Back on the dressing table, Roxie’s cell phone rang. Michael’s name flashed across the screen. Speak of the devil.
“You better have a good excuse, Houdini. Poor Tommy’s about to have a breakdown out there.”
“Miss De Vere?”
The voice on the line wasn’t Michael’s. “Yes. Who is this?”
“Oxfordshire police. I’m afraid there’s been an accident.”
“How do I look?”
Alexia twirled in front of Teddy like a high school senior on prom night.
Teddy puffed out his chest happily. “You look perfect, my dear. I could die of pride.”
Good, thought Alexia. Perfect was what she’d been aiming for.
Gone was the haggard crone of this morning. Gone also the frightened woman haunted by pictures of Jenny Hamlin’s mutilated corpse. Or the paranoid politician, looking over her shoulder for imagined enemies. There would be no enemies tonight. No death. No fear. No surprises. The prime minister and his wife might have let Alexia and Teddy down, but Alexia intended to make sure it was the Whitmans who regretted their absence at tonight’s party, not the De Veres. The party was, as Lucy Meyer had predicted, going to be “awesome.”
Dresswise, Alexia had changed her mind at the last minute, opting for a dramatic dark green gown in heavy, structured jacquard silk with a high, Oriental collar. It had a touch of the Cruella De Vil about it, but not in a bad way, and it was utterly elegant and restrained. The pearl-and-diamond choker was less restrained, but at Alexia’s age, a choker covered a multitude of sins, and it was a De Vere family heirloom, which naturally delighted Teddy. With her hair recolored, styled, and sprayed into place, her skin revivified, and her makeup flawlessly applied by the incomparable Marguerite, Alexia both looked and felt a million dollars. Battle-ready, as Teddy would have called it.
“Blast this bloody, buggery thing. Where is Bailey?”
Teddy fumbled with his bow tie in front of the mirror. A regular attendee of black- and white-tie events for well over forty years, Teddy nevertheless approached each bow tie as incompetently as if it were his first.
“You don’t need Bailey.” Alexia tutted, patting his hands away and taking charge herself. “Over, around, under, through. There. It’s not rocket science, darling.”
Slipping both arms around her waist, Teddy pulled her to him. Closing her eyes, Alexia inhaled his familiar smell, a combination of Floris aftershave, Pears soap, toothpaste, and polished shoe leather. Safety. Home. She had never been attracted to Teddy sexually, not even when they were young. But she had found his physical presence comforting, pleasant rather than exciting, like cuddling a slightly worn but much-loved teddy bear. She felt the same way now. She wished she could bottle that feeling somehow, keep it to savor when she was alone, when the stresses of the present and horrors of the past became too much for her.
“I love you.”
Teddy De Vere had been married to Alexia for more than three decades. He understood his wife well enough to know that verbal expressions of affection were not her usual style.
Reaching out, he put a concerned hand on her forehead. “Are you feeling quite well, old girl?”
Alexia batted his hand away, embarrassed. “Stop making fun. Can’t I tell my own husband how much I love him from time to time?”
“I’m not making fun.” And suddenly she saw that he wasn’t. “Darling, darling Alexia,” Teddy whispered urgently. “If you had any idea how much I love you, how far I’d go to protect you . . .”
“What?”
“You’d be terrified.”
He kissed her then, passionately, thrusting his tongue into her mouth like a teenager in the back row of a movie theater. Alexia was so shocked she responded in kind. It was exciting, like kissing a stranger, but after a few moments she was aware of being watched. Pulling away, she saw Roxie, her wheelchair parked in the master bedroom doorway. She looked stunning in a cream silk dress. At least she would have done if it weren’t for the look of revolted horror on her face.
Alexia lost her temper. “What is the matter, Roxanne? Haven’t you seen a husband and wife kiss before?”
“Steady on, darling,” murmured Teddy, but Alexia was on a roll.
