Gareth Dawson Series Box Set

by Nathan Burrows

  ‘Hello,’ the woman behind the desk said in a throaty voice. Jimmy turned to look at her. She was quite a few years younger than he was, mid-thirties if Jimmy had to guess, and she was wearing a simple dark purple business suit. On the desk in front of her was an Apple computer, the sleek aluminium of the rear of the screen reminding Jimmy of the one he had at home. The woman’s hands sat poised over the keyboard—she had stopped typing when Jimmy had opened the door. ‘Please, have a seat.’ Her head inclined towards the sofa. ‘Can I get you anything? A cup of tea, perhaps? Or some water?’

  ‘A cup of tea would be lovely, thank you,’ Jimmy replied as he unzipped his coat. ‘It’s getting cold out there.’

  ‘Isn’t it?’ the woman replied, getting to her feet. ‘And it’s only September.’ Jimmy watched her make her way to a table in the corner of the room with a small kettle and a selection of sachets, just like in a hotel room. He eased himself out of his coat and placed it on the sofa before sitting down as the woman waited for the kettle to boil, neither of them saying anything. ‘Milk and sugar?’ she asked a moment later as the kettle started bubbling.

  ‘Please,’ he replied.

  As the receptionist brought the tea over to him, expertly nestling the china cup in its saucer, Jimmy saw her close up for the first time. She was a little older than he’d first thought, thin but not too thin, with fine lines around her eyes. Blonde hair peppered with small flashes of grey framed her face, and when she smiled, the lines deepened as the smile reached her eyes.

  ‘Here you go,’ she said as she placed the cup and saucer on the table. ‘Take your time. I’ll be just over there if you need anything.’ She retreated to the desk that she’d been sitting behind when Jimmy had walked in and resumed typing.

  He leaned forward and picked up the cup with a trembling hand, leaving the saucer behind on the coffee table. He wasn’t the sort of man who usually drank tea from a cup and saucer, and he struggled to get his thick finger through the small hoop of the cup. Managing to take a sip from the cup without spilling any of the tea, Jimmy put the cup back onto the saucer. He stared at the brochure on the coffee table for a moment before leaning back. He took a deep breath, closed his eyes and allowed the tears to stream down his face.

  When he opened his eyes again, there was a small box of tissues on the table next to his cup of tea, and a thin man in a dark suit sitting opposite him. Jimmy hadn’t heard a thing—the tissues and the man had materialised in silence. As the white-haired man in the suit regarded him through hooded but kind eyes, Jimmy leaned forwards and plucked a tissue from the box, resisting the urge to wipe his nose on the back of his sleeve.

  ‘May I say,’ the man said, crossing his legs and plucking at an imaginary thread on his pin-striped trousers, ‘how sorry I am that you find yourself here today.’ Jimmy knew that it wasn’t a question, not really. It was a statement of fact. He wouldn’t be sitting in this building if there wasn’t something to be very sorry about. It wasn’t that sort of business.

  ‘Thank you,’ Jimmy replied before clearing his throat and repeating himself. ‘Thank you.’ He looked at the cup on the table, wondering for a few seconds whether to pick it up and have another sip of tea. Not trusting his shaking hand, he decided against it.

  ‘I think, perhaps, that you’ve been here before,’ the man on the opposite sofa said, almost in a whisper. Jimmy looked at him, in equal parts uncomfortable and reassured by the man’s appraising look. ‘Indulge me for a moment, if you would?’ Jimmy didn’t reply, but waited for his companion to finish his assessment. The hooded eyes closed for a few seconds before they reopened, and Jimmy looked into the man’s watery blue eyes. ‘Hannah Tucker,’ he said. ‘Which means you must be Jimmy.’

  ‘Bloody hell,’ Jimmy replied, surprised enough to forget for a moment why he was there. ‘Bloody hell, that’s impressive.’

  ‘It’s been a while,’ the man said, allowing himself a brief smile that revealed smoker’s teeth. ’Ten years?’

  ‘Almost,’ Jimmy replied. ‘It’ll be ten years in March.’

  ‘My goodness,’ the man said. ‘Isn’t time…’ he thought for a second, ‘ephemeral?’ Jimmy didn’t reply, not knowing what the word meant. ‘Fleeting, perhaps?’ the man continued, as if he sensed Jimmy’s confusion.

