The World Out There - 47. Forty-Seven

Mark was sitting at the table in the Visitors Room waiting for him as he always did. But Mark looked different, not very different, but enough to be noticeable. Mark’s hair was longer - it now reached down to his collar and, being longer, it seemed to be pulling it down, making the curls look more opener and shaggy. Mark’s face was different too - his chin and the bottom part of his cheeks were covered in very short but dark stubble, as if he’d missed a day or two shaving. He was dressed in a baggy, pale grey jumper and dark blue jeans. He looked different. Liam had seen Mark looking casual before, as he often did on his Saturday morning visits, but this Saturday morning he looked even more different, somehow more casual.

Liam could also see a large paper bag, sitting at Mark’s feet. He knew what was in it, or what it most likely was that was in it. Mark was still wasting his money on Liam.

As he walked between the tables there, heading towards Mark, Mark looked up and saw him. Mark raised his hand and smiled at the sight of him. That was the best thing about Mark’s visits. Mark liked him and came here specially to see him.

“How are you?” Mark asked, as Liam sat down at his table.

“Okay.”

“Do you feel any older?”

“Not really,” Liam replied.

“I never did on any of my milestone birthdays. I only felt a day older. Well, I’ve got you something for your birthday.” Mark lifted the paper bag onto the table and pushed it towards Liam. Liam reached for it and opened it.

Inside was a denim jacket, but it wasn’t a cheap, supermarket jacket. He reached into the bag and ran his fingers over the sleeve. The denim was soft against his fingers.

“Try it on,” Mark said.

“I don’t know if I’m allowed to. The nurses have to check everything.”

“It’s Anthea on the nurses’ desk today. She’s too busy reading her phone.”

“Okay,” Liam replied.

He pulled it out of the bag and as soon as he had it lain on the table, he saw how expensive it was. The denim wasn’t the cheap and rigid type as his supermarket jeans had always been made from. This was smooth and soft denim that was already faded. There was pale suede leather covering its shoulders. Over the left breast pocket, formed of tightly drawn stitches, was a shower of stars. It was lined with a smooth cotton cloth, decorated with a white and red checked pattern.

He slipped the jacket over his shoulders. It fit him easily, probably too easily, because it hung large on his shoulders. It was probably two sizes too big for him, but he didn’t care - he liked clothes that were too big for him as he could almost hide inside of them. This jacket was amazing, but it must have been so expensive. Could he accept it? Mark spending all his money on it.

“It’s great,” Liam quietly said.

“It really suits you, though it’s a bit big on you. I’m sure you’ll grow into it.”

“I like that it’s so baggy…” Liam took a breath of air in, but he still felt bad about it. This jacket must have cost Mark a fortune. “It must have cost you a fortune. You can’t spend all this money on me.”

“Don’t be silly. I’ve got plenty to spare. My practice is doing really well. We’ve had to take on two junior partners to help with all the work.”

“Oh, that’s good.”

“Anyway, I like spending it on you. It makes you happy and you’re always grateful. Not like my nephews. They bloody expect expensive things.”

“Thank you for this jacket, it’s… it’s great.” It was more than great, it was special and made him feel so good.

“How was your birthday?”

“They had a party on the ward for me.”

“That must have been fun.”

“It was after I’d cut the cake when I could sit on the sofa with Ed and just watch it. Everyone enjoyed it and that was good.”

“God, Liam, you are such a wallflower.”

“I can’t help it. I just feel better there.” It was true: he much preferred to be on the edge or outskirts of events - he was far more comfortable there.

“And there’s nothing wrong with that. There’s too many people who think that they should always be the centre of attention, whether they deserve it or not.”

“I guess so.”

“You’re sixteen now,” Mark said, leaning slightly forward in his chair.

“Yes,” he replied.

“There’s something I need to talk to you about.”

“What?” Liam asked. Why did Mark suddenly sound so serious? Was it something bad?

“When you’re eighteen, the law sees you as an adult. Now you’re sixteen, you can consent to many things. You choose what you want to do. You can consent to legal action being taken in your name.”

“What do you mean?”

