I went back downstairs to begin on the kitchen. On the way I glanced into Verity’s room. Something was different – the room was so tidy and so sparse that small changes were instantly noticeable. I stepped in and looked around and almost at once I could see the ghost of a mark on the wall over the bed where the picture of Our Lady had been removed. The wooden crucifix that usually stood on the bedside table was gone, too.
Stupidly, I thought for a moment of burglars. But that was plainly ridiculous. Neither the picture nor the crucifix had any intrinsic value, and how many petty criminals had turned to Jesus? Besides which all the eminently pinchable – and saleable – technology was still in place, in spite of the wide-open back door and windows. I decided she must have taken the things to the shelter.
Downstairs I went into the garden for a moment. It had its usual well-used and not quite kept-up-to-scratch air. But summer was nearly over and what wasn’t done now would wait till the spring. I pulled off a few deadheads, and in doing so noticed that ‘Isobel’, perhaps encouraged by next door’s superabundance, had a few unprecedented late buds, just starting to open. That reminded me that I still hadn’t taken a picture to put in the frame Susan had given me. The conditions hadn’t been right, but now they were, and I would do it. In the kitchen I did not, as I normally would have done, turn on the radio. I felt an almost susperstitious unwillingness to break the silence. I seemed to be waiting for something.
About half an hour later – it was seven minutes to seven – the phone rang. It was Glyn, speaking on the mobile.
‘Laura, I’m so glad you’re back.’ His voice was easy and light.
‘Where are you?’ I asked.
‘I’m at Parkfield,’ he replied. It was the larger of the two local hospitals. ‘We all are. Don’t worry.’
Futile advice. All I could say was, ‘Oh God …’
‘No, I mean it. Sinead’s had an accident. She’s going to be all right. I didn’t leave a message or a note because I didn’t want to drive you crazy before I had something concrete to tell you … Laura-lou?’
I had flopped down on the chair. My face felt cold, my hands were clammy. ‘What happened?’
‘She baled out of the car without looking, on the road side, and another car hit her. It wasn’t the driver’s fault – not anybody’s fault – but she was bowled along a bit. She’s pretty battered, but it could have been a hell of a lot worse.’
‘Battered?’ My voice was sharp with fear. ‘But I mean – how bad is she?’
‘She bounced along on the bonnet for about fifty yards before she hit the ground. Actually that probably saved her. She’s got a couple of something they call depressed fractures of the skull, and some fairly horrific cuts and bruises, but they’ve put her through the scanner and she will be perfectly okay in time.’
I didn’t know, nor dared to ask, what I should make of that ‘ in time’. Terrifying visions of wheelchairs, clinics and repeated surgery filled my mind. Sinead was so small …
‘There’s no brain damage,’ said Glyn. ‘She will be okay. She’s not in intensive care, even.’
‘I’m coming now,’ I said.
‘Are you okay to drive? Do you want me to come and pick you up?’
‘I’m okay.’
‘It’s C2, the main children’s ward on the ground floor. Take care then. Laura …’
‘Yes?’
‘Be warned, she does look pretty grim – but she will be all right.’
That was the third time he’d said that. Was he protesting too much, repeating it for his own benefit as much as mine?
When I put the phone down my panic translated into a peculiar form of manic energy, like that which accompanies the onset of labour. I finished the washing-up, locked the garden door, closed the windows, tidied the sitting-room and turned on the answering-machine. It only took about ten minutes, but all the same I may have been prevaricating a little – I both did and did not want to be at the hospital. I was afraid of what I’d see there, and of other people’s reactions. Did Liam, for instance, know what had happened? My parents? The thought of Becca’s reaction terrified me. Had the accident, by any stretch of imagination, been her fault? And what if they were wrong about Sinead?
