Nothing and no one else.
‘Okay,’ Phoebe said, addressing 2020 again and hitching her bag up onto her shoulder, ‘let’s go see what you’re really made of.’
She started up the crumbling steps towards the front door and, she hoped, the crack sheltering Angelotti’s keys. Halfway up she stopped, suddenly unsure if she’d remembered to bring along her electronic measuring gizmo. She opened her bag and rummaged through. No gizmo.
‘Oh, phoo,’ she grumbled at the house. ‘That means I’m going to have to pace out every one of your damn rooms and corridors. Happy now?’
She started up again, her mind and hands still buried in the bag, only half-concentrating on where she was planting her feet. Her fingers closed on something metallic caught in the bag’s lining – she paused again to look and leaned back against the balustrade for balance.
She heard the sound about one second before it gave way.
A cracking. 2020’s own private quake.
The rail was the only thing there was to grab on to.
It and Phoebe fell together.
Chapter Twenty-four
From across the street, out of sight behind the steps of the empty house opposite 2020, Holly watches for a long while. Her heart is pounding too hard and her palms are moist with a kind of panic and confusion. Holly is not accustomed to feeling like this, unable to think properly, smoothly.
She thought she had prepared so carefully, so thoroughly. She made sure that the blonde was still going out on valuations despite her advanced state of pregnancy – only yesterday, for heaven’s sake, Nina Ford Miller was valuing an apartment in Presidio Heights. Holly has taken care every step of the way, inventing G. Angelotti but sending the fax from a public machine on Market Street so that it bore a San Francisco fax-back number for added credibility.
She checked in at the Huntington yesterday afternoon, having told Jack she was coming to meet a prospective client’s business partner. She told Jack she couldn’t tell him much about the case, and Jack scarcely raised an eyebrow, simply kissed her long and hard and told her to be careful and that he was going to miss her. Jack doesn’t know that his wife has already come to San Francisco twice this past month, taking an early flight up and returning late the same afternoon. He doesn’t know that on both occasions she spent several warm, tiring hours, shielded by large sunglasses and a hat, blistering her toes on a cross section of the city’s less than immaculate streets in order to choose the most workable site for her plan. Holly steered clear of Pacific Heights and Cow Hollow, knew they were too close to both the Millers’ home and Ford Realty’s office, aware, in any case, that she was unlikely to find suitably neglected properties in those districts. She was beginning to think that she might never find the right house, that she might even have to go with her Plan B (taking a sound building and rendering it unsafe herself), but sabotage was a much riskier scheme and one with which she would have been far less at ease.
And then she found Catherine Street and its crumbling, potentially lethal row houses.
She knew, late last night when she left the hotel and came to Catherine Street and took away the DANGER signs at 2020, that someone other than Nina Miller might be the first up those treacherous steps and into the house – that someone else might get hurt. But somehow she didn’t picture it happening so swiftly, before they even reached the front door.
And she did not picture it happening to the redhead.
Time passes. On the other side of the street, Phoebe Ford lies very still in the rubble at the base of the steps of 2020. There is no one else around. The two women who, not long before the collapse, were standing at a front door four houses away, have vanished inside. The thin man who was walking up the hill turned a corner and disappeared before Phoebe fell. Even the black and white cat that was sunbathing on the steps behind which Holly is waiting has skulked away.
The wheels of Holly’s mind are starting to turn again.
There. There. You’re you again. No need to panic.
Her heart rate slows. Part of her brain, she realizes as she calms down, is simply registering a degree of guilt at having involved an innocent party, and irritation at having missed her target. But another, more dominant, part is already beginning to calculate how best to utilize this new, unexpected situation.
After all, she reasons, everyone knows there’s more than one way to skin a cat.
And maybe there’s more scope to this particular skinning than she might, at first, have thought.
She goes on watching.
Phoebe does not move.
Chapter Twenty-five
They were sitting in the garden, watching the charcoal on the barbecue burn, waiting for it to turn white, when the telephone rang.
