I spent as long — longer! — by Liz’s bedside as Nesta. I spent more hours there than anyone else. I talked to that woman about everything under the sun. I opened up my heart. I was unstinting.
And who does she choose? Whose gormless, mumbling, irritating voice does her spirit decide to listen to?
Nesta Dixon. Gob on her like a foghorn. Never talks a word of sense. Isn’t that just the way of it? It’s like I told that snotty Penny. Her and her mam. They think they’re too good to speak to me.
“I want you to join with me, Nesta,” said Tom.
His most commanding voice, I noticed. Almost his vampire voice. The husky, deathly voice he would put on for our Christopher Lee black-cloak, pointed-teeth games. Her squinty eyes goggled under his influence. Why was he Bela Lugosing Nesta? What did he want with her?
“Oh yes?” She batted her thick black eyelashes. Now she’s gone all flirty and flattered, I thought. Now she wants to do everything she can for him.
“I have a special gift,” she said thoughtfully. “I must put it to proper use.”
“That’s right,” said Tom. “You must come with me to see Liz. There is work to be done.”
“Work?” Nesta and I asked together.
“Liz is on the cusp,” he said. “She is at the limit of experience. She is on the edge. While she is there, there are questions to be asked, before her spirit returns to us.”
“When she comes back, will she be normal again?” I asked.
“As normal as the rest of us,” he said.
“Good.”
“While she is on the edge, we must ask what it is like,” Tom said.
The room had become dark around them.
“Are you sure you want to know?” Nesta asked. Her white forehead as she frowned was the brightest thing there.
“She is approaching the totality of her experience on earth,” Tom explained. The shadows on his face were long and dark. “Of course we need to know. I need to know.”
Andy is waving Craig off at Waverley Station in Edinburgh.
Craig stands with his bags in the train doorway. Andy has Jep in his arms.
“Are you sure you won’t come back to Aycliffe?”
Andy shakes his head, grinning. He shuffles his feet and talks to his child. “Wave, Jep.”
Craig has spent almost a month with them.
“I’ll pass your love on...to everyone,” Craig says.
The guard is going by and checking on doors. He has his white table-tennis bats at the ready, to signal the train to leave.
“Good luck with your mother,” Andy says.
Craig pulls a face. “She’ll be all right.” He knows already how she will try to make him feel guilty for staying away a month.
The train leaves.
Jep squirms in Andy’s arms, to keep sight of Craig —Uncle Craig — and to wave. How he’s grown! His sharp nails click on Andy’s new tartan jacket.
Then the station is left behind.
The city flashes by. Savacentre. Terraces. The Meadowbank stadium. The land either side settles down to green. Then the sea appears.
Craig’s mam isn’t so bad. Elsie has sense. But he has to tell her that he’s moving out of home. He’s leaving Aycliffe. He doesn’t know yet where he’s going. She’ll take it badly, but maybe she’ll understand in the end.
He can’t live with her and Tom. It’s too sweaty and compressed with all of them there. Too many people on a long, breakless journey in a single car.
It’s a step backwards for all of them, living together.
Seeing Andy has convinced Craig of his need for a new town, autonomy. Managing his own life. Paying rent and bills and fetching in his own groceries. Maybe he can put some of those skills of his to use.
Andy told him he should set up in his own business. Andy wished he had talents like Craig’s. Craig could turn his hand to anything. You’re a handyman! Andy told him, laughing.
I’m a handyman, thinks Craig, heading south.
Changing of the guard. Fran walked out of Liz’s room, straight into Nesta, Tom and Elsie. The three of them sat in the waiting area, not talking, not reading, staring at the door. They looked keen. She wanted to ask them, what are you expecting? And why are you flocking here all at once? They wanted to see Liz doing handstands, jumping about. Tom would be putting it down as some great religious experience. It was too awful to think about. Elsie and Nesta pulled along for the ride, his handmaidens. Fran didn’t trust Tom one bit. He looked manic and calm at the same time. His eyes were silver. He was like a toad with silver eyes. Now he was pacing towards her.
“No change?”
“Nothing,” said Fran, buttoning her coat.
“I think all this…expectancy will come to nothing. It’s just raising Penny’s hopes. There is no hope. I don’t see Liz rallying.”
“Ah,” said Tom. “You don’t know the signs. The proper signs.”
“Don’t I?” Fran looked at the two women, who were still sitting. How quiet and submissive Elsie was when Tom was there to do her talking.
“Forgive me,” said Tom. “But you are ignorant. Liz is a person on the edge. The mistake people like you make is to treat them as dead already. Liz is on the verge of a new phase of life. She is in a very creative limbo. She is communicating with us in a host of different ways. We simply have to be sensitive and receptive.”
“Right,” said Fran, shouldering her bag.
The two women stood up.
“We must go and see her,” said Tom. “We have work to do.”
Fran said her goodnights and left.
As she passed the reception, she wanted to warn the nurses that religious nuts were taking their turn to sit with the helpless Liz. Yet she couldn’t do it. She imagined the receptionist — one of the organised, clever-looking, self-important, I’m-really-as-good-as-a-doctor type — staring back at her. Telling her wearily that they get all sorts in here. They’ve seen all the religious nuts in the world.
And who was Fran to criticise anyone and what they did at the
