Whatever Love Is

by Rosie Ruston

If he had stopped right there, she might, she thought later, just might have wondered whether she’d got him all wrong. Within the next five seconds she knew she’d got him completely right.

  ‘And anyway,’ he smirked, ‘you owe me. Who was it who told your brother about that job advert? That deserves at least one thank-you kiss. And if he gets the job, I’ll expect a lot more than a kiss!’

  She had never slapped a guy before. She thought it only happened in the movies.

  ‘You little b—!’

  She didn’t wait to hear his insults. Ignoring the fact that her purse was almost empty, she waved at a passing taxi and left him standing on the pavement. She was rather pleased to see that a couple of guys on the opposite side of the road were laughing their heads off.

  CHAPTER 14

  ‘Our present wretchedness.’

  (Jane Austen, Mansfield Park)

  The next ten days were horrid. Thomas was away, firstly in Mexico, then in the Far East and when he was in the UK, he stayed at the London flat and immersed himself in salvaging the reputation of his company and the manufacture of next season’s lines. Although the first rush of news items had ceased, several radio programmes including Woman’s Hour and The Moral Maze had picked up on the cheap labour issues in the manufacture of must-have fashion and Thomas faced some fairly vigorous questioning as well as full-on meetings with retailers anxious to disassociate themselves from his brands. To his credit, he didn’t shirk any of them and even admitted that it was his son who had alerted him to the shortcomings of the Mexican contractors.

  William, to his great delight, was snapped up by Neptune’s and within a week had flown to Cape Town and joined a cruise ship heading for Australia and New Zealand.

  ‘When will I see you again?’ Frankie had asked tearfully as he had hugged her goodbye.

  ‘Tomorrow.’ He laughed. ‘I’ll Skype. In fact, I’ll Skype twice a week till I’m back.’ He hugged her again. ‘Thanks for being you. You know, about everything.’

  The day after William left, Ned came home from KOT camp. Frankie’s spirits lifted when she saw him and dropped when he announced that he would be leaving almost immediately to join Alice in Sussex.

  ‘She’s in pieces, poor thing,’ he said as he packed up his car. ‘Not only is she gutted about everything that was stolen, but her mum keeps having panic attacks and can’t bear Alice to be out of sight, and she’s missing the horse.’

  He paused and eyed Frankie seriously. ‘And she’s pretty upset with you actually,’ he said.

  ‘With me? Why?’

  ‘She thought you and Henry were really getting it together and now he’s gone off on a theatre craft summer school because he says it’s all off.’

  ‘It was never on!’ Frankie exploded. ‘And if it had been, it would have stopped the instant I found out that he was two-timing and going behind Nick’s back!’

  Too late she realised she had said too much.

  ‘Behind Nick’s back? What are you on about?’ Ned stood stock still, staring at her.

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Frankie, you can’t say something like that and then clam up!’

  ‘All right, you asked for it,’ she replied. ‘Mia and Henry – they’ve been texting and calling one another the whole time Mia’s been away. And at the festival, I caught them snogging and —’

  ‘You know what? I would have expected more of you than that.’

  Frankie felt sick. ‘What?’

  ‘So Mia texts her friends when she’s on holiday – like, don’t we all? She’s in Barbados, she’s sailing, riding, staying at an amazing old sugar plantation – of course she’s going to want the world to know.’

  ‘No, it wasn’t that kind of —’

  ‘What is this, Frankie? Are you jealous? Is that why you’re spreading stories? Because if you are, then maybe you shouldn’t have led the guy on and then been so high handed with him!’

  ‘Ned, listen, it’s not like that . . .’ She broke off as a horsebox turned into the drive.

  ‘I don’t have time for this,’ Ned said briskly. ‘I said I’d help the guys load Fling and then I’m driving to Sussex to stay with Alice’s folks for a few days.’ He beckoned to the driver to turn into the paddock. ‘And if you say a word of all this rubbish to Nick . . .’

  ‘As if I would!’

  Ned shrugged. ‘I don’t know what you’d do,’ he replied. ‘You’ve changed Frankie.’

  ‘Maybe I have,’ she said, struggling to keep her voice level. ‘Maybe I’m not a doormat any more. Maybe when a guy invades my personal space – not once, but repeatedly – tells bare-faced lies and openly deceives someone like Nick, maybe it’s time to tell it like it is.’

