by Jane Shemilt
“I tried to tell you.” He stares at me. “You weren’t interested.”
I look at him to see if he really believes what he is saying. Is this some kind of excuse or was that how I really seemed to be? Is that how I really was?
Ted looks at Michael and his gaze is hard. “Shouldn’t we be phoning someone? Shouldn’t we be doing something this very minute, now that we know?”
“It’s too soon to say that we know anything for sure.” Michael’s voice is quiet, steady. “I have a team working on this right now, tracing the family. The best way you could help is by telling us exactly what happened.”
Ted pours a slug of whiskey into my empty glass on the table and he swallows it quickly. He sits down near the fire and looks into it as he speaks. His fingers are still tightly holding the photograph.
“It was almost two years ago. I saw the child for the first time in my clinic. The room was crowded with people standing against the wall, leaning on the desk, one huge family. They were Gypsies, that’s what they told me, or was it Travelers?” He laughs briefly. “Anyway, I remember thinking the girl was lucky.”
“Lucky?” Michael looks at Ted quickly, his gray eyes puzzled. “I thought she was ill.”
“She was very disabled, yes, but they had all come in for her. Grandparents, parents, uncles, aunts.” He pauses. “She sat in the middle on someone’s lap, calm and smiling. She was obviously loved.”
I stare at Ted. Why is he talking about family togetherness now? Is he punishing himself or punishing me?
“Where did Yoska fit in?” Michael asks.
Ted looks at the photo in his hand again and is silent for a while. “I was never sure of the family dynamics, but I think he was an older brother. Maybe an uncle.” He stops and looks at Michael. “He was the quiet one with the power; the mother did the talking, but the group deferred to this guy.”
Good power or bad? I remember back to those minutes in the office; the hands on the table, his smile, the way he had shaped the consultation.
“What did you tell them about the operation?” Michael has pulled his notebook out and his hands are moving quickly over the paper.
“In the clinic I went through what would happen if we left her as she was. She might have ended up paralyzed. I said the operation could be a cure, but there were risks,” Ted explains.
“Did they really understand?” I ask. He nods.
“When they signed the consent, you must have gone through it again?” I probe him.
“Martin did the consent.” Ted doesn’t look at me as he replies. “The pediatric surgical registrar.” He is looking at Michael. “The pediatric team shared the case, and Martin was interested. Unusual problem with the spine; we planned to write it up.”
Why had the family become so angry if they had known the risks? Was it because no one had listened to them? If Ted had listened, he would have discovered the things they hadn’t understood and he would have warned them properly. Ted continues.
“Because of the way the back was bent, it took longer than Martin had thought it would. The blood pressure dropped unpredictably during the operation, so the spine suffered ischemic damage.”
“You’ve lost me now.” Michael stops writing.
“Sorry.” Ted smiles briefly. “The blood supply to the tissue of the spine was cut off, so that part of the spine died. That means messages couldn’t get to the legs from the brain, or the other way round. She became instantly paralyzed.”
A log shifts and falls. There is silence in the room.
It is difficult to stay still. I stand up, but my head is thumping and I still feel dizzy so I have to sit down again.
“What happened next?” Michael asks.
“I heard about the operation, but I had to leave early the next day. I had to go to Rome for a conference—”
“Why?” I interrupt. “Would it have been impossible to stay behind and talk to the family? Explain why you didn’t do the operation, though you were the most senior surgeon?”
“We have an obligation to let juniors do complex cases.” Ted’s voice is sharp. “It’s a training hospital.”
“What happened then?” Michael has been listening quietly, now he glances at Ted quickly.
“When I came back after a week, the group had gotten bigger,” Ted replies. “There was hostility. People around her night and day as though they were guarding her.”
Of course they were. They would feel they had to stop anything else happening to her.
“I tried to talk to them but it was as though I was speaking in a foreign language.”
Medical jargon is a foreign language, useful for keeping frightened people at bay.
