by Jessie Keane
As the car zipped through the night she sat in the back seat thinking of all the treacherous things her sister had done to her and knew that, despite everything, she still loved Annie very much. And she was boiling with rage because she didn’t want to love Annie at all, she wanted to hate her.
‘Tell me what happened,’ she said when she found Max in the hospital waiting room, blood all over his shirt and his face grey with strain.
‘Tell me’ was something she never, ever said to Max.
‘Kieron Delaney shot her,’ said Max.
‘Is she…? I mean…’ stammered Ruthie, her mind in a spin.
‘I don’t know. She was bleeding a lot. A lot.’
‘Do they think she’s going to be all right?’ Ruthie forced herself to ask.
‘They can’t say yet. The bullet clipped an artery in her chest. Missed her heart by an inch. It happened in the Palermo. He was aiming for me. He got Annie.’ Max looked straight at his wife. ‘She jumped in front of me.’
Tears spilled over then and slid down Ruthie’s cheeks. Trust Annie to go for the grand gesture, she thought in irritation. Again the anger rose. Stupid little bint, arsing around with all sorts. Now look where she’d ended up.
‘Did they get him?’ she managed to say.
Max shook his head. ‘He ran off. The Delaney twins were there too, I told them they’d better go. We had to have the ambulance. It was life or death, she’s in emergency surgery right now.’
Ruthie started to cry harder. Max did what he hadn’t done for a very long time; he put his arms around his wife, held her close and tried to give her comfort.
* * *
For the rest of the night Max and Ruthie sat in the bare, scruffy waiting room. People came and went down endless corridors as they waited to hear what was happening to Annie.
She’s going to die, thought Max.
He didn’t think he would ever forget the horror of the moment when she’d collapsed against him, blood spilling from her mouth and her chest. The aghast expression on Kieron Delaney’s face as he saw what he had done. Orla screaming and rushing forward, Max holding Annie on the floor as her eyes looked up at him, bewildered, weakening…
‘Stay with me,’ he had said to her. ‘Annie, hold on. Hold on, lovey.’
Redmond icily controlled as always. Picking up the phone, dialling 999, saying ‘ambulance please’, giving crisp directions, then slapping the phone back down.
Annie starting to shiver with shock. Redmond taking off his coat and draping it over her. Blood everywhere. Orla’s screams turning to quiet sobs of distress. Jimmy bursting into the room, his face a mask of dismay as he took in a scene of carnage. Kieron shoving past him, running away down the stairs. The audience roaring and stamping down there, oblivious to the drama being played out above their heads.
‘The bloody little idiot,’ Orla muttered brokenly.
Annie’s eyes glazing, closing…
‘No! Annie, come on. Stay with me,’ Max urged her.
But it was no good.
She was going.
‘Where the fuck is that ambulance?’ shouted Max.
‘Mr Carter?’
Max and Ruthie looked up. The surgeon was there, his dark green gown stained brown at the front. Annie’s blood, thought Ruthie, feeling sick. He looked young in his cap, his mask pushed down around his neck. Too young to be trusted with Annie’s life, surely?
‘How is she?’ asked Max.
The surgeon took a breath, looked at Ruthie.
‘This is Miss Bailey’s sister – my wife,’ Max told him.
The surgeon nodded, looked at Max again. ‘We’ve patched her up, Mr Carter. But she’s lost a lot of blood. She’s not out of the woods yet.’
‘Thank you.’ Max put his arm around Ruthie’s shoulders as she broke down again and wept. ‘When can we see her?’
‘Maybe tomorrow. Go home now and try to get some rest. Phone tomorrow and we’ll see how she’s doing. The police will want to talk to you about this, I should imagine.’
61
When Annie awoke, Max was sitting beside her bed.
Hospital? she thought. That smell.
She tried to remember how she’d got here. She’d been in the club, she remembered that. Then she’d been in an ambulance. After that… nothing.
‘Hello,’ he said.
Annie felt him take hold of her hand, squeeze her fingers.
