by Jessie Keane
When the doctors came, the surgeon who’d operated on Kit was among them. He said Kit was making progress, but that he wasn’t out of the woods yet, and that the police would doubtless be in touch with the family to discuss the nature of Kit’s injuries.
‘It’s not every day we get a gunshot victim in here,’ he said.
After the doctors’ rounds, Daisy and Ruby went home, but Rob stayed on. At ten o’clock that evening, one of the other boys would take over. Until then, he would do what he always tried so hard to do: watch Kit’s back. This time, he wouldn’t fail in his duty.
The following day, Ruby spoke to Daisy over breakfast. Neither of them had slept.
‘This is a nightmare,’ said Ruby, refusing food. She couldn’t eat, the very thought of it made her guts heave. She could barely keep down a cup of coffee.
‘He’ll pull through,’ insisted Daisy.
‘Thomas Knox said he was going to look out for him,’ said Ruby numbly. ‘He promised.’
‘Knox? The man outside the church?’ Daisy was watching Ruby.
Ruby looked up at Daisy. ‘We’re . . . involved,’ she said.
‘Well, that’s good, isn’t it? I’ve been worried about you, since Michael died. That was awful for you.’
Ruby took a gulp of coffee. The strange and deeply sexual nature of her relationship with Thomas was something she didn’t feel able to discuss with anyone, especially not her own daughter. With Michael, she had felt loved, secure. With Thomas, it was so different: she was on tenterhooks. And now he had told her this thing, this terrible thing.
‘Thomas told me that Michael was unfaithful,’ she blurted out.
Daisy’s mouth dropped open. ‘He what?’
‘He said there was another woman.’
Daisy was silent for a moment. ‘Do you believe him?’
‘Why would he lie?’
‘To distance you from Michael? Maybe he’s jealous of how close you were.’
‘I don’t think so. I think he was telling the truth about it.’
‘But who’s the woman?’ Daisy was shocked by this revelation.
‘I don’t know.’
‘I can’t believe it.’
‘Neither could I,’ said Ruby grimly. ‘But the more I think about it? The way Michael was behaving in the weeks before his death? I’m starting to.’
Ruby’s brain was in turmoil. She had spent a wretched night again, wondering if at any moment the phone was going to ring and it would be the hospital, saying Your son is dead, he passed peacefully away, we’re so sorry.
She had been afraid to sleep, afraid to even lie on the bed, as if that might be inviting disaster. Now, hyped up on coffee and dazed from lack of sleep, she sat there and wondered what the hell was happening to her life.
Thomas
Michael
Kit
What Thomas had told her – that Michael had been unfaithful – devastated her. It had never occurred to her; in all the time they’d been together, not once had he given her cause to doubt him. And she had been utterly faithful to him. Had he lived, they would have married. Yet here was Thomas, telling her that Michael had betrayed her.
She had asked him to tell her who the woman was. ‘Come on. You know everything, don’t you?’
‘Sweetheart, I don’t know that.’
Maybe he was lying. If Michael could have lied to her, then so could Thomas. And that shocking thing he’d told her about the Danieri girl, Bianca, the one Kit seemed, according to Rob, to have become obsessed with . . .
She sank her head into her hands as she thought about Thomas. How easily he had reeled her in, how volatile and passionate their sudden affair was; how inappropriate. What was she thinking, getting involved with a cold-blooded crook like him? A man of secrets, a man who watched, who took note, who waited with the patience of a spider for Michael to come to grief, so that he could snatch her for himself.
And now Kit was lying in a hospital bed, teetering between life and death. She cast a fearful look at the phone. What if it rang, and they told her he was gone? She would never have the chance to make things right with him, never know the joy of having him love her as desperately as she loved him.
‘I’ll phone Joan,’ said Daisy, watching her mother with concern. ‘Tell her you won’t be in to work for a while.’
Ruby nodded, wiping away the tears that were streaming down her face.
She couldn’t think about work. Couldn’t even form a sentence. All she could do was cry.
