The Bookshop on the Shore

by Jenny Colgan

  ‘Ssssh,’ she said. ‘We’ll get you all cleaned up.’

  Mary’s mouth opened, and she started to cry in great gouting tearing sobs, as the blood continued to drip onto the floor below.

  Chapter Three

  At last, Ramsay appeared at the door, blanched and immediately disappeared. For a terrible moment, Zoe thought he might have left – just turned and gone. He couldn’t have, surely.

  He was back in a few moments, though, carrying a first aid kit which was in a wooden box and looked as if it might have been left over from any of the last four wars.

  ‘Mary,’ he said, going up and caressing her head as Zoe washed her hands at the bedroom sink and prepared to take a look. ‘Mary, Mary, Mary.’

  The girl wept on.

  ‘I can’t . . . I am so . . . I wish . . .’

  Zoe got down to practicalities. She washed the wound quickly. Most of it was surface, but at the thigh it was deep.

  ‘You’re going to need a stitch,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry, sweetie. It won’t stop bleeding without one. You really got yourself.’

  ‘I’ll call Joan,’ said Ramsay. Zoe stood up.

  ‘I think no,’ she said, shortly. ‘I think maybe she needs to be in hospital.’

  ‘But you said a stitch . . .’

  Zoe shook her head, even as the girl sobbed harder.

  ‘She needs to be assessed, Ramsay. You can see it. I’m sorry. I feel for her, and I have done since I got here. But she needs help. Don’t you think?’

  ‘It’s not her fault,’ said Ramsay miserably.

  ‘I never said it was,’ said Zoe. ‘Don’t you see? It’s because it’s not her fault is why she needs to see someone.’

  She knelt down.

  ‘This bleeding isn’t stopping,’ she said. ‘I think you should call an ambulance. If she’s nicked an artery, we’ll have to be quick.’

  Ramsay fumbled out his phone and called straightaway. Zoe managed to tie a reasonable tourniquet thanks to a first aid course her old job had made her do. But as she was trying to clean Mary’s leg, she noticed something much more worrying – underneath the bright new wound, a faded, old patch of hairless white, an old scar. She glanced up at Ramsay, who looked away. Immediately she realised. He knew. He knew. She burned with a white fury on the little girl’s behalf.

  As they waited for the ambulance, Mary with her head buried in her father’s shoulder, Zoe’s brain was racing. How long had the child been self-harming? Ramsay had seen that scar before, she could tell.

  What had he been doing? Ignoring it? Hoping it would all go away? What the hell kind of a father was he? What was he thinking?

  Mrs MacGlone was summoned to babysit and they stuck to the story that Mary had fallen over and cut herself, and so they were taking her to get her seen to.

  ‘Are you going to the hospital?’ said Mrs MacGlone sceptically. Zoe had already decided. She wanted to be there, see what Ramsay told them there. This was a duty of care issue.

  ‘Yes, I am,’ she said shortly. ‘If you could keep an eye on Hari, that would be helpful.’

  It wasn’t a suggestion.

  * * *

  At the hospital, they waited nervously as Mary was triaged and taken away to get stitched up. She clutched Ramsay’s hand as the nurse worked expertly and quickly and then said, as Zoe had known she would, we’d just like someone to come in and have a few words with Mary on her own as to how this happened, okay?

  Ramsay and Zoe sat two chairs apart in the waiting room. Everything seemed to be taking a very long time. Zoe went and got them two horrible cups of tea from the vending machine but was too angry to start a conversation.

  Eventually the receptionist came over.

  ‘Which one’s next of kin?’ she said, her face looking from one to the other. Zoe wondered what she thought they were – an estranged couple? Two people who’d fallen out? Divorcees?

  Ramsay stood up, looking as usual ridiculously over-tall in the low-ceilinged A&E. His head hit the light fitting.

  The receptionist looked up at him as she prepared to write something on her clipboard.

  Chapter Four

  Zoe found herself twisting round, staring at Ramsay. He was bright red. She raised her eyebrows at him but he point-blank was refusing to meet her gaze.

  At that moment, the young doctor emerged from the side room Mary was in and beckoned them forward.

