False Hope

by Lynne Lee

  ‘Yes, of course. Well, as much as they needed to know.’

  He rolled his eyes. ‘Of course you did.’

  ‘Matt, this really isn’t helping. I. Am. Sorry. I. Didn’t. Tell. You. How many times do I have to say that?’

  His only answer was to narrow his eyes. ‘Tell me something. If they hadn’t put that complaint in – say, if you’d patched him up and sent him on his merry way – would you have told me then? I’m serious. Would you have told me at all?’

  I felt skewered then, because I genuinely didn’t know the answer to that question.

  But Matt was already one step ahead of my thought process.

  ‘I’m guessing no.’ He cast his gaze around the kitchen, and when it returned to me it stayed, even as he lifted his glass and drank his wine. He lowered the glass then. ‘You know something? I’m beginning to feel like a visitor in my own house. And that bloody family. Just the thought of them having anything to do with us. I knew we should never have come down here.’

  I didn’t know what to say to that, either. Except perhaps that I’d been thinking the exact thoughts he had, with some conviction, for over two weeks now. I didn’t though, because I knew it would only inflame him further.

  ‘I know,’ I said limply. But he was off on his own train of thought now. ‘Your bloody mother,’ he said, as if half to himself. And when he didn’t continue, I ventured, ‘My mother?’

  ‘Yes, of course your mother. All of this comes down to your mother. Why else are we here? We wouldn’t be in this situation – anywhere near that poisonous family – if we hadn’t let her blackmail us into coming down here, would we?’

  I was grateful for the ‘we’, which could so easily have been a ‘you’, but less enthusiastic about revisiting that particular conversation. ‘We’re not in a situation. The complaint will be thrown out and that will be the end of it.’

  ‘Christ, how can you be so naive? The guy’s lost his arm. So he’ll also lose his livelihood. And his driving licence – no question about that. And his insurance will be invalid, so he’ll almost certainly be charged with causing criminal damage too. And his mother, in case you’ve forgotten, hates us even more than he does. And you expect me to skip around thinking that will be the end of it? They live here. She lives here. And now we live here too. Jesus, Grace, if you think she’ll let this go, you have a very short memory. Trust me, she’ll be out for your blood.’

  Chapter 9

  Tim Shelley was as good as his word. Though I didn’t see him between Christmas and New Year – there were no routine clinics then, so I was only operating on emergency trauma patients – an email from him appeared in my inbox on New Year’s Eve, to let me know they’d conducted their investigation and, just as they’d anticipated, my confidence in my professional opinion had clearly not been misplaced. The next step, therefore, would be to draft a robust letter, so did I have any space in my diary on the 3rd?

  The letter itself, once it was written and signed (in my case, after I’d cleared it with my defence union, as they’d instructed), was necessarily frank and to the point. There was absolutely no case to answer.

  Privately, I would have liked to add a further, pithier paragraph, making it clear that malicious accusations like theirs could be subject to legal redress. After all, they’d tried to smear my professional reputation. But I said nothing. What good would it do, after all? And perhaps, as I kept trying to reassure Matt, this would be the end of it. That realising they’d shot their bolt and missed, they’d see sense, and the whole thing would be over.

  But it didn’t matter how many times I convinced myself it should be, something told me it wouldn’t be.

  I was right. Because I was on my way out of outpatients the following Monday, having just finished my morning clinic, when a woman came hurrying up to me. ‘Mrs Hamilton?’ she said. ‘Is there any chance I could have a word with you?’

  I didn’t recognise her at first. I’d only seen her very briefly, after all. Plus her hair was different; she had it pulled back into a high ponytail, which bounced behind her as she walked. She was wearing an NHS uniform, too. Short-sleeved tunic, black trousers, soft-soled shoes, the usual lanyard. So she worked here?

  She’d obviously noticed my confusion.

  ‘Sorry, I’m Jessica,’ she said. Then added, ‘Jessica Kennedy?’, her voice rising at the end as if even her own name was up for dispute. Her accent wasn’t local. Perhaps Yorkshire. Had she met Aidan in Hull?

