by Heidi Perks
Three days before they left me, and just after I’d made more threats, I’d left Kathryn sobbing on the kitchen floor like a child. Eleanor had at that moment walked in and I gave her a smug look as I passed her in the hallway and went upstairs to my bedroom. I was naïve, too young to realise I was playing a game against a woman who would never lose.
‘This cannot continue,’ I heard her say to Mother. ‘I am going to put an end to this.’
But I had smirked as I went into my room.
Three days later they were all gone. I wondered how much of it was my fault, if I’d pushed Kathryn to the brink. Yet I also couldn’t imagine it was her decision. She would have needed help and that help would always come from Eleanor. The truth was I was sure Eleanor had somehow been behind it, I just didn’t know how.
So Eleanor won. It didn’t matter her opponent was her seventeen-year-old granddaughter.
That’s the woman I’m up against today, Adam. My only hope of finding the girls rests with the very person I suspect took them away from me in the first place.
– Twenty-Seven –
Kathryn pushed through the main doors to the hospital and stood in the entrance. The signs faded in and out of focus as she searched for the ward where her daughter would be. Around and around she looked, but the more signs she saw, the less clear they became. Panic coursed through her body: it was happening again. They had taken Robert, and now Hannah.
But she couldn’t go there. Couldn’t believe she might lose Hannah too. Yet still Kathryn heard the threatening voice telling her it was all her fault, all her doing.
She had prayed in the car on the way to the hospital. Made a bargain with God. ‘Keep Hannah safe,’ she had said. ‘And I’ll—’ What was it she could do? Come on, Kathryn, think! What could possibly make any of this better? ‘I’ll put it all right, I’ll find Abigail, I’ll tell everyone the truth,’ she had cried out. ‘Just keep her safe.’
‘Can I help you?’ a voice asked. Kathryn turned round, still rooted to the spot in the middle of the foyer. A man in his early twenties surveyed her over the top of his frameless glasses. He wore a badge that said Jenson Turner.
‘My daughter,’ she said.
‘Would you like me to see if I can find out?’ he asked kindly.
Kathryn nodded and gave him Hannah’s name. She watched him walk to the reception desk and speak to the girl behind its counter, gesturing vaguely behind him in her direction. When he returned, he said, ‘She’s in Ward 23. Through those doors to the left, and it’s the first ward on the right-hand side.’
‘Thank you,’ Kathryn mumbled, but didn’t move.
‘I’ll take you there if you like?’ the young man said as he nodded towards the doors. ‘I’m going that way.’
Kathryn allowed the stranger to lead her to the ward, where he left her at the door, telling her she was in the right place and nodding towards the nurses’ station.
‘Can I help you?’ a nurse asked, barely looking up from her paperwork.
‘My daughter …’ Kathryn started again.
‘What’s her name?’
‘Hannah Webb.’
‘Oh, Mrs Webb,’ the nurse said, looking up before standing and walking round the desk. ‘Hannah’s through here.’ She pointed to a closed door and walked towards it, one hand on Kathryn’s arm. ‘She’s stable, but I think she might be sleeping.’ They stopped at the door and the nurse turned to Kathryn. ‘Your other daughter, Lauren, is in there with her. She’s very upset so she’ll be glad you’re here. And I’ll try and get hold of the doctor for you to speak to.’
Kathryn nodded and gazed through the small window on Hannah’s door as the nurse retreated to her station. Lauren wasn’t aware of her presence and for the moment Kathryn preferred it that way: she wanted to watch them. There was something about the girls, the way they moved around each other, that had always captivated her. They were as close as real twins could ever be, moving as one, always in tune with the other. Sometimes Kathryn felt a small pinch of jealousy, as if she was an outsider. But there wasn’t room for jealousy today, it was superseded by the knowledge she was ripping that bond apart for ever.
Kathryn couldn’t see much of Hannah’s face from where she stood. It was masked by the angle of the bed and a drip with one line feeding into her wrist. But she saw what Lauren meant when she’d said she barely recognised her. The right side of her face was noticeably swollen, distorting her features. It made her eye look black, as if she had been beaten up. Kathryn wanted to run her hands over Hannah’s face and wipe away the bruising; her daughter shouldn’t look like this.
