About Last Night

by Adele Parks

  ‘Right.’ Kirsten wondered whether Jake was, like, uber-square or were his brothers terrified of him and therefore happy to hand over their goods if he asked? She’d nicked things off her brother all the time when she’d lived at home, money, fags, T-shirts, his iPod. She thought it was probably best not to mention to Jake that until she was fourteen years old, it had been practically a tradition for her to open all her brother’s Christmas presents on Christmas Eve and swap tags if she thought he was getting cooler stuff than she was. The tradition was only abandoned because once she was fourteen her parents stopped buying Christmas presents and just wrote large cheques instead.

  The train and taxi journey flew by and before Kirsten knew it they were at the hospital. She had often visited people in hospital before. When she was about sixteen there was a whole spate of occasions when her mates found their way on to a ward with some sort of attention-seeking affliction. One of her friends had her stomach pumped after a half-hearted, melodramatic attempt to end it all, another had an abortion, a third had twins (poor cow!) and a couple of others were treated for bulimia, anorexia, depression or a combination of the above. It wasn’t because all of Kirsten’s friends were drama queens that she’d ended up visiting the hospital on so many occasions at such desperate times. It was more a case of her liking to make friends with girls who were in crisis, and this was not because she was the milk of human kindness and believed her mother’s saying that ‘a friend in need is a friend indeed’, it was just she liked to be up close and personal with the gossip. When she’d visited Sicky Vicky, the bulimic, Vicky had actually asked if they’d ever met before and Mad Mel had cried for a nurse and asked to have her removed, calling her an evil cow and no sort of friend. Kirsten thought it was probably the medication that made her go so mental, that or she’d heard that Kirsten was the one who had coined the name Mad Mel in the first place. Anyway, Kirsten had thought that these experiences would all stand her in good stead when she visited Jules. She did not expect to be shocked or frightened. Or moved.

  ‘Are you OK? You’re as white as a ghost,’ said Jake. Kirsten was aware that he’d slipped his arm around her shoulders but she couldn’t feel any pleasure in the intimacy at all.

  ‘He looks like a ghost,’ she whispered, staring at the shadow of a man lying still on the bed.

  Jake coughed uncomfortably. He couldn’t deny it. Julian looked as though he was at death’s door. The truth was Julian was at death’s door. He was shrivelled, grey and frail. It was a lot to take in. Knowing something and seeing it were two very different things. It was like watching the ten o’ clock news, everyone knew there were wars and famines and torture and murders in the world but it wasn’t very real unless you stood where the victim stood, or at least where the cameraman stood.

  ‘He looks so completely different from when I last saw him,’ gasped Kirsten.

  Then she started to make strange sounds. She was gulping at the air as though she couldn’t get enough. Had she forgotten how to breathe? She was shaking so much she looked as though she was body-popping. Jake realised she was in shock and questioned his own judgement in bringing her here. He’d never imagined Kirsten would take it this badly. She’d said she wasn’t that into Julian. He’d thought she’d meant that what they had going on was just a bit of ill-considered, mindless fun. But that clearly wasn’t the case. Kirsten was devastated to see Julian in such a mess.

  ‘Come on now,’ he mumbled but he wasn’t certain what he meant by that or what good it was. He just needed her to hold it together. Julian’s brother, who’d said a brief hello to them and then gone to chat to the doctor, might be back any moment. What would he think if he came into the room and Kirsten was lying prone across the bed practically passing out? The last thing Jake wanted was for the family to guess Julian had a mistress. His poor wife must be going through enough right now without that sort of complication.

  ‘He looks so weak and frail,’ muttered Kirsten through her gasps. ‘He might actually die.’ This comment was pushed out as a squeak. She couldn’t believe it. She couldn’t imagine it. Of course the thought had skittered across her mind, loads, since Tuesday, she wasn’t an animal. Tuesday had been terrifying and part of her had lived in constant fear that at any minute she might hear the news that he’d died but she hadn’t thought much about what that would actually mean. She’d mostly been worried about her involvement in the incident.

  ‘This is not my fault,’ whispered Kirsten. Jake had to lean close to her to hear properly.

  ‘No, of course not. No one is saying that,’ he said soothingly.

