by Adele Parks
The moment she’d got back to her flat Kirsten had run a hot, deep bath and climbed into it without pausing to check if the temperature was even bearable. The water was scalding and scorched her flesh but she hardly noticed. One of her flatmates had woken up and angrily complained about the lights going on and all the noise at such a late hour but Kirsten didn’t give a toss. One small part of her brain was already calculating that it was important to form a tight alibi as to her whereabouts and so her flatmate knowing she was at home was a good thing. She’d yelled through the bathroom door that she’d been in bed for ages unable to sleep and that she was having a late-night bath in the hope that it might send her off. She was fairly sure her flatmate had bought it. Kirsten was used to finding herself in trouble and usually she managed to get out of it. Not always though. Oh fuck. Not always and she had to get out of this mess. She had to. Kirsten had cried, causing rivers of mascara to cascade down her pretty face. She’d hugged her knees tightly to her body and silently sobbed until the bathwater turned cold.
How was she going to get out of this mess? How? It was impossible to fix. He was dead.
27
‘An ambulance has taken him to the Royal Surrey. I’m sure you want to get there as quickly as possible,’ said the policewoman.
‘He’s not dead?’ Steph felt a tidal wave of relief surge through her body.
‘You thought he was dead?’ the policeman asked suspiciously.
‘You seemed so serious, so deathly,’ stuttered Steph. She couldn’t think, couldn’t imagine, couldn’t breathe. He was alive. Oh thank God, the bastard was alive. She took deep gasps of air but there wasn’t enough oxygen in the room. She rushed to the kitchen window and flung it open. The sweet smell of dewy grass and the chill of the early spring morning cradled her. The officers watched her carefully.
‘It is serious. A hit-and-run has severe legal consequences,’ said the policeman grimly.
‘And your husband isn’t yet conscious,’ added the policewoman. ‘Where were you last night, Mrs Blake?’
The policewoman slipped the question into the room as stealthily as a small mouse creeping around looking for crumbs, yet Steph knew the danger.
‘Me?’ she asked stupidly, stalling for time. Her mind started to whizz and whirl, she was certain that the police would hear her forming excuses and considering explanations.
‘Just routine to ask.’ The policewoman smiled reassuringly.
‘Yes. Of course.’ Steph pulled the window closed and took a moment to lock it. ‘I was at my friend’s home. I was at Pip’s. Philippa Foxton. We were having a celebratory drink, actually. She’d had some good news.’
‘What time were you there?’
‘I got there about seven and I left at about eleven, maybe eleven thirty.’
‘She can verify that, can she?’ asked the policeman bluntly.
‘Yes, of course,’ replied Steph firmly. She reached for her handbag, ‘Now, should we get going?’
The neighbourhood watch scheme in Hilledge Grove was tested and passed with flying colours. Just as the officers were asking whether there was someone Stephanie could call to watch the boys while she rushed to the hospital to be at Julian’s bedside, Mrs Hodgson from next door ‘popped by’. She’d seen the police car and she wondered whether everything was all right. Steph was, for once, grateful for the fact that her neighbour was a nosy empty-nester with too much time on her hands. The thoughtful Christmas and birthday cards, occasional jars of homemade jam and donations of rhubarb from Stephanie’s garden were all paid back, with dividends, when Mrs Hodgson ushered Steph to the police car insisting that there was no need to worry about the boys, she’d take care of everything.
Stephanie had never sat in a police car before. A thoroughly law-abiding citizen, she’d never so much as received a speeding ticket. She felt conspicuous and panicked as she ducked into the back seat. The policeman actually said, ‘Mind your head,’ the way they did in films. Stephanie felt tears prick her eyes. How could this be her life? Her husband was in hospital, he was an adulterer, she was in a police car, a crime had been committed.
The car smelt of sweat, produced through adrenalin and dread. She wondered who else had sat in the back of this car. What sort of person? Pimps, drug dealers? Murderers? The world’s lowlife. Now she was in the same seat. Stephanie’s backside itched and her mind whirled.
