Chapter 15
Back at Saint Helen’s, I go in by the front door and the letterbox basket is a perfect fit.
It hooks right onto a pair of old, overpainted nails sticking out there.
I’m all set for my very own Land’s End catalogue, as soon as they track me down, and my first AudioFile magazine, as soon as I restart my subscription.
I wouldn’t have said I’ve got enough stuff to take them this long, but David and Chloe are still unpacking the kitchen, and I’d only get in the way.
Anyway, thinking about AudioFile has fired me up and I want to see to my work equipment.
I go up to my dead room and empty everything out of the packing cases.
I’ll only have to box it up again to install the sound insulation, and I haven’t even ordered that yet, but these are old friends.
Almost without thinking, I start to set them where they’ll need to go.
When I’m finished, the workstation looks nothing like what Kai would have done, so neat and trim.
Mine is a robotic sea creature, loops and clumps of wire trailing over the floor and switches underfoot as well, crammed onto the desk.
The shock mount and boom arm are solid though, and the lights are green, the cursors blinking.
It’s ready for me to start. The last thing I do is set Kai’s Earphones Award where I can see it every day.
Playing back first, to remind myself how good the sound was in Hilo, my own voice makes me realise how much I softened my accent without knowing.
Maybe I better dial up the Clack now I’m home.
They always say a Scottish accent is one of the most trusted, don’t they?
Then there’s that last file from Kai. Maybe I’m remembering it worse than it was.
If you’re there, Lindsay, that means I managed to shift this file to somewhere you’re going to find it.
I didn’t want to leave it too long. I wanted to sound like me and I can feel my range narrowing every day.
Anyway. So I died, huh? What a downer. You okay, babe?
I want you to be okay. I want you to be happy.
I want you to meet a nice guy—not too nice, but solid, you know?
He’ll cope with living in my shadow if he gets you thrown in.
And then you and him can get started on those babies we were going to have if it had turned out that way.
Deal? We got a deal? Try not to mind them being basic issue and not the angels we would have made.
Love them anyway. And even if he doesn’t show up, just go ahead and have the babies.
Seriously, Lin. I’m not going to tell you not to mourn. I would be ready to burn the earth to embers if it was me losing you. So, mourn. Grieve. Don’t forget me. But be happy. You’re living for two now, sweetheart. You’re living for me as well as yourself. No slacking.
When it’s finished, I’m as angry as I was last time. I put on my headphones and prepare myself.
“My nice guy is here,” I say into the mic at the perfect distance. “And I will be happy.” Only that little speech doesn’t cover anything like all the danger sounds. “Fudge, chairs, groping,” I say. Those were always my bêtes noires.
What I really need is the text with all the sounds.
I know it off by heart, of course. All audio artists do.
“The North Wind and the Sun,” I say into the mic, ignoring my pulse beginning to lift and lighten.
There is no way on what Kai always used to call “God’s green-and-blue bowling ball” that I misheard John and Shelley that time and only imagined that’s what they were saying.
“The North Wind and the Sun had a quarrel about which of them was the stronger,” I say, slow and steady as a lullaby.
“While they were disputing, a traveller passed along the road wrapped in a cloak.” And on and on until, “The North Wind was obliged to confess that the Sun was the stronger of the two. The end.”
What did John claim they were saying?
“They’re old enough to walk home,” I say into the mic.
“Now shave,” I add. “Naaooow shaaaaave.”
I flick the counter back to hear how it sounds, and I don’t even notice the echoes and buzzing telling me I’m going to have to spend a fortune in here.
All I’m listening for is what a degraded version of those two phrases might sound like.
The first gets me no further forward. It’s either what I thought it was or it’s morth (not a word) wind and (maybe on) the Sun.
The second little snippet though, is a different story.
My crappy far-from-dead room recording, played back, gives me a version of “now shave” that makes perfect sense.
In one way. Although it raises even more questions in another.
“Nice save,” I say to myself. “Nice save?”
They’re still at it when I go down. Slow as they must have been going, though, they’ve got a good system running and they work in companionable silence.
I watch as Chloe unravels the packing paper and hands it to David to fold and stuff back in an empty box, before he hands her another wrapped dish from a full one.
