by Vivien Brown
There was a queue for the lifts. Sunday visiting, straight after lunch. Always a busy time. When the first one came, she squeezed inside, along with at least a dozen others. There was a smell of pungent flowers, lukewarm burgers, lots of sweat. A small boy eased his way to the front, his hand outstretched, eager to be the one to push the buttons. ‘Six, please,’ Laura said, when it was her turn to tell him where she wanted to go, and the lift rumbled its way upwards, stopping at just about every floor to let people out and a few replacement people in, several of them grumbling that it was going up when they really wanted it to go down and sending the boy into a frenzy of excited button-pushing, until the woman with him grabbed him by the sleeve and hauled him out at level five.
Intensive Care was always quiet. There was a rather sad air, a mixture of fear and expectation that hit her as soon as the doors opened to Laura’s push of the intercom. She went inside, closing the doors as silently as she could behind her.
‘You back again?’ the sister called across to her. It was the same one from earlier, the jolly black one with curly grey hair pulled back into a straggly bun. Cora Jenkins, according to her badge. Laura couldn’t remember ever seeing a black person with such grey hair before. It was very distinctive. Striking. Cora pushed the file she was writing in aside and beckoned her over. ‘Anyone would think you were family!’
‘No, but until one appears, I’ll have to do.’ Laura dunked her hands under the anti-bac dispenser on the wall and rubbed them hastily together before moving to the nurses’ station. ‘Still nothing?’
‘Not a thing. We’re no nearer to knowing who she is. There were just the keys in her pocket and a cross around her neck. Ordinary high street clothes, no bag, no tattoos or anything like that. Nothing to help ID her at all. The police are on to it, but nobody’s been. Seems like, wherever she’s come from, our mystery girl hasn’t even been missed. Sad, isn’t it?’
‘And how is she? Has she opened her eyes? Tried to talk? Anything?’
‘Not yet, I’m afraid. The leg’s been sorted, as you know. They’ve done what they can in theatre to relieve the pressure on her brain and her blood pressure is more or less back on track. Look, lovey, she’s as stable as she can be under the circumstances.’ She shook her head. ‘They want to keep her under a while longer, give her a chance to recover before they try to wake her up, so she won’t be back with us and talking just yet. It’s still early days …’
‘Can I go in?’
‘Course you can, my love. You know where I am if you need me.’ And she turned her attention back to her paperwork as Laura made her way along the corridor of little side rooms, each patient encased in their own private bubble, until she reached the right door.
She eased it open quietly, nodding to a nurse who was just replacing the clipboard at the end of the bed and was about to leave. ‘No change,’ she whispered, touching Laura’s arm. ‘We’re still doing the breathing for her, just for now anyway. To help her along while she rests, make things easier for her. She did take a very nasty bang to the head. The surgeons have done what they can, but there’s no knowing if there’s any lasting damage. Not until she … well, as it’s you, I’ll be honest and say …’
‘If she wakes up?’
The girl nodded and opened the door. ‘Let’s hope someone comes to claim her soon, eh?’
Before it’s too late, Laura thought, but quickly shook the idea away.
‘Oh, and there’s one more thing. I don’t know if I should tell you, but as you’re staff …’
‘Yes?’
‘She has a caesarean scar. At some time, not too long ago, she’s had a baby.’ And then the nurse was gone, her shoes clicking away into the distance along the corridor, and Laura and the girl were alone.
‘So, Lily …’ Laura moved towards the bed, surrounded by machinery, and looked down into the still, bruised face. There was a tube fitted into the girl’s mouth, a bandage wrapped around her head, wires attached to her chest, the incessant beeping of monitors, providing the background noise like crickets on a summer’s night in some Spanish holiday resort. ‘What are we going to do with you?’ she muttered, picturing this girl with a baby in her arms. And where was that baby now? ‘How are we going to find your family?’
She pulled a chair nearer to the bed and slid her hand over Lily’s, spotting the nibbled nails and noting again the absence of a ring.
‘Hello. Can you hear me?’
There was no response, which was no surprise, but that wasn’t going to stop her from talking.
