by Liz Lawler
She smiled properly, feeling as if a weight had been lifted from her shoulders, and turned her head as a car pulled slowly alongside her.
She waved through the open car window at Mr Dalloway. So many people didn’t seem to like him. They thought he was cold and aloof but Zoe thought he just looked sad. ‘Hello, Mr Dalloway. Lovely morning.’
‘Have we met?’ he asked.
‘Yes,’ she answered gaily. ‘You gave us a lecture, though please don’t ask me what it was about.’
His lips twitched in amusement. ‘And your reason for being in a hospital gown?’
‘Drunk and disorderly. Wasting hospital time and using a precious bed to sleep it off. Guilty as charged, your honour.’ She saluted him and was delighted when he chuckled. He had a nice face when it was not being serious. A bit like Emily’s, she thought.
‘Climb in,’ he said. ‘Before you get mistaken for a runaway patient. I’ll drop you where you need to go.’
Zoe stepped round the bonnet to the passenger door, and as she did so, she felt a sharp stabbing in her right heel. ‘Ouch!’
She sank back in the luxurious leather seat. It was the poshest car she had ever been in. There was blood oozing, and she quickly fretted that it would stain the foot mat.
‘What have you done?’ he asked.
‘Trod in glass, I think.’
He tutted mildly, then handed her a navy handkerchief. ‘Hold that to it. I’ll look at it when we get you home.’
Even before he set the car in motion she had begun to tell him of her present plight, and some twenty minutes later she was still talking as she stared at her surroundings in amazement. His home was stunning.
‘Oh dear, I talk too much, don’t I? I bet you forgot to take me home.’
He laughed. ‘You actually never said where you lived and I was so entertained I forgot to ask. My wife or I will drop you back after breakfast. I have to go back to the hospital to check on a patient I’ve just operated on. How’s the foot?’
She held it up for inspection.
‘It’s barely bleeding. I’ve got some plasters indoors.’
Zoe suddenly felt shy and underdressed in the hospital gown. She reached down and put on her strappy high heels, using the handkerchief for a bandage round her foot, and pulling the long cardigan right round her to cover the gown. She hoped his wife was as nice as he was.
The front door opened as they approached it and an attractive red-haired woman and young girl were coming out.
The woman drew back in surprise, her eyes raking over Zoe, taking everything in from her cheap shoes and blue nail polish, to yesterday’s smudged makeup and her short black hair. Zoe fixed her eyes on the child who was staring at her with the same intense gaze as the woman beside her. ‘Hello,’ she said, and was rewarded with a sweet smile.
Mr Dalloway seemed to ignore the uncomfortable silence and frosty stare the woman gave him. Instead, he introduced his family. ‘Jemma, this is Zoe. Zoe, this is Jemma, my wife, and Isobel, my daughter. Zoe has somehow got glass in her foot,’ he added, as if this was enough explanation for turning up with a stranger. The woman threw a withering look at her husband, took hold of the child’s hand and moved her forward. ‘We were waiting to hear your car. I shall be out for a while, Rupert. I’m not the only fucking doctor in this household. I need a break sometimes.’
He looked at her with a puzzled expression on his face. ‘The shops won’t even be open yet. It’s Sunday.’
She smiled tightly. ‘Well, we’ll get breakfast somewhere then, won’t we? It’ll be nice to be out of the house for a while.’
‘I want to stay with Daddy,’ the child chanted loudly. ‘Daddy. Daddy. Daddy.’
The woman cast her an impatient stare. ‘In that case, you shall,’ she said crossly, before marching in the direction of the car her husband had just got out of. ‘You can use mine, if you have to go back out,’ she shouted, before revving the engine and leaving a cloud of gravel dust in her haste to get away.
Zoe felt embarrassed at witnessing the domestic dispute and wished she hadn’t been so foolish in coming here. The brief interlude of enjoyment was over.
Mr Dalloway led the way into his home and she followed. Isobel scampered through the house out of sight.
He frowned. ‘She’ll be on Jemma’s iPad as soon as her mother’s back is turned. Her behaviour of late—’ He shook his head, despondently. ‘Never mind. Come this way. Tea or coffee?’ he asked pleasantly, as he led her into a huge kitchen. ‘And I make a good scrambled egg when our housekeeper isn’t here and for the moment she isn’t. She will be at church, as she is at this time every Sunday, putting us lot to shame with her devotion.’
‘Maybe I should go,’ Zoe offered. ‘I can get a taxi.’
‘Nonsense,’ he said. ‘Never mind all that you heard. We’re just going through a bit of a hard time. My wife’s a doctor too, but she’s minding our son at the moment.’
Zoe looked round for a second child.
‘He’s in bed,’ Dalloway said, pointing at the ceiling.
‘I’ll make the tea,’ Zoe suggested, feeling herself relax again. ‘You make the eggs.’
In the kitchen they carried on talking and Dalloway turned to her. ‘If I can help out with your money problem, I’d like to.’
Zoe felt herself redden. ‘I didn’t tell you about it to make you give me money,’ she said in a hoity tone.