Lauren held Hannah’s hand in her own, using the other to stroke her sister’s hair, pushing it away from her face. She bent to kiss Hannah on the forehead and then stood and walked around the bed to the table, where she poured herself a cup of water from the jug. She drank the water and crushed the cup in her hand before throwing it into a bin then went back around the bed, sitting next to Hannah again, once more taking her hand and placing it back within her own as she stroked her fingertips over Hannah’s. There was plenty of space at the other side of Hannah, even an empty chair. But Kathryn knew why Lauren was on the other side of her: she needed to be on the right, just the way she always was.
Kathryn knew she should go in. Just push open the door and be there with her girls. She held her hand up to the glass window on the door. Everything was playing out in slow motion. Her precious Hannah, lying deadly still. Hannah had been trying to get away from her, running away. How long had she been trying to do that for? ‘But look where’s it got you,’ she whispered to Hannah. ‘It’s so unsafe.’
Then there was Lauren: sweet, oblivious Lauren. Kathryn felt an overwhelming need to keep it that way.
Taking her hand away from the glass she stepped back, her eyes sweeping across the room. It was so empty, unsurprisingly, as Hannah had only been brought in that afternoon, but the lack of cards and flowers felt wrong. The room needed colour, Kathryn decided. That was it, she would go to the shop and buy balloons, flowers … Anything to distract from the stark white clinical box her daughter was lying in. It was a good idea that almost made her smile. Turning away, she began walking back down the corridor when the nurse called, ‘Aren’t you going in to see your daughter, Mrs Webb?’
‘I’m going to the shop first,’ Kathryn told her. ‘To buy balloons, I think.’
‘But Mrs Webb, Lauren’s been waiting for you. She needs you to be with her. I really think you should—’
‘I will in a minute,’ Kathryn snapped. ‘But first I need to brighten up that room, it’s far too drab.’ She turned on her heels and walked away before the nurse could intervene further but not before she heard them whispering.
‘What was all that about? Has she even been in there?’ another voice asked.
‘No, she’s gone to the bloody shop.’
A sigh, and then, ‘I just don’t get some people.’
Kathryn picked up pace and turned left into the main corridor leading back to the entrance. She knew the nurses would think she was a bad mother. They were probably right. But the truth was she couldn’t face going in and seeing Hannah, knowing she herself was the reason her daughter was lying in hospital with internal bleeding, her face in pieces. Kathryn kept her eyes trained forwards, not wanting to look anyone else in the eye. She didn’t see the boy with the huge bunch of flowers as he turned the corner and walked straight into her.
‘Sorry,’ he mumbled as he knocked against her left arm. Kathryn didn’t respond.
‘Mrs Webb?’
She turned and saw the face behind the flowers. ‘Dominic,’ she said coldly. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘I just came to see Hannah.’
‘I can take those to her.’ Kathryn held out her hand for the flowers. ‘This time is for family only. We don’t want any other visitors.’
Dominic looked uncertain. ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘if that’s what you want.’ He handed the flowers to Kathryn. Yellow,
pink and white carnations sprayed with gypsophila. They were a pretty choice.
‘How’s she doing?’ he asked.
‘She’s—’ Kathryn stopped. ‘How did you know she was here?’
‘Erm …’ Dominic paused and looked down, contemplating his shoes as he shuffled from one foot to the other. ‘Well, when my dad got the call.’ He shrugged.
‘What do you mean? What’s your dad got to do with it?’
‘Oh,’ he said. ‘You don’t know what happened?’
‘Just tell me.’
‘Well, I thought she was just waving at me, when I was in the sea, you know.’ He shrugged again. ‘I guess she must have needed me pretty urgently, though. I didn’t see her text until I got out and by then she’d taken off in Dad’s car.’
‘She took your dad’s car? What are you saying? She was driving?’
Dominic nodded. ‘Yeah, Cal saw the car speeding off, and he—’
‘Just shut up for a moment,’ Kathryn said, holding up a hand to stop him. ‘You’re saying Hannah took your dad’s car and drove off – where? Where was she going?’