“No, I’m sorry, Teddy, but I won’t ‘steady on.’ How dare she look at us like that! I’m tired of creeping around my own house, my own husband, like I’m walking on eggshells. Your father and I love each other, Roxanne. We are happy together, blissfully happy, and if you don’t like it . . . well, I’m afraid that’s simply too bad.”
Roxie opened her mouth to say something, then closed it again. For what felt like an eternity, she sat frozen in the doorway. When she did finally speak, her voice came out as a croak.
“It’s Michael.”
Cold fear flooded Alexia’s heart. “Michael? What about Michael? Has something happened?”
“That’s what I came to tell you.” Tears streamed down Roxie’s face. “There’s been a terrible accident.”
Chapter Twenty-five
Summer Meyer leaped out of the taxi and ran through the electric double doors into the John Radcliffe Hospital. Situated out in Headington, a few miles North of Oxford city center, the Radcliffe was home to one of the busiest accident and emergency departments in the country. It was still only late afternoon, but the sun was out, it was a Saturday, and the pubs were open. This being Oxford, Summer found herself fighting her way to the reception desk through a sea of drunken students, noisily bemoaning their mostly self-inflicted injuries.
“Michael De Vere,” she said breathlessly. “Motorcycle accident. He came in a few hours ago.”
Please, please hold on, Michael. Please don’t die.
A litany of hideous coincidences had prevented Summer from arriving earlier. Roxanne was listed in Michael’s wallet as his next of kin. When Roxie heard the news she’d called Summer immediately. Unfortunately Summer’s U.S. cell phone battery died, and she’d left Michael’s flat to go makeup shopping just minutes before Roxie called and left her voice mail. Summer finally heard Roxie’s message almost two hours later. She would not forget it as long as she lived. Coming back to the flat and hitting play, expecting to hear Michael’s voice, she had found herself listening instead to Roxie. Choking with sobs, Roxie told her that Michael had been “crushed” by a truck in a horrific accident, and was on his way to hospital. But it was the last five words of Roxie’s message that had branded themselves eternally on Summer’s memory:
“He might not make it.”
Summer ran out into the street, still barefoot and with her long hair dripping from the shower, but it took her fifteen minutes to find a free cab, and a further five to convince the driver to take her in her half-dressed, hysterical state. Once they did get going, the traffic on the beltway was terrible.
The receptionist in the emergency room typed Michael’s name into her computer.
“De Vere. Yes, here we are.”
“How is he? Is he in surgery?”
The receptionist looked up from her screen. “And you are?”
“Summer. Summer Meyer.”
“Are you family?”
“I’m his girlfriend.”
“Sorry. Family only.”
“But I just told you. I’m his girlfriend.”
“Y’gan be my girrrlfren, ’fyou want . . . gorgeous fucking arse.” A revolting, paralytically drunk man in a suit careered into Summer from behind, groping her as he tried to steady himself.
Turning around, Summer pushed him off hard, sending him flying back into a nearby group of patients. “Fuck off!
“Look,” she implored the receptionist, “Michael’s sister called and asked me to come. She’s his next of kin. Please. I am family. I have to see him.”
“Wait here a moment.”
Getting up, the woman conferred with a colleague in whispered tones. Summer saw the pained, serious looks on their faces and drew the obvious conclusion. I’m too late. He’s dead. She wanted to ask the question out
right, but found that the words refused to come. Instead she stood mute and helpless as the receptionist returned, handing her a slip of paper with a number on it.
“If anyone asks, say you’re related. Critical care, fourth floor, lift bank C. This is your pass.”
“Is he dead?” Summer finally blurted it out.
The receptionist looked down, unable to meet her eyes.
“They’ll explain everything to you on the fourth floor, my love.”
“Please! Just tell me. Is he dead?”
The receptionist exchanged an anxious glance with her colleague. “Look, we’re not supposed to say anything,” she whispered to Summer. “But according to my notes, Michael De Vere was pronounced dead about an hour ago. I’m so sorry. Critical will tell you more.”
