by Penny Jordan
‘I’m coming to the hospital now!’ she announced, and then hung up, rushing into the kitchen to collect her car keys.
What if the hospital had been lying to her? What if Zoë were far more seriously injured than they had indicated? Alice had never understood why she had wanted such a powerful high-performance car. Unable to see properly through her blurred windscreen, she switched on the washer and the wipers, and then realised that the blurring was caused by the tears filling her eyes and not dirt on the windscreen.
Zoë! Oh, please God, let her be all right, she prayed as she drove towards the hospital. Zoë, her precious first-born child, so much wanted, and yet so very, very difficult. As a child she had been constantly falling over, into and out of things and hurting herself, much more so than the boys. There had been regular emergency drives to their local hospital, but fortunately the damage had never been as dire as Alice had always feared.
And then there had been that time when they had thought she’d had appendicitis and she’d had to stay in hospital for several days. Alice had stayed there with her, until Stuart had insisted that she come home to catch up on her sleep. Zoë had screamed and tried to follow her. Alice had felt terrible, only getting as far as the car park before turning round and going back. When she had reached the ward, she had been greeted by the sight of a serene, laughing Zoë happily watching a television programme. A car accident, though!
Alice shuddered. The hospital was up ahead of her. She turned into the car park, mercifully not full at this time of day, and got out of her car.
Sombrely, Nicki stared down at the sleeping form of her son, her most precious and beloved child.
Last night, pacing the floor of her bedroom, unable to sleep, tormented by her fears for him, she had suddenly realised what she had to do, the only thing she could now do to protect him from ever being harmed. Once she had come to her decision, a wonderful sense of calm and purpose had descended on her, a healing sense of rightness and peace.
She had been very careful to crush up the sleeping tablets she had given to Joey into a powder so fine that he wouldn’t be able to taste them, mixing them with his favourite juice. There were things she’d had to do—important things, and she hadn’t wanted him to wake up and be afraid whilst she’d been out doing them.
Her hand had shaken a little when she had woken him to give him the drink she had made. Sleepily obedient, he had swallowed the contents of the glass she had held to his mouth.
Afterwards, she had lain down with him until she’d been sure he’d been safely asleep, then she had got up and driven her car to the large out-of-town hypermarket that stayed open twenty-four hours a day.
The girl on the till had been yawning and bored, uninterested in her purchases. She had panicked a little, worrying that she wasn’t going to be able to find any garden hose, but then she had spotted some tucked away at the back of a shelf. She had filled the car with petrol before coming home, unsure of how much she would need, that same sense of beatific calm and purpose filling her with a powerful euphoria.
Her final action had been to go down to the special place in the garden where she had made her own secret shrine to the baby she had lost, a special place where she went every day to think and to mourn.
And then she had watched dawn pale the sky, filled with a soaring sense of relief and release that this would be the last dawn she would have to see, the last day she would have to face in fear for her precious son.
And now she was gently kissing Joey as he slept, smiling as she saw how peaceful he looked.
Soon now it would be time. A feeling of purposeful elation filled her.
‘Mmm. Do I really have to go into the office?’
As he breathed a relaxed sigh of pleasure against her skin, tickling her slightly, Maggie laughed tenderly and pushed Oliver away.
Maggie had been woken early by the baby’s gentle kicking, and she had shaken Oliver out of his own sleep so that he could feel its movement.
He had insisted on getting out of bed to make her tea and toast, and then she had teased him into making love to her. Now replete and content, she turned her head to look at him. A small pang of remorse scorched her heart. Oliver looked so young: his hair ruffled, his jaw slightly stubbly, the clear morning light highlighting the smooth suppleness of the bare flesh of his torso.
Her own skin could no longer bear such a remorseless and unforgiving light.
‘Mmm…No, I really don’t think I will go to work today,’ Oliver continued, nuzzling her skin a bit more determinedly.
Making a soft sound of pleasure, Maggie asked him, ‘Have I ever told you how much I love you and how lucky I think I am to have found you?’
Oliver lifted his head to look at her.