‘They say coma patients can hear sometimes, you know. People wake up and say they’ve heard every word spoken while they’ve been asleep, family chatting, music, all sorts, but they just didn’t have the power to answer back. Maybe that’s happening with you? Maybe you’re hearing me now. Lying there scared and trapped, not understanding where you are, or what’s going on?’
Still nothing.
‘I want to help you, Lily. I don’t even know if that’s really your name, but I’ll call you Lily anyway. I’m Laura. I’m a nurse. I know you have nobody else here to talk to you, to tell you where or how you are; what the weather’s like outside. Would you like me to be that person, Lily? For now, anyway, just until someone comes?’
The girl just lay there. Not a flicker. Laura squeezed her hand and half hoped she might feel it move, that it might try to squeeze her back, but no. Just the beeps, marking out the seconds, one by one, and the sound of the ventilator breathing in and out, in and out, in and out.
‘You’re in the hospital. We don’t know what happened to you. Hit by a car that didn’t stop, so they say. Your leg’s broken, so that might hurt a bit. And your ribs. And your head’s going to feel sore. You’re being kept asleep, just until your brain decides to get better and start working properly again by itself. Don’t worry about that. Or the noise, or the tubes. It’s all here to help you. All perfectly normal. Don’t be afraid. All you have to do is lie there and sleep, and let yourself heal.’
Laura looked at the watch on her chest. It was time to get back to work already.
‘It’s a nice day, Lily. It’s rained a lot the last day or two, but the sun’s out now, and there are trees outside the window. Lovely, tall, green trees. I think I can even see a little nest. You’ll be able to see it for yourself when you wake up. And hear the birds. If you can’t already …’
She withdrew her hand, and resisted a sudden compulsion to lean over and kiss Lily on the cheek. No, that would be wrong. Crossing professional boundaries. But maybe she was doing that already, just by being here?
The lift was empty this time, depositing her back on the ground floor with a bump. She hurried back into A & E and checked the screen for new patients, any developments since she’d been gone. Nothing of any significance. Things were remarkably quiet. Until the Sunday afternoon football and rugby players started to roll in, the amateur ones with proper jobs who played just for the exercise, and the beer afterwards, and the fun – some fun! – with their split lips and bloodied noses and broken ankles. Three o’clock loomed. Kick-off time. It wouldn’t be long now.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Ruby
Michael is nice. More than nice. Michael is handsome, gorgeous, wonderful. Michael is the best thing ever to happen to me. Only he hasn’t happened to me. Not really. Not yet.
He did speak to me today. Only to say thank you. But he said it in such a lovely way. With his eyes, not just his voice. Like he really meant it.
Mrs Castle lets me run errands now. She says that a children’s home is for children and I’m not a child any more, that she is going to give me more responsibility, prepare me for the outside world. When she’s in her office she lets me help her sometimes. A bit of filing, answering the phone. All good practice for when I get a job, that’s what she says. I’m sixteen now, and I have always known I can’t stay here forever.
Today she sent me down to the bank. Not with tons of money. That would be too dangerous. I could get mugged or something.
But she’d been collecting up coins in jars for weeks and she let me bag them up and walk them down to the bank to pay them in. Nobody robs you for ten pence pieces, do they? Not worth the effort.
Michael’s long fingers reached across the desk and hooked the bags in, under the see-through dip that separates him from the queue, lifting them one at a time, dropping them onto the scales, ticking them off on the slip with his pen. I know his name is Michael because he wears a badge. Michael Payne. He’s so much younger than the rest of the staff, who all have grey hair and bored faces and look like they’ve been there forever. He’s older than me though. Maybe twenty or twenty-one. So, not by all that much. Not enough to matter. And he has the most brilliant blue eyes. The eyes that said thank you, all by themselves.
In my mind, I can still feel his hand, touching the top of mine, ever so lightly, as he takes the coin bags, making the tiny hairs stand to attention all along my arm. And then, later, touching my cheek, touching my body under my clothes, touching with soft gentle strokes where nobody has ever touched me before. And then it’s gone again. The hand. And suddenly all I can hear is the sound of my own breathing struggling in my throat as the very thought of him stops me in my tracks, sends the blood rushing to my head, to my heart, and almost takes my breath away.
