“And then they chucked me out. Next of kin only. So here I am.” He shrugged and rubbed at the back of his knee.
“Next of kin,” tutted Elsie. “That means poor Penny is in there by herself. Anyway, you did smashing, pet.” She smiled proudly at her son. “I wouldn’t be surprised if, when that Liz gets out of here, she doesn’t give you something. A reward. He deserves it, doesn’t he?”
Fran smiled tightly and Big Sue just looked disgusted.
Craig said, “I just did what anyone would.”
“No, you were a star,” said Elsie. “You were masterful.”
“Oh, get away!” He was scratching himself again and his mam noticed that Big Sue was frowning at this. He ran his hands nervously through his hair. His ponytail was out and his hair hung down all over the place. He went to the coffee machine in the corridor and his mam followed him.
“What are you itching for?”
“You what?” He punched Bovril.
“Oh, you don’t want that. What about mad cows?”
He rolled his eyes. “Mam, you’ve always, always bought the cheapest Walter Wilson own-brand beefburgers. One cup of Bovril won’t kill me now.”
“Cheapest!” she cried. “Listen, tell me, why are you scratching all the time?”
He pressed for sugar by mistake. “Shite.”
“Craig!”
“I’m not scratching all the time.”
“It’s like you’ve got fleas. Oh, Craig, it’s not crabs, is it?”
He blushed. “No, it’s not. I’ve had crabs, I know what —”
“You haven’t!” She looked shocked.
“And I used that lotion stuff that smells like pear drops.”
Elsie grimaced, remembering a bout of her own.
“But I am itching,” he said. “Like there’s something under my skin.”
She looked scared. “You want to get down the doctors’.” She looked around. “Maybe they’ll look at you while you’re here.”
“Don’t be daft.” He lowered his voice. “Everyone in the house is like this. I reckon it’s something in the beds, in the mattresses. Someone said something about scabies.”
Elsie could only think about dogs foaming at the mouth. She said, “Isn’t that rabies, when they go mad and turn homophobic?”
“You what?” He frowned. “This is scabies. It’s like having itchy worms under your skin.”
She looked sick. “Oh, my God!” Elsie had never had much, but she’d always been clean. Her house had always been spotless and there had never been vermin. Never. “That does it then, Craig. You’re not to go back there. It must be filthy. You can’t go back to that den of vermin.”
He threw away the sugary Bovril and she realised she was holding her breath, awaiting an outburst. It never came. When he looked at her, he just seemed obscurely pleased.
“Look, we’ll see, Mam. We’ll just see.”
Penny didn’t want to see her mam like that. Tubes up her nose.
They had let her into her mother’s room to watch all the urgent fussing around. Penny was content to sit in the corridor. She couldn’t watch what they were doing.
She flipped through the tatty magazines left lying about. Mysteries of the Mind: UFOs, abductions, spontaneous combustion. She bloody hated mysteries. What was the point of the unexplained if no one explained it to you at the end?
It had shocked Penny that, while the doctors and nurses were working on her mam, they left her dressed in her golden frock and high heels. She was the most glamorous victim Penny had ever seen. She was bald and her wig was propped on the cardiograph machine like a mascot.
To Penny her mother looked blue. It was as if she was still getting colder, and she couldn’t stop herself from turning blue.
She listened to the muted hospital-corridor sounds. She couldn’t believe they were so stupid as not to see her last night. Her own mam, unconscious in the snow. The image of Liz being snowed on and blotted out preyed on Penny’s mind.
She’d been mugged, there was no doubt about it. You didn’t slip and end up like that. Someone had hit her. Penny made a quiet resolution to find out what had happened.
She had stared now for some minutes on end at a page in her Unexplained magazine. It was a page of ghostly apparitions. Grainy, probably faked photographs. There was a whole magazine dedicated to wondering whether they were real. It made her sick such effort was made to prove these shabby ghosts true.
SEVEN
“I’m not sure where my time goes. It just goes. It’s not as if I’m doing anything special.” Mark was peering into the grill at their cheese on toast. The red element was reflected on the cheese’s oily surface. “And I can’t even find time to cook a proper meal.” He looked up at Andy, who stood holding the bottle of Hardy’s Nonage Hill he’d brought, feeling daft. “Sorry.” He pulled the grill pan out and looked at the toast. “I bet you thought this was going to be a proper meal, didn’t you?”
Andy, who had indeed expected something more, shrugged and put his bottle down on the kitchen surface, screwing the tissue paper into a pink carnation. “Oh, I haven’t been eating properly for days, anyway,” he said. “It was just nice of you to invite me round.”
Stiffly Mark plonked their toast on two plates. He handed Andy his. “Shall we go through there?”
They were being strange with each other, the way they would have been a week ago, when they still knew each other only from Completely Fit. A week ago it was Christmastime, Andy thought. At home he and Penny were taking turns at being the optimistic one, while the other sank into despondence. Penny had no idea why Andy looked depressed. She thought he was simply sharing the way she felt over Liz.
“It must be…” Mark paused, choosing his word. “It must be hectic round your house just now.”
“It’s not hectic,” Andy said.
They had to choose between sitting on the settee or at the dining table. The settee. Would Mark switch the telly on? Would they make it as
