As Time Goes By

by Annie Groves

  It had happened; just what she had always feared since that first time. She was trapped down here; buried alive. Panic clawed at her thoughts in much the same way that she wanted to claw her way upwards, but she forced herself to stay calm. The men up there above her knew she was there, and they knew far better than she how best to get to her. All she had to do was keep calm and wait …

  But what if they couldn’t reach her? What if the weight of the earth that that fallen on top of what was left of the platform forced it down on top of her? What if …? She could taste mud mixed in with her fear; she could feel death hovering at her shoulder, waiting.

  She thought of Mouse, and her parents. She thought too of Hazel and Russell, soon to be reunited and happy, but most of all, as the seconds and the minutes of her entombment crawled by, she thought of Johnny.

  Sally tensed as she heard a car pulling up outside. Unable to settle after Alex had left, still filled with the shock and despair of the debt collector’s visit and threats, as well as worrying about poor little Luke, she had started dusting the already dust-free furniture and then, when that was done, pacing up and down the kitchen, trying to work out how on earth she was going to find the strength to leave Alex, whilst knowing that for his sake she must.

  ‘Alex!’ She ran to open the door. ‘How’s Luke?’ she asked.

  ‘It’s bad,’ he told her grimly. ‘I’ve had him admitted to Mill Road. The hospital didn’t want to take him at first, but I managed to persuade them to find a bed for him.’

  Because they thought so highly of him. Because he was a doctor, because he was a man who others admired and respected because of his decency and his devotion to his patients. But public opinion could be fickle. Gossip was easy to spread and could soon destroy even the best reputation.

  Sally’s thoughts ripped at her heart like so many knives. It was so unfair. If she left she would be depriving her sons of the best stepfather they could have, a man they already loved and trusted, and she would be depriving Alex of them, never mind her own feelings. But what else could she do?

  ‘The ambulance has just collected him,’ Alex was telling her. ‘I’m on my way there myself now but I thought I’d just call here to tell you what’s happening.’

  ‘And Luke? I know you said it was bad, but he will get better, won’t he?’ she asked him.

  To her shock Alex didn’t reply straight away and then avoided looking at her. ‘It’s going to be touch and go.’

  ‘What … what do you mean?’ she asked him, but she already knew the answer from his bleak expression. ‘No,’ she protested, adding when he didn’t respond. ‘What is it? What’s wrong with him?’

  ‘Same as Tommy had, but much worse. His mother won’t say what he’s been eating, but my guess is that that husband of hers has been giving her tins of condemned food again. I just hope to God that this is an isolated case. He would have had a better chance if she’d got medical help earlier.’

  ‘Oh, Alex. Why didn’t she? It’s not as though the Cartwrights are short of a bob or two.’

  ‘She said something about her husband not wanting her to. Poor woman, she was in too much of a state for me to press her too hard for an explanation. I’ve got to go. They won’t have any spare doctors down at the hospital to stay with him. The poor lad’s very weak. If we can get him stabilised over the next twenty-four hours he might have a chance.’ He rubbed his hand over his eyes. ‘If only they’d called me out at the first. Don’t wait up for me, Sally,’ he told her. ‘It’s going to be morning before I get back.’

  When he hugged her, Sally hugged him back fiercely, determined not to let him see her tears or guess what she was going through.

  Maybe this was a ‘sign’ for her, she decided after he had gone. Maybe fate was telling her that she should leave, by providing her with the perfect opportunity to do so.

  Alex had told her himself that he wouldn’t be back until morning. All she had to do was go upstairs, pack their things, wake the boys and go.

  No! No, she couldn’t bear the thought of it, never mind actually doing it. It was so unfair. They had been so happy.

  She had no idea where she could go or what she would do. All she did know was that she had to go to protect Alex.

  She felt sick and somehow as though neither her head nor her body were working properly. It was a bit like having a bad head cold, a muzzy, vague, shaky sort of feeling that made her feel wretchedly miserable and weak.

