Carefully, she pushed the pocket back into the coat, and slid her finger through the hole. It touched something inside the lining, and Beth wiggled it through the hole and pulled whatever it was out of the pocket. A penknife. It certainly wasn’t Josh’s. Beth knew that Marcie had been putting off buying him one until he was a bit older.
Beth inspected the lining of the coat thoroughly, to see if anything else was hidden in there. Then she stared at the knife in her hand. He’s up to something. And if this is hidden in his coat it must be outside the house. Prising the knife open, she inspected the blade. It was dirty, discoloured, but there was nothing on it.
She picked up an old duffel coat of James’s and Marcie’s Wellington boots and walked through to the kitchen, where Kat was frowning into the phone. ‘Anything?’
‘Nope. Not home yet. I’ve tried the mother’s mobile but it’s going straight to voicemail.’
‘What about the other children?’
Kat snapped her mobile shut. ‘Anna told Marcie’s sister that Josh has been playing with Simon, but that they wouldn’t let her join in. Apparently they were digging for something at one point but Anna’s pretty drowsy and isn’t saying when.’
Beth dropped the Wellingtons onto the floor. Digging. What were those pages from the internet she had seen? She ran back to Josh’s room and snatched them up from the desk. Plan of a Roman Bath. Excavating a Roman Ruin. James had said something about Josh having insisted that he had found some pieces of Roman pottery the other day.
She picked up the pieces of dirty clay from the puzzle box. Surely these couldn’t have anything on them that would have hurt Josh? She sniffed at them tentatively, not really sure what she was trying to find, and put them back into the box. There had to be something more obvious than this.
Perhaps it was something else. Some kind of infection, maybe. But Matt didn’t think so, and Beth trusted his judgement.
If it was poison, it was up to her to find it, and her instinct told her that it wasn’t inside the house.
Beth grabbed Matt’s car keys from where she had left them on Josh’s desk, and ran to his car, taking the lantern-style torch she had seen in there from the boot. Back in the kitchen, she pulled on the coat and boots and stuffed her phone, a pair of rubber gloves and some plastic bags into the pocket.
‘Very stylish.’ Kat was grinning at her. ‘Going into the garden?’
‘Yeah. Give me a shout if you hear anything.’
‘Will do.’
Beth hurried past the spot where she and Matt had been together, just a few short minutes ago, taking the opportunity to curse herself again for her stupidity. Nothing good was going to come of it. Nothing good had come of it. He’d been out there kissing her when he should have been at Josh’s bedside.
Her phone vibrated and the small screen told her that she had a text from Matt. Thank goodness. If he had the time to send a text then things couldn’t be that bad.
Arrived hospital. Any news? M
She sent her answer quickly. Ask James where Josh digging for roman pottery.
Gripping her phone, Beth worked her way down to where the hole for the pond was being dug, wishing that she had thought to put find a pair of thick socks to put on. Marcie’s feet were a size bigger than hers, and her stockinged feet were slipping backwards and forwards in the boots, making it difficult to walk on the uneven ground.
Her phone vibrated again. Ten feet beyond pond. To the left. James was with Josh and Simon when they were digging.
It was unlikely that they’d found anything dangerous, then. Beth swung the beam of the torch to the left and saw some areas of disturbance. There were some small pits, where Josh had been digging, and she carefully examined the area for anything that looked as if it might be the cause of Josh’s illness. There was nothing.
She swung her torch around. There was some grass, a few scrubby bushes, but nothing that was either edible or poisonous. James would have rooted up anything that was that dangerous.
Beth almost cried out with frustration. What now? The garage lights were on and she could see men in there, looking around. It seemed that every part of the property had been covered and no one had found anything. Beth sank to her knees, feeling a trickle of water run into one boot. She had to think.
Of course she had to think, but not like an adult. She had to think the way that Josh did, look at things through the eyes of an eight-year-old. And she had to take a leaf from Matt’s book, too, and not even consider the possibility of failure.
