by Karen Swan
‘Hey! Lady!’
The sudden shout made Ro look up, just as she saw a man advancing towards her, his face twisted in a vicious sneer. He was wearing jeans and a blue hoodie – the hood pulled up, his arms up in the air like he’d thrown out a sheet across a bed. Ro saw something coming towards her. She couldn’t work out what it was: there was no time. She was just up and out of her seat, blocking Florence from the impact of whatever was coming.
She screamed as, in the next second, her skin stung like it had been ripped from her face and arms at once. Florence screamed too, rising from her chair, trying to support Ro as she toppled back against the table, coffees and muffins crashing to the floor, making more noise, more mess, more heat.
Ro felt like her skin was on fire, taut and raw. Someone grabbed a tablecloth from the neighbouring table and ran at her again. She blanched, unable to react in time, paralyzed now. She heard a man shout, ‘Get this off quickly!’ and felt hands rip her T-shirt away like it was made of paper, the tablecloth pressed against her scalded skin.
‘Soak another one in cold water! Get it out here now!’ the man demanded, sending the waitress running out to the kitchen.
Ro began to shake as the shock set in. What had happened? Her skin felt scorched and tight, several sizes too small.
‘Oh my God, how could this happen? Who would do this?’ Florence was crying, the manager’s arms around her as everyone clamoured for a better look, some people taking photos on their phones.
‘We’ve called 911,’ a waitress said.
‘Did anyone see his face? Do you have CCTV?’ the man demanded. He still had his arms around Ro, holding the tablecloth to her.
‘I’m sorry, sir.’ The waitress shook her head.
‘For Chrissakes,’ the man muttered furiously. ‘It’s OK, Ro, we’ll find out who did this.’
He knew her name? Ro looked up and saw that she was in Ted Connor’s arms. Again.
Ro stepped out of the cool bath, shivering, wrapping herself carefully in the pima cotton dressing gown that someone had just happened to have bought from the Monogram Shop over the road and generously given her as a cover-up. The cotton felt good against her vulnerable skin, and she could tell just from the feel of it that it would have been expensive. The kindness of strangers. They weren’t all bad, then?
She felt the tears flow again and sat on the edge of the bath, letting them fall. Her hand, forearms and neck had been worst affected, her face mainly protected – bar a few drops – by her instinct to raise her arms. Thankfully, Florence hadn’t been hurt at all. The situation would have been even worse if it had been her thinner, more fragile skin that had been scalded.
The paramedics had said she’d been lucky – she had mainly first-degree burns, apart from on her arms, which had second-degree severity and would probably blister within the next few days. She didn’t feel lucky. A stranger with a coffee pot? Wrong time, wrong place. Bloody unlucky.
Ted Connor had driven her and Florence back to Hump’s house, Florence increasingly agitated by what had passed and Ro’s injuries. They were downstairs now, Hump trying to soothe the older woman with cups of camomile tea and Rescue Remedy as he’d ordered Ro into the deep, cold bath he’d drawn for her. The shock on his face as he’d opened the door to them had almost been one of the worst things.
She wiped her eyes and opened the bathroom door, pausing to listen for noises downstairs. Hump’s voice drifted to her ear and she could tell from his tone he was calming Florence down, fully back in the doctor mode he’d walked away from, apparently without a backward glance.
She walked lightly over the landing to her bedroom, dodging the creaky boards – she knew where they all were now – not wanting to alert them that she’d got out of the bath. It was Matt she wanted to speak to, Matt she wanted to comfort her. Much as she loved Hump, only Matt could make her feel better.
She walked straight over to the laptop set up on the pine chest of drawers and pressed the Skype button, waiting for the distinctive bubbly underwater-sound dial tone to fill the room. She held her breath, staring at his Skype ID picture on the screen, as it rang. She needed him desperately now. More than she’d ever needed him. He had to be there. He had to be. Pick up.
Pick up.
Pick up.
Pick up!
PICK UP!
