Mrs Tibbins had picked up the screaming, kicking child, cuddling him to her amble bosom and assured Aviva that she’d coped with far worse from her four sons. Aviva was not convinced. She’d met Mrs Tibbins’s offspring – they were all portly and pompous, the polar opposite of their mother who always reminded Aviva of an older version of Thembi, with her warmth and sensible calmness. It was Thembi who had rocked and comforted Aviva when she was ill; Thembi to whom Aviva had confided her childish hopes, dreams and fears; Thembi who had done her best to shelter her from her mother’s erratic behaviour. Aviva was determined that Mattie would never need his own Thembi, but it was comforting to know that she could leave her precious son with someone she trusted – almost.
She’d run all the way to the Stanmore Underground station, galloped down the stairs just in time to hop on as the train doors were closing. She’d tapped her foot impatiently as the train stop-started through the host of stations to Green Park. Then she’d run again, weaving her way through crowds of commuters, desperate to make the train to South Kensington which, she knew from experience, pulled into Green Park on the Piccadilly line just minutes after her train from Stanmore arrived on the Jubilee line. But, as was to be expected on a day that had started badly, the train was already on its way to Hyde Park Corner and Knightsbridge by the time she’d reached the platform. She’d gulped stale air into her burning lungs and glanced up at the flashing train arrivals board. An interminable six minutes to wait for the next train.
As she hurtled through the ICU doors she almost collided with the ward matron, who frowned at her.
‘Steady, Ms Silverman,’ she said. ‘No need to rush like that. Your grandfather isn’t going anywhere. In fact, he is doing remarkably well, all things considered.’
Aviva thanked her and walked—briskly—to the cubicle at the far end of the ward. Her heart sank when she saw him. He was slumped sideways in a chair, eyes closed and mouth wide open. The fat high-pressure oxygen tube distorted the shape of his nostrils, a trickle of drool had formed a yellowish line through the white stubble on his bony chin.
Aviva quickly slipped on the blue surgical gloves and yellow plastic apron that hung outside the door of the cubicle before entering, obeying the hospital rules for any contact with patients with MRSA – Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus – the hospital-acquired antibiotic-resistant superbug.
‘Zaidah, Zaidah?’ Aviva gently shook Sir Benjamin by his painfully thin shoulder. The old man opened rheumy eyes and stared blankly at her.
‘Hello Zaidah. How are you today? Are you tired? Should I call a nurse to help you back into bed?’
‘Brenda, how nice of you to come and visit. Thank you. Please my child, I don’t want to be a nuisance but I’m very tired. I want to lie down.’
The nurse objected. ‘The doctor said he has to sit in the chair for at least two hours. He can’t just lie in bed all the time. It’s not good for him.’
‘For heaven’s sake – he’s tired, and uncomfortable in the chair. And his feet are as swollen as footballs – he needs to put them up. Please, put him back to bed. It’s what he wants.’
‘He doesn’t know what he wants. He’s totally confused,’ the nurse said, but her voice was compassionate.
Ben was gently helped to his feet and then supported in an awkward sideways shuffle as two nurses manoeuvred him onto the bed. Aviva nearly jumped out of her skin as the monitor above the bed started beeping loudly. She watched the numbers indicating his oxygen saturation level plummet.
‘Switch the alarm off, there’s a dear,’ the nurse told Aviva. ‘His SATS will come up again when he’s settled and has had time to catch his breath. I’ll nebulise him as well to help him along.’
Ben lay back on the pillow, eyes closed, his pigeon chest rising and falling rapidly as he gasped for air. Aviva felt the familiar sensation of anger and pity rise in her throat, threatening to choke her. She hated seeing her proud, dignified, smart, witty and loving grandfather reduced to this pitiable state: confused, in pain, totally dependent on the nurses, or herself, for everything from a sip of water, to having his nappy changed.
Oh Zaidah, she thought, why the hell are you such a fighter? Let go, please just let go and be with your beloved Ruth and Jeremy. And then she felt consumed with guilt for wanting this wonderful old man dead.
‘Brenda?’ Ben whispered. ‘I’m thirsty.’
