Lennie moved away to let her say hello and Robin leaned in to kiss her cheek. She smelled different – no perfume. Of course, she’d woken up having already had the mini-stroke and they’d come straight here: she hadn’t had time to shower and dress. Or to put on her make-up – that was missing, too, and shocking in itself. When had her mother last been seen in public without make-up? The Seventies? When had she last seen her without make-up, even having lived with her for eight months last year? Every morning before breakfast, without fail, she put on her make-up, her perfume, her earrings. ‘Self-discipline!’ For her mother, a pyjama day was a sign of moral bankruptcy. Every day was game day. Except this one.
‘Mum,’ she managed croakily.
‘Thanks for coming, love,’ her mother said, voice slurred as her father had described but slow, too, as if forming the words took effort.
To her horror, Robin’s eyes filled with tears.
‘Of course we were going to come!’ She blinked hard, sniffing, and looked at her dad across the bed. Had he explained why she hadn’t come straight away, the moment he’d called this morning? Did her mum know that?
Movement behind her. She turned to see Lennie carrying a stacking chair. ‘Here, Mum.’
‘No, you sit nearest to Gran, it’s you she wants to see, not me.’ She tried to smile.
Lennie gave her a weird look but brought over a second chair then took the first. ‘Do you need the bars up, Gran, or can we let them down for a bit?’
‘You can let …’ said the slow, strange voice.
Dennis was on his feet in an instant, cranking the bars up to release them, folding them gently down. Lennie reached for the hand without the line.
‘How are you feeling?’ Robin managed. She could see saliva shining at the corner of her mother’s mouth. She would hate that – was she aware of it? Could she feel it, even?
‘All right,’ came the response. ‘Bit tired.’
Translation: horrendous and exhausted. Robin nodded.
Lennie stood and reached for a tissue from the table across the bed. ‘Here, Gran.’ She folded it and dabbed the corner of her mouth. Robin saw her mother’s look of gratitude. Why hadn’t she done that? For very far from the first time, she marvelled that even at fifteen, her daughter was far the superior human being.
‘Poor you, it must be so scary.’
‘Bit of a shock.’ Christine’s right eye looked at Lennie, shining with love.
‘But they’ve got you, Gran, the team here. I looked it up on the Net, the stroke ward – everyone was talking about how great they are. They’ll look after you and soon you’ll be right as rain and you’ll come home.’
‘Hope so.’ The saliva was back and now her eyes were shining with tears.
‘You will. I know it.’ Lennie squeezed her hand. ‘You’re tough, Gran. A tough nut. It’d take more than something like this to stop you.’
Her mother attempted a word that came out as a sob. She was trying to stop herself crying in front of Lennie, Robin saw, to hide her fear and pain. Her dad knew it, too, and to aid the effort, he sprung up again and started fiddling about with the scratched plastic jug, adding the barest top-up to the already brimming cup of water on the table.
‘Here you are, love.’ He picked it up carefully and brought it to her, placing the straw in her mouth beyond the useless lip. It cost her mother effort to swallow and to her dad’s visible panic, she choked slightly. She held up her hand, I’m okay, and sank back deeper into the pillows. Lennie dabbed some water from her chin then startled as a loud electronic whirr started up behind her.
‘The blood-pressure monitor,’ her dad said as the cuff on her mother’s arm started to inflate. ‘It’s automatic, takes a reading every fifteen minutes.’
Her mother grimaced as the cuff crushed her arm before slowly deflating. All four of them watched the numbers on the digital display as they clicked down: 174 over 116.
From behind the curtain of the neighbouring bed emerged a nurse whose generous hour-glass shape, accentuated by a wide elasticated belt, spoke of the open tin of Quality Street Robin had seen at the desk rather than the dietary advice they doubtless dispensed around here. She peered at the machine. ‘That’s gone up a bit again, love, hasn’t it? Nice and calm now, lots of deep breaths. Let me guess – your daughter and granddaughter?’
‘Yes,’ her dad answered for her.
‘I can tell – really strong family resemblance, isn’t there?’
‘Peas in a pod,’ he said.