‘Dammit, Matt, where are you?’ she screamed, kicking at the chest of drawers furiously as the line disconnected, all her pent-up rage and frustration and fear tumbling over each other in a tangled ball that left her breathless and exhausted. ‘I need you! Where the fuck are you? You can’t not be here. You can’t!’ she cried, her hands balled into fists, tears streaming down her face as she leaned on her forearms – forgetting – before crying out from the pressure against the burns. ‘Ow! OW! Bastard!’ she railed, sinking to the floor in dejection, sobbing.
‘Rowena.’ The voice was quiet, so quiet she hardly registered it over her sobs and the sound of blood rushing in torrents through her head. She felt so unbelievably angry, as though the heat in her skin was boiling her blood, and she realized she was pounding the floor with her fists.
It was only the soft touch of skin on hers that made her stop. She looked at the hand closed gently round her wrist and knew she had seen it before. On the film . . . She opened her eyes. Ted Connor was kneeling beside her, his head dipped beneath hers, trying to get her to look at him. His face as close to hers now as it had been on the screen last night as he’d leaned in for the kiss.
The shock of the visual echo stunned her into stillness. ‘Hey,’ he said, a ghost of a smile on his lips, his voice so quiet she was forced into silence to hear him. She watched his eyes travelling over her face and knew she must look hideous – as red and blotchy from crying as the rest of her was from the scald.
He blinked. ‘Let’s get you into bed. You need to rest.’
He helped her stand, his arms supporting her as she walked to the bed. For some reason, her legs couldn’t stop shaking and she felt as boneless as jelly. She got to the side of it and hesitated. She was nude beneath the robe.
‘I’ll turn round while you . . .’ he said quietly, turning his back to her.
Quickly, she slipped off the robe and slid between the sheets. They felt cool against her skin, which felt like it was trapping fire beneath the dermis.
‘OK,’ she croaked, holding the sheet close to her neck, still shivering slightly, paradoxically.
He turned back, handing her a white caplet and the glass of water from the table. ‘Painkiller. Hump says to take these regularly, every four hours, OK?’
She leaned up on her elbow, swallowing the pill like an obedient child as her body began to realize it was spent – Matt’s absence the proverbial last straw on today. Ted took the glass from her, and she lay back on the pillow, silent tears streaming from the outer corners of her eyes, forcing them shut.
Occasional hiccups punctuated the silence, but she was too far removed from herself to care about little indignities today.
‘I’ll let you sleep,’ Ted murmured after a moment, intruding into her oblivion, and she realized she’d already forgotten he was there. Sleep was claiming her fast, as adrenalin gave way to a smothering exhaustion.
‘Don’t go. Not yet,’ she mumbled, and she turned her hand so that her fingers caught his. ‘Please stay, just a little longer.’ She felt sleep rolling up from her feet, making her body heavy, drowsy, even her mind just filling with a tempting empty blackness. She felt him hesitate, then relax, felt the weight of his body dropping onto the side of the mattress.
‘I’m so tired of being alone,’ she murmured, almost incoherent now, barely aware of his hand lightly stroking the back of hers.
She couldn’t be sure. She couldn’t trust her own ears when her body was so fugged with pain and fright and shock. But she thought she heard him say two words as she dropped into the chasm she so desperately craved. ‘Me too.’
Chapter Eighteen
‘You made t
he wrong call, Hump.’
Hump, who was applying a bandage to her left forearm – the blisters had burst, as predicted, and were prone to infection – raised a querying eyebrow.
‘I’m serious. You must have been a brilliant doctor.’
He shook his head. ‘No. Too many rules and regs.’
She watched him closely as he expertly wrapped her arm, keeping it clean and protected from invisible but omnipresent bacteria, which he treated with a sombre respect, knowing he would change it again tomorrow and the day after that. Tension infused his face, his happy-go-lucky grin but a distant memory these past two days. Since the attack, he had hovered over her with a concern she’d have expected for 90 per cent burns, not 15 per cent. He had delegated his shifts among his other drivers for the rest of the week and wouldn’t let her off the sofa, much less out of the house.
‘Rules and regs? Hump, no one walks away from God-knows-how-many years of post-graduate study and the thousands of pounds – I mean, dollars – it would have cost because of rules and regs.’