He could charm the birds out of the trees, that one. It’s one of Mrs Castle’s sayings, and it’s as if I can hear her still saying it now. Birds. Trees. My mind’s all over the place, whirling around like I’m in a spin dryer, but I know what I felt. In that one delicious moment at the bank, I felt it. The beginnings of love.
I am in love. Head over heels, birds in the trees love. With a man I don’t even know. And his name is Michael Payne.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Patsy reached across the lumpy bed for Michael. He wasn’t there.
It was ridiculous to feel so tired after such a short flight, but perhaps the months of intense work had finally caught up with her. Now she’d sealed the latest contract she could take a couple of weeks off and relax a bit before Phase Two. The hefty bonus coming her way would help too. She could feel a spot of retail therapy coming on, just as soon as they could get up to London and hit the shops.
They’d had a meal at the local pub with Michael’s mother last night, but it had proved to be a rather strained affair. They’d both been putting on smiles for his benefit, but underneath the surface they’d been squaring up, marking their corners. Womens’ stuff, that Michael wouldn’t have noticed. But she knew. Geraldine did not like her, did not really want her here.
Michael had clearly felt a bit awkward about sharing the bed. It was his mother’s house. The last time he’d properly lived here was a long time ago and he’d been a single man for most of that time. She’d still done his washing, hoovered his room, made his meals. Even when Ruby had arrived, he’d told her, it hadn’t felt like this. Ruby had been like family to start with, like a younger sister, just there living alongside him in the house, until things had suddenly and stupidly changed between them. Things had moved so quickly then, into an intimacy he had never felt ready for. A shared room, a shared bed, a baby on the way, but always something lacking. Now he was finding it hard to make this new transition, to bring his own fiancée, a woman his mother hardly knew, into the house, take her into his old room and do the kind of things he would have done if they’d been back in Portugal, where walls did not have ears. His mother’s ears, anyway. And things he had never done with Ruby.
And so, after the pub outing last night they’d drunk cocoa and made small talk until Geraldine had gone up to bed, and then they’d tiptoed up the stairs like naughty teenagers and gone to sleep curled against each other, with far too many clothes on, the light off, and not so much as a snog, let alone anything that might have made the bedsprings creak.
Patsy had not slept well.
Geraldine had made them breakfast, which they’d all eaten together, squashed around the kitchen table, then she’d made some calls before deciding to get off back to the shop. She didn’t usually open on a Sunday, or at least not out of season, but she’d missed a good bit of yesterday and there were things to be done, she’d told them. Paperwork, stock taking, financial stuff. It had sounded like an excuse to get away from the house, and probably from them, but Patsy wasn’t complaining.
‘At last,’ Patsy had said when the front door closed and they’d heard Geraldine’s car move off down the road. ‘Bed!’
‘But we’ve only just got up,’ Michael had pleaded, as she led him back up the stairs, still clutching a slice of cold toast in his hand.
‘Oh, no, my lad. You haven’t got up at all yet. That’s the problem!’
And now, what must be three or four hours later, she was awake again, her clothes scattered in heaps on the carpet, her hair tangled up in post-coital knots, and the other side of the bed empty.
‘Michael?’ she called, raising her head from the damp sweatiness of the pillowcase, which was made of some sort of shiny nylon. In a sickly pale peach colour, too. Certainly not to her taste, but they wouldn’t have to stay here long. Not if she had anything to do with it.
There was no answer, so she swung her legs over the side and sat up. Her head ached. Alcohol from the night before? Unlikely. She was sure she hadn’t drunk all that much. No, it must just be the air in here. It was too warm, muggy, like the onset of a storm. And daytime sex didn’t help, with no window open, and the curtains closed. Oh, she could do with a coffee. A good strong one. But Geraldine didn’t go in for proper coffee. There was no percolator, no filter machine, no fancy coffee pods in her kitchen. Patsy had established that last night. So, instant it would have to be.