“Did you say sorry?”
Ted shifts irritably in his seat. “Of course not. That would have been admitting guilt.”
“It would have been acknowledging their grief.”
But I was equally at fault. If I had really listened to Yoska, I might have understood why he was there. If I had asked why he needed to carry his sister around, he might have told me what had happened and I could have explained how operations can go wrong by chance, not negligence, and then he might not have needed revenge. Had he been offering me a chance to redeem Ted? Perhaps all Yoska had wanted from me was time. The nightmare regrets begin to circle me, closer and closer.
Michael looks at us both, then he stands up. “Coffee?” He goes into the kitchen.
Ted and I face each other. The room is dark now. I can only see his eyes, lit by the flames, staring at me.
I stare back. “Apart from it being a normal human thing to do, saying sorry means people have the chance to forgive you.”
“What world do you live in, Jenny?” He gives a small bitter laugh. “Saying sorry gets you sued.”
“But they tried that anyway, didn’t they?”
Michael comes back with mugs of coffee. He brushes my hand with his fingers as he gives one of them to me, and it pulls me to myself. Blaming Ted will slow us up. Stay focused. Naomi’s photographs glow in the firelight. I get up and walk across to touch the glass over her face. We are trying to find you. We are getting closer. Wait for us.
I sip the coffee and sit down on the other side of the fire.
“Yes, they did.” Ted sighs sharply. “Fortunately it came to nothing, no negligence could be proved, so it never actually went to court.”
“When was the operation?” Michael asks; he has started writing in his notebook again and doesn’t look up.
“In the summer,” Ted says after a little pause. “I know that’s right because I used to talk to Naomi about it when we drove to the hospital together. She was doing an internship. She seemed so interested in the case. It was helpful to talk to her.”
“When was the internship?” Michael asks, looking at me.
“Early July,” I answer immediately.
I know that for sure, because I still remember the disappointment. The boys were away on their expedition; Naomi’s exams were over, and she had her internship to absorb her. I had looked forward to the beginning of July as a chance for Ted and me to do things together for once, the small things that other people do. Seeing a film, eating out. But that was when he started coming home really late almost every day. Huge amount of work, he had said. Colleagues on holiday. I had used the chance to catch up on adding to my appraisal documents, meet a few friends, but it wasn’t what I had hoped for.
“Did Naomi’s internship take her on the ward?” Michael asks Ted.
“It was lab work mostly, but she liked the wards,” Ted answers. “She talked to the patients and their families.”
“So she was there at the same time as the little girl,” Michael says, looking at him. “And Yoska.” Quietly, almost to himself, he murmurs, “Yoska could have worked out who she was and what she did; he would have got to know her in
order to obtain ketamine. Lucrative revenge.”
Naomi would have fallen for the charm and the power, the excitement of someone different from the boys at school. She would have been thrilled with her new secret; putting on the makeup every day that I had thought was for the job, so the exotic stranger wouldn’t realize she was as young as she really was. Their developing relationship must have continued after she finished the internship, Yoska carefully gaining her trust; even while she was still with James, his hold on her must have been gradually increasing.
“Who was the head nurse at the time?” Michael looks at Ted.
“Beth,” Ted says quietly. He looks away from me, out of the window, though it’s too dark to see anything. “Beth Watson.”
“Ah, yes, of course. Beth Watson.” Michael looks at Ted. “There was a fire at her flat on the night of November the nineteenth.” He pauses for a moment and glances at me; he knows that was the last time I saw Naomi, so the date is like a knife turning in a wound. Then his voice continues slowly, “I was telling Jenny earlier about the disturbance in the hospital. Traveler kids from Yoska’s family.” He glances at me again, then carries on. “We always thought the fire in Miss Watson’s flat was a coincidence.”
I watch Michael as he gets up from his chair and stands in front of the window. Behind him the glow of the firelight is reflected in the pane. From the outside it will look as if we are a warm and happy group, family and friends together.
