by Zoe Sharp
Just for a moment there was a flicker across Jamie’s good-looking face.
“You don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about, Charlie,” he said, the smile belying the words. “Until you do, why don’t you keep your nose out of it, OK?”
It was my turn to shrug. “It’s your funeral.”
***
Being inside the hospital had the same tightening effect on my nerves that it had the night before. I couldn’t quite pin down what it was about the place that made me so jumpy. Maybe it was just the total loss of control I had difficulty coping with.
I knew from bitter experience that if you came in here as anything other than a visitor suddenly any personal freedom was stripped away. Complete strangers could come and rob you of your dignity any time they felt like it. They governed your sleep, your food and water, and your pain.
Making a conscious effort to relax, I led Jamie on towards the waiting area I’d occupied the night before. From there a nurse directed us to the female orthopaedic ward.
The male nurse at the ward entrance looked surprised when I mentioned her name. “She’s a popular lass today,” he remarked. And when we neared her bedside I found out what he meant.
Sean Meyer was sitting in a plastic visitor’s chair next to Clare’s bed and was chatting to her like it was the most natural thing in the world that he should be there.
I stopped dead and they both looked up at us. Clare was marginally less pale than she had been the night before, but it was a close-run thing.
They’d erected a framework around her bed like a minimalist four-poster. Wires stretched from it to pins that appeared, from this angle, to actually go right through her legs, like she was some kind of suspended executive toy. The equipment seemed medieval in its crudeness. I could almost believe that the pins I could see sticking out of her torso were penetrating her body completely, impaling her to the bed.
Jamie was silent next to me. When I glanced at him he was staring fixedly at Clare. He seemed to sense my gaze and looked away quickly. But for that unguarded moment his expression had been on full view and there was no mistaking its stricken quality. So he wasn’t quite as hard-faced about all this as his mates had been.
Then Sean stood up and I’m ashamed to admit that my attention was entirely diverted. He looked exactly the same as he had the last time I’d seen him. Tall and wide without ever being bulky, he nevertheless filled the narrow space between the bed and the window, exceeded it, even.
He was wearing black jeans and a black v-necked T-shirt that emphasised the shifting layers of muscle across his chest and shoulders but I knew it wasn’t intentional. He dressed more for comfort and necessity. There was no vanity to Sean.
“Hi,” I said, uncertain and a little defensive when I should have been nothing but grateful. “I didn’t expect you to come.”
I found I was clutching my Arai helmet against my body like a shield. My legs had started to tremble and I had the horrible feeling I was just about to burst into tears but I couldn’t understand why.
“I know you didn’t,” he said, eyeing me closely. He turned back to Clare with one of those slow smiles of his. “Would you excuse us for a moment?”
“Of course,” Clare said, her cheeks dimpling.
Sean just gave me time to dump my stuff down on an empty chair before he took my arm.
Jamie, meanwhile, had kept his head down during the exchange. Now, he edged round the pair of us and sat down quickly in the chair Sean had just vacated. I wasn’t sure if I needed to introduce Jacob’s son to Clare, but Sean was already ushering me towards the door and I didn’t get the chance.
We got as far as the waiting area where I’d spent so much time the previous day before he stopped and put both hands on my upper arms, turning me to face him.
“Are you OK?” he said, those near-black eyes skimming over my face like a laser targeting system.
“Yes, no – I don’t know,” I said helplessly and my eyes began to fill. I shook my head, annoyed with myself. “Sorry, I’ve been fine until now.”
“It’s OK,” he said gently. “It’s not the first time you’ve been told someone you care for is dead. It was bound to be a shock.”
That was enough to set me off. I swallowed a couple of times, fighting it, but when he pulled me towards him I barely resisted, allowing him to gather me up and hold me close. Sean was too angular to cuddle up to, but being in his arms made me lightheaded with both tension and relief.
Those clever hands began to smooth up and down my spine, one of his habitual gestures. He traced the indentations of my vertebrae with his fingertips through the thin cotton of my shirt, like he was reading the signs of my body by Braille.
It was supposed to comfort, but it was making me only too aware of the length of time since we’d last done this, and how much I wanted to do it again.
Maybe it was recognition of that need, of the temptation to give in to it that made me stiffen. Footsteps sounded loud in the corridor behind me and poured a further mental bucket of cold water on my thoughts. I pulled back a little so I could see his face.
“When did you get here?” I said, striving for the mundane. “Have they told you anything about how she is?
He smiled as though he knew exactly what had been going through my mind. “I set off early this morning. I only got here about ten minutes ago,” he said. “Clare said there’s been quite a bit of nerve damage in her legs. They’ve been pretty candid with her about the fact that it might or might not all come back. They haven’t told me anything but then,” he added with a wry smile, “bearing in mind who one of her consultants is, I don’t think he’d be inclined to take me into his confidence, do you?”