  And with that, she turned and walked back to the house, stumbling slightly as the tears blurred her vision.

  He hadn’t even asked about her A-level results. Come to that, neither had anyone else.

  As always when things went badly, Frankie immersed herself in writing. The story about Jasper that she’d started ages ago had grown into the first six chapters of a novel and although she was pretty certain it would never be good enough to send to a publisher, she just kept going, pouring all her emotion and anger and confusion into the lives of her characters, turning Jasper into Henry and Alice into a nasty piece of work called Serena and Ned . . . well, Ned became Sam who was loved and adored by Emily but who was too blind to see that he was being duped by Serena. The faster her fingers typed, the better she felt; but every time she got to the point where logic told her that the reader needed to know what was happening between Sam and Serena down in Sussex, she couldn’t go there.

  ‘Oh, it’s so lovely having the young ones back in the house!’ Nerys enthused the day after Mia, Jemma and Nick arrived home. ‘If only James . . .’

  She paused as Tina waved a hand at her.

  ‘Don’t speak about James,’ she wailed. ‘He rang, you know, yesterday, and when I answered, he just said “Ma, I . . .” and hung up! I know something’s wrong, I feel it in my guts.’

  ‘Mum, don’t worry. Jon’s going to see him tomorrow. He’ll fill us in,’ said Jemma.

  ‘Jon? He knows where James is?’ Tina gasped.

  ‘How do you know? You’ve been away,’ Nerys probed.

  ‘He’s been in touch with me quite a bit – texts and stuff,’ Jemma said, blushing slightly. ‘He didn’t say anything about James not being at home, just that he was hanging out with him a lot.’

  ‘But when I phoned him, he said he didn’t have a clue . . .’ Tina began, and then sighed. ‘I suppose he was doing what James wanted.’

  ‘Did he mention your father’s troubles?’ Nerys asked.

  Jemma nodded. ‘Not till I came home from Barbados though,’ Jemma said. ‘He said that he didn’t want to spoil our holiday by telling us how bad things got after we left.’

  ‘Not that anything could have spoilt it,’ Mia added, hooking her arm through Nick’s and resting her head on his chest. ‘We were too busy having fun!’

  Well, Frankie thought, clearly everything is OK between the two of them. Perhaps Ned was right after all – perhaps it had been just a drunken moment of madness.

  Hard as she tried, she couldn’t quite convince herself.

  Nick and Mia left for Brighton two days later. The Rushworths had booked them into the Hotel du Vin, and given them an eye-watering budget with strict instructions not to come home until they had found what Verity called ‘the perfect little love nest’. Apparently they had assured Mia that despite Thomas’s ‘shocking’ behaviour, they loved and adored her and knew that she and Nick were made for one another.

  Mia had seemed on edge, talking too fast and too much, telling anyone who would listen how great it was going to be and how she couldn’t wait to get her own place. But twice Frankie caught her coming out of the bathroom, clearly having been crying.

  ‘You OK?’ she asked the second time.

  ‘Why wouldn’t I be?’

  ‘Pardon m
e for caring.’ Frankie sighed. At which point Mia burst into tears and ran into her bedroom, slamming the door behind her.

  An hour later, when Nick picked her up in his car, she was wearing full make-up and a broad smile. Her eyes, however, weren’t laughing.

  ‘She’s been like this for the past week,’ Jemma said when Frankie caught up with her in the kitchen, early that evening. She propped open her new Cook Caribbean book and began chopping ginger and tossing it into a mixing bowl. ‘I was saying to Jon, I reckon something’s up.’

  ‘Are you and Jon . . . you know, an item?’

  Frankie couldn’t help noticing that his name cropped up every few minutes in Jemma’s conversation.

  ‘Well hardly, not yet,’ she said. ‘Thing is, he wants to see more of me and I really like him. Only don’t say anything to Dad. He still thinks Jon meant to give that photo to the journalist guy.’

  She chopped faster. ‘And what with things with Mia and Nick getting a bit sticky . . .’

  ‘Sticky?’

  Jemma glanced at Frankie. ‘You won’t say anything?’

  Frankie shook her head.

  ‘Between you and me, I think Mia wishes she hadn’t got engaged. Not that she’s said so, not in so many words.’ She hurled some coconut flakes into the bowl. ‘Two or three times I found her crying and when I asked what was wrong, she said “Everything”!’

