If You Knew Her

by Emily Elgar

  She lets her hand drop to her lower belly; she pictures her mum, travelling back from Mexico all on her own, her belly already swollen with Cassie. Maybe she’ll pick up on some of her mum’s courage if she’s by the sea, walking those high cliffs they both loved so much.

  She’s at the gate now that leads to the lane. She’s about to open it when she hears a branch crack. She stops. She feels a slightly itchy sensation prickle her back, as though she’s being watched.

  ‘Hello?’ Her voice is small, lonely in the night, but there’s no reply, just the creak of the trees and the distant hum of drunk party laughter. Another firework explodes, gaudy in the sky. It lights up the space around her in an unnatural pool of brief light.

  She’s on her own after all, Steeple Lane directly ahead of her, the stream hissing by its side. The fireworks die in the sky and the darkness settles around her again. She turns left onto the lane, towards the cottage. It feels right to be walking on her own, away from the crowd, into the first night of the New Year, towards a future she realises with a surge is entirely her own. The wind picks up and Cassie shivers. She pulls her jacket tighter, freezing against her skin. Her breath coils around her in dense white clouds, each icy inhale electrocutes her lungs. Her mouth fills with an unusual taste. It reminds her of something, something metallic, and as she walks deeper into the night, she knows what her mouth tastes like. It tastes like blood.

  22

  Alice

  ‘Alice, what are you doing here?’ Paula is looking up from where she sits at the reception desk, yesterday’s papers spread before her. If she’s pleased to see me, she doesn’t show it; her pale face folds in on itself like cake mix in confusion. ‘I thought you were off today?’

  I try and ignore the flicker of amusement I see shadowing her wide-set features; I’m probably getting a reputation for always being on the ward, not having a life outside my shifts.

  I shrug and lie. ‘I left something in my locker so thought I’d just pop in for it.’

  ‘For god’s sake, it’s seven in the morning, Alice!’

  ‘Paula, I got an early night, woke up early, OK?’

  Now it’s her turn to shrug, before I ask, ‘How’s Cassie’s night been?’

  Paula folds away her newspaper.

  ‘Oh, she’s quiet as a lamb,’ she says with a sigh. ‘It’s Frank who’s taken a turn, I’m afraid. The registrar was with him for a while earlier.’ Paula wrinkles her nose. ‘I’ve never heard his lungs like this, I would have sworn it was pneumonia but the reg said it was most likely an infection brought on by overexertion over the last few days, not enough sleep and all that. I’ve just cleaned his trach, given him his antibiotics and made him comfortable.’ She pauses, before adding as an afterthought, defensive perhaps that I caught her slacking, ‘I just finished his notes, before you arrived. They’re all up to date.’ Then she licks her thumb and forefinger and opens her newspaper again.

  Paula’s left Frank slightly turned towards the left. His eyes are open, as though he was expecting me, or someone else. He blinks as soon as he sees me. Paula was right, his lungs are congested; they rattle with every breath. I drop my bag on his visitor’s chair and move him to a more central position. Veins wriggle across the whites of his eyes like tiny red rivers. He’s exhausted.

  ‘Frank, what’s going on?’ He stares at me and I kick myself – idiot – for not asking yes or no questions.

  ‘Is something wrong?’

  Frank blinks yes.

  ‘You want the board, Frank?’

  Blink.

  ‘All right, we can try for a little while, but after you must promise me you’ll try and rest, deal?’

  Blink. I have the feeling he’s only saying yes to get me to shut up and get the board. I pick it up from its place behind the frame of his bed.

  He starts blinking as soon as I’ve raised the board in front of him. He moves too quickly. I don’t know the board well enough and have to keep looking at it and back at Frank so I miss his blinks. I don’t know what he’s trying to say. I feel a rip in my chest, and I’m worried I might cry suddenly: he needs me and I don’t understand.

  ‘I’m sorry, Frank, I …’ I look at him; there’s a ferocity behind his eyes I haven’t seen before.

  ‘Shall we start again, Frank?’

  He blinks, weaker this time. Each blink draining a little more energy.