‘Michael?’ she called again, louder this time. ‘Can you put the kettle on?’
He was in the back garden when she finally ventured down to find him. The shed door was open, and he had a pile of old tennis rackets, some kind of net thing, and a rusty bike laid out on the grass.
‘Just looking out a few bits for when Lily comes down,’ he said. ‘I didn’t want to wake you.’
‘Well, I’m awake now, and my head’s banging.’ She pulled her flimsy gown tightly around her and picked her way barefoot over the grass. ‘How about we go out, find a coffee shop, take a walk by the sea? It might blow away the cobwebs a bit. This stuff can wait, can’t it? It all looks pretty ancient. Wouldn’t she rather have new? And it’s not as if you’ve heard anything yet from Ruby, so we have no idea when Lily’s likely to need any of it …’
Michael shook his head. ‘Leave it an hour or so, eh? You go back in and help yourself to whatever you fancy in the kitchen, have a shower – the water’s hot – and then we’ll go out for a late lunch. How does that sound?’ He slipped his arms around her waist and pulled her in for a kiss. ‘Just give me time to get this lot sorted at least, and then I’ll be in, okay?’
The kitchen felt cold as she flipped the switch on the kettle and hauled herself onto a high stool to get her feet up off the tiled floor. There was a blob of mud on her big toe and she leant down to wipe it away with a scrap of kitchen roll. Back in Portugal now it would be warm, the sun sending long streaks of pale light through the shutters, and she would have real strong coffee. Lots of it. She had almost forgotten what England was like at this time of year. All brown trees and chilly winds, and the awful driving rain. No wonder they hadn’t been brave enough to open the bedroom window. Maybe it was being here near the sea that made it worse. Not the clear blue sea and golden sands she had grown used to, but this harsh grey pounding sea that struck at the endless piles of pebbles Geraldine had laughingly called a beach.
The instant coffee, heaped with more sugar than was good for her, didn’t quite hit the spot, but it helped. She gazed out of the window, watched Michael busying himself in his mother’s garden, and breathed. Just breathed. She had to tell herself that she was here for a reason. And that reason was Michael. And Lily, of course. She felt her stomach lurch involuntarily as she thought about Lily. They would meet
properly soon. This tiny child who still meant so much to Michael, whose absence had left a hole in his life he was so anxious to refill. My new stepdaughter, she thought, trying out the word for the first time. Oh, hell. What do I know about children?
*
Geraldine had tried. Well, not very hard admittedly, but it wasn’t easy to like Patricia. Or Patsy, as Michael insisted on calling her. They had met before, of course. Once or twice, in London, before her son had made the big announcement that he was going to go off and work abroad. Something to do with land, and holiday homes by the sea. Project management, he’d called it. Whatever that was.
Moving from Brighton to take up a better position in the bank’s head office in London had been bad enough, but she hadn’t tried to stop him. Much as she had missed them all, she had to admit it had made sense. A fresh, exciting new start for him and Ruby, and for little Lily, a chance to build a better life together as a family. There were opportunities in London that would never have come his way at home. But then he’d heard about this new company, been offered a job, left the bank behind, grabbed his chance. ‘Now, I’m really going places,’ he’d said, proudly, as if that was what mattered in life. And within months he was. Moving on from the company’s London base and all the way to Portugal. A place too far.
Back then, when she’d first come across her, Patricia hadn’t seemed particularly important. Just some girl from work. Michael had not long left the bank and was still settling in at the new place, full of ambition and eager to please. The girl was visiting from their office in Lisbon where she had been making a name for herself. She knew the right people, the right contacts. They spent time together, working on some project or other. There were working lunches and late night meetings. She’d even been to the flat, met Ruby, drunk her tea, shaken her hand.
Geraldine still remembered sitting with Ruby one night, waiting for Michael to come home. With Lily in her pyjamas, clutching that bear of hers, trying to keep her eyes open for a goodnight cuddle from Daddy, and not managing it. And Michael coming back smelling of too much wine and crashing out on the sofa, Ruby pulling a blanket around him and making excuses. He works hard, he’s busy, he’s doing it all for us …