They silently zipped through the streets. There was no traffic on the roads as yet, it was too early for Surrey to mooch into action. By contrast the hospital was heaving. There was a scattering of dazed and bloodied people waiting in A&E, a fair number of confused and restless patients aimlessly wandering the corridors, and seemingly endless grief-stricken, terrified souls hanging around the vending machines waiting for news about their loved ones. The angels of life and death didn’t give a toss what time it was.
Steph was led through the endless corridors of beige lino, ushered through heavy swing doors and finally into an area which bore the signpost Intensive Care Unit. Steph thought it was a brutal notice. Sadly, it was entirely Ronseal, it did what it said on the tin. The people behind these doors required intensive care, ordinary care was inadequate, it wasn’t enough to keep them safe and functioning.
The officers introduced Stephanie to a receptionist and then the policeman gave Steph his card. PC Terry Weybridge. He did it in such a way that suggested they were colleagues who’d met at a networking conference, he said they’d be in touch but his promise seemed more threatening than comforting. The policewoman also gave Steph her card. Her name was Sergeant Mary Jean Brown. The name was somehow reassuring. It was a solid, promising name. Steph thought that she might like to have had a cup of coffee with Mary Jean Brown under different circumstances. Say, for example, if they’d met at a book group, rather than over her comatose husband’s body, Sergeant Mary Jean Brown was the sort of woman Steph would want to become friends with: calm, experienced, sympathetic. Steph felt confused and strangely bereft as she watched the policeman and woman walk back along the corridor, away from her. Shouldn’t they have to stay with her, at least until she saw Julian? Who would prop her up now?
Stephanie was given a form, she was asked to sit down, offered some tea (which she refused), asked to sit down again (when had she stood up?), she couldn’t answer the questions on the form, it was too confusing although usually she was efficient and accurate when completing questionnaires of any sort. Again she was asked if there was anyone she wanted to call.
Pip. The solution came to Steph straight like an arrow.
Pip would help. She’d fill out the forms and hold her hand. She’d bring tissues and maybe toothpaste and a deodorant. Steph could smell her own stale body. She recognised the smell, it was exactly the smell that was emitted when you unzipped a sleeping bag after a poor and restless night’s sleep on a camping trip, sweet not sour.
Stephanie was not a natural camper. She liked her home comforts far too much to think it was a good idea to use up Julian’s precious leave battling with inclement weather on the Northumberland coast. Julian didn’t subscribe to trips to Cornwall like the rest of Surrey, he preferred the brooding landscapes of the north. Steph would have liked to stick to five-star hotels which laid chocolates on the pillows when they turned down the beds. Yet she had never said as much and they camped at least twice a year over bank holiday weekends because Julian was firm in his belief that the boys would benefit from camping trips. He was staunch in his insistence that their boys ought to be the sort of boys who were comfortable with pegs, torches, compasses, portable gas stoves, light aluminium pan sets and groundsheets. It had been easy to be seduced. Cath Kidston had a lot to answer for. Steph had bought beautifully patterned cagoules, a floral parasol and brightly coloured melamine beakers, she’d donned spotty Wellington boots and gamely joined in. Despite the wet and the sweat and the mould and the cold, Stephanie admitted that she enjoyed herself in a slightly masochistic way, it was fun to see what she and her boys were physically capa
ble of. Besides the bracing walks and daring boat trips, they played cards in the tent, Alfie kept hiding the aces, Harry smiled for three solid days. They fried sausages and heated tins of beans. The experience was like something out of an Enid Blyton book.
She’d give anything to be freezing on a beach right now.
Steph’s eyes stung with lack of sleep. She worried that it wasn’t nice to smell so stale when you had to meet a doctor. But if Pip came to her, who would look after Chloe? Maybe Steph should call her parents. She glanced at the clock. No, it was too early. They’d be so terrified to receive a call at this time in the morning. She’d have to wait an hour at least. Steph’s mother had been the sort who dragged her daughter out of bed, bathed her and dressed her in her Sunday best before she’d take her to the doctors. Would she be cross with Steph for being so slovenly? Or would she understand? Steph didn’t know the rules. It was Armageddon.
