I Follow You

by Peter James

  She nodded, blankly. ‘What a mess – it’s all a fucking nightmare.’

  Kath put an arm on her shoulder, facing her. ‘Georgie, the ICU team are going to get Roger straightened out and back on his feet, I’m sure of it. But we do need to terminate your baby, and I know how tough that is for you.’

  Georgie placed a hand on her brow, scraping back her hair, and the other on her midriff. ‘I don’t even know if it’s a boy or girl.’

  ‘Do you remember I sent you an envelope?’ she said gently. ‘It’s in there, if you want to know.’

  Tears rolled down her face. ‘I don’t know, Kath. How can I decide this shit? My life is a total wreck. Part of me is thinking, do I have any moral right to kill it just so I might live?’

  Kath pulled out another tissue and dabbed away more of Georgie’s tears.

  ‘Don’t torture yourself. Just think it through. If you went to term without any treatment, you’d be creating a very serious risk that the baby would lose its mother in infancy – how would you feel about that? Who would take care of it?’

  Georgie sat in miserable silence, her thoughts all tangled, desperately wishing she could talk to Roger about this. They’d work this through together.

  ‘When would you do it?’ she said, in a voice barely above a whisper.

  ‘I’d like to get you into theatre tomorrow.’

  ‘After I’ve done all the chemo and radiation treatment, if all’s good, would there be a chance I could conceive again?’ Georgie asked.

  Clow gave her a sad smile. ‘I’m afraid not. There’ll be too much radiation and chemo damage.’

  Georgie said, ‘I’ve read about people who have to undergo cancer treatment having things like eggs, ovaries, frozen. Is that a possibility?’

  Kath shook her head. ‘To do that I’d have to put you through a programme of hyperstimulation, which takes time – and it would accelerate the progress of the cancer. It’s also very possible there are cancerous cells in your ovaries – we can’t risk preserving those and passing it on.’

  ‘Great,’ she said bitterly. ‘It’s just fucked up, isn’t it? I feel like I’m the filling in a triple-shit sandwich.’

  Clow gave a sympathetic smile. ‘Not a bad analogy.’

  Georgie lapsed into her thoughts. Then she said, ‘So tomorrow – that’s when you want to do it?’

  ‘Yes. I’ve already spoken to the Marsden and booked you in for next Monday.’

  ‘Next Monday? You’ve already booked me in? What about Roger? I want him to be a part of this decision.’

  ‘Hopefully, he’ll be a lot better by next week. But whatever his condition, I think he would be very upset to think he’d caused any delay in your treatment starting. Time really is critical.’

  ‘How long after this op – abortion – will I be on my feet again?’

  ‘After the procedure you’ll be in hospital overnight and it will take you a few days to recover, but you should be able to fly on Monday morning. The States of Jersey will cover your travel and hospital costs, so there won’t be anything to pay.’

  ‘Sod the money,’ she said.

  ‘It’s not going to be cheap and I don’t want you having to worry about the costs.’

  ‘Very thoughtful,’ Georgie said, more bitterly than she had intended.

  ‘I’ve also spoken to Mr Valentine. He’s not scheduled to be operating tomorrow – he has a day at his private consulting rooms – but he’s very kindly agreed to move something around and fit you in at 2 p.m.’

  ‘What?’ She sat bolt upright. ‘Marcus Valentine? You mean he’s going to be doing it?’

  ‘Yes, Georgie. I want you to have our top gynae-oncologist.’

  She shook her head wildly, and shouted out, ‘No!’ The vehemence in her voice startled Kath.

  ‘You’d be in the best possible hands.’

  ‘You think so, Kath? I’m not convinced. He makes me feel uncomfortable. There has to be an alternative. Please.’

  The obstetrician looked at her. ‘If this was me in your situation, it’s Mr Valentine I would ask for, Georgie.’

  She shook her head. ‘Couldn’t you do it? Surely you can do it?’

  ‘If that’s what you really want?’

  ‘It is.’

