by CJ Carver
Grace was going to ask more about her mother’s job, but then the vicar appeared. He wanted her to sit at the front of the church. Joe walked her down the aisle and settled her next to Ross. The service sped past. When Grace and Ross headed outside with her mother’s coffin, the congregation followed. But when Grace and Ross started to walk to the wake – being held in the pub opposite the church – only her mother’s family and a handful of friends followed. All her mother’s work colleagues melted away.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Tuesday 27 November, 10.35 a.m.
When the police car arrived outside Stella’s house, the lookout in the van was immediately on his phone, expression urgent.
Dan could see that the cops weren’t taking any chances. To combat four men potentially robbing a house, they’d sent an armed response vehicle. Two uniforms climbed out, leaving an operator to man the in-car comms and send on-the-spot information back to base in case specialist firearms officers were needed.
The uniforms didn’t have to knock on the door. As they approached, it swung open. Sandy Hair was there again. He talked to the police for thirty seconds, no more. One policeman spoke into his radio, updating his comms man, and then the police entered the house. The door shut behind them. Dan counted the minutes.
At 10.45 the police stepped outside. Dan walked quickly to intercept them. He had no doubt Sandy Hair was watching.
‘Yes, sir?’ one asked.
‘I reported the four men,’ Dan said. ‘I thought they were burglars.’
‘Ah. You’re the neighbour.’ He glanced at his colleague, who gave a nod. ‘They’re carpet cleaners all right. But thanks for ringing us. You never know about these things. Always better to call than not.’
Dan didn’t stay to watch them drive away. He walked to the top of the street and ducked out of sight. Kept an eye on Stella’s house. The men were inside for half an hour. Oddly, they didn’t appear to take anything when they left. He’d rather thought they might have taken Stella’s laptop, perhaps some files or papers, he wasn’t sure, but to see them empty-handed made him frown. Maybe they’d pocketed what they needed? A computer disc or memory stick?
When the driver started up the van, he raced back to his car and climbed in.
He wanted to see where they went.
Because his was the only car following the van, he had to hang well back and change positions regularly to try and avoid being spotted. He lagged steadily behind, but when they hit the dual carriageway of the A41, he became exposed.
The van trundled along at a steady sixty miles per hour until they reached the Hemel Hempstead turn-off. As soon as they hit the second roundabout, Dan knew he was in trouble. Whether they’d designed it or not, they’d timed it perfectly to force their way across, leaving him two cars behind and struggling to make any headway. On the other side of the roundabout, he saw them swing right and out of sight. He floored the accelerator when the road was clear ahead, racing for where he’d last seen them. His senses were alive and sharp, taking in everything around him; the mother and pram on the pavement, the trees planted between parking slots, two dark-skinned men smoking and chatting by a bus stop.
He swung right. His eyes went straight to the bottom of the street, a T-junction. Traffic streamed in both directions. The van turned left.
Dan put his foot down, burning rubber, overtaking two cars, one of which blared its horn. At the junction he swung left and pushed his car hard. The van was accelerating up a hill towards a pedestrian light. When the light turned amber the van didn’t slow down. The light was red when the van blasted across.
By the time Dan passed the traffic stopped at the light, the van was long gone.
Carpet cleaners or not, it was obvious they’d spotted him and hadn’t wanted him to follow.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Tuesday 27 November, 11.00 a.m.
Grace stood next to the fireplace watching drizzle slide down the window. Outside, pedestrians huddled beneath umbrellas, their faces pinched with cold. But inside, everyone’s expressions were expansive and rosy, no doubt helped by the copious quantities of alcohol Ross was helping to provide.
It had been his idea to hold the wake in the pub and now she applauded him for not holding it at her mother’s house. Less formal and somehow more comfortable. She’d spoken to all the cousins, and was thinking it was probably time to wind things up – she felt exhausted – when the man who’d come to her mother’s door earlier approached. He held his hat in his right hand but hadn’t shed his camel coat or his leather gloves.
He said, ‘I’m sorry for your loss.’
‘Thank you.’
‘My name is Sirius Thiele. I am a debt collector.’
For a moment she thought she’d misheard. ‘I’m sorry?’ she said.
‘I appreciate this is a difficult time, but my business has become increasingly urgent. I am here on behalf of a client of mine.’
She stared at him. ‘I think there must be some mistake.’
‘Please, if I could trouble you to step outside.’ He flicked a glance at Ross. ‘I think you may prefer it if we weren’t overheard.’
‘I’m sorry, but –’
‘A friend of yours is waiting to see you,’ he cut over her. ‘Someone you haven’t seen in a while. His name is Martin Fairfield. He told me a very interesting story about you and your friend, Simon Granger. What a sad and touching tale it was, when poor Simon died.’
Her nerves fizzed with shocked disbelief. ‘Simon?’ she repeated. The pitch of her voice came out unnaturally high.
‘Martin wants to see you. Privately.’
Grace didn’t move. Her brain seemed to have stalled. She hadn’t seen Martin in over six years. What was this?
Sirius Thiele leaned forward confidentially, his tone low. ‘Does your boyfriend Ross know about you and Simon? What Martin saw?’
