by Cari Hunter
“To me? Why?”
“To both of you, and I don’t care why. I just need answers to the questions on the front sheet of that file.” Steph snapped the latches on her briefcase. “They’ll be down to see you in the next half hour. I’ve spoken to your doctor, Ms. Pardon, and she’s given her permission, albeit reluctantly.”
Rosie wished she’d been a fly on the wall for that conversation. Harriet had stayed late into the night, and she’d been back on the ward at shift changeover.
Rosie managed to retrieve the file without leaving the bed and found a bullet-pointed list of questions. “Am I recording the interview?”
“Audio only.” Steph set a small Dictaphone on the overbed table. “Ring me when you’re done. If you can find somewhere with reception, that is.” Evidently satisfied with her parting shot, she strode to the door, almost colliding with the nurse as he returned with a tray of brews and mid-morning medicines.
“Who pissed on her chips?” he asked as the door closed behind her.
“No one. That’s her default setting.” Rosie passed Jem her tea and a small cup of tablets.
“I like it better when you call me ‘Ms. Pardon,’” Jem muttered, and Rosie laughed over the rim of her mug.
“Down the hatch,” the nurse told Jem. “Then you’re getting a couple of visitors, so chair or bed?”
“Chair.” Jem reached behind her head to untie her gown. “And do I have any clothes that don’t come with ‘West Penn’ stamped on them?”
“Not as such,” Rosie said. “But I’ve got a spare T-shirt and a pair of tracky bottoms, if the price is right.”
Jem’s payment options were limited to a malted milk biscuit and a cache of small red tablets. She shrugged and offered both.
“I’ll stick to the biscuit, thanks,” Rosie said.
“Wise choice,” Jem said, and necked the tablets in one.
* * *
Resting her hands on the sink, Jem studied her reflection in the bathroom mirror. Her complexion sat somewhere between catastrophic hypovolaemic shock and day-old corpse, while her eyes were encircled by blue-black shadows. The nebs had left her lips dry and cracked, and she’d caught her chin on something, probably the balcony, tearing an uneven laceration through its centre.
“Bloody hell,” she said, scratching her nose where the oxygen tubing was chafing it.
A knock on the door preceded Rosie’s singsong, “Are you decent?”
Jem spat mouthwash down the plughole and slumped on the toilet seat. “No.” She hid her face in a towel. “I’m a monster.”
Rosie came in regardless and sat on the clinical waste bin. She tugged the towel away. “Don’t be a daft ha’p’orth. You’ve been ill, Jem.” She tapped the IV line in Jem’s wrist. “You’re still ill. You’re allowed to look like death warmed over.” She scrutinised herself in the mirror and wiped sleep from her eye. “I, on the other hand, have no such excuse.”
“I think you look gorgeous,” Jem said. “But then I’m biased, because I fancy you.” She laughed at Rosie’s stunned reaction and double-checked her O2 cylinder, wondering if she was hypoxic. She hadn’t meant to say that out loud.
Rosie fake-swooned, almost upending the bin. “That’s the most romantic thing anyone’s ever said to me, and in this”—she gestured expansively at the pile of incontinence pads, the boxes of examination gloves, and the shower cubicle with its emergency alarm—“most idyllic of settings.” Within seconds, she’d fashioned a couple of pieces of loo roll into a flower. “Jemima Pardon, I fancy the pants off you as well.”
Jem took the flower, though she stopped short of sniffing it. “Is it sleep deprivation?” she asked, linking Rosie’s arm and walking with her to the door. “Making us act like twerps?”
“It’s sheer joie de vivre, Jem!” Rosie said, and then paused to reconsider. “And possibly sleep deprivation and PTSD as well.”
She sat Jem in the closest chair and propped the door open in readiness. A social worker in his mid-forties came in first, taking an unobtrusive seat in the corner as Ava steered Chloe’s wheelchair straight into the bathroom wall.
“These things are fucking shite,” she said over Chloe’s yelp, and caused further ructions by attempting a three-sixty. Outrage and effort made her face as pink as her hair, giving her the look of a pissed-off imp, albeit one wearing slipper socks and Minion pyjamas.