Summer pushed her way through the swing doors in a daze.
Michael’s dead.
Dead.
I’m too late.
An orderly stopped her. “Are you all right, miss? Can I help?”
Summer held up her piece of paper like a zombie. The orderly waved her on. Elevator bank C was over there. Turn right for trauma, left for critical care. Reception up the stairs. Summer was aware of people moving around her, nurses and patients and visitors and doctors. There was piped-in music and a coffee shop selling plastic-wrapped sandwiches and a big fish tank with a gang of bored children hovering around it and huge glass windows with light streaming through them. But for her, everything had stopped. She moved through the corridors like a ghost, numb and silent.
He’s dead. Michael’s dead.
Bizarrely, she found herself thinking about the party. What was happening at Kingsmere while Michael’s private tragedy unfolded? Would the event still go on as planned? Or would heads of state arrive and be turned away? She tried to picture the scene.
“I’m so sorry, Your Highness. There’s been a tragedy. The hosts’ son has been killed.”
“You going up, love?”
Michael’s dead, we can’t go ahead.
That rhymes.
“Fourth floor. Doors opening.”
Michael’s dead, in a hospital bed, we can’t go ahead.
“This is critical care. Can I help you?”
“Summer.” Teddy De Vere’s voice was the first thing to reach her. She turned around and there he was. It took a few seconds for the fog to clear, for the shock to fade enough for her to recognize Michael’s father’s kind, familiar features.
“Teddy.” She burst into hysterical tears.
“Now, now.” Teddy wrapped comforting, paternal arms around her. “Don’t cry. It’s all right.”
“All right? It’s not all right,” Summer wailed. “He’s dead!”
Teddy looked perplexed. “No, he isn’t.”
Hope rose up in Summer’s throat like vomit. “Michael’s not dead?”
“No, my dear. Who told you that?”
“The receptionist. Downstairs.”
She felt her knees start to give way. Teddy helped her into a chair.
“She must have been confused. He was pronounced dead by the ambulance team initially. But when they got him here, the doctors were able to restart his heart.”
“So, he’s okay?”
It was too much to take in. The roller coaster of hope and despair had left Summer’s head reeling.
“I wouldn’t say that. He’s in a coma. That’s all we know. They operated for three hours and what can be done has been done.”
“But he’s going to be okay.”
Teddy rubbed his eyes with exhaustion. “I honestly don’t know, Summer. Alexia’s been talking to the doctors. You’d best talk to her. She’s with Michael now.”
A nurse showed Summer in. Michael’s room looked more like the deck of the starship Enterprise than a hospital room. Machines and wires and lights were everywhere—against the walls, on stands next to Michael’s bed, even suspended from the ceiling.
Then, there was Michael himself.
As soon as she saw him, Summer’s hand flew to her mouth in shock. There was no blood. But he’d been cleaned up so thoroughly, and he lay so utterly still, he barely seemed real. His body was covered with a white sheet, and the upper part of his face was swathed in bandages. Only his chin and mouth were visible, and those were half obscured with bulky tubes and a breathing apparatus that attached to a respirator behind the headboard. The wheezy wheesh, whoosh of the machine as it pumped air in and out of his lungs gave the otherwise high-tech room a distinctly old-fashioned feel. Summer half expected a dwarf to jump out from behind the bed with a pair of bellows or an accordion. Instead, Alexia stood up to greet her.
“Summer. How are you?” Alexia extended a perfectly manicured hand for Summer to shake. Her fingers were ice cold. “So sweet of you to come.”
Summer looked at her blankly. Sweet of me? Alexia was greeting as her as if this were a cocktail party she’d been kind enough to attend. Did she not realize how serious the situation was?
“What’s happening, Alexia? What are all these machines? Teddy said you spoke with the doctor.”
“The surgeon, yes, Dr. Crickdale. Terribly nice man.”