  There was so much Frankie wanted to say but remembering her promise to Ned and to Mia, she kept quiet about that. ‘But she seems all over Nick – lovey dovey and everything.’

  ‘That’s just the point,’ Jemma said. ‘That’s not Mia’s style. It’s like she’s trying to convince herself she wants him. Which is why . . .’ She hesitated.

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘Nothing,’ Jemma said, breaking eggs into the bowl. ‘By the way, I was going to ask about . . .’

  She broke off as her phone shrilled.

  ‘Hey, can you grab that?’ she said. ‘My hands are all covered in flour.’

  Frankie fished it out of the back pocket of Jemma’s jeans, and held it to Jemma’s ear.

  ‘Jon! Hi, babe, we were just talking about ya! How ya doin’?’ Jemma appeared to have adopted a totally new mode of speech. ‘What? Oh my God, no!’ Her face blanched. ‘Where is he?’ She reached for a pen. ‘Wait, wait – Frankie get some paper, like fast!’

  Frankie, who never went anywhere without a notebook, tore out a page and thrust it at Jemma. ‘University College Hospital, London.’ Jemma scribbled. ‘Oh-eight-four-five, one-five-five, five thousand. OK, I’ll tell Mum and ring you back. Oh God, oh God!’ And with that she burst into tears.

  ‘Jem, what is it, what’s happened?’

  ‘It’s James,’ she sobbed. ‘He’s been beaten up. They say . . .’ She stumbled over the words, her hands shaking. ‘They say he’s in a critical condition.’

  The rest of the day passed in a blur. Tina sat in the kitchen, weeping and rocking backwards and forwards while Jemma rushed down to Keeper’s Cottage to get Nerys, and Frankie phoned her uncle.

  ‘I’ll get to the hospital right away,’ Thomas said. ‘I want you to get hold of Ned.’

  ‘I tried, but there was no reply,’ Frankie said.

  ‘Keep trying,’ Thomas said. ‘Where is he anyway?’

  ‘With Alice,’ Frankie told him. ‘In Sussex.’

  ‘Right,’ he replied. ‘Well, when you reach him tell him to go to the hospital immediately. And Frankie?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Get in touch with Mia and then ask Nerys to drive the rest of you to London, I don’t want Tina behind the wheel of a car when she’s in a state, OK?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘I’ll be in touch as soon as I can. I’m counting on you, Frankie. You’re the only one I can trust to keep calm.’

  Frankie was helping Tina load a bag into the back of Nerys’s car when her mobile rang. It was Ned. ‘I’m sorry, Ned, but —’ Frankie began.

  ‘It’s OK,’ Ned cut in. ‘I was probably a bit hard on you and I didn’t mean all the things I said —’

  ‘I wasn’t talking about that,’ Frankie interrupted. ‘I mean I’m sorry to spoil your holiday but there’s been some bad news. It’s James.’

  They were on the M1 when Thomas rang Frankie’s mobile. The news wasn’t good. James was still on the critical list and in the operating theatre.

  ‘He tried to break up a fight,’ Thomas said, his voice cracking. ‘We don’t know the whole story but a witness said one of the guys pulled a knife and stabbed him. If it hadn’t been for Jon turning up . . .’ He left the sentence unfinished.

  ‘Ned’s on his way,’ Frankie said. ‘He’ll probably get to you before we do. But I can’t reach Mia. I’ve left a message on her answerphone.’

  ‘Just keep trying. We all need to be here. As soon as possible.’

  If her sister was bad in a crisis, Nerys was brilliant. She had packed the car-boot with a picnic hamper stuffed with bottles of water, fruit and cheese, plus blankets and a few pillows.

  ‘I know we’ve got the flat,’ she had announced, ‘but if any of us stay overnight at the hospital we’ll want to be comfortable.’

  On the way to London, both Frankie and Jemma had repeatedly tried to contact Mia but every time it went to answerphone. They tried Nick’s mobile but he didn’t answer either. They tried the hotel, but were told that Mr Rushworth and Miss Bertram were not in their room.

  ‘Oh, just let them enjoy themselves while they’ve got the chance,’ Nerys said as she dropped them off at the hospital door before hunting for a parking space. ‘It’s too late for them to do anything tonight anyway.’

  They followed the signs to ICU where a nurse greeted them at the door.

