Up the Dollar Road – a short story

I can now smile if I happen to see Colleen. There was a time when her outlook seemed so bleak I half expected to see her death notice.

What made the breakthrough, the key to unlock the door of the prison Colleen’s mind had become, was a simple local expression. From that moment on those innocuous words would have a deeper significance.

It had become an everyday expression. Well, not every day, but over the years I’d heard it a hundred times. This time it made me shiver inside.

It had been about five years before I worked out what the expression meant. It tended to be older people who used it, but sooner or later most born and bred village folk heard themselves say it. It was a code, I suppose. It wasn’t used unkindly or to exclude like in-phrases uttered by in-crowds. It had probably originated, I decided, as a gentle acknowledgement of a delicate, painful event.

When I first learned its meaning it was a reminder I was still an outsider. An embarrassing reminder. I had casually enquired about a new friend’s parents. He’d shrugged the response, “They’ve been up the Dollar Road for a couple o’ years.” His reaction to my follow-up question stays with me. I asked where they’d lived before that. Over a few seconds his face staged a short drama. A hard frown at me, eyebrows down, melted into a head-shaking smile of comic disbelief before an exhalation of raucous laughter. “Up the Dollar Road,” he said. “Cemetery’s along there. They’re deid.”

Now I knew, I seemed to hear the expression more often. Sometimes, I learned, it could be a warning. “You’ll be up the Dollar Road if you carry on like that.” Or a prediction. “He’ll be up the Dollar Road soon, Ah tell ye.” Or even, “Doctor says it’ll no be long noo. Up the Dollar Road, like.”

I knew I was settling in to the village when I no longer noticed it. I had finally been accepted when I could say it myself. “It’ll no be long noo,” I’d add, and brave relatives would understand and thank me.

But when Colleen said it one morning it meant far more. She was finally ready to tell me the missing part of her life story. She’d dropped enough hints over the years, always closing the book before the ending. I had to hear more.

That afternoon I called Mary’s extension. Mary was a good soul, impatient with time-wasters perhaps, but she could separate wheat from chaff. Colleen would never agree to see a different GP, and likewise it was only Mary she would deal with at reception. If another receptionist answered, Colleen would hang up and wait until another day.

I asked Mary to let Colleen know I’d like to see her after my surgery.

“What will I say it is about, Dr Thom?” Her sigh told me I was wasting my time.

“Tell her I just want a wee chat. She’ll come.”

I could picture Mary shaking her head as she dialled Colleen’s number. But I thought it was a fair bet Colleen would turn up. I just hoped she would be sober.

###

Colleen was now 43, and today she’d looked it. At other times, wasted, spaced out and stained, you’d be forgiven for thinking she was 60. When she made an effort, at weekends or on Giro day, in the dark she could blend in with the gang of teenagers and twenty-somethings she tagged along with. The youngsters would tolerate her until, inevitably, she dishevelled into her usual state. Then she was discarded like trash. I usually saw her in the aftermath, a day or three later. Dark hair lank on her shoulders, a greenish complexion.

But today, nearly sober, she’d looked her age.

She lived mostly alone. It was only when Barry hit one of his bad patches and had to come back that she played at being a wife for a few days. She would smarten up, accompany Barry to the corner shop with her head high, and carry his messages home for him. Don’t forget the Rizlas. When he’d gone Colleen would have to make do with White Lightning for a few days. ‘He’s away working for a few days,’ she’d tell me. ‘He’s a good man.’ The black eye was that dodgy cupboard door again. I once remarked to myself that Colleen’s place in the relationship was like her father’s had been.

Two of Colleen’s kids had been Barry’s. All four were in care. Sometimes, if she wasn’t on a bender, she remembered one of their birthdays, prompting empty Buckfast bottles to gather around her.

Her records told a sad but unremarkable story. Her parents had an on-off relationship. ‘Big Gerald’ was fairly stable, waif-like Sally wayward and often violent to him. She left home when Colleen was nine, believed headed to Corby with a miner. Although it was no surprise in the village – Sally was known to ‘like the boaby’ and was serially unfaithful – Colleen was off school for weeks afterwards. Gerald’s mother, as big-built as he was, moved in to help after the desertion.

A few years later Nana died. After that, in Year 3 of secondary school, Colleen changed. Truancy chewed away at her previously near-perfect attendance record, some of her absences long enough require Social Work involvement. Gerald didn’t respond to letters home from school requesting he meet with guidance teachers. When Colleen did attend there was trouble and fighting, and weight fluctuations led to suspicions of an eating disorder. When I came to know her years later I saw the criss-cross scars on her skinny forearms and thighs. Reports told me they had begun to appear in third year at school.

From that age forward Colleen’s medical records gained weight as she continued to lose it. Child Psychologists wrote lengthy assessments, and Social Work case conference minutes ran to ten or more pages, with input from educators, social workers, psychiatric services, and police. Gerald continued to ignore invitations.

