“And I’m sure you will all share my and the judges’ profound admiration for the time, dedication and passion that went into producing that work,” Edmund said, and everyone applauded and several people blew their noses, “but there can only be one winner. So without further ado, let me present the Quinns/Bollinger Gainsborough Portrait of the Year, and award the fifty thousand pound first prize, to a painting which the artist tells me was completed after just one sitting.”
The lights dimmed some more, and a new picture appeared on the screen. It was a woman, painted from the back. She was sitting on a bed, looking out of a window, her pale hair flowing over her slender shoulders, her face turned so that her profile was just illuminated. A strappy dress lay on the floor by the bed in a shimmering puddle, next to a pair of high-heeled shoes. The shades of blue that predominated reminded me unmistakably of the picture of Jamie Cunningham’s I’d seen in Oliver’s bedroom, although the treatment wasn’t abstract at all – it was a tender, exquisite painting of a beautiful, naked woman. And it was immediately recognisable as Rose.
“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you,” Jamie said to Rose over the tide of applause. “It’s the best thing I’ve ever painted; I had to enter it.”
I just had time to register Oliver’s enraged face when my phone started vibrating furiously in my bag, and I pushed my way out of the room to answer it.
An unfamiliar voice said, “Am I speaking to Ellie Mottram? I’m calling from Accident and Emergency at St George’s Hospital. We have a gentleman who’s here after a cycling accident, and you are listed on his mobile phone as his contact in case of emergency.”
My hands were shaking so much I could hardly get my phone back into my bag. I pushed my way back into the room, looking for Rose, but she and Jamie were surrounded by a crowd of well-wishers and there was no way I’d be able to get to speak to her without hovering on the periphery for about twenty minutes. Then Oliver appeared next to me.
“You okay?” he said.
“No,” I said. “Yes. But Ben’s not. He’s in A&E in South London and I have to get there now. Do you know where there’s a cash machine near here? I can’t get the Tube in these shoes, I’ll need a taxi and I’ve no money on me.” I could feel my lower lip trembling.
“Don’t be silly,” Oliver said. “I’ll drive you. Or rather, Elliot will drive both of us. Come on. You text Rose while we’re on our way. She’ll be fine.”
Through the clamour of my worry, I realised quite clearly that Oliver didn’t want to be alone with Rose any more than she wanted to be alone with him. “Thanks,” I said.
Oliver made a rapid-fire call and after a few minutes his car purred into view round the corner and Oliver told Elliot where we wanted to go, Elliot told the SatNav, and we were on our way.
Hospitals are strange places. There’s this massive sense of urgency about everything, but also a huge amount of hanging around. We stood in a queue at the main reception before being directed to the A&E department, and then we waited for ages before any of the bustling nurses noticed us, and then they couldn’t find Ben’s name on the computer, and I was crying because I thought it must mean Ben had died, and Oliver came over all masterful and made them check again, and it turned out they had his name down as Benedict, not Ben, and he wasn’t dead after all, but he’d been moved over to the Lanesborough wing, where the radiology department was, for a CT scan, and we’d have to wait.
I said, “That’s a brain scan, isn’t it?” and I must have gone a bit green and looked like I was about to faint and sustain a head injury of my own, because Oliver took my arm and steered me over to a hard plastic chair and made me sit down, and fetched me a cup of sweet tea. After a bit one of the nurses came over and told us Ben had had his scan and was waiting for the results, and his score on the Glasgow Coma Scale – at the word coma I felt a bit faint and queasy again – was up to fourteen, and we could go to the radiology place and see him, if we wanted. We trailed through a maze of corridors and after getting lost a few times we found the right place, and another nurse took us to a cubicle where Ben was lying in a hospital bed. His eyes were closed and he looked so pale and vulnerable that I started to cry again, and when he heard me snivelling he opened his eyes.
“Hi, Ellie,” he said.