  It was dark and cold, and the mud was all around her, pressing in on her, filling her mouth and her eyes and her nose so that she couldn’t see or breathe. It pressed down on her in a heavy crushing weight. Sam tried to cry out against it but it was too late, the darkness was invading her …

  ‘There, it’s all right, love, you’re safe and sound now. You was just having a nasty dream, that’s all.’

  Sam forced open her eyes. They were sticky with something, and her chest hurt. A nurse was bending over her.

  ‘Where am I?’

  ‘Mill Road Hospital, love. Brought you in a couple of hours back, and a real state you was in, an’ all, covered from head to foot in mud, looked like you’d been dug up out of a potato patch and according to them what brought you in you might just as well have been. Dug you out of some tunnel that had collapsed, they did.’

  Sam could feel her chest starting to grow tight whilst her heart pounded.

  ‘Johnny?’ she managed to ask. ‘My … is he …?’

  ‘Sister will have my hide if she comes in and finds you awake. You get back to sleep. Sister said to put you in a private room as a bit of a treat, seein’ as what you’ve bit through.’ The nurse started to move away.

  ‘No, please wait,’ Sam begged her. ‘I’ve got to know. Was there … did they … Johnny …?’

  ‘You’re asking me about that handsome chap with the broken leg and a bump the size of an egg on the back of his head?’

  ‘He’s all right?’

  The nurse nodded.

  Sam sank back against the hard mattress, weak tears of relief blurring her eyes.

  ‘Unconscious, he was, when they brought him in but seemingly he’s come round now and Dr Munroe says there’s nothing wrong with him that won’t heal, thanks to a certain someone not too far away from me,’ the nurse told Sam meaningfully. ‘Now, you’d better drink this medicine the doctor said you was to have. It will help you sleep. And no more nasty dreams this time.’

  Reluctantly Sam took the glass she was holding out to her, grimacing as she drank its bitter contents.

  Johnny was alive and safe. They were both safe … She closed her eyes and then opened them again, reluctant to go back to sleep in case she was dragged back into the nightmare from which she had just escaped. But the sleeping draught she had been given was too strong for her, and by the time the nurse came back down the ward Sam was fast asleep.

  Weeping silently, Sally pressed the softness of Alex’s shirt to her cheek. She had picked it up, meaning to wash it for him before she left, but she just hadn’t been able to bring herself to part with it. It smelled of his skin and just holding it felt a little bit like holding him.

  It was gone three o’clock in the morning and she still hadn’t done what she had come upstairs to do. The suitcase she had dragged from under her bed was lying open on the floor, the boys’ clothes folded neatly, ready to go into it, the drawers to her own cupboard open.

  What was wrong with her? She should have had everything packed by now and be downstairs making up some sandwiches for their journey. She looked down at the case, her face contorting with grief. She just couldn’t do this. She couldn’t leave Alex.

  But she must. She had to.

  ‘Sally?’

  She whirled round. Alex was standing at the door.

  ‘What’s this?’ he demanded. ‘What are you doing?’

  Overwhelmed by her own despair she hadn’t even heard her bedroom door opening, never mind his footsteps on the stairs or his key in the front door. And now all
she seemed able to do was stand there clutching his shirt, caught between guilt and anguish, as he stood looking from her guilty face to the open suitcase.

  ‘What’s going on? What are you doing?’ he repeated.

  When she didn’t answer, able only to shake her head in mute misery, he strode across to her, taking hold of her arm, tension darkening his eyes.

  The smell of the hospital on his clothes jerked her out of her own despair, reminding her of where he had been and why.

  ‘Luke, how is he?’ she asked him urgently.

  She saw his mouth compress as he looked away from her, drawing in a deep breath and then exhaling tiredly, and her heart went cold.

  ‘He’s gone.’

  Sally could hear the heaviness of defeat in his voice. ‘No,’ she protested, her own position as a mother shrinking from the thought of any child losing its life. ‘No, Alex. He can’t be.’ Inside her head she had an image of the vigorous, healthy child Luke had been. ‘He can’t be,’ she repeated, but she knew from Alex’s expression and his silence that he was.