Colleen’s descent into chaos steepened. She was about 29 when she attached herself to me. By then she had more or less bottomed out, in an unsteady state of dependence on the cheapest intoxicant available. Her father had died, found hanging in his kitchen. Colleen was now living alone in a second-floor council flat with kick-holes in the doors, surviving from fortnight to fortnight on benefits money. She was a survivor.

I would meet her at times of crisis. They weren’t crises to her, but she went along with the concerned social workers or charities who accompanied her to appointments. I would always attempt support, making another referral to addiction services or writing to the court. Colleen would say little, and fail to attend reviews.

Then one day in her mid-thirties she turned up to one of those follow-ups. I was surprised, and if I admit it probably a little irritated. DNAs – Did Not Attends – freed up ten virtual minutes to catch up, to run a little less late than usual and lessen the delay for the impatient queue in the waiting room. But Colleen was here and she had made an effort. I still remember her aroma, an olfactory cocktail of stale wine, mint and perfume. She said little and there was less I could do. Other than listening and compassion there was nothing ‘medical’ I had to offer.

Colleen DNAd the next scheduled appointment, and I doubt if I thought much about her until the next surprise. When I saw her name on my appointment list a few months later I asked the receptionist who was bringing her this time. Mary was on duty that day and said Colleen had made the appointment herself. She had turned up a week or so back and asked for an appointment with the baldy doctor, unwilling to accept one with any of my partners who could see her earlier. It was a foul afternoon of driving rain and I couldn’t imagine Colleen walking the length of the village.

“Hello Doctor. I’m sorry I couldn’t come last time,” she said when she sat down, dripping.

“Erm, hello, Colleen,” I replied, shuffling in my chair.

Once again, she didn’t say much. We sat through long silences, and I knew the effort of coming to see me and presenting herself reasonably had exhausted her. When she left I looked out at the lashing rain for a few seconds before calling the next patient in.

For a couple of years Colleen’s sporadic attendances continued. We made some progress, I suppose. After a while, I knew the names of her babies and more or less worked out in what order they had made their brief entries into her life. They would always be babies, I realised. Colleen spoke of them in present tense, indicating with her hands how small and light they were. “My eldest, Danielle, she’s so wee! Just five pounds she is, and a touch of the jandies. Yellow, like. Her skin, y’ken.”

Colleen seemed to get something out of coming to see me and kept coming back until she was a regular. I would schedule her next appointment, every four weeks, on a Tuesday. She was usually sober. If she did miss an appointment it meant she was on a bender. I would make the next one for her and she’d be sheepish, apologetic. Once she brought me a packet of Murray Mints.

Sometimes Colleen would look at me, lips apart and hesitant, on the point of saying something. Then a brief shake of her head and she would prepare to leave, reaching down beside her where she always put her Spar bag. I began to wonder what it was she wanted to say, or ask. A lot later I realised that the unspoken thing between us was real, at least to Colleen. And it was important. Clues would be muttered as she was leaving, and I would stare at the surgery door trying to fathom their meaning.

“She was so wee.” What was wee?

“Those wee bones.” Wee bones?

It was something that made her sad, or more often angry. It had taken years to confirm what we weren’t discussing was a person. At times I had wondered if it was a lost pet. If it was real.

Then “she” became “Sarah”. Not a pet’s name. In between appointments I began to think about Colleen a lot. Before one April dawn, I put things together. I still remember the pieces slotting, the satisfaction at my diagnostic detective skills. If I had known how wrong I was I wouldn’t have been such a smug bastard.

My eureka theory went like this: it wasn’t her grandmother’s death that pushed Collen over a cliff. The long absences from school, weight changes, unruly behaviour, anger. “She was so wee.” It all pointed to another child. A daughter no one knew about. Colleen’s official obstetric history was well-documented. Aged 17, the first of four babies, each spirited away before they could bond, in theory. To a different life with a different name.

But where was Sarah? She had to have died. Stillbirth, I hoped.

At coffee time that day I put my theory to one of my partners

“It wouldn’t surprise me in the slightest.” Jack, older and wiser, smiled grimly. “But what can you do? She’s so damaged already. Would it help her? Dragging it out of her.” He went off to start his afternoon surgery.

A week or so later I spoke to Mary.

“You didn’t guess that?” she said, eyebrows raised.

Mary went on to explain that common rumour in the village was that Gerald had fathered some of Colleen’s children. Never overtly unkind, Mary could be judgemental. I was struck by her matter-of-factness.

I began to think of Gerald differently. Always feckless, but nothing like Sally. I hadn’t had him down as a child abuser, but now wondered if his suicide had been out of guilt, not grief for his mother. Thinking of him now gave me a chill. But only Colleen could expose his crimes.

