Innocent

by Kinsley, Erin

  Laura keeps pace with her. ‘Is she OK?’

  ‘She’ll be staying with us overnight. We’re trying to find a bed for her now. She’ll be having a psychiatric evaluation before she’s discharged.’

  Gemma is lying in a side-room, ashen-faced, eyes closed. Laura rushes to take her hand, and when she squeezes it, Gemma opens her eyes. Her focus wavers; then her eyes fill with tears.

  ‘I’m sorry, Mum.’

  Laura bends down to kiss her cheek. ‘I’m sorry too. I didn’t know things had got so bad. Just try and sleep now, sleep it off. I’ll stay here with you. I love you, sweetheart.’

  ‘I love you too,’ says Gemma, and she closes her eyes.

  There’s no space for Gemma in the Paediatric Unit. Somewhere in the small hours, as she drifts in and out of sleep and Laura strokes her hand, a nurse disconnects the drip of benzodiazepine antidote which probably saved Gemma’s life. A while later – Laura has been dozing, and doesn’t know how long it’s been – a taciturn porter releases the brake on Gemma’s bed, and with Laura following close behind, pushes her through the glare of white-lit corridors, the only sounds a squeaky wheel and Laura’s hard-soled shoes on polished tiles. Beyond the windows, the world is dark.

  Even on the far side of midnight, the general admission ward is noisy and unsettling. Gemma is wheeled into a corner bay, watched by the wakeful eyes of those who should be sleeping. A woman with wild hair and a drooping breast exposed at the front of an open nightgown is watching a live casino on TV. In a bed diagonally opposite, an elderly woman’s repeated cries – Mary! Where are you, Mary? – go ignored.

  ‘Don’t leave me here, Mum,’ begs Gemma.

  Laura doesn’t want to lie.

  ‘I don’t think they’ll let me stay with you much longer, sweetie. This is an adult ward.’

  ‘That woman’s mad,’ says Gemma, and her eyelids slide closed.

  ‘If I have to go, I’ll come back straight after breakfast.’ Laura brushes a lock of hair off Gemma’s forehead. ‘Just sleep, my darling. Get some rest.’

  But Gemma is already sleeping – sleeping normally, not hovering, as she was earlier, on the borders of deep-space coma. Laura shudders at the way this night might have gone, without Mandy’s phone call. How could she have borne it, if Gemma had been lost?

  Her thoughts go again to Tristan, floating alone in his own inky black hole, physically close, his consciousness adrift.

  Gemma set out on that same journey, but they managed to bring her back.

  Please God they can find a way to do the same for Tristan.

  Thirty-seven

  There are hours of waiting in getting Gemma discharged. When Laura arrives on the ward – still the crazy place it was last night, still next to impossible to find anyone who knows what should happen next – Gemma is already dressed, sitting on her bed and desperate to go home. After a long time, a nurse arrives to take Gemma to the psychiatric unit, and she returns not long afterwards with a prescription for antidepressants.

  She hands the paper to her mother.

  ‘I’m so not taking those. So many people at school are on them. They just make you into a zombie.’

  ‘Maybe you should think about it, sweetie. Under the circumstances, I mean.’

  ‘Mum. No.’

  Laura’s unable to resist asking the question, even though she knows Gemma won’t answer. As she’s learned, the two of them aren’t close.

  ‘So what did they ask you?’

  ‘Just stuff. She talked about the importance of mental health and dealing with stress, like I don’t know already. Can we go now?’

  As they walk across the car park, Laura sees Gemma sniff the air, as if she might, on some level at least, be grateful she’s here to see this new day. In the car, she’s quiet, until they’re approaching a McDonald’s, where she asks Laura to pull in.

  ‘I’m starving. The food they were handing out at the hospital was rank.’

  Fast food in the Ridley household is normally reserved for special occasions, but if Gemma still being with them isn’t a special occasion, then what is? In the drive-through, she orders a Big Mac, fries and a chocolate milkshake, and wolfs them as if she hasn’t eaten for a week. Which, on reflection, she hasn’t.

  Could it be that this episode marks a turning point, a low spot from which the only way is up? Is it possible she’s given herself a wake-up call, and whatever it was that was getting her down, she’ll start to get over it?