“However, I now think that Yoska may have worked out the relationship between Ted and Miss Watson.”
All he needed to do was to watch them together. Like I am sure Naomi did. Yoska would have picked it up quickly; Naomi might have told him anyway.
“I think it’s possible the Travelers deliberately set fire to Miss Watson’s flat, knowing she would call Ted,” Michael says quietly.
Ted had stood in the hall that night and smelled of burning. I look at him briefly; his face is dark with guilt.
“It would have been in Yoska’s interest to make sure Ted was later than usual going home, giving him more time to escape with Naomi. They would have hoped Ted’s being late would delay the alarm being raised.”
Michael looks at both of us in turn. “The real target that night was Naomi.”
Target. Why did he have to use that word? It makes me think of bullets thudding into a circle on paper, a circle that represents a heart, her beating heart.
“There’s something else . . .” A pause, then Michael says slowly, almost reluctantly: “We already know Ed exchanged the drugs he took from Jenny’s bag for ketamine. It seems that as part of his revenge against Ted, it was Yoska who made it his business to give Ed the ketamine in exchange for those drugs.”
We both stare at Michael in disbelief. Ed as well?
Ted gets to his feet. “That’s not possible. He wouldn’t have ever met Ed—”
“I went to see Ed yesterday,” Michael interrupts, speaking quickly. “I hope you don’t mind, but I felt there was no time to lose. I took the photo with me. He recognized Yoska as the man who supplied him with ketamine. He thought he was very generous; you see, Yoska had continued to supply him with ketamine long after Ed had run out of the drugs he stole from Jenny. Ed had nothing to exchange, but that didn’t seem to bother Yoska.”
Michael’s words fall into silence. I see Ted struggling to take it in, pacing backward and forward in the room. Then he turns to face Michael.
“He couldn’t have known who Ed was, how on earth could he have found him? Where?”
“It would have been simple for Yoska to have tracked Ed down from what Naomi might have told him about her family,” Michael replies with quiet certainty. “His name would have been enough. Any dealer knows where to find potential clients: the school gates, the pub, clubs. Once the contact was made, he would have carefully manipulated Ed to obtain the drugs and, in return, supply ketamine to him. And continue to supply it.”
A man in a club. Ed’s words come back to me.
Ted continues to pace back and forth, hands balled in his pockets. “Why didn’t Ed tell us? He must have known about Yoska and Naomi, so why the hell didn’t he say something after she disappeared?”
“For the simple reason he didn’t know.” Michael’s voice is very definite. “Ed had absolutely no idea because Naomi obviously would have kept her friendship with Yoska secret, and Yoska wouldn’t have dreamed of telling Ed he was involved with his sister. Wouldn’t serve his purpose at all.”
His purpose, of course, being to strike at the heart of our family, inflicting all the damage he could in vengeance for his sister.
Michael tells us that the search will move forward quickly now, with the new information. He leaves later; he has work early the next day. He brushes my cheek with his lips as he goes out of the door. Ted is waiting at the foot of the stairs.
“How can you do this with so much at stake?”
I try to push past him. “I’m exhausted, Ted. And I need to sleep. We’ll talk later.”
“Have an affair, if you want. Who am I to criticize?” But his voice begins to rise. “He’s a police officer. It’s completely unethical.”
“How can you even think about this now?” I take in his flushed skin, his eyes bright with fury. “Michael has helped more than you could know—”
Ted gives a contemptuous snort. “Of course he has. Men like that seek out women who are vulnerable; he’s probably done this before.”
He’s jealous, even after Beth. I turn away without answering and climb the stairs slowly, sensing him watch me as I go. Now he knows what it feels like, but I’m too tired, too heartsick to feel any satisfaction.
Sleep doesn’t come. Yoska set a trap for us. He caught both Ed and Naomi. Does Beth know that the night she called Ted was the night Naomi disappeared? I wonder if she feels guilty. If Ted had come home as he normally did, the dynamics of the evening might have been different. I would have woken sooner; we might have called the police earlier.