I went over to the bed and sat down, and held his hand, and for a while I couldn’t say anything. Then I said, stupidly, “Are you okay?”
“I’m going to have a hell of a headache,” he said, “and my cycling helmet’s seen better days. But I’ll live.”
“What happened?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” Ben said. “Can’t remember a thing about it. But they tell me a lorry was trying to overtake me and got too close, and the wing mirror hit the back of my head and I went flying. If he’d been going a few miles an hour faster it would have been a different story, apparently.” He managed a rather weak grin, and closed his eyes again, and I squeezed his hand as if I’d never let go.
I’d almost forgotten Oliver was there, when he said, “Would you like me to stay for a bit? I can wait outside and give you a lift home when you’re ready?”
I was about to thank him and say that would be brilliant actually, if it wasn’t any trouble, when we heard the sound of running feet on the floor outside, and Nina burst in, if you can be said to burst through curtains.
“Ben!” she wailed, “my…”
Then she saw Oliver, and stopped dead, and the two of them just looked at each other, and everything froze for what felt like a long, long time.
Then Oliver said, “Nina.”
Nina said, “Oliver.”
Oliver said, “Where is he?”
Nina said, “Who?”
Oliver said – actually, he kind of croaked out the words, his voice sounding all gravelly and harsh – “My son. Benedict. My boy.”
Ben hoisted himself up on the pillows and I shifted over and held his hand a bit tighter, and we just sat and looked at two of them, like people watching a murder scene unfold in a horror movie – it’s awful and you wish you could make it stop, but you’re transfixed.
I’d never heard Nina sound uncertain or defensive before, but she did now. “With my mother,” she said. It was also the first I’d heard of Nina having a mother – I suppose I’d imagined her springing fully formed into an unsuspecting world, like Athena from the head of Zeus.
“Why, Nina?” Oliver said. “Why didn’t you tell me you were in London?” He was looking at her with the same sort of blind longing I’d seen on Ben’s face when he’d first met her. Honestly, what was it about the woman?
Nina moved towards him and Oliver actually flinched away from her, the way you would from a wasp that looks like it’s about to fly into your glass of Pimms. Then he seemed to accept his fate, and put his arms around her, and she buried her face in his shoulder, except it was more around the region of his breast pocket, Nina being so vertically challenged, as I think I’ve mentioned. I looked at Ben, dreading seeing devastation on his face at the prospect of losing her again, but he looked fascinated by what was unfolding. I could almost hear him thinking that a box of popcorn would go down well.
“I was so selfish,” Nina whispered. “I didn’t think you’d ever forgive me.”
“You took my son away,” Oliver said. “My son, who I loved and supported and lived with for two years, because you said you needed a clean break and seeing me would only confuse him.”
“I’m sorry,” Nina said. “I don’t know what else to say. I’m sorry.”
“What happened to New York?” said Oliver. I felt terrible for him, he looked so baffled and helpless and hurt, and furious too. “What happened to living the dream?”
“I was there for three years,” Nina said defiantly. “I was working. I even auditioned for the New York Philharmonic. But I didn’t get in.” Her voice cracked. “I’m not good enough. So I came home.”
For a moment I almost felt sorry for her, too. Then I said, “But why did you tell Ben…” an
d at the same moment Ben said, “But you let me think…”
Nina rounded on us and said furiously, “I told you nothing! You believed what you needed to believe! You contacted me on Facebook, you said you wanted to see me. What was I supposed to say? I needed a place to live.”
“Why didn’t you come to me?” Oliver asked.
“How could I?” said Nina. “After what I’d done?”
I remembered how longingly Oliver had talked about the child he’d lost, the love that had got away. But Ben was looking a bit knackered and grey-faced and it was all getting a bit too much like an episode of Jeremy Kyle, so I said rather primly, “Really, Nina, I wonder if this is the appropriate time and place…”
Oliver said, “Come, Nina. Take me to him.”
He seemed to be over his wobble and was back in masterful mode, and Nina looked up at him admiringly and said, “Really?”