Steph waited and waited and waited, for what seemed to be hours, and then she checked the clock – four minutes had gone by. That couldn’t be right, could it? Another age past, a nurse informed her that her husband was having tests. The nurse couldn’t explain what the tests were for or how much longer they would take. Finally, a doctor came and stood in front of Steph. For a moment Steph lost confidence in whether he was actually a doctor. He was wearing a white coat and he looked worn out but then he said his name was Mr Khan. Mr Khan started to use words like, ‘profound state of unconsciousness’ and ‘acute neurologic injuries’. The words whirled around Steph’s head but would not settle in any sort of order.
‘I want to see a doctor,’ she insisted, she felt exposed and made susceptible by her confusion.
Mr Khan guided her to a chair in the corridor (no matter how often someone sat her down she seemed to jump back up again, a veritable Jack-in-the-Box). Seeing her confusion he gently explained he was a doctor, a consultant, a specialist if you like. That was a good thing, Steph told herself. He was a specialist. He’d know what he was talking about, he’d have answers. Yet, needing a specialist was a bad thing. Very bad. Mr Khan had a gentle and practical face. He was born to do this job, a job where he had to win people’s respect and trust within a heartbeat. Steph tried to concentrate on the tricky words that he was using. He was saying that the head trauma was caused by a blow. He didn’t want to speculate on how that blow could have happened. All he’d say was that the police were investigating. He added that the good news was her husband had not sustained any other serious injuries, besides the blow to his head; he was badly bruised and had two cracked ribs but the specialist didn’t seem to rate those. There was no internal bleeding or broken limbs that they were aware of but it was too early to fully comprehend the extent or exact nature of the trauma. They’d been running investigative tests and would continue to do so, as necessary.
‘We’ll know more presently. These cases are unpredictable. The underlying cause of coma is bilateral damage to the reticular formation of the midbrain, which is important in regulating sleep.’
Stephanie heard coma and nothing else.
Was she ready to see her husband now?
At the door to the hospital room, the doctor turned to Stephanie. He pushed his glasses further up the bridge of his nose, he had tiny beads of sweat nestled all the way along the top of his eyebrows. ‘We find patients often respond well to a familiar voice at this early time. I do urge you to talk to your husband.’
If only I had, thought Steph. If only.
28
Pip practically sprinted Chloe to school. Initially her speed was because not only had she successfully managed to hide Robbie’s presence from Chloe but she’d also successfully persuaded Robbie to stay put (it hadn’t been that tricky, actually) and so she was motivated by the thought of dashing home for yet more sex. Who could blame her for enjoying the feast after such a long famine?
As she dashed to school her thoughts fled to Stephanie and Julian. Pip still couldn’t believe it. Not really and truly. Julian an adulterer? No, it couldn’t be true. However, about halfway to school, all thoughts of Stephanie and Julian were ousted as she was suddenly struck by the thought that Robbie might be some sort of professional thief. She hardly knew him! Well, other than in the Biblical sense. OK, last night, when they’d talked and talked, she had felt as though she’d known him for ages and she felt as though she could trust him but that was idiotic. The facts were a) she was a poor judge of character as far as men were concerned, b) she was unable to remember with any clarity a single thing they’d talked about last night anyway (other than she had an awful feeling she had perhaps dwelt a little too long on her break-up with Dylan), and c) she’d only met Robbie less than forty-eight hours ago, even she could not pass that off as a meaningful relationship. There was a chance that Robbie Donaldson had sweet-talked his way into her house and her knickers with the sole purpose of clearing out her home of all valuables. How had she ever bought into that male fertility nurse line? Who had heard of male fertility nurses? By the time she got back she might discover that her flat had been stripped of electrical equipment, and her sheets (if still there) would be cold.
However, as Pip risked life and limb (both hers and her daughter’s) darting across the A road between the speeding cars (yet again she wished that she had the energy to start a sustained campaign for a zebra crossing), she consoled herself with the thought that even if Robbie was some sort of professional thief – who had gone to extreme lengths to lull her into a false sense of security – she had very little (actually nothing) of value for him to steal. Her TV was rented and insured through the rental company for the few quid it was worth, her DVD player had been purchased a couple of Christmases ago from Boots of all places (with points from her loyalty card) and she couldn’t think that Robbie would be that interested in her hair dryer, her hair straighteners or her vibrator. Although her straighteners were GHD and invaluable to her, he just wouldn’t get it.
