Exposure

by Avril Osborne

  Lying in the hospital bed, she knows that the children’s reactions confirmed for her that, hard as it is going to be, she made the right decision to stay with them. Any weakening of her resolve is gone. There is no circumstance in which she will allow the children to be further upset than they are over this. They need both parents. They will have both parents.

  Her young lover does not come back to the hospital and Linda senses that she will not. She is tempted to ring her just to hear her voice and to speak with her. She decides this would not be fair to Jane. She does come to a decision though, somewhere in the early hours of Sunday morning. She is not going to lose all personal contact with Jane. If Jane will see her, she will see Jane. She will do it without Ken knowing – at this stage anyway. Lying here, it seems both sensible and pragmatic in all the circumstances. But she will wait for a while until the business of the car attack is out of the way and she is mobile again. It does not seem like a decision, really. It just seems inevitable.

  Susan comes to see her from her ward for the second time, early on the Monday morning. They are alone together for the first time since they were injured. All she says is “I’m so sorry, Linda.”

  Linda’s words to Susan are calm and reassuring but Linda knows that somewhere inside herself she does now hold an element of blame for Susan. She would never say so nor would she act on it. If Susan had not messed with Ramsey, this would not have happened. If it was Ramsey, that is. “You can’t just be a fair weather friend”, are her private thoughts as she chides herself for her lack of charity.

  “Do you remember what happened?” Susan asks her. She has almost a plea in her eyes.

  “Yes. Do you?”

  “No. Not really. They’ve told me most of it. But, no, it’s pretty vague. What did happen? What do you remember?”

  Linda tells her all that she can remember herself. There is no point in not doing so. Susan listens as if desperate for information. They exchange details about the police questions. They talk about their respective injuries. But Susan is tired. She has been vomiting the previous day and Linda’s nurse advises her back to her own ward.

  Neither of them speculates much to the other about who attacked them or why – Linda suspects that Susan could not face yet that it might have been Dave Ramsey. Yet he looks the obvious suspect to her, if it was indeed a personal attack. She knows within herself that this is where her feeling of blame comes from.

  By Monday morning Linda is restless to be discharged and persuades the doctors that she can be cared for at home. She watches as what seems like an inordinate amount of effort goes in to organising a wheelchair, a home care worker and a community nurse. She never ceases to wonder at the compartmentalisation of bureaucracy. Finally, everything is confirmed and her doctor clears her for discharge on Tuesday morning.

  On Monday afternoon, the Principal of the University comes to see her on the ward. A man in his early fifties, Robert Thane is both an academic and, by virtue of the post he holds, an experienced businessman. He is dynamic and shrewd and not the stereotypical image at all of an ivory tower academic. Linda and he have always got on very well in the world of the University.