  ‘Yes,’ Jimmy said, finally trusting his hand to pick up the cup. ‘I’m ever so sorry, but I don’t remember your name?’

  ‘I’m Gordon,’ the man replied, ‘Gordon Baker.’ He extended a bony hand across the coffee table for Jimmy to shake. As they shook hands, Jimmy remembered too late the sign on the front of the building with the man’s name in large brown letters.

  ‘Of course,’ Jimmy said. Gordon shook his head ever so slightly from side to side, as if to dismiss Jimmy’s discomfort. ‘I can’t believe you remembered Hannah.’

  ‘I remember them all, Mr Tucker,’ Gordon replied. ‘Every single one, and those who come with them.’

  ‘Even so,’ Jimmy said, ‘after ten years?’

  ’Time is, as I said, fleeting.’

  ‘It doesn’t feel that way sometimes.’

  ‘No,’ Gordon replied, ‘I would imagine not.’ He smiled, and Jimmy saw true compassion in his eyes. An underlying sadness accompanied it that Jimmy couldn’t begin to imagine living with. ‘Do you still feel her?’

  ‘Every day,’ Jimmy said. ‘Every single bloody day. I feel her, I sense her, I even hear her sometimes.’

  ‘There are some who say people live on in the hearts of others.’

  At Gordon’s words, Jimmy felt the tears flow again. He didn’t bother with the tissues, but just raked his sleeve across his cheek.

  ‘I’m sorry, perhaps that wasn’t the best choice of words,’ Gordon said in a quiet voice. ‘Melissa?’ The receptionist behind the desk looked up as he called her name. ‘Could we perhaps have two glasses and some Talisker? I think the time for tea has passed us by.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Jimmy said a few moments later, putting the crystal tumbler back on the coffee table as he enjoyed the burn of the dark liquid in his throat.

  ‘Not at all,’ Gordon replied with a wry smile. ‘To be honest, it was a gift from a client. I save it for when it’s really needed.’

  ‘Not for the whisky. For remembering Hannah.’

  ‘Jimmy,’ Gordon said, ‘it’s okay if I call you Jimmy, is it?’

  ‘Of course it is.’

  ‘The business I am in is all about people. If they aren’t at the heart of how I deliver my services, then it would be time to hang up my hat. Does that make sense, Jimmy?’

  ‘It does,’ Jimmy replied. ‘You were so good back then, when it happened.’

  ‘You can say her name,’ Gordon whispered. Jimmy took a deep breath.

  ‘When Hannah happened.’ He’d not said her name out loud outside his own house for a long time.

  ‘How is your daughter?’ Gordon asked.

  ‘Milly?’ Jimmy replied, surprised. ‘She’s good.’

  ‘Such a pretty little thing, if I remember right. So lost at the time, bless her. But children are so resilient, I find.’

  ‘Do you have children?’

  ‘No,’ Gordon said, taking a sip from his tumbler. ‘Sadly not. I never met the right person. How old is Milly now?’

  ’Twenty-four a couple of months ago,’ Jimmy replied, noticing Gordon’s change of subject.

  ‘Is she like Hannah?’

  ‘In so many ways, yes. But in so many other ways, no. She took it hard.’

  ‘I would imagine she did,’ Gordon replied. ‘Losing your mother at that age is unimaginable, I would think.’

  ‘But she turned out okay.’

  ‘I don’t doubt that for an instant, Jimmy.’ They sat in a companionable silence for a moment before Gordon continued, shifting the conversation again as if he knew that was what Jimmy wanted him to do. ’Forgive me, but what is it you do for a living?’

  ‘I’m a bin man,’ Jimmy replied, ready for the usual look of dis
dain when he told anyone that. Gordon’s face didn’t so much as flicker in response.

  ‘A vital public service,’ Gordon replied. ‘And looking at you, I would imagine that you take it very seriously indeed?’ Jimmy thought for a few seconds before replying.

  ‘Yes, I do,’ he said.

  ‘Because if you didn’t, then you wouldn’t do it anymore.’ Another statement, as opposed to a question.

  ‘I don’t know if I’d go that far, Gordon,’ Jimmy replied, smiling for the first time in days. ‘There’s not much else I can do, not at my age.’

  ‘What are you, early fifties?’

  ‘Fifty-eight.’

  ‘Plenty of life in the old dog yet, then?’ Gordon said with the ghost of a smile.