  ‘Can I come?’ said Zoe, still burning and absolutely not letting this go ahead without her as a witness. Ramsay shrugged and she tagged along behind. Mary had been moved to a ward, so they now had the room to themselves.

  ‘Now,’ said the man, looking at the two of them. ‘I can’t do anything without your explicit consent to this. You’re her legal guardian?’

  Ramsay nodded.

  The doctor frowned.

  ‘Her only guardian?’

  Ramsay nodded swiftly again, as if he had absolutely no need for ridiculous discussions on the subject. His patrician air made the young doctor more nervous than he seemed to be already. He consulted his notes and cleared his throat.

  ‘Well, we’ve sutured the wound but it nicked an artery. Potentially a very harmful injury.’

  He looked up, eyes wide behind his glasses.

  ‘Potentially lethal if you hadn’t found her.’

  ‘Jesus,’ Zoe couldn’t help saying under her breath. Ramsay simply closed his eyes.

  ‘We’ve patched her up,’ he said. ‘But I’m afraid by law we have to keep her under observation. Just in case this was a . . .’

  ‘Suicide attempt,’ said Ramsay, and the doctor flushed, looking relieved he didn’t have to actually use the words.

  Ramsay blinked. His fingers were clenched very close into his fists.

  ‘Whereabouts?’ he demanded. ‘Here?’

  ‘No,’ said the doctor. ‘We have a facility attached to the hospital.’

  Ramsay clenched his jaw.

  ‘I don’t want her to go there. She’s not going to that . . . asylum.’

  ‘It’s the best place . . . They have the facilities . . . We can’t . . .’

  Ramsay’s face remained absolutely stony; there was none of the normal, equivocal gaze about him.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘She’s not going there.’ He got up. ‘I’m going in to see her.’

  * * *

  All three entered the small antiseptic room together. The hospital was quiet at that time of day, not at all like the noisy bustling places Zoe used to take Hari to. It was almost restful. Mary was sitting up, scowling.

  ‘My darling,’ said Ramsay, going over to the bed and putting his arm around her. ‘My sweetheart. I’m so sorry.’

  Ramsay looked at Mary and framed his large hands on her tiny peaky face.

  ‘Tell me you weren’t . . .’

  Mary’s huge eyes filled with tears. She shook her head.

  ‘I wasn’t . . . I wasn’t trying to kill myself. I promise. I promise!’

  Ramsay engulfed her in a hug.

  ‘It’s okay, sweetheart, it’s okay.’

  ‘Don’t make them put me in the nuthouse! Please! Don’t let them put me in the nuthouse!’

  ‘Don’t . . . don’t call it that,’ said Ramsay. ‘All we want to do is make you less unhappy, sweetheart.’

  ‘But I just . . . It was just a little cut.’

  ‘But . . . but why?’

  Ramsay’s voice was so sad, so full of tenderness, as if he already knew there wasn’t an answer. Zoe looked at him, wavering.

  ‘To try . . . I thought it might help.’

  She said the next words so quietly it was almost impossible to hear.

  ‘Where the scar is.’

  Ramsay turned his face away and couldn’t speak. Instead he pulled Mary closer to him as she whispered in his ear.

  ‘I miss her.’

  ‘I know,’ he said, rocking her like she was a lot younger than her nine years. ‘I know you do. I know.’

  ‘I’m doing my best, swee
theart.’ Mary lowered her head. ‘I’m doing . . . me . . . and Zoe . . .’

  ‘Oh, you and Zoe,’ she said, her tone dripping with sarcasm. ‘Oh yes, I forgot about “wonderful Zoe”.’

  ‘Who found you,’ chided Ramsay gently. ‘Before you bled out all over the floor.’

  Mary pouted.

  ‘You should probably be grateful.’

  ‘Why?’ said Mary.

  ‘Because!’ said Ramsay, his voice suddenly raised. ‘Because I can’t lose another person! I can’t lose you, Mary! I can’t! I’m your dad!’

  Tears came to Mary’s eyes and she nodded.

  ‘Yes,’ she said in a tiny voice. ‘You’re my dad.’

  ‘I’m your dad!’ said Ramsay. ‘I’m your dad! And I love you! And I will try to make things right as well as I can, Mary . . . but you have to . . . you have to stay with me. You have to. You have to try. Even when you don’t want to. Even when it’s hard. Even when you feel it’s all my fault . . .’

