Love Until It Hurts

by Fiona Blakemore

He settles back in his seat, his eyes drifting up to the television monitor. There’s a Formula One car on the screen now, against the back drop of a racetrack. It looks like Silverstone. He wishes his could turn up the volume, but it’s the headlines that attract his attention. Lucky Pagoda has been banned from Formula One. Dominic stands up and walks over to the screen. The words are on a continuous loop. Scandal. Banned. Dropped by the International Automobile Federation. Links with the China State Tobacco Enterprise.

  Dominic raps on the counter, just as the mechanic reappears.

  ‘All ready for you now, sir,’ says the fresh-faced youth. ‘Your car’s passed its MOT. Just a couple of advis…

  ‘Can you unmute the television,’ says Dominic impatiently.

  ‘Sorry, sir?’

  ‘The television. I want to hear the news. It’s important.’

  ‘Em. I’ll need to find the..’

  ‘Now. Please. It’s important.’

  Dominic stares at the screen. It changes to another item. The moment is gone. He needs to get home. He turns back to the mechanic. ‘Too late. Can I have my keys?’

  ‘Of course,’ says the youth, passing a sheaf of papers, and his keys, over the counter. ‘If I could just have your card details, please and I can go through what I’ve done.’

  Dominic inserts his card into the machine and hurriedly taps in his PIN number.

  ‘Not much on the advisories,’ the mechanic continues, ‘the offside front and rear tyres are reaching their limit. Best get them replaced in due course, although the tracking is okay. And your brake pads could do with a renewal next time.’

  Dominic hasn’t got time for this. He retrieves his card, picks up his keys and without a word of thanks he’s gone.

  Opening the front door Dominic flings his coat and papers to one side. He clatters downstairs to the kitchen and sifts the bundles of paper on the table, looking for the TV remote control. His pulse accelerates. Sweat pools in his armpits. He hears the clash of the door upstairs.

  ‘Daddy?’ Bella’s voice percolates through the floorboards.

  ‘Downstairs, darling,’ he replies.

  Courtney appears in the doorway. Behind her the frame of the tall man from the coffee shop. With the black and white umbrella. Gary Sharp.

  ‘Gary?’ Dominic looks at Courtney, then back to his colleague. ‘Well, this is a surprise. I hadn’t realised you two knew each other.’

  Courtney looks embarrassed. ‘Oh, come on, Dom, I’m sure you did,’ she says, ‘I told you. Gary and I have been going out for …’ she turns to her boyfriend as if trying to read his lips, ‘…for at least a couple of months.’

  Gary Sharp steps forward and taps Dominic’s upper arm. ‘All right, mate?’

  ‘Bella and I are going upstairs,’ says Courtney breezily. ‘She wants to show me something in her bedroom.’ She follows Bella out of the room.

  Gary shifts his weight from one foot to the other. ‘Have you heard the news?’

  ‘I… I,’ Dominic hesitates. ‘I saw the headlines. About Lucky Pagoda. Is that what you mean? I haven’t had a chance to hear the full story.’

  Gary Sharp looks downcast. He pulls out a chair. ‘It’s not good news, I’m afraid. Do you mind if I sit down?’

  Dominic feels sick.

  ‘The FT ran a story this morning on the China State Tobacco Enterprise. They own the Lucky Pagoda Formula One team. They also have the monopoly in Chinese tobacco sales.’ He sucks air in through his teeth. ‘The International Automobile Federation has issued a joint statement with the World Health Organisation stating that tobacco advertising in F1 and any links with the tobacco industry are to be banned from the end of this season.’

  ‘This doesn’t affect me, though, does it?’ Dominic’s pulse quickens.

  ‘Your shares…Oh, Christ, I don’t know how to say this.’

  ‘What about my shares?’

  Gary’s expression clouds over. ‘I’m sorry, Dominic. This isn’t easy. They’ve crashed.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Dominic can hear his voice getting louder. He approaches Gary who pushes his chair back and pulls himself up to full height, so that his chin comes level with Dominic’s brow.

  ‘They’ve plummeted on the back of this news. Worthless. God, this isn’t easy.’

