The Rotting Spot Read online

The Westfield woman grabbed the arm of one of the paramedics. ‘My sister is a gynaecologist,’ she told him. ‘Let them know, at the hospital. She’s a consultant, very high up!’

  Westfield? Gynaecologist? Erica’s booze-soaked synapses began to connect. Surely not …

  ‘Alright pet.’ The paramedic was intent on getting out of there. Sometimes ambulance crews got stoned at this time of night, and not in a good way.

  The Westfield woman persisted. ‘My sister. Her name’s Elizabeth Seaton.’

  Erica froze. Shit. There couldn’t be two of them. It must be her. The Bitch Doctor. Mother of Lucy Seaton, her best friend. Ex best friend. She hadn’t seen Lucy, had tried not to think of her, for five years. Much later, she thought back to that moment. A can of worms was bursting open, and it stank. If Erica had known then just how putrid its contents were, she would have taken Stacey’s parting advice. She’d have gone home, put the encounter out of her mind, and kept away from Stony Point.

  But it would already have been too late. The skull buried in the rotting spot did not move, except for the faint vibration of the sea pounding the cliffs below Stony Point, but the night’s events had already put in motion its return to the light.

  Now Erica looked again at what must be Liz’s sister. Westfield: the name hadn’t meant anything at first, and in the poor light, out of context, Erica hadn’t recognized her. Now she remembered Lucy’s terminally uncool Auntie Peggy, sitting knitting in the kitchen. In teenage self-absorption, she’d barely glanced at the older woman except for a muttered hello as the two girls dashed upstairs to Lucy’s room. Lucy was fond of her aunt but… that’s right, she’d said she was embarrassing because she’d ask Lucy’s friends if they’d found Jesus yet. Her daughter Molly had run away years before, which had made her go a ‘bit funny’.

  It looked as if Peggy Westfield hadn’t recognized Erica either. Lucy’d always called her Ricci, and her hair had grown in the years since they’d met. Also, Peggy’s attention had been all on Stacey, rather disturbingly so come to think of it. Erica’s toes were numb by now, her shoes probably a write-off. Better not get involved. Sod it.

  ‘I can give you a lift.’ Peggy gestured up the street, her smooth cap of hair catching the light as she turned.

  ‘No, no thanks, I’ll get a taxi,’ Erica was already heading for the rank, almost deserted now. ‘Quite a night, wasn’t it? Just as well you were keeping an eye on Stacey.’

  The woman smiled sadly. ‘She should have been my granddaughter, and that baby should have been my great- grandchild.’ Peg scurried away.

  One mystery was solved anyway. It wasn’t so odd that she was trawling the streets for lost souls, nor praying over them in filthy alleys. Having lost her daughter, Peg must feel the need to be a sort of guardian angel to other youngsters.

  Erica was drowsily warm in the taxi. She asked the obligatory question. ‘Busy night?’

  ‘Oh aye, time of the month ye know.’

  This cryptic utterance was nothing to do with the menstrual cycle, but the monthly round of salary cheque, frantic spending, financial drought, staying in watching telly, salary cheque …

  He rambled on about United’s chances, while Erica’s tired, cold body insinuated pictures into her brain; hot toast dripping with melted cheese, chunks of milk chocolate, mugs of hot chocolate, hot toast dripping with melted chocolate, drip by chocolatey drip, the latenight munchies hadbegun.

  ‘A moment on the lips, a lifetime on the hips,’ she muttered.

  The prayer of her own particular religion.

  ‘Did ye say chips? No food or drink in here pet,’ the driver said sternly. ‘It tends to, like, reappear, if ye know what I mean. Aye, it’s amazing how stuff comes back when ye least expect it, knaa what I mean?’

  Erica did.

  2

  Saturday 7th June

  Wydsand Bay

  Erica woke after a few hours restless sleep, prodded by habitual guilt to swim early. Could she never stop pushing herself, punishing herself?

  Swimming a mile would put her in credit for the night’s indulgence to come. See patients, lunch with Rina, enjoy the sunshine, if any, and the fresh exuberance of June.

  Should she visit Stacey? No reason to, she was probably fine except for a hangover, a condition she probably hardly noticed any more. Erica’s involvement was over, with Stacey and with Peg Westfield. Better steer clear of Liz and her world. Though she couldn’t help wondering about Lucy, what she was doing now … better not go there.