Okay, so what did she know? Josh had been digging at the end of the garden for what he thought was a Roman ruin. He’d been interested enough to go onto the internet and find out something about his subject. He had a penknife in his pocket and had collected pieces of pottery, stones, feathers…
Feathers! That could be nothing to do with a Roman ruin—Josh was old enough to know that. What did that mean? Suddenly light dawned. Jack had been talking to Josh last week about Robin Hood, and the two had been running around Marcie’s kitchen, pretending to fire arrows at each other, until Marcie had called a halt to the game.
Beth swung the beam of her torch along the back fence and found what she was looking for. A hole, too small for an adult to squeeze through but big enough for a boy. Beyond the fence was open land and a shortcut through an area of woodland down to the main road.
She scrambled over to the fence. She could fit through the hole—just about. Beth dropped to her hands and knees and wriggled through, feeling her dress catch and tear on something.
Beth moved the torch beam around in a semi-circle. Up against the fence, there was a collection of old planks and branches, which formed a small shelter. This was Josh’s work. He had not just been engaged in digging for pottery, he had been doing some construction of his own. It was his own make-believe woodsman’s shelter, an eight-year-old boy’s version of something that Robin Hood might have built.
She walked carefully over to it and peered inside. There was a threadbare blanket, rolled up in the corner, wet from having lain on the ground. An old pot from Marcie’s kitchen, a tin of baked beans and a metal tea caddy that Beth remembered Marcie throwing away some months ago. She could just imagine Josh here, playing in his own make-believe world. She reached in and picked up the tea caddy, opening it up.
It was empty. Tears of relief sprung to Beth’s eyes and then she realised that she was no further towards finding anything. She swung the torch back and forth, looking for anything that might give some clue as to what had happened here.
‘Stupid!’ She signed to herself vehemently. Josh wouldn’t be standing out here, he would be sitting inside the shelter that he had taken so much trouble to build.
Crawling on her hands and knees, gripping her phone as if it was a lifeline, Beth squeezed into the tiny space and sat down, planting the lantern torch in front of her. Reaching over to sort through the little cache of supplies, she felt something brush against her face, and when she leaned back, she saw two bare branches bent into the shape of bows, with pieces of garden twine for bowstrings.
The branches had been stripped bare, probably with the penknife she’d found, so it was difficult to see what type of bush they came from, but she took no chances. Pulling the rubber gloves from her pocket, she put them on and carefully unhooked one of the bows from where it was fixed to the ceiling of the shelter and examined it.
It could be yew, and it would be just like Josh to try and use the right type of wood if he was making a bow. And from what she remembered, practically every part of the yew bush was poisonous and could produce exactly the symptoms that Josh was suffering from.
She should let Matt know—perhaps they could do some test to either confirm her theory or rule it out. Crawling to the entrance of the shelter to get better reception on her phone, Beth caught sight of something. Hauling herself onto her feet and catching up the makeshift bow in her hand, she started towards a small clearing, surrounded by trees. She had not been able to see it when sh
e was standing up, but at low level the red berries and dark green needles of a yew bush were easily visible.
She stumbled and fell as she ran across the uneven ground, but she was up again in a moment, hardly even feeling the pain in her knee. When she approached the bush, she bent low and saw that one of the branches was broken and hanging loose.
A quick inspection revealed several jagged cuts where branches had been hacked off at low level and when she compared the makeshift bow with the branches that had been cut, she found a match. It looked as if the branches had been cut recently, too, as the wood was still pale in the light from her torch.
Quickly she texted Matt. Yew?
She held her phone, staring at it, willing his response. It came immediately.
Possible. All symptoms in line with taxine poisoning. Do not touch.
Beth rolled her eyes. She knew that. The question was why that well-known fact hadn’t occurred to Josh. Dialling Matt’s number, she saw from the display on the phone that he had answered immediately.
She pressed the phone against her ear, straining to hear. Matt was saying something, but she couldn’t make it out over the crash of branches above her head and the low howl of the wind. She spoke into the phone and heard him fall silent.