  Her face whipped round, and Zoe realised he’d hit a nerve.

  ‘I know you think that,’ he went on. ‘I know you do. I can’t . . . There’s nothing I can say or do to change that. But please believe me. I am trying.’

  Mary shuddered in his arms, and let the tears run down over his shirt.

  ‘I wasn’t trying to . . .’

  ‘Hush now,’ said Ramsay. ‘I’ll stay,’ he decided. ‘Doctor, I can stay, right?’

  ‘Well, she’d really be better off in—’

  ‘No! She told you. It was a small cut that hit the wrong place. It was an accident. We’re staying here.’

  Zoe stood up. Her anger had dissipated, replaced by a deep pity and a sense that Mrs MacGlone, of all people, had been right: she was intruding on something deeper than she understood; on things that were not her business.

  ‘I’ll go and sort the others,’ said Zoe. ‘Get tea on.’

  She came over.

  ‘I hope you’re okay.’

  Blinking, Mary looked up at her. And for the first time said something Zoe wasn’t expecting:

  ‘Thank you.’

  Chapter Five

  Back home, Zoe was instantly set upon by everyone. What was wrong with Mary? Shackleton was perturbed.

  ‘Is she attention-seeking?’ he asked intently. ‘Or is it . . . ? Was it . . . ?’

  The kindness in his voice again was unusual.

  ‘He is asking,’ said Patrick. ‘If Mary is most absolutely dead.’

  Zoe glanced down.

  ‘She is most absolutely not dead,’ she said, trying to make her voice sound light. ‘It was just an accident; she had a bit of a fright. She’ll be back tomorrow and we will all be very, very nice to her.’

  In fact, she realised as she walked into the kitchen, the golden autumn light heavy through the windows, even though today had felt like it had lasted about a hundred hours and she couldn’t believe it was still daylight and not the middle of the night, there was something different.

  It was heavy with great coils of ivy and acorns. The boys had decorated it. It looked beautiful. And on the stove was a simmering pot of stew, with red berries and wild mushrooms carefully collected by Porteous’s owner. It smelled heavenly.

  ‘Did you do that?’ she said, turning to Shackleton, who smiled bashfully. ‘That’s amazing! Gorgeous.’

  ‘She’s not coming home tonight?’ he said, worried. ‘And Dad?’

  ‘No,’ said Zoe, shaking her head. ‘I’ll stay home tomorrow and hopefully I’ll be able to go and pick them up then. Would you like to come?’

  Oddly, both the boys shrank back.

  ‘I don’t . . . Not hospital,’ said Patrick, uncharacteristically quiet on the subject. They both looked terrified.

  ‘Okay,’ said Zoe. ‘Hari and I will go, won’t we, sweetie?’

  And the little boy looked up, beaming.

  * * *

  Zoe was trepidatious driving in the next day. Hari was bouncing happily in the back, his eyes following the bright red and orange falling leaves, swirling and dancing across the windscreen.

  ‘There’s so many,’ said Zoe wonderingly. ‘Where do they all even go?’

  The big – huge – relief was that they were going to discharge Mary. The paediatric psychiatrist had accepted her explanation that she was self-harming rather than trying to commit suicide. Not that that was necessarily okay in itself; they had to contact all sorts of authorities and phone numbers, which Zoe saw Ramsay glance at in a fairly cursory manner and made a mental note to herself to grab the list and make a plan of action. They would also join the CAHMS waiting list. Without exactly saying so, the psychiatrist implied that this might take some time.

  But they weren’t going to admit her to the inpatient facility. Ramsay’s patent relief was overwhelming, as Zoe pulled up in front of the hospital to find them both waiting there for her.

  Ramsay had shadows under his eyes – he couldn’t have slept and seemed to have aged five years in one night – and when Mary baulked at being pushed in a wheelchair, he carried her into the back of the car himself. Hari waved his hands about, grinning happily to see her. As usual, Mary disdainfully ignored him, but he was never bowed. He was just pleased.