Kit was surrounded by icy windblown blackness. There was nobody there but him, and this faint but biting pain, chilling him, eating into him like frostbite. He could hear murmurings, far away. Could be from another world, it was so distant, so unconnected to anything that was happening with him. There was not a thought in his head, there was simply . . . nothing. So this was what it was like. This was death.
‘Do you think he can hear me? Really?’ Ruby asked the nurse. She was staring at Kit’s face, so still in repose. Not the flicker of an eyelid. He looked dead to the world.
They let you in, mornings, in ICU. After all, the person laid up in here might not make it. It was a special consideration for the relatives, to be allowed in. The monitors beeped, pumps wheezed; this really was intensive care. It was a different nurse this time, a neat little pigtailed blonde. But she had the same smile. Patient. Kind.
‘Try it. Talk to him.’
So Ruby gulped, cleared her throat. Felt foolish, didn’t know where to begin. She started telling her son about living through the war, with a father who seemed to hate everything about her and with brothers, Charlie and Joe, who ducked and dived.
‘Joe was the nicer of the two,’ she told Kit.
She told him about the Windmill Theatre, and about Vi and about Cornelius Bray – the father Kit had never known, the father who had lavished whatever love he had upon Daisy, having washed his hands of his unacceptable and illegitimate dark-skinned son.
When she stopped talking, pouring her heart out to the man lying unconscious in the bed, the little blonde nurse was standing beside her, arms folded, listening. The nurse blinked; her eyes looked faintly red.
‘I hope he can hear you,’ she said.
Ruby nodded, and wiped at her eyes. She didn’t think he could. ‘Let’s hope,’ she said.
‘Keep at it,’ said the nurse.
Ruby did.
Daisy phoned Joan and told her to pass a memo round to all the heads of department that Ruby wouldn’t be available for a while, probably the next fortnight, who knew? But they were to carry on as normal, and if there were any problems they couldn’t manage, they were to inform Joan, and Joan would phone the Marlow house. Then Daisy would see what she could do to resolve them.
‘You?’ asked Joan, looking up from her notepad in surprise when Daisy said this.
‘Yes, or I’ll pass it on to Ruby if she’s OK to take it. If not, it’ll be down to me. Is that all right?’
‘I’m sure it will be,’ said Joan.
81
Bianca didn’t know what to do with herself. She had gone back to work, back to Dante’s, but her mind was all over the place.
I’ve killed him, she thought, over and over.
The man she loved, the one she had thought loved her, she had finished him, taken his life. If the police came and got her, hauled her away to a cell, she knew she deserved it, she would almost relish it. Instead, life went on. Life dragged on. And the everyday mechanics of living exhausted her.
She waited for the police to come, for that knock on the door in the middle of the night.
You did it. You’re guilty. You ought to suffer.
And she was suffering. Every ghastly, endless day was a waking nightmare, during which she went through the motions of doing what she had done before she met him, the same endless drag of days, none of it having any meaning now that everything had changed. Nothing would ever be the same again.
‘You OK?’ Cora kept asking her.
And then, even worse: ‘Did you ever catch up with that Tony Mobley character?’
‘No. No, I didn’t.’
At night she lay sleepless in her bed, remembering the feel of his body against hers, the sweet sharp scent of him. She looked at the pills in the bathroom cabinet, thought about ending it. But then she thought of her mother. Bella’d had enough grief to last a lifetime, she couldn’t inflict still more on her.
Vittore phoned, just once. ‘You OK there?’ he asked his sister.
‘I’m fine,’ she told him, same as she told everybody. She knew she should stop there, but the question nagged at her, the one she ought to ask, the one she had to ask, even though it would make him angry. ‘Have you heard anything? Is he . . . ?’
Dead.
She braced herself for his answer.
Vittore was silent for long moments. ‘He’s in hospital, he’s holding on, they say.’
Bianca slumped down onto her chair, pressing a hand to her mouth to stifle a sob. Her ears hummed, the world went momentarily black: he was alive.
‘If he should pull through, this could get bad,’ said Vittore.