“We don’t need your mother to agree to us applying for a review of your case, if anyone could bloody find her. You can consent to it being applied for,” Mark said.

“Why would I do that?”

“Your trial was a farce. That old bastard of a judge refused to let Bernie run a decent defence for you. That boy bullied you, made your life a nightmare and pushed and pushed you until you lashed out at him. Witnesses said he shouted at you to stab him. And the court and the jury should have heard that. That bloody judge was out-of-line.”

“Who’s Bernie?” Liam asked.

“Mrs Bernadette Stewart-Graham, your barrister.”

“Yes,” Liam quietly said. “I always think of her as Mrs Stewart-Graham.” She was the wife of Gerry Stewart-Graham whose every book he read - apart from the latest one - because Mrs Stewart-Graham always sent them to him.

“I only think of her as that when she’s in court. Well, I spoke with Bernie the other week about your case and she agrees with me. You have a very good case to have your conviction reviewed and hopefully overturned.”

“What would happen to me if the review is successful?”

“Well, first you would be released from here…”

“No,” Liam quietly said, interrupting Mark.

“What?” Mark’s face stared back at him as if Liam had said something unintelligible.

“No, I don’t want to leave here.”

“Why?”

“I’m happy here.”

“What? But this is a secure hospital, and you can’t leave it. You’re a prisoner here.”

“But I’m happy and safe here. I go out on Day Release with Aiden and that’s great. If I did leave here, would I have to live with my mum? Because I don’t want to see her again.”

“You won’t have to live with her, we’d have to find her first. We would make other arrangements for you.”

“But I would have to leave here. I would have to leave Ed, and Aiden and Janet and the other nurses. I’d have to leave Mrs Williams and her school, and her school is brilliant. I want to stay here. I’m happy and safe here.”

“You will have to leave here someday,” Mark said.

“I know, but later. Let me stay here a bit longer. It’s the best place I’ve ever lived. People here like me and care about me. I’m doing well at school. None of that happened until I came here.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes, I’m happy here. If there was a review of my trial, wouldn’t there be publicity about it?”

“Yes, I guess so.”

“They would all start hating me again. They’d say all those things about me, again.”

“Who?”

“Rhys Clarke’s mum. My mum. People like that.”

“Yes, they might get wind of it.”

“I don’t want to hear them shouting about me, again.”

“All right. I’ll tell Bernie about your decision.”

“I’m sorry I don’t want a review. I don’t want to let you down.”

“Don’t be. This is your decision to make, in the end, and I’ll always be here to help you. I certainly will be here to help you when you do leave this place.”

“Thanks…” He needed to change the subject. He was really happy here; he was safe here. “What have you been doing lately?”

“We’ve had to hire a private investigator, my practice, to help with some of our cases. We’ve only hired her on a case-by-case basis…” Mark replied, as he leant back in his chair.

<><><><>

He placed the large paper bag, containing his new jacket, on the table in front of Anthea. She opened it and looked inside of it for a moment.

“What’s this?” She asked him.

“It’s a jacket,” Liam answered her. “It’s a birthday present from my friend, Mark.”

“You know what they say about middle-aged men who buy young boys expensive presents?”

“No. What do they say?” he replied. He knew what they said, and he knew when Anthea was being a bitch, which was more and more often lately. He gave her a quizzical expression, wined her up a little bit more.

“Don’t be so naïve, Liam. God, you’ve been here too long.” She pushed the bag along the table. “I’ll send it to your ward later. Now sit down. The nurse isn’t here to take you back there yet.”

Liam just nodded his head in reply to her and then turned away from her table, stepping over to one of the chairs lined up along the wall. He’d said goodbye to Mark a few minutes ago, Now he had to wait to go back to the ward.

<><><><>

There were so many people staring at him, the eyes of strangers staring back at him. His chest was tightening around his lungs, stopping his breathing, stopping him taking a deep breath.

He was on Day Release with Aiden, walking through a paved-over shopping area in Chatham, and suddenly people were started staring at him. A middle-aged woman, two teenage-aged girls, a teenage-aged boy, an elderly man. People staring at him as they walked through there. Why where they staring at him? Did they recognise him? How could they recognise him?

