by Karen Swan
‘Kerching.’ Hump grinned.
‘Going well, then?’ Peter asked.
‘Going really well.’ Hump nodded. ‘Looking into rolling it out along the East Coast next summer.’
‘Bet it’s good being your own boss, huh?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Still, you must miss this?’
‘Nope.’ No hesitation. No delay.
‘Well, we miss you, man.’
Hump shrugged lightly. ‘You? Last I heard you were in Boston,’ Hump said.
‘Ortho rotation. Here till October.’
‘Swerving summer in the city, huh?’
They both laughed, and Ro tried to imagine Hump in the white coat – with yellow flip-flops. He seemed so at home in this environment.
He remembered that she was standing there, with them, and rested a hand on her shoulder. ‘By the way, this is my housemate Ro. Be careful – she’s British.’
‘Oh? Is it catching?’ Peter grinned, shaking her hand briefly, his eyes too expertly, rapidly, assessing her arms.
She felt Hump’s fingers squeeze her shoulder a little harder, as though he could tell that she felt more exposed and scrutinized here than in any other place since the attack. The police report may as well have been tattooed on her skin.
‘It’s nice to meet you, Ro. I hope for your sake Hump’s table manners have improved since med school?’
She tried to think of a witty riposte, but her tongue felt leathery and leaden in her mouth, her mind solely on Florence, just metres from where she was standing. In a coma.
Peter looked from Ro back to Hump, recognizing shock in all its guises. ‘Why are you in here? Not bad news, I hope?’
‘A friend of ours has been brought in to ICU. Florence Wiseman.’
Peter grimaced. ‘Oh yeah. The lady who was electrocuted, right?’
Ro felt herself sway as the word splashed over her, and Hump’s hand clamped to her arm tightly, as though keeping her upright.
Hump leaned in to Peter, lowering his voice. ‘Can you tell me anything? The nurses are sticking to protocol – we’re not family, but she’s a good friend and we’re concerned. Ro’s mind is going into overdrive.’
Peter looked around their group before lowering his own voice. ‘Well, I’m not on that case, so I really shouldn’t obviously, but . . . just don’t take any of this as gospel. From what I heard, it happened in her pool house when she turned on the shower.’
‘The shower . . .’ Hump’s voice sounded different, weak, and Ro watched his expression change, like a child looking to its parent for reassurance. ‘But it shorted, right?’
‘Well, yeah, but . . .’ Peter’s eyes flicked to Ro quickly and she sensed there were things neither of the doctors was saying out loud.
‘What are her chances?’ Hump’s voice had almost flat-lined, as though he didn’t want anyone, not even Ro – especially not Ro – to hear.
Peter angled his head, scratching his ear awkwardly. ‘Just can’t say yet. She’s been unconscious since getting here. Her heart rhythms and blood pressure are all over the place, and we’re monitoring a small haemorrhage in the brain. We’ll know more in—’
‘Twenty-four hours, yes, right . . . Jesus,’ Hump muttered, glancing back at Ro. ‘Anyone know how long she was under there for?’
‘Long enough obviously. The electrics fused and the other person in the house went to investigate.’
‘Who was that?’ Ro frowned. ‘She lives alone. She’s widowed.’
Peter shrugged. ‘I’m afraid I don’t know the finer details. Like I said, she’s not my patient.’
Hump nodded. ‘Listen, can you text me if her condition worsens? Even if we still have to sit out here.’
Peter hesitated. ‘Sure. OK. Same number?’
‘Yep.’
‘I’ll write, “Bad weather forecast,” OK? I need to be careful with patient confidentiality.’
‘Of course.’ Hump slapped his arm gratefully. ‘Thanks, man. I owe you.’
‘No worries. Let’s grab a beer sometime.’
‘On it.’
‘You looked worried when he was talking,’ Ro said nervously, as Hump caught her by the elbow and gently led her out of the waiting area.
He glanced down at her, taking in her pale complexion. ‘She’s lucky to have made it in here, Ro. She’s not going to be out of ICU tomorrow.’
They walked in silence through an automatic door and out into the car park, easily finding the canary-yellow, angular Humper amid the hundreds of round-shouldered silver coupés.
