by Ruth Dugdall
Kenley village was still just one row of houses, terraces built for farm labourers way back when. The local pub was in need of a lick of paint, as was the red-brick school, its navy-painted door and eaves peeling with neglect. When her family had lived here, the American soldiers at the base would volunteer to do tasks like this: good deeds in the community to ease the disquiet of the locals, putting up with a military base in their midst. But in the eighties the Cold War thawed, the base was run by a skeleton of staff through the nineties and closed completely after the invasion of Iraq; it became a ghost town. Today the playground lay empty. Half-term, Holly remembered, school was out for the week, although there were no children on the street either. Too early. And the headmaster wouldn’t let them play on school premises during holidays, so they’d be left to roam the fields and woods nearby.
There was just one new addition, just one sign of change in the twenty years she’d been gone – a six-foot banner, hung across the front of the school building, emblazoned in black capitals with the message: HANDS OFF OUR COUNTRYSIDE!
Once she was through the village, the landscape turned barren. Here, the road was flanked by flat fields of turned earth with dirty pigs snuffling around domed metal huts. She turned down Innocence Lane. She’d always known she’d have to return one day, but still she didn’t feel ready.
The hedgerows were untended and bleached by the sun with singed grasses and wires of ivy. Beyond, fields sprawled, stubbly with cut corn. When they were younger, she and Jamie had played here until they were spotted and shouted away by the farm workers. Before. Rooks jumped on the ashy white soil and cawed to each other in warning, rabbits darted around the muddy mounds. This stretch of Suffolk was remote – not an area a tourist would simply happen upon, so the perfect spot for a controversial American airbase, now derelict. In the distance, the perimeter fence still stood intact, but grass grew through the cracks on the sidewalk and the roads led to abandoned homes. The Yanks had gone home. Now this was a site of controversy and debate, given the lack of houses locally, but no one wanted to live out here: no shops, no employment. It was a problem. Something had to be done with the place.
A few hundred yards further down the lane came a wooden sign that hadn’t been there before. It had a fat pink sow painted alongside a plump red hen and cheery script with the name INNOCENCE FARM. Staked into the mud beside it was a long banner, the twin of the one outside the schoolhouse: HANDS OFF OUR COUNTRYSIDE!
An uneven track, better suited to a tractor than her Fiat, eventually opened onto a gravelled drive that must once have been grand. In the middle was a stone fountain, the pump long since broken, judging by the mossy stone beneath. A squad car and an ambulance were already parked on the gravel, the police had secured the scene and Jon and another member of the team would be inside, expecting her.
There was the black skeletal barn that had both drawn and repelled her so much when she was a child. She looked away, unable to stand the memory. Instead, she looked up at the farmhouse, solid and square with its proud red-brick facade, dark glassy eyes for windows. A building that had seen generations of people come and go, and knew it would outlast them all. Holly pulled her Fiat in beside the ambulance, switched the engine off and left the safety of her small car.
Inside the farmhouse, Holly’s senses picked up the faint metallic tang of gunshot, and it spun her back two decades. She followed the scent, past the grand entrance with its wide staircase to the back of the house, where, in a dimly lit hallway, two of her colleagues were working to save a woman’s life.
A few yards away was a pale, stocky man with slate-grey hair – Hector Hawke, the farmer who had shouted her off his land so many times. Now, he lay slumped on the floor, one hand cupped to his chest, in a posture of defeat. Holly felt an ache along her left arm, a painful tingling in her fingers that mirrored his pain, as a black spaniel ran in crazy circles around him.
Seated on the third step, a confused expression on her face, was a woman in her thirties, who Holly hadn’t seen in twenty years. Cassandra Hawke had attended the Victorian primary school, just like Holly, but the four-year age gap was too wide for them to have been friends. Besides, their worlds were radically different. Cassandra was the posh girl who lived in the haunted house, beautiful and aloof. She had been a figure of fascination to Holly, but as unapproachable as the Queen of England. Her cheeks were puffy from crying, and Holly felt her own cheeks dampen and swell. Despite this, the woman was as beautiful as ever, a sheath of golden hair falling to her shoulders. Except that the tips were matted with blood, as were her hands.