  ‘Perhaps.’ There was another silence as the two men looked at each other.

  ’Shall we get down to business, Jimmy?’ Gordon asked, blinking his watery blue eyes a couple of times as his smile faded. Jimmy swallowed, his mouth suddenly dry. He didn’t trust himself to speak, so just nodded his head in response. ‘Whose funeral is it that you need my assistance to plan for?’ Jimmy closed his eyes and took a deep breath before replying.

  ‘Mine.’

  Chapter 2

  One Week Earlier

  ‘Mr Tucker?’

  Jimmy looked up from his newspaper as he heard his name being called. When the nurse called his name again, he folded the paper and made eye contact with her. Stretching, he got to his feet, relieved to be leaving the chair he’d been sitting in for the last forty-five minutes, and made his way across the starkly decorated waiting room. ‘Sorry, we’re running a little late this morning,’ the nurse said with a faint smile as he approached her. She was mid-forties, overweight, and looked exhausted despite the early hour. ‘Would you follow me?’

  This was Jimmy’s third visit to the hospital in as many months, and each time he’d attended for his appointment, they’d been running late. His first appointment was at nine fifteen in the morning, by which time they were already running half an hour late. Not for the first time, Jimmy wondered why they’d not worked out a better way to schedule their appointments by now. He apologised as he brushed against an elderly woman’s shoulder as he walked across the waiting room, but she didn’t respond. Jimmy wondered if she had even registered it.

  The nurse Jimmy was following was, he presumed, one of the senior nurses in the outpatients department. She was wearing a navy blue uniform that wasn’t particularly flattering to her curves, and Jimmy grinned as he imagined her having to give weight loss advice to a patient.

  ‘How have you been?’ the nurse asked over her shoulder as she walked into one of the treatment rooms that branched off the sterile corridor. It was the same room that they had seen Jimmy in on his first visit, unless they had the same patient information leaflets in every room.

  ‘Not too bad, thank you,’ Jimmy replied, stopping himself from asking her how she had been. He wasn’t sure that he wanted to know.

  ‘Good stuff. Have a seat, just there.’ The nurse pointed at an uncomfortable looking plastic chair with a suspicious stain on the seat. She turned to look at him and he glanced at her name badge. Sister Lisa Sutton, Senior Nurse, Outpatients. ‘So, nothing unusual today. I’ll take some bloods, weigh you, do a quick heart tracing, and then it’ll be back to the waiting room to wait for your appointment with Dr Fitzpatrick.’

  ‘I had some bloods taken the other week, before the scan,’ Jimmy replied. He didn’t like needles at the best of times, and if it was possible not to be stuck again, he would take it. Sister Sutton smiled at him.

  ‘Nice try, Mr Tucker,’ she said, crossing to a counter where she started collecting some equipment together. ‘Different bloods, I’m afraid.’

  With a resigned sigh, Jimmy rolled his sleeve up. Sister Sutton bustled around him, snapping her hands into a pair of bright purple surgical gloves.

  ‘Are you on your own today?’ she asked.

  ‘Yeah,’ Jimmy replied. ‘My daughter was still in bed when I left home.’

  ‘How old is she?’

  ‘Twenty-four.’

  ‘You don’t look old enough,’ Sister Sutton said with a forced smile as she approached Jimmy with a needle and syringe. ‘Perhaps I should call her? I’m sure she’d want to be here with you.’ Jimmy felt a prickle of fear at the back of his mind. It was nothing to do with the needle, but he couldn’t help but wonder why the nurse thought Milly should be with him.

  Less than five minutes later, he was back in the waiting room with a plaster in the crook of his arm and strict instructions to keep pressing it with a finger for another couple of minutes.

  The next time he heard his name being called, almost an hour had passed. Jimmy had long since given up on his newspaper and was staring at a year-old copy of Top Gear magazine as he tried to stay awake. He looked up with a start to see Sister Sutton standing in exactly the same place as before, looking at him from the other side of the waiting room. She gave him the same tired smile as he walked over to her.

  ‘Sorry to keep you waiting, again,’ she said, turning round and walking away from Jimmy, ‘but Dr Fitzpatrick is ready to see you now.’ This time, she walked past the treatment room and all the way to the end of the corridor. Jimmy dutifully followed, ignoring the buzzing from the fluorescent tubes in the ceiling. He wondered how the staff put up with the constant hum.