  Luke was dead. She started to shake, her fingers curling into the shirt she was still holding. She tried to put herself in Daisy’s shoes, but it was too painful and she shrank back from the horror of such a reality.

  ‘We tried our best, but it was no use.’

  He looked down at the suitcase. ‘You’re leaving me.’ He said the words flatly, as though her going was something he had expected. Expected but not wanted – Sally could see that from the pain in his eyes. ‘You were going to walk out on me without a word and leave me to come back and find you gone! Why, Sally, why? I thought you and I … You said you loved me.’

  She could hear the torment in his voice. It tore at her heart and she knew she couldn’t let him think she didn’t care.

  ‘I do love you. But I’ve got to go. I can’t stay, Alex.’

  ‘I’m not letting you go!’

  ‘You must.’

  He looked at her and shook his head. He looked so tired, so beaten down, that she ached to hold him and comfort him.

  ‘I don’t understand, Sally. You say you love me and yet at the same time you say you want to leave me … It doesn’t make sense.’

  Not to him, perhaps, but it made perfect sense to her.

  Why had he had to come back like this, catching her when she was at her most vulnerable, making this so much harder for both of them? If she had just left without any explanation he could have hated her for going and that hatred would have set him free to find someone else.

  ‘I want to know what’s going on, Sally.’

  ‘I can’t tell you. Please don’t try to make me. It wouldn’t do any good, anyway. I have to go, Alex. I have to – for your sake.’

  Sally felt as though she was being torn in two, her fear for him driving her in one direction whilst her longing for him was pulling her in another.

  ‘You’re not making sense,’ Alex repeated. ‘And I’m not letting you go, Sally, not until I have the truth.’ His voice and his manner had changed now, becoming stronger and determined.

  ‘You can’t stop me.’

  ‘No? You’re still in my employ and if I were to report you to the authorities for leaving…’

  Sally stared at him in disbelief. ‘You’d do that?’

  ‘Yes. Unless you tell me the truth.’

  He meant it, Sally knew. She had no choice. She would have to tell him. Maybe only then would he understand that she had to leave and he had to let her go.

  She looked up at him and took a deep unsteady breath. ‘All right,’ she told him, ‘I will tell you.’

  Slowly, haltingly, even stopping at times to shake her head when Alex, plainly moved by what she was saying, took a step towards her, she told him the full story.

  ‘You planned to leave me because of that?’ Alex burst out at one point when she had been describing how the debt collector had threatened her with blackmail.

  ‘What else could I do? He said there’d be letters sent, and gossip spread, saying that you weren’t a good doctor, and she, the Boss, she could do it … I know she could.’ Sally gave a fierce shudder. ‘You don’t know her, Alex. She’s wicked through and through. And if they found out about you and me it would only make things worse. I couldn’t let that happen, not even though I knew it would break my heart to leave you. I couldn’t shame you and bring you down on account of you loving me, I just couldn’t.’

  ‘Oh, Sally, Sally! I can’t bear to think of you suffering all of this … Listen to me. Nothing’s going to happen to me.’

  ‘You don’t know what they’re like and what they can do …’

  ‘Oh, yes, I do. In fact, I know a very great deal now about this woman, her sons, their threats and their wickedness, and even if I didn’t, do you really think for one minute I’d let anything or anyone part us?’

  ‘What do you mean, you know a very great deal about them?’

  Very gently Alex took hold of her and then drew her towards the side of the bed, where he sat down and pulled her down to sit beside him. Then turning so that they were facing one another he explained, ‘Daisy Cartwright broke down at the hospital. She told us about this same woman, the Boss, and how she and her sons had been blackmailing some of the men working on the docks to force them to supply her with large amounts of tinned goods, pressuring them for more and more so that in desperation Daisy’s husband has been giving them tins that are condemned. Daisy didn’t realise this and opened one of them for Luke’s tea. When he started to be sick her husband, guessing what had happened, panicked and told her that they’d have to keep quiet about it otherwise he’d lose his job. That’s why she didn’t come round straight away. Of course, once she saw how much worse Luke was getting she ignored her husband, but by then it was too late. I … I knew that as soon as I saw him, but one always hopes for a miracle, especially where a child is concerned.’

