by Julie Corbin
‘Leila?’ I’ve just finished washing the pots while Leila’s been stacking the dishwasher. ‘Would you mind if I popped out for a bit?’
‘But I want to talk to you about what happened on Friday night.’ She takes two mugs from the shelf and puts the kettle on. ‘I just didn’t want to do it in front of the children.’
‘Could you save the coffee for when I get back? I shouldn’t be more than an hour.’
‘Where are you going?’ Her face is open, inviting a confidence, but I can’t take her up on it.
‘I have to meet with DI O’Reilly. Forensic results.’ I hear myself speak the lie and flinch. ‘No, that isn’t true.’
‘What do you mean? Nothing else has happened, has it?’ She grabs my arm. ‘Liv, you would tell me, wouldn’t you?’
‘Nothing else has happened, I promise. It’s probably crazy but . . .’ I widen my eyes. ‘I have to reassure myself that I’m not the reason behind what’s been going on.’
‘How could you be?’
‘I’m probably just going bonkers.’ I kiss her on the cheek. ‘I’ll tell you all about it when I get back.’
‘Don’t rush.’ Her expression is concerned as she walks me to the door. ‘Take as long as you need. Archie can always drop the kids off later.’
I thank her and drive home. The Royal Edinburgh Hospital is Phil’s territory, so I’ve been there a lot in the past but not at all recently. I know that during Sunday visiting time the car park will be full, so I leave my car by my own front door and walk on to the grounds. I pass Phil’s designated parking space and groan to myself when I see his car there. He’s the last person I want to bump into. I’ve accepted that I’ll have to endure another conversation with him about summer arrangements, but I’d prefer it to be later rather than sooner.
Like many of the hospitals in cities all over Britain, the Royal Edinburgh is a patchwork of old and new buildings. I expect to find Trevor in one of the acute adult wards and I check in at reception to find out which one. The receptionist gives me the name and I make my way there, walking the length of the main corridor and up some stairs. I’m close to where Phil has his office and tiptoe at speed past his closed door and around the corner. The staff nurse on duty is a woman I’ve known for years. She’s been working here almost as long as Phil and we’ve met often enough for us to be on first-name terms.
‘Liv!’ She looks up from the chart she’s reading. ‘Long time no see. What brings you here?’
‘Hi, Sally. I’m here to visit Trevor Stewart.’
She looks surprised. ‘You’re not his GP, are you?’
‘No. He’s a friend of a patient of mine and I said I’d look him up because she’s not able to get out much.’ As a child I could tell lies as easily as the next girl, but I surprise myself at just how easily this lie comes tripping off my tongue.
‘That’s thoughtful of you.’ She comes round from behind the desk and walks ahead of me into the dayroom. The television is on, and of the seven people in the room, it looks as though six are asleep, and only one is watching the screen. ‘Congratulations, by the way, on your award. We all voted for you here.’
‘Thank you. It’s given the centre a lot of publicity which is great for fundraising.’
‘Trevor’s over there in the corner.’
She points her hand towards a man slumped in a straight-backed chair, the sort of chair made from wipe-clean plastic masquerading as leather, and frequently chosen for dayrooms in care homes for the elderly.
‘We’re trying to organise long-term residential care for him, but you know how hard it is to get beds.’
‘He looks older than I expected,’ I say, because even at a distance I can see his hair is completely grey and his back is rounded as if he suffers from osteoarthritis.
‘You’d never think he was only fifty,’ Sally agrees. ‘But he’s not someone who’s looked after himself. He’s been a serious alcoholic since he lost his wife and that was eighteen years ago.’
I’m not surprised to hear that his degeneration into alcoholism started when Sandy died. He wouldn’t be the first person to turn to drink to salve his grief. What’s far worse is the fact that, despite being a comparatively young man, he wasn’t able to give up on the bottle.
‘What was the incident that led to him being sectioned?’ I ask, wondering whether he’s being kept sedated with drugs.
‘He was incoherent, brandishing a knife, intent on self-harm rather than hurting others. He calmed down within a few days of being in here.’