‘Holly,’ called Jon, suddenly noticing her, ‘come over here and make yourself useful, please.’
4
Cassandra
It takes a moment, then I differentiate the uniforms around me: the bottle-green uniform of the paramedics, a man and a woman; the navy blue of a police officer who wears white overshoes to check upstairs and then pulls on blue gloves to remove the rifle.
The paramedic introduces himself as Jon, then asks what your name is.
Dad whispers, ‘Maya. My Maya.’
They move quickly towards me at the foot of the stairs, and Jon smoothly positions himself just where I’m kneeling, taking over. ‘Cassandra, is it? You can stop now: we have her.’ I lean back, suddenly in the way.
You lie, limp and pale, your hair shrouding you like a black veil dipped in blood. Bruises are appearing on your neck, red as garnets. Your nightdress has ridden up, so you’re exposed, but no one seems to notice.
‘Hello, Maya, my name’s Jon and this is Hilary. Can you hear me, love?’
The paramedics work together in a tightly choreographed dance. They snap on purple plastic gloves, then she unzips a blue kitbag, folds it out to reveal syringes, tubes, medical objects.
Jon puts on a pair of clear safety glasses before checking your mouth and nose.
I wince as a metal object is slid into your mouth.
‘Okay, I can see the cords. Airway compromised, blood occluding,’ he says to Hilary, withdrawing the metal tool. ‘Unknown damage to neck and lower jaw, possible fracture at base of skull. I’m going to have to intubate to protect the airway. Get me a size eight.’
Hilary moves swiftly to the bag and brings forth a pump-driven machine. ‘Here’s the suction.’
Jon slips a tube into your mouth, looking all the time at the position. With a balloon-like object at the other end of the tube, he pushes air into you, counting to ten, stopping to check his watch, counting again. Hilary connects you to an octopus-like machine with many tentacles. At the end of each is something different: a peg to place on your finger, a cuff for your arm, several sticky dots for your chest. I’m watching a horror film, disconnected from me but still terrifying. I want to turn it off, but can’t.
Another paramedic arrives. She’s pretty, with caramel skin and the darkest eyes I’ve ever seen, I assume she’s mixed-race. Something about her feels familiar. She looks at me, wide-eyed as if she’s seen a ghost, then kneels beside Jon and looks away.
‘Okay, good, airways clear and she’s breathing,’ says Jon. ‘Circulation, Holly?’
She checks the machine, though I can tell she’s still aware of me. ‘Pulse is weak, low BP. Saturation is only seventy-five per cent.’ Speaks the foreign language of medicine in which they’re fluent.
‘Take over the bagging, Holly. I’m going to cannulate for fluids.’
A needle is inserted in the crook of your arm and I shudder on your behalf.
Jon unravels the clear tube from the needle then shows her a bag of fluid. ‘I’m going to put up a 500-millilitre bag of sodium chloride, 0.9 per cent, expiry 2020.’
Hilary lifts her head from checking the machine, glances at the label. ‘Yes, confirmed.’
The work continues, but I see how the third paramedic leans forward, pulling gently at your nightdress so it covers you again. Giving you back your dignity. I am more grateful for this than for any of the life-saving tricks that ha
ve saved you.
Jon checks his watch. ‘Okay, we’re six minutes in and she’s stable enough to travel. Let’s scoop and run. Make sure the hospital knows we’re coming and they’re ready for us in Resus. Holly, you can meet us back at base.’
My thoughts slide into the fog.
I sit on the stairs, my body heavy and aching. There’s a lull, a calm in the activity as the fluid enters you and Jon looks up, to where I’m perched. I feel him notice me and look down, see my stained blouse and realise it’s obvious I’m not wearing a bra. I cross my arms over my chest, lower my head and feel the damp tips of my hair on my throat. When did it get so bloody?
‘You’ve done well. I heard you had to resuscitate her. Relax now. We can take over from here.’
‘I’m going with her to hospital,’ says Dad aggressively, as if a right is being denied.
A stretcher is brought in, and it takes forever to move you. I notice the third paramedic is talking to you, almost lovingly, the whole time.