‘What?’ He was alive. That was all she could think about. Tears flooded down her face like a waterfall. She was half-crying, half-laughing, thinking, Oh, thank God it’s true he’s alive, he’s alive!
‘They say he’s out of it for now. But if he comes round, he’ll name you, won’t he?’
She wiped at her eyes, shuddering. He ought to name her. What she had done had been done in a moment of supreme madness, and if he were to recover, then she didn’t care what happened to her any more, let her be punished, she didn’t care about that.
‘You got your passport up to date?’ asked Vittore.
‘What? Well . . . yes.’
‘You may have to go.’
Bianca was shaking her head. She’d done an awful thing, a crazy thing, but the madness was past now, she could see things more clearly.
‘I’m not going anywhere, Vittore,’ she said.
‘You’ll do what you’re fucking well told, capisce?’ he snapped.
‘No! Look. I . . . I made a mistake. I shouldn’t have done it. I want to be with him. With Kit Miller. I can’t help it.’
There was a moment’s frozen silence.
Then Vittore hissed: ‘Madonna! You think that’s going to happen? You seriously think I’d let you? I’ll kill you first!’
‘Vittore . . .’ Bianca felt her mouth go dry, her stomach lurch with fear. He meant it.
‘No. No more! I’ll keep my ear to the ground here. Stay in touch – don’t make a move unless I tell you.’
Vittore was already making plans. He had someone singled out to take care of a simple clean-up job like this. Best take no chances. As for the crazy thing she’d just said, he was going to ignore it. She thought she could ‘be’ with Miller? No chance.
Bianca gulped. ‘Look . . . Vittore—’
‘Not another word,’ he said, and slammed the phone down.
Slowly, shaking, Bianca placed the phone back in its cradle.
He was still alive.
Now she knew what she had to do. And fuck Vittore.
82
The murmuring voices were like someone having a whispered conversation in another room. Kit heard them all the time, drifting to him on a cold black wind. He couldn’t make out what they were saying, but somehow it was a comfort, knowing that he wasn’t completely alone here in the void.
‘And then I had you, and Daisy,’ said Ruby, sitting at Kit’s bedside and holding on tight to his hand. ‘I was an unmarried mother, and those were different times. I knew I couldn’t give either of you what you would need to get on in life. Charlie was going on and on about how I’d shamed the family and I was a disgrace and I needn’t expect any handouts from the family to help keep illegitimate kids. So Daisy went with Cornelius and his wife Vanessa, and you . . . Charlie told me you were going to a good home, with a nice married couple. It broke my heart, broke it clean in two, but I had to put you first, to forget about how I felt.’
A monitor was beeping; the dark-haired nurse with the bushy eyebrows hurried over.
Ruby stopped talking as the nurse examined a reading. Some figures were dropping. It meant nothing to her.
‘Is everything all right?’ she asked.
‘Fine. His blood pressure’s falling a little.’ The nurse was pressing a buzzer beside the bed. ‘Can you wait outside, just for a moment?’
The black wind had increased to such a force that his feet were no longer on the ground. It was carrying him now so that he floated, weightless, lifeless, and now he could see there was a tunnel, whirling and spinning, sucking him in. At the end of the tunnel he could see a tiny pinprick of light. The cold wind swept him onward, into the tunnel, whirling him into the distance, where the light awaited.
The consultant’s eyes were brown and very kind, as he explained to Ruby four nightmarish hours later what had happened.
‘Kit’s pressure dropped and that told us there was sudden and significant bleeding. But, Mrs Miller . . .’ Ruby had long since given up correcting them; at a time like this, what did it matter that she was Miss Darke? ‘. . . we’ve stopped that now, and he’s resting comfortably.’
Ruby felt sick. This nice man was telling her that Kit had nearly died for a second time. She had never felt so helpless, so useless, as she did right now.
‘Can I go back in? See him again?’ she asked, dry-mouthed.
‘Tomorrow. For today, let’s just keep monitoring his signs, make sure he’s back on an even keel.’