Were they? Robin was surprised. In photographs of her as a young child, seven or eight, she could see it but as an adult, she didn’t think she looked particularly like her mother at all, and she’d always thought Lennie must look more like her own father.
The nurse added the reading to her mother’s chart then moved away.
‘How’s work?’ The voice came from the bed, aimed at Robin.
‘My work? Oh, Mum, don’t worry about that – you don’t need to be thinking about …’
‘Tell me.’
Robin glanced round, conscious of the bed behind them and the man she guessed was the husband of the ancient woman lying there, her hair a puff of white smoke against the pillow. Lowering her voice, she told her about the new lead from the CCTV footage. ‘It was on Midlands Today and the Post have it, too, you know, Maggie’s friend, Sara?’
Her mother gave a small nod; she didn’t know Sara, but Maggie talked about her.
Sweating slightly, Robin undid the second button on her shirt and pushed her cuffs back. On the way over, she’d shown Lennie the Herald piece, and told her she was going to keep completely schtum about it because her mother would be mortified. Given the circumstances, maybe she’d finally literally mortify her, kill her with sheer embarrassment. A tart, as her mother had once called her; an unmarried mother far too young and then a third-rate one at that, always at work; bovver-booted, leather-jacketed antithesis of her natural elegance with a job that meant dealing with some of the worst that humanity had to offer – and, in the past couple of years, being publicly shamed in the papers for the privilege. It was fair to say she hadn’t made her proud.
‘Does Maggie know?’ she asked.
‘Yes,’ her dad nodded. ‘I rang her this afternoon. She’s going to come and see your mother tomorrow morning.’
‘That’s good.’
‘Will you say hello?’ Lennie said. ‘You know, you should all come over for dinner at ours when you’re out and about, Gran. Mum and I could cook for you for a change.’
Christine smiled crookedly and her hand tightened on Lennie’s. ‘I’d like that.’
Fifteen minutes later, when the cuff told them that her mother’s pressure had risen again, the nurse checked it manually, too. She frowned. ‘And you’re quite flushed as well, sweetheart,’ she told her. ‘You need to rest now.’
‘We’ll go and find Luke,’ her dad said. ‘Get these girls something to eat.’
Her mum looked at him, good eye wide. ‘Will you come back up, Dennis, afterwards?’
‘Of course, love. Of course I will.’ He leaned over the bed and kissed her forehead. ‘I’m here till you tell me otherwise.’
Lennie kissed her goodbye, too, and Robin told her they’d come again tomorrow.
She nodded and Robin thought she saw tears in her eyes. ‘Off you go,’ she said, lifting her hand off the blanket.
They started to walk away but when they turned near the nurses’ station to give her a last wave, her mother called, ‘Robin’. They all started to walk back but she said, quite firmly, ‘Only Robin.’
‘I’ll come and find you down there,’ she told them.
As she walked back, she was suddenly nervous, a feeling that sharpened when her mother reached for her hand. A fat blue vein ran down her forehead and disappeared beneath her left eyebrow and Robin had the awful idea that it was a worm. An omen. Did she think she was going to die? Was that why she wanted to talk to her?
Her mother’s one-ha
nded grip tightened, thumb pressing into her palm. Robin felt the hard semi-circle of the nail and her mother’s shining eyes locked onto hers. ‘Look after your brother.’
The words hit her in the chest, temporarily knocking the wind out of her. ‘Look after your brother’ – that was what she wanted to say to her in extremis? Nothing personal, nothing about them and their relationship, just look after her sodding brother?
‘He’s in a state,’ her mother said slowly, her nail still cutting into Robin’s palm. ‘Now this.’ She moved her head, indicating the ward. ‘He needs your support.’
The lump in her throat was back. Robin blinked and swallowed. She nodded. ‘Okay,’ she said. ‘Okay, yes. I will.’
‘Thank you.’ Her mother gave her hand a squeeze then let go.
*
She found her dad standing in front of the hot-food counter as if he’d been hypnotized by the tray of cottage pie desiccating under the heat lamps. She put a hand on his back and he jumped.