‘I can’t hear you properly. Listen and I will talk.’ She repeated the sentence in case he had been speaking and not heard her the first time. ‘I’ve found a shelter behind the back fence. Josh has been here and he’s been cutting yew branches and stripping the leaves off to make bows. The cuts on the bush look recent. Text me back and let me know you’ve got this.’
Beth repeated her message again, but by the time she had finished, Matt had already hung up. Either he’d got it the first time, or he couldn’t hear her at all. She stared at her phone and it obligingly vibrated in her hand.
Understood. Bring everything here. Use my car. Well done.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
BETH walked through the automatic doors into A and E to find Matt standing in the reception area, waiting for her. She handed him the carrier bag that she had brought with her, and he smiled.
‘Good work. Wait here and I’ll take these through.’ He disappeared through the door to the clinical assessment unit and Beth was left alone again. She went over to one of the plastic chairs in the waiting room and sat down, inspecting her left knee, which was beginning to stiffen and throb.
Matt reappeared a few minutes later, walked over to where she was sitting, and squatted down on his heels in front of her, squinting at the graze on her knee. ‘Let me see that.’
Beth had lost interest in her own aches and pains. ‘In a minute. How’s Josh?’
Matt shook his head but rose and sat down opposite her, drawing his chair up close so that his feet were planted on either side of hers. ‘He’s not out of the woods yet, but he’s stable.’
That could mean any one of a hundred different things. ‘What’s happening, Matt?’
Matt leaned forward and took her hand. ‘The doctors treating him have accessed Toxbase and are in touch with the National Poisons Information Service in Birmingham. They have enormous experience with this kind of thing, and they agree that it’s probably taxine poisoning—which means that Josh has ingested some part of that yew bush. They have the option of transferring him over to the West Midlands Poisons Unit, but that’s not necessary at the moment.’ He squeezed her hand tight.
‘Aren’t they sure?’ It all seemed a bit hit and miss.
‘They have to act before the tests come back to confirm that Josh has taxine in his system. So we have to diagnose the old-fashioned way.’ He made an attempt at a grin. ‘Assess the symptoms and the probabilities and act accordingly. What you found out has helped a great deal, though, because we know what to test for and what the most probable cause of his symptoms is. They’re doing a gastric lavage and Josh is on an IV drip to keep his fluid levels up, but the good news is that he’s breathing on his own and his heart is steady at the moment.’
‘And what’s the prognosis?’
‘The main worry is Josh’s heart. He may experience periods of heart arrhythmia of various kinds, which, as you know, can be very serious. Or he may develop brachycardia—where his heart beats very slowly. If that’s the case they’ll need to consider transcutaneous cardiac pacing.’
‘An external pacemaker?’
‘Yeah.’ Matt stared at the floor. ‘The main aim of this is to keep him stable until the taxine is expelled from his system. He’ll need to be kept a very close eye on over the next day or so, but there are very few deaths from this kind of poisoning, where people are not trying deliberately to do themselves harm.’
‘And the other boy, Simon?’
‘We don’t know yet. I’ve just heard from Kat and she still can’t contact them by phone so she’s going to call the police to see whether they can send someone round to the house. In the meantime, we have to assume that the parents are awake and with the boy and that they’ll get help if he falls ill.’ A muscle twitched at the side of Matt’s jaw.
‘So all we can do is wait. Do Marcie and James know what’s going on?’
‘Yes, I explained it all to them and they’re with Josh now. They’ll probably transfer him up to the high-dependency unit initially to keep monitoring him, but I expect that he’ll be taken down to the children’s ward soon if everything goes well.’ He paused. ‘There’s no reason to think that it won’t.’
Beth nodded. ‘Thanks. So…you got to him in time?’
Matt gave her a querying look. ‘In poisoning cases, sooner is always better. But, yes, I hope so.’