Ruby went home. Next day she returned to find Kit was lying there, looking exactly the same. The blonde nurse was on duty, beaming a smile as Ruby came in and took up her position by the bed.
‘How’s he doing?’ she asked the nurse, Corinne.
‘He’s comfortable,’ said Corinne. ‘He’s a real fighter.’
He’s had to be, thought Ruby. No wonder he hated her. She should have been there, when he was growing up, looking out for him, but she had failed in the most basic of all mothering duties.
‘Talk to him,’ said Corinne.
So Ruby did, picking up the thread and telling him about what had happened after she had lost touch with him and with Daisy. How business had become her focus in life, because her children were missing.
‘One corner shop,’ she said. ‘And I wanted to turn that into a chain . . .’ She talked for nearly half an hour, telling him of her life without him, how difficult it had been and how lonely and yes, now she was a rich woman, she’d worked hard to become so, but she would give it all back, every penny, trade it all in a heartbeat, to have been able to spend that time with him.
Ruby looked at his lifeless face and squeezed his hand. The tears came again, hot and hard: Corinne, in passing, patted her heaving shoulder.
‘Oh, Kit, please come back,’ sobbed Ruby. ‘Please, please don’t leave me.’
For a while there were no voices, but now the tunnel was receding, that dim distant light had winked out, and he was back again in the inky-black wasteland, the ice-cold wind lashing at his skin, bringing with it the voices, the murmuring voices that he could almost hear clearly, sometimes. He made out words now and then: corner shop. Daisy. And this was a novelty – a whole sentence: please don’t leave me.
Leave who?
Leave where?
83
Daisy and Rob arrived at the hospital that afternoon to find the usually calm Ashok looking tense and agitated.
‘What’s up?’ Rob asked the minute he saw Ashok’s face.
‘I went down to the paper shop and when I came back there was some git up here asking about Kit,’ said Ashok. ‘He was right there, at the desk. He looked like a face and I heard him trying to pass himself off as a cousin of Kit’s. I went up to him and said I didn’t know Kit had any cousins, and he laughed it off and said OK he was a friend and wanted to see him, and was
there anything wrong with that, but I tell you, the instant I called him on it he backed away and vamoosed.’
‘One of Vittore’s crew?’ asked Rob.
Rob had been into Gino’s where Kit had dined on Saturday night, asked the owner who he’d been with. A pale blonde young woman in a white dress and coat, he said, and she left in a hurry, Kit going after her.
Christ, that has to be Bianca Danieri, thought Rob.
Had her brothers done this then? Shot Kit?
‘I’m certain of it,’ said Ashok. ‘He fucked right off. They’re checking it out, Rob. They’re worried Kit’s going to come round and start talking.’
‘They’re trying to get to Kit?’ asked Daisy, her voice high with anxiety. Her skin crawled at the thought.
Rob looked at Ashok. ‘Double up,’ he said. ‘Cover any breaks, however short.’
Ashok nodded.
‘Set up Fats and one of the other guys to come over. When they’re here, tell them about this geezer, make sure they know Vittore’s sniffing around. Then you go home, rest up. You done good.’
Rob and Daisy went into ICU; Ruby was still there.
‘How’s he doing?’ asked Rob.
‘He’s holding on,’ said Ruby. ‘How’s everything with you two?’
‘Oh, fine.’ Daisy sat down on the other side of Kit’s bed, took his hand in hers. His hand felt hot and spongy; not lean and muscular, not like Kit’s hand at all.
‘I’ve been thinking . . .’ said Daisy.
Ruby looked at her with weary, deeply shadowed eyes.
‘. . . Rob and I ought to carry on with what Kit was doing. Trying to find out who was behind Michael’s death.’
As Daisy said the words, Ruby thought of Thomas saying that Michael had been unfaithful to her. Unfaithful with who, though? He’d said he had no more information; it had just been word on the street. So was it even true? Or was Thomas, in his Machiavellian way, trying to destabilize her loyal attachment to Michael’s memory, to have her transfer the whole of her affection to him?