  Powering up and down the pool in her usual fast crawl, Erica felt the water lift the burden of gravity from her bones. She remembered summer on Stony Point. Lucy, slim and tanned in her short white dress, walking arm in arm with her across the headland, the wind mingling her rich brown hair, smelling of rosemary, with Erica’s blonde locks. Talking about her cousin Molly.

  ‘Molly ran away from home. She was about my age. Never been seen since. I love Auntie Peggy, but she’s got religion like really badly. I suppose it got too much for Molly having God dragged into everything she did, when she just wanted to be a normal teenager. I never knew her, she went the year before I was born, but Aunt Peg’s given me some of her things. Molly used to work here, same as us. Probably stood right here.’

  Erica had shuddered, a pleasant gothic thrill. ‘Maybe she was murdered!’

  ‘When I was younger, I used to think the fairies had taken her. I suppose she just ran off and didn’t come back. Probably became a crack whore or something, couldn’t face being forgiven. She’d be forty-one now, imagine that! But we all still think of her as about sixteen. I used to be scared something would happen to me when I got to her age. Like our family had a curse on it.’

  The memories dissolved like Alka-Seltzer as Erica finished her customary sixty-four lengths.

  Erica cycled to Ivy Lodge, relishing the milky June sky. Sun warmed the Georgian façade, where Erica ran her homeopathy practice. It was a centre for alternative medicine, about four miles from her home, but in the opposite direction to Stony Point and a mile inland. Her friend Rina was an aromatherapist there.

  Erica opened the heavy, wooden door with its brass knocker and knob, and went into the neutral Ikea-chic of the interior. Her own room was in the same style, except for one wall painted sunshine yellow and a big grinning horse’s skull on her desk, fruit and flowers adding more splashes of colour. She put on the kettle just as Rina’s heavy step sounded outside.

  ‘With you in a min!’ Rina’s square-jawed, pale face, heavy dark bob swinging, appeared round the door. ‘A woman has needs, and mine is strong, black, hot, and takes a lot of swallowing,’ and vanished again.

  ‘Rina and coffee,’ said Erica to the skull. ‘Who says love don’t last?’

  She made one of the two cups of real tea she allowed herself daily, a fragrant Earl Grey in a paper-thin Chinese cup picked up from an antique shop, the sun filling the golden liquid with warm light. Civilised pleasures, she thought, pushing to the back of her mind the image of her nocturnal self swigging Smirnoff Ice from a bottle. She was sipping when Rina came in with a mug of coffee big enough to drown a hippo in. Rina was a classic Nat Mur type, the salt of the earth. It hadn’t taken Erica long to identify her constitutional remedy. Rina walked on her heels, she was strong, with a large bosom to counterbalance her brawny arms.

  ‘Well, get lucky last night?’ she greeted Erica.

  ‘Yep.’ Erica sniffed the aroma of coffee, so much better than the taste. ‘Didn’t cop off with anyone.’

  ‘Something different about you,’ mused Rina. ‘Tension in your shoulders…’

  Erica sighed. It was both comforting and annoying that Rina could read bodies so well. Comforting and annoying too that Rina seemed to care about her. It was dangerous to rely on anyone.

  She explained about Stacey. ‘Completely feckless.’

  ‘Not in the Irish sense of the word, obviously,’ remarked Rina dryly.

  Erica laughed. ‘Still tense,’ said Rina. ‘Don�
��t worry, I know you don’t cry on shoulders.’ She put on a horribly ‘therapist’ voice. ‘But if you need to talk –’ she dropped the voice. ‘Ring a helpline, unless it’s something filthy. In which case, come round tonight. Unless you’re too tired. As if. I bet you swam the channel this morning before coming in.’

  ‘I’ve got damp hair and goggle marks, not exactly Sherlock, are you?’ Erica drained her cup, feeling stimulation threading through her.

  ‘You could give the pool a miss, just for once.’

  ‘No, I can’t. I’d be the size of a house in no time.’ I’d rather die than be Fat Girl again.

  ‘I’ve never known anyone so driven, no wonder you haven’t got a car,’ said Rina.

  ‘Can’t afford one, in this job.’ She forced her shoulders down.

  ‘Good,’ commented Rina. ‘They were round your ears.’ She swilled down the last of her coffee. ‘Ah, there is a god, and she’s Brazilian. So, you checking up on this feckful lass this afternoon?’

  ‘She’ll be fine,’ said Erica, sorting out her first patient’s notes. ‘She doesn’t need me. Thank god.’