His heart was pounding inside his chest as though it was about to break out of his ribs. But his chest was so tight, he couldn’t catch his breath.

“Liam? Liam? Are you all right?”

Someone was talking to him. It was Aiden.

“I… I… I can’t breathe,” he replied. His breathing was so tight, he had to push his chest out against the tightness, push the words out of his mouth. His fingers were tingling now. What was wrong with him?

A hand took hold of his arm. Aiden’s hand?

“Come on. We’ll go down here,” Aiden said.

Aiden’s hand began to steer him. Were people staring at him? They had to be staring at him. He couldn’t focus now. His breathing was so fast and his heart was pounding away in his chest. Why was he so ill? Now his hands were tingling as if they were full of pins and needles.

“This way… down here,” Aiden said, steering him off the shopping parade. He didn’t know where they were going, but there had to be less people.

“Sit down,” Aiden finally said. Liam sat down and found himself sitting on a low brick wall.

“Listen to me,” Aiden’s voice said, close to his head. “You need to slow your breathing down, so listen to me.” Liam just nodded because his breathing was so fast now.

“Breathe in,” Aiden told him, so he did.

“Now hold your breath,” Aiden said, but he couldn’t. He gasped for air as soon as Aiden said his words.

“Breathe in,” Aiden said, so he did again.

“Now hold your breath,” Aiden said, Liam held tight onto the little breath in his lungs. “One, two, and breathe out,” Aiden told him, and he did, the air rushing out of his mouth.

“Breathe in,” Aiden said. “Hold your breath for one … two … and now breathe out.” And Liam followed Aiden’s voice.

Over and over, he followed Aiden’s voice, and his breathing did slow down. He could take a breath, hold it for longer and longer, before breathing out again. As he did so, his heart slowed down, the tightness in his chest easing. His heart no longer felt as if it was going to burst out of his chest, and the pins and needles were disappearing from his hands.

Finally, his breathing was slow enough so he could speak.

“What… What happened to me?”

“You had a panic attack,” Aiden quietly replied.

He glanced around himself. Aiden and he were sitting on a low brick wall, down a side street off the shopping parade. It looked like they were down the side of one of the big shops there.

“What’s that?” he asked Aiden.

“Let’s go back to my car. We can talk quietly there.”

“Okay,” he replied.

He walked with Aiden back up the side street and back onto the shopping parade. As he stepped out onto the shopping parade, something tight caught in his chest. The place was still full of people, people who could look at him. He stopped walking.

“Are you all right?” Aiden quietly asked him.

“There’s… There’s a lot of people here.”

“You’re with me. We’ll walk close to the shops, not out in the middle of the pavement, and the car park entrance is just down there.”

“Okay,” he replied.

He walked close to Aiden and the two of them walked near to the shop fronts there. Liam kept his head down, staring down at the pavement under his feet. Fortunately, they only had to walk for a short time before Aiden said, “Here we are.”

They turned up an alleyway and were soon in the car park lift, heading to where Aiden’s car was parked. As the lift doors closed and it began to move upwards, the tightness in his chest was easing. The lift ride was calming.

Once they were finally sat in Aiden’s car, with the doors firmly closed, did Liam feel his body start to relax. He was safe there.

“What… What happened to me?” he asked Aiden.

“You had a panic attack.”

“But what’s one of them?”

“We all experience anxiety at one time or another,” Aiden said. “It’s a normal part of being a human. There’s nothing wrong with that. We can even get panicked. Again that’s normal.”

“But what happened to me?”

“In some people, their anxiety can get out of control and they have a panic attack. For some people it’s an actual panic disorder. They can suffer from regular panic attacks, usually triggered by certain things. In other people, this can be a one-off thing, or maybe happens two or three times in their life.”

“Which one am I?”

“You’ve had one panic attack before but only one.”

“When?” he asked.

“When Chrissy harmed herself in the garden.”

“But you weren’t there.”

Aiden gave him a little smile.