‘Hmm,’ she said. She’d meant to say hello. She swallowed and tried again. ‘Hello.’
Jesus, could that be her voice? It sounded raw and hoarse with disuse. Her whole body ached. Christ, such pain. She winced.
‘You gave us a right fright there,’ said Max.
He looked dishevelled, she thought, not like himself. A dark stubble on his chin. His hair disordered as if he’d been running his fingers through it, his white shirt unbuttoned at the neck.
God, but she was tired. It was annoying how tired she felt.
She closed her eyes and was back in oblivion again, so peaceful, so dark.
She’d come up out of unconsciousness several times before, but this time was different. Before, her body had been a sea of pain. Before, she had felt weighted down, inert. She had no strength to move. There had been bright lights, fuzzy faces… and Max, there by her bed and saying hello. Had she dreamed that? She wasn’t sure.
But this time she opened her eyes and clearly saw the room around her. Wood panelling. She was in Upper Brook Street. No, she wasn’t. The bed was facing the wrong way, the light was fainter.
She saw an open window, thin white curtains moving in a breeze. She could smell not disinfectant but new-mown grass. She could hear birds singing.
I’m in heaven, she thought. I died and now I’m in heaven.
There was no pain now, but her body still felt heavy. She tried to raise an arm but it felt like a ton weight and she let it fall back on to the bed. Something stirred over by the window. A woman in a chair there. A woman in a white cap. She looked over at Annie and put down her knitting and came over to the bed.
An angel.
‘You’re with us at last then?’ she asked.
Annie nodded. But she was tired. She closed her eyes and was gone again.
62
Ruthie was still furious. After three days of anxiety and police questions and waiting and hoping, Annie finally came back to full consciousness at last. Her surgeon was confident that she should make a full recovery from the wound caused by the bullet that had passed straight through her body and embedded itself in the wall behind Max’s desk. In its passage it nicked her aorta and one lung, but missed her heart and her spine. She was lucky.
After two weeks of being hospitalized, Annie was pronounced fit enough to go home, providing she had nursing care. Without debate, Max had her moved to the Surrey house and hired the best private nurses to attend her round the clock. And he stayed at the house. He’d never stayed there for Ruthie, but he stayed for Annie.
Which only added to Ruthie’s rage. In fact she was royally pissed off with the whole thing. Max dropping everything for Annie but never for her was a bitter pill to swallow. But then – she’d learned to live with that a long time ago.
She kept away from Annie’s room for some time. Max would be there, or the nurses, and she was full of resentment that Annie got the five-star treatment while she was disregarded totally. When she finally went up to the wood-panelled guest room at the front of the house – yes, he’d put her in one of the best rooms, with the French windows and the balcony and the views out over the garden – she didn’t enter. She just stood at the door and looked in.
The nurse was changing Annie’s dressings. Annie was sitting up half-naked against the pillows and she was wincing in pain as the bandages were pulled away from the pus-covered dressings on her chest.
Does that stupid woman have to be so rough about it? wondered Ruthie in irritation. Ruthie didn’t know which peeved her most. Annie for getting herself into this state, or the n
urse for handling her with such apparent lack of care. Annie cried out as the nurse tried to pull the dirty dressing away from the wound.
Ruthie found herself rushing in and over to the bed.
‘Don’t pull her ruddy skin off,’ she said, pushing the woman back, away from her sister. Annie was sweating with pain, she saw. That enraged Ruthie even more.
‘The dressing has to come off, Mrs Carter,’ said the nurse, colouring up with annoyance.
‘Why not use a bloody crowbar and have done with it? Go on, get out, I’ll do it.’
And so Ruthie found herself nursing her sister back to health. Part of her wanted to let Annie rot, but she couldn’t do it. Despite everything that Annie had done, she didn’t want to lose her. And now she had something that demanded all of her attention, the booze didn’t seem quite so necessary as it had before.
Ruthie carefully dabbed the dressing free of the healing wound with warm water. Annie lay back weakly on her pillows and watched her sister’s face as she worked with gentle hands. Much gentler than the nurse’s, feeling Annie’s pain and not wanting to add to it.