‘Zaidah, It’s Avi – Aviva, Brenda’s daughter.’ Aviva held a water glass close to Ben’s chin and put a straw in his mouth. ‘Suck, Zaidah... there you go.’ She wiped some of the dribble from his lips and chin. She’d tell Arno to bring his electric razor when he came to visit Ben that evening. She was sure a nice shave would make Zaidah feel better.
‘Where’s Brenda? I have to tell her that Ruth came to visit, but she couldn’t stay. She had to go to the shops. Jeremy is coming home, he’s been in LA you know. She has to get everything ready for him,’ Ben said.
Aviva couldn’t stop herself. She had to ask: ‘What did Bobba Ruth say to you?’
‘She told me to pull myself together. She said she’s tired of going shopping on her own.’
Aviva turned away so that Ben wouldn’t see the tears streaming down her face. The past few weeks since his admission to hospital had been nightmarish. He hadn’t wanted to go, but she had insisted. ‘You’re coughing up green gunk again, Zaidah,’ she’d said. ‘The antibiotics the GP gave you aren’t helping – you need something stronger.’
At the hospital, the respiratory specialist who had been treating Ben for Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease—emphysema—for fifteen years had diagnosed pneumonia. ‘Your granddaughter was right to bring you in,’ he lectured Sir Benjamin. ‘Who knows what would have happened if she hadn’t insisted.’
Thank heavens she had returned from South Africa when she had, she thought.
‘Hopefully, I would have died,’ Ben muttered. Aviva heard and glared at him.
‘Zaidah, you must get better. You have to! We’ve just found each other again. And I’m pregnant again. Don’t you want to see your new great-grandchild? You can’t leave me now, not when I could lose Yair too. So you have to fight this – you hear?’
Ben had nodded dutifully. He didn’t ask what she’d meant about Yair, and Aviva didn’t tell him. It would only upset him. But he had been fighting ever since, fighting what was probably a losing battle Aviva had been forced to acknowledge when the specialist had shown her the x-rays of Ben’s congested, barely functioning lungs.
She’d comforted herself with the thought that he wasn’t ready to let go, not yet. She’d been so frightened when his condition had deteriorated so much that they had wanted to intubate him – but Ben had signed a ‘do not resuscitate’ order, so they couldn’t put tubes down his throat to help him to breathe.
Aviva had prepared herself for the end as Ben lay comatose in the ICU bed, hooked up to drips and flashing monitors, his arms black and blue from the needles that the pathology ‘vampires’ stuck in his collapsing veins to draw blood, and yet more blood. She and Arno had sat vigil at his bedside, watching and waiting, for two days. Mrs Tibbins had cared for Mattie.
And then Ben had started to recover. Slowly. Painfully. Erratically. There were mornings when he was alert and cheerful, his SATS and heart rate strong and steady, and her heart would soar, confident that her strong, stubborn Zaidah would walk out of the ICU and watch Mattie grow up, and stand over the new baby’s cot as he had stood over Mattie’s. And then, that same evening, he would be confused and gasping for air and her heart would break all over again.
‘We’re trying to get him off the high-pressure oxygen so he can be transferred to the general ward. It will be much more restful for him,’ the specialist told her when she questioned why the drip—which had been removed days before because his course of antibiotics had finished—had been reinserted into his painfully bruised arm. ‘His kidneys also still need a little help to get back more of their function so the swelling in h
is feet and hands will go down.’
‘So he’s going to get better?’ she asked.
‘Well, he’s a remarkable man. But he has a long way to go.’
‘When do you think he will be able to go home again? We need to arrange proper care for him there.’
‘Let’s take it one day at a time.’
***
‘Zaidah’s off the high-pressure oxygen! He’s been transferred to a general ward. Well, they’ve actually had to put him in a private ward because of his MRSA but he’s finally out of ICU and his SATS are stable even though he’s only on ordinary oxygen,’ Aviva yelled into her smartphone.
‘That’s great!’ Arno said.
‘It’s a miracle. An absolute miracle – and I don’t believe in miracles!’