Hump opened the door and Ro climbed silently into the passenger seat. She had just clipped her seat belt and was turning off the radio – she couldn’t bear to listen to anything – when she did a double take.
‘What’s he doing here?’
‘Who?’
She pointed wordlessly to Ted Connor, who was walking towards the hospital entrance, a huge spray of flowers in his arms.
‘He’s obviously visiting someone.’ Hump shrugged, starting up the engine.
Ro watched as the huge plate-glass doors closed behind Ted and he disappeared from sight. But not from mind.
It was three days before Florence was moved out of ICU, and Ro and Hump were standing in front of Doris again on the dot of two o’clock, the start of visiting hours.
They were led through to Florence’s room with solemnity, Doris having warned them that they couldn’t stay for more than five minutes.
‘Don’t agitate her, stress her or excite her in any way. Her heart rate is still erratic,’ Doris said bossily.
‘Of course not,’ Ro replied. ‘I just want to hold her hand.’
‘No, don’t hold her hand either.’
‘Why not?’
Doris glanced at her like she was a defiant toddler. Why not? Why not? Why not? ‘She’s in here.’
They had stopped at a closed door, ‘Florence Wiseman’ written into the temporary door plate.
‘You ready?’ Hump asked, stalling her with a hand on her arm.
‘Of course.’ She frowned.
But she wasn’t. She wasn’t ready for the blackened skin on Florence’s hands and forearms, for her yellow complexion or the number of tubes coming out of her. More than anything, though, she wasn’t ready for Florence to be looking back at her through entirely red eyes that weren’t so much bloodshot as blood-soaked.
Ro gasped, tears instantly falling from her eyes – she could never have envisaged this – and Hump squeezed her arm as they stood in the doorway.
‘Be strong. For her sake. She won’t have seen her reflection,’ he whispered in her ear.
Ro nodded fractionally, feeling her resolve stiffen. Her reaction mustn’t be allowed to frighten Florence further. She must be terrified enough.
‘Hi.’ She smiled, walking over and looking down at Florence’s arm for somewhere to touch or squeeze in greeting, but there wasn’t anywhere safe and she looked back up quickly. ‘How are you feeling?’ What a ridiculous question, she thought to herself, as the words came out. How would anyone feel after God knows how many volts had surfed through them?
It was hard to meet Florence’s eyes; they were too graphic an indicator of the internal bleeding and bruising and haemorrhaging that had occurred as her body had been gripped in the electricity’s warp.
Florence opened her mouth to reply. Slowly. Painfully. God, she was so weak. Suddenly, Doris’s overbearing attitude was given perspective. Florence would never manage five minutes of conversation today.
Hump leaned forward fractionally. ‘Don’t try to speak too much, Florence. Keep resting. Is there anything we can get you?’ His voice was as warm and comforting as a tumble-dried towel.
Florence shook her head lightly, her eyes meeting Hump’s for politeness’s sake only, constantly returning to Ro’s.
‘Is there anyone we can contact for you?’ he asked.
She shook her head again. ‘My family knows.’ Her voice was tissue thin, almost transpar
ent, and without any power behind it. ‘What . . . happened?’
‘Don’t worry about that now.’ Hump smiled. ‘You just need to concentrate on getting better.’
Florence pinned her all-red eyes on Ro. ‘No one will tell me. Worse not knowing.’
Ro looked up at Hump, distressed by the thought of Florence imagining the causes of her injuries – although was there anything worse than being electrocuted in your own shower?
Hump saw Ro waver and talked quickly. ‘You had an accident in the shower, but it’s all OK, Florence. They’ve established the cause – an earth wire had become detached, but everything’s been fixed now. You can go home as soon as you’re better.’
Florence looked back at Hump, expressionless, before she slid her red eyes over to Ro. What passed between them was wordless, but Ro understood. She had seen that expression before.
‘Anyway, we’ll leave you to rest and you’ll be home before you know it. Close your eyes now and we’ll come back tomorrow,’ Hump said, taking charge yet again in his medical capacity.
But Florence’s eyes didn’t close; they never left Ro’s as Hump gently steered her out of the room. Ro slumped against the wall, shaken by her friend’s condition.