Now I thought I knew what she needed to disclose, I tried to push. It was a mistake. For weeks she disappeared into her old life. A+E reported short attendances, brought by police or from the street by ambulance. When she stabilised we had to start over from somewhere further back on the clue trail. But I could tell she remained determined to unburden herself. Petulant, apologetic, pathetic, but always returning to her stuttering, piecemeal narrative.

I thought I knew her secret but all I could do to help her share it was gently probe and prompt. I was on the right track if she nodded in answer to one of my questions. At times I gambled, asked a direct question, usually met with sullenness. Then one Tuesday, the breakthrough.

Inhale, swallow, go for it. “Sarah died, Colleen, didn’t she?” The last two words dry and squeaky.

A nod, as Colleen reached for the Spar bag.

My pathetic euphoria was short. A concealed pregnancy was a crime, the only thing that could override my duty to maintain a patient’s confidentiality. I wrestled with the dilemma for some weeks, wishing at times I could stop seeing Colleen. That was out of the question. I told myself the story I had spent years drawing out of her was just that. A story. Make-believe.

I believed it though. All the pieces fitted.

Then, as my wife slept, I realised what was wrong. I’d seen Gerald a few times after his mother died, depressed and lost. I’d asked about his habit of stroking a scar on his forearm, and he described being glassed by Sally. She was pregnant when they’d married, and her violence and philandering began when they discovered he was infertile. Baby Sarah couldn’t be Gerald’s.

###

Colleen missed the next few appointments. I didn’t forget, but in the everyday blur she faded. My mind condensed the story: Nana died, grief, motherless, off the rails, pregnant, no surprise, the father a youth in a bus shelter. Simples. I ignored the stillbirth, except in my guilty sleep.

Until this morning’s unexpected ‘flu’ housecall. It had been classic Colleen. Puffed up with whatever she was going to say, but lips pursed, eyes down, silence. I’d looked around her flat. She’d made an effort, the sink empty, no cans under the sofa.

“What do you want to tell me, Colleen?”

Eventually, she’d spoken to the curtained window.

“Up the Dollar Road.”

Before my mind could process the words Colleen had slunk off to her bedroom. Through the door I thought I heard a can fizz.

###

And now, that evening, the waiting room was finally empty.

“Right, Colleen, in you come.”

She surprised me by walking smartly along beside me. As I showed her into my room she popped a mint into her mouth, and I smiled my thanks for her effort.

We sat down, looking at each other expectantly.

I broke the silence. “Colleen, when you said what you said, who were you talking about.”

“You know fine,” she said. Some of her petulance crept in between her too-careful words. She clasped her hands in her lap, knuckles white, and said, “Sorry, I mean...”

“It’s OK. I think you meant Sarah, didn’t you.”

She nodded.

Colleen had finally told me more about Sarah. But what she had said was bouncing in my head. If her baby was in the cemetery there would have to have been a funeral. Records.

My stomach lurched. Oh god.

“Oh, Colleen, you poor…” Her face didn’t move. “Your baby. Your first. You lost her. Up there?”

As my mind played a movie of a desperate teenager in agony, alone in a cemetery, Colleen’s face lifted and turned to me, sweat in the furrows on her brow. Then eyes wide, a jaw-drop before a smile formed, head shaking.

I felt lost, floating, drowning.

Colleen laughed. “Not a baby, you stupit fucker. My ma.”

###

Looking back, it worked out as well as it could. Colleen spewed out the story. Sally, or Sarah to give her proper name, was the one who was up the Dollar Road. When Colleen, aged nine, had seen enough of Gerald being assaulted, she hit her mother from behind with a tin of Carnation Milk. The Sunday treat, I remember her saying. With Sally lifeless on the rug, Gerald went for his mother. Nana took over. The body lay with the rats under the old, decaying pigeon shed. Nana planned the rest. By the time she died herself, Sally would be little more than bones. All Gerald and Colleen had to do was hide them under Nana’s bulk when the coffin lay at the vigil.

Colleen knew she would have to be reported to the police. It was what she wanted. The Judge agreed with Social Services and the Forensic Psychiatrist who was asked to assess Colleen. Guilty of murder, she had served a life term already. She received a suspended sentence on the condition that she engaged with supports.

Colleen exceeded my hopes. There were no more binges, and she complied with the Judge’s conditions. Now, five years later, on the rare times I see her she always has a cheeky laugh at how wrong I got it. A couple of years ago she brought me a gift, a souvenir from Ayr where she’d been to visit her eldest daughter. Danielle, now named Mhairi and with two sons of her own, had traced Colleen with the help of Citizens Advice.

Some Sunday afternoons I invent an excuse to drive to the Spar. If I time it right, there’s a chance I’ll see Colleen on her way to visit her Nana and Sally, up the Dollar Road.

END

© Copyright N J Edmunds 2024

First published in iScot Magazine, Issue 95

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