looking up at the open first floor door to number forty-one. Further up the stairs, directly outside her door, more people stand, gawping and ruining the view for those on the ground. Too many bodies in the way. They’re stock still, staring at what I can’t see. They part suddenly and a young boy shouts as something flies past everyone at knee level. It’s Terrence. I feel like he’s an old friend even though we only met a few hours ago. The night before last. When I was here.
Terrence barks wildly. Spooked or just seeing an opportunity to play. He finds me and comes to say hello. I stroke his head and peer past the faces and into the flat. Then I see her. There, face down in the middle of her kitchen, surrounded by her family pictures and an overturned dog bowl, Jean. It’s strange how stupid people are in crowds. How insensitive to the moment. The import of the situation ripples through their bodies but their brains struggle with ‘what’s appropriate’ and the result is an open-mouthed gawp. Some hold phones, unsure whether to use them. A bloke in shades scratches his arse. They are all overcome by this unusual Saturday morning drama and have no way of coping with it.
A man is venturing into Jean’s flat, watched by the crowd. He heroically shrugs, looking down every so often, afraid to touch her in case he gets whatever she’s got, then wanders out again. Women mumble. Men rub the back of their necks and scrunch their faces. There are boys in hooded tops here too. A bearded man in his pyjamas, with a French bulldog, who definitely lives on our side. Even the nervous woman is here, who I taught to count to fifteen. She sees me and reacts, eyeing me, excitedly. Instinctively, I turn to leave.
‘Doctor! Let this woman through. She’s a doctor!’ she bellows.
Oh, God. They perk up now. Their indecision has a leader. I turn, hold up a hand, as if to say, Yes, it is I, your saviour. Someone even starts to clap, but it doesn’t catch on. I am jostled up the concrete stairs and inside number forty-one. Despite ardent promises to myself that I would come clean, that I wouldn’t let this happen again, it’s happening again. I suppose this isn’t the ideal moment to mention to everyone that I’m not actually a doctor. That it all came from a misunderstanding with my phone and Internet cable. Public declarations are for Richard Curtis films. And I’m not good in front of crowds. I’m the kind of girl that would rather skulk around in the wings.
They all have their eyes trained on me. I want to get out of this as quickly as possible, but it’s difficult not to take a look around while I’m here. It’s very much as I left it. The cupboard, half open, shows her array of tin cans still tightly packed. I crouch down, sensing I’ve spent a moment too long surveying the place, rather than tending to the matter in hand. I must get back to playing Dr Gullick. Dr Gullick, who has certainly never been in this flat before and isn’t wondering what exactly happened here in between the time she left and now. Dr Gullick, who heals the sick. I crouch down to tend to her, without any idea what Dr Gullick will do next, but I have to do something, to please the assembled masses. After all, she may still be alive. But then, people who are alive aren’t usually blue.
I take her pulse with two fingers, pushing my hand between her chin and the floor to get to her throat. She’s cold. I’ve never felt anyone so cold. But then I’ve never felt a dead body before. I put the back of my hand in front of her nostrils, doing my best work from what I’ve gathered from old episodes of ER. No breath. I imagine her sitting up, gasping as the crowd reels, someone screaming at the back. She tells me to ‘get off, ya silly cow’, picks up a wooden spoon and throws some beans into a pan, muttering to herself all the while. But she doesn’t do that.
I take a leap of faith and open her eyelids. I don’t know why. Getting into it? Curiosity? It’s so intimate. My middle finger and thumb pulling apart the tissue paper eyelids of this formidable woman. I try desperately to hold back my gasp as I stare into her, the pupil dominating her eye. Doctors tend not to squeal. It doesn’t engender much trust.
Her eyes were so alive, so fidgety last time I saw them. I look into the pupil now and I’m struck by the emptiness of it all. How quickly we can all become ‘the body’. Where has the rest of Her gone? I’m struggling to come to terms with something. I’ve never seen anything like it before. Never been confronted so directly by what used to be an idea, death and nothing. No literature, television drama or gossip can prepare you for its glare. It’s so mundane. It’s a familiar tune. Hummed many times before, which will be hummed many more. And it chills me how quickly I can shrug it off, take the torch from my keys out of my pocket, shine a light in this whale’s eye and play out the final part of the artificial inspection. At the last, somewhere between the role and myself, I touch her hand and hold it for a second.
I turn to the crowd who proclaimed me their leader and shake my head. Some sympathetic groans. A couple shuffle away at the back shaking their heads. It’s as if they’ve just found out the bloke who comes to clean the windows isn’t coming this week. Even death itself seems an anticlimax I suppose, especially if it’s not happening to you. Or if you weren’t staring into the face of it.
‘Can someone call an ambulance, please?’ I shout to them all.
‘Isn’t she dead?’ a voice comes back.
‘Yes. I believe she is, but either way an ambulance will have to come and take her away.’
‘Why? If she’s dead, she’s dead,’ the voice comes back.
‘Because we can’t just throw her in a skip and be done with it.’
It comes out before I can stop it. I’m angrier than I thought I was.
‘She has to be pronounced officially dead. They’ll take away her body to be examined.’
‘Oh. You don’t think there’s… er… foul play, do you?’ replies another voice. With a tone that suggests the speaker thinks he’s in an episode of Diagnosis Murder. Rather than reality.
How detached we all are. Safe in our tiny dwellings. Hidden from the natural world, our windows and TV screens soft lenses that beautify. I feel like I’m the only one that really feels sometimes. If that’s not too narcissistic a sentiment.
‘No. I don’t think it’s… “foul play”. Personally. But that’s not up to me to decide.’ Just a dash sardonic. Classic Dr Gullick.
In reality, I can’t say whether there has been ‘foul play’ or not. It looks to me like a woman dropped stone dead and gave herself an almighty whack when she hit the ground. But maybe that’s the way it’s supposed to look. Because, maybe, someone gave her an almighty whack first, and then lay her on the ground to make it look like the injury was caused by the fall. She’s certainly gone down hard.
I could be more sure about my assumption. If I turned her over. But I don’t want to do that. I’d be scared to move her. I don’t want to ‘contaminate the scene’. Plus, I probably shouldn’t leave any more of my fingerprints in this place than there already are.
So I can’t be sure exactly what caused that blow. But then, you see, I’m not a doctor.
As someone volunteers to dial 999, I take one last look at her. A young woman dials as she holds her boyfriend’s hand. I think they live further down on the estate. I’m sure I’ve seen them before. I scan the other faces in the crowd too, just to check.
Before I go I have a last look around the place. I poke my head around the corner to see the living room more fully than I did the night before last. Then, coming back to the kitchen, I see a strange thing. The black metal poker she kept by the door. Is gone.
Her other weapons. The cricket bat and pipe sit by in their usual place for safe keeping. But not the poker.
Perhaps she needed it for something. I wonder where it is now. It wasn’t the sort of thing she’d ever be without. It was for her own protection. Jean was all too aware of the sorts of people that hang around here at night and what they’re capable of. I wonder if anything else is missing.
I play a quick game of spot the difference. The room the night before last. Versus the room today. I spy something else. With my little eye.
The porcelain figurine.