Orders of Magnitude by Kieran Wyatt

I try to learn one interesting fact a day. It’s best when this happens naturally. A dollop of Fairy Liquid ingested over a period of a few weeks will cause serious sickness. Dollop was Melanie’s word. It was unlike Melanie. Almost onomatopoeic.  

‘How did you get the idea?’   

She stopped to eat her croissant. ‘He said his tea tasted chemically. The arsehole said he could taste the washing-up liquid.’   

I love the way Melanie swears. You have never heard a more decisive shit, and her fucks have an almost primordial power. She knew he was an arsehole, felt it in her bones.    

‘But did you know before he said that?’  

‘It was just a matter of how.’  

‘Before you knew you were in the family way?’  

I could hear Melanie’s lips smack. It made the back of my brain tingle. She has been able to do this since we were small.     

Andrew was due back at six, I knew she’d want me gone by then. She’d need to change, sort herself out.  

‘Do you want a fact?’ I didn’t wait for a yes. ‘A femtosecond is to a second what a second is to thirty-million years.’

My fact lay on the kitchen table like a bad smell.   

‘You won’t say anything?’  

‘No, I wouldn’t.’

‘Because that would be so wrong.’ Melanie was now making toast. She was posting regularly on her Instagram story about each new craving.

‘Did you hear what I said about the femtosecond?’    

She scraped butter across her toast. It was the Aldi equivalent of Clover. She’d burnt it. There was smoke in the kitchen, very thin, barely noticeable.  

‘I wouldn’t tell anyone.’   

‘Not even Caroline?’  

Since being a teenager, Melanie has called our mother by her first name. It’s one of her few affectations. We sat in silence for a minute, Melanie slowly eating her toast.   

‘He’s puking every day now. It’s part of his routine.’ 

‘He won’t meet baby then?’  

Melanie got a tangerine from the fridge, and slammed the door shut.    

As usual nowadays, it’s the three of us on this outing. I have come to enjoy Bethany-May’s company almost as much as Melanie’s. She’s silent for me, but she makes lots of noise for Melanie.  

Earlier, Melanie said again, ‘She’s pushing.’ Other people might have said, ‘Oh, she’s kicking, feel!’ Bethany-May pushes her mother.  

In Booths cars park, about an hour ago, Melanie handed her bag to me and stopped. We were not far from the car. I manoeuvred Melanie into the Polo.

‘Am I making a mistake?’ I thought what she said was quite rich. If there was a mistake, it had been made months ago. ‘Tell me one of your facts.’   

‘Cliché is actually onomatopoeia. It comes from the repeating sound of a printing press.’ That wasn’t really my fact. I had been reading about neuroferritinopathy, a disease, a build-up of iron on the brain. There are only around a hundred victims of neuroferritinopathy, and I do say victims. They have traced the disease to a family in Cumbria. I read about a daughter whose mother now suffers from neuroferritinopathy. She is the same age her mother was when she began to deteriorate.  

‘Are you ready to go?’  

‘One minute.’  

I watched the clock near the speedometer.   

We have visited Andrew every Tuesday and Thursday. Tuesdays coincide with Melanie’s appointment anyway. We walk as a three. Melanie manages to sit with her husband with her head high. I don’t know how she manages. Hers is a very tragic case. Everyone sympathises. When we speak to people, Melanie is beyond polite.   

In her own parlance, she fucked it up, the poisoning. She didn’t know what she was doing. Amateurish. The business with the Fairy Liquid. That was a joke at my expense. She used something else, but it still didn’t work.

On the drive home, Melanie falls asleep next to me. After changing gears, I place my palm lightly on Bethany-May and move it up and down. I imagine I’m soothing her. I imagine her floating in a pool of fentanyl.   

The barber had cut his hair very short, shorter than I’d ever seen it, even in photos. We were holding hands and walking towards Melanie and the pram. Bethany-May was out and toddling over the green. It was a week since Caroline’s funeral. Bethany-May was looked after, during the funeral, by a neighbour with twin boys. Melanie said, wearily, they made lots of noise in the garden. 

She ran towards the windmill, which must have seemed like a colossus to her. I embraced Melanie briefly. She’d lost more weight. I introduced her to Cameron, although they’d met at the funeral. We walked as far as Lowther Gardens, then started back towards the windmill, when Melanie announced that she couldn’t see Bethany-May. Neither could we. We spread out. I left the green and followed the steps down to the shingles. Bethany-May, in her pink puffer coat, was crouched by the wall. She was holding a sheathed zombie knife. She used it like a walking stick, propping up her round body. She was playing. Bethany-May swung her new toy. She moved so she was facing the long grass, then she tried to chop it all down.  

Cameron was the one to take it off her. He was the one to call the police to report the knife. Reporting it hadn’t occurred to me at all. When we were back on the green, Melanie practically threw Bethany-May into her pram.  

You can see the football stadium from Cameron’s bedroom window. One evening, last week, I stood naked, fresh from the shower, and faced the stadium. The floodlights were white and strong. Just before I drew the curtains, there was an almighty cheer.  

Goal.  

Lily white.  

My first thought was, I couldn’t do this if I had children.   

‘That was something.’ Cameron’s voice is like a long line.   