I should wash them, I suppose, but for one thing I haven’t got a dishwasher in this house and anyway, I like the idea that those tea stains on the cups I use all the time are made of the tea I bought in the ABC store and the water that came from our well.
I like the idea that the dust on the big dishes I hardly ever use blew into the Hawaii house on the trade winds.
It might even have bits of Kai in it. That’s what they say about dust, don’t they? Dead skin cells, mostly.
“What’s wrong?” Chloe says.
“It sounds like a 1980s answering machine up there,” I tell her. “Impossible. I just hope I can get the panels quickly. I can install it all myself—trained by the master, you know—but God knows how long the delivery time will be.”
“I told you Lindsay thinks Britain is a third-world country,” Chloe says to David. Then she blushes. She clears her throat and says to me, “Can you take over here? I need to run.”
“You shouldn’t have been unpacking stuff when you’re all dressed up anyway,” I say.
“I’m not all dressed up,” she says, colouring even more. Maybe she’s got a date with “love you too.”
And then she’s gone, with no more than a quick peck on my cheek, before I can ask her what’s the matter.
“That was weird,” says David. “I mean, unless she’s always like that.”
“No, that was weird,” I say. “Like everything else. I kind of hoped you two would get on when I finally unleashed you on her.” He gives me a look I can’t begin to decipher and, far too late, I realise I’ve made it sound as if I think he’s a long-term fixture.
“Lindsay.” He looks as uncomfortable as I feel.
“I know!” I say. “Sorry. I’m kicking myself.”
“What? Can I say something?”
“You don’t have to,” I tell him. “That was a slip.”
“I wanted to wait until you were moved and everything before I brought this up.” It’s something else then. “The thing is,” he goes on, “I was wondering if we could slow down on the ‘going out’ thing.”
It is the most awkward, mealy-mouthed sentence I’ve ever heard him say. The suave top lawyer is gone. And, even as break-up lines go, it’s one of the worst I’ve been treated to. This soon after listening to Kai’s half-hearted goodbye again, it enrages me.
“Nah,” I say. “I’m not interested in ‘slowing down.’ Let’s just call it quits.” God, I’m proud of myself.
“What?” It comes out in a yelp.
“I don’t like games, David. Never have. If you don’t want to go out with me anymore, then just tell me. I’m a big girl. I’ll live.”
He has put his hands over his face and now he pulls them down, stretching his lower eyelids until he looks like a basset hound, leaving white finger marks on his cheeks.
When his hands drop free, I can see that he’s smiling.
“Oh my God!” he says. “I don’t mean stop seeing you.
I mean literally stop ‘going out’ so much.
Drinks, films, dinner, bloody brunch! I’m falling behind at work and between us painting the town and the boys there half the time, I’m knackered. ”
“Oh,” I manage to get in.
“I meant now you’re moved into your own place and we’re approaching Aileen’s probation-period milestone, I thought you could come round to mine, eat pasta and watch the telly. Or I could come round to yours and do the same.”
“Oh,” I say again. “Right. So, pretty much the exact opposite of stepping back and slowing down, then? Much more like stepping forward and speeding up.” He beams at me. Then my brain catches up with the rest of what he said. “What do you mean about Aileen?”
“Ach, she’s hard-nosed about the boys not meeting anyone until they’ve proved they’re suitable,” he says. “As if she didn’t take them straight to a flat she was already sharing with a woman they’d never met.”
“And even I have to do probation?” I say. “I was at school with her.”
“That’s a good point,” he says, looking startled.
I think he had forgotten. “And you haven’t changed much.
” I frown. “You still call what we’re doing ‘going out.’” He crosses his arms and taps his foot.
“Ma pal’s not going out with your pal now, so I’m not going out with you.
” It’s a perfect imitation of a mouthy schoolgirl and it makes me laugh.
“What would you call it then?” I say. “What we’re doing?” I’m joking, mostly. I want to unsettle him, for payback. To my surprise, he takes it seriously.
“We, Lindsay Lord Hale,” he says, “are trying again. You up for that? Hey!” He leaps forward because, me thinking about everything standing in the way of “trying again” has made a sob wrench itself out of my chest and now suddenly tears are pouring down my face.
