Page 30 of Watching You
‘You think that’s what I did?’
There was a knock at the door. ‘Room service.’
‘You were amazing tonight,’ Connie said, standing up. ‘I know things about Abnay I hadn’t seen clearly before. And I also know some things about his murderer. Whatever happened on my floor, it was a breakthrough, not an issue.’
She went and opened the door, holding it for an exhausted-looking woman to carry a tray through.
‘That’s my cue, I think. I’ll skip the tea,’ Baarda said. ‘Seeyou at breakfast.’ He slipped out and let himself into his own bedroom next door, painfully aware of Connie just metres away, and knowing with absolute certainty that neither of them would be getting any sleep in the few hours left before dawn.
Chapter 24
The Watcher
7 June
Karl put on his father’s favourite music then ran warm water into a bowl and fetched a clean, soft flannel. The carer had been in that morning, and washing his father’s face and chest was on her list of duties, but he’d caught her more than once on her phone, tapping away at a text message or social media post, so how could he possibly trust her to do everything on the list?
He’d worked his way through too many carers to risk losing this one, though, so he bit his tongue and did all the tasks again when he got home, stewing privately over the carer’s tiniest faults: not fully raising the blind to allow maximum sunlight in, washing the lunch plate and cutlery but not drying them properly before putting them away, putting a new toilet roll on the holder the wrong way round. She was infuriating. He’d really wanted a male carer, but they were few and far between, and the only one he’d engaged had spoken virtually no English. His father, in his few moments of lucidity, would have been horrified, not to mention confused, so that was never going to work out.
As Lee Marvin sang ‘Wand’rin’ Star’, Karl ran the flannel over his father’s face with all the care of handling a newborn.
‘Here you go, Dad. Hope that’s not too warm for you.’ Dip in fresh water, squeeze the excess, wipe again. ‘I had a good morning. Was Sandra nice today? I hope she let you listen to your music. Sorry I was out for so long.’
His father responded by jerking his head towards the window, more likely a twitch than a meaningful movement, but Karl stood anyway and pulled the blind down.
‘Too bright? I get it. I nearly went straight through a red light earlier cos I couldn’t see it properly. Hey, I’ve got you a treat.’ He dried his father’s face with a towel softer than a plush teddy, and smoothed the few hairs left on his scalp. ‘You warm enough, Dad? I’ll put the heating up a little. Don’t want you getting cold.’
He pulled the blanket up closer to his father’s chin and unwrinkled the fabric. The thermostat was in the upstairs hallway at the end furthest from Karl’s bedroom. He’d long since moved his father downstairs into what used to be their dining room. When his father was still able to walk around a little, the idea of him falling down the stairs was just too stressful. The move had made everything easier, and really, who still used a dining room anyway? Karl ate his meals on his lap in the armchair next to his dad’s bed, and his father only ate baby food these days.
The change had made the upper floor of the house even more lonely and creepy, but his father’s safety was more important than his own insecurities. He moved into the hallway, took a deep breath and gripped the lower banister hard enough to blanch his knuckles, at least in those patches where he hadn’t picked the skin off. His mother used to slap his fingers every time she saw him sitting there, scraping at one hand with the other while he was watching TV or reading a comic.
‘Stop it, Karl,’ her voice said inside his head. ‘You’ll get blood on your school shirt if you carry on like that, and I’ll have the devil’s own job getting it out.’
‘Stop it, Karl,’ Karl said out loud, his falsetto impression of his mother eerily close to her actual pitch. ‘Get upstairs and sort out that thermostat.’
‘Okay Ma,’ he said, his head so low his chin was almost on his chest.
Up the stairs he went.
‘Up the stairs to Bedfordshire!’ Karl/Ma sang as he plodded, as she had always done. He’d assumed Bedfordshire was some wonderful, made-up place until he’d asked her about it, aged ten. It had never seemed as magical after he was given the answer.
At the top, he paused, gave his shoulders a shake, and stared along the hallway at the thermostat clinging to a once-cream-now-yellow wall, and reminded himself that his mother was gone gone gone. He’d visited her body in the hospital when she’d passed, the whites of her eyes much the colour of the jaundiced wall. Then he’d made arrangements at the funeral home. Once her body had been moved there, he’d taken one long last look at her with his father as they said their until-we-meet-agains. She’d lain in the coffin with a pale blue silk lining. It had been her favourite colour.
So she couldn’t possibly be in the room at the end of the hallway now, perched on the edge of her bed, brushing her hair. She couldn’t be, because he’d watched her coffin as it was lowered into her grave. And the grave hadn’t been disturbed because he visited it every single week on a Sunday afternoon, come rain or shine. Which meant that the woman in the room at the end of the hallway was either his mother’s ghost or a figment of his imagination.
‘Just my imagination,’ he said, his voice all his own again, lowand gravelly, as his father’s had been when he still spoke, before the stroke had dissolved the man he had been and left only a quivering dad-shaped shell. Karl forced one foot in front of the other. The thermostat was a million miles away at the end of gluey brown carpet that did its best to keep his feet stuck to it.
‘Would you hurry up, Karl!’ his mother called from her bedroom. ‘You always were a slowcoach.’
‘Coming, Ma,’ he mumbled. ‘I’ll do better.’
He forced himself to pick up speed, wondering if he’d left the door to her bedroom open himself or if Sandra – stupid, lazy, nosy Sandra – had been poking around where she wasn’t wanted.
Karl made it to the thermostat and cleared his throat. It would be better if he just got on with it and cleared out his mother’s stuff. She wasn’t coming back, and no one else wanted any of it, so leaving all those patterned dresses hanging in the wardrobe and all her tights turning to dust in the drawers was simply an exercise in denial.
Karl put his hand to the dial and turned it up to twenty-one degrees.
‘Going to ignore me, are you?’ his mother called, her voice thick with extra disappointment. She’d always been disappointed in him. It was her default maternal disposition.