Oliver said, “Yes. Ellie, if you need anything, ring me. I’ll be in touch with Rose.”
And he took Nina’s twig-like arm and the two of them swished back out through the curtains.
I was still holding Ben’s hand, and I realised I was pressing it so hard it must have really hurt, but he didn’t seem to mind. I guess they’d given him some good strong drugs, what with his bang on the head and everything. But I released my grip and was about to stand up, when he said, “Ellie?”
I said, “Yes?”
Ben said, “Come here.”
I sort of leaned over him and squished up on the pillows, and he put his arms around me and squeezed me tight. He was wearing a hospital gown but he’d obviously been unceremoniously bundled into it, and I could see drifts of dried salt on his skin where he’d sweated on his long cycle ride, and smell the familiar smell of him. I could feel tears trickling down my face, and they tasted salty too.
“You want to be a bit more careful on that fucking bike of yours,” I said.
“I know,” Ben said. “I’m sorry. I will be in future, I promise.”
“And what’s more,” I said, “You need to put sunblock on your hands, because you haven’t been, just look at the tan you’ve got. And if you don’t wear sunblock you might get skin cancer and die.” My voice went all quavery on the last word, and it came out as a proper wail.
“I’m sorry, Ellie,” Ben said again. “I’ll wear sunblock next time. I’ll wear it when I do the triathlon next week, if they don’t make me pull out.”
“If they don’t… You’re not still planning on doing it, are you?”
“Of course I am,” Ben said. “Otherwise this would have been for nothing. And I’ve raised two grand for charity, and I’d have to give it back if I didn’t finish.”
“Which charity?” I asked, impressed.
“YEESH,” Ben said. “I thought you’d be pleased.”
There wasn’t very much I could say after that. I half-sat, half-lay on the hospital bed, getting a horrible crick in my neck but not really minding. And after a bit one of the nurses came in with a sheaf of notes.
“Now,” she said, “It appears you’ve been a very lucky man. The CT scan shows no damage to your skull or brain, although you’ll probably have a sore head for a couple of days. We’ll give you paracetamol for that.” Which seemed a bit like trying to bring down a guided missile with a fly-swatter to me, but what do I know? “We’ll keep you in overnight and reassess your Glasgow Coma Scale score again in the morning, and if it’s up to fifteen you’ll be free to leave.”
“Great!” Ben said.
“However, with head injuries like yours, we’re unable to release a patient unless there’s a responsible carer to look after them at home. Do you live alone?”
I saw Ben realise that until about ten minutes ago, he’d lived with Nina, but now he definitely didn’t.
“There’s the cat,” he said, doubtfully. “Which reminds me! Shit, Ellie, Winston will be needing his dinner. Do you think you could go back to mine and feed him, and get me some clean clothes to wear when I go home tomorrow?”
“As I said, Benedict,” said the nurse rather sternly, “We’re not able to discharge you unless there’s a responsible person able to take care of you at home.”
I stood up off the bed and picked up my handbag. “I guess that would be me then,” I said. “Give me your keys, I’ll go and feed the cat and come back with some clothes for you.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
I was actually really looking forward to playing Florence Nightingale to Ben’s wounded soldier, but I didn’t get the chance. The next day he texted saying he’d had a panicky call from Lucille to say his presence was urgently required in her constituency because the Leader of the Opposition was paying a visit and Lucille, desperate to get back into his good books, needed to roll out the red carpet and make sure nothing went wrong. So Ben spent his convalescence writing sycophantic speeches for Lucille to make and scouring the constituency for signs with ‘cock’ on them, so he could make sure the dear leader wasn’t photographed in front of any of them. He probably had a lucky escape, because I can kill a pot plant in five days flat.