  ‘Too fucking right,’ retorts Dominic. He pushes Gary back. ‘I fucking trusted you.’

  ‘I know. I know. I didn’t see this coming.’

  ‘Well you didn’t see this coming either,’ says Dominic, raising his right hand to swing a punch. He winces at the pain in his shoulder. His fingers go into spasm as he tries to clench his fist.

  Gary grasps his forearm. ‘Steady on, mate. We can work something out.’

  ‘Get out. Get out now.’

  Gary retreats, as Courtney reappears.

  ‘Bella’s in the bathroom,’ says Courtney, ‘she’ll be…’

  Gary swings her round, with his hand on her shoulder, and hustles her out of the door.

  They leave without a further word and Dominic watches them going up the basement steps, hand in hand.

  The shame. The humiliation. Being taken in by a fraudster. And his own pitiful lack of strength. He needs to retaliate somehow but he doesn’t know how. Rushing upstairs to the first floor landing he looks out the window to see if he can identify Gary’s car. There’s no sign of the couple. They are not going to hear the end of this.

  Back in the kitchen he switches on the twenty-four-hour news. The headlines continue to taunt him. He flicks to the FTSE column on his phone. He feels numb. Paralysed. Laced into a straightjacket. Unable to breathe.

  Why hadn’t he seen this coming? His brain does some quick-fire arithmetic. Christ, he might lose his house. He switches off the TV, replacing the remote control on the pile of papers on the table. And that’s when he sees the letter with its characteristic blue and red franking. His mother. The last thing he needs. But there is a way out of this mess. Potentially. He could ask Ruth for a loan. For his mother. Of course.

  34

  Ruth

  Above Ruth’s desk at work, tacked to the cork board, between a poster on handwashing and another of a talking condom, is a hand-drawn picture of a cat in multi-coloured crayon.

  ‘Look what I made for you,’ Bella said, her eyes shining as she pressed the paper into Ruth’s hand, the day she came home again from hospital. ‘I drew a picture of Tilly, sitting under a rainbow. Brenda helped me make it.’

  ‘Brenda?’ Ruth asked. The name sounded familiar, and then she remembered seeing her coming out of the ward. Brenda, the social worker, the same woman who had turned up on Dominic’s doorstep the day the ambulance was called.

  ‘That’s lovely, darling,’ Ruth said. ‘I’ll put it on the wall in my office so I can see it every day.’

  Ruth has watched Bella closely, in the days since the picture went up, and her cheeks have filled out more, her hair seems glossier. She’s back to her usual innocent banter. Yesterday, when Ruth asked her to go and wash her hands she stood, with her hand on her hip, and said she’d do it ‘in a minute.’ Bella was on the mend.

  By contrast, Ruth isn’t feeling any better. Her period has come late. Her morning surgery drags. By eleven o’clock the thought of coffee makes Ruth feel sick. She settles, instead, for water. Maybe she’s dehydrated. The nausea and headaches are still there, even though she knows she’s not pregnant. She opens the window but there’s hardly any movement of air. The atmosphere has a muggy heat, like a swimming costume which has been rolled into a suitcase still wet.

  She’d agreed with Dominic that she’d go home tonight. She needs to pick up a few things, plus finish her accounts. It had been his idea for her to move in permanently and, the more she thinks about it, the more it makes sense. Making an appointment with the lettings agency had been much more straightforward than she
’d anticipated. She drags her thoughts back to the present and reaches for the call button.

  Her last patient is eighty years old, brought in by her daughter because she’s having dizzy spells. As she listens to the younger woman recounting the story, she looks at the old lady’s expressionless face and observes how she rolls her thumb repeatedly over the tips of her fingers. Ruth looks at her prescription chart. She’s on sixteen different medications, many vital to managing her Parkinson’s disease, but half her drugs have been prescribed to counteract the side effects of the other half.