  ‘In many ways, it’s his own fault. He practically asked for it,’ she added as she moved closer to the bed. Jake didn’t follow her. He let his arm slip to his side.

  ‘What do you mean?’ he asked carefully.

  What had she ever done to him? Well, before Tuesday? Nothing. Nothing at all. She’d kept her side of the unwritten deal, she’d been a perfect mistress! She’d always been available, she’d always made an effort to look super cute, she’d tried to be funny and interesting (she’d taken such care to stockpile interesting facts about Paris Hilton and Celebrity Big Brother so that she’d always have something to talk to him about), and she’d swallowed! She did not deserve to be treated the way he’d treated her! How dare he think he could just brush her off like a piece of fluff, toss her away like a used tissue!

  This was not her fault. It was just a reaction. You know, a consequence. An accident.

  Kirsten tried to be indignant but she was simply terrified. The resulting adrenalin surged through her body causing her to quake even more, she felt a lot like she’d felt last Tuesday. My God, she didn’t know whether she was coming or going. It was not her fault. It really wasn’t. She hadn’t asked him to start the affair and she certainly hadn’t asked him to finish it! Because he’d started and then finished the affair, she was bound to be upset and accidents do tend to happen when people are upset! And because he was married, he was the one that insisted on going to an out-of-the-way place, which was why she had been driving in the first place. Daddy was right, it was a huge car for her to handle (Daddy should have stuck to his guns and not allowed her to drive it, no matter how much Mummy had begged him to – he was a tiny bit to blame for this whole disaster too). Not as much as Jules, though. It was really Jules’s own fault. She hadn’t asked him to chase after her, had she? He’d leapt out in front of the car, she couldn’t have stopped, no one could have.

  It was not her fault.

  She panicked. It was understandable. To be honest, it was a miracle that she hadn’t killed herself on her drive back up the A3 that night. She couldn’t even remember much about how she’d managed to get back to her flat, she just drove. The lack of recall might be to do with the champagne she’d drunk earlier on or it might have been shock. Because, fuck, it was shocking. The yelling, the thud, his body falling on to the bonnet of her car and then slumping heavily on to the ground. It made her sick just thinking of it. Through the rainy car window she’d watched him slump in front of her and she’d just driven away.

  ‘What did you say?’ asked Jake.

  ‘The yelling, the thud, I just drove away,’ whispered Kirsten. Oh fuck, how much of that had she just said aloud? How much had stayed in her head and how much had escaped into this room?

  52

  Her lips, her hips, her tits punched out at Pip, almost embarrassing Pip by being so blatantly sensual in a hospital room. The woman, or rather girl, was mesmerising, it was no wonder Julian had fallen so utterly and completely in . . . In what? In love with her? In lust for certain. Poor, poor Stephanie, how could she compete with this vision of gorgeousness? Pip gazed at the girl’s long, long, sexy, gently muscular legs, her high bum and pert tits. It was a fact that this girl-woman’s ribs had never been pushed aside to accommodate a growing baby, her skin hadn’t stretched, sagged, wrinkled or simply slipped to her ankles, the way it seemed to do once you’d reached Pip and Steph’s age. The girl-woma
n was blonde and tanned and toned and honed. She had flawless skin and make-up, she wore tight-fitting, up-to-the-minute clothes and shoes. She was perfect.

  Except for the sewage that was spurting out of her mouth. The dirt that she’d held in her head. The mess that had squeezed her heart.

  Pip listened as the mistress poured out vile words over Julian’s bed. Pip was aware that the young man in the room was swaying with confusion, he looked as though he’d just been thumped as he listened to all the gory details about that night.

  ‘Chloe, go and find a nurse, now,’ said Pip. She couldn’t let her daughter listen to this but she couldn’t miss a word herself. Chloe heard the urgency and determination in her mother’s voice and sped off without argument.

  The girl-woman was unstoppable. She was hysterical, crying and yelling. Sometimes addressing the comatose Julian, sometimes the handsome guy who was with her, sometimes it seemed as though she didn’t know anyone else was in the room, she just needed to talk.