The drive across town through the gently gathering evening to Parkfield was nightmarish. Every light was red, every driver a learner, every pedestrian a halfwit. I’d never been so conscious of the ordinary, quotidian weave of other people’s lives: people walking home, sitting in cars, catching the supermarket, buying papers, eating, drinking, jogging, cycling … all enviably carefree, it seemed to me. I tried to tell myself that it probably wasn’t so that there must be divorces, illnesses, beatings, accidents, geriatric parents and handicapped spouses – but as usual, thinking about other people’s distress did nothing to alleviate my own. In my mind’s eye I ran the imagined sequence of events over and over again like an action replay. I saw Becca in the front seat, checking her face in the mirror before finally turning off the ignition and with it the radio. Sinead seeing someone the other side – one of Karen’s lot perhaps, or the children from next door. The wide-eyed smile, the wave, the push on the door (which didn’t have childlocks), and her swift, happy leap into the path of the oncoming car … Why hadn’t she had her seatbelt on? But why worry about that now? I needed to blame someone, because I hadn’t been there. I’d been with Patrick, so it couldn’t have been my fault – could it? I felt as if the whole thing was retribution, visited on the most innocent, for my wrongdoing. If I had been at home the whole complex chemistry of the afternoon would have been different, and this might not have happened.
I left the car parked illegally just outside the main hospital entrance. The woman on reception directed me to C2 – through the area known bizarrely as the Central Plaza, past the lifts, and turn right through swing-doors. As I approached the doors Glyn and Josh came the other way. Inconsequentially, I noticed for the first time that Josh was now taller than his father. Glyn took my hand and kissed my cheek. His skin felt cool, I remembered his voice on the phone. There was a kind of lightness and sureness about him which was in stark contrast to the fiercely scowling Josh.
‘Did you manage to park all right?’
‘Not really. Does it matter?’
‘No point in making difficulties for ourselves. Got the keys?’ I handed them over, and Glyn passed them to Josh. ‘Find a space for Mum’s car, can you?’
‘Thanks, love.’ I caught Josh’s arm. ‘Are you okay?’
‘Sure.’ He didn’t catch my eye but he made a small awkward movement which resulted in his hand touching mine, and I let him go.
‘Did you see Roberto with Amos?’ asked Glyn, holding the swing-door. ‘They went to get something to eat.’
‘No. Roberto’s here?’
‘He just showed up – Becca got Nathan to call the theatre and run him up here.’
‘What about his show?’
‘It’ll go on. It’s good that he’s here, for Amos.’
‘Yes.’
We walked up the ward. On either side were a small kitchen, some lavatories, a sluice, a laundry room and some bathrooms. There was also a visitors’ lounge with chairs upholstered in the obligatory ginger and khaki tweed, a sign thanking patrons for not smoking, and a television talking to itself. Further along, the ward opened out and there were two nurses behind a desk in an area off which four bays opened. A woman in jeans, a parent, obviously, walked past us carrying some magazines and a bottle of lemonade in a carrier bag. She and Glyn greeted each other.
He spoke to one of the nurses. ‘ Heather, this is my wife.’
‘Hallo,’ said Heather. ‘If you’re going to Sinead I’ll come with you, it’s vital functions every twenty minutes at the moment. Bad as air travel,’ she added gaily over her shoulder, ‘she won’t get a moment’s peace!’
Glyn laughed briefly, and didn’t catch my eye.
Sinead was currently the only patient in a four-bedded room. There were other peopl
e there – I dimly registered Becca, at the head of the bed, and Verity perched on the very edge of a chair. Someone kissed my cheek as Heather went briskly about her business, and Glyn gripped my elbow and said, ‘It’s not as bad as it looks.’
Just as well, for our granddaughter looked as though she had no right to be alive. If I hadn’t known this was Sinead I wouldn’t have recognized her. Where she wasn’t black and purple she was red. Her face and head were distorted, as though they were made of plasticine and had been pushed by some gigantic thumb. Her eye-sockets were so swollen that only the thin, blood-encrusted line of her lids marked the position of her eyes, and where one was finely slitted, like a sleeping cat’s, the sliver of eyeball showed a horrific, unnatural scarlet. Her nut-brown hair was greasy and dark, and some of it had been cut away above her left ear. There was blood bubbling stickily, with her shallow breathing, at the edges of her nostrils and the corners of her mouth. Bloody saliva and mucus had left pink stains on the pillow and the sheet, and her hands, lying on the checked bedspread, were rimmed with blood. A frame held the bedclothes away from her legs. She was on a drip. It was hard to believe that Sinead was not damaged beyond repair.