I had found Beth’s scarf back then. Giving up on sleep, I go downstairs to find my sketchbook, open it up, and draw a strip of silk, as thin and twisted as the flames in the grate.
BRISTOL, 2009
THIRTEEN DAYS AFTER
The length of unfamiliar crimson curled itself loosely around the box of old CDs in the glove compartment. I had opened it looking for sweets for Ed to suck on because he felt car sick. As I bent closely over the open compartment, the scarf seemed to glow in the dark space: red for danger. A faint scent of lavender rose toward me.
“Any sweets?” Ted asked.
The lid shut with a metallic click. Everything in his warm, leather-scented car shut smoothly, edge to edge. The van I had seen in the wood the day before had no doors.
“No.” I didn’t turn to look at him as I replied. Someone had taken her away in that van. I needed Ted. We had more chance of finding her together. I had to put everything else out of my mind. What had happened with Beth was behind us. The scarf didn’t matter now.
“We can stop at the next service station.” Ted looked into his rearview mirror at Ed. “You managing, Ed?”
I twisted around to look at Ed. His face was gray, pressed into the angle between the back of the seat and the window. His eyes were closed and he didn’t answer. He was pretending to sleep, perhaps he really was asleep. I edged the window down. Ted preferred air-conditioning, but Ed could do with fresh air.
I sat back and watched Ted’s hands on the wheel. The fingernails were clean and close cut, even the fair hair on the backs of his hands looked neatly brushed. His face in profile was calm, even faintly content. How could that be? It took all my focus not to scream out loud and tear the skin off my face and arms.
When I’d gotten home the night before, I couldn’t get that little wood out of my mind. The place had been sinister. Now my mind began to go down dark corridors,
seeing Naomi being pulled out of the car, her terrified eyes, hands over her mouth muffling her calls for me, for Ted. The flames leaping, terrifying her. My own hands started to tremble. I pushed them under my thighs.
The quietness in Ted’s face calmed me in spite of myself. He dealt in facts; he liked things that made sense. He was good at detail. I was glad of him yesterday after Michael had dropped me off. He had taken my sodden raincoat, washed my muddy boots, fed the dog. He told me that while Ed was sleeping he had made a next-day appointment for us to see around a rehabilitation center in Croydon that a colleague had recommended. He had taken the day off.
“We have to stop this now, Jenny. He needs help fast. The sooner, the better. Being at home now is terrible for him, you can see that.”
Of course I knew Ed needed help. I was the one who had bargained with him for his cooperation, but it had all been organized so quickly. I had hardly had time to get used to it.
“What do you want us to do about school?” Ted asked, his eyes on the road.
I turned to the backseat again. Ed was watching the road, his eyes flicking rhythmically backward as the telegraph poles went by. He didn’t answer, but his cheeks were tinged with pink, he looked better.
“Let’s not worry about school,” I said, still looking at Ed. “We’ll sort it all out. It doesn’t matter.”
Ed’s eyes went to mine and away again. He didn’t believe me, but it was true. We had lost one child; we had to keep Ed safe. Nothing else was important.
The outposts of London began to appear. Bridges, a power station, a biscuit factory. Ted stopped at a service station, where we bought sandwiches and I checked Ed’s temperature; it showed a small spike. The bandage around the crook of his arm had a wet yellow patch in the center. I gave him his midday antibiotics and more acetaminophen. As Ted filled the car with gas, I thought we probably looked like a normal family on an outing, taking our son back to the university after a break perhaps. No one would guess that this calm-looking, handsome man in fit middle age with fair hair and bright blue eyes had lost a daughter in the last two weeks, or that the thin dark-haired woman sitting in the front seat of his car was holding on to her sanity with both hands. If they had glimpsed Ed in the back of the car they might have thought he looked like any teenager.