‘You shouldn’t be doing this,’ said Annie as Ruthie put on fresh dressings and then helped her lean forward a little so that she could look at Annie’s back and attend to the exit wound.
Ruthie repeated the procedure she had performed at the front.
‘I’m your sister,’ she said roughly. ‘Who else should do it?’
After that, Ruthie had a word with Max and they disposed of the day nurse’s services but kept the night nurse.
‘Are you sure?’ he asked her, more than just a little surprised.
‘That woman was far too rough,’ said Ruthie. ‘It’s better I take over.’
So Ruthie took over during the days, changing Annie’s dressings, feeding her, bathing her, bringing her bedpan and finally helping her to the bathroom. Inch by inch, Annie was mending. Max came up to see her. Ruthie’s excellent care of her sister was working small miracles every day, he could see it. The colour was coming back into her cheeks. She was gaining a little weight. Ruthie fussed around her constantly.
‘I don’t deserve this,’ said Annie sometimes, her eyes sad as she watched her sister hustle efficiently around the sickroom.
‘Rubbish,’ said Ruthie, folding towels and pouring barley water and straightening the bedspread.
Annie caught her hand. ‘I don’t deserve it,’ she said, holding Ruthie’s eyes with her own.
‘You’re my sister,’ said Ruthie firmly. ‘I want to do it, it gives me the higher ground for a change, Annie Bailey. Just be a good patient and shut up and let me get on with it.’
Annie had to smile. ‘Now you’re even talking like a nurse.’
‘Well, listen to me and you’ll hear a lot of sense,’ said Ruthie, but she almost smiled back. ‘You can go out in the garden this afternoon. It’s warm. The fresh air will do you good.’
‘Yes, Matron,’ said Annie.
‘You’re doing fine now,’ said Ruthie. ‘That wound’s as good as healed.’
‘Thanks to you.’
‘Nonsense. You’re as strong as a horse, that’s all. Take more than a bullet to stop you in your tracks.’ Ruthie tidied the sheets and told her to lean forward, then plumped up the pillows.
‘I’m off up to London this afternoon,’ said Ruthie while she worked. ‘Going to stay at Queenie’s place up there for a bit.’
‘Oh.’ Annie frowned. It had been so nice having Ruthie around her. But she understood. Annie was well enough now to manage on her own, and this situation must be slowly killing her. Max coming up and sitting on Annie’s bed and the pair of them talking quietly and holding hands. She’d walked in on them once or twice and quietly excused herself. She never stayed in the room if they were together.
Now, Annie was stronger. They would be together even more. Max seemed hardly capable of keeping away. She thought that Ruthie accepted that, but of course the poor mare didn’t want to stop here and see it with her own eyes.
Annie caught her sister’s hand as she came and sat on the bed for a moment. ‘You’ve been wonderful,’ she said.
‘That’s me. Wonderful Ruthie.’
Annie laughed. ‘Mum always said you were.’
‘Dad always said you were.’ Ruthie looked at Annie and felt that whole mix of emotions again, the anger, the annoyance, the jealousy and – yes – the love. She wanted to forgive her, but she couldn’t bring herself to say the words.
‘I can’t ever begin to thank you enough, Ruthie.’
‘We’re family. We don’t have to thank each other.’ Ruthie freed her hand and stood up and looked down at her little sister. ‘Now you keep well, okay? No more getting shot. No messing about.’
Annie nodded, feeling desolate. This felt like goodbye. Hell, this was goodbye. She knew it. Ruthie wouldn’t be coming back here again, not while she was here.
‘Goodbye now,’ said Ruthie, and dropped a quick kiss on to Annie’s cheek. Then she hurriedly left the room.
It was only when Ruthie had closed the bedroom door behind her that she broke down and cried her heart out.
63
‘Ruthie’s gone up to stay in Mum’s place in London,’ said Max as he brought their drinks out into the garden.