  ‘Whatever,’ said Rina, leaving in a hurry. ‘My place, seven, ok? Dave’s out with the lads. SNAP.’

  ‘Snap?’ Erica looked up from the screen.

  ‘Situation normal, all pissed.’

  ‘You should pay me to be your straight man, Rina.’

  ‘Straight man, gay woman, I’m not fussy. That’s how I ended up with Dave.’ And she was gone.

  Erica had a guy coming in with restless leg syndrome. Sounded like a dose of arsenic would be just the thing. Arsenicum. Homeopathic remedies worked by prodding the body into fighting the symptoms which, in a bigger dose, they caused. Like vaccination.

  A teething baby next. Chamomilla, possibly. Though this particular baby was a belladonna child. A clear constitutional type often responded to the same remedy for almost any ailment. One reason homeopathy, once the norm in rural America where the doctors knew their patients and families intimately, had been pushed into alternative land. Big cities, ten-minute appointments with a doctor who barely looked at you, not to mention the drug companies selling magic bullets. Erica spent two hours with each patient at their first appointments, finding out all about their habits, ways of thinking and speaking, noting their physical appearance, as well as their symptoms. People had always confided in her;

  homeopathy put this to good use.

  Not that Liz Seaton would agree. A waste of a brain, she’d say.

  Erica pedalled through the Saturday afternoon traffic as workers filled in their leisure time by visiting home improvement hypermarkets. The sun glittered on polished bonnets and balding scalps exposed by open sunroofs. Look at them, she thought, admiring shades of MDF veneer, but blind to that improbable depthless sky, the tender leaves on the old beeches that still defied the chainsaw. She had been looking forward to sunning herself in her own little patch of paradise, to be paid for later by running before her date with Rina. It was strange then that she turned inland to the low redbrick sprawl of the hospital. Going in, she straightened her back and lifted her chin as if she was entering the arena.

  3

  Tynebank General Hospital

  Might as well take Stacey some arnica for bruising and pain, Erica reasoned. And she might as well see the baby whose arrival had caused so much upheaval. The chances of Liz being around on a Saturday were negligible. Consultants made their royal progresses on weekday mornings, not amid a welter of grape-carrying visitors.

  The new mother lay on a barrage of pillows. Her hair was greasy, probably from alley chip fat, and her body was shapeless under the sheets. She was gazing raptly at a tiny face, two huge eyes, a pink sea-anemone mouth. A beautiful new baby, born to Rachel and Ross on Friends yet again on the ward TV. Beside her bed, her daughter lay unregarded in her vivarium.

  ‘Stacey?’

  ‘Who’re you? Oh, aye. What do ye want now? Ah’ve just got rid of me mam, daft old wifey moaning on at iz.’

  ‘I thought you might like some Arnica to help with any soreness or stitches.’ Erica proffered the little bottle of tablets.

  Stacey took them. ‘Bleedin’ hurts, ye knaa. Fkn stitches. Jeez, it’s like sitting on a vindaloo with no knickers on after shaggin’ a lad with a big dick and a Prince Albert.’ She spoke as if from experience. ‘Only not as fun.’

  ‘Opium’s good for healing wounds.’

  ‘Aye, mint, that’s hardcore!’

  ‘It’s a homeopathic remedy, there’s no actual opium left in the tablets, you won’t get high!’

  ‘Fuck that then.’

  Erica looked at the improbably gorgeous baby that had emerged from Stacey. She gently touched the soft cheek. A scent rose from the baby, like peaches, vanilla, and freshly baked scones. She fought off incipient broodiness. ‘She’s beautiful!’

  ‘Keeps fkn well yellin’. Me mam says we can put some sugar’n a bit brandy in her bottle when I get home, get some peace.’

  ‘Is that, er, safe?’ Erica perched on the edge of the chair, as if poised for escape. An impression magnified by her sports gear and trainers.

  ‘Whey, me mam did it with me, and Ah’m alreet,’ Stacey said without irony. ‘None of your business anyrate. Ee, I’m sick as a chip. They’ll not let yer smoke in here, rotten bastards. I could murder a fag.’

  Stacey’s daughter’s minute hand opened, fingers spread. Perhaps practicing holding an Embassy Regal. ‘What’s her name?’

  ‘Fkn’ell!’ Stacey was looking at the entrance to the ward. ‘Stuck-up cow, and that god-botherin owld loony. I hope they’ve browt more painkillers.’