“Us nurses, we talk about the patients on the ward all time. It’s part of our jobs. We talked what happened that day, how it affected everyone, a lot. We talked about you and how best we could help you.”

“Do I have this panic disorder?”

“No,” Aiden replied. “You had a panic attack because the stress of the situation.”

“But what about today?”

“What happened before you had the panic attack? Do you remember anything that upset you or scared you?”

“I don’t know…” What had happened to him? What was it?... That woman, that woman staring at him. “I think I do.”

“What was it?”

“There was this woman, she was staring at me. When we came out of that charity shop. She stared at me like… like she knew me.”

“Did you recognise her?”

“No.”

“We humans, we’re hardwired to find patterns in things we see. That’s why we see pictures and faces in clouds, which are some of the most random things in nature. It’s very human thing to see people we know in the faces of strangers. She probably thought you looked like someone she knew. That’s why she stared.”

“But she could have recognised me, for what I did.”

“Liam, you look nothing like you did when you first came to the ward, nothing like you did at twelve. I don’t think your mother would even recognise you now, if anyone could find you.”

“You’re sure?”

“Yes. I think she was staring at you because of her problems, something she imagined. Not you.”

“Are you certain?”

“If she had recognised you, wouldn’t she have shouted at you? Shouted that she knew you.”

“Yes. Yes, I guess so.”

“And she didn’t.”

“Thanks.” Liam licked his tongue over his dry lips. But what was going to happen next? What about him? “You’re going to tell the other nurses about happened today.”

“I have to.”

“Will it stop my Day Release? I really like Day Release. I don’t want it to stop.”

“Day Release is part of your rehabilitation. It won’t stop, but we might have to modify it. That all needs to be discussed and with you. But before that, we need to get back to Nurton Cross. Okay?”

“Okay,” Liam replied.

Aiden started his car.

<><><><>

Aiden was waiting for him at the end of his lessons. He was standing in the doorway to his classroom and waiting for him. Precious had brought him and Ed to the Education Centre that morning, collected them at lunchtime and brought them back there after lunch. Why was Aiden here now? It wasn’t that Aiden even brought him here often anyway.

He closed his notebook and started to collect up his papers on the table.

“I’ll do that,” Mrs Williams said. She was suddenly standing next to him at the table. She could really walk quietly. Liam smiled back at her. “Aiden needs to see you,” she said.

Liam nodded his reply and walked off towards Aiden.

His panic attack had been the day before, but was still there, nagging away at the back of his mind. Would it happen again? Did this mean he was getting more ill, not better? He’d heard all the things Aiden said but he was the one who had it.

Over dinner, the previous evening, Ed had stared at him across their shared table, for an awkward moment. Then said, “Are you all right?”

“Yes,” Liam said.

“You don’t look right.”

“I… it’s just things didn’t go that well today.”

“What happened?”

He looked up at Ed’s face. Ed was looking back at him with that concerned expression. Ed did care about him.

“I had this panic attack thing when I was out with Aiden. It was horrible.”

“I had them too.”

“You did?”

“Yeah,” Ed told him. “When I was in the police station after I set fire to my stepdad. I got really scared and I couldn’t breathe. I thought I was going to die.”

“What happened?”

“There was this nurse there and she gave me a paper bag to breathe into, and that helped me. It slowed my breathing down and I felt better. I didn’t know there were nurses in police stations.”

“Has it happened to you again?” Liam asked him.

“No, not again. Not even when I came here, but here is great.”

What Ed said helped him the previous evening, helped him get to sleep. Ed had had a panic attack too, and it didn’t seem to held him back. He was able to comfortably sleep last night.

Now, seeing Aiden waiting there for him, it had to be about his panic attack - what else could it be? Did they know something he didn’t? Was he actually getting worse and not better?

He stopped in front of Aiden.

“Hi,” he said, as Aiden and he started to walk down the stairs.

“We’re not going straight back to the ward,” Aiden said.

“Where are we going?”

“We’re going to one of the interview rooms. We’ve been having a meeting about what happened yesterday.”

“Oh… right…” This was serious. Meetings about things were always serious things, and… he didn’t want to stop having Day Release.