I frowned. My father and Sean had never been on the best of terms. Not least because the uncovering of our clandestine affair had been part of my abrupt and ignominious exit from the military. I could have pointed out any of this to Sean, but instead I felt the need to defend my father.
“Yesterday they were talking about the possibility of Clare losing her legs,” I said flatly. “Whatever other failings he might have, my father is a bloody good surgeon.”
Sean pulled a face that could have been smile or grimace, take your pick. “I have cause to know that,” he said wryly, rotating his shoulder a fraction, “better than anyone.”
The silence beyond that stretched a moment too long and I rushed to fill it.
“Any news of Jacob?”
“One of the guys you found a number for is based in Wicklow, right down in the southwest corner,” he said, not commenting on my abrupt swerve of subject. “He reckons he’ll probably see Jacob later this week at an auction – if we haven’t managed to get in touch with him before then.”
I nodded, jamming my hands into the pockets of my leather jeans so they wouldn’t be lured into reaching for him again. “How long do you plan to stay?” I asked.
He almost smiled, his body suddenly very still. “As long as you need me.”
Release nearly had my eyes closing. “Thank you,” I said, awkward but sincere. “I really didn’t expect you to drop everything and come rushing up here.” But I wanted you to.
“It’s OK, Charlie,” he said. “It’s not a sign of weakness to need a shoulder to cry on every now and again.”
Sean had been through hell and back more times than I could count. The last time, in the States, he’d come within a whisker of execution and yet he would not – could not – talk about it, let alone cry. I turned and looked at him, dubious.
“Isn’t it?” I said.
Four
When we got back to the ward Jamie had pulled his chair up close to the bedside and was sitting leaning forwards intently and holding Clare’s hand. He jumped up looking flustered when he saw us.
“So who’s the kid?” Sean asked quietly while we were still too far away for him to overhear.
“Jacob’s son, apparently.”
He raised his eyebrows and I shrugged. “Don’t look at m
e,” I muttered. “Until I caught him breaking in at some ungodly hour this morning, I didn’t know Jacob had a son, either.”
Clare smiled warmly at us as we drew nearer and held out her hand to me.
“Charlie,” she said, giving my fingers a fierce, heartfelt squeeze. “Thank you. For everything.”
“No problem,” I said, taking the chair Sean unstacked for me, alongside another for himself. We sat on the other side of the bed, facing Jamie across Clare’s wired limbs. “You were right about Bonny, by the way.”
She frowned. “What about her?”
“Last night,” I said. “You asked me to go and look after the dogs because they’d been stuck in all day. Don’t you remember?”
She shook her head. “Wow,” she said, looking round at us, “I must have been completely out of it.”
“But you remember telling me about the van?” I said.
“Van?”
“You talked about the Transit van that hit you,” I persisted. “You called him a determined sod.”
Sean glanced at me sharply but my eyes were on Clare’s confused face.
“I-I can’t remember,” she said, fretful. Her colour had begun to rise.
“Leave her alone,” Jamie said, tense. “It’ll come back to her when she’s ready.”
I sat back and looked from Jamie’s set expression to Clare’s embarrassed one. Not the right time to push it.
“OK, OK,” I said, contrite. “You’re right. I’m sorry. I just want to get to the bottom of what happened.” Even then I couldn’t entirely let it go, but I smiled to soften the question down. “I thought you hated being a pillion passenger.”
“I do, but what I do remember is that the bloody Ducati wouldn’t start and I’d promised to go up to Devil’s Bridge,” Clare said, smiling back at me now, although a little faintly. “Slick arrived – to see Jacob about some parts, I think – just as I was struggling with it and he offered me a lift.” She shrugged and lay back carefully against the pillows. “Just bad timing, I suppose.”
It was more than bad timing, but even though I didn’t voice the comment she regarded me anxiously. “There are going to be all sorts of rumours flying round about this, aren’t there?”
There already are, I thought, but what I actually said was: “I expect so.”
She reached out and put her hand on my arm. “Sean’s told me you’re looking for Jacob,” she said. “When you find him, please don’t say anything to him about Slick. I-I’d rather explain things to him myself.”
It was the note of desperation in her voice that rocked me and for a moment I didn’t speak, straightening in my chair.
“Clare – what is there to tell him?” I demanded. And what is there that you’re not telling me?
She seemed to realise she’d said too much. Her lips thinned and the lower one began to tremble. As if on cue, a nurse came bustling up and swept us all with an accusing glare.