Words of love from her were so rare—not because they meant nothing to her but, he knew, because she felt they meant so much and should never be used carelessly. He could feel his emotions reacting to her declaration.
‘No, Maggie,’ he told her gruffly. ‘I’m the one who’s lucky.’
Smiling at him, she leaned over to kiss him. ‘Are you sure you don’t want to go to work?’ she asked mock innocently, whispering the words against his mouth. ‘Only, isn’t it today that you are supposed to be seeing Amelia Ainsworth, the footballer’s wife?’
Maggie laughed when she saw his expression. Amelia had initially sought out Maggie after she and her husband had moved into the area. As an ex-model turned photographer, she had wanted to consult Maggie about an office she wanted to commission for the new house, which both she and her husband could use, and which in addition could serve as a homework room for their two young children.
‘Amelia Ainsworth,’ Oliver breathed. ‘How could I have forgotten about her? It’s your fault.’ He addressed Maggie’s bump. ‘If you hadn’t distracted me…’
Still laughing, Maggie slid out of bed.
‘You know, you are one very clever lady,’ Oliver told her ruefully an hour later as he finished his breakfast. ‘And if I didn’t know better I might even suspect that you had an ulterior motive for not wanting me around today.’
Maggie pulled a face. ‘As it so happens, I do have,’ she told him. It was, after all, the truth, even if Oliver believed that she was merely teasing him. As he grabbed his jacket and leaned over to kiss her before hurrying towards the back door her face became slightly shadowed. She hated not being able to be totally honest and open with him about anything, but in this instance she knew he would not like what she was planning to do, and the last thing she wanted to do was to quarrel with him about it.
While in principle she believed very strongly that honesty and trust were essential ingredients for any meaningful relationship, right now she was experiencing a conflict of loyalties that was putting those beliefs under a pressure they could not withstand.
What she planned to do today was something she had to do. She owed it both to herself and more importantly to a relationship that predated her love for Oliver by many, many years.
She had known ever since she had spoken to Alice when she had bumped into her in town that she was going to have to face this moment, and she recognised that it could not be put off any longer.
‘I’ve come to see my daughter,’ Alice explained anxiously to the nurse on duty. ‘The hospital rang me. She…there was a car accident, and she, my daughter…’
‘What is your daughter’s name?’ the nurse asked Alice calmly.
‘It’s Zoë…Zoë Palmer,’ Alice told her, quickly correcting herself. ‘No, I’m sorry, it’s Zoë Chambers. She’s married now, you see, and…’
The nurse was glancing down a list on the desk in front of her, and had begun to frown.
‘Zoë Chambers. Oh, yes. I see. Well, you can see her, Mrs Palmer, is it? But only for a few minutes, because the doctor will be seeing her soon, to do a blood test.’
‘A blood test,’ Alice repeated. ‘What’s wrong with her? Whoever telephoned just said that she was shocked and bruised and…’
Through the open door Alice could see Zoë lying on the bed. Her eyes were closed, a bruise swelling her cheekbone, and some scratches on her face. The hand that was lying on top of the bedclothes was bandaged and Alice could see that there was dried blood matted in her hair.
Immediately she hurried to her side, exclaiming in distress. ‘Zoë…’
‘Ma…’ Zoë opened her eyes so quickly that Alice realised that she could not have been asleep, as she had first thought.
‘Ma. Thank God you’re here. What on earth took you so long? I told them ages ago that I wanted to see you. Tell me you haven’t rung anyone and told them about this! Ian—he mustn’t know…’
As she spoke Zoë leaned forward, grabbing Alice’s arm in such a tight grip that Alice could feel her nails piercing her skin—feel her nails and smell the unmistakable scent of alcohol on Zoë’s breath.
Instinctively she recoiled, both from the physical evidence of Zoë’s drinking and from the shocked thoughts pouring into her head.
It was only just gone nine o’clock in the morning! Zoë could not possibly have been drinking, could she?
‘Ma, answer me! You haven’t told Ian about this, have you?’
