by Judy Astley
‘Singing?’ Clover pulled back and stared at her mother. ‘But he never sings any more! Oh – I get it. He was pissed?’
‘No! Look, don’t you start. I’ve had that from everyone else. He wasn’t, OK? Well … hardly at all, nothing serious.’ Lottie sniffed. ‘And he just, keeled over.’
‘I think maybe, if you don’t mind, I’ll just go and er …’ Al stood up and shuffled his feet around, looking desperate to escape.
‘Al, thanks so much for staying,’ Lottie said, squeezing his hand. ‘I’ll be fine now Clover’s here. And I promise I’ll call if there’s anything …’ The tears started to spill over. She could feel them, fat and bead-like, trickling one by one like the first thumping raindrops of a thunderstorm.
‘Mum, please don’t cry.’ Clover squeezed Lottie tight. ‘It’s scary! It’s like you think he’s going to—’
‘Don’t say it!’ Lottie snapped. ‘Don’t even think it!’
Lottie was thinking it though. Of course she was. She was thinking, what kind of massive, unfillable trench would the death of Mac leave in her life? Just when they’d decided to take some us-time, to offload all the peripheral ephemera that thirty-something years had accumulated so they could get back to the you-and-me basics. The essentials. Of which, for her, Mac was the essential.
Ilex crept round past the garages at the back of the apartments carrying his outrageously pricy hand-tied bunch of deep red roses and loitered by the dustbins, almost colliding with a fat, dirty fox that shot out from behind them and raced past carrying a chicken carcase. He knew, of course, that he could just go into the apartments through the main door, up the stairs and let himself in – he still had his keys. And, he reminded himself, if push came to shove, it was technically his own property. On paper, anyway. Right now, it looked as if Manda had gone for squatters’ rights. Which was fine. He didn’t want her out, just himself back in, in her life, in her bed and in her good books. Why was it so hard when he’d done nothing wrong? Well, not very wrong anyway.
There was a light on in their bedroom. Or should that be ‘her’ bedroom now? He imagined her many, many clothes, no longer crushed together now that most of his had been ejected, luxuriating on their padded satin hangers in the space of both sides of the long wardrobe; his sock drawer would have been cleared out to make way for even more froths of her delicious underwear. He shouldn’t think along those lines – it would drive him to the kind of crass, clumsy impatience that would have him storming up the stairs and breaking the door down. He didn’t think that would impress her – Manda didn’t approve of gratuitous breakage. Splintered wood meant finding a carpenter and all the ensuing hassle and expense. Not good.
There was no point phoning Manda’s mobile or the flat yet again; she still wasn’t answering. Only once had he briefly heard her voice in these last days and that was because he’d used Clover’s phone, but after saying hello, and discovering it was him, she’d hung up instantly, not even sparing him a perfunctory ‘Sod off’. He’d considered writing a letter but she’d probably put it through a shredder and send it straight back and he couldn’t face the angst of opening an envelope of viciously sliced shards that represented his heart and soul. Besides, what did you write without sounding after-the-event soppy? E-mail was definitely out, though he’d considered it. But you couldn’t do emotional take-me-back stuff by e-mail, especially not to Manda’s work-place. There was too much risk of it getting mixed up in the daily round-the-building joke-swap: one casually miss-pressed key and half Gatwick Airport could know the whole sorry tale in minutes. (If they didn’t already. Wasn’t that what women did? They told one close friend, in total confidence, over a tears-and-lipgloss moment in the loo, and a mysterious three hours later they were getting God-what-a-bastard sympathy from every female in the building?) And anything electronic for communication was too far along the track of those famous people you heard of who’d so callously dumped their lifetime partners by fax. Not that he was dumping her. He’d turned up tonight, with his rather corny roses, in the hope of entirely the opposite.