  ‘I think I know the reason for your dizzy spells, Mrs. Wright,’ Ruth says, laying her hand on top of the elderly lady’s, and feeling it tremble under her fingers. ‘And I think that, by stopping one of your tablets, we can sort out the problem.’ Satisfied that there’s no–one else waiting to see her, Ruth spends the next half hour going through her patient’s drug chart, cancelling two drugs which work to lower blood pressure, but which, together, exaggerate this to dangerous effect. She concludes by asking her to come back for review in a couple of weeks. The daughter expresses her gratitude and morning surgery finishes satisfactorily.

  ‘Dizzy spells,’ Ruth writes in Mrs. Wright’s notes. ‘Iatrogenic cause. Diuretic discontinued. Beta blocker reduced.’

  Drugs. They should always be the first thing to consider. Always. Just one of the many causes of dizziness. She congratulates herself on another correct diagnosis.

  Fingers of light point through a leaden sky, as Ruth departs on her afternoon visits. The clammy heat sucks at her energy, like a leech. Fronds of warm breath mist the car windows. She pulls into the drive of the first house, stirring up loose chippings which crunch under her tyres. Switching off her engine she checks her phone, which has vibrated at regular intervals during her journey.

  Three new messages. All from Dom. The air conditioning has cut out and now the atmosphere feels oppressive.

  Bella has temp this morning. Given Calpol but no better. Ideas?

  Have rung GP for appt as no reply from you.

  Ring me when you get this message as may be home late.

  She sighs. How did he manage before? She wonders if this will change when she moves in permanently. Maybe she should ignore the messages until later. Maybe if she disregards them things will sort themselves out. But instead her mind drifts to Bella, and she taps Dominic’s number on her phone.

  ‘Dom? How’s Bella?’

  ‘Oh, at last. Thank God you’ve rung. Miserable. Sick. Complaining of earache. She’s had Calpol. I’ve got a doctor’s appointment this evening.’

  ‘But she was fine this morning, wasn’t she? Do you want me to come round later?’

  She holds her breath momentarily, hoping he’ll say no. She needs to have this evening to herself. Her paperwork has been pushed down the list of her priorities, until she can ignore it no longer.

  ‘No need. That’s why I was ringing you. Don’t know what time we’ll be back. I’ll ring you later.’

  ‘Okay, but if you change your mind just let me know.’

  ‘I will. Maybe come over tomorrow? I want to ask you a favour. Nothing urgent. Oh, and Ruth?’ He hesitates and his voice sounds distant.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I love you.’

  Ruth hears the clash of a front door and looks up to see her patient’s husband striding towards her car.

  ‘Listen, I’ve got to go. Love you too. Speak to you later.’

  An eerie light percolates through the glass-roofed atrium. The waiting area is empty. Ruth walks through to reception to deposit some pathology specimens in the courier’s bag. The office is quiet. Both receptionists, who are manning the phones, are chatting over their cups of tea.

  ‘Can’t believe how quiet it is,’ says Ruth.

  Julie looks up. ‘There’s been a few cancellations. Did you hear the thunder earlier? There’s more on the way too, according to the forecast. Typical British summer.’

  Ruth walks over to a filing cabinet. She slides open the drawer and takes out a notepad.

  ‘Just taking a prescription pad for my visits, ladies.’ It had puzzled her earlier when she went to write a prescription and couldn’t locate her pad in her bag. So unlike her to go on a visit unprepared. The receptionists don’t look up.

  She wanders back to her room. Time to complete some medical insurance forms. There’s also a letter from Social Services requesting more information on a child protection case. Ruth clicks open the little boy’s electronic records. She can see that he’s been a frequent attender with episodes of minor illness and has had lots of time off school. His mother, a former drug addict, has another child who’s in foster care and she’s pregnant again with a new partner, residing at the same address. Ruth adds an alert on his notes, and completes the form.

  She leaves work at six thirty and runs across the car park in the pelting rain, as if dodging bullets. She flings herself into the car seat, her tights clinging to her legs in wet streaks. With dismay she realises she needs milk so, stopping at the twenty-four hour grocers, she repeats the performance, being blunted by the wind, as she exits the car. Once through the front door her clothes are peeled off and dropped on the floor in a sodden trail which soon reaches the shower.