  ‘OK, try going slower,’ I tell him before we get to work again. I think he blinks ‘L’ but then he blinks a juddery series as his eyelids spasm with exhaustion and I think I’ve got it wrong again. His eyeballs shudder in their sunken sockets. I can hear the effort within him – the catarrh echoes through his chest – and I know we can’t carry on.

  ‘Frank, I’m sorry. But that’s enough for now. You need to rest. I’ll come back later, we can finish then, OK? I promise.’

  Frank blinks twice for ‘no’ but, as he does, I hear Mary calling good morning, warning Paula to watch out for roadworks on the A27 and I know it’s time for me to go. I can handle Paula’s disdain, but I know Mary will see through my weak excuses. She’ll know something is up and I don’t have the energy to try and convince her I’m OK. I grab my bag from Frank’s chair, ignore his furious blinks, put my hand against his cheek and tell him again, more firmly this time, that he has to rest. I promise him that I’ll be back later and it’s only when I hear Mary go into the nurses’ room that I pull Frank’s curtain back and walk quickly off the ward.

  Mary was right; the traffic even so early in the morning is bad and it takes me twice as long to get home as normal. I’m still worried about Frank, but I tell myself that once the antibiotics take hold he’ll calm again as his infection starts to clear. In stationary traffic I watch early daffodils shake their heads on the grassy verge by the road, and my thoughts turn again, magnetised, back to Cassie, and I know what I’m going to do with my day off.

  As soon as I get home, I bundle Bob into the back of the car. David won’t be home until the afternoon. The trains have been bad into the city recently, so he stayed at a hotel in London last night to make an early morning meeting. I told him on the phone last night that I was going to take Bob for a windy beach walk today, perhaps to Birling Gap, but as soon as we pull back into the traffic, I know I won’t follow signs for the coast. Instead, I stop at a petrol station and buy a big bunch of red and yellow tulips and follow the signs to Buscombe.

  The morning sky is a picture-book blue against the peacefully sleeping mounds of the South Sussex Downs. Bob pokes his nose out of the car as I open the window; the air feels cool and new, a fresh batch. Visiting a local village isn’t a crime, is it? It’s a Wednesday so Jack will be working and even if I bump into Charlotte, I’ll pretend I’m visiting a friend who lives nearby and if she doesn’t believe me, then I don’t really care. Now I know I’m not going to be a mum, I feel strangely invincible, bolder in my new, toughened skin. I may not be able to protect my own child, I know that now, but I remind myself I can still try and protect Cassie’s as I turn down into the dappled shade of Steeple Lane.

  I press my foot to the brake as I pass the sign for Steeple Farm and Cottage, Jonny’s place. Bob pokes his nose out of the window towards an elderly-looking Alsatian lying on the short rubbly drive that leads up to the farm. The Alsatian creaks arthritically onto his paws and, tossing his head in the air like he thinks he’s still a puppy, he trots down the drive, barking all the while at Bob, to either stop and say hello or to get off his patch. I’m just about to accelerate away when a man I can’t see shouts, ‘Dennis!’ The man whistles and then says, ‘Come here, boy!’

  Bob almost clatters off the front seat as I slam on the brakes. My mind flicks through my nurse’s training. Did I miss the class on ‘not visiting the main suspect in your patient’s manslaughter case’? Have I gone completely fucking mad? The Alsatian is still barking, shaking his mane at us and ignoring the voice that keeps calling for him, getting closer. I can’t move. I have to see him. This is why I’m
here; this must be why I’m here. Bob whimpers in the front seat to be let out. I just keep staring past him, towards the Alsatian as a tall, blond-haired man in cut-off denim shorts, with old, tan, leather boots that gape around his lower calves, walks in long strides out onto the drive. Jonny.

  ‘Dennis,’ he calls, a warning growl in his voice. At last, Jonny looks up. I’m not sure if he sees me peering out at him through the window over Bob’s shoulder. He stands up straight, peaks a hand to his forehead to shield his eyes from the sun and neither of us moves for a few seconds. I wonder whether this is the moment I’ll look back on and regret. Will my future self scream at the memory of this moment to ‘turn the fuck around, Alice’. But I don’t. I can’t. Dennis looks thrown, turning from Jonny to Bob and back to Jonny, before he breaks the armistice and starts running towards us, which makes Bob dance on the spot in the front seat and bark.