  Clow pulled her appointments diary up on her screen and studied it for some moments. ‘Well, OK, there’s a meeting I can duck out of.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  She could see the relief on Georgie’s face. It was Georgie’s decision and if she felt more comfortable with her doing it then so be it.

  But why, the obstetrician wondered, was Georgie so against Valentine? She couldn’t even begin to know the emotional turmoil that must be going on inside her mind. Was it that she’d just prefer a female surgeon? If it gave her some crumb of comfort, then why not do it herself, she supposed.

  All the same, she would have been a lot happier if Marcus Valentine had been doing it. He was much more experienced than she was, and more able to assess what else might be going on inside Georgie.

  ‘OK,’ she said. ‘Please can you check in with the Gynaecology ward before 11 a.m. tomorrow. Don’t eat anything after 8 a.m., and no fluids after 11 a.m. All clear on that?’

  ‘Clear, thank you, Kath,’ Georgie said, quietly.

  90

  Monday 21 January

  As soon as Georgie had left, Kath Clow dialled Marcus Valentine’s internal number. He answered on the first ring.

  ‘It’s Kath. Do you have five minutes?’

  He hesitated. ‘I’m due at a meeting – but yes, five minutes max. In your office?’

  ‘In my office.’

  ‘I’ll be right there.’

  He entered a brief while later, dressed in a dark suit. ‘What’s up?’

  She ushered him to the chair Georgie had just vacated and sat opposite, looking intently at him. ‘A couple of things. The first is I’m so terribly sad about Robert Resmes.’

  ‘Me too,’ he replied. ‘I’m just devastated. Such a terrible waste. He was such a lovely, bright guy, with a big future ahead of him. I told him he had all the makings of a truly great doctor.’

  His body language gave her nothing but genuine sadness.

  ‘I didn’t have the chance to know him as well as you did,’ she said. ‘But I had that impression, too – so did all the staff here.’

  ‘They did.’

  ‘Look, there’s something I didn’t want to tell you, Marcus, because I didn’t want him to get into trouble for seeming disloyal to you.’

  ‘Oh? What do you mean, Kath?’ He smiled. ‘Sounds rather cryptic.’

  ‘Well, it doesn’t matter now he’s dead, poor man. Robert Resmes came to see me on Thursday and said he’d been assisting when you’d removed Roger Richardson’s spleen.’

  ‘Correct, he was.’ He frowned. ‘Came to see you?’

  She hesitated. ‘Look, this is difficult for me to say, but he told me he was sure that he had seen a tear in Roger Richardson’s bowel, which you hadn’t spotted.’

  She saw the sudden fury in his face. ‘Oh, for God’s sake, Kath! He said the same thing to me. It was scar tissue from a previous exploratory op – probably years back. Utterly ridiculous! But I suppose an easy mistake for a student to make.’

  ‘That’s what I told him.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘The other thing is that Georgie Maclean would rather I performed her termination.’

  For an instant his face seemed to tighten, then relax again. ‘Really? Yes, fine, if that would make her feel better – poor thing – I don’t have a problem. I’ve frankly got a damned busy day over at Bon Sante.’

  ‘Good, thank you, Marcus. Are you OK if I use the theatre time you’ve booked in for it?’

  ‘Oh, absolutely, you might as well.’

  ‘You’re a star!’

  He smiled. ‘It’s a pretty poor prognosis she has.’

  ‘It is.’

  ‘If I can give you one small piece of advice,
Kath. I can see you care about this delightful lady. Don’t let it get to you, OK?’

  She nodded. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘We’re a team, Kath. Any time, you know that.’

  91

  Monday 21 January

  Marcus Valentine left Kath Clow’s office and hurried down to the meeting of the hospital’s oncology team. For the next hour he barely listened, contributing almost nothing. His mind was totally focused on tomorrow and on what he had just heard from the obstetrician.

  It was too much of a risk to let the woman carry out the termination, in case of what she saw – or rather, didn’t see. And he hadn’t liked the way she was looking at him. Was it suspicion he’d seen in her expression?