Ben was sitting in the armchair next to his bed, trying to eat his lunch. Aviva cut the chicken into small pieces, placed one on the fork with a bit of rice and eased it into his mouth. He chewed slowly, pausing as he tried to catch his breath, and chewed again. He finally swallowed painfully, and she fed him another morsel. Eventually he waved her hand away.
‘I’ve had enough,’ he said. Aviva frowned – he hadn’t eaten enough to keep a sparrow alive, but eating exhausted him. He looked so miserable that she handed him her phone and opened the latest photographs of Mattie. He beamed. Then he gave the phone back to her, leaned back in the chair and wiped his eyes.
‘I can’t go on like this,’ he said.
‘What are you saying, Zaidah?’ Aviva asked, knowing the answer and dreading it.
‘I can’t do this. I can’t. It’s enough already.’
She asked the question she and Arno had been discussing for weeks, ever since they’d realised that there was a distinct difference between a DNR—do not resuscitate—and a ‘do not treat’ order.
‘Do you mean you don’t want any more active treatment – like antibiotics if you get another infection?’
‘Yes. I asked the doc what the end would be like and he explained it would become increasingly difficult for me to breathe and swallow but...’
‘But if you have antibiotics you’ll be able to breathe.’
‘It will just postpone the inevitable.’
‘But not being able to breathe! Zaidah, I can’t let you suffer like that!’
‘I hope I’m strong enough to get through it, Avi. When the time comes, I need you to be strong for me and to make sure I don’t weaken and let them do things to me that will just prolong everything. Do you understand what I am saying?’
She nodded mutely, too choked up to speak.
‘Good. Now I want to go home. The doc wants to give me a blood transfusion because he says I’m anaemic and if it gets worse, I may go into heart failure. I should be so lucky!’ Ben’s laugh immediately transformed into a raking cough. He wiped phlegm from his mouth with a white paper towel. He looked at it. Aviva looked too and her heart turned over.
‘Green,’ he said. ‘Time for me to go home, my child.’
***
‘He’s gone,’ the hospice sister said, running her hand gently over Ben’s eyes to close them.
Aviva watched in numbed silence as she switched off his electric oxygen concentrator and removed the nasal cannulas from his mouth where she’d put them yesterday to help him when he’d tried to suck air into his waterlogged lungs through desperate lips. Then the sister gently removed the morphine pump which she’d placed under the flaccid skin on his chest three days before, after he’d stopped talking and eating. He’d been thrashing around on the bed, groaning and gasping and crying, his translucent hands clenched. Within minutes, he’d relaxed, his breathing shallow but quiet.
‘Look, Arno,’ Aviva had whispered, holding Ben’s cold hand. ‘Look at his face. He’s not in pain anymore.’
Now he would never be in pain again. At ninety-four, the obituaries would say Sir Benjamin Shapiro had had a good innings. For Aviva, he’d gone too soon, and her heart was breaking. Yet, paradoxically, she felt enormous relief. And that made her feel incredibly guilty.
She was worried about Arno too. He’d just lost his father. Now he had lost a man he’d also come to regard as a grandfather.
‘No Avi, I’m fine. It’s not the same as my Pa’s death. Pa was still so young, and he had so much to live for. Zaidah was old and tired and he wanted to be with his wife and son. There was nothing left for him in this life.’
‘He had us. And he had Mattie. He adored Mattie! And the baby – he could have waited for the baby!’
‘Oh Avi, he hated being frail and having to struggle for every breath he took. So, in a strange way I’m happy – for him, not for you or me. And I’m really sorry Mattie will never get to know him. He was a wonderful man. I know he will watch over you and Mattie and the baby always, just as I know my Pa will always watch over us too.’
***
Aviva put Mattie to down in his new big-boy bed with its safety guard, tucked his Spiderman duvet under his chin and kissed his forehead. ‘Sleep tight, little man,’ she whispered and tiptoed out the room, leaving the door slightly ajar.
She had just curled up next to Arno on the couch when her phone rang. Darryl’s name flashed on the screen and she snatched the phone up.
‘Darryl – hi. What’s up?’
‘Hi Avi. So sorry about your grandfather. I wish you long life. I told Yair as you requested in your WhatsApp message, and he was really upset. But he was glad you were with him at the end.’