‘I think she was looking for Lauren,’ he said, his head hung to one side as if considering whether Kathryn actually knew anything at all. ‘The police called my dad when they got to the accident. Then he called me.’
Kathryn rubbed at her temple with her free hand. This couldn’t be happening. Her sixteen-year-old daughter, who couldn’t drive, had stolen a car and crashed it.
‘I don’t think he’ll press charges, though,’ he added.
Kathryn nodded. ‘Good,’ she snapped. Her head was beginning to throb. She wanted to ask the boy if he thought the lights were too bright in the hospital because they were spearing her eyes so much it was becoming difficult to focus. He hadn’t seemed to notice, though. In fact he was still staring at her intently as if waiting for something. Maybe he had asked her a question and she hadn’t heard. The lights really were too bright.
‘What did you say?’ she murmured.
‘I didn’t say anything,’ he said.
‘OK, well, I’ve got things to do, if you don’t mind.’
She really did need to get to the shop or maybe sit down for a bit. Somewhere dark.
‘It was me that got hold of Lauren,’ he carried on talking. ‘Hannah said in her text she was at the shopping centre so I called them and they put out a tannoy.’ He sounded so pleased with himself, she thought, as if waiting for her to thank him when all she wanted was to grab him by the arms and shout, ‘Get out of my bloody way!’
‘I didn’t say anything to Lauren, obviously,’ Dominic said.
‘What?’
‘Well, you know,’ he said. ‘Hannah said something about finding something out—’ he tailed off. ‘Anyway, I didn’t say anything.’
‘Now you listen here,’ Kathryn lurched towards him, grabbing a handful of his shirt, the flowers dropping to the floor beside them. ‘Whatever you think you might know it has nothing to do with you. Nothing.’
But Dominic stared back at her; his head gave a fraction of a nod, his mouth the glimmer of a smirk. She pulled her hands away and held her clenched fists in front of her stomach, her eyes quickly scanning the empty corridor. Dominic reached down to pick up the flowers and pushed them back at Kathryn, who by reflex took hold of them.
‘Let Hannah know I was asking after her,’ he said.
– Twenty-Eight –
‘I wish you could tell me what you so badly wanted to,’ Lauren murmured to her sleeping sister, squeezing her hand. ‘What made you take a car and come looking for me?’
Lauren had been queuing to pay for a pair of jeans when the tannoy came booming across the speakers: ‘Will Lauren Webb please report to the main office on the ground floor immediately?’ Sophie looked at her, gaping. Something awful had happened, of course it had. They didn’t put out messages like that if it wasn’t an accident, or someone had died.
‘You’d have had a phone call if it was something bad,’ Sophie said. ‘Check your phone. It’s probably something to do with your bank card.’
Lauren scrabbled in her bag for her phone and found it at the bottom. ‘It’s dead,’ she said, pressing the button. ‘It must have run out of battery.’
Sophie took the jeans and dumped them on the floor, grabbing Lauren’s arm. ‘Come on, then, we’d better get down there.’
My mum’s had an accident, she thought. Or maybe it’s Grandma. That’s more likely it, she reasoned, with guilty relief. Grandma’s ill, or dead. No, she’s just had an accident. It will be awful and her mum would be in pieces, but it was still a preferable option. Not once did she think it was Hannah. Not once did she remember that, of course, Hannah was the only one who even knew she’d gone to the shopping centre that morning.
When they gave her the message, that her sister was in hospital, they told her to call Dom. Lauren felt as if all the breath had been sucked out of her. Nothing could happen to Hannah; she wouldn’t let it. Not her little sister. ‘We need to go,’ she turned to Sophie. ‘I’ve got to be with her.’
‘Of course. Do you think your mum knows? You’d better try calling her from my phone on the way.’
No, she didn’t think her mum knew, because Kathryn would have been the one to call the shopping centre and leave the message. Lauren tried her but she wasn’t answering the phone. Her mum could wait, as long as she was there with her sister. Lauren would be the one Hannah would want to see when she opened her eyes. It was always each other they first saw when they woke up, no one else.