Quietly he followed behind Aiden. What else could he do?

As always, it seemed to take an age to get to the front of the hospital. Aiden opened and closed all the doors to get there took as long as always, but he’d stopped worrying about that ages ago. There was his Day Release to worry about. What if they said it wasn’t safe for him to go on it anymore? He couldn’t lose it. He couldn’t not have it.

Janet and Dr Sayeed were already in the interview when Liam following behind Aiden. Both women were sat on the opposite side of the round table there, facing the room’s door. Both women were dressed in their usual smart work clothes, but why did he expect anything different?

“Do take a seat Liam,” Dr Sayeed said to him, as Aiden sat down on one of the other empty chairs at the table.

Liam sat down on the chair in front of him.

“Liam, we’ve been discussing what happened to you yesterday,” Dr Sayeed said.

Liam just nodded his head in reply.

“Do you want to tell us what happened?” Janet asked him.

“I had a panic attack. Well Aiden told me that was what happened,” he replied.

“Do you know what started it?” Janet asked.

“There was this woman staring at me as we walked down this parade. She kept staring at me and… I think I thought she knew who I was.”

“Did you recognise her?” Dr Sayeed asked him.

“No,” Liam said.

“She only seemed to be someone who was staring at people in public. She certainly didn’t react as if she knew Liam,” Aiden said.

“We have to think about your safety, Liam,” Dr Sayeed said.

“But I really like Day Release,” Liam replied. It was in panic, but the words rushed out of his mouth. “I don’t want it to stop.”

“We won’t be doing that. Day Release is part of your rehabilitation.”

“Thank you Janet,” Dr Sayeed said. “But this isn’t the first time you’ve had a panic attack, Liam.”

“Come on, Farah. That was after another patient self-harmed herself in front of Liam,” Janet said. “That would be enough to make anyone have a panic attack.”

“Yes, but there is still the question of Liam’s safety,” Dr Sayeed replied.

“Which my strategy addresses,” Janet added.

What were these women talking about? Had he come in on a conversation halfway through?

“All right Janet,” Dr Sayeed said, leaning back in her chair.

“You’re still going to have Day Release,” Janet said, talking straight to him now. “Aiden will still take you out, but he and I will plan much more closely, where you go. For the next few weeks, Aiden will take you out to places where there aren’t as many people. Slowly, we’ll build up to places where there are more people. When you leave us, you’re going to have to be in crowded places, so we’ll need to get you accustomed to them so you know how to manage them.”

“And I will meet with you each week to discuss how our Day Release is going,” Dr Sayeed said.

“We can go to the cinema in the afternoon. There’s never anyone there,” Aiden said.

“As long as its age appropriate,” Dr Sayeed added.

“Yes, always,” Aiden said.

“Does that sound good to you?” Janet asked him.

“Yes, yes,” Liam replied. He was still going to be going on Day Release. It wasn’t being taken away from him. That was good. Really good.

<><><><>

He followed Aiden out of the main entrance and around the side of the hospital. Aiden’s car was always parked in the car park at the side of the hospital.

Aiden had been talking about a restaurant called ‘Nando’s’ and how Liam would enjoy it. He’d never heard of Nando’s, but his mother often said that McDonald’s was too expensive for them to eat in. He’d enjoyed going to McDonald’s with Aiden. Why couldn’t they just go back there? But Janet and Aiden were deciding on where he went on Day Release. At least he was still going on Day Release, and that was the thing.

Aiden’s small, red car was parked near the car park entrance. It always seemed to be when they went out in it. Today, it was different - it was dirty. Usually, it was clean, if rather old and battered, but today there was a large amount of brown mud smeared over it. It looked as if the car had crashed through a large ball of mud. The front of the car was caked in brown, colouring its radiator grill and front bumper that muddy brown. The bonnet and front wings were also smeared in the brown mud, though it faded away further along the car’s body, ending with no brown mud on its rear. Why hadn’t Aiden cleaned it? Where had Aiden driven it?

“Hurry up, or all the nice chicken will have been eaten,” Aiden called to him.

Liam quickly walked up to the car’s passenger door.