I wish someone would talk to me like that. I’m feeling absent. I have to slide my hands between my thighs to stop my body shaking.
Dad says you shot yourself, but that makes no sense to me. I want you to talk to me, tell me what really happened, but you can’t speak, have barely moved. All I can do is watch helplessly as they open the stretcher into two halves and slide each side under you, scooping you up. Then the two who came first begin to carry you out.
The third paramedic comes forward. ‘Cassandra?’ She hesitates, then tells me, ‘We’re getting ready to take your mum to hospital, and your dad will be travelling in the ambulance with her. She’s in good hands, and the hospital are waiting to take care of her. Is there anything we can do for you?’
I shake my head. All I want is for someone to tell me what happened, since I can’t believe you shot yourself, and she can’t tell me that.
Down the hallway, near the backstairs, Jon continues his loud monologue: ‘Okay, Maya, we’re just taking you out of the house now to the ambulance.’
His voice comes closer as he and Hilary carry the stretcher through the hallway, past the door to the front room, and I see the breathing tube and line into your arm being held over your bloodless face by the third paramedic. Strands of dark hair spill over the side of the stretcher, long and fragile like silk, and I want to reach and gather it up, in case it gets caught and hurts you. As if she can read my thoughts, the paramedic reaches forward and lifts your hair back in place.
Dad follows, like a condemned man. ‘How could she have done it?’ he mutters to no one in particular. No one looks my way, I’ve become invisible. Minutes later, they’re out on the gravelled courtyard and the ambulance starts to scream its warning. A blue light is sent swirling around the room as it pulls away. The house is finally silent.
The third paramedic returns. She guides me away from the stairs, where I think I’d wait forever if I could. Her hand tries to steady me, but she must feel how much I’m shaking.
‘Come on, Cassandra. We’ll go in the front room. Take a breath.’
Now you’ve gone, everything looks just the same, the clock is still ticking to the right rhythm. How is that possible? She helps me into the armchair, and lifts the bedding from the sofa so she can perch on the end. Dad slept here last night, after your argument.
I can see her mouth moving, I can hear the words, but they seem to have nothing to do with me. Then something breaks through. ‘Cassandra?’
‘I’m sorry,’ I say. ‘What did you say?’
‘I was saying I could drive you to hospital, if you like? You probably shouldn’t drive yourself.’
I remember I should call Daniel. ‘Please . . . I need the phone.’ It’s somewhere at the bottom of the stairs, from when I was on the call to the emergency operator. The paramedic goes to fetch it, returning swiftly and watching as I dial. He picks up immediately.
‘It’s me.’
‘Cass? What’s happening?’
‘It’s Mum. She’s just been taken to hospital in an ambulance. She’s been shot.’ Three short sentences, not enough to convey the confusion and mass of questions in my head.
‘Is she alive?’
Poor Daniel – he’s always loved you, and you him. He’s the son you never had, the man who cured your cancer.
‘Just,’ I say. Then I can’t say any more.
‘Keep strong, love. It’ll be okay. I’ll meet you at the hospital.’
He doesn’t ask who shot you, or for any details, and I’m grateful.
As I disconnect, I realise there’s something happening in the hallway. Someone has arrived to disturb the silence. A voice is calling my name. For a moment, I don’t recognise Ash when he finds me. He’s shockingly pale, his scruffy sandy hair dangles in his eyes. Never the cleverest of men, now he looks utterly dumbstruck. His thin fingers agitate the frayed edging of his battered wax jacket.
‘Cass! How’s Maya?’
An angry thought follows: What the fuck’s it got to do with you? You’re only the housekeeper’s son.
The paramedic follows behind him, looking concerned. ‘I’m sorry, but I don’t think she’s able to talk at the moment, she’s just had a terrible shock. Why don’t you come back later, when things are more settled?’
‘I have a right to be here!’ He turns aggressively, then stops when he sees her face, his eyes widening with recognition. ‘What are you doin’ here?’
‘I’m a trainee paramedic. I’m here as part of the emergency response.’
Ash looks around him, confused. ‘Where’s Hector?’