Glyn put his arm round my waist. ‘Say hallo, she can hear you.’
I couldn’t find my voice. Heather, taking Sinead’s pulse, said, ‘She’s a lot prettier now than she was a couple of hours ago, isn’t that right, Mr Lewis?’ Glyn made some vague noise of assent. ‘And she’ll be a lot prettier this time tomorrow by the time we’ve finished with her.’
Becca said. ‘ Granny’s here, Sinead.’ She looked up at me commandingly. ‘Mum?’
I leaned forward. I’d never felt less adequate to a task in my life. ‘ Hallo, darling.’ I cleared my throat. ‘Poor you, you are in a mess. But you’re going to be fine.’
The liquid red eye opened a fraction more and the swollen lips moved. ‘She’s all there,’ said Heather. ‘Stand by for fireworks while I take her temperature.’
I wouldn’t have called them fireworks exactly, but Sinead wasn’t happy. Her head twitched from side to side and she made little whimpering, gargling sounds in her throat. Becca held her hand and tried to soothe her without success. I found it very hard to watch. As I averted my eyes I saw that the missing picture of Our Lady stood propped against the water carafe on the bedside locker. Verity was holding the wooden crucifix in her clasped hands. I caught her eye and she gave me a tense smile, jerking the crucifix in a miniature version of what footballers do with the FA Cup.
By the time Heather took the thermometer out, Sinead was crying – a faint, lost mewing that seemed to come from miles away.
‘Good girl,’ said Heather. She looked brightly at the rest of us. ‘That’s a very good sign. All the normal reactions.’
I said, ‘Her head looks out of shape …’
‘So would yours if you had two depressed fractures,’ replied Heather. ‘ But a child’s skull is amazingly resilient. It’ll pop back into shape like a plastic bottle. By the end of the week you won’t know the difference.’
Sinead began to retch. Heather picked up a stainless-steel bowl from the floor and handed it to Becca. ‘There you go, Mum. All yours.’ She flashed me a collusive she’ll-manage sort of look, and rustled away.
I half-expected Becca to hand the bowl to me, or Verity, or at the very least to flinch, but she took it, and lifted her daughter’s head as she spewed up a terrifying quantity of dark liquid spattered with tadpoles of congealed blood. I watched with appalled respect. When Sinead had finished. Verity said, ‘I’ll get rid of that for you.’
‘Thanks.’
Verity took the bowl, which Becca had covered with a hospital hand-towel, and disappeared with it. I sank down on the chair she’d vacated and watched as Becca dabbed the worst of the mess off Sinead’s chin and neck. Our daughter’s blonde hair was scraped back into an elastic band, and the only traces of make-up were shadows of smudged mascara which accentuated her hollow eyes. Her pale face looked older, and wiser – this was a stern, womanly Becca, in control and getting on with it. She did not look as if she’d been crying, and her hands were steady.
Glyn asked, ‘Can I get anyone anything – tea or coffee?’
‘I could murder a Coke,’ said Becca, going to rinse out the facecloth in the basin.
‘Tea,’ I said. ‘Two sugars.’
‘Coming right up.’
As he was about to go Becca added, ‘I don’t want Amos to be too late, he’s got school tomorrow. If you see them, can you ask Roberto to bring him along here?’
When Glyn had gone I sat quietly for a moment while Becca soothed Sinead back into the relative calm of her semi-conscious trance.
‘Have you told Liam?’ I asked.
‘Of course, first of all.’
I felt myself gently reproved. ‘Is he here?’
‘Jasper’s gone to pick him up from the workshop.’
Another couple of minutes went by. Gradually, now that the initial shock had worn off, I was aware of the rest of the ward – the brisk comings and goings of the nurses in the central area, the slightly less purposeful movements of worried parents in unfamiliar surroundings, voices in one of the other wards, a toddler crying, the distant chat of the TV. Life went on. I felt a little more able to function.
‘Becca, it must have been the most terrible shock – seeing what happened.’