  Laura’s fingers are firmly crossed.

  At home, Laura expects Gemma to disappear upstairs and close her bedroom door, but something’s different. The sun is shining, and the garden looks, if not pretty, inviting. When Laura puts the kettle on to make coffee, Gemma finds juice in the fridge, pours herself a glass over ice, and heading out on to the deck, takes a seat at the table.

  As Laura’s pouring milk into her mug, her phone rings. Mandy, no doubt wanting chapter and verse on Gemma’s drama. Not happening. Laura bounces the call and joins Gemma outside.

  The breeze is off the hills, and there’s that heady scent of heather and bracken, of rocky streams and weathered stone. Gemma’s taking deeper breaths than normal, breathing it in, and Laura wonders again if she’s thanking her lucky stars for her narrow escape. Too narrow, by far.

  ‘Do I have to go to school tomorrow?’ she asks.

  ‘I don’t think so,’ says Laura. She can imagine the difficulties Gemma will face if Hannah hasn’t kept her mouth shut (and when has Hannah ever kept her mouth shut?) – stares, nudges, maybe even taunting and teasing. That can’t be helped; it’s a crucial life lesson, learning to rise above it all when you’ve done something gossip-worthy, but a couple of days in the sanctuary of home will make Gemma much better prepared.

  Gemma leans her head back and watches the clouds move slowly across the sky.

  ‘Penny for them?’ asks Laura.

  ‘What does that mean?’ Gemma looks smilingly baffled, and Laura smiles too.

  ‘Haven’t I ever said that to you before? It was one of Grandma’s favourite expressions. Penny for your thoughts, it means. From the days when a penny had some value. Do you remember Grandpa telling tales of the penny chews he used to buy with his pocket money?’

  ‘Old people live in the past.’

  ‘They have a long past to live in.’

  ‘Do you miss Grandma and Grandpa, Mum?’

  The question takes Laura aback. Gemma never asks personal questions, not since she hit the self-obsession of her teens and lost interest in almost everything but herself. As she considers how to answer, she feels the pricking of tears. Delayed shock, no doubt, from last night.

  ‘Yes, I do. Every day.’

  ‘I miss them too.’

  ‘I would have missed you far, far more if we hadn’t found you in time.’

  Immediately Laura’s said the words, she wishes she hadn’t. They’re far too intimate for their present relationship, way too exposing. She expects Gemma to leave her, and will be sorry if she does, but Gemma’s focus seems to be back on the clouds passing overhead.

  ‘Do you think that’s where people go when they die, up there behind the clouds?’

  Laura lightens her tone. ‘I like to think so. I like to think Grandma and Grandpa are up there somewhere, looking down on us all, keeping us safe, being our guardian angels.’

  ‘If that’s true, they’d see everything we do. Good and bad.’

  ‘So you’d better not do anything bad.’

  Gemma falls silent again and Laura sips her coffee, hardly daring to move, not wanting to startle her daughter away. But still Gemma remains, and Laura begins to realise she has something to say, if she can find the right words.

  The doorbell rings: the postman, needing a signature for one of Aidan’s internet orders. By the time Laura returns to the garden, Gemma has disapp
eared.

  Late that afternoon, Aidan texts and asks if he should bring a takeaway, for which Laura is grateful. Having had almost no sleep the previous night, the fog of fatigue has taken over, and the thought of cooking is too much. She suggests pizza, and asks him to bring a side salad for her and Gemma, and plenty of chips for Josh, otherwise he’ll bolt a whole pizza to himself and everyone else will go hungry.

  Even though it’s takeaway, they eat at the outside table. Gemma is quiet, but manages two slices with tuna and peppers. As predicted, Josh takes far more than his share, chattering about a dramatic experiment in the chemistry lab as he dives into the chips. When there’s nothing left but greasy boxes, Gemma slips away upstairs. As she carries the plates into the kitchen, Laura’s eyes follow her anxiously.

  Aidan’s about to leave the table too when Josh says, ‘Fancy a game of footie, Dad?’