“Are you all right, Clare?” she asked. “Can I get you something for the pain?” And when Clare nodded she rounded on the rest of us, her tone ominous. “I think it might be best if you all left now,” she said. “I don’t think you appreciate that Clare’s been through major surgery and she needs to rest.”
We rose obediently. Sean bent to kiss her cheek and she gave him a quick hug. Jamie just offered a cross between a wave and salute. I reached down to squeeze Clare’s hand but she gripped it, hard, and held on.
“I just need to speak to Charlie for a moment longer,” she said pleadingly to the nurse, not letting go of my hand. “Just a moment. I promise.”
The nurse scowled a little more, but the heat went right out of it when the force of Clare’s smile hit her. Clare could do that to people.
“All right then,” she said with a grudging indulgence. And to me, more sharply: “Then you’re out, yes?”
“OK,” I agreed meekly and sat down again.
Sean met my eyes fleetingly as he began to shepherd Jamie towards the doorway. There was everything and nothing in that brief glance.
Clare waited until they were well out of earshot before she spoke again, tracking them anxiously.
“Charlie, I need you to do something for me. For us, really,” she said, keeping her voice low so I had to lean towards her to hear it properly.
“Name it,” I said, without hesitation.
Clare hesitated a moment. She let go of me and toyed with her nightie instead. She was wearing an elderly sack in faded cotton with the words ‘hospital garment’ running through it in red and blue letters so that from a distance it looked like a pattern. Stops people stealing them, I suppose. I was suddenly glad I’d brought her her own stuff.
“I need you to look after Jamie for me,” she said in a rush.
“What?” It wasn’t quite what I was expecting. I sat up, my face blank. “Why?” I said.
She flushed a little. “He’s going to Ireland with a group of bikers at the end of this week,” she said. “Some trip Slick was organising, I think. I-I don’t want him to go.”
I frowned, remembering the conversation I’d had with Jamie last night. “But he’s from Ireland,” I said. “I can’t stop him going home.”
“It’s not that,” Clare said, her face miserable. “It’s the people he’s going with. They’re, well, they’re like Slick. They ride like a bunch of total idiots and they’re going to get him killed. Jamie hasn’t had his licence for that long. He’s on a bike half their size and he won’t admit he can’t really keep up.” She gave me a wan smile. “You know what these fellers are like.”
I did. Clare was ferociously quick. She’d left more than one bike wreck behind her as a testament to the foolish assumption of less experienced – and usually male – riders that any corner she could take, they could take faster.
“Why don’t you ask him yourself?” I said. I nodded to the mechanical construction that was holding her bones together. “At the moment, he might just listen to you.”
She shook her head. “I’ve always been something of the wicked stepmother to Jamie,” she said with candour. She was folding the edge of the starched sheet over and over, her eyes fixed on her fingers. The knuckles of her right hand were bruised solid purple like she’d been in a fight. “I mean, Jacob and Isobel’s marriage was history long before I came on the scene but when I did I suppose Jamie knew they weren’t ever going to get back together again. He’s always resented me a little for that, I think.”
“So what do you want me to do?”
She stilled a moment, like she hadn’t thought it through that far, then shrugged, looking close to tears again. “I don’t know,” she said, back to restless. “I suppose I was hoping that, if you can’t stop him going with them, you could, maybe, even go with him?”
It was said hesitantly enough to turn it into a question, with a little wince at the end as though she was expecting me to shout her down.
I didn’t shout. I sat still for probably five full seconds wondering how to ask when my friend had developed this massive maternal instinct for someone else’s child. And why.
Clare took my silence for refusal. “Please, Charlie,” she said, reaching to grab my hand again. “Look, you’re a bodyguard now, aren’t you? So – I’ll hire you! Name your price.”
She said the words with a big smile but there was panic in her voice and cowering behind her eyes. Across the other side of the ward the nurse’s head snapped up like she could sniff the patient distress in the air. She started to move purposefully in our direction.
“Charlie, please!” Clare said quickly, sounding desperate now. The panic had climbed out of the background and was in full flight across her face. Her fingers gripped tight. They were unnaturally cold.
“I want you out, now!” the nurse snapped with thunderous restraint. “I will not have you upsetting my patients.”
I stood up, ignoring her, and summoned up my best reassuring smile for Clare.
“It’s OK,” I told her. “I’ll look after him.”
It wasn’t until I was heading for the ward doorway that I wondered how on earth I was going to make good on that promise.
Sean was waiting for me, leaning against the wall in the corridor. Of Jamie there was no sign.
“She OK?” Sean asked, falling into step beside me.
“Mm,” I said, still distracted. “She’s just hired me to act as Jamie’s bodyguard.”
Sean didn’t scoff, as anyone else might have done. A dent of concentration appeared between his eyebrows. “What’s the threat?”