“Sit your arse down,” Rosie told her, no stranger to dealing with moody teens. “There are cans of pop and all kinds of crap on Jem’s bed. Help yourself.”
Placated by the vending machine stash, Ava sat cross-legged on the chair next to Jem. She opened a packet of crisps but then scrunched the bag closed again and placed a careful finger on the dressing securing Jem’s cannula.
“Don’t worry,” she said in a confidential undertone. “It doesn’t hurt when they take ’em out.” She displayed the bandage on her own wrist and offered Jem a Quaver.
“Thank you,” Jem said, crunching a crisp so she wouldn’t start sniffling.
“We brought these for you, Jem!” Finally facing forward, Chloe held up a bag of Haribo. “We got two, but Fat Face ate one for breakfast.”
“I’ve been there myself,” Rosie said. “It can’t be helped.” She’d already set the recorder going, but she propped her feet on Jem’s chair, letting everyone relax and eat their snacks. The girls appeared to have rediscovered their mettle overnight. They were still pale and undernourished, but the beaten-down kids Jem had found cowering in a corner had been replaced by scrappy teenagers who swore like sailors and thought nothing of stealing chocolate from a police officer.
“I’m going to my nan’s,” Ava said through a mouthful of Crunchie. “Tonight, instead of going home.”
“Is that a good thing?” Rosie asked.
“Yeah, cos that prick Davey won’t be there. He’s my mam’s boyfriend. He’s already got four kids, but he knocked up my mam six weeks after moving in.”
Rosie took a swig of her Pepsi Max. “Was he the reason you ran away?”
Ava shrugged. “I bet they didn’t even notice I was gone. My nan’s ace, though. She stayed with us last night.”
“What about you, Chloe?” Jem asked. “Are you going home?”
Chloe nodded. “I told our Kirsty I was sorry for nicking her iPad, and she says she won’t set the coppers on me.” Her hand flew to her mouth as she stared at Rosie. “Shit. Fucking shit.”
Ava dropped her crisps and went to kneel by the wheelchair. “Rosie won’t tell, will you, Rosie?”
“Absolutely not,” Rosie said.
Jem’s eyes flicked from Ava to Chloe as she gauged their exchange, trying to work out their relationship. They were obviously close but seemed more akin to siblings than best friends.
“How long have you two known each other?” she asked, and wasn’t surprised when Chloe took Ava’s hand in lieu of providing an answer.
“About three weeks,” Ava ventured. “We got picked together.”
Rosie leaned forward slightly, the detail catching her attention. “Who picked you to do what?”
Chloe had started to tremble, her slippered feet clattering the wheelchair’s footplate. Ava squeezed onto the chair and pulled her close.
“We met down by the canal,” Ava said quietly. “All the kids go there after school, and you can crash in the mills if the smack rats aren’t around.”
“Ava was there before me,” Chloe said. She cupped her hands over Ava’s ear and whispered something inaudible.
Ava whispered a reply and then jutted out her chin and folded her arms. “If we tell you what we did, are you going to arrest us?” she asked Rosie.
“Did you murder anyone?” Rosie said, copying Ava’s pose as she threw the challenge back.
“No!” Ava looked horrified. “But we stole loads of things.”
“Do you promise to renounce your life of crime and become upstanding citizens?”
“Huh?” Chloe said.
Rosie pared things d
own to the essentials. “Will you be good from now on?”
Both girls nodded.
“Excellent. No, I won’t arrest you.” Rosie made a rolling gesture. “Carry on.”
Chloe started on a bag of M&Ms, sorting the colours into order on her thigh and making Rosie smile. “Ava taught me how to shoplift,” she said, still arranging the sweets. “Just things we needed, like butties and pop, or things we could sell, like razors. Nance said we were dead good at it.”
“Who’s Nance?”
Chloe nudged an orange M&M into line, her eye contact nonexistent. “She’s just Nance.”
“She came to one of the mills and offered us a job,” Ava said. “There was a lad with her, all decked out in gear. He said she’d given him all kinds of stuff, and we were sick of eating Pot Noodles, so we went with them, and it was fine for the first few days.”