  Peg and Liz were framed in the doorway together. A similar cast of feature, the way the blue eyes were set, the shape of the nose. Peg, in one of those elasticated skirts women with no money buy at market stalls, Poundstretcher tee-shirt loose but not disguising the bulges. Her round eager face smiling, her cheeks pushed up into apples. Her trainers were pink and white plastic, which no designer had deigned to claim as their own. Short socks, bare white calves bearing the blue graffiti of varicose veins. She carried something woolly in lurid lime green.

  Beside her, Liz, still strikingly good looking though she must be well into her fifties, thought Erica. Tall, straight, slim, actually in her sixtieth year, Liz wore an immaculate cream suit, beneath which elegant legs tapered into shoes which were as sensibly chic as a Paris librarian’s. Her hair, a blonde so well done it might have been natural instead of disguised grey, was caught back in a clip. Erica sat frozen.

  ‘Look at them, man,’ Stacey muttered to Erica, ‘a right smart arse, and the other as thick as pigshit.’

  No ‘pretty one’ and ‘brainy one’ in that family. Liz was both. What was it like for Peggy, always in Liz’s shadow? And being the eldest must have made it worse for her, growing up.

  If Liz registered Erica’s existence at all, she must have assumed she was a friend of Stacey’s. Erica needed breathing space. Her heart was pounding like it did after a long run. Peg made straight for the cot and hung over it, placing the lime object, a knitted soft toy, by the warm bundle inside. Liz swept the medical chart on its steel-grey clipboard smoothly up, and studied it. Studying her covertly, closer up, Erica could see fine lines round her cool blue-grey eyes. A demanding job; she must be near retirement. Yeah, like she’d give up all that power. Replacing the chart, Liz looked keenly at the new mother.

  ‘Stacey, isn’t it? How are you today?’

  ‘Dyin’ for a fkn fag. And me stitches are fkn agony. Like ye’d knaa.’

  ‘Like you, Stacey, I have a daughter. Tell my sister your little girl’s name.’

  ‘Noosh.’

  Peggy looked puzzled.

  ‘Noosh!’ repeated Stacey. ‘Ye knaa, short for Anoushka. Like that lass off Big Brother. Original, innit?’

  Liz’s face retained its professional detachment.

  ‘Remember my sister from last night, Stacey?’

  ‘Aye, the god
-bothering nutter was groping iz last neet.’

  ‘You’ve a beautiful baby, Stacey.’ Peggy, apparently not hearing, gazed raptly at the little flower face.

  ‘Yeah, right.’ But she pulled the wheeled tank closer to her, in an instinctive gesture, disturbed by Peggy Westfield’s hungry eyes.

  Liz picked up the baby, her face softening. ‘She’s perfect, Stacey. And you’re healing well, I hear. You should be up and about.’

  A hint of maternal pride as she looked at Stacey would have moved Erica had she not been holding her breath waiting for Liz to notice her. And had she not known how controlling Liz was. Sod it, she couldn’t cope with Liz as Mother fucking Theresa.

  Liz replaced the baby, as Peg said, ‘Oh! Hello, er, Erica, I didn’t realize it was you! Come to see the baby, God bless her?’

  Liz looked at Erica properly for the first time. Their eyes met. A little frown, otherwise Liz’s face was carefully still. Erica stood, refusing to be towered over by Liz, who was still taller, able to look down at her.

  ‘Ricci Bruce! What a surprise!’ Liz made her face, at least the lower half of it, relax into a smile. How could that girl be here? Right here, suddenly, in her hospital, her territory.

  ‘Why – are you a friend of Stacey’s?’

  ‘Erica and I helped Stacey last night,’ Peg beamed. ‘Do you two know each other?’ She looked to her sister.

  ‘Remember, Peg, our Lucy used to see a lot of Erica when they were teenagers,’ Liz explained as pleasantly as she could, though her mouth seemed suddenly too tight for her face. ‘Lucy called her Ricci.’

  ‘Oh, yes! I didn’t recognise you last night.’

  Liz looked critically at Erica’s fit, muscular body. ‘You’re certainly looking well, if a little too thin.’

  Too thin? Obviously used to hugely pregnant women. Erica knew Liz as a control freak, who disapproved of her and all she stood for. But that last phone call, the horrible humiliated, bullied feeling it had given her. Had she blown it up all out of proportion? Did Liz even remember it?