  Jonny starts cautiously following him. His long legs and arms sway by his side, as though they’re only held in place by thin string. From a distance, there’s a boyishness to his movements, but when he gets closer, I see how his cheekbones protrude from his face like stumps and how worry has carved its telltale lines all over his face like battle scars. I wind down the window a little further, and hold Bob’s collar, pulling him back as he shoves his neck through the gap. Jonny curls himself down towards the window and we peer at each other over Bob’s shoulder.

  ‘Can I help you?’ he asks, politely.

  His face darkens as soon as he sees me. He recognises me but I’m not sure he knows where from.

  ‘Jonny?’ My voice is small.

  He frowns, immediately on guard; I know his name. Dennis picks up on his hesitation and growls by his side. Jonny rests a quietening hand on his head.

  ‘Who are you?’ he asks.

  Bob bounds out of the car with me; I have to pull him by the collar to get him back onto the passenger seat, closing the door, before I walk around the bonnet of the car to Jonny. He looks at my face, his brow furrowed and his eyes full of warning. He has the shady uncertain look of someone who has recently learned not to trust people. I stand in front of him and say simply, ‘I’m Alice.’ He looks at me like I’m stupid for a second before I add, ‘I’m one of the nurses looking after Cassie.’

  His face breaks in knowing at last and he waggles a finger towards me and nods as he says, ‘That’s right, that’s right … you were there when I tried to see her.’

  ‘That was me,’ I say, nodding.

  ‘You didn’t let me see her.’

  ‘I couldn’t, Jonny. You see, we have to be …’

  He interrupts me gently, raising his hands, ‘No, that’s OK, I understand. It was a stupid thing to do, in retrospect. Didn’t do anyone any favours, least of all me.’ His face gathers itself and comes to rest in newly furrowed lines. ‘Is she OK? God, has something happened?’

  I bite my lip and realise I have one chance, one chance before he spooks and turns his back on me.

  ‘Would it be OK if I pulled my car into your drive, Jonny? Perhaps we could go inside and have a chat?’

  There’s a twitchiness to him, a jerkiness to his movements, as though he’s drunk too much strong coffee to stay awake. I get that sometimes. Although he looks about a decade older, I recognise the look on his face from before, when he came crashing onto the ward. It brings a certain light to his eyes that can’t be feigned, and I know – as I did that first time I saw him – that he loves her, not necessarily in a romantic way; he just simply loves her.

  He nods but says, ‘Please just tell me, she’s …’

  ‘She’s still alive, Jonny.’

  He breathes out and closes his eyes, briefly, a quick thank you to the universe before he turns towards the cottage and asks, ‘You’ll tell me how she’s doing? I can ask about the baby?’

  ‘Yes, I’ll tell you whatever you want to know.’

  He stares beyond me for a moment, as though searching for an answer on the lane behind me.

  ‘Come on, then. I’ll put the kettle on.’

  Jonny tells me his place is where the herdsman used to live when the farm was still a working dairy. It looks as though Dennis has had the run of the place for a while. I step over a large, well-chomped stick; splinters litter the floor. Half the table is covered in open leaves from newspapers like broken wings from huge dead insects and the other half is dominated by a small army of empty wine bottles and cans. The sink is full of cups and pans, their surfaces iridescent with grime. A small circus of flies buzz around the overflowing bin in the corner. One has crash landed; it fizzes on its back across the sideboard. Jonny knocks the washing machine door closed with his leg; it bounces open again, knocking against some washing that spews out of its maw.

  ‘Sorry it’s such a dump at the moment,’ he says, flicking the kettle on and peering optimistically into a cupboard for clean mugs. ‘I haven’t been here for a while. I hate being here now, for obvious reasons.’ He turns back to me. ‘Do you mind tea in a glass?’

  I shake my head, still standing.

  ‘Bollocks, I don’t have any milk. Is camomile all right?’

  ‘Perfect,’ I say and he clears a jumper, dog food and a couple of maps off a chair.

  ‘I always got camomile for Cassie,’ he says as he motions for me to take a seat in the space he just cleared. ‘It was her favourite.’