‘I’ll go,’ Nick said.
‘No, you cook.’ Nina struggled to her feet. ‘I’m too hungry to wait much longer.’
‘If it’s Phoebe, tell her we’ve plenty if she wants to join us.’
Nick watched his wife walk into the house, thought, with one of his frequent rushes of pleasure, how graceful she managed to remain in spite of her size, and then he looked back at the charcoal.
‘It’s ready,’ he called out. ‘I’m starting.’
He put the chicken pieces on first and basted them with marinade. The aroma sprang into the air immediately, making his mouth water. He reached for his white wine spritzer and took a sip.
He heard a sound from behind and turned around.
Nina’s face was white as chalk.
‘Sweetheart?’ Nick put down his glass. ‘What is it?’
Her mouth moved, but no words came. Quickly, Nick went to her, put his arms around her, tried to push her down onto one of the garden chairs.
‘No!’ She pushed him away, the word shrill, alarming.
‘Nina, tell me – what’s happened?’
Her eyes were torn wide, staring at nothing.
‘Phoebe,’ she said.
They waited at People’s Hospital for a long while, knowing nothing more than that Phoebe had met with an accident at a house in Haight Ashbury and had sustained serious injuries. A doctor, young, harried and tired looking, came to see them, explained that Phoebe had two badly broken arms requiring urgent attention, and some head injuries, extent as yet unknown.
Nina, as next of kin, signed the papers consenting to surgery, but asked unnaturally few questions.
‘These head injuries,’ Nick said, quietly, reaching for Nina’s arm. She felt stiff, like a doll. ‘Are they bad?’
‘As I said, we can’t assess that yet.’ The doctor paused. ‘She’s unconscious, and we’ve put her on a respirator—’
‘She’s on life support?’ Nick was horrified.
‘It isn’t as bad as it sounds,’ the doctor reassured him. ‘We often put head injury patients on a respirator simply because it breathes quickly for them and helps decrease any swelling on the brain.’
‘So there’s no immediate danger?’ Nick asked.
‘That’s right.’
Nina moved away from Nick.
‘What about brain damage?’ Her voice was quite loud and hard, not at all like her normal voice.
‘It’s too soon to say, Mrs Miller.’
‘When will you be able to say something?’ Still that harshness.
‘This is an inexact science,’ the doctor answered. ‘Until your sister regains consciousness, or we’ve run some tests, we won’t be in a position to answer any more questions. I’m sorry.’
The waiting began again. Nick watched Nina’s face growing more strained with each passing half-hour and knew that there was nothing he could say or do that would persuade her to go home or even lie down.
‘You want to go home, you go,’ she said once, unfairly.
‘I’m going nowhere,’ Nick said.
Twenty minutes later, she went into labour. Nick stayed with her while things got underway, ascertained that her own obstetrician was en route, and then went to make the call he had been dreadin
g.
‘William Ford.’
Nina’s father always answered in that clipped, crisp way. Phoebe had joked once about it being a pity that her dad’s time with the RAF had come after World War Two because his manner, even sight unseen, was enough to scare a Messerschmitt out of the sky.
‘William, it’s Nick.’
The silence was fleeting, but telling.
‘What’s happened to Nina?’
‘She’s gone into labour.’ Nick’s chest felt tight.
‘It’s too early,’ Ford said.
‘Thirty-six weeks.’
‘Are the doctors concerned?’
‘They seem pretty confident.’ It was hard to find the words. ‘Phoebe’s had an accident.’
‘What do you mean?’ Ford waited a second. ‘What do you mean?’
‘She had a fall.’ Simple was the only way to tell it. Simple and stark, the way it was. ‘We don’t know exactly what happened. She went to see a property, and a wall collapsed.’ Nick’s heart wrenched, but he forced himself on. ‘Phoebe’s badly hurt, but they don’t know yet how badly.’ He decided against specifically mentioning head injuries – time enough when the man arrived. ‘They’re operating now to set some broken bones in her arms,’ he said.