  So that little shit, Resmes, had shot his mouth off to her, and to who else?

  He needed to resolve this mess, fast, to follow through the chain of events that he’d carefully planned.

  While various PowerPoint images appeared on the screen in front of his assembled colleagues, he was preoccupied making mental notes. Slowly a revised plan was taking shape, haphazardly at first but steadily crystallizing into something that might work.

  Would work.

  Had to work.

  Sometimes you had to be bold, make the biggest leaps to achieve the greatest victories.

  He remembered Kath telling him, a while back, that her son – his godson – was being bullied at school. And that she was worried because Charlie had kept hinting that he was planning to take revenge on his tormentors, but refused to elaborate to her.

  That had possibilities. He just needed to do a little detective work.

  As soon as the meeting was over, he was due at his private consulting rooms. He asked his registrar to head on over and to tell his assistant to apologize to the private patients he had booked in and say that he would be there as soon as possible. Then he hurried up to his office. He was trying to remember the name of Charlie’s school. He momentarily berated himself for not showing more of an interest over the years.

  Seated at his desk, he logged on and clicked onto Kath Clow’s Facebook page.

  He began trawling through her posts. A recent photograph of her husband amid a flock of sheep at their house in the Lake District. A post of her in running gear, breaking the tape at a 10K event. Then one of her in cycling kit, standing next to her fair-haired son. Behind them were road bikes propped against a bridge wall, with a canal running through a pretty town in the background.

  My boy Charlie and me on a bike ride around glorious Annecy last summer!

  Marcus smiled. Why hadn’t he thought of it? His godson was bound to have online profiles of his own.

  He did.

  It took only a couple of minutes to find him on Instagram, where he was a prolific poster.

  The most recent post was of the boy, in rugby kit, lying horizontal in mud on a playing field. The caption read:

  Scoring my third try of the game for GdL! Grève de Lecq School v Grouville Academy Under 10s.

  Grève de Lecq School. He googled it.

  The school had an active Facebook page. He trawled through the other links. Saw photographs of all the teachers with their mini bios beneath. Then a list of recent sporting achievements. There was a team photograph headed ‘Under 10s Rugby Squad’.

  Charlie sat surrounded by the team, holding the rugby ball.

  He’d always been generous to his godson, giving him a lavish christening present, as well as generous birthday and Christmas gifts every year without fail. He’d not seen as much of him in recent years as perhaps he should have, and had he done so that might have been useful now, but hey-ho, onwards all the same.

  Now, Charlie, now it’s payback time. Your chance to do your godfather a little favour!

  92

  Monday 21 January

  Seated at her kitchen table in silence, Georgie refilled her glass yet again. It didn’t matter any more. She’d drunk the tiny drop of white that had been in the bottle in the fridge, and in the absence of anything else was now making inroads on a red. It was a bottle Roger had been saving for a special occasion. Well, hell, this was a special occasion. It was a special need.

  She took a photograph of the label, making a mental note to try to replace it. She’d search online for an identical bottle tomorrow – hoping it wasn’t going to be too crazily expensive.

  ‘Cheers, my darling, here’s to your recovery. Soon. Please!’ She raised her glass.

  Jesus.

  There had been plenty of shit days in her life but, boy, this one topped the lot. This one was the doozy of doozies. She put the bottle down harder than she’d meant and it wobbled, nearly toppling over – she just grabbed it in time. Then stared at it, struggling to focus on the label: Château Lafite, 1989.

  Must be past its sell-by date, she thought with a grin. What was the story with old wine, she wondered? When did someone realize it tasted better long past the date when any other product would have been binned? Thirty-year-old vintage tuna? How long could you keep cheese? Until it walked out of the kitchen?

  I’m getting a little wasted. Probably shouldn’t be drinking, having an anaesthetic in the morning, she knew, but she was beyond caring. I’m a dead woman walking.