‘Mr Hawke has gone to the hospital, with his wife.’
‘Is Maya gonna be okay?’ He’s usually the last to catch on, yet he’s grasped the situation far quicker than me.
‘We don’t know yet,’ she says. ‘I hope so.’
Ash moves from one foot to the other, still watching the paramedic. ‘It is you, isn’t it? The sister.’
‘Holly Redwood. Jamie’s sister.’ She glances at me, her skin flushes. ‘I used to live round here, on the airbase.’
Ash remembered her, and now she’s said her name it sounds familiar to me too. I examine her face again – her caramel skin dusted with dark freckles over her nose, her very dark eyes. She’s studying me with an intensity that makes me uneasy. I feel like I’ve been unwrapped and everyone is seeing the very fibres of my being. I want to go back to sleep, and wake to find this is all a bad dream. I want Ash gone.
‘Holly, can you show Mr Cley out so you can drive me to the hospital. He doesn’t belong here right now.’
Ash looks at me, disbelieving, his mouth hanging open. ‘Cass, what do you mean? I’d do anythin’ for you and your family, you know that. It should be me drivin’ you!’
I can see Holly assessing the situation, wondering what to do.
‘He just works for us, you probably remember that.’ I refuse to catch his eye. ‘Dad employs him to manage the pigs and the poultry, and he lives in the cottage we own, down the lane. That’s all.’
‘That’s all?’ he repeats, gormlessly shaking his head so his dirty-blond hair falls in his eyes. ‘Cass . . .’
‘Go away, Ash,’ I say, my fingers straying to the scar on my collarbone. ‘You’re not welcome.’
He blinks, fighting back tears of surprise. Holly takes advantage of his momentary shock to guide him outside. His head is droopy, his chin almost to his chest. He doesn’t want to go, but he has no choice.
Finally, I’m alone as I’ve never been, not here at the farm. I came here yesterday because I needed your help, Mum – I was slipping again. I was so wrapped up in myself, I didn’t see this coming. I hear footsteps, Holly returning, and before I can stop myself I say, ‘I don’t believe my mum shot herself.’
Holly stands close to me. Her gaze is intelligent and sympathetic. ‘It must be very hard to come to terms with.’
‘No, that’s not it. What I mean is that I know Mum wouldn’t do that.’
She frowns. There a
re furrows between her dark eyes. ‘Maybe that’s just what you want to think?’
‘No.’ I’m determined that she should believe me. ‘Suicide is for cowards, and she’s not one of those. My mum is tough – she’s run this place since she was in her early twenties, she’s seen through two recessions. She isn’t a quitter.’
Holly breathes in, looks around the room, then back at me. ‘You think someone else did this?’
‘I’m certain.’
I wait, expecting her to dismiss me, but she doesn’t.
‘I’ll have to write a report on this, but it doesn’t include a space for feelings: it’s a medical form. But I’ll tell my supervisor what you’ve said, and ensure it gets passed back to the police. It’s their job to investigate anything suspicious. We should go to the hospital now.’
Pacified, I let her lead me out.
5
Holly
Holly pulled her Fiat into her parking space and looked up at her flat with longing. It was small and hardly a triumph of design, built out of breeze blocks that fitted together simply, rather than with style, the rooms all small and square. But what it offered her was priceless: a place with no noise, no stimulation of any kind and, especially after the day she’d had, a chance to think of nothing at all. She removed the keys from the ignition, and gathered up her coat and work bag. Opening the car door, she was hit by cold air, a biting wind that promised frost.
As she walked across the car park, she saw that Leif ’s light was on, and that he was watching her from his kitchen window. The last time she’d seen him was this morning, he’d been naked and she’d had to tread over two used condoms to make her exit. So much had happened since then, she could hardly believe it was just twelve hours ago. What an idiot she was: relationships were bad news, she didn’t need the complication, and fucking a man who was a neighbour was bloody stupid.
She planned on slipping quietly into her flat, but when she arrived on the walkway to the flats he was there, waiting for her. She saw he was wearing the navy police uniform she had seen hanging in his bedroom that morning.