‘Is he being heavily sedated?’
‘Initially he was given moderate doses of anti-psychotics, but now what you see is what you get.’
‘This isn’t just a bad day, then?’
She shakes her head regretfully.
‘I’ll have a quick word with him,’ I say. ‘Pass on the message from his friend.’
‘Be my guest. Although you’ll be lucky to get any response from him.’ She turns back towards the nurses’ station. ‘Say cheerio before you go.’
‘Will do.’
I approach Trevor quietly, careful not to wake any of the other patients. The likelihood of him having the wherewithal to inflict damage on Robbie and paint MURDERER on the wall now looks like a very long shot, but I need to stare into his eyes and satisfy myself that it wasn’t him.
He’s dozing into his chest, his breath is rasping and he’s dribbled down the front of his cardigan. It’s a Fair Isle pattern with round, chunky buttons. My father used to wear something similar but my father never ended up like this – and anyway, Trevor’s only eight years older than I am. I pull up a chair and sit down in front of him. ‘Mr Stewart?’
No response. There’s a smell of decay permeating the air around him and I keep my breaths shallow. I gently nudge his knee with my hand and he raises his head up, his movements very slow as if everything is happening through layers of cotton. Rheumy eyes peer into mine. His eyelashes are sparse; his blue iris is rimmed with an off-white discolouration. There isn’t so much as a hint of recognition in his expression, just a fleeting interest before oblivion seizes him again.
And there’s no recognition for me either. I try to find even a shadow of his former self, but there’s no sign that he was ever the fresh-faced man of eighteen years ago whom I last saw leaving the ward after he’d been told of his wife’s death. True, at that point, he looked beaten, but I never expected him to stay that way.
‘My name is Olivia Somers,’ I say. ‘I’ve come to visit you.’
His eyes are closed but his tongue moves around in his mouth as if he’s trying to shape some words.
‘Mr Stewart.’ I nudge his knee again. ‘Do you remember me? My maiden name was Naughton and I looked after your wife Sandy.’
I say his wife’s name quite loudly, but even that doesn’t register with Trevor. His chin slides further towards his chest until it knocks against it. Within seconds his head lolls to one side and he begins to snore.
‘He sleeps a lot.’ There’s a woman pacing beside me. Long greasy hair and stick thin, she brings her splayed fingers up to her mouth and draws greedily on an imaginary cigarette. ‘Pickled his liver and his brain.’ She starts to cough, and spits the phlegm from her throat on to her sleeve. The noise wakes a man further along, who fixes startled eyes on me then makes a masturbating motion with his hand and treats me to a lecherous smile.
I look back at Trevor, lost in his own world, and realise that there’s no way this man is capable of walking from here to the toilet on his own, never mind being allowed an overnight pass and engineering an attack on Robbie. The woman is right – he’s burnt out, his brain and liver permanently damaged by alcohol. And I played a hand in his downfall. It’s a depressing thought.
‘Goodbye then, Trevor.’ I briefly touch his shoulder then walk back towards the nurses’ station. No sign of Sally so I keep walking. I feel relieved that the trouble hasn’t stemmed from my past, but that feeling is brief, as my shoulders grow heavy, guil
t crowding in on me, taunting me with memories of a dead mother and her son. I remember what Professor Figgis said – ‘From now on, everything you do must be done that little bit better. You can’t give anything back to Mr Stewart, but you can pay it forward. Be exemplary in your care for others.’
Have I done that? Have I harmed anyone else? I sincerely hope not, and am sure that I’ve always given my very best attention to every patient who’s come to see me.
Back in the corridor, I’m about twenty yards from Phil’s office when the door opens. Not wanting him to catch me here, I pull myself tight into the wall and then creep back round the corner and on to the ward again. It’s too soon for me to feel okay about his impending marriage and, as for taking the children away for eight weeks, it’s just not happening.
I walk the length of the ward looking for Sally. She’s in the linen cupboard folding sheets.