Snot forms bubbles at both my nostrils and I’m wailing.
“I am so sorry,” he says. “I’m rushing you. I can wait. Please don’t cry.”
“It’s not that,” I say. “It’s something else.”
“Tell me.”
No way, I think, then I find myself telling him everything.
I tell him I’m scared of the house and I’ve made a mistake.
I tell him I heard noises last night that sounded like an intruder and that my book moved.
I tell him I think the person who used to live here before doesn’t want me to live here and is trying to drive me off.
“But you don’t really believe that, do you?” he asks me.
“No!” I wail. “I think I’m going mad. I keep thinking I don’t really own this house, even though I bought it.
And I thought John was lying to me about clearing it, because of a bloody biscuit tin with bog-standard biscuits in it, as if they were some kind of Sherlock Holmes cigar ash or something.
It’s not just this house though. I was freaked out at the yard because a fox died in the back bit where no one goes.
And I think I recognise people I’ve never met—that poor estate agent in Bridge of Allan.
He thought I was trying to pick him up! And then I don’t recognise people I should!
I can’t remember Aileen for the life of me, but Chloe knew her and Chloe and I were joined at the hip all through school, so that makes no sense at all.
And it’s sounds too now. Words. That’s my job.
That’s my whole— That’s what I do and if I can’t do that, I’m .
. . And I’m having nightmares. I’ve started having this one about there being splinters under my fingernails and when I try to pick them out I just drive them in deeper. ”
“Yes, you mentioned the splinters,” he says. “Nasty. But it sounds like normal stress at a stressful time.” He tucks my head in under his chin and rubs my back.
“I know,” I say. “I mean, it must be, right? But that’s what I mean.
It doesn’t feel like that. It feels as if there’s something big and horrible just out of view and I keep seeing scraps that I can’t make sense of.
Like everything’s connected and I don’t know how.
That’s what I’m telling you: I think I’m going mad.
And that’s not even the truth of it. I hope I’m going mad. ”
He waits.
“Because the other possibility is that there’s nothing wrong with my mind but there’s something wrong with my brain.
Like Kai. That the sounds are auditory glitches like he had, and the visual stuff too—even though I kind of know what that is and it’s just childhood shit, but then there’s the memory loss and face blindness.
Because it’s unrelated, him and me. People get brain tumours all the time and Kai’s cancer makes it not one iota less likely that I’ll get the same thing.
It’s magical thinking to say his cancer inoculated me.
But I’ve got no balance issues or nausea or—”
David takes my arms in a firm grip and moves me back. “You don’t have a brain tumour,” he says.
“Are you a doctor?”
“You’ve got stress and exhaustion—”
“But, even when I had the stress and exhaustion of tracking Kai’s symptoms, I never psyched myself into having them too.”
“—stress and exhaustion, I was going to say, and a family and friends that, frankly, tell you what to do far too much and then have the nerve to call it supporting you.”
I blink at him. He’s right. But how did he know? What have I said that’s clued him in so completely?
He lets go and turns away to pour me a glass of water and, as I stare at him, his back flattens to tissue paper.
I squeeze my eyes hard shut and when I look again it’s a tiny bit better.
Painted card, but with a jolt like an extra step in the dark, I think I recognise him.
Then I laugh. Of course I recognise him.
It’s David! I know David. My head has scrambled itself because I’ve been letting all my fears out at last and sharing them.
Once I’ve drunk a good bit of the water, he pulls me back in close.
“What you need,” he says, rubbing my back again with one hand but also now smoothing my hair with the other, “is a short course of treatment that consists of eating pasta on a couch and watching trashy telly, beside someone who cares about you very deeply.” He squeezes me.
“And a project or two. Get your dead room sorted out and get back to work. In the meantime, find where your old man was and make your donation.”
“Old lady,” I say, mumbling into his chest. “There’s an old man next door, but it was an old lady who lived here and died. Peggy March.”
“Find your old lady’s nursing home and give them a massage chair or a croquet set or whatever you were thinking. And I bet you’ll stop hearing noises in the night.”