  Like me, she had a handbag over her shoulder, so I imagined she was either at the end of or perhaps midway through a shift. The badge hanging from the lanyard told me she was a healthcare assistant – the modern equivalent of the old auxiliary nurse.

  The word ‘meek’ came to mind again. Meek, demure, diffident. Perhaps Aidan’s tastes had changed. And if so, pretty radically. Hope had been none of those things. But perhaps that was the point.

  ‘Hello,’ I said, wondering what was coming next. First impressions (mine was ‘brace yourself’) weren’t always the right ones, after all. But her smile was both open and apologetic.

  ‘I’m so sorry to accost you like this,’ she went on, ‘but I was wondering if there was any chance I could have a word with you? Either now, or . . .’ She opened her palms. ‘Well, whenever, really. I’m on a break at the moment, but maybe later, if you’re busy now? If that would be better for you?’

  Distrustful as I was of her – she was, after all, a Kennedy – both her expression and her body language seemed genuinely appeasing. And she worked here. Did that change anything? If, so, how?

  ‘Now is fine,’ I said, wondering if she’d been keeping an eye on my movements. Had she been watching out for me, waiting for me? If so, to say what?

  I took her back into the consulting room I’d just left.

  ‘I didn’t realise you worked here,’ I said, as she sat down in the chair I’d directed her to. There were a pair of them, so I could equally have sat in the other, but I wanted the security of being behind a desk. She didn’t seem in the least threatening, but there was still something about her, an air of agitation she was clearly struggling to contain.

  ‘I don’t,’ she said. ‘Well, I mean, I am this week. A couple of bank shifts. That’s what I mostly do at the moment. Mostly nights right now too, so this is . . .’ She frowned and bit her lower lip. ‘Look, I just wanted to say how sorry I am about everything. About sending that complaint letter.’

  Her hands were in her lap and she was rubbing the palm of one repeatedly with the thumb of the other. She looked like she meant it, and, just as had been the case with Aidan, my immediate instinct was to pity her. Not just because it was such a long-ingrained professional habit, but because I knew the kind of man she was married to. But I forced myself to fight it. She had knowingly done something (and her being a fellow NHS employee made it even worse, somehow) that, without a shred of evidence, she must have known would cause me all kinds of grief and stress, and could have seriously damaged my professional reputation.

  ‘The letter that had your name on it,’ I pointed out, albeit gently, because old non-combative habits die hard.

  She frowned. ‘I know, and I really am so sorry. I would never—’ She glanced down towards her lap, at her restless, restless hands. ‘Honestly, I’d never normally get involved in something like that. It’s really not . . .’ She tailed off, and I wondered if she had ever been on the receiving end of something similar. ‘It was just all the anxiety, and the shock – it was all just in the heat of the moment . . . I don’t know what I was thinking even agreeing to it. I mean, I knew it was wrong. I kept trying to tell them . . .’

  Again, she let the end of the sentence hang. For me to backfill with reassuring noises?

  But knew how? She’d known nothing. At least, not at the time. I could have been a rabid axe murderer in scrubs. There was little doubt in my mind that, for Norma, I still was. ‘So it wasn’t your idea then.’

  ‘No!’ Again, she sounded genuine. But
then again, I thought, suppose the complaint had been considered serious? Suppose I had recognised him before I operated on him and had admitted as much? Suppose they’d found a lawyer, who’d dug around into the background and latched on to something they thought they could work with? Suppose the photos had been inconclusive and they had made a case? Would this woman be sitting here now, apologising to me?

  ‘Then whose was it?’ I asked her. ‘Aidan’s? His mother’s?’

  It might just have been the way I said it, but when she met my eye now there was something slightly different, slightly unreadable, in her gaze.

  ‘I’m not exactly sure. Look, I don’t want to make excuses for him,’ she hurried on. ‘But he really wasn’t thinking straight. He’d already been through so much, and then for such a horrendous accident to happen to him—’

  Been through what? Did she mean recently? Or was she harking further back? If the first, nothing to do with me, and if the second, she was on very stony ground. Not least because the accident hadn’t exactly just ‘happened’. He’d had significant amounts of alcohol and drugs in his system. Intoxicants he’d put there. Aidan being Aidan. How many times had I heard those words said? As if ‘being Aidan’ conferred some special get-out-of-jail-free card. I didn’t say it, though. She, of all people, must have known that.