First thing was to get Manda’s attention. She craved love and romance. Clover said so. Even Sorrel had agreed with that (albeit with a typical teen sneer) so it must be right. Eternal love and a wedding were required apparently, not a cat and a litter tray. Well, fine. If she wanted it, she could have it. Otherwise what would the future be for Ilex? Oh yes, he could see it now and a very gloomy prospect it was. A carpet of empty pizza boxes and beer cans, a Sky Sports habit plus years of pointless and ever more desperate and unsatisfactory skirmishes with scary, predatory women like Wendy. If he ever got access to the flat and to Manda again, his copies of Fuzz would be straight out here to these bins. The next person in a uniform he hoped to have dealings with was the vicar who’d conduct the wedding. (‘Do you, Ilex Adonis MacIntyre …?’ Adonis. Aaaagh. The thought of laughter ripples still made him cringe. He’d have to get over it. On the day there’d be so much more to think about. How to pay for it all should keep his mind occupied.)
Ilex, still toting his bouquet and dodging the squares of light cast from windows in the block, crept across the grass and bent to pick up a selection of small stones from the gravel pathway. Then he started gently lobbing them up at the bedroom window. But he was too tentative in his efforts not to have every flat-owner coming out to their balconies to shout at him and managed to miss his target with almost every one. A couple scratched almost noiselessly against the window and fell uselessly onto the bedroom’s small outside deck area. Lucky that England weren’t depending on him to carry the bowling at the next test, he thought. He had another go, concentrated hard and this time hit the jackpot, centre of the window pane. He hid back in the shadows and waited for a response. If she opened the glass door he’d simply emerge into one of the light-squares and ask her the big question from there, Romeo-style, a full-on balcony-scene. What more could she want? Wouldn’t that be something to tell the one ladies’-room confidante at work? By lunchtime there’d be a queue to look at the ring. Ah – that was another thing he hadn’t thought of. He’d have to take her out in the morning to choose something and pray his credit limit wouldn’t melt under the strain.
But right now, there was no sign of her. What was she doing in there? Maybe she was in the shower, or had music or the television on. He looked at his watch. Nine fifteen. Was it Celebrity Love Island that was showing at the moment? Or was it the one in the jungle? Manda liked that sort of faux-reality thing, and became completely engrossed in who was doing what with whom. He found it sweet and appealing that she took it all as gospel, never considering that celebrities might be there to play up to the cameras and the audience and that someone, just off-set, might well be ordering them to gee up the arguments and power-drive the lust interest.
TV or not, a better stone was obviously needed – something that would make more noise but without smashing the glass. Ilex was well aware how much damage could be done with the half-brick that he’d just very nearly trodden on but in the absence of anything better (unless he fought it out with the fox in riffling through the bins) he decided that if he aimed it right, and carefully, it should do the job. To add to the romantic drama, Ilex pulled a couple of the roses from the bouquet (no time for qualms about wrecking the immaculate arrangement), pulled one of the silver raffia strings that held the bunch together from the bottom of the stalks and tied the flowers to the brick. Then, watched by the fat fox that had returned and was now sitting beneath the balcony like a coach-party matinée audience impatient for curtain-up, he hurled the brick at the window. The smash was pretty impressive, Ilex thought. And how amazingly like a cartoon soundtrack was the cascading tinkling of the glass. Stray shards of it rained down from the balcony on to grass and gravel, though most must be on the bedroom floor, which was a bummer. Manda would be seriously unimpressed about that. The fox gave him a look that suggested it was seriously underwhelmed and trotted away at a cool-dude pace towards the front of the building. Lights flicke
d on all over the block, his neighbours, both curious and furious, appeared at many windows and yet still Manda didn’t show her face. Where was she? Why didn’t she come to the window and give him hell about the damage? God, please don’t say he’d killed her with the brick?
Ilex saw the blue lights whirling long before it occurred to him he might be their target. Why so many? he was vaguely wondering. Had there been a murder nearby while he’d been dallying with his roses and his stones? At least four squad cars were hurtling round the corner of the building towards him, and a police van – the sort they sent to riots – slewed itself at a dramatic angle across the road, blocking his exit. He hadn’t seen so much police activity since a new-driver teenager had accidentally run over a swan on the Richmond riverside and half the force had turned up, on account, according to collective wisdom of passers-by, that the birds belonged to the Queen and killing one was tantamount to treason. The poor boy had been in floods: some crazy old biddy had told him it was still a hanging offence.
‘Stay right where you are. Don’t move.’ Light beams were blazing in Ilex’s face and the roses were ripped from his hand. It was like being mugged. Something stopped him from blurting out that they’d got the wrong person. Something that told him, rather late, that they hadn’t.