  For the first time in ages it feels good to have the place to herself. She has a shower then goes downstairs in her dressing gown to make a tray to take to her study. Two slices of toast, a plate of salami and cheese, plus a bowl of olives and another of nuts. She’s tempted to pour herself a large glass of wine but, instead, settles for a large cafetiere of coffee.

  The low-wattage bulb from the desk lamp casts a cone of light over her credit card statements, as she scans down them, highlighting the petrol bills. Her fingers hover over the monthly fee for alikemind.com. She casts her mind back over the hopeful, failed encounters. Another image supersedes this now. It’s Bella, her hand outstretched, presenting her with a handmade card. Ruth reaches for a highlighter pen and strikes through the line with surgical precision. A reminder to cancel her subscription. With a pang of regret she realises she’s been a bit selfish this evening. Picking up the phone she rings Dominic’s number, but it goes through to voicemail.

  ‘Hi, it’s Ruth. Just checking you’re both okay. Hope Bella is feeling better. Ring me when you get this message. I love you.’

  Within a couple of hours she has filed the mountain of post-it notes, receipts and bills into some kind of order. As a reward she pours herself a large vodka, tops it up with cranberry and climbs into bed. She wonders whether she should try the phone again. Five past ten. It goes straight through to voicemail as before. She’d expected a call by now. She wonders what time Bella’s appointment was. He could be putting her to bed. Or maybe they’ve both fallen asleep. It wouldn’t achieve anything to drive round to the house now. She’ll just have to be patient. As she settles down in bed she can hear the wind battering the garden furniture outside. Metal chairs slide across the patio and clash against the fence. She should have brought them inside but it’s too late and too inclement to go outside. The volume on the TV is adjusted up slightly and she slides down under the duvet.

  When she wakes, the credits of the late night horror movie are rolling across the screen. Percolating through the haunting music, however, is the sound of the front doorbell. Although she hears it, with its persistent, intrusive monotone, it takes her a while to dissociate it from the screen and realise that someone is at the front door. It can’t be Dominic. He has a key. Besides, it’s quarter past midnight now and surely he would have rung first.

  She clambers out of bed and walks over the landing to the rain-splattered window of the guest bedroom, lifting the curtain. She can’t make out the figures standing by the front door, but under the sepia spotlight of the streetlamp is the ghostly outline of a police car.

  35

  Ruth

  She stands at
the front door, silently screaming. The street is ink black, but the high visibility jackets lend a garish hue to the police constables’ faces. One of them is talking. Looking at his pimpled brow and pock-marked cheeks, Ruth suspects he’s several years younger than her. Her dressing gown flaps around her legs, so she pulls it in tight.

  1242 reads the number on his epaulette. She stares at it. A thread has come loose from the stitching. It curls under the numbers, like a cedilla, and she wonders whether, if she pulls it, everything will unravel and go away.

  She must have invited them in, because now she’s sitting in her front room and the policewoman is asking her if she takes sugar in her tea. She opens her mouth to speak but no words come out. She’s in a time warp, and the only sensation she feels is a dull pain in her chest.

  PC 1242 is apologising that it’s taken so long to notify her.

  ‘It happened around seven fifteen this evening,’ he says, ‘and although the gentleman had ID on him there was no one else at that address. It was the hospital that gave us your details as next of kin. I believe there are no other relatives?’ He puts his hand on her knee, then retracts it as an afterthought when the policewoman returns with a tray. Instead he crouches forward, bringing his head close, and says, ‘The little girl, she’s in ITU, but she’s going to be okay.’

  Ruth tries to process his words. She can hear voices upstairs. She must have left the television on. The policewoman’s radio crackles, and spits out random words, ‘Lima Charlie, Lima Charlie.’

  A sour taste bubbles in her mouth. Noises and imagery crowd in her brain. Excel spreadsheets swim across her vision. Collar numbers and petrol receipts merge. PC 1242 is pulling her into a different life and she tries to resist. He’s saying something about a need to identify the body. Just a few hours ago she’d been sitting in her study doing a menial task, which she’d deferred repeatedly. She would give anything to go back to that moment.

  Both sets of eyes are on her. The expressions behind them are those of professional objectivity, but their mouths downturn in an arc of sympathy.