His eyes flickered to hers quickly and back down again. ‘I’m just not suited to it. It’s a personality thing.’
‘But what about the people? You’re so good with people. I mean, the way you’re looking after me—’
‘You’re my friend. You get special treatment. Anyone else?’ He pulled a face. ‘I’d just let the arm rot.’
Ro laughed, not fooled. ‘Everyone loves you. Think how much nicer it would be for people to be given bad news by you rather than someone like . . . I dunno—’
‘Ted Connor?’
Ro stopped in surprise. ‘Don’t say that,’ she said in a quiet voice. ‘He was really kind.’
‘Yeah, he was. Quite the revelation,’ Hump said quietly, his eyes meeting hers briefly as though she was supposed to say something back. ‘So I take it you’re friends now, then?’
‘Well, I wouldn’t go that far. I hardly know the man.’
‘Well now, we both know that’s not true,’ Hump replied, alluding to her almost constant watching of the Connors’ home videos as she lay on the sofa, a notebook beside her covered in scrawls of timings, dates and scenes. ‘Sometimes I think I’m living with a spy.’
‘It’s my job, Hump,’ Ro spluttered, laughing in spite of herself. ‘He’s paying me to watch them! Besides, what else have I got to do when you’re forcing me to rest all week? I need to keep on top of things. It’s ridiculous – I’ve gone from famine to feast in just over a week and I can hardly keep up with all the enquiries coming in.’
Whether it was the ad in the hardware store, her cards in the galleries or, most probably, her overnight, highly dubious fame after being splashed on the front pages of the local newspapers, which had featured some of her work, to show what a talented, hard-working victim she was, suddenly people were stopping by the studio every day and Hump was run ragged trying to deal with her business (as he enforced her absence), as well as his.
She put her head to the side and smiled sweetly. ‘Surely I can just pop by the studio with you while you make your calls later?’
‘Out of the question,’ Hump said shortly, straightening up and putting away the first-aid kit.
She exhaled loudly in protest. ‘Strictly speaking, you’re not my doctor, Hump.’
He looked at her sternly. ‘Yes, I am. You’re not going out. Not yet.’
‘Well, when, then?’ she demanded, as he rose from the sofa.
‘Not before Saturday at the earliest. Trust me, the very last thing you need is for these to become infected. Just rest, drink water, sleep lots. And don’t argue!’ he bossed, pointing a finger at her as she was stopped, open-mouthed, from doing exactly that.
Hump wandered back into the kitchen with the depleted first-aid kit, and Ro slumped sulkily back to her reclining position.
‘There’s no food in the fridge,’ he called through.
‘I’ll go out and get some,’ she said quickly.
‘Ha, ha! Nice try, Big Foot. Shall we get a pizza delivery tonight?’
‘S’pose.’
‘We can watch a movie. Of your choosing.’
‘Great. More films,’ she muttered, as she pressed ‘play’ on the remote – she had rigged the home media direct into the TV – freeing Ella from her holding position of bear-walking across the living room, smiling as her attention was immediately diverted back to her. She was one of those babies who didn’t crawl on their knees but with their bum in the air, and she was surprisingly fast at it. Hump had made her rewind the tape several times a few days earlier, when he’d walked in on an earlier video of Ella bottom-shuffling – her knees out, her feet pressed together like a yogi – and traversing the room at great, comical speed without any apparent friction burns. The two of them had got the giggles really badly, watching it become funnier on every replay, tears streaming down their cheeks until eventually Hump had had to run to the bathroom.
Marina had taken this video, her voice cooing and aahing softly next to the microphone, as Ella circuited the room, heading towards bright plastic toys that were scattered all over the floor and broke up the interior designer’s carefully conceived scheme.
Ro watched impassively as the camera angle swung up, surprise in Marina’s voice, and Ted came into shot. He was wearing a suit and was pulling off his tie, his eyes fixed on his wife, just to the left of the screen, it seemed. He winked at her, sharing the private smile that Ro recognized as ‘theirs’ now, his eyes travelling down to her belly – Ro quickly calculated Marina was seven months pregnant by now and recorded it in her notebook on the cushion beside her.