He looked up at his former bedroom window: so there was Manda, at last, out on the balcony, watching the action. She had her arms folded across the front of her body, which was wrapped in her pink satin robe. The stance had a look of both the defensive and the vengeful.
‘Manda!’ Ilex shouted, struggling to haul himself out of the grip of a mountainous police constable who must surely be at least a county prop forward. Handcuffs were jingling and Ilex’s arm was so agonizingly twisted by his captor it felt close to snapping as he struggled to get free. ‘Manda! I love you!’ Ilex yelled up at the silhouetted figure. ‘Manda, will you marry me?’
There was an unflattering break-out of tittering from the circle of police. ‘Oh dead romantic, mate,’ said his burly minder. ‘That’ll be one for her to remember. Romeo, in handcuffs!’
‘I’ve heard of some bids to get bail …’ Another one hooted.
‘Manda? Will you at least think about it?’
It was too late to hear if she was going to reply. Ilex’s head was pushed roughly into the back of a police car and the rest of him followed, hurled onto the back seat and landing smack against a waiting policewoman, where Ilex grazed his nose on the metal shoulder tag of her hi-vi jacket.
‘Oh dear, Mr MacIntyre, you have been a naughty vandal, haven’t you?’ Wendy smirked.
Ilex turned away from her and gazed longingly out of the rear window as the car pulled away. The now-wrecked bouquet lay on the ground beside the dustbins, forlorn and abandoned, like a solitary tribute at the scene of a tragic accident.
‘Sean’s what? Why is he there?’ Clover studied the sign on the wall across the corridor, the one that ordered her absolutely not to use a mobile phone. Surely this was an exception. When your own father might be fighting off all four apocalyptic horsemen, how else were you supposed to let your little sister know what was going on without having to trail down miles of passageway to find an exit door and maybe miss an essential (and she refused to add the word ‘last’) moment?
‘No, we still haven’t really been told much. He’s seeing someone right now. Mum’s in with him, in resuss, like they have on Casualty. Sorrel, why did you call Sean? There’s nothing he can do about anything.’
A passing nurse gave Clover a glare, presumably relating to the use of the phone. Clover waited till she’d gone past then rudely raised her middle finger at the retreating back. Bloody Sean. What did all this have to do with him? OK, maybe Sorrel had a point – he possibly could be useful, taking care of Sophia and Elsa so that Sorrel could join them at the hospital, but when Clover had left Holbrook House, Gaz had been lying on the sofa, looking very much as if he wasn’t intending to go anywhere. Couldn’t he have taken over baby-sitting just for a few hours? If – and horrible what-ifs flickered across her mind – if a few hours was all they needed, to sort out Mac and what was wrong with him and some treatment for fixing it, Gaz could keep an ear open for the girls quite easily. Longer than that … and she hardly dared to think what might happen to Mac. It was probably all her fault; rubbish karma or something, for going out and behaving like a slut, just for the sake of simple revenge. It no longer felt even remotely like revenge either. Just a very, very bad and stupid thing to have done.
‘And where’s Ilex?’ Clover demanded to Sorrel. ‘Why hasn’t he got here yet? I’ve left messages on his mobile but he hasn’t bothered to call. Has he checked in with you? Is he back at the flat with Manda?’ Someone else was coming. Clover went and sat on a bench by the window and bent her head so her hair hung over the phone, wishing she could disappear. This person looked more like a visitor than a doctor, but it was hard to tell. No one wore uniform stuff and dangled stethoscopes any more, apart from the nurses and even then it was all a bit basic, dress-code-wise. Wouldn’t going back to sterile white coats help with MRSA or something, as well as helping the customers know who they could run to in the event of heart stoppage or blood gushing? She hadn’t been inside a hospital since her post-natal check-up after Elsa was born, years ago. Since then, influenced by watching Holby City and Casualty she’d grown to imagine there’d be an atmosphere of congenial chaos, lots of personal, life-changing input from staff and patients, possibly a heart-warming moment where a paramedic called his mates into the waiting area to announce his engagement to the paediatric registrar and everyone clapped and drank unchilled cheap fizz from plastic mugs. Instead there was cool, distant efficiency and a background of suspicious odours. And the certainty that death had taken up residence and liked to sneak into the action now and then to pick off one of the sick herd’s stragglers.