The new silence did not mask Ford’s anguish.
‘I’m on my way.’
‘Good,’ Nick said, as gently as he could. ‘I’ll tell Nina.’
The line was cut.
Shortly after one in the morning, not long after Phoebe’s surgery had ended, Dr Judith Liebowitz, one of the investigating physicians, diagnosed a subdural haemorrhage. Within a half-hour, while Nina laboured on another floor of the general hospital, a team of surgeons were drilling burr holes in Phoebe’s skull, draining the blood clot that had formed, and clipping the ruptured vessels.
A nurse, coming in to the labour ward to report to Nick what was going on in the OR, made the error of speaking in earshot of Nina. Her blood pressure shot up and her pulse began to race.
‘I want to know everything that happens to Phoebe,’ she said between contractions, gripping Nick’s hand so tightly that her fingernails cut into the palm of his left hand. ‘Don’t you dare let them keep anything from me. You tell me everything.’
‘I will, sweetheart,’ Nick soothed her, silently cursing the nurse.
‘You swear it.’
‘Don’t worry.’
‘Swear it, Nick.’
‘Cross my heart and hope to die.’
‘Phoebe’s okay,’ Liebowitz, petite, black-haired and energetic, reported to Nick ninety minutes later outside the delivery room. ‘The surgery went beautifully.’
‘Is she conscious?’ Nick asked.
‘Not yet, but that’s to be expected with this type of injury.’
‘Is she still on a respirator?’
‘For the time being.’
‘What can I tell my wife?’
‘Tell her to worry about giving birth and leave the rest to us.’
‘You don’t know Nina,’ Nick said.
‘So tell her the truth.’ Liebowitz smiled and patted his arm. ‘It’s good news, after all.’
Their daughter was born at six minutes to five next morning. She weighed four pounds and twelve ounces, was placed in an incubator, given oxygen and humidity and fed through a nasogastric tube.
‘She’s what we call moderately premature,’ a paediatrician told Nick. ‘She has a few problems right now, but nothing we can’t deal with.’
Nina – who had been so calm through every stage of her pregnancy, who, even through her labour pains had been so distracted by her sister’s plight that she had seemed scarcely to register her own physical state – now began to come apart. Nick, afraid for her, sat by her side, held her hand, stroked her hair, tried every way he could think of to allay her fears, but knew it was impossible to do so.
‘She’ll be all right,’ he told her. ‘I know she will.’
Nina stared at him wretchedly, bitterly. ‘Our daughter or my sister? Who’s going to be all right, Nick?’
‘They both are,’ Nick said.
‘How do you know that?’
He held fast to her icy hand. ‘I know it because Dr Liebowitz said Phoebe’s surgery was successful, and I know that our little daughter’s going to be strong, just like her mother and her aunt.’
‘You don’t know that,’ Nina said. ‘You can’t know it.’
‘I can, Nina,’ he said forcefully. ‘And so can you.’
‘I want to see my baby again,’ Nina said.
‘She’s sleeping. The nurses say that preemies really need their sleep, and we should fit in with her natural patterns.’
‘I hate that word – preemie.’
‘It’s just a word, sweetheart.’
‘I want to see her now.’
‘Soon,’ he said.
‘She’s so tiny.’
‘She’s beautiful,’ Nick said.
Nina shifted restlessly in the bed. ‘I want to see Phoebe.’
‘You have to get stronger, sweetheart.’
‘I’m strong enough now.’
Nina tried to sit up but fell back again. For just a moment, she seemed, at long last, on the edge of tears, and Nick almost longed for the release, for her sake, but it was not to be. Nina lay back against the white hospital pillows, and stared at the ceiling, and though her lips moved a little, she made no sound.
Nick’s fear for her grew.