‘What was?’  

‘Bethany-May with that knife.’  

‘Do you not think she looked vaguely murderous?’  

‘That’s a horrible thing to say.’ Cameron crosses his legs. We’re watching Happy Valley on iPlayer. Cameron’s pick. ‘She’s three,’ he says.  

‘We’ll just have to wait and see.’  

Sarah Lancashire bemused and bloodied, in the middle of the street in broad daylight.  

I knew lots at one point, now it feels like I only know snippets of song lyrics and famous lines from famous films. The words of the prophets are written on the subway walls, and tenement halls. You come to me on the day of my daughter’s wedding. And so on. I don’t even remember watching The Godfather. I try to explain this feeling to Beth as I drive her to taekwondo.  

‘You’re sad you’re getting old?’  

‘No, it’s more that I’m said I don’t feel any older. It terrifies me that I’ll be eighty and still have the brain I have now.’  

‘Mum says you’re weird.’  

‘Your mum’s a fascist,’ I say, pulling into the car park.  

‘She regrets me. Having me.’  

‘That’s what you think. Come on, you’ll be late.’  

I read in the car for the next hour. Cameron texts.I read another chapter before replying that yes, Chinese sounds fine. But I don’t go any further than fine.  

Beth startles me. She’s back in the car. Back in the Polo, next to me. She’s sweaty. She’s a yellow belt, green tag. 

Beth is staying at our house tonight, as her mother is away for work. It’s a Tuesday. I tell Beth that she can skip school tomorrow, stay up late tonight. It’s impulsive. I wanted to give this to her. Maybe we could watch a film together, or something.  

‘It’s fine. I’ve got Chemistry tomorrow. I can’t miss it.’ I feel like a fool. 

I want to ask Melanie if she’s seen much about it. What does she think?  

‘I don’t think anything about it.’  

‘No?’ I’m genuinely curious. ‘Babies.’  

I’m eating one of Melanie’s bananas. She said I could help myself.  

‘I saw a headline. I’m a psychologist and this is why we struggle to believe women like Lucy Letby exist.’  

‘It’s sad.’  

‘Do you struggle to believe it?’  

‘In a way.’  

‘Is that all you can manage?’  

‘I’m not the one obsessed with it. Reading everything about it.’ At this, Melanie flaps her hands, as if trying to bat away the everything. ‘Hannah, I mean.’  

‘What? Why did you say my name?’  

‘Oh, is that not allowed?’  

I have come to the house to see Beth, to make amends. She’s in but she’s out, is what Melanie said. I didn’t call ahead, so I don’t think Beth’s avoiding me necessarily. Although I am sure she doesn’t want to see me.  

There is a clingy feeling in the kitchen. I tell Melanie I need to get out.  

Beth is behind the garage reading a book. She’s wearing short-shorts and a green Mountain Warehouse cagoule.  

‘Are you not cold?’  

I can tell she’s surprised by my coming to her spot behind the garage. But she makes an effort to calmly place her book on her lap.  

She asks after Cameron. He’s still sick, I tell her. He’s puking constantly. She cringes at the Americanism, although I could tell her that puking is, like most Americanisms, very English in origin. Almost every moment of every day, and night, he needs to be close to the toilet. Its plastic seat, which he sometimes holds as ballast.  

‘I just want to know why.’ 

‘No, you don’t.’  

‘Indulge me.’  

‘That’s stupid, you don’t want to know why.’  

‘Indulge me,’ I say.  

‘I think you’re assuming too much.’ 

‘The relationship is petering out anyway. You might be doing me a favour, in the long run. But you could have warned me.’  

‘I don’t believe that. You’re pissed off.’  

‘You’ve got me. That’s the word for it. Pissed off.’  

‘You can’t do swearing. Mum can. Do you remember when you called my mum a fascist, when I was like eleven? I told her and she just shrugged. Bet you’re surprised I remember that.’  

‘It’s almost like she was well aware.’  

‘Or doesn’t care what you think.’  

‘Believe what you want to believe. Believe it or not, I wanted to make amends today. Our relationship means a lot to me, more than you probably realise. When you’re being less of a teenager, we can have a proper conversation.’  

‘God, you’re trite.’  

Instead of walking away, I sit myself down in one of the garden chairs by Bethany-May. She squirms a little but tries to carry on with her book.

After a minute, and maybe because I’m just looking at her and then occasionally at the rhubarb Melanie has planted, Beth gets up and starts to walk back to the house, leaving her book outside. 

I watch as she puts on her jacket. I follow her upstairs. She gets a packet of cigarettes from her hidey-hole. It turns out to be the bottom of her knicker draw. Who’s trite now?  

We go out of the house and to the bus stop and we board the sixty-eight.

Preston bound.

On the top deck, she meets some friends. She was texting on the walk to the bus stop. My own phone buzzes on the bus. It’s Cameron. I text that I’m fine, that I’m still with my sister.

I imagine Bethany-May sitting in one of the hospital’s brown plastic chairs, talking to Cameron while he sleeps his long sleep. She could tell him about the femtosecond, its length, and the building of iron on the brain.

Kieran Wyatt

Image: Hospital beds in an open ward. From pixabay.com