‘Did you get much out of him?’ she asks me.
‘No, you were right. He’s a poor soul.’
‘He is that.’
‘I don’t suppose he gets many visitors?’
‘His daughter comes in almost every day, but otherwise no one’s been in.’
‘He has a daughter?’ I’m frowning. After what Trevor’s neighbours said to me about him never recovering from Sandy’s death, I assumed he hadn’t remarried. ‘I didn’t know that.’
‘She was taken into care when she was young.’
‘What about her mother?’
‘Her mother died.’
I do a double take. ‘Two wives died on him?’
‘Just the one, as far as I know.’ Sally folds a sheet into a perfect oblong and settles it on top of a neat pile, keeping all the edges parallel. ‘She had a brain tumour.’
‘No, that can’t be right.’ I lean up against the slatted wooden shelves, the strong smell of hospital laundry filling my nose. ‘That baby died.’
She thinks for a second, another sheet suspended in her hands. ‘You might be right. I don’t know all the details. Only what Kirsty’s told me.’
Kirsty. Memories of long ago – another hospital, a vulnerable young woman, me taking blood as she told me about her chosen baby names – collide in my brain with a crashing of gears. My ears ringing, I fix a frozen smile on my face and look at Sally. ‘How old is she?’
‘She’ll be eighteen this month. She’d asked me about taking her dad out for a meal, but you see how ill he is?’
I nod, feel the skin on my face tremble.
‘She’s doing okay, though, Kirsty. She was lucky to get good foster parents. They encouraged her to apply for a scholarship with the performing arts school out near Livingston. She’s quite an actress, apparently. One of the student nurses saw her in a production at the Lyceum last month.’ She stacks the final sheet and looks at her watch. ‘Better get on with the drug round. No rest for the wicked, eh?’ She smiles. ‘It’s been good catching up, Liv. I was sorry to hear you and Phil had split up.’
I manage to almost-shrug my tight shoulders. ‘Such is life.’
I say goodbye and my legs walk themselves back into the corridor, treading lightly as if on eggshells. I’m holding my breath as the neurons in my brain light up, busying themselves with making connections.
The baby lived.
Sandy and Trevor’s baby – a girl, not a boy as Leila said – lived. And yet Leila told me the baby had died. I can’t imagine how she could have got that so wrong. I try to envision a conversation where she asks about one of the babies in Special Care and they tell her the baby is dead. Leila would have asked after the Stewart baby. Maybe a baby boy died that day and he had a similar surname. Maybe—
‘Olivia?’
The voice is loud and I jerk upright. Phil is standing in front of me.
‘Are you here to see me?’ he says.
‘No.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Yes.’
‘And yet I come out of my office and find you here, frowning down at your feet.’ There’s an impatience in his tone and in his demeanour that makes me both shrink with embarrassment and expand with anger. He glances beyond me through the window and takes a bored, why-are-you-always-so-difficult breath. ‘I’m sorry that my intention to remarry has upset you so much but—’
‘Why do you always assume that everything’s about you?’ I cut in. ‘I’m here visiting a patient and I was standing in the corridor thinking about his life when you appeared.’
He sighs, making it obvious that he doesn’t believe me. He considers himself an expert on human behaviour and no amount of me defending myself will convince him otherwise.
‘I’m not going to stand here explaining myself to you,’ I say, walking past him.
‘Where are the children?’
‘Leila’s.’
He follows me to the top of the stairs. ‘We still need to talk about the summer holidays.’
‘Not here,’ I call back. ‘And not now.’
My anger at Phil propels me out of the hospital and back home. When I get there, I stop for a breath and unlock the front door. The sight of the bare living-room wall pushes Phil to the back of my mind and catapults what I’ve just found out about Sandy and Trevor’s baby to the front. I lean back against the kitchen counter, trying to make sense of the mix-up. It has to be a miscommunication. It’s not unheard of for hospitals to give out the wrong details about the right patient and vice versa. It does seem unlikely, though, bearing in mind that Leila’s a doctor, and the Gynaecology ward she worked in was close to the Special Care Baby Unit. She could have walked along the corridor and found out, seen the baby for herself.
