The Sandman

143

Saga’s heart is beating so hard it seems to her that Jurek must be aware of it. If the microphone is working, then her colleagues will be identifying every derelict brickworks, they might even be on their way already.

‘It’s a good place to hide until the police give up the hunt,’ he goes on, looking at her. ‘And you can stay in the house if you like it there—’

‘But you’ll be moving on?’ she says.

‘I have to.’

‘And I can’t come with you?’

‘Do you want to?’

‘Depends where you’re going.’

Saga’s aware that she might be pushing him too far, but right now he seems keen to involve her in his escape attempt.

‘You have to trust me,’ he says curtly.

‘It sounds like you’re planning on dumping me in the first house we come to.’

‘No.’

‘Sounds like it,’ she persists, sounding hurt. ‘I think I’ll stay here until I get discharged.’

‘And when will that be?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Are you sure they’re going to let you out?’

‘Yes,’ she replies honestly.

‘Because you’re a good little girl who helped your sick mum when she—’

‘I wasn’t good,’ Saga interrupts, pulling her arm away. ‘Do you think I wanted to be there? I was only a child, I was just doing what I had to.’

He leans back on the sofa and nods.

‘Compulsion is interesting.’

‘I wasn’t forced into it,’ she protests.

He smiles at her. ‘You just said you were.’

‘Not like that... I mean, I managed to do it,’ she explains. ‘She was only in pain in the evenings, and at night.’

Saga falls silent, thinking about one morning after a particularly difficult night, when her mother was making breakfast for her. She was frying eggs, making sandwiches, pouring milk. Then they went outside in their nightdresses. The grass in the garden was damp with dew, and they took the cushions with them down to the hammock.

‘You gave her codeine,’ Jurek says, in a strange tone of voice.

‘It helped.’

‘But they’re not very strong – how many did she have to take that last evening?’

‘A lot... she was in such terrible pain...’

Saga rubs her hand across her forehead and realises to her surprise that she’s perspiring heavily. She doesn’t want to talk about this, she hasn’t thought about it for years.

‘More than ten, I suppose?’ Jurek asks lightly.

‘She used to take two, but that evening she needed far more... I spilled them on the rug, but... I don’t know, I must have given her twelve, maybe thirteen pills.’

Saga feels the muscles in her face tighten. She’s scared she’s going to start crying if she stays, so she gets up quickly to go to her room.

‘Your mum didn’t die of cancer,’ Jurek says.

She stops and turns towards him.

‘That’s enough,’ she says sternly.

‘She didn’t have a brain tumour,’ he says quietly.

‘OK... I was with my mum when she died, you know nothing about her, you can’t—’

‘The headaches,’ Jurek interrupts. ‘The headaches don’t subside the following morning if you have a tumour.’

‘That’s how it was for her,’ she says firmly.

‘The pain is caused by the pressure on brain tissue and blood vessels as the tumour grows. That doesn’t pass, it just gets worse.’

She looks into Jurek’s eyes and feels a shiver run down her back.

‘I...’

Her voice is no more than a whisper. She feels like shouting and screaming, but she’s suddenly powerless.

If she’s honest, she’s always known that there was something odd about her memories. She remembers yelling at her father when she was a teenager, saying he lied about everything, that he was the biggest liar she’d ever met.

He had told her that her mother hadn’t had cancer.

She’s always thought he was lying to her in an effort to excuse his betrayal of her mum.

Now she’s standing here, no longer sure where the idea of her mother’s brain tumour came from. She can’t remember her mum ever saying she had cancer, and they never went to any hospital.

But why did Mum cry every evening if she wasn’t sick? It doesn’t make sense. Why did she make me call Dad all the time and tell him he had to come home? Why did Mum take codeine if she wasn’t in pain? Why did she let her own daughter give her all those pills?

Jurek’s face is a sombre, rigid mask. Saga turns away and starts walking towards the door. She wants to run away, she doesn’t want to hear what he’s about to say.

‘You killed your own mother,’ he says calmly.