Ro watched as he looked down at his daughter bombing towards him across the floor, bottom in the air, before clinging on to his trouser leg. He laughed, bending down to pick her up. Ro gasped – worried – as he threw her high in the air above his head, their eyes locked on each other, Ella gurgling with delight.
The laptop, also sitting on the sofa beside her, began ringing and Ro started in surprise, looking down at the Skype screen she’d needed to see so desperately the day of the attack. It was Matt. Obviously. He was around now. Finally. He was there; she was here. The stars had aligned again – it was their fortnightly chance to be together again. Only . . .
A peal of giggles made her glance back at the screen. Ted was holding Ella above his head and blowing raspberries on her tummy.
A shot of anger tunnelled through her again as Matt’s photo stayed belligerently on screen, demanding she pick up because he was ready now and everything they did went according to his rules, right? Her own stubborn streak kicked in. Well, where had he been when she’d needed him? The attack had happened two days ago – the culprit still unidentified – and Matt knew nothing about any of it. She crossed her arms and looked back determinedly at the TV screen. It was his turn to wait.
The next day, she was still in the same position – cross-legged on the sofa, the notebook now on her lap, the remote in her hand, the house phone ringing laconically on the side table to her right. She picked it up with an eagerness that betrayed her mounting desperation to talk to someone, see someone, do something other than obsessively watch the Connor family videos.
‘Hello?’
‘Yo, Ro.’
‘Hey, Bo.’ Ro smiled down the phone – pleased with her riposte but more pleased to hear her housemate’s voice. Bobbi had been on the Jitney back to Manhattan straight after her meeting on Tuesday and hadn’t learned of the attack until later that evening, when Hump had rung her while Ro slept upstairs. Several times Ro had overheard Hump in the kitchen on the phone, updating her on Ro’s progress, and she was touched by Bobbi’s long-distance concern. ‘How are you?’ She sat forward, rearranging the cushions behind her and getting ready to settle in for a chat.
‘Do you have whites?’ Bobbi demanded, skipping all the usual niceties most people bothered with. She was busy, busy, busy.
Ro, who’d been anticipating ‘Oh my God, how are you?’ was so wrong-footed it took a
moment for her to respond. ‘White . . . ?’
‘Whites. Tennis whites. Wimbledon whites.’
‘Uh, no. No, didn’t pack those funnily enough. Why?’ She dragged the last word out slowly, suspiciously, trailing it over three octaves.
‘I’ve entered us into the Fourth of July tournament this weekend. Biggest tennis event of the season.’
‘You. Have. Not.’ Ro closed her eyes.
‘What’s up? You said you play tennis. You told Greg that morning—’
‘I told him I used to play tennis. Past tense. Long time ago. When the dinosaurs still walked the earth.’
‘And I already got Hump’s approval on it. He says you’ll be fine to play so long as you take your pain meds beforehand and make sure not to get whacked on the arm by a ball.’
Ro winced at the thought. ‘Ha! A likely story. As if Hump’s going to let me play in some ritzy tennis tournament when I’m not even allowed out of the house. I don’t think so.’
‘That’s different. He just doesn’t want you going into town until they find the psycho who did it. He says you’re better off at home where the only thing that can hurt you is his cooking.’
The joke fell flat, outgunned by the shiver already trammelling down Ro’s spine. Bobbi, true to blunt form, had put voice to the fear that neither Ro nor Hump had been able to articulate all week – that she had been targeted, that someone had deliberately set out to hurt her. Hump had insisted over and over it had been a random attack – he’d repeated it every time she woke with a short scream as her mind snagged on the twisted sneer, the faceless figure, skin on fire – but he’d clearly said differently to Bobbi.
Ro blinked slowly, blindsided by the thought. The level of hatred that fuelled an act of that sort brought tears to her eyes – what had she done to deserve it? – and she covered the phone receiver to sniff discreetly, not wanting Bobbi to know that she was so on edge.