Summer waited. And . . . ?
“We’ve met before, as it happens,” Alexia rambled on. “I know him from the local constituency party. His wife’s done stalwart work as a fund-raiser.”
Summer wanted to shake her. I don’t give a fuck about the constituency party and neither should you. Your son may be dying! Instead, fighting to keep her voice steady, she asked, “What did Dr. Crickdale say about Michael?”
“Ah yes, well. Michael’s in a coma, which was medically induced.”
Summer looked horrified. “You mean the doctors did this to him?”
“They had to. There was no way they could have operated on his brain without it.”
“They operated on his brain?” Summer’s insides began to liquefy with fear. For the second time in as many minutes she found she needed to sit down.
Alexia said, “Yes. They think he was going over eighty when he hit the lorry. It was a side impact, but at that speed it’s a miracle he survived at all. Both legs and arms are broken, and there’s some internal bleeding, but the main concern is the head trauma. Dr. Crickdale removed sixteen separate shards of bone from his right ventricle.”
It was like listening to a weather report. Alexia sounded so calm, so chillingly controlled.
“There’s been considerable swelling and bleeding in the brain. Unfortunately the first scans showed a very poor level of activity. We’re waiting on the later ones, but Dr. Crickdale doesn’t hold out much hope.”
“Will he live?” Summer whispered.
“They can’t say at this stage. He may. But that may not be the best outcome.”
Summer looked at Alexia incredulously. Michael’s mother had always intimidated her. Summer had long thought of Alexia as a cold fish, but she’d never imagined her capable of such callousness toward her own son. Roxie, maybe. But Michael had always been the apple of her eye.
“What do you mean it ‘may not be the best outcome’? You don’t want him to live?”
“Not as a vegetable, no. I’ll stay with him tonight.” Alexia turned regally away, resting her diamond-encrusted hand on Michael’s limp one. “You can come back in the morning.”
It was a dismissal, an empress shooing away her ladies’ maid. Summer’s shock at Alexia’s detachment turned to anger.
“I want to stay. Michael would want me here.”
“No.” The steel in Alexia’s tone left no room for negotiation.
Summer opened her mouth to protest but Teddy wisely put a hand on her arm. “Not now,” he whispered. Outside in the corridor, he spoke more openly.
“You mustn’t judge her too harshly, my dear. She’s in shock. We all are.”
“But she’s so cold, Teddy!”
She hadn’t meant to speak so bluntly, but the words just came out.
“I know it seems that way,” Teddy said kindly.
“But that boy means everything to her.”
He means everything to me, Summer thought desperately.
“Can’t you convince her to let me stay? What if . . .” She started to cry. “What if he dies in the night?”
Teddy gave her a look of infinite kindness.
“If he dies in the night, he won’t need either of you. Will he?”
The next morning’s Sunday papers were full of pictures of the Kingsmere party-that-wasn’t, and lurid accounts of Alexia De Vere’s son’s near-fatal motorcycle accident. The Sun on Sunday was the first to coin the expression that was to haunt Alexia over the coming months, with its questioning headline: THE CURSE OF THE DE VERES? With this latest juicy tragedy to chew on, the tabloids delighted in dredging up all the old rumors about Roxie, and the “real story” behind the home secretary’s daughter and her mysterious three-story fall. Pictures of a wheelchair-bound Roxie were run alongside images of the John Radcliffe, where Michael De Vere remained “critical but stable.” Even the old, infamous shots of Sanjay Patel, taken before his imprisonment and subsequent suicide, were given a fresh airing. Instead of sympathy, the fickle British public seemed to react angrily towards Alexia, interpreting her stoicism (about Michael’s accident) as cold-heartedness, a reverting to type. Overnight, it seemed, the positive image that Alexia had worked so hard to build with voters all year began to unravel. She was more alone than ever.
Sidney Sheldon's the Tides of Memory Page 22
