the cool air did little to stem the tightening that was spreading across her chest. That was it , her mind raced as she walked blindly along the pavement. Martha was gone. There was no coming back from this. And what about her family? This thought caused the pain in Fiona’s chest to increase. What would happen to them? Would they know? How could they? It wasn’t like they were going to watch it on the nine o’clock news. Fiona had read so much about sperm whales in the past week. The bonds between mother and calf, the hundreds of miles their clicks could travel to let them keep in contact with one another. Would they carry on calling for Martha? And for how long? What would her children think? That their mother had simply decided to stop answering them now?
Trying to steady the trembling that was overtaking her, Fiona crossed a road, oblivious to the route she was now taking.
Orange leaves tumbled to the ground around her. Autumn, then winter, then Christmas, she thought. At least she would have family with her then. At least she would have Joseph back home for Christmas. Or would she?
This thought knocked the air from her lungs. If Stephen went through with this, would Joseph even come home to her for Christmas? There was no guarantee. It was the time of year when she and Stephen usually went to town: two trees, endless presents, and enough food to keep them in leftovers for a month. But it was Joseph and Stephen who did the cooking together. It always had been. Of course, it helped that Alton Foods gave him a huge, seasonal hamper. Their cupboards were always full of jars and tubs of delicious things and the fridge would be loaded with everything from cheeses to goose fat and double cream. Christmas was when Joseph had learned to roast his first potatoes and stuff a turkey. How many times had he said that cooking was his favourite part of Christmas Day?
Mind whirring, she stumbled on, bumping into Saturday shoppers and families trying to make the most of the last warm days. She felt herself dragged along with the tide. Her direction changed once, then a second time. Then she was standing at traffic lights, ready to cross a road she barely recognised. Not that it mattered. What did it matter where she ended up? Not when Joseph was going to abandon her too. As if he would come to hers for a frozen turkey crown and a jacket potato, if he was lucky.
Her breathing grew shallower still. She was going to faint, she thought, a new wave of light-headedness engulfing her. Her body was spiralling. The pavement seemed to have become spongey.
‘Hey, are you okay?’
‘I… I…’ she stuttered. The ground was slipping away, rolling in waves beneath her feet.
‘Come on. You need to sit down. Let me help you. Let’s go inside.’
A hand grasped her elbow. Another was placed in the small of her back.
‘I’m… I’m…’ I’m okay , was what she was trying to say. She was okay. But the words refused to leave her mouth.
Slowly, she felt her body change position, as the hand shifted from her back and guided her down onto a chair.
‘Just sit there and breathe slowly, okay? I’ll go and fetch you some water. Don’t move. I won’t be a second.’
Holding her face in her hands, she waited for the dizziness to subside. She’d only fainted twice before in her life: once when she’d been at a Take That concert, desperate to get to the front – which she managed – only to pass out three minutes before the band came on stage; and a second time when she was with Holly, who was getting a tattoo. Neither time had it felt like this though.
‘There you go, drink this.’
With her eyes still blurry, she took hold of the proffered glass and lifted it to her lips.
‘Thank you,’ she managed, following the first sip, then taking a second and a third, which turned into frantic gulps until she’d finished the whole thing. A minute later, her head had cleared enough to notice her surroundings, including a large cup of coffee on the table in front of her.
‘I made it with milk milk.’
She frowned. ‘What…?’
Her head was still fuzzy and the smallest movement resulted in the whole room spinning again. She tried focusing again.
‘You!’
She didn’t remember her pulse racing so much when she’d felt faint before. Nor her skin becoming so clammy. She just needed a moment to regroup.
Had she been in her right state of mind, or even close to it, she would no doubt have leapt to her feet again as the Dumpster Dive owner pulled out a chair to sit down opposite her. Even if he had stopped her collapsing in the street. Unfortunately, her brain was still working at a third of its normal pace.
‘Do you want me to call someone for you?’
A miniscule shake of the head.
‘Are you sure? I think you gave yourself a bit of a fright.’
She looked up and scanned the room. The lip-ringed girl behind the counter was clattering crockery, while a large group of customers had just come in, all laughing loudly at something. The coffee smelt appealing but she needed to get away from her Good Samaritan.
‘Thank you.’ She pushed herself up to standing, not really sure if she was ready to achieve this or not. ‘For the coffee and the water. Thank you.’
He rose quickly too, blocking the way between her and the door.
‘Are you sure you’re good to go? You looked like you were having some pretty harsh panic attack out there.’
‘Panic attack?’ She snorted with a laugh. ‘I just haven’t eaten recently. A bit light-headed, that’s all.’
‘Well, if it’s food you need, I’ve got a whole restaurant’s worth you can choose from. On the house. And you haven’t touched your coffee.’
She smiled as politely as she could. Leaving a Blue Mountain to go cold was a sin on any level, but at that precise moment, it was all too much. He was too much. Too helpful. The place was too noisy, too bright. Besides, one glance at the blackboard reminded her why she’d refused to eat here in the first place, and it would take a lot more than a bit of light-headedness to persuade her to ingest something from landfill. Thanking him once again and trying not to bang into any of the genuine customers, she lurched out of the door. She needed to get home.
When she finally stumbled through her front door, she didn’t even bother looking at the time, before popping a sleeping pill out of its packet and washing it down with half a glass of wine.