  ‘I couldn’t get a massage, not even that. I deserved that much, didn’t I? But that silly bitch in the spa embarrassed me beyond limits so I stomped back to the room and shook Jules awake, insisting he dress for dinner. He did, eventually, but we didn’t sit down until nearly ten. I was starving! And then we ate in one of those hideous painful, sulky silences. You know? You know what I mean?’ She turned angrily to Jake. ‘Like married people! I mean it was humiliating. But I certainly wasn’t going to be the one that made the effort to keep the conversation going, no way! After all, it was his fault that we were having such a shit time. I ate three courses. I didn’t even care if the hotel staff kept looking at their watches and yawning, really obviously. I ordered coffee too. He owed me!’

  Jake slumped down into a visitor’s chair. He held his head in his hands. ‘Jesus, Kirsten.’

  ‘Back in the room I thought again. Tried to calm down.’ There was no evidence of calm now, Kirsten paced around Julian’s small room like a cheetah in a zoo cage. ‘What I figured was that if I fell out with Jules that would leave me with just Mark because it was the day after Brian Ford had dumped me. But I know Mark’s a bastard. He’s sexy, true, but cold. A little too hooked on power games and sometimes even I just want to be cuddled, you know? Don’t you men ever realise that?’

  Kirsten stared at Jake accusingly. He shook his young head sadly, not sure what to say to this lost girl. She didn’t care. She carried on. She was finding it a strange relief to get her story out in the open at last. It had been a hard secret to carry around this week. No fun at all. Not like having an affair, that sort of secret was thrilling and exciting and—Kirsten’s gaze drifted over to the comatose Julian. Well, no. Maybe not thrilling and exciting. Not anymore. There was no fun left in any of it.

  ‘I just like pretty things, expensive things. It’s just what I’m used to. I always thought I’d marry a wealthy guy. I’m not the first woman to think that, am I? And Jules was my best shot,’ Kirsten explained desperately. She wanted Jake to understand. She needed him to. People had to listen to her. They had to understand her. ‘So I performed, erm, this really salacious striptease to try to cheer him up. It didn’t work. He just looked a bit awkward. So I was, you know – desperate.’ This bit was difficult to explain but if she didn’t tell it how it was, it might stay trapped in her head for ever. She had to get it out. She’d go insane if it stayed there. ‘So I’m standing, in nothing but Agent Provocateur, and I lean in to kiss him and guess what he did? He backed away from me! I asked him if he was sickening from something. And you know what he replied?’

  ‘What?’ asked Jake, although he felt squeamish and uncomfortable and was pretty sure he didn’t want to know.

  ‘He said, “A bit. I’m a bit sick of this. Of you.”’

  The memory of Julian’s words assaulted Kirsten all over again. She felt the fury and disappointment, the humiliation and the desperation, resurface. But this time, it was worse, this time she also felt a hideous sense of bleakness and sorrow. What had she done? Tears streamed down her face now, her make-up was no longer perfect, there were rivers of mascara cascading down the neck of her white T-shirt. Her chest ached, it was hard to breathe, to speak, to simply stand up.

  ‘Oh God, I wanted to punch him in his stupid, bored-looking face and in his stomach. I wanted to punch him over and over again. Punch the life out of him. I wanted to kill him in that moment. He was sick? He was sick? Well, he wasn’t alone! I was sick too. I was sick of people using me and then ditching me.’ She glowered at Julian as though she might punch him right that moment but instead she took another breath and continued. ‘I was sick of going down on men, sick of faking orgasms, I was sick of their stupid unfunny jokes and their middle-aged fucking crises. It’s degrading.’ Kirsten turned her glare on Jake again. ‘But I didn’t punch him. Instead, I just got dressed. I was silently seething as he went on and on. He mistook my silence to be, I don’t know, some sort of calm acceptance of his viewpoint. He probably thought I was a good little well-behaved mistress who would slink away, now he’d had enough of me. He probably thought that I’d disappear without causing him any trouble or inconvenience. But with each word Julian uttered, I became eaten up with rage. You know? I’ve never known anything like it. He kept saying stuff that I didn’t agree with and he kept assuming I did agree. It was annoying. Really, really annoying. It was so, so fucking patronising.’