He smiled kindly and for a moment she wished he was her father. ‘I know you didn’t, Zoe. But I would be pleased to help you.’
She pointed a teaspoon at him. ‘You know, if this country, like other countries, let us sell our blood, I’d have sold a good few pints by now. You know in the States you can get about fifty dollars for one pint. I’d only need to sell about six pints to sort my debt out.’
‘More if you have a rare type blood group,’ he said in a deadpan tone.
‘Really?’ Her eyes brightened at the thought, and then she saw the look on his face.
‘You’re joking, aren’t you?’
He stared at her mock sternly. ‘You might get a free T-shirt or tickets to the cinema, though. Your information is dated. Imagine all the junkies who would be queuing up if that were the case.’
She gave a rueful shrug. ‘Oh well, maybe I can sell something else. An arm, maybe? I have two,’ she said impishly.
He chuckled. ‘Look, if it makes you feel better I’ll set up a payment plan and you can pay me back twenty pounds a month. How does that sound?’
She stared at him, astonished, then twirled on the spot, clapping her hands. ‘That sounds like a great plan to me.’ She looked at him, the mirth and silliness gone from her face. ‘Thank you.’
He shrugged and turned back to whisking the eggs.
Zoe finished making the tea and then asked for directions to the bathroom.
He told her there was one halfway down the corridor from the front door. She found it and then instead of returning to the kitchen, she wandered through a stone archway into a room that would be big enough to hold a party for at least a hundred people. She saw the gallery and could not stop herself from climbing the stairs, her high heels clattering as she ran up them. She leaned over the balcony, imagining herself as Juliet, when she heard a small voice calling.
‘Is that you, Daddy?’
She walked in the direction of the voice and through an open door saw a young boy in bed, his small body hooked up to a complicated-looking machine with blood running through its tubes.
‘Hello,’ she called softly so as not to alarm him.
He smiled shyly. ‘Can you read me a story, please?’
Zoe smiled back. ‘Of course.’ She walked over to a low bookcase and knelt down to view the choices. ‘Any particular one?’ she asked.
‘The Very Hungry Caterpillar.’
‘I don’t like that one,’ Isobel said, and Zoe saw her sitting in a corner with an iPad held in her hands.
‘We’ll pick one you like after,’ Zoe said to
placate her. Isobel stormed out of the room and Zoe stared after her in surprise, hoping she hadn’t upset her.
She was nearing the end of the story when Mr Dalloway found her. He was stood in the doorway, listening. ‘Hello Walter,’ he said. ‘How’s my boy today?’
Zoe felt unbearably sad. Though still a relatively inexperienced student nurse, she could tell that the child was seriously ill. She now understood why Mr Dalloway always looked so sad.
She got up from the boy’s bed and made her way to the door.
‘He’ll eventually need a new liver,’ said Mr Dalloway quietly.
Zoe stared at him in shock. Their conversations about her needing money and selling her blood were going through her head as she backed out onto the landing. Had he brought her to his home for a reason?
He must have seen something in her face, because he put a hand out towards her. ‘Zoe, I’m not talking about you. I’m just saying it, that’s all.’
She backed further away from him, feeling ridiculous, confused and embarrassed.
Of course he wasn’t suggesting she be the donor, and now after this he probably wouldn’t want to know her anymore. She’d had a sickening thought about him and he knew. She had spoiled their new friendship with her wild imagination. She turned and took flight and he called to her to stop running. She took the first step of the stairs fast, and before her other foot could find its partner she lost her balance in the high-heeled shoes. She teetered at the top of the stairs, seeing all the solid wood she would bounce off and the slab of stone at the bottom that would eventually break her fall. Then a hand touched the small of her back and she glanced back gratefully at her saviour, feeling the grip on her clothes. She trembled at the thought of how close she’d come to being seriously injured. Emily would have been so cross.
Chapter Fifty-Three
‘It was an accident,’ he repeated, as he came to the end of his tale. ‘A tragic accident.’ He looked wrung out. Emily stood up without a word and left him at the table. He stayed seated till a prison guard came to take him back to his cell.
Had he brought her to his home for a reason that day? He didn’t think so. Had she planted the seed for what was to eventually grow? When he looked at her lying there, her young body hardly broken, her head touching one shoulder, the stem that kept her alive had simply snapped, he thought; how heartless death was to take a body that was in perfect order, because its weak point had broken under pressure. He saw her death as a betrayal of life and vowed he’d do everything to save his son. He owed it to her memory. A month after that terrible day, they thought their prayers had been answered. A possible match for Walter had been found; only to have their hopes dashed as further tests proved it wasn’t.
When Walter started to get more ill, his unwillingness to give up on his son drove him to desperate measures. His patients were no longer just his patients. When they stepped into his consulting room and stared across the desk at him, telling him their ailments, his only thought would be: was today the day he found someone to save his son? He tested their blood without invitation, without conscience. It was his belief that if he could save Walter, Zoe would not have died in vain. That she mattered. If only to remind him how easy a life became a death. Dalloway felt tears blind him. In the end it was all hopeless. Everything had been in vain.