She leaned her elbows on the edge of the bed, staring levelly across at me. ‘ I tell you, Mum … I never want to go through that again as long as I live. I thought she was dead. There was blood coming out of her mouth, and her eyes were open.’
I didn’t want to dwell on this image – I had to ask about practical things, the order of events.
‘Dad said it wasn’t the driver’s fault.’
‘No,’ said Becca baldly. ‘It was my fault. I told her to put her belt on instead of doing it myself. I hadn’t even started the engine.’
Relief overcame shock with dizzying speed. ‘But you would have put it on …’
‘Yes. Eventually. But I shan’t leave it to chance again. She and Amos were horsing around, not very seriously, and she jumped out of the car to annoy him.’
‘Is Amos all right?’
‘He was very shocked and weepy to begin with. But Roberto’s been a star.’
‘And the driver?’
‘I felt sorry for her. It must have been ghastly, and there was no one to hold her hand. I got Dad to give her a ring and put her mind at rest.’ She stroked Sinead’s sticky hair and shot me a sidelong look that contained a glint of the old, bellicose Becca. ‘You should have seen the car.’
Verity brought the clean bowl back, and went to look out for Jasper and Liam.
Glyn returned with the drinks, closely followed by Roberto and Amos. Amos went and clambered on Becca’s knee, and Roberto took my hands and kissed me on both cheeks.
As Becca began giving Roberto a stream of instructions about the house, the key, and getting Amos to school the next day, Glyn went and sat down on the empty bed next to Sinead’s. He looked absolutely bushed, his face dragged down with tiredness. I remembered he’d driven down from Newcastle this afternoon and must only just have got back when this happened.
‘I expect this is against the rules,’ he said. ‘But if I don’t sit down I’ll need hospital attention anyway.’
Becca hugged and kissed Amos. ‘Say goodnight to Sinead.’
‘She can’t hear me.’
‘How do you know?’
‘Night, Sinead.’ He didn’t look at his sister.
‘What’s the plan?’ I asked. ‘Can we help?’
‘We’re going home, aren’t we?’ said Roberto, answering me but addressing Amos. He had scribbled a list on a page from Becca’s diary, and consulted it. ‘We’re going to pack a bag for Sinead, and get you ready for school.’
‘Will you be all right, Roberto?’ I asked. ‘Are you sure you wouldn’t like Amos to come to us?’
‘He’ll be fine wi
th his daddy,’ said Roberto, making the point with an unexpected elegance which robbed it of any potential sting. ‘I’ve got two days off – I owe it to my understudy.’
Becca got up. ‘It’s a kind offer. Mum, but Amos is better in his own bed. Perhaps you guys could collect him from school tomorrow?’ she added, handing us a kindly sop to our grandparental pride. ‘I’ll come and see you off.’
We said goodbye to them and watched as Amos ran off down the ward towards the distant swing-doors, in front of his parents. Roberto put his arm round Becca and she dipped her head on to his shoulder for a moment.
‘How will they get back?’ I asked. My mind seemed to be fighting shy of the important stuff and latching hysterically on to the inessentials.
‘In a taxi,’ said Glyn.
‘That’ll cost.’
‘I offered to pay, but Roberto and Bex had enough between them. They want to be independent.’
‘She’s doing terribly well.’
‘She is.’
We sipped our tea from polystyrene beakers. Heather looked in. ‘Everyone all right?’ We nodded dimly. She came to the bedside and looked down at Sinead. ‘Don’t get too comfy, young lady, vital functions again soon.’
The phone rang out in the reception area and she glanced over her shoulder. ‘No one there, excuse me.’
She was back in a minute. ‘It’s for you, Mrs Lewis – it’s your father.’
‘Give them my love,’ said Glyn.
My father’s voice had a mellow, yielding quality – not over-emotional, but pliant in preparation for possible shock. I remembered it from once before.
‘Laura … how are things?’
‘Rather dismaying,’ I admitted, ‘but under control.’
‘And the little ’un?’
‘Unrecognizable, but not in any danger, apparently.’
Life After Lunch Page 33