  When she got to the end of the corridor, Sister Sutton opened a door with a simple white sign that read ‘Doctor Stephen Fitzpatrick’ followed by a long alphabet soup of letters, none of which Jimmy understood. He figured that the letters weren’t there for people like Jimmy to recognise, but merely to emphasise the point to everyone that Dr Fitzpatrick was an educated man. Not a bin man. Underneath the letters were the words ‘Medical Consultant’.

  Jimmy walked into the office as Dr Fitzpatrick got to his feet. He looked to be about the same age as Jimmy, mid-fifties at best, and was wearing a white coat complete with a stethoscope hanging around his neck just to emphasise the fact that he was a doctor. Underneath the white coat, the doctor was wearing an expensive shirt and tie combination, set off with gold cufflinks. Jimmy heard the consulting room door close behind him.

  ‘Mr Turner,’ the doctor said as they shook hands. ‘I am so sorry to keep you waiting.’ He had a firm grip, and a confident handshake that Jimmy appreciated in a man.

  ‘I’m used to it,’ Jimmy replied with a grin that Dr Fitzpatrick returned. He turned to another doctor, dressed in the same uniform, who was sitting behind the same desk.

  ‘Can I introduce my colleague, Dr Ahmed?’ The other doctor also got to his feet for a handshake, and he greeted Jimmy with a broad smile that accentuated his dark skin. When he spoke, it was with a clipped foreign accent.

  ‘Pleased to meet you,’ Dr Ahmed said as the three of them sat down.

  ‘Sister Sutton,’ Dr Fitzpatrick said. Jimmy turned to see the nurse was still standing by the door, even though it was closed. ‘Were you able to…?’ His voice tailed off.

  ‘No, I wasn’t. Mr Turner is attending on his own.’

  ‘Oh, I see,’ Dr Fitzpatrick replied, looking disappointed for a few seconds before turning his attention to Jimmy. ‘So, Mr Turner. How have you been?’

  ‘Not too bad, considering the weather,’ Jimmy said with a nervous smile. ‘Cold snap on the way, so they say.’

  ‘Any headaches?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And the tiredness?’

  ‘Most of the time, yes. Although since I stopped eating bread, that doesn’t seem to be as bad.’

  ‘Since you stopped eating bread?’ Dr Fitzpatrick asked, frowning.

  ‘I read about it on the internet,’ Jimmy replied. ‘Apparently it makes you sluggish, so I stopped eating it.’ Dr Fitzpatrick didn’t reply at first, looking down at a sheaf of medical notes on his desk.

  ‘So, Mr Tucker, after you went to see your General Practitioner with your headaches a few weeks ago, she referred y
ou to us so we could have a little look at you. We did a couple of scans?’

  ‘Yes, you did,’ Jimmy replied, not sure what else to say. Was the doctor asking him to see if he remembered? Dr Fitzpatrick got to his feet and walked to a screen on the wall of his office. On the screen was an x-ray which Jimmy could only assume was his head. The doctor flicked a switch next to the screen, and it flickered into life, illuminating the x-ray.

  ‘This was the area that I was most concerned about,’ Dr Fitzpatrick said, pointing at an area on the x-ray. He circled a small grey blob on the screen, using a pen as a pointer. Jimmy glanced across at the other doctor, but Dr Ahmed was scribbling something on a notepad. ‘It’s a small sub-arachnoid haemorrhage. Easily treated with a judicious amount of time.’

  ‘Yes,’ Jimmy said, wriggling in his chair. He watched as Dr Fitzpatrick removed the x-ray from the screen and replaced it with a different photograph. Jimmy leaned forward and looked at the new image, but he couldn’t make any sense of it at all. It reminded him of a packet of pork chops, each sliced and placed on its own.

  ‘This is the MRI scan that we did later on,’ Dr Fitzpatrick said, pointing at the screen again with his pen. ‘And this is the area that is troubling me most. That’s why we repeated it a couple of weeks later. Just to be sure what we are dealing with.’ Jimmy frowned, not able to understand what the doctor was trying to explain to him. One thing he did know was that he didn’t want another scan. It wasn’t the claustrophobia from the machine, but the unpleasant feeling of the stuff they injected into him. ‘The MRI scans have revealed a rather large problem.’