  Aidan has invoices to produce and orders to submit, but it’s been a difficult twenty-four hours. Recalling how he felt seeing Gemma lying on the floor, he reckons he can spare some time for his son.

  ‘Think you’re up to it? I’m in goal.’

  They play for about half an hour, Aidan letting in a few balls he could have saved, then finding when Josh is in goal he cuts his father no slack. Josh makes a great save, and Aidan calls time.

  ‘I’m about done, buddy. Shall we go and get a drink?’ Walking back towards the house, he puts his arm around his son’s shoulders. As he does so, Josh stops.

  ‘Dad, can I ask you something?’

  ‘Ask away.’

  ‘What’s wrong with Gemma?’

  Aidan hesitates. Stupid to think Josh wouldn’t be upset by what had happened. He should have been proactive, talked about it this morning before school.

  ‘She’s just having a difficult time at the moment, son. Sometimes things affect us more than they might at other times – all those things like hormones play a part. And when the world looks dark, people do mad things, like taking too many tablets they think are going to make them feel better, and they end up feeling worse.’

  ‘She took an overdose.’

  Aidan sighs. ‘Yes, she did. She took an overdose.’

  ‘Doesn’t she love us any more?’

  Aidan squeezes Josh’s shoulder. ‘Of course she loves us. But do you know why she got in that mess? Because she didn’t trust any of us – me, or your mum, or you – enough to tell us how she was feeling. She kept it all bottled up inside, so it all went rotten.’

  ‘Like brain rot?’

  ‘Well, not exactly like that, but brain rot if you like.’

  ‘What if you hadn’t found her? Would she have died?’

  Aidan doesn’t want to answer that question, so he says, ‘What you always have to remember is that we’re your family, and you can always come to us with any problem, any problem at all, and we’ll listen and we’ll stand by you. That’s what families do. Never bottle things up, Josh. There’s never anything so bad you can’t tell me or your mum. Nothing. I used to be a policeman, remember? There’s nothing you can tell me I haven’t heard before. We have to trust each other. Promise?’

  Josh nods, and glances up at the bedroom window where he hopes Gemma is listening.

  ‘Ice cream?’ asks Aidan, and he and Josh go inside.

  Thirty-eight

  Izzy’s at the wrong end of another lonely evening, standing with the fridge door open, hesitating between a Chablis and a Rosé d’Anjou. The house is full of that disturbing silence which gets inside your head, the kind where you hear dust-motes falling and every drip of a leaky tap, the kind where every empty second lets you know you’re all alone.

  She isn’t alone, in truth. Flora’s asleep upstairs, and if it gets too much, Izzy will take a glass of wine and go and sit in the nursing chair at the corner of her daughter’s room, sipping while she watches Flora’s breathing, comforted by the knowledge that even though she has no one to talk to, another living soul is here. Yet sole care of Flora is a weighty responsibility, one which she feels she’s failing. What kind of woman drinks in her child’s bedroom? The answer is simple: the kind of woman who’s been betrayed by the man she thought was in love with her. The kind of woman whose faith in everything she knows lies like rubble around her feet.

  She stands indecisive before the fridge until the sensor starts to bleep because it’s getting too warm, and pressed into a decision by the noise, chooses the rosé because of its attractive hawthorn colour. When she tastes it, the wine has some of hawthorn’s sharpness too, but Izzy doesn’t mind. Sweet or sour, the effect’s the same, though with Flora in her care, she really ought to eat something to stop it going straight to her head. Bridget has bought eggs from Taylor’s farm; Flora loves to go and see the chickens strut and peck about. An omelette, then, and maybe a slice of toast.

  She’s heating olive oil in a pan when the house phone rings. Immediately, she’s tense. Every call might be the hospital. Then she thinks it might be Laura, and if it is, she’ll be pleased. Turning off the gas, she looks at the phone display before she answers.

  A London number.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘Izzy, my dear, it’s Duncan. How are you?’

  ‘I’m all right. Just getting something to eat.’

  ‘That’s the ticket. Got to keep your strength up. Listen, before we go any further, have you got that machine switched on, that robot house controller?’

  ‘Do you mean Alexa?’ She glances over at the machine, and sees a light come on as it hears its name.