  Why was Jake looking at her like that? Like she was some sort of animal? And who was that woman in the room, who looked so shocked and worried? Not Julian’s wife. Too thin for his wife. Kirsten couldn’t work it out. It was all rushing around her head. Julian’s machine was beeping and loads of people were staring at her. Pointing at her. The woman. And now a kid. They were sort of lunging at her as though they wanted to trap her. Jake was telling everyone to calm down. Now there was a nurse, with a grim mouth and really ugly shoes, she was demanding to know who Kirsten was. The room was so full. The nurse was yelling that everyone had to get out. Get out of the room. Two more nurses did the opposite, they ran in but they weren’t interested in Kirsten, they ran straight to Julian. Then a doctor charged into the room as well. Kirsten saw her chance. She dashed for the door, not so much because the nurse had told them to, more because she needed to make a break for it. In a flash and despite her killer heels, she was off. She sprinted along the corridor, straight into the waiting arms of Sergeant Mary Jean Brown.

  Kirsten kicked and fought, flashing her knickers because her designer skirt was so short. PC Weybridge watched as the dishevelled beauty struggled with his superior officer and he just wished he could have filmed it on his phone.

  53

  ‘OK, Mrs Blake, thank you for your time, you can go now,’ said a middle-aged policeman that Stephanie hadn’t seen up until now.

  ‘Sorry?’ Was he joking?

  ‘You’re free to go. We have your statement. We’ll be in touch.’

  Steph was confused, they’d had her statement for hours, how come she could suddenly leave now? She glanced at her lawyer but the lawyer was already packing up papers, it was clear this wasn’t the moment to question the logic of the powers that be. Steph thanked the officer, nodded at her lawyer, grabbed her bag and bolted for the door. She didn’t really take in what the lawyer was calling after her. She’d get the details later, right now all she needed was to get to the hospital to see Julian. In the reception she briefly glanced around, hoping to spot her parents but they weren’t there. Presumably they were at the hospital or taking care of the boys. She couldn’t expect them to be waiting on her. She asked the policeman at the reception desk if she could borrow a phone to call a cab.

  ‘Mine’s out of power,’ she explained.

  ‘Take my cab. It will be here any moment now. I called it ten minutes ago.’

  Steph recognised the voice before she turned to face him. ‘Subhash.’ Ah, now she understood why she’d suddenly been released. He smiled and together they walked the two or three steps out of the police s
tation on to the street. After being in the windowless room all day, Steph was surprised to find it was a beautiful day. The sun slapped down on the pavements, throwing off a glare that caused her to squint. ‘You came forward. That’s why they let me go.’

  ‘I think so, yes.’

  ‘I’m sorry you had to get involved.’

  ‘My call.’

  Steph nodded. ‘Thank you.’

  Subhash nodded stiffly. ‘I think they are pursuing a different line of inquiry now,’ he explained. ‘They are looking for Julian’s mistress. Some of the hotel staff have confirmed we were there but someone saw us leave the hotel grounds. Do you remember, you wanted to drive but I wouldn’t let you because you’d had too much to drink, then the moment I was behind the wheel I clipped the car against their garden wall, despite being stone-cold sober? The night porter came out to check I hadn’t damaged his damn wall or shrub. Apparently he watched us drive all the way along the drive and on to the A road. I guess he was really worried about his shrubs.’

  ‘Yes, I think I remember that.’ Steph had forgotten but now he mentioned it, the hazy memory was stirred.

  ‘She was there too, that night, the mistress, but no one saw her leave,’ added Subhash, carefully.

  ‘I see.’ Steph didn’t know what to say. The thought had never occurred to her. ‘Why would his mistress knock him over?’ she mused aloud.

  ‘Maybe he was leaving her,’ suggested Subhash. ‘Maybe Julian chose you.’

  Steph looked up at Subhash with total gratitude. He saw her tear-stained, careworn face break into the biggest, broadest, most definite smile he’d ever witnessed.

  ‘Do you think?’ she asked, almost breathless.

  Subhash nodded. ‘How could he not?’ he replied quietly. He looked away and concentrated on the spot a few inches above her head. He would choose this woman too, if he could, if she’d have him. But she would not, he knew that and now he would have to accept it. Once and for all. He took deep breaths and let the warm spring air fill his body. ‘I can see the cab, you better get going. I imagine you are desperate to get to the hospital.’