He could never tell Emily fully about that day. The secret was too painful to tell. The desperate call he made to Shelly – the only person he could think of to come and help him. She’d occupied Isobel and distracted Maria when she returned from church, sending her on errands she neither wanted nor needed. She’d taken Isobel for a walk, returning her with field-picked flowers clutched in her hand, wanting to give them to Zoe. Her eyes still looked shocked in her small white face. He’d taken them from her and said Zoe was asleep.
He wrapped her in a sheet, arranged the flowers around her head. He placed in her hand a small photo he had found in her purse of her and someone who looked like her.
She’d been a sweet young woman who had come into his home and for a short while chased the darkness away. Her visit changed his life for ever. Her death was a secret he could never reveal. Not even to his wife. She had seen Zoe visit their home, seen the news reporting her missing and yet she didn’t confront him. She didn’t say a word, and he knew then that she would do anything to save Walter. Even if it meant not knowing if her husband had anything to do with a young woman disappearing. When he found Sophia Trendafilova he wanted to get down on bended knee, to give thanks for the gift she gave. But her gift came with a price he could never atone for.
She died trying to save his son.
Nina Barrows died because of his son.
Emily Jacobs suffered because of his son.
These deeds could not go unpunished. And nor too could Zoe’s death. He would give anything to change that day. Her death, even though he tried to think it an accident, haunted him night and day. Isobel had stopped her falling. Her small hand had gripped her clothes. Then she’d looked at her father, and he’d seen a mutinous, calculating look in her stare, and in that final second, before he saw her small hand let go, her palm turn round, her hand at the ready, she smiled at him and then she pushed.
‘She’s sleeping,’ he told her.
He lived every day knowing, seeing, exactly what his daughter had done. When she held his hand and touched his skin with the press of her small palm, when he looked down at her and she smiled, he felt his heart break at the secret he kept for her sake, and he saw something inside her was broken.
Zoe’s death could not go unpunished. A sentence had to be served.
Acknowledgements
Writing is possibly the scariest job I’ve ever had and I am so grateful to have the opportunity to say a heartfelt thank you to you, The Reader, for helping me believe I could do it again. Your opinion matters!
A huge thank you to Sophie Orme and Jennie Rothwell, my editors at Bonnier Zaffre and the entire team Twenty 7 for making this book the best it could be. Thank you for all the gentle pushes and enormous support you amazing team! Thanks to Joel Richardson for opening the first door.
Thank you to Rory Scarfe, my agent, for telling me I have at least twenty books in me. Your encouragement and belief does me the power of good.
A very special thank you to Miss Samantha Williams BSc MBBS FRCS (Gen Surg) Oncoplastic breast surgeon for your generous time and invaluable input and your intention to visit you know where . . . just to see if it were possible. Thank you so much! Any mistakes are of course mine.
Thank you to Michael Knight, my son-in-law, for pointing me in the right direction on how to hang out with the police (without being arrested). Thank you to PC Zoe Phillips for introducing me to the wonderful Sergeant Kurt Swallow. Thank you so much Kurt for not only reading my book and advising me on police matters, but also for the opportunity of riding along with the Fast Response Team! I am so grateful.
Thank you once again to Martyn Folks for keeping opinions honest.
Thanks to my sister, Bernie for taking time to read the first draft and still liking the story. Thanks to my three children Lorcan, Katherine and Alexandra and daughter-in-law Harriet for the endless chats on plot direction. Your imaginations gave me so many better paths to take – and some nightmares too. You know how scared I am of horror stories.
To my husband Mike, thank you for letting me just sit and be silent in my imaginative world, without noticing I stayed in my pyjamas all day every day.
To Darcie, Dolly and Arthur who light up my life and bring me back to the real world.
Lastly for you mum – hope they have a good library in heaven and you get to read this one too!
Note: If you visit Bath and should need to visit a hospital, you will find the care and service at the Royal United Hospital excellent. You may, however, not find The Windsor Bridge Hospital as you drive across the Windsor Bridge, sitting tall with its black glass windows looking down on the River Avon, but will agree it would be a perfect p
lace to position this hospital. So who knows, maybe one day . . .
About the Author
Born in Chatham and partly raised in Dublin, Liz Lawler is one of fourteen children and grew up sharing socks, pants, stuffed bras and a table space to eat at. Liz spent over twenty years working as a nurse, and has since worked as a flight attendant and as the general manager of a five-star hotel. She now lives in Bath with her husband.
Also by Liz Lawler
Don’t Wake Up
First published in Great Britain in 2019 by Zaffre
This ebook edition published in 2019 by
ZAFFRE
80-81 Wimpole St, London, W1G 9RE
www.zaffrebooks.co.uk
Copyright © Liz Lawler, 2019
Cover design by Lewis Csizmazia
The moral right of Liz Lawler to be identified as Author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organisations, places and events are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN: 978–1–78576–607–7
Paperback ISBN: 978–1–78576–603–9
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