  ‘About which I sympathise, obviously,’ I said instead. ‘But—’

  ‘Look, like I say, it was a really, really stupid thing to do, and I sincerely regret agreeing to it.’

  ‘Does Aidan?’

  ‘Yes, of course. He’s just . . .’ She leaned forward slightly. ‘Look, I just wanted to say that he really is sorry. And that there will be no more of that kind of thing, I absolutely promise. That—’ She paused, put her loosely fisted hand to her mouth, and let out a small cough, as if preparing to make a speech. ‘Look, I just wanted to ask you, please, to not take any of this further. He’s already in so much trouble, and if you, well . . .’ She left a pause, which I didn’t fill, leaving her no choice but to continue. ‘Look, I’m sure you’ll understand how fragile his mental health is. You know, what with everything, and now all of this on top . . . He’s just become . . . you know . . .’ (I could tell she was groping for the right word) ‘. . . you know, a bit emotionally unhinged by it all. I mean, I know what you think of him, and I understand why you’d be angry at him. But he’s not a bad person, honestly. He really isn’t. He’s just—’ Another pause. ‘He’s just struggling with so many demons. In a really bad place.’

  Entonox – or gas and air – is a singular kind of painkiller. It doesn’t actually kill pain, but it’s great for things like childbirth, because it has the effect of distancing you; making you feel as if you’re slightly detached from what’s happening to you. I remember it well from when I gave birth to Daniel. As if I was floating above everything, looking down on myself.

  I felt a little like that now. Not in pain, but slightly distant, an observer. Observing that I was sitting there with a woman who up until now had been a stranger. A stranger who was talking to me about – of all people – Aidan Kennedy, and asking me – me! – to care about his demons and ‘fragile’ mental health. Or at least to accept it in mitigation of his and his mother’s actions. Who kept using the word ‘everything’, as if, where Aidan Kennedy was concerned, everything was defensible. Because, ‘you know’ – and how familiar this territory felt – ‘this is Aidan.’ She might just as well have been my seventeen-year-old sister. The sense of déjà vu was profound.

  I wasn’t quite sure what to say to her, because I had no intention of taking anything further. Though the suggestion that I would made me angry all over again. As if I was being tarred with the same vengeful brush. ‘I’m very sorry to hear that,’ I finally plumped for, ‘but—’

  She obviously misread what I was about to say, because her chin immediately jutted. ‘Look,’ she said, before I’d even had a chance to point that out to her. ‘I’m not trying to make out like it excuses him, I’m genuinely not, but he’s really not the kind of man you think he is.’

  The delicate wire I’d been walking, between objective professionalism and personal irritation, developed a tremor. I wobbled off it now and fell.

  ‘How would you know what sort of man I think he is?’

  ‘Because of what you’ve been told about him. About leaving his son and everything.’

  If she was still hoping to make a case for him, she was making a spectacularly bad job of it. I was beginning to get angrier now. I sat forward slightly.

  ‘I think you mean what he’s told you I’ve been told about him, don’t you?’

  There was a flash of something in her eyes then. Perhaps the realisation that coming here had been an error of judgement. I wondered if Aidan Kennedy’s ears were burning. I wondered what he’d have to say about her being here, mounting a case for his defence. I wondered if Norma Kennedy knew she was here. I imagined not. In a million years, not.

  ‘I’m just saying he’s not the villain he’s been painted as.’

  ‘By who? My late sister?’

  She had the grace to lower her gaze for a second. Then met my eyes again. She clearly still had something to get off her chest. And now I’d challenged her to do so, she was going for it. ‘Look, no disrespect to the dead, but all the stuff about the way he treated her, none of it was true. She made all that up to get back at him.’

  ‘Back at him for what?’