So it wasn’t until the weekend of the dreaded triathlon that he came home. We were sitting at his kitchen table eating pasta that Ben had cooked – and needless to say it was far superior to any effort I could have produced: lovely roast vegetables, wholemeal spaghetti and some sort of sauce that Ben said had sundried tomatoes in it. When I say we were sitting at the table, actually I was, and Winston the cat was too a lot of the time, because Ben kept getting up and going to check his kit, which was carefully packed into three separate different-coloured bags, and every time he did Winston jumped on to his chair and asked politely for tastes of grated Parmesan cheese.
“You need to eat something,” I told Ben. “Come on, you’re meant to be carbloading, aren’t you, not burning off more calories than you will the whole of tomorrow, pacing up and down.”
Ben laughed. “Okay. Just let’s run through this once more. You take my phone and read out the stuff on the list and I’ll check that it’s all there.”
We’d been through this at least four times already: once when he got everything out of various wardrobes and drawers and carrier bags; once when he put it all into the bags; once when he took it all out because he found his energy gel things inside the pair of trainers he’d decided not to wear after all, and panicked that he’d got everything else wrong as well; and again for what he said was the absolute, final time to make sure. But I decided to humour him.
“Okay,” I said. “Red bag: cycling shorts, cycling shoes, cycling helmet – and it had better bloody work – cycling gloves, socks. Towel, sunblock. Three energy gels, two bottles of energy drink, one bottle water, sunglasses, watch.”
“All there.”
“Blue bag: running shoes, running shorts, running socks, high-vis arm band, sunblock, baseball cap for sun protection, three energy gels, one bottle energy drink, two bananas.”
“Okay.”
“Special needs bag,” I made the horrible politically incorrect face I made whenever I said ‘special needs’, and Ben looked disapproving. “Two Mars bars, one can Coke, one packet cheese and onion crisps, Marmite sandwiches. I’ll make those before we go to bed. Christ, though, this is more like a bloody picnic than a triathlon. Are you sure you don’t need to pack a corkscrew somewhere?”
“No corkscrew. No booze again, ever. Not until tomorrow night, anyway. Remind me again why I thought this was a good idea?”
“Because you’re a man, and you do stupid, man things to prove your manliness,” I said. “Speaking of which, tell me again what happened with Nina.”
Ben abandoned his various bags and came and sat down again, scooping Winston on to his lap, and half-heartedly forking up some pasta.
“She sent me a friend request on Facebook,” he said. “So I accepted it, because that’s what you do. And I sent her a message, just to find out how she was, and then she suggested that we meet up. And when we did she told me she’d just got back
from America and had nowhere to stay, and I was worried about her, because you know she’s always been…”
“Barking mad?” I said.
“Emotionally fragile,” Ben said. “I didn’t know about her son then. But the next day she turned up at the flat with all her stuff, and him, and although she never said I was his father, she didn’t say I wasn’t, either. And the name… And she never mentioned that bloody Oliver. And he was okay, you know, the kid. I’d like to see him again.”
I thought, over my cold, dead body. But I said, “Tell me again that you weren’t sleeping with her.”
Ben reached across the table and put his warm, dry hand over mine. There were calluses at the base of his fingers, from all the weight training and stuff he’d been doing in the gym – I could feel their roughness against my skin. “I didn’t sleep with her,” he said. “I got the sofa and she and Benedict got my bed, and Winston wasn’t too pleased about it, were you?” He scratched Winston under the chin, and the cat began his thunderous purring, narrowing his eyes and looking adoringly at Ben. It’s possible that I may have looked adoringly at him, too. “But what could I do? She needed me, she needed some sort of stability, and she told me she had nowhere to go. She certainly didn’t say she had a Mum living in Croydon.”
“Like I said, mad as a box of frogs.”
“Emotionally fragile,” Ben corrected me.
“But she’s Oliver’s problem now, I guess.”
“Looks that way. They came round on Tuesday to collect Nina’s stuff – not that she had very much. Oliver really seems to love her.” Ben shook his head in bemusement.
It Would Be Wrong to Steal My Sister's Boyfriend Page 24