“We got nice clothes,” Chloe said, “and Converse. And Bill showed us a trick to do in the street, where I fell down and pretended like I was unconscious, and Ava pinched purses and phones from everyone who came to help.”
Jem’s monitor suddenly registered a pulse rate of one-twenty. She whacked the alarm to silence it and shook her head, warning Rosie not to intervene. “Ava, did Nance take you to a shelter called Olly’s?” she asked.
Ava stared at her. “How did you know?”
“Bill and Nancy,” Rosie said, the light evidently dawning. “Their surname didn’t happen to be Sykes, by any chance?”
“Dunno,” Ava said. “They were just Bill and Nance.”
“Could you tell us where the shelter is?” Jem asked, her enthusiasm for the new lead making her forget she wasn’t actually a police officer.
Ava filched one of Chloe’s sweets, careful not to disrupt the order. “They took us in one of those big cars, but the windows were black so we couldn’t see much, and Chloe fell asleep.”
“How far from the canal, at a guess?” Rosie asked.
“Half an hour? Maybe. I’m not sure.” Ava chewed her bottom lip with teeth dyed blue by the sweets. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay, love. You’re doing really well. The shelter must’ve been great after roughing it at the mill, eh?”
“I suppose,” Ava said. “But we never got to keep any of the cash, and Nance locked us in at night, so we got fed up and tried to do a runner.”
“Who caught you?” Jem asked.
Ava slipped an arm around Chloe’s shoulders. “Bill. He called us ‘ungrateful little twats’ and said we needed to be taught a lesson. Then he locked us in the cellar and left us there.”
Chloe was staring at the wall behind Jem, her expression blank. Tears were running unheeded down her cheeks.
“I think that might be enough for now,” the social worker said.
Rosie held up a hand, taking out her mobile with the other. “One minute,” she said, and clicked on a photo of Kyle Parker. “Ava, did you see this lad at the shelter?”
Ava took the phone but barely needed to look at the image. “He was the one with Nance at the mill. Strutting about like he owned it or summat. We were shifted around a lot, though. No one really stayed at the shelter after the first couple of nights. They took us to a few different houses.”
Rosie crouched by the chair and swiped the screen to bring up another photo. “What about this lass? Do you recognise her? Her name’s Tahlia.”
Ava shook her head. “I’m not sure. I might have seen her in the old mill or by the canal, but I got drunk most nights.” She nudged Chloe, who shut her eyes and refused to look.
“Okay, love.” Rosie retrieved her phone. “It’s okay, we’re finished now.”
“I want my mum,” Chloe whispered, the plea so emphatic it made Jem ache with homesickness. She watched the social worker wheel the chair to the door, Ava following closely behind him.
“Hey, wait a sec,” she said, realising there was a puzzle piece missing. “Were Bill and Nance in charge at the shelter?”
“No,” Ava said. “I heard them talk about a boss, but we never met him. He had a weird name. Fage, Fage-in?” She shoved a handful of M&Ms into her mouth and licked her palm clean. “Or summat daft like that.”
Chapter Sixteen
Jem’s nightmare was different this time. The fire hadn’t changed; the smoke still choked and blinded her, and the air was hot enough to burn her throat, but Rosie wasn’t there to pull her out of the window, and when Jem collapsed on the balcony there were screams echoing from the room she’d just escaped.
She awoke feeling sick and utterly lost. The unfamiliar surroundings, the clothes she was wearing: none of it made any sense until she saw Rosie sparked out on the camp bed beside her hospital bed and everything slotted back into place.
“God,” she whispered. The dream continued to claw at her, forcing her to go to Rosie’s side, to kneel and double-check Rosie was really there, safe and sound and still breathing. “You’re okay,” Jem whispered, feeling the soft puff of Rosie’s breath on her palm. “You’ll be okay, I promise.”
She tiptoed to the bathroom and splashed cold water on her face. Then she cupped her hands beneath the tap, letting them fill. The water was stale, but its chill eased the dryness in her mouth and settled her stomach. She sat on the closed toilet lid and pulled up her knees, wrapping her arms around them to try to hold them still. Her chin juddered when she lowered it, knocking against her shaking legs and making her bite her tongue. The tang of blood mingled with the chemical taste of the water. She wiped her lips with a handful of toilet paper and stayed where she was, waiting for the shivering to stop.