  ‘Exactly so. Could you turn it off? I mean right off, unplug it or switch it off at the wall.’

  ‘Is that necessary?’

  ‘I really think it is.’

  Izzy lays down the phone and tracks the wire connecting the device along the countertop to a power point near the floor. She turns off the switch, then decides to go one better and pulls the plug from its socket.

  ‘Done.’

  ‘And are you alone this evening?’

  ‘Flora’s asleep upstairs.’

  ‘But your nanny’s not there?’

  ‘She’s been gone a couple of hours. What’s this about?’

  She hears him take a swallow of what will certainly be wine.

  ‘Well, it’s not good,’ says Duncan. ‘And I really don’t want to put you under any more stress, especially with the way things are. How is Tris doing today, by the way? Has there been any change?’

  ‘No, no change. I thought it might be the hospital when you rang. I get jumpy, you know.’

  ‘Of course you do, of course you do.’ His tone is always soothing; he’s competent and capable, always to be relied on, like a favourite uncle with unlimited resources of whatever you need – advice, sympathy, cash – always at his disposal. ‘The thing is this, Izzy. I’m afraid you have a spy in the camp, my dear.’

  Izzy feels a coldness in her stomach.

  ‘A spy? What on earth are you talking about?’

  ‘Let me tell you from the beginning. I had a phone call from someone you don’t know, a woman called Dolly Blythe. Does that name ring any bells?’

  The coldness mutates into the beginnings of nausea.

  ‘Dolly? Isn’t that what Tris’s first wife was called?’

  ‘That’s her. Quite a blast from the past, I can tell you. I haven’t spoken to her in many, many years, so you can imagine how surprised I was to hear from her. Anyway, we went through the usual pleasantries, until she finally got round to telling me why she’d called. She herself had been contacted by her half-brother or step-brother or whatever relation to her he is, a chap called Murray Roe. You don’t know that name, I’m sure.’

  ‘No.’ A thought strikes her. ‘Wait a minute.’ She finds her mobile and scrolls through her messages to find the photo sent by DS Weld: a face she didn’t recognise, captioned Murray Roe. She goes bac
k to the house phone. ‘I don’t know him, but the police asked me about him the other day. I think he was at the wedding.’

  ‘So they’re already aware of him, are they? Interesting. Let’s park the wedding, just for a moment. Back in the mists of time, while Dolly and Tristan were married, Murray was Tristan’s brother-in-law. From what Dolly says, they were never close, but he was a relative nonetheless.’

  ‘Where’s all this going?’

  ‘Where it’s going, I’m sorry to say, is that Murray thinks he’s got a story about Tris he’s going to sell to the papers.’

  ‘What story?’

  There’s a slight hesitation before Duncan replies.

  ‘Look, I don’t want you to worry about that. It’s all cobblers, of course – these things very rarely have any substance to them, but the newspapers have become less and less careful about what they print. Let me worry about that part of it. I’ll make a few phone calls, call in a few favours. It might cost me a couple of lunches, but I think I can persuade the right people that going to print with anything Mr Roe tries to sell them could turn out to be very costly indeed. When they know I’m on the case, they’ll soon leave it alone. Without Dolly, they don’t have a story anyway, and she’s most emphatic she doesn’t want to see anything in the media. She’s dead against the whole thing. But happily for us, Dolly was a very clever girl. She played along a bit with Murray, suggested she might be interested in making a few quid – who isn’t, after all? – and so she got the full story from him, what he was planning. Turns out he’s turned your nanny – what’s her name, by the way?’

  ‘Bridget,’ says Izzy quietly.

  ‘Bridget, that’s the one. Sounds like he’s turned her into a mole. She’s been recording your conversations through that Alexa thing. I do hope you haven’t been too indiscreet?’

  ‘Why shouldn’t I be indiscreet in my own home?’

  ‘Does that mean you have?’

  Izzy immediately thinks of her conversation with Laura, where everything – everything – spilled out.

  ‘Oh my God.’

  ‘I’m guessing that’s not so good. But not to worry, not to worry. We’ll get this all sorted. There’s no harm done. Yet.’