  ‘He’s out of theatre and the operation went well,’ she said. ‘I can’t allow all of you at the bedside at once. His mum.’ She smiled at Tina. ‘And maybe one more.’

  ‘You go,’ Jemma said, nodding to Frankie. ‘I feel queasy just being here.’

  Frankie followed Tina down the corridor and into a side ward. James was lying motionless on his back on the bed, wired up to a bleeping machine and with a drip in each arm. His head was swathed in bandages, his right eye closed and swollen and his lips bloodless. Ned was in a chair on one side, Thomas on the other.

  ‘Oh my baby.’ Tina sank down on her knees beside the bed and took James’s hand.

  ‘There’s good news,’ Thomas said at once. ‘The internal wounds are much less than they first thought and it seems the fracture to his skull hasn’t damaged his brain. God has been very good.’

  His eyes filled with tears and he swallowed hard. ‘I blame myself for all this,’ he said. ‘I have been such a stupid, short-sighted fool.’

  Just then, James stirred and opened his good eye. ‘Dad?’

  ‘James,’ Thomas gasped, seizing his hand. ‘It’s OK, we’re here. We’re all here.’

  ‘Sorry, Dad.’ He struggled to get the words out. ‘Sorry about . . .’

  ‘It’s all right, son,’ Thomas murmured. ‘Everything’s going to be all right.’

  After a while, the nurse suggested they should leave and let James rest.

  ‘One of you can stay with him overnight but no more,’ she said firmly.

  ‘I’ll stay,’ Thomas said, rubbing a hand wearily over his eyes. ‘The rest of you go and get some sleep.’

  As they moved out into the corridor, Frankie spotted Jemma and Nerys at the drinks machine. The guy whose arm was draped protectively round Jemma’s shoulders was Jon Yates.

  ‘Any news? How’s he doing? I wanted to go in but the nurse said no more visitors. Is that bad news? Or is he sleeping?’ Jon’s face was etched with worry.

  ‘He’s doing OK, he’s speaking,’ Frankie said.

  ‘Well, that’s wonderful,’ Nerys said, ‘because in cases like this, you see . . .’

  She was about to hold forth from the depths of her imagined medical knowledge, but Jemma burst into tears. ‘Than
k God!’ she sobbed. ‘I thought he might die. I was horrid to him before he went away and I thought I might never be able to say sorry.’

  ‘Hey, it’s OK.’ Jon wrapped his arms round her, and hugged her to him.

  ‘Oh – well now. Yes. Well.’ Clearly, for the first time since James’s ‘little misunderstanding’, Nerys Lane was lost for words.

  Over breakfast at the flat the following morning Thomas, who had spent most of the night at the hospital, filled them in about the events leading up to the attack on James.

  ‘It was Jon who told me,’ he began, picking halfheartedly at a slice of toast. ‘To be fair to the lad, he came clean, admitted that he had been out of order showing his godfather the photos. But much more importantly, he told me what James had been doing.’

  ‘Which was?’ Tina urged.

  ‘What he saw in Mexico had a profound effect on him – a far deeper effect than it had on me, I’m ashamed to say,’ Thomas continued. ‘Once his initial anger had passed, he told Jon he was taking a whole new look at his life and was fed up with being what he called a sponger and a con artist. He bedded down in Jon’s flat and started working at a soup kitchen.’

  ‘What? James?’ Ned blurted out.

  ‘Yes.’ Thomas nodded. ‘He told Jon that I had said he had no social conscience and that he was going to prove me wrong. Well, he did that all right.’ Thomas poured himself another cup of coffee and took a deep breath. ‘The night of the attack he was heading to the soup kitchen when he saw a group of thugs laying into a little lad of no more than twelve. He didn’t think twice – Jon was coming out of the tube station to meet up with him and do an article about the work of the charity that ran the kitchen and he says James just dashed across the road, narrowly missed being knocked down, and began shouting at the guys to lay off.’

  He took a gulp of coffee.

  ‘That’s when the biggest one turned on him and pulled the knife. Jon says James fell to the ground like a stone and they all kicked him as if he was a football.’

  ‘That’s awful,’ Frankie gasped. ‘How can people be like that?’

  ‘I guess it happens when society turns a blind eye,’ her uncle replied. ‘I’m as guilty as the next person – I should have realised what was going on in that factory, but the profits were good and that was all I cared about.’