She awoke the following morning with a bitter taste in her mouth. However, a coffee, a shower, a rinse with mouthwash, and another coffee and she was feeling ready to tackle the world. She had to be. She had a presentation to work on.
VertX . She read the single word heading, before changing the font size by one point. Something like that could make all the difference. And perhaps it needed to be just a fraction off centre? She used her cursor to nudge it slightly to the left. Yes, she thought, moving her head back to get a better view of the screen. That was much better.
She continued to go through each slide with the same attention to detail. Fonts changed; margins were realigned. She was back to her old self again. This was where she excelled. Only when her stomach began to growl, around midday, did yesterday’s little episode creep back into her thoughts. Panic attack, indeed! Why on earth would he have thought that? Forty-six years old and she had never been even close to one. Panic yes, but panic attack: definitely not. They were for people who didn’t organise their lives properly. People who let stress control them, rather than taking control of situations themselves. Yes, she’d possibly endured slightly more than normal that week but, still, disorders like that didn’t come on overnight and she’d never taken on more than she could chew. It was a lack of food. That was all.
With the thought of food causing her stomach to growl even louder, she pushed her computer to the side. There was no way she could stomach takeaway again and the fridge was in need of a refill.
Her aim was to be in and out of the shop as quickly as possible. Unfortunately, it appeared that was also the aim of half her neighbourhood. People blocked the way to the frozen-food cabinets, picking things up to read labels only to put them down again. You’re choosing dinner, not a partner for life, for crying out loud, she wanted to scream.
Shuddering at both the cold of the chillers and shopping in general, she squeezed between two dithering old ladies and grabbed three ready meals and a few smoothie bottles. The latter would hopefully replace whatever her body was currently craving: antioxidants or macrobiotics or whatever the latest jargon was. She headed to the checkout. With two plastic bags loaded, she marched back home for a final run through of the VertX presentation.
She would have an early night, she told herself, as she pressed save on the computer for the final time. Tomorrow was a big day.
As was generally the way during the working week, she woke a full five minutes before her alarm rang. It was a bizarre adaption of her body, she often thought. After all, if she’d wanted to get up five minutes earlier, then she would have set her alarm for that time. Still, it was a relief to feel that part of her routine was at last returning to normal, even if half the bedsheets still remained flat and unrumpled.
After switching off the alarm and taking a gulp of water from her bedside glass, her eyes moved instinctively towards the television.
‘What’s the point?’ she said out loud. ‘You know what’s happened to her.’
She moved towards the en suite, only to stop. That wasn’t entirely true. She didn’t know exactly what had happened. And they’d said on the news that they would be performing an autopsy – or whatever – that weekend, meaning they might now have actual evidence as to why a thirty-year-old sperm whale had made her way all the way up the Thames to London. She reached for the remote.
‘What we need is government intervention,’ someone was saying. ‘The fact that this can happen in this day and age is simply preposterous.’
From the images of sand dunes and tanks, it was clear they weren’t talking about Martha. With a shrug of disappointment, she crossed the room. This was another reason she’d always refused to have the television on in the house first thing. Disturbing perfectly pleasant morning thoughts with politics or world affairs before even having a coffee. Surely that never put anyone in the right frame of mind to start the day.
She was almost through the door, when she heard the story change.
‘For those of you who are just joining us: the Institute of Marine Life and Conservation has just released photos of the contents of the whale’s stomach, which was said to have contained over sixty pounds of plastic.’
She stopped and twisted her head back to the television.
‘Everything from plastic cups, bags and bottle tops to synthetic clothing and even novelty decorations were found there.’
They cut to the other presenter. ‘We wish to warn you now that some viewers may find this disturbing.’
They doubtlessly carried on talking over the pictures, in the annoying way they always did, to keep your attention as you washed up or packed lunchboxes or whatever but, from the moment the images appeared on the screen, Fiona heard nothing but the drumming of her own pulse.
Sixty pounds of plastic was a lot. That was for sure. Especially when you saw it displayed on a table, the way they had. It was the type of table she used for company seminars – long and fold-away but light enough to need only two people to carry. Normally, she would have been wondering what make it was but, at that moment, her eyes were focused only on what was on show. A hand shot to her mouth as she stifled a gasp. There was a stench that accompanied the shot. She couldn’t smell it, of course, but she could sense it. A smell of rotting flesh, of sickness and decay. Of poisons, thick and viscous. Even when the urge to gag had passed, her hand stayed covering her mouth.
Most of the items were stained red: the one hundred plastic cups; the countless plastic bags. She could even read the label on one of the plastic bottles. But none of that mattered as something else grabbed her attention.
Despite being stretched out as flat as it would go, it was still crumpled and raggedy. Age and a trip in a giant mammal’s intestinal tract had caused the once-iridescent surface to dull into the ferrous tones of the dead whale’s insides. She leaned towards the screen, her heart pounding harder and harder. It was impossible. It couldn’t be. The remote clattered to the floor, spilling its batteries.
‘And what is that?’ one of the presenters asked. ‘Is that some kind of plastic bag?’
‘Actually,’ her partner replied, squinting at their monitor. ‘I think it’s an old foil balloon. It looks like a parrot.’
‘No,’ Fiona whispered, barely able to speak. ‘It’s a parakeet.’