Still, she ran home with her fingers crossed. She crossed the fingers on one hand in the hope that on her return she’d find all her possessions exactly where she’d left them and she crossed the fingers on the other hand in the hope that he’d be exactly where she’d left him; there was a danger that he’d have hot-footed it out of there the moment she and Chloe had closed the door behind them. She couldn’t kid herself she was what was classically known as a great catch. She was thirty-something (best to stay a little vague as to the exact numerical value of that something) and a single mum, who while saved from the indignity of droopy boobs was suffering from a severe case of sagging self-confidence. Besides, it crossed her mind that running through the streets with her fingers crossed might lead some to believe that she was more than a little bit weird.
She put the key in the lock and gently pushed open the door to her flat. Instead of being greeted with tumbleweed or any signs of a robbery, Pip was greeted with the delicious smell of bacon grilling and the sight of Robbie in one of her aprons. It was a floral number, it took quite a body and an attitude to carry it off. But he did.
‘I didn’t know I had bacon in the fridge,’ she commented, as she edged through the door and slipped out of her jacket.
‘You didn’t. In fact you didn’t have much in, other than some really fancy crisps.’
‘I used the last of the milk up on Chloe’s Weetabix,’ said Pip defensively. She was used to her homemaking skills not coming up to par but she wasn’t used to anyone, other than Chloe, being aware that they didn’t.
Robbie shrugged good-naturedly. ‘I guessed that you probably do your big shop on a Wednesday. I never have anything in the house the day I’m due to go to the supermarket either.’ Pip nodded. She was keen to accept his explanation, even though it was untrue. She didn’t do a big shop on Wednesdays, or indeed any other day of the week, with any sort of regularity. She was far more likely to pick up a microwave meal and a few essentials like milk, tea bags and a copy of Heat magazine at the overpriced One Stop on the walk home from school. Robbie continued,
‘I popped out and got some bacon, sausages, eggs and stuff. I found your spare key in the jam jar marked “spare key”.’
‘Right.’ Not able to resist, Pip glanced towards the jar to check the key had been returned. It had. She couldn’t decide if she was disappointed or relieved. It was too early to entirely rule out the possibility that the man was psycho and if that was the case she definitely didn’t want him to have her key, on the other hand he might just be Prince Charming, in which case . . .
‘I thought you might appreciate a big breakfast,’ added Robbie.
‘You mean to mop up my hangover?’ said Pip with a weary grin.
‘Erm, no, I was thinking of storing up some calories, considering all the energy you are going to use this morning,’ replied Robbie with a much more confident, cheeky grin that, happily, left Pip in no doubt that he wasn’t suggesting a jog around the park. ‘Your timing is perfect. We’re good to go,’ he added, placing two plates stacked with attractive-looking cholesterol on to the table.
Pip, prone to inane chatter, particularly when nervous or embarrassed, surprised herself by relaxing into if not a comfortable silence then at least a definite silence while she ate. She found that instead of worrying about the fact that she hadn’t had time to apply any makeup (not even the briefest wave of a mascara wand) she focused on the fact that this was the very first time she’d shared breakfast with anyone (other than Chloe) in this flat, it was also the first time anyone (other than Steph) had cooked for her in many years. Again Pip’s thoughts flew to Steph. What must she be going through? Pip resolved to call her the moment Robbie left.
Pip considered that she ought to feel awkward, especially when the yolk of the fried egg found its way down her chin and Robbie wiped it away with a mucky tea towel. She ought to be more self-conscious about the fact that the mugs that Robbie had brewed the tea in were both chipped and mismatched and that her washing (clean but revealing) lay in mountainous stacks around the kitchen (would he think it was a nice homely touch that her bras and tights were hung across the radiator?). But she found that no amount of chaos or muddle could chisel through her feelings of contentment and – good Lord – was the word security overstating the case? It felt pleasant having Robbie here in her messy kitchen. More than pleasant, it felt appropriate. It felt right.