‘Okay, Dad?’
‘What? Oh. Yes.’
‘Where’s Len?’
‘Getting some teas.’ He pointed to an island in the centre over whose various drink-making machines Robin could see the top of her daughter’s head.
‘Doesn’t look too bad, does it, the food?’ she said. ‘Better than the canteen at work by a long chalk.’ Maybe she should start eating here instead – maybe the Herald would like that more.
The woman serving had evidently given up waiting for her dad and moved away to spray the counter at the back. ‘Excuse me?’ Robin called her.
‘Sorry, love.’ She put down her cloth and came over. ‘What can I get you?’
‘The chicken and chips, please.’
‘Same for me please,’ her dad told her, then to Robin, ‘I was thinking about the cottage pie but it wouldn’t be a patch on your mother’s. I can’t believe she’s up there, like that, so poorly, while we’re … I feel sick, Rob. Totally sick. What if …?’
Lennie reappeared holding two beige plastic cups by their rims. ‘I’ll keep yours on my tray, Grandpa, probably easier. They’re thermo-nuclear.’ She must have seen how his hands were shaking.
It was dusk, Robin noticed while they were waiting to pay, the brightness of the lights inside making it look much darker than it was. The room was huge and as busy as an airport lounge, almost every table taken even at this time of the evening. She scanned about for her brother. She’d assumed he was alone so it was a moment before she spotted him sitting with someone else. The man had his back to her, more or less, and she could only see part of the side of his face but Luke’s posture, hunched forward, elbows on the table, suggested he knew him.
‘Who’s that, Dad?’
He saw where she was looking. ‘Billy.’
‘Billy? What – Hideous?’
‘Robin.’
‘What’s he doing here?’
‘He rang earlier and your brother told him what happened.’
‘But why’s he here?’
‘He was nearby, apparently, and he said he’d keep Luke company for a bit while you saw your mother. No fun for him, sitting down here on his own, worrying.’
Bloody hell, she thought, there were toddlers who got less babysitting. What was it like to go through life being so coddled? No one would even ask her how she was. Or Lennie, for that matter, she realized.
They carried their trays over and she borrowed a fifth chair from the next table. ‘Hi Len,’ Luke said.
‘How are you, Billy?’ Robin asked, sitting. ‘I don’t think I’ve seen you since I went to university.’
It was a genuine observation and the truth but she realized as soon as she said it how it would be interpreted – since I left you thicko losers in the dust. Even her dad gave her a warning look.
‘Well, you haven’t changed,’ Billy said.
He had, at least physically. He’d always been a squirrelly little thing, modern-day Dickensian, amusement-arcade pale and under-nourished, struggling to fill the jeans that he’d had to strap round his hips with a belt whose excess length she remembered him cutting off at Dunnington Road with her mother’s knife. His face was still squirrelly, his eyes a surprisingly dark brown given the rest of his colour scheme, his nose blade-like. The difference was in his upper body which was now beefed up to almost comic proportions. His pecs made clear squares under his tight T-shirt and his arms were so bulky they didn’t lie flush against his torso. He caught her looking and gave her a knowing smile, Yeah? Like what you see?
‘How is she?’ Luke asked.
‘Her pressure’s up.’ Their dad picked up his fork and then put it down again.
‘What is it?’
‘The last one was 172 over 126.’
Luke sucked air in over his teeth, nodding as if he were a cardiologist. ‘That’s getting back near what it was straight after.’
‘The nurse said she needed a break. That’s why we’re down so soon.’
Luke glared at Robin. ‘What did you say to her?’
‘Nothing. God, why …?’
‘Oh, come on, we all know how you wind her up.’
‘Luke, that’s not fair,’ said her dad.
He huffed. ‘Really?’ He took a sip from his can of Tango. ‘Nice picture of you and lover-boy, by the way – did you show her that?’
‘What are you talking about?’ asked her dad, frowning. ‘What picture?’
Robin gave Luke a what-the-hell-is-wrong-with-you stare. ‘I didn’t want to tell you, Dad, I thought you’d got enough on your plate.’ She brought the story up on her phone and handed it to him, watching him frown as he read it.