But if it isn’t a mix-up then Leila lied to me. And why would she do that?
Only one way to find out. I call Benson and take him in the car with me back to Leila’s. It’s a beautiful afternoon and the children are in the garden. Leila’s three girls have changed into their swimming costumes and have set up a hosepipe which has a sprinkler attached and is sending arcs of water over their shrieking, running bodies. Out of range of the water, some of the hockey crowd have arrived and are lying on the grass beside Mark. They raise lazy hands to wave to me and I walk briskly towards them, concerned that I can’t see my own children.
‘Are Robbie and Lauren still here?’ I say.
‘They’re round the back by the trampoline,’ Emily says, sitting up with crossed legs and reaching to stroke Benson’s head. ‘With their dad.’
‘Okay.’ Phil must have hotfooted it over here after he spoke to me at the hospital, keen to talk to the children before I do. Unnecessarily, as I am not about to throw cold water on his holiday ideas – or tell the children he’s getting married. I know Phil doesn’t trust me, but in fact I’m more likely to encourage the children to spend time with him than not. Our marriage hasn’t worked out but I don’t want them to lose their dad.
‘Robbie was telling us about the graffiti,’ Emily says, standing up beside me. ‘It’s a really weird thing to happen.’
‘You’re telling me.’ I look down at her worried face. ‘The police are investigating it, so hopefully we’ll get some answers soon.’
Her foot is jerked away from her as Benson drags at her laces, and she laughs, bending down to haul him off. ‘You’re such a silly mutt!’
‘Don’t let him bully you, Emily,’ I say, walking into the house. ‘Call me if he becomes too much of a pest.’
I find Leila staring through the patio windows at Phil, who is directly ahead of her, sitting on the edge of the trampoline, his feet dangling in mid-air.
‘You’re back!’ She turns to hug me. ‘I’m sorry about this.’ She points towards Phil. ‘He just turned up.’
‘It’s fine,’ I swallow down the urge to launch straight into questioning her about the Stewart baby. Instead I keep my mind and my eyes on the conversation outside. Lauren is standing beside the trampoline, her face solemn, as it often is these days when Phil is talking to her. Robbie is lying back on the centre of the trampoline, sta
ring everywhere except at his father: the street, the sky, towards the house and then back to the street again.
‘What can he be saying to them?’ Leila remarks.
‘He’ll be sowing the seed for summer holiday arrangements,’ I say. ‘And he might even be sharing his latest news.’
‘What news?’
‘He’s marrying Erika.’
‘What?’ Leila folds her arms across her chest and her face grows disbelieving and then angry. ‘When?’
‘This summer.’
‘Of all the shitty timing! You’ve only just got divorced!’ She throws her arms out, her silver bracelets colliding together with an arrhythmic shriek. ‘And now with all this going on! What’s wrong with the man?’
‘I’m not really that bothered about it.’
Her expression is a question mark.
‘I’m really not! I need some time to readjust but . . .’ I take hold of her agitated hands. ‘Thank you for caring. I appreciate it. I really do.’ Then I tilt my head towards the garden and say, ‘I just want the children to be okay with it.’
She follows my lead and stares through the window again. ‘Well, if he’s telling them now, he certainly picks his places.’
This makes us both laugh because Phil does look ridiculous, perched on the edge of the trampoline, swaying backwards and forwards as Robbie shifts position and Phil tries to keep his balance.
‘Honestly, though,’ Leila says. ‘I just . . .’ She trails off, shaking her head, and then says vehemently, ‘I would never have believed he could be such a shit.’
‘Well.’ I shrug. ‘People change, don’t they? And not always for the better.’ I rest my finger against the glass. ‘I think he’s done now.’
Phil’s walking away, waving to the children as he goes. Lauren raises a reluctant hand – more of a dismissal than a wave – and Robbie doesn’t even bother with that. I almost feel sorry for Phil.