Please Don't Leave Me Here by Tania Chandler Page B

she can’t be bothered.
    â€˜Not tired, Aidan!’
    â€˜If you weren’t tired you wouldn’t be speaking in that voice.’
    â€˜Not going to bed.’
    Please, just for once, make it easy. Brigitte grinds her teeth and leans against the wall.
    â€˜Then you won’t get a story or a cuddle.’
    â€˜Don’t care!’ Bang. Something hits the wall.
    â€˜Phoebe!’
    The sound of naughty little footsteps patters through the kitchen.
    â€˜What’s going on out there, Phoebe?’ Brigitte says.
    â€˜Aidan angry.’
    â€˜Really? What did you do to Aidan?’
    â€˜Nothing.’
    â€˜It didn’t sound like nothing.’
    Phoebe sticks out her bottom lip. ‘Not tired.’
    â€˜OK. Let’s just get you clean anyway.’
    Phoebe protests and squirms while Brigitte brushes her teeth and rubs a face washer over her face.
    Brigitte drags her by the arm to bed — past a hole in the plasterboard wall that’s the same shape as her plastic toy tiger.
    Aidan is sitting on Finn’s bed, reading him a story. He pauses, looks at Brigitte over the top of the book, and then keeps reading. He’s wearing the shirt with the missing button. She feels a flutter in her chest: a side-effect of Doctor Rhys’s medication?
    Phoebe chooses Dr. Seuss’s Green Eggs and Ham . Again. Brigitte tucks her in and lies next to her. ‘That Sam-I-am! That Sam-I-am! I do not like that Sam-I-am.’
    â€˜Sam is Daddy.’
    â€˜Yes.’ Brigitte turns the page.
    â€˜Daddy is sleeping with Kitty under the ground now.’
    Brigitte puts Green Eggs and Ham aside, and cuddles Phoebe. She smells of sandalwood and rose. She rests her face in the crook of her little neck, kisses her, and strokes her fairy-floss hair until she falls asleep. Finn and Aidan have fallen asleep, too. She kisses Finn’s lips and turns off the light.
    Aidan stumbles out a couple of hours later while she’s watching TV and procrastinating about writing her article. His button is in the sewing box in the laundry; she should sew it back on for him.
    â€˜Good night,’ he says.
    She nods. Her back is hurting, and there are shimmers of pain in her pelvis.
    When the light goes off in the bungalow, she opens a bottle of wine and takes two painkillers.

16
    Ida rests on the chair by the lift, her head lolling forward onto her chest. Nobody notices that she looks kind of bluish-grey, like over-boiled egg yolk. Brigitte tells Petula, who waits until all the residents have made their way into the dining room before calling an ambulance to take her away.
    Papa’s seated near the end of a long table, turning a paper napkin over in his hands. He smiles when he looks up and sees Brigitte squeezing past chairs to get to him. She kisses him and takes the chair in front of her place card. He’s wearing his only suit — brown and mothballed.
    The staff are wearing Santa hats, and the walls of the dining room are lined with tinsel. Crackers and paper tablecloths bordered with holly and ivy adorn the tables. A balding man plays Christmas songs on a keyboard in the corner: ‘White Christmas’. Two carers try to get Rose to take her medication, but she won’t sit down. Joyce spits something into her napkin, and Roy complains that the paper hats in the crackers aren’t as good as last year’s. It’s just like the Christmas party at kinder earlier in the week.
    When the staff bring around jugs of fruit punch, Brigitte fills two plastic cups with it. ‘Merry Christmas, Papa.’ They touch their cups together. She takes a big drink.
    â€˜Kids at school?’ Papa says.
    â€˜Kinder.’
    â€˜You right?’
    She looks into her cup.
    Papa pats her arm, ‘You’ll be right.’
    She tops up their drinks.
    Petula and the resident podiatrist come over for chats. While the podiatrist is talking bunions with Papa, Petula bends down to Brigitte and