Rosie still hadn’t stirred when Jem went back into the room. Curled on her side beneath a pile of blankets, she looked content, as if she was satisfied she’d done everything asked of her and she was finally letting herself rest. Jem returned to her bed, but she couldn’t settle, and the sight of Rosie peacefully blowing spit bubbles whilst scrunching her nose just made everything worse. Moving slowly so she wouldn’t start coughing, Jem hooked her oxygen tubing onto a portable cylinder and wheeled it out into the corridor, closing the door behind her. One of the nurses stopped her by the linen cupboard and told her there was a chap at the desk attempting to blag his way past the ward sister.
“Is it my dad?” she asked. He’d spoken to her last night, but he hadn’t mentioned a visit.
“No, a younger bloke in an ambulance uniform. Looks like something was sick all over his shoulder before he came out.”
That narrowed things down slightly, and Jem relaxed, ruling out Baxter as her potential visitor. “It’ll be Kev, my manager. He’s got more kids than sense.”
Kev waylaid her halfway to the nurses’ station, hugging her and then stepping back to appraise her. “I expected worse,” he said. “Bob and Dougie were in bits when they got to station the other night.”
“I can imagine.” Taking his arm, she led him into the day room, where she muted the telly and dropped onto the sofa. “They popped in for a few minutes this morning. Bob ate most of my grapes, once he’d stopped blubbing.”
Kev hefted a gift bag. “The group had a quick whip-round. Everyone sends their best.”
She arched an eyebrow. “Everyone?”
“Baxter and Caitlin were on mandatory training,” he said, easily catching her drift. “And you’re not to worry about the morphine business. It’ll all come out in the wash.”
“That’s apt, given how much he’d love to hang me out to dry.” She coughed against the stress clamping around her ribs. With everything else that had happened, the threat of the disciplinary had understandably slipped her mind. “I was supposed to have a meeting with a rep about it on Monday. My doc’s promised to discharge me tomorrow, so I might be able to come in for it. Maybe I can resume on light duties or—”
“Jem.” Kev put a hand on her arm. “Take a breath.”
She took several. “Am I going to get sacked, Kev?” she asked quietly.
“I very much doubt that, love, no matter how hard
Baxter might push. Besides which, his timing is terrible.” Kev fished in his pockets and pulled out a handful of newspaper clippings. “The fire has been quite the story. The MEN ran it on the front cover. So did the Guardian, the Indie, and the Tameside Chron. One of the Daily Mail hacks turned up on station, but Dougie told him to piss off. We’ve had a couple of requests for an interview, but I asked the media department to handle them.”
“I don’t want any fuss,” she said, glad for once to have been isolated in the hospital. “I just want to get home and get back to work.”
“Better not rush things, then. How’s Officer Rosie?”
Jem smiled. She never had told him Rosie’s surname. “She’s fast asleep. Well, I hope she is, or she’ll be wondering where I am.”
“I might have a word with her sarge, see if we can get you on opposing shifts. You don’t half get into trouble when you’re together.” He chuckled, obviously meaning nothing by it, but the unease that had lingered since her nightmare ramped right back up. He walked her to her room, and she stood on the threshold, watching Rosie blink blearily at her.
“What did I miss?” Rosie asked.
“Nothing,” Jem said, but the kneejerk denial seemed to stick in her throat, and she knew now what she had to do. She smiled to soften the bluntness of her tone, though she felt like curling into Rosie’s arms and sobbing her heart out. “Go back to sleep.”
* * *
Rosie slapped the parking ticket onto her windscreen and collected her rucksack from the back seat. At Jem’s insistence, she had gone home for the night, but although she felt better for having had a bath, a meal cooked from scratch, and eight hours in her own bed, she had spent half the evening texting Jem and the other half of it wondering how Jem was getting on. She stumbled on the kerb that marked the car park boundary, flummoxed by a relationship that had sneaked under her defences and blossomed into something that was making her trip over her own feet. It had never been like this with Steph, who clicked her fingers to see how fast Rosie would come running and left her with a bitter taste in her mouth. In all honesty, it had never been like this with anyone.