  Sally could see how much the little boy’s death had affected him. ‘Oh Alex …’ Instinctively she leaned towards him, wanting to give him comfort and receive it herself.

  He moved towards her and then checked. ‘What’s this?’ he demanded, looking at the shirt she was still clutching.

  ‘Your shirt from yesterday,’ Sally confessed. ‘I was going to wash it for you before I left and then when I picked it up, well, it smelled of you and I … I knew I had to take it with me so that I’d have a bit of you with me.’

  ‘Oh, my love, my love. How could you ever think that anything could matter more to me than you? Do you really think I’d ever let a bit of gossip, no matter how malicious or damaging, come between us?’

  ‘Alex, you’re a doctor – you’ve got your good reputation to think of, and your patients need you.’

  ‘And I need you.’ He removed the shirt from her grasp and wrapped her in his arms.

  Sally didn’t even try to resist, instead leaning her head on his shoulder and giving in to her own need to have this wonderful precious closeness to him. But her conscience still forced her to tell him, ‘You know what the Boss can do to people, Alex. She’ll try to blackmail me like she did poor Daisy’s husband.’

  ‘Shush,’ Alex stopped her lovingly, as he held her close. ‘She won’t be doing anything to hurt anyone any more, Sally, I can promise you that.’

  ‘What … what do you mean?’ She moved slightly in Alex’s arms and immediately they tightened lovingly around her.

  ‘Daisy Cartwright and her husband agreed to tell the police what’s been going on. In fact, the police were there at the hospital with them when they left, and I have it on good authority that the Boss and the rest of her gang will be behind bars in a very short space of time indeed.’

  Silent tears of relief slid slowly down Sally’s face whilst her body shook in Alex’s hold with the force of her emotions.

  ‘My dearest love, I can’t bear to think of what you’ve suffered, but it’s all over now.’

  ‘Yes,’ she began to say, but her assent was lost within the swe
etness of Alex’s kiss.

  ‘I think I must have a very special guardian angel looking after me, Sally,’ Alex whispered huskily against her lips. ‘I nearly didn’t come home tonight but after we’d lost little Luke all I could think of was how much I needed your tenderness.’

  ‘Maybe it’s not one guardian angle but a pair of them,’ Sally suggested softly, knowing he knew what she meant when he looked at her and said huskily, ‘My two lost boys? I’d certainly like to think they were looking down on me with love.

  You mean so much to me, Sally. Everything, in fact. Promise me that from now on there won’t be any more secrets between us?’

  ‘I promise.’

  The half-packed suitcase lay ignored on the bedroom floor as Alex lifted her onto the bed and then joined her there, the only sounds now breaking the night’s silence not those of despair but the soft music of whispered words of love and shared kisses.

  TWENTY-NINE

  ‘Wake up, sleepy head.’

  The soft words, whispered teasingly close to her ear in a familiar and beloved voice, had Sam opening her eyes and then turning her head on her hospital pillow in disbelief.

  ‘Johnny!’ she exclaimed with delight as she looked from his dear face to the wheelchair that he was sitting in, and in which he had, she was sure against hospital rules, managed to get himself into her small private room. ‘Oh, Johnny!’ she whispered, her eyes filling with tears.

  ‘Well, that’s a fine welcome for a chap who’s managed to get himself a bit of transport out of a sister who’s tighter that a duck’s a—’

  ‘Johnny!’ Sam protested, giggling.

  ‘That’s more like my girl,’ he told her approvingly. ‘And you are my girl, Sam,’ he added, his voice deepening with tenderness. ‘Always and for ever. The only girl I could ever want, and just you make sure you understand that, and that you’re mine. Savvy?’ he told her, mock sternly.