Sleep. C.L. Taylor
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forties in a pink blouse and a puffy black gilet presses up against me and holds a digital Dictaphone just under my chin. ‘Are you satisfied with the verdict? A two-year sentence and two of your colleagues are dead?’
I stare at her, too shocked to speak, but she registers the turn of my head as interest and continues to question me.
‘Will you go back to work at Tornado Media? Was that your boyfriend you were with?’
‘You’re having trouble sleeping, aren’t you?’ a different voice asks.
I twist round to see who asked the question but there’s a sea of people following us down the steps – dozens of men in suits, photographers in jeans and anoraks, a dark-haired woman in a bright red jacket, an older lady with permed white hair, my mother – pink-cheeked and worried – and, on the other side of the group from her, the thin, anxious shape of my boyfriend.
The blonde to my right nudges me. ‘Anna, do you feel responsible in any way?’
‘What?’ Somehow, in the roar, Tony heard her question. Someone behind me bumps against me as my stepdad stops sharply. ‘You bloody what?’
It’s like a film, freeze-framed, the way the crowd around us suddenly falls silent and stops moving.
The blonde smiles tightly at Tony. ‘Mr Willis, is it?’
‘Mr Fielding actually, who’s asking?’
‘Anabelle Chance, Evening Standard. I was just asking your daughter if she felt in any way responsible for what happened.’
The skin on my stepdad’s neck flushes red above the white collar of his shirt. ‘Are you bloody kidding me?’ He stares around at the crowd. ‘Can she actually say that?’
‘It was just a question, Mr Fielding. Anna’ – she tries to hand me a business card – ‘if you’d ever like to chat then give me a—’
He knocks her hand away. ‘You’re treading a very fine line. Now, get out of our way, before I make you.’
Mum and Alex wrap around us like a protective shield, Alex beside me, Mum next to Tony, as we hurry away from the noise and chaos of the courtroom.
‘Have you got a tissue, love?’ Mum asks as we reach the car. ‘You’ve got mascara all down your face.’
I touch a hand to my cheeks, surprised to find that they’re wet.
‘Yes, I’ve …’ I reach a hand into my suit pocket and feel the soft squish of a packet of Kleenex. But there’s something else beside them, something hard with sharp corners, something I don’t remember putting into my pocket when I got ready this morning. It’s a postcard. The background is blue with white words forming the shape of a dagger. The words turn red as they near the point of the blade and a single drop of blood drips onto the title: The Tragedy of Macbeth.
‘What’s that?’ Mum asks as I flip the card over.
I shake my head. ‘I don’t know.’
There are two words written on the back, in large, looping letters:
For Anna
I look from Mum, to Dad and then to Alex. ‘Did one of you put this in my pocket?’
When they all shake their heads, I flip it back over and read the quote:
Methought I heard a voice cry ‘Sleep no more! Macbeth does murder sleep’ – the innocent sleep, Sleep that knits up the ravelled sleave of care, The death of each day’s life, sore labour’s bath, Balm of hurt minds, great nature’s second course, Chief nourisher in life’s feast.
I know this quote from studying Macbeth at A-level. It’s Macbeth talking to Lady Macbeth about the frightening things that have happened since he murdered King Duncan.
‘Anna?’ Alex says. ‘Are you okay? You’ve gone very pale.’
I glance back towards the courthouse and the throng of faceless people milling around.
‘Someone put this in my pocket.’
‘It wasn’t that bloody journalist, was it?’ Tony says. ‘Because I’ll get on the phone to her editor if I need to. I won’t have her harassing you like this.’
‘Let me see that.’ Alex leans over my shoulder and peers at the card. ‘Is that a quote from Shakespeare?’
‘It’s Macbeth telling Lady Macbeth about a voice he heard telling him he’ll never sleep again.’
‘Oh, that’s horrible.’ Mum runs her hands up and down her arms. ‘Who’d give you something like that?’
‘Here, give me that.’ Tony takes the card from my fingers, rips it into tiny pieces and then drops them into a drain. ‘There. Gone. Don’t give it a second thought, love.’
No one mentions it all the way home but the words rest in my brain like a weight.
Saturday 28th April
Steve Laing bows his head and crosses himself as he crouches beside his son’s grave. He’s not a Catholic but it feels like the right thing to do. It shows respect. He touches a hand to the gravestone, tracing a finger over the cold imprint of his son’s name, and his chest burns with grief and rage. He still can’t quite believe it, that his son’s body is buried deep in the ground, six feet below him. It doesn’t feel real. How can it be? Freddy was young, he was strong, he went to the gym three times a week and played squash every Saturday. He’d had chickenpox as a kid. Broken his arm when he fell off the slide. But he wasn’t one of those kids in the park with snot dribbling over his top lip. He was healthy, hardly had a day off school. The only time Steve had had to take him to A&E was when he got so pissed at a house party for a mate’s fifteenth birthday that he ran into a glass door and knocked himself out. When he came round he claimed he’d had his drink spiked. Steve could see in the twitch of his lips that he was lying but he admired his gumption. Freddy could be a gobby little shit, always trying to talk himself out of trouble. He was loud too. He filled the house with his booming voice and his clumsy-arsed ways. Steve had lost track of the number of times he’d shouted at him to ‘keep the bloody noise down’ when he crashed into the house late at night, clattering around in the dishwasher or bashing every pot and pan together as he tried to make himself a snack after a drinking session with his mates. But he was never angry with him, not really. Freddy was all he had after Juliet had died. Fucking cancer, stealing the kid’s mum away from him five days before his eleventh birthday. If cancer were a person he’d have beaten the shit out of it and smashed its face to a pulp.
The house is quiet now. So bloody quiet it makes him want to turn on every stereo and sound system in the place and scream at the top of his voice. That’s the worst thing about death, the silence it leaves behind. But not in Steve’s head, there’s no peace there. Some days he feels as though he’s going mad, all those thoughts, buzzing around like wasps. He kept them quiet for a bit – planning the funeral and preparing for the trial – but they started up again afterwards, louder and angrier than ever. It’s the powerlessness he can’t cope with. He couldn’t save Freddy. He couldn’t grab hold of the surgeon’s knife, plunge his hand into his son’s chest and massage his heart back to life. He couldn’t speed up the police investigation. He couldn’t talk to the CPS and, other than a prepared statement, he couldn’t speak to the judge or jury. His son had been taken from him and he couldn’t do a fucking thing about it. ‘Trust us,’ the police told him. ‘Let us do our job.’ But they hadn’t, had they? Not really. Not them, not the CPS and not the fucking judge.
He