‘No. No, I haven’t,’ Alice answered her, white-faced. She hated confrontation of any kind, but now she knew that she was going to have to confront Zoë with her shocked, horrified suspicion that her daughter had been driving her car under the influence of alcohol.
‘Zoë,’ she began. ‘I…’
She stopped as she heard Zoë’s indrawn breath and felt her flinch. Turning her head, Alice saw a uniformed policeman and a white-coated doctor standing in the doorway.
‘What’s he doing here? That prick in the uniform. I haven’t done anything wrong,’ Zoë was demanding in a furious high-pitched voice. ‘I’m in hospital. Tell him, you stupid arsehole.’ She swore at the doctor. ‘Just because I like a drink, that doesn’t mean that the accident was my fault. It was that fucking lorry driver, if he hadn’t pulled out when he did…I don’t have to say or do anything. You can’t make me. Tell them, Ma, tell them that they can’t make me…’
Unable to speak, Alice stared at the wild-eyed, almost hysterical young woman she could hear uttering pleas so childish and unstructured that they tore at her heart, intermingled with the kind of language that made Alice’s face burn with shame. This was her daughter, this pitiful, disgusting creature in front of her, who was gabbling like a madwoman, screaming and crying, trying to pull herself free of Alice’s hold and then lashing out at her with such ferocity that her nails clawed the side of Alice’s face, sending blood showering down onto the bedcover.
‘Calm down, Zoë, we just want to take a blood sample,’ the doctor was saying coolly.
‘Yes, so that you can say that I was pissed! Well, I wasn’t, and you aren’t pissing well taking anything from me. Nothing until I’ve seen a solicitor! Do you understand? I know my rights. You can’t make me stay here. I want to go home. Ma, take me home…now!’
‘Zoë…’ Alice implored her helplessly.
‘You aren’t leaving this hospital until it’s been medically proved that you aren’t suffering any after-effects from the accident,’ the doctor told Zoë firmly. ‘You are damned lucky to be alive at all, do you know that? There was a young mother in the other car, and four children she was taking to school. You were driving so fast that you crossed the central barrier and smashed into her head-on.’
He stopped speaking to look briefly at Alice as she gave a shocked exclamation of distress.
‘Oh, for Christ’s sake, you’re exaggerating,’ Zoë protested. ‘I barely clipped the damned woman’s car, and if she hadn’t been driving like a prat she could have quite easily avoided me.’
‘Zoë!’ Alice protested, shocked and appalled by her daughter’s lack of remorse.
‘Zoë what?’ Zoë mimicked. ‘God knows why I told them I wanted you here. You’re useless. Worse than useless. And if you think that I’m going to—’
So abruptly that Alice had no inkling of what was happening, Zoë stopped speaking and slumped across the bed.
Instinctively she moved out of the way to allow the doctor better access to the bed and to Zoë. And as she did so, she heard the unmistakable sound of Zoë being violently sick.
‘Please, tell me what happened,’ she begged the policeman as the doctor rang for a nurse to come and assist him with Zoë, who was moaning and swearing in between bouts of sickness. ‘What’s going to happen to…to my daughter?’
He frowned before answering her.
‘Well if, as we suspect, it is proved that she was over the legal alcohol limit, then she will be charged accordingly. She’s lucky that she isn’t facing a charge of manslaughter, never mind anything else,’ he told Alice grimly. ‘Both cars are complete write-offs, and how they all escaped unscathed, I have no idea. The lorry driver who witnessed it said it was a miracle. We’re going to need to interview your daughter properly, of course, but I have to warn you that we have several witnesses who say that she was driving dangerously.’
Alice blenched as she listened to him.
This wasn’t something she could handle on her own, and if Zoë had refused to allow the hospital to contact Ian that meant that she would have to ring Stuart.
Zoë had stopped being sick now and Alice could hear her sobbing violently and claiming that none of it was her fault.
‘It’s all that wanker Andrew’s fault.’ She hiccuped. ‘If he hadn’t sacked me…Him and that fat ugly cow of a girlfriend of his are going to love this. And bloody Laura. She’s just waiting to get her claws on Ian, pretending to be such a goody-goody, and whining all the time about me having a drink.’