  Zoe and Ramsay regarded them in silence, as Zoe took the wheel again without Ramsay saying anything about it, even though he could barely contort himself into the front seat of the little green car. He looked absolutely beaten up and she was happy to drive through the long golden roads, utterly empty, in silence, which made it a pleasure in itself, the long rolling fields ahead full of gathered wheat in huge round – not square – bales, and every so often catching a glimpse of sparkling sunlight on the loch, or a tractor tootling along one way or another, or a motor caravan pootling up the middle of the road that Zoe would daringly overtake.

  She was waiting for the two in the back to fall asleep which, lulled by the drone of the engine, they soon did so she could ask Ramsay a few very serious questions.

  But by the time they had slumped over in their seats, Mary’s face in the mirror still chalky white; her leg up in the middle of the seats, heavily bandaged and supported, Zoe glanced to the side . . . and saw that Ramsay was asleep too, his head leaning against the window, the sunlight burnishing the sandy curls on his large forehead, the tension at last drained out of his face.

  She couldn’t bear to wake him, and so she let him sleep, let everyone sleep, and nothing broke the silence save the occasional bump in the road and the occasional cry of the birds cycling higher and higher in the updraught.

  Chapter Six

  Zoe put Mary to bed without her waking up, carefully changing her into pyjamas, then went out to find Ramsay.

  She found him eventually down by the old abandoned rowing boat, staring out across the water.

  ‘She’s on a waiting list,’ he said eventually, as if knowing what Zoe would say before she even opened her mouth.

  ‘But what about privately?’ said Zoe. She couldn’t deep down believe that Ramsay didn’t have any money, whatever the state of the gardens; the house made it simply impossible.

  Ramsay heaved a sigh.

  ‘I’m . . . I’m not a . . .’

  His hand went to the back of his neck.

  ‘We tried. Before. It didn’t work out well.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘She refused to talk other than to call the therapist a . . . name I wouldn’t like to repeat.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Zoe. The question was on her lips and she couldn’t ask it: why was she like this?

  ‘They wanted to drug her. Give her really serious drugs.’

  ‘I think medication can help a lot of people.’

  ‘Dosing my little girl . . . when she didn’t want to take anything. She’s just sad. She has . . .’ Ramsay’s gaze was very distant. ‘She has good reason to be.’

  He turned to Zoe, his expression imploring. ‘Being sad because you miss your mum . . . I mean, that’s normal. Not a medical condition that sho
uld be drugged into submission. Don’t you think?’

  Zoe considered it.

  ‘Yes, but if she’s hurting herself . . .’

  ‘I know, I know, this changes everything.’

  He ran his fingers through his hair and had obviously no idea it stuck up in all different directions afterwards. Then he turned his face away and it took Zoe a couple of moments to realise suddenly, with an odd shock, that he was crying, and trying with all his might to pretend that he wasn’t.

  ‘Let me talk to someone at the school,’ said Zoe, going towards him. Had it been someone else, she’d have put her hand on them, given them a cuddle. But with Ramsay this presented two problems: firstly, he was so enormous that she would end up putting her arm around his hip or something equally awkward, and secondly, of course, he was her boss. But standing there doing nothing felt bad too. She ended up flapping her arms rather weakly, and he quickly rubbed his face with the collar of his shirt and stood upright again.

  ‘Sorry,’ he said.

  ‘Don’t ever be,’ said Zoe, and looked at her watch to make it look like she was very busy and had something to do. ‘But I could see what Kirsty offers . . . They must have a counsellor.’

  ‘No, don’t . . .’ Ramsay winced. ‘I don’t want . . . gossip and social services and everything . . . It just makes her worse. If we’re going to get her back to school.’

  Zoe nodded. ‘Okay. Well. I might talk to the headteacher privately then. We’re friends.’

  He winced again.

  ‘Okay. Well. Maybe casually. Just to see what they do have.’

  Zoe turned.

  ‘If it helps . . . I don’t think she’s alone. In this cutting thing?’

  Ramsay’s face was so sad.

  ‘Christ, really?’

  Out on the lake, there was a quick splash as a salmon bounded up, glistened like silver in the sunlight and vanished again.

  ‘Oh,’ said Zoe.

  ‘What?’ said Ramsay.

  Zoe stared at the sun gleaming off the shiny hide of a seal who was staring at them so intently it was impossible to think it hadn’t recognised them. The expression on its face was like someone trying to place you at a party.