William Ford came, and Nina did give way then, wept in her father’s arms while Nick, feeling suddenly, disturbingly, like an outsider, looked on. To him, Ford said hardly a word, but the hostility in his eyes was unmistakable. It was shockingly apparent to Nick that the older man blamed him in some irrational way for what, in the space of twenty-four hours, had befallen both his daughters – as if Phoebe might not have fallen, and Nina might not have gone into premature labour if Nick had taken better care of his girls.
‘How exactly did it happen?’ Ford asked him later, outside the ICU.
‘No one knows exactly,’ Nick answered. ‘Phoebe was at a house over in Haight Ashbury and she fell from the front steps.’ He paused. ‘One of the paramedics said it looked as if a supporting wall had crumbled away. He thought maybe Phoebe was leaning against it—’
‘What in God’s name was she doing at a place like that?’ Impotent rage and despair blazed from Ford’s green eyes. ‘My daughters are in real estate, not demolition. Why was she looking at a derelict house in the first place? Tell me that.’
‘I don’t know, William.’ Nick stayed gentle, feeling for the man in spite of his own pain. ‘I don’t know any more than I’ve already told you.’
‘Nina’s falling apart,’ Ford said, unnecessarily.
‘Yes, she is,’ Nick said.
‘And do you understand what that could mean to her?’ Ford challenged.
‘Of course I do,’ Nick said steadily. ‘But I don’t think Nina’s going to start drinking again,’
‘And what exactly do you base that on?’
‘On being her husband,’ Nick answered.
‘You weren’t there,’ Ford said, and all the remembered agony of his wife’s and Nina’s alcoholism were in those three words.
‘No, I wasn’t.’ Nick paused. ‘But I am here now.’
The initial crises passed, and both Phoebe and the baby were pronounced in a stable condition. People kept asking the new parents what they were naming their baby, and Nick and Nina had been leaning towards Zoë for a girl several weeks ago – a lifetime ago – though they’d agreed to wait until they were certain that it suited her.
‘You decide,’ Nina told Nick now.
‘We’ll both decide,’ Nick said.
‘I can’t.’
‘I don’t want to make that kind of decision without you, Nina.’
‘Tough,’ she said, and closed her eyes.
The baby, who had been diagnosed with jaundice on her sixth day of life and was being treated
with phototherapy, was still in an incubator in the premature baby unit. Nick crouched beside his daughter and stroked her tiny right hand through the porthole with one of his fingers and wondered how in God’s name he was supposed to know what name suited this fragile, pitiful scrap of mottled flesh and blood?
‘Zoë?’ he asked her softly through the glass. ‘Is that a good name for you, sweetheart? Will you be happy with that?’
The infant squirmed and cried and Nick felt his heart contract at her helplessness and the thin, plaintive rage of her wail.
‘I love you, Zoë,’ he told her, and the sensation within him was so powerful it took his breath away. ‘You get strong now, for your mommy and daddy.’ There were tears in his eyes, but he made no attempt to brush them away. ‘You be healthy and you grow, Zoë, my love, do you hear me?’
Flowers and messages of support came flooding in – from friends and relatives, from publishers, from Clare Hawkins, from Meganimity, from Betty and Harold at Ford Realty – but they were hardly noticed. At what should have been a time of profoundest joy, Nick felt only hopelessness and inadequacy as he watched Nina, discharged but refusing to leave the hospital, going back and forth between the ICU and the prem ward where she, like Nick, for the most part, could only gaze and touch through that damned porthole, without even the warmth and comfort of holding or nursing her fragile daughter.
Phoebe remained unconscious, yet Judith Liebowitz seemed optimistic.
‘The scans have all been positive,’ she explained, patiently, for the third time, to Nick, Nina and William Ford, in the corridor outside the ICU.
‘Then why hasn’t she woken up?’ Nick asked.
‘That’s hard to say.’ Liebowitz shrugged. ‘At times like this, the body can develop all kinds of protective mechanisms. Recovery sometimes takes longer than expected. It could be that Phoebe just isn’t ready to wake up.’
‘But she will wake up?’ Ford asked the question tightly.
‘There’s no reason to believe that she won’t,’ Liebowitz answered.
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