She may as well say it. Now that she had nothing useful left to do, the nag at the back of her head had turned into a fully blown scream. ‘What I meant was…would it have made any difference if you had been there a few minutes sooner? When Marcie first realised he was sick?’
Guilt bloomed in his eyes. The same thing had obviously occurred to Matt. ‘Doctors can’t live their lives constantly asking What if. It would drive you mad, you know that.’
‘Yes. I just couldn’t help thinking…’ Beth could feel her face reddening, and was sure she was about to cry.
‘Listen. If it hadn’t been for you I wouldn’t have even have been there. I probably would have taken Jack home and stayed there with him.’
‘What?’ Beth wasn’t sure how to take this new information.
He sighed. ‘I brought you to the party, remember. I wasn’t going to just leave you there without a ride home.’
He was trying to make her feel better now. ‘I would have got a lift from someone.’ She’d done that very thing more than once, when Pete had wanted to go drinking with his mates after a party.
‘Yeah, probably. But if I take someone somewhere, I expect to take them home again.’ He shrugged. ‘That’s basic good manners, isn’t it?’
‘Yes, it is. Thanks. Let’s not think about it any more.’ Somehow they’d managed to get through this whole conversation without saying the one word that it all revolved around. Beth hadn’t even signed it. The sign for kiss was far too obvious. She reckoned it was best to quit while they were ahead.
‘Okay.’ He nodded slowly. ‘So now we’ve got that sorted, you need to get your knee looked at.’
‘I’m all right. Really.’
‘It’s a nasty cut and it’s absolutely filthy. And look there, you’ve got a slight swelling just below your patella.’ He jabbed his finger in the direction of her kneecap.
Beth rubbed absently at the side of her hand, where she had been stung by a nettle. Her knee had started bleeding again and her stockings were ripped to shreds. ‘I look a mess.’
Matt leaned towards her confidingly. ‘You look beautiful.’
‘No, I don’t.’ She knew full well that she was caked with mud, her hair was all over the place and her dress was torn. Beth tugged at the hem of it, pulling it across her legs.
His finger was hooked under her chin and he gently tilted her head up towards
him. ‘You do to me.’ Large tears rolled down her cheeks and he produced a medical wipe from his pocket and wiped her face. ‘Would you like me to take you home?’
Beth grabbed the makeshift handkerchief from him and blew her nose. ‘I’m staying.’
Matt grinned. ‘Now, there’s a surprise. In that case, we need to get you out of those clothes…’ He stopped suddenly, aware of the gaffe.
There was a moment of awkward silence and then the tension broke and Beth began to giggle. It was either laugh or cry at the moment, and somehow laughing felt a bit more positive. Matt shot her a conciliatory look. ‘Okay. Bad choice of words. Why don’t you go and get a shower and I’ll see if I can rustle up a pair of scrubs for you to change into?’
‘You don’t need to stay as well.’ She wanted him to. She didn’t want to have to wait here alone for news of Josh.
‘Like I said, I take someone somewhere, I expect to take them home again.’
‘I can get a taxi.’
His lips twitched provocatively. ‘I’ll beg if I have to.’
‘You wouldn’t know how.’
‘I could take a shot at it. I’m sure I’ve seen it done on TV.’ He made a show of thinking hard. ‘You get on your knees…’
‘Don’t you dare.’ Laughter gave way to sudden panic.
‘Oh! Stop me from trying new things, would you?’ His face became solemn. ‘Anyway, I said I’d be sticking around for a few hours until Josh is stable. The doctors who are treating him have everything well under control, but they’ll page me if they need me.’
‘You might have said that in the first place.’
‘I might.’ He grinned. ‘Truce?’
‘Okay. Truce.’ Just for tonight. While Josh’s condition was still uncertain and Beth badly needed Matt’s strength. Tomorrow she’d learn to stand on her own two feet again. And even if there were other doctors on call who could help Josh if his heart began to react to the taxine, with Matt here he would get the best.
All She Wants for Christmas Page 11