Ashamed both for Zoë and for herself, Alice felt her face burn. ‘Zoë, I’m going to go and ring your father,’ she began, but immediately Zoë started to scream.
‘No, no! You mustn’t tell Daddy, you mustn’t!’
‘Zoë, I have to,’ Alice insisted. ‘From what the policeman has just told me you are going to need help, a solicitor. I don’t…I can’t…’
‘Oh, that’s typical of you,’ Zoë yelled. ‘Dear, sweet, helpless Mummy, who can’t do a thing without a big strong man to help her, but it’s all a lie really, isn’t it, Ma? You just pretend to be like that to get them on your side!’ Zoë collapsed on the bed in a heap, crying noisily.
Alice hesitated. How many times in the past had she protected Zoë from the consequences of her actions, lied for her, shielded her from other people’s anger and other people’s criticism? She couldn’t do that this time. It was appallingly obvious to her that Zoë’s current condition was not the result of one too many glasses of wine over dinner the night before, but more likely an entire night of heavy drinking. It was useless trying to hide the truth from herself any longer, Alice recognised bleakly. Zoë was not just someone who occasionally had too much to drink—Zoë had a serious drink problem.
Standing up, she repeated as calmly as she could, ‘I’m going to ring your father, Zoë.’
She could hear Zoë’s screams the full length of the ward, and, of course, she could not use her mobile until she was physically outside the hospital, sitting in her car. She went through her address book until she reached Stuart’s mobile number.
The first time she got the message that the number was not recognisable, she thought somehow the phone had misdialled, but by the third time she realised that for some reason Stuart’s mobile must be out of action. And she needed desperately to contact him. The only way she could do that would be for her to ring the airline, and ask his PA to pass a message on to him for her.
When the switchboard answered her call, she asked for Stuart by name. There was a long pause and then she was told, ‘I’m sorry, but I don’t have any record of anyone of that name working here. Are you sure you have t
he right person?’
Alice felt like laughing hysterically and telling the girl that she felt pretty sure she knew her husband’s name, but instead, too on edge to argue or to protest, she asked instead to be put through to the PA Stuart shared with three other senior pilots.
Nancy Lucas was very much a career spinster of the traditional sort, who had always made it plain that she did not have very much time for her pilots’ wives who, she considered, should not waste valuable working time by telephoning their husbands with petty domestic problems. Alice felt her stomach muscles clenching a little as she came on the line.
‘Nancy. It’s Alice Palmer,’ she introduced herself. ‘I’m sorry to bother you but I do need to speak rather urgently to Stuart. The girl on the switchboard couldn’t seem to be able to trace him and his mobile isn’t working. I wonder if you could get a message to him from me?’
The silence that met her request was so long that Alice actually thought the other woman must have hung up, but then just as she was about to hang up herself in exasperation she heard her saying uncomfortably, ‘Alice…Mrs Palmer. I’m so sorry…But Stuart…Mr Palmer doesn’t actually work here any more. I…I think I’d better put you through to our human resources department,’ she added hurriedly before Alice could say anything. ‘Just hold on, will you?’
Stuart didn’t work there any more. What on earth was she saying?
The cool-voiced young woman from Human Resources was matter-of-fact and there was no sign of any discomfort in her voice as she told Alice briskly, ‘I’m sorry, I can’t tell you anything.’
‘But is it true that my husband doesn’t work for the airline any longer?’ Alice pressed her.
‘That is true, yes,’ she agreed evenly.
Alice took a deep breath.
‘My—our daughter has been involved in a car accident this morning and I need to speak to him urgently. He must have left you with a contact number.’
‘I’m sorry,’ the girl repeated, quite plainly not sorry at all. ‘I really can’t help you, I’m afraid. Oh, by the way,’ she continued crisply, ‘if he does get in touch with you, you might remind him that he still hasn’t handed his work-issued mobile to us. We have informed the network to invalidate his line, of course.’