‘She’s still frightened, Hump. I’m not sure she wants to go back home, not yet anyway. I think we should tell the nurses to inform her family. They need to look into making alternative arrangements.’
Hump shook his head. ‘No need. From the looks of her vitals on the screen, she’s going to be in here for several weeks at least. And even if she was discharged, she wouldn’t be allowed back to the house.’
Ro went very still, Hump’s tone setting her on alert. ‘Why not?’
He sighed, running his hands through his hair. ‘I didn’t want to tell you this, and we certainly can’t let Florence know, but the house is a crime scene.’
‘What? But you said in there it was an accident. You just said it.’
‘Because I was hoping you wouldn’t have to know. You’ve been through enough yourself recently.’
‘Hump, tell me what you know,’ she demanded crossly. ‘You can’t keep wrapping me up in cotton wool. I’m not a child.’
Hump looked back at her as though he didn’t believe that, but he knew too well that he was going to have to tell her the truth.
‘One of my drivers saw the yellow tape going up outside the house this morning. He spoke to the officer on duty.’
‘About what? What’s happened?’
‘They traced the faulty earth wire to one on the pole, on the street outside the property. And it hadn’t simply come loose, Ro. It had been cut.’
Chapter Twenty-Three
‘I’m coming home.’
‘No.’ Ro shook her head. ‘Don’t.’
‘No?’ Matt’s blue eyes widened. ‘You’ve been telling me for the past four months you wanted me to come back and now when I offer to get the first flight back, you say “no”? You can’t stay there, Ro.’
‘I can, Matt. I have to. I can’t leave Florence – not while all this is still going on.’
‘And what about what happened to you? Listen, I feel bad for what’s happened to Florence, I do, but this isn’t your problem. You’ve had enough going on without making her your responsibility too. She’s got her own family to look after her. You’ve only known her a few weeks.’
Ro stared back at him down the screen, rankled by his certainty that her relationships here were temporary, flighty and meaningless: ‘just passing through’.
‘You don’t understand. I care about what happens to her, Matt. What happened in the coffee shop – it’s a sort of tie between us. I can’t just scarper and leave her to it. I’m involved in this now whether I like it or not.’
‘Ro, listen to yourself. You’re not being rational. This is not the time for some noble sense of loyalty. The fact of the matter is, someone tried to hurt her. No! More than that. If they tampered with the electrics – well, don’t you see? They’re obviously prepared to kill, Ro.’ She heard the tremor in his voice and watched as he began chewing on his cheeks, which he always did when stressed. ‘No, I’m sorry. You can’t stay there. I won’t let you. Christ, it’s bad enough you kept what happened to you a secret from me for two whole weeks, much less this.’
‘I didn’t keep it a secret,’ she fibbed, remembering how she’d ignored his call on the sofa. ‘I just couldn’t get hold of you. It’s not as simple as simply calling your number. Nine times out of ten when I ring, you never pick up. You’re never there. And besides, the two things aren’t related. What happened to me was just . . . just a freak thing. I got unlucky.’
Ro looked away from the screen. Outside the window, two pigeons were perched on the telephone line strung to the roof, their feathers lightly ruffling in the breeze. The sky behind them was streaked peach, the sun setting on yet another beautiful day. She had cycled to work after an early morning walk seed-bombing the dunes on Wiborg Beach on Florence’s behalf – for some reason, she felt even more compelled to continue Florence’s work while she was recovering – snaffled a yoga class with Melodie, had lunch with Hump and spent the afternoon in the grounds of a glorious estate on Further Lane photographing twin boys climbing up a giant fir tree as a surprise for their father’s fortieth birthday. It had been glorious, idyllic, wonderful, even with the unexplained horrors lurking in the background. She was surprised to realize she actually didn’t want to leave this and go home. Not yet, anyway.
‘Hey, don’t pretend I’m not here.’ His tone cajoled her into looking back at him.
‘But you’re not, are you? I am. I’m the one here, living this, part of this. And the only reason for that is because you are all the way over there. You just shrugged off our life together like it was an old coat that made you too hot, so you don’t get to boss me around or order me back. You’ve forfeited that right for the time being. Who says I have to live by your rules, anyway?’ She looked at him, as though seeing him properly for the first time in the conversation. Until now she hadn’t laid eyes on him in almost a month, and his appearance hadn’t done anything to comfort her. He was indeed – and still – bald, and had grown a goatee too, something he’d omitted to mention on their last phone call.