‘Yeah, thanks. Any news?’
‘Well, we finally got an opinion on Zivah’s legal culpability.’
‘And? What did the psychiatrist say?’
‘Nothing we didn’t already suspect. He is pretty confident that if she is ever charged with a crime, she will not be competent to stand trial.’
‘Well, that’s fantastic – isn’t it?’
‘It depends. She could end up as a state patient – which means she might never go free. Or she might be released within a couple of years, depending on how she responds to treatment. On the other hand, we have no guarantee that another psychiatrist will also find her incompetent.’
‘I don’t understand. Won’t the courts accept the recommendation of our psychiatrist?’
‘They may. Or they may not. There’s huge pressure on the NPA to convict someone for Tiffany’s death. If they charge Zivah, and she is not able to be tried, the perception will be that Tiffany’s death is going unpunished.’
‘But Zivah will be locked up in a mental institution! Isn’t that punishment enough?’
Darryl laughed. ‘The NPA may not think so. The law states that a person found guilty by reason of insanity—which is what would probably happen to Zivah if she were to stand trial—can be released at any time on the recommendation of a psychiatric panel rather than a judge. However, I really wanted to tell you that all this discussion about what may or may not happen to Zivah may be totally pointless because we’ve also taken the evidence implicating Zivah to the NPA – and they’re just not interested. They have Yair and you know the saying about birds and bushes... they are not prepared to even consider another suspect, especially one who may never stand trial.’
‘Isn’t there something you can do about it? Yair is going to be convicted for something he didn’t do! You can’t let that happen.’
‘Avi, the evidence against Yair is so flimsy, he’ll get off.’
‘Can you guarantee that?’
‘Of course not. But we’ll do our best, I promise.’
‘I’m sure you will. But I’m not willing to take a chance that your best will be good enough.’
‘Avi – that’s not fair!’ Darryl sounded hurt. Then he asked: ‘What are you going to do?’
‘You’ll see. Give my love to Yair – and Zivah, if you see her.’
She cut Darryl’s call, ignored Arno’s curious look, and booted up her computer. She’d given this a lot of thought. She could not allow Yair to be convicted for a crime she knew he did not commit, not ev
en to save Zivah. She opened Facebook and searched for Tracy Jacobs. There were several people called Tracy Jacobs with Facebook accounts but she soon identified the one she wanted. Then she hit the ‘Messenger’ button.
Chapter 33
Tracy
Tracy’s smartphone pinged, an alert tone she didn’t recognise, and she swore softly to herself. She had just been drifting off to sleep and now this. She turned over, determined to ignore the phone. It had been a long, stressful day again with Mafuta doing his best to goad her, and she doing everything in her power to pretend it wasn’t affecting her. But it was. Even Maxine had noticed.
‘Trace, what’s the matter with you? Look at how those pants are hanging on you. You’re not dieting are you?’ Maxine had asked that morning, stopping Tracy as she made for the door with Buttercup’s keys in her hand.
‘No mom, I’m not dieting,’ she’d said. And she wasn’t – she just didn’t feel like eating. And the bathroom scale showed that she had shed another kilogram, weight she could ill afford to lose. She also wasn’t sleeping, spending most nights tossing and turning in misery. She looked haggard and there wasn’t a damn thing she could do about it, short of joining the ranks of the unemployed.
And now her damn smartphone’s pinging had destroyed any chance of sleep again. She fumbled for the phone and stared in surprise at the Messenger icon which indicated that someone had sent her a message via Facebook. If it was some stupid marketing ploy, she’d throw the fucking phone against the wall.
It wasn’t.
‘Hi Tracy,’ she read. ‘Please call me when you get this. I have some information about Tiffany’s murder I think you’ll find very interesting. Please. It could help to save Yair. If you ever had any feelings for him, please don’t ignore this. It would be a pretty big story – a scoop, I think you journalists call it. Phone me. Any time. London is two hours behind Jo’burg. You can reach me on Messenger, or on Whatsapp +44 5527 002292. Looking forward to hearing from you. Aviva.’
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