  It was 11 p.m. Earlier, she’d done what she always did when she was upset, she’d put on her kit and run. And run. On her route she’d gone up to the Bel Royal Hotel, but there was still a police scene guard outside, and no one was allowed in. So, she’d carried on. Almost eight miles. But it hadn’t made her feel any better. She’d moped around the house, unable to settle, then called Lucy, needing a friendly voice. They spoke on the phone for over an hour, mostly about Georgie, what she had to do. Lucy offered to come over and cook for her, but Georgie refused, needing time to herself. Lucy tried to cheer her friend up by telling her about some of her latest online and speed-dating exploits.

  Despite them all being disasters, Lucy remained positive. There was someone out there for her, she only had to find him. Just like you and Roger found each other, she’d added.

  When they ended the call, Georgie felt in a better place. But then, stupidly she knew, she googled cervical cancer again – undoing all the good of the last hour’s conversation – and spent nearly two hours looking at images, reading forums, checking out alternative treatments. Then the dismissive reports of experts.

  Sod experts.

  Roger always had a healthy scepticism of experts. He had something he always trotted out whenever an expert was pontificating on television or in the papers about some matter of high importance. On the day the world ends, Roger would say, the last sound anyone will hear will be the voice of an expert explaining why it could not happen.

  Then she’d started hitting the wine, thinking, what did it matter? Remembering the past warnings from Kath and the midwife when her pregnancy had been confirmed, that alcohol might harm her unborn baby. Oh yes, sure. She laughed silently, bitterly. Probably wouldn’t harm it as much as an abortion, eh?

  She reached out for her glass, then peered at it suspiciously, struggling to focus. It was empty.

  Didn’t I just fill it?

  Reaching out for the bottle, this time she did knock it over. But nothing poured out. Just a few drops.

  Shit.

  She tried to stand, but didn’t feel too confident about it, swaying and having to grab the table to steady herself. She sat back down, much harder than she had intended. Then she stared down, for the hundredth time tonight, at the printout of Kath Clow’s scan of the tiny creature inside her, barely three centimetres long, that she and Roger had been given just before Christmas, a month ago. God, they’d been so happy then.

  How big are you now? she wondered, tears rolling down her face.

  Next to it sat the still-unopened envelope from Kath, containing the information on the baby’s sex. Should she open it now?

  And just feel even worse?

  She ripped the envelope in half. Then in half again. Then tore all the bits of the envelope
and the sheet of paper inside into smaller and smaller pieces. She scooped them up and dumped them in the bin, and sat back down again.

  She’d hoped having a drink might numb some of the misery she was feeling, but it hadn’t. It had made her feel even worse.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered. ‘I’m so, so sorry.’

  Her eyes felt leaden; her head gave up its struggle with gravity and sank down to the surface of the table. She rested her cheek on the hard, warm wood and in seconds was asleep.

  For a brief while after she woke up, she stared around, confused. The clock was showing 2.55.

  What?

  Someone was poking a blowtorch around inside her head and she had a raging thirst. After downing two paracetamols with a glass of water she staggered, still unsteady, into the bedroom, pulled off her clothes, just remembered in time to set the alarm and crashed out again.

  93

  Tuesday 22 January

  At 10.15 a.m., not sure if she should be driving after all she had drunk last night, Georgie cruised slowly along the lower level of the multistorey that was reserved for hospital patients and visitors, looking for a parking space. Before leaving home, she’d postponed her clients’ appointments. She felt terrible, on the verge of throwing up at any moment. The blowtorch was still searing the insides of her head. Her hands were shaking. She had a bitter chill under her skin.

  She was pregnant. Carrying her baby. Their baby. Hers and Roger’s.

  An expectant mother.

  Her dream for years.

  In a few hours she would no longer be an expectant mother.

  From his mother’s womb, untimely ripped.

  The words popped into her head. Macduff? From Macbeth? She’d never been a big Shakespeare fan, but Macbeth was one play that had always fascinated her. Something about Lady Macbeth herself. So damned evil.

  She wished now that she’d asked Lucy to come with her, but pride had stopped her. She’d thought she could deal with this. But as she reversed into a narrow slot, then switched the engine off, she was really struggling.