Annie was sitting under the shade of the big willow tree in the Surrey garden. Summer was at its height, the lawn was bleached yellow and the air was hazy. Birds sang. Bees hummed. Max put the drinks on the table and sat down with her.
‘I know,’ she said, thinking that he would always call the house in London ‘Mum’s place’. Queenie had reigned supreme there, and in the annexe here. In a way, she still did. ‘She told me.’
‘Are you two all right now?’ Max was watching her acutely.
Annie shrugged. ‘As all right as we’re going to be.’
‘I was worried,’ said Max. ‘When she started looking after you.’
Annie laughed. ‘What, you thought she was going to do me in?’
‘It crossed my mind.’
Annie shook her head. ‘That’s not Ruthie. You must know her by now. She’s been spitting mad about all this, but she’s good right through to the bone. She couldn’t squash a fly, much less hurt me.’
‘She had every right to be spitting mad,’ said Max.
‘I know.’
‘I was mad at you myself when you did it, told her about us. It was only ever meant to be sex between us. I thought you understood that. But now I see you were too young to understand anything except getting back at your sister.’ He sat back and sighed. ‘Truth is, I felt bad about it. Really bad. I was the one who should have known better.’
‘But Max – I chased you.’
‘Yeah.’ He smiled. ‘You did.’
Annie looked away, down the garden.
‘I think you know it wasn’t ever “just sex” for me.’
‘I’ve come to know it. Slowly.’
‘I’ve always been in love with you,’ said Annie.
‘I know.’
Annie looked round at him. ‘Fuck it, Max. You’re not supposed to say that. You’re supposed to say “I love you too”.’
‘It goes without saying,’ teased Max.
‘Men,’ sniffed Annie. ‘It doesn’t ever go without saying. Women need to hear it.’
‘Okay then.’ Max looked her dead in the eye. ‘I love you, Annie Bailey. Even if you are a fucking lunatic. You stopped a bullet for me, and I’d stop one for you.’
Annie stared at him. ‘I’m going to jail, Max,’ she said. ‘You know they postponed the trial because of me being hospitalized; well now they’ve re-scheduled.’
His face clouded. God, how she loved his face. So strong, almost brutal, but saved by a masculine beauty that she would never tire of.
‘Maybe it won’t be for long,’ he said. ‘I’m looking into things.’
Annie shook her head, ignoring his platitudes. ‘The date’s set for the trial. Six weeks’ time. Taking a bullet’s not
going to stop them sending me down.’
‘Then we’ll make the most of those six weeks,’ said Max, and he took her hand and kissed it.
64
Max sorted her out with a proper, hotshot brief for the trial. Mr Jerry Peters, her defending counsel, was an expensively-suited tall man with a florid complexion and too much fluffy ginger hair. He told her that she was almost certainly going down, but there were mitigating circumstances and they were going to make full use of them to lessen the sentence.
‘Aren’t you supposed to promise me you’ll get me off?’ Annie asked as she and Max sat in Jerry’s plush office in the Law Courts.
‘I don’t deal in lies with my clients, Miss Bailey,’ said Jerry smoothly.
‘And what are these “mitigating circumstances”?’ she asked.
‘A disturbed childhood. Your father left when you were nine …’
‘Eleven.’
‘Eleven.’ He made a note. ‘Your mother drank. You and your sister had to fend for yourselves. Little wonder that you ended up out of your depth.’
Which wasn’t exactly how it had happened, but she supposed he did have a point. She’d always had to make her own way in the world, with no support. Her entrepreneurial spirit had always been there, lying dormant. If she hadn’t seduced her sister’s bridegroom on the night before the wedding, she wouldn’t have been flung out of Connie’s house and been forced to retreat to her Aunt Celia’s. Once there, it had only been a matter of time before her business skills kicked in and she landed herself up to her neck in the shit.
‘And?’
‘And none of the neighbours complained. Not one.’
‘And?’
‘And you were doing a service to these poor unfortunate women. Without your protection, they would have been walking the streets, at the mercy of men who would exploit them.’