  ‘For seeing someone else. For not wanting to be with her any more.’

  ‘He’d have barely had to see the New Year out. Did that small fact escape his notice? My sister was dying. Yet he walked away anyway.’

  She remained undaunted. ‘He left her. Not his son. Her.’ She almost spat it out – this woman who had never even met my sister. ‘He never wanted to be cut off from his son. Look, I don’t know what you’ve been told – how can I? But I do know that.’

  But, of course, she would say that, wouldn’t she?

  ‘So why didn’t he fight for him?’

  ‘Because he knew he’d never win. Because he knew what your sister had told you about him.’ Her shoulders stiffened. ‘Because he was trying to do right by his son.’

  Whoa, I thought. Enough. This was my sister we were talking about. My sister, who could not defend herself. ‘Okay,’ I said, raising a hand. ‘I think our conversation needs to end here, Mrs Kennedy. I’m not even sure it’s appropriate to be talking to you at all. Your husband is no longer my patient, in any case, and I don’t think raking any of this stuff up is going to help matters. In fact, right now, it’s making it all feel a lot worse.’ I got to my feet, shouldered my handbag. ‘I think it’s best if we finished this here,’ I added firmly.

  She half rose as well, flustered now, perhaps realising she’d gone too far. ‘Look, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you. I just thought if—’

  ‘Apology accepted,’ I said briskly. I was genuinely conscious of the time now. I had a meeting to get to, and was already late. ‘But I really do hope this is going to be the end of it, because—’

  I stopped then, because she had suddenly flopped back down into her chair.

  ‘Are you okay?’ I asked.

  Her answer was unequivocal. No. Because she didn’t answer. Instead she leaned forward, placed her elbows on the desk, put her head in her hands, and started crying, her shoulders shuddering as she wept. Which left me little choice but to either ask her to leave or go around to her side of the desk and try to comfort her. Because there was nothing else to do in such a situation (is there ever?), I chose the latter, pulling the adjacent patient chair a little closer, sitting on it, and putting a hand on her nearest shoulder, which seemed to make her cry all the more. Familiar territory again. Horribly familiar territory.

  But I wasn’t sure quite what to say to her – there, there? – so I got up again. ‘Let me fetch you some water.’

  I went to the sink, plucked a disposable cup from the stack, filled it from the tap, and grabb
ed a wodge of paper towels as well. Then returned and, because she still had her head in her hands, placed both the cup and the towels on the desk.

  Then waited. It was a full fifteen or twenty seconds before she could pull herself together enough to speak.

  ‘I just don’t know what to do,’ she said finally. ‘I’m so sorry. I knew I shouldn’t have come here and bothered you with all this. I just thought I needed to explain to you, before things get completely out of hand and he gets into really serious trouble . . .’ She started sobbing again. ‘And, God, his bloody mother. And all I’ve done now is make everything even worse.’

  ‘Not worse,’ I began.

  ‘But I have. And I don’t know what to do.’ She sounded desperate now, and I thought all of a sudden of her two little girls. Innocents, like Dillon, in such a shitty situation. I didn’t doubt she was desperate, either.

  She took a towel from the desk and dabbed at the wetness on her cheeks. ‘He’s drinking himself to oblivion. I mean, it’s always been a problem, but in the last couple of years or so, pretty much since we moved down here, really, it’s been getting totally out of control. And Norma winding him up about all this is making everything even worse. She just doesn’t get it. I mean, seriously, she knows what he’s like. I keep telling her to leave it. It was his fault, and he knows it – so why can’t she just let it go? God. I just feel I’m stuck in some horrible nightmare and I don’t know what to do to get out of it.’

  ‘Have you spoken to his GP? Maybe if you could persuade him to seek help—’

  She shook her head. ‘It’s completely pointless trying to arrange anything like that. He won’t go. He won’t let anyone come round and see him either. Not even friends. And I’m having to work night shifts to bring some money in, and I just can’t . . .’ She faltered. ‘Just can’t trust him. You know, trust that he’s not going to get into one of his . . .’ Again she hesitated. What? I thought. His what? She looked conflicted.