It wasn’t that it didn’t suit him. It did. He had a beautifully shaped head, it was true, but his blue-shock eyes didn’t seems so intense without his dark hair framing them, and the goatee hid the cleft that she loved so much. He looked lean, rangy and tanned, exuding a raw sexiness, but he didn’t look like hers. Not her Matt – the Matt she had unwittingly styled for over a decade, picking out his pants and socks, buying his shirt-and-tie combos for work, approving his jeans . . . He had gone native. Free-range Matt. She could picture him now in beads and batiks, tie-dye and rags, recycled flip-flops and a hookah in his backpack.
‘For God’s sake, you’ve got to let this go, Ro,’ he sighed impatiently, a dark spark of anger in his eyes. ‘I haven’t abandoned you or dumped you or left you. We’ve been over this, like, a million times. I explained my reasons to you. I am coming back, so just stop playing the victim card.’
‘Victim?’ Ro felt her anger flare. ‘That’s rich coming from the man who’s camped along the Irrawaddy tracking sodding river dolphins! What would you know about any of what I’ve been through? I’ve been the victim of bigger and badder things than just you leaving.’
‘Exactly! Which is why as soon as we hang up, I’m rebooking my flight, and I want you to do the same.’
Ro stared at him, able to feel every single one of the almost 9,000 miles that separated them. ‘I said no!’
‘Why? Why not?’ he demanded, cross now.
‘Because I’m not ready to leave yet. I like it here. I’ve got friends. Work is taking off finally.’
‘You’ve got better friends at home, and work has already taken off back there. You’ve got customers who are waiting for you to come ba—’
‘And!’ she interrupted, losing her temper now.
‘If you really want to know, I will not be responsible for you cutting short your dream trip, OK? Because what would it mean further down the line? When we’re married with two kids, will you suddenly up and off again because you didn’t get the chance to really get it all out of your system? I’m not taking that chance, Matt. We do this now. We get this bloody “pause” out of the way, and then we go back to our lives, the way they were.’
‘What? You really think I’d do that? I’d just walk away from my own family?’
‘You’ve done it once, Matt,’ she said tightly. ‘So let’s just get this done once and for all.’
He watched her for a moment, as though finally hearing what she was saying, his eyes finding the new distrust in hers. ‘You’d really rather stay there, even with all that shit going on?’
‘That’s right. Even with all that.’
They stared at each other’s pixelated images on the flickering screen. ‘Then I’ll call you when I can,’ he said finally.
‘Fine.’ Her heart was pounding triple time, her breathing shallow.
‘Fine.’ He had dropped his gaze from her and the top of his newly bald head was the last thing she saw of him before he disappeared from view again. The screen went black and Ro found herself alone in her room in her new life that didn’t include him.
She jumped up and began pacing madly, her hands balling into anxious fists, her feet coming down so hard on the floorboards that she knew the small wooden ceiling light downstairs would be swaying slightly, disturbing Hump from his position on the sofa as he groaned that Big Foot was on the prowl.
Regret was already snapping at her heels like a nervy dog. Oh God, why had she said those things? It had been the opportunity she’d been waiting for since he’d left and she’d just thrown it back in his face, rejected it. Rejected him.
She dropped her head in her hands, confused by her own actions. She said she wanted one thing and yet inexplicably did another. She felt caught between two worlds, trying to keep one leg planted in each life, like a giant straddling continents. It should have been easier than this, just a light-hearted summer of weekends at the beach and driving on the right; but she hadn’t counted on the sapling friendships that were springing up around her and steadily turning into oaks. Florence, Bobbi, Hump, Melodie . . . Each of them brought a new dimension to her life – spiritual wisdom, motherly advice, sibling rivalry and peace – and she knew it wasn’t Matt’s fault he didn’t know that. He heard only the headlines, not the behind-the-scenes stories. Yes, she’d been attacked, but if he only knew how tenderly Hump had put her back together again. And he wouldn’t implore her to leave Florence if he knew how isolated she was already – he knew that she understood better than anyone what it was to be alone.