It was as though he’d just slapped her. She jerked visibly, her eyes wide.
‘I thought not.’ He smiled.
She worked her mouth. Her lips were dry, her tongue like cardboard. ‘What do you want?’
‘For you to follow me outside, and into the car park, where Martin is waiting. It won’t take long.’
Without waiting for her response, he turned on his heels and wound his way through the mourners towards the exit.
Grace’s mind churned. Was Martin really here? Why had he turned up after all these years? What was he doing with Sirius Thiele?
I am a debt collector.
Grace didn’t move. She wasn’t going to trust a stranger’s word that Martin was outside. But how did he know about Simon? Or was he guessing?
‘Are you all right, my love?’ She jumped when Ross put his hand on her waist. ‘You look terribly pale.’
‘I’ll be OK when the day’s over,’ she said.
‘Can I get you anything?’
‘A brandy would be good.’ She rarely drank spirits, but she thought it might help steady her nerves. She watched Ross head for the bar and at the same time, took in the man who’d put his head around the corner and was staring at her.
He’d barely changed. Still boyishly good-looking, with a fresh complexion and a thatch of fair hair and baby blue eyes.
Martin Fairfield.
The years poured away.
She was in Simon’s house. She was trying not to cry.
I can’t, she told him. What if someone finds out?
Please, he begged.
She’d known Simon since they were toddlers. Their mothers had met at pre-natal classes and forged a bond that had remained until their children left home. They had lived two doors from each other and as Grace grew up, Simon had walked her to and from school. They learned to ride their bicycles together, helped one another with their homework. When Simon took up judo, so did Grace. When he took up squash, so did Grace. He was active and sporty, and together they went hiking and mountain biking. She met his various girlfriends, and he’d vet her boyfriends. Simon was her big
brother in everything but blood.
While Grace went to uni to study medicine, Simon joined a university air squadron. His dream was to become a fighter pilot and Grace was there to celebrate when he was accepted into the Royal Air Force, and sent to Cranwell for officer training. She sent him a bottle of champagne when he got engaged to a pretty, bubbly fitness instructor called Juliet, and put the date of his wedding in her diary.
Everything looked perfect.
Until he went skiing one day.
Black run and demanding off-piste skiing in Val d’Isère with two friends. Frequently icy, the run was littered with old stumps and fairly steep in places, around 45°. Many of the markers were becoming difficult to pick out in the flat evening light so – being the more experienced – Simon led the way, skiing fast, fuelled by adrenalin until he missed two of the markers and, caught unawares, faced an unexpected cliff. He started to make a turn away from the lip but a runnel of ice made him lose control and the next second he’d shot over the edge.
He hadn’t even had time to shout.
He plummeted a hundred feet before he smashed into a boulder, then bounced a further forty feet to crash into another rock where he came to rest, unmoving, unconscious.
Two doctors and four members of the Val d’Isère rescue service raced to the accident. They took Simon to hospital where they discovered he had suffered a catastrophic high cervical spine injury.
When Grace heard, she had to go home. She cried herself to sleep.
Simon remained in a coma until he was returned to the UK, where he awoke paralysed from the neck down, and had to be ventilated in order to stay alive. The RAF began medical discharge proceedings. The wedding was postponed. After Simon’s family brought him home, Grace visited him every week, each call leaving her more and more despondent as his muscles grew weaker and wasted away. He sank into depression. Why me?
His depression soon turned to anger. Rage at being helpless, unable to move, unable to do anything for himself. Fury that he couldn’t have sex any more. He was a tactile person and now he couldn’t even show physical affection, not a hug, not a cuddle.
Juliet wanted to care for him for as long as she could. She didn’t want carers’ working hours dictating what time he awoke or went to sleep, but Simon didn’t want her wasting her active, young life on him.
If I was dead, he told Grace, she wouldn’t feel obligated to look after me. He’d had a tracheotomy – an operation to place a tube in his neck just below his Adam’s apple to ventilate his lungs – but could only speak during the exhale phase of the ventilation cycle. Even then his voice was weak and bubbly, nothing like he used to sound. Another frustration he was forced to live with. He’d also been catheterised shortly after the accident but now he had to suffer regular suppositories for bowel care which he found unbearably demeaning.
I want to be dead, he cried, sobbing in Grace’s arms.
He had all his faculties, but his body was useless.
He’d been robbed of his future.
He got pressure sores. Muscle spasms. Urine and mouth infections. He began to plead for compassionate release. He wanted his family to take him to Dignitas in Switzerland, an organisation that legally assisted suicide, but they recoiled, horrified. They adored Simon. Loved every inch of him and wanted him to live for as long as possible. They didn’t care he was incapacitated. They didn’t want to lose him – wouldn’t contemplate euthanasia. They thought his request to die meant he didn’t love them.
Of course I love them, he told Grace. I don’t want to hurt them but I can’t live like this anymore . . . I’m a fighter pilot, remember? Not a bloody vegetable. I hate every minute of every day. Please help release me . . .
Grace talked to him about having ventilation withdrawn but he baulked.