‘He’s been what? Arrested? Oh God, whatever for?’ Clover pictured Ilex, breaking into Harvey Nichols on a crazy impulse, in search of the perfect take-me-back present for Manda. They’d probably found him riffling through the handbags, wondering if she’d prefer the Prada or the Mulberry. Or had he been caught having a Hugh Grant moment with a hooker in King’s Cross, this extra-mural race to have sexual compensation possibly being a previously unsuspected family trait?
Clover, trying to get sense out of Sorrel, caught sight of Lottie at the far end of the corridor, emerging from the resuscitation area, coming towards her. It was hard to read her body language – whether her mother walking normally at a medium pace signified life or death. Feeling a pool of hyper-anxiety flooding in, she stood up to go to her mother, and the cool plastic of the bench peeled itself from her uncomfortably naked flesh beneath her skirt.
‘And Sorrel,’ Clover hissed into the phone, ‘when you come here, please will you bring me some knickers?’
Lottie was getting nearer but it was still hard to tell what her expression was. Clover needed Sorrel not to be on the phone if it was bad news. If the worst had happened, it shouldn’t be conveyed that way, not with only Sean and Gaz there to comfort her and knowing she’d had no chance to say goodbye.
‘No, just bring knickers. They’re for me. Don’t ask, Soz, please. Just bring me some, OK?’
SIXTEEN
‘WHEN I MENTIONED I fancied going to the Burning Man Festival, I didn’t have my own cremation in mind,’ Mac told Lottie. He seemed to think it was funny and she decided that was a good thing; gallows humour it might be but it was a welcome sign that he was feeling he was likely to survive. Some people go the other way, she’d heard, forever after convinced that the first warning shot would be followed up at any minute by an inescapable, catastrophic fusillade. What a wicked waste of their future that would be.
She and Mac were alone for what felt like the first time in days. Days during which a constant, exhausting stream of hospital staff had come and gone, tweaking drips, taking blood, adjusting monitors and doing that non-committal smile, like waiters who come to yo
ur table and ask if you’re enjoying the meal, but in a way that makes you suspect they’ve added a truly foul secret ingredient. And then there were the visitors – was it all down to internet gossip or an elaborate game of Chinese whispers that resulted in just about every person Mac knew turning up with cards and flowers and nervous expressions of barely hidden relief that this wasn’t happening to them? Wonderful as it was to have so much attention, it was exhausting. Bizarrely, it reminded Lottie of her wedding; towards the end of that day her entire face had ached from the constant smiling.
Now Lottie and Mac were stretched out together on Mac’s bed in his room in the private wing of the hospital with Deal or No Deal on the TV. It had been Sean who had organized the transfer from the public ward, where Mac had been distinctly not delighted to be opposite a patient who happened to recognize him, claimed he knew every lyric from every record Charisma had ever made, and insisted on proving it over many a long and loud hour. Mac hadn’t asked the man what had brought him into the hospital, but told Lottie that if he had to guess he would have said it was something to do with an alcohol-stricken liver. It had also been Sean who had called the health insurance company, sorted the paperwork for the claim and made sure the move was done quickly and efficiently. And then he hadn’t hung around to be thanked, which Lottie thought a shame, but had instead taken Sophia and Elsa back to Richmond and to the gentle comfort of home routine so that Clover could stay at Holbrook House within easy visiting distance of her father. Lottie was happy to let Sean take over admin duties, understanding that he felt he had something to prove to Clover about reliability. Ilex seemed to be in a useless dream-world of his own, Clover was concentrating on keeping Holbrook House ticking over and Sorrel was coming to the end of her exams.
Lottie felt pretty comfortable snuggled up to Mac, considering he was still linked to a drip containing an ever-changing dose of warfarin to keep his blood clot-free. She could live with his flippancy about his condition, and although tempted to whack him for it occasionally, this wouldn’t be a good idea as any small nudge, while the dose was still being adjusted, could result in a multi-hued bruise the size of a dinner plate.