‘It’s not true, is it, love?’
‘That I’m sitting round twiddling my thumbs while a serial killer stalks Birmingham? No, I’d say not.’
‘Camera doesn’t lie about Kevin Young, though, does it?’ said Luke.
‘No,’ she admitted, keeping her eyes trained on her plate to avoid meeting Lennie’s.
‘Couldn’t believe my eyes the other day – you and that wide boy.’
What, when we came to bail you out? she barely refrained from saying. Talk you down from throwing yourself in front of the 6.32 from Birmingham Moor Street?
‘Del Boy!’
Hideous made a kind of snorting sound. ‘At least this one’s white.’
Robin saw Lennie’s mouth literally fall open. She shot an anguished glance at the table next door where a Sikh family were quietly eating.
‘Don’t,’ Robin said in a low voice. ‘Just don’t, either of you. Keep your disgusting racist views to yourselves and away from my daughter. And for the record, Kev’s twice the man either of you is and he always has been.’
‘He’s a sodding gyppo, Rob,’ sneered Luke. ‘I mean, we all know you’re into your ethnic minorities but—’
‘Luke!’ Dennis snapped. ‘Stop it!’
‘He’s not a gypsy,’ Robin said, ‘but even if he was, what difference would it make?’ She stood up. ‘I’m really sorry, Dad, but we’re going to go. I’m at my limit – I can’t deal with the poison tonight on top of everything else.’
She expected him to try and talk her down, attempt his usual peace-brokering, but he merely nodded. ‘Okay, love.’
‘I’ll ring you later. Come on, Len.’
Lennie was already standing. She put her arms round Dennis from behind and gave him a kiss on the cheek. ‘Bye, Grandpa. Tell Gran I’ll be thinking about her all the time.’
They took their trays of barely touched food to the racks for the dishwashers. ‘I’m sorry,’ Robin said. ‘But I couldn’t sit there and listen to that. We’ll get something to eat at home.’
‘No need to say sorry to me,’ Lennie said hotly. ‘If we’d stayed a minute longer, I would have chucked the tea at them. Wankers.’
‘Granny and Grandpa really love each other, don’t they?’ Len said as they pulled out of the car park.
‘Yep. Truly, madly, deeply. They always have.’
‘It’s lovely.’ She leaned her head against the window.
‘Yes, it is.’ Except that if something happened to one of them, the other would be destroyed, ripped up by the roots. I feel sick, Robin. Totally sick. She’d been scared by that. Her dad wasn’t an emotional basket-case like she was but he never talked to her about his feelings. She’d realized then how terrified he was. That was the trouble with loving people: it left you so bloody vulnerable. Much easier to keep your heart ring-fenced, she found. Except that she hadn’t, had she, said the voice in her head, because sitting beside her right now was someone on whose safety her entire happiness depended. God, don’t think about that now – too much, too much.
‘Shall we ring the Lebanese?’ she said. ‘If we order something easy, it might be ready by the time we get there.’
Lennie trained her eyes on the road. ‘Why didn’t you tell me about Kev?’
‘What?’
‘You heard me, Mum.’
Robin signalled left off the roundabout and tried to think. No lies, of course, but … Oh, Christ. ‘The truth is,’ she said, ‘I didn’t tell you because I don’t know how I feel about him and I didn’t want you to think …’ That I’m a slapper. That I sleep around. That I sleep with people I don’t care about. That that’s the way things work. ‘You’re at the start of it all, Len, and I don’t want to be a bad example. I know I haven’t been a great example.’
Silence from the passenger seat. The spectre of Lennie’s father hovered between them, unknown. Unnamed.
‘I meant what I said about Kev. He’s solid. He’s a good person – funny, bright, loyal. He’d do anything for his friends. And he’s not a “wide boy” – Luke just can’t stand that he’s successful.’
‘But his dad did go to prison. I looked that up on the Net, too.’
‘His dad, yes, not him.’ God, Len, she nearly said, if people are going to be defined by their parents, you’re stuffed.
Risk of Harm Page 20