They won’t understand. They’ll be distraught, thinking I don’t care for them. There has to be another way. You’re a doctor! You have to know of a way I can die without them knowing I orchestrated it. Please, Gracie!
His eyes were on hers, pleading.
Grace fell into turmoil. It wasn’t just that she was terrified she might go to prison, or get struck off; it went deeper than that. She hated seeing her friend so desperately unhappy. She wanted to help him, yet this conflicted with all the reasons she had become a doctor. Life was sacred to Grace. Life was to be prolonged and protected. Revered.
I’m sorry, she told him. She was trying not to cry. But I can’t.
The pain and disappointment in his eyes was like a scalpel slicing through her heart.
A week later, Grace visited Simon with a friend and fellow GP. Martin Fairfield. They’d met at uni and kept in touch over the years, meeting at the odd conference and sharing medical papers they thought the other might find of interest. One day he accompanied her to Simon’s. He had a patient who’d suffered a similar catastrophic spine injury and he wanted to see how Simon’s home care had been set up. With two of them there, Juliet took the opportunity to go shopping. Grace sat with Simon while Martin took a phone call outside.
They were listening to the radio via the Internet when suddenly, the music stopped.
Click.
Her eyes snapped to the digital display on Simon’s medical equipment. Blank.
Then his ventilator stopped.
Simon couldn’t breathe without it.
Her pulse went into overdrive. Power short.
She leaped to her feet. Where’s the trip switch? she asked out loud.
Simon’s eyes smiled, blazing with a joy she hadn’t seen since before his accident. He didn’t want her to trip the switch. He wanted her to ignore the power cut and let him go.
She stood, racked with indecision.
His eyes continued to smile. Then he gave her a wink.
Simon . . .
Slowly, he closed his eyes. It was his way of saying goodbye.
No!
Grace looked around wildly. A scream built inside her head. Why wasn’t the ventilator’s back-up battery working?
No time to think. She had to do something. She tore out of the room. Raced around the house searching for the circuit box. Kitchen, hall, hall cupboard, laundry, sitting room . . . she pelted upstairs. Nothing. She ran downstairs. Remembered the basement. Raced into the kitchen for a torch. Returned, flung open the basement door and shone the torch around.
The circuit box was at the bottom of the stairs. Not far. Just ten steps.
She glanced at her watch. At least a minute had passed since she’d started searching. It took approximately three minutes for someone without air to die. That was all. Three minutes.
Grace ran down the stairs. Shone the torch on the circuit box. Opened it. Put her fingers on the trip switch that would fire up the electricity. Force Simon to start breathing again.
The look in his eyes returned to her. His smile. His blazing joy that he would at last, die. And without hurting his family.
Grace stood motionless.
She let her hand drop. She stood staring at the circuit box.
In her mind, she started to count.
One thousand, two thousand, three . . .
Tears seeped down her cheeks.
The seconds rolled past.
‘What’s going on?’ Martin’s silhouette appeared at the top of the stairs.
She didn’t respond for a moment. She only needed a few more seconds, to make sure. She’d never be able to face Simon again if he survived this, because not only would he be mentally disabled – brain damage started after sixty seconds – but he’d never forgive her.
‘Grace?’ he prompted.
‘Power cut,’ she said.
‘Is that the circuit box?’ he asked.
‘Yes.’
‘Why haven’t you flipped the switch?’
Grace counted the last few seconds away. Slowly, she raised her hand and put her fingers on the switch.
Just a couple more seconds . . .
‘Grace?’ Martin prompted.
<
br /> Two more . . .
‘Grace!’ Martin shouted, and at the same time, she flipped the switch.
The lights snapped on. Immediately she heard Simon’s medical equipment beep and his ventilator resume its pumping.
‘Jesus,’ Martin said, and vanished.
She found him at Simon’s side. ‘He’s dead,’ he said. He looked shocked.
Grace checked Simon’s vital signs. ‘Yes,’ she agreed.
‘How come the back-up battery failed?’
‘No idea.’
‘What were you doing down there?’ Martin said. ‘You were standing there not doing anything . . .’
‘I didn’t cause his death,’ she said calmly.
‘But you didn’t prevent it, either.’ His look was accusing.
She held his gaze. She didn’t say anything. Just looked at him.
Martin looked at Simon, then at the machines, steadily beeping and humming. ‘You had no right.’
‘There was a power short,’ she said. ‘I couldn’t find the trip switch in time.’
‘How dare you.’ His expression turned furious. ‘His family will be devastated.’
She took a breath. ‘What about Simon?’
‘What about the sanctity of life?’ he spat. He stalked outside, slamming the door behind him so hard the entire building shook.
To her relief, Martin hadn’t reported her, but it was obvious to everyone with half a brain cell that they’d fallen out. Luckily most people assumed he’d asked her out and she’d refused, or vice versa, and there had been no professional blowback. She’d had sleepless nights worrying he might change his mind and report her to the General Medical Council, but as the days passed she began to relax, and eventually weeks went by without her thinking of him and what she’d done to Simon.
But now Martin was here. And he was looking straight at her.