  I smile at him, grateful for this small detail, grateful to him for making her a little clearer to me. As I sit down, I imagine her here, sitting on this chair, drinking her camomile tea, looking out of the little window across to the farmhouse. This space was their friendship HQ, where she made her jams, somewhere she felt safe. I want to keep him talking about her so I ask, ‘Did she come over a lot?’

  ‘Yes, over the summer especially. We kept all the stuff for the jam in the spare room here. She’d use my spare key so she could come and go, even when I wasn’t around.’ He puts a glass in front of me. The inside of the glass sweats with condensation, a tea bag floating in the middle, flaccid as a jellyfish. Jonny makes a clicking sound with his tongue as he gently wakes a pissed-off-looking tabby cat I hadn’t even noticed, dropping her to the floor so he can sit in the chair opposite me. His collarbones stick out painfully under his T-shirt and I notice the skin around his fingernails is scabbed and bitten. He doesn’t have tea.

  ‘OK, so can you tell me how she is?’

  I breathe out. I’ve come this far; I can’t lose my nerve now.

  ‘I will, Jonny, I promise, but first I want to hear what happened that night. I want to hear from you.’

  He looks up at me, alarmed, and rakes a hand through his hair. I’ve changed the deal and feel cruel, but I know I can’t help Cassie if I don’t have the truth. I lean forward across the table towards him.

  ‘She’d taken off her wedding ring, Jonny. I don’t think she was looking for Maisie, I think she was leaving Jack and someone surprised her on the road. You said she was scared.’

  Jonny nods and leans back in his chair, closing his eyes for a moment before rubbing them hard with both hands.

  ‘She cried at the party. Everyone thought I made her cry because there was something going on between us, but that’s bullshit. I think she cried because – as we now know – she was pregnant, and I don’t think she knew what to do.’

  ‘About the baby?’

  ‘No, not about the baby. I know she wanted the baby, especially after her miscarriage. She didn’t know what to do about Jack.’

  ‘You think she wasn’t happy with Jack?’

  Jonny interlaces his fingers between his hands, and looks at his nails as he picks them. I imagine he did the same when he was interrogated at the police station hour after hour.

  ‘Looking back, I think something changed. I don’t know what, but she went from seeming happy to being distant. I was away a lot and had so much shit going on with my ex; I’d talk and talk to Cassie about Lorna, about how crazy she could be, but now, of course, I wish I’d asked her mor
e, listened more.’ He pauses and looks up from his hands. ‘The only person who can tell us now what was going on between them is Jack and there’s no way he’ll say what was really happening, so …’ Jonny shrugs. ‘You know, when you think about it, Jack, moving down here … all of it was a bit of a curveball. She’d spent her whole life in London; she got together with Jack just a couple of months after her mum died. I think he offered her a ready-made life, a way out of feeling on her own. A home, a husband … a chance to make a family of her own. So different to the way she grew up. I think he made it seem like he understood her, that he knew her grief, but he didn’t, not really.’

  He stops talking, and in the pause I ask, ‘So what changed?’

  ‘I don’t know, exactly, but I think the baby made her wake up, realise the life she had with Jack, although seemingly perfect, wasn’t really who she is.’

  ‘So you think she tried to leave that night. You said she was upset?’

  ‘I meant she was upset because she was scared, scared of the future, scared of making a decision about whether to stay or leave Jack.’

  ‘But she chose to leave.’

  ‘That’s what I think. She told me she was fine, that she wanted to go home and check on Maisie and she just left. Asked me to tell him she’d gone.’

  ‘But why did Cassie have to leave that night. Why not wait until the morning?’

  Jonny shrugs. ‘That’s what I can’t figure out. She told me before she left the party that she would come over the next morning, that she’d need some help, but she didn’t say what with.’

  ‘What happened after she left the party?’

  ‘I stayed for a couple more hours, then I drove home, around three in the morning. I’ve admitted that – I should never have been driving – but I remember the whole journey and nothing happened. I must have driven straight past her.’ He pauses and digs into his thumbnail with his other hand so hard that he draws blood. He winces and wipes his hand against his shorts.