And now she was watching her sister, slowly breathing in, out, in, out. Tubes feeding her veins and her face so swollen and sore. ‘Wake up, sis,’ she pleaded with her. ‘Talk to me, tell me what you wanted to say so badly.’
She couldn’t bear to see her sister so empty of life. Sometimes Hannah’s bubbling moods drove her mad; she was always looking for the next thing, never pausing for breath. Lauren envied Hannah’s take on life, how she always knew what she wanted out of it and would make sure it happened. One day she would have to let her go, she knew that. Hannah wouldn’t settle in the Bay as she herself most likely would. But none of that mattered right now, because all she wanted was for Hannah to open her eyes and laugh and joke about something, then leap out of bed announcing her next crazy plan.
Lauren heard the door click and turned around to see her mum standing in the doorway, armed with at least half a dozen pink and purple balloons, a giant teddy bear and a bunch of flowers. Don’t say anything, she told herself. Don’t ask what’s taken her so long.
‘Come and sit down,’ Lauren said, pulling up another seat next to her. Kathryn looked awful. Her face was ghostly pale and her hair a mess. Her hand shook as she took hold of the chair and sat down next to her. Not once did she look at Lauren, nor at Hannah, it seemed. Instead she stared intently at the bed.
‘Are you OK, Mum? The doctor’s going to come by in a bit and speak to us. We’ll know more then,’ Lauren told her.
Kathryn nodded and Lauren shifted on her chair. She would have liked her mum to tell her everything was going to be OK and to hold her in her arms, but she could see she wasn’t going to get that. Yet again, Lauren would have to be mother.
‘Why was she trying to get hold of me?’ she asked her mum. ‘Do you know what she wanted? I’ve got no idea why she would take Dom’s car. It must have been something urgent.’
Kathryn turned and gazed at Lauren. ‘Do you need a drink?’ she asked, a forced spring in her voice. ‘Shall I get us both a cup of tea, or maybe some soup. I fancy soup, I think. There’s a machine just out there.’
‘Mum! Will you just stay here with me for a bit; you’ve only just got here. I was asking you if you knew what Hannah wanted.’
‘No, I don’t, I’m afraid,’ Kathryn murmured.
‘Well, aren’t you in the least bit curious?’ Lauren asked. ‘She stole a car; she can’t drive. She was desperate to see me for some reason because she couldn’t get hold of
me.’ Lauren started to cry. ‘It’s my fault, Mum. It’s my fault she’s in here because my phone wasn’t on.’
‘No, no, it’s not your fault,’ said Kathryn. ‘It’s definitely not your fault.’ But her words were flat and either she didn’t believe what she was saying or she knew something. Lauren watched as Kathryn idly twisted her ring around her middle finger, then stared blankly at the bed again. That was more likely it: her mum knew exactly why Hannah wanted to see her but she couldn’t bring herself to tell her.
– Twenty-Nine –
Lauren was asking questions and all Kathryn wanted was to get out of the room. A rap at the door made her jump as a doctor walked in, smiling at her. He looked older than her, maybe in his sixties, which she liked because that meant he would know what he was talking about. Much more than all those young ones swanning about in their pristine white coats, barely out of college.
‘Mrs Webb?’ His voice was soft. She nodded and stood up. ‘I’m Dr Emmett.’ He held out a hand, which she shook. He had large hands that enveloped her own and a nice firm handshake. Yes, Hannah would quite literally be in good hands with him, she thought, stifling an unwanted giggle. There it was again, that urge to laugh in the midst of a horrific situation. Kathryn shook her head, ridding herself of the thought.
‘Shall we step outside the room for a moment?’ he asked, motioning to the corridor.
‘Hannah’s car collided head-on with a tree,’ Dr Emmett said, once they were outside the room. He had glasses that might be for reading, Kathryn thought, because they were perched on top of his head, making his white hair spring out either side. ‘The force of the impact meant that Hannah was thrown against the steering wheel,’ he continued. ‘Her stomach was very swollen when she arrived at the hospital and she was complaining of pain in the top right side, so we ran some blood tests. There were indications of internal bleeding so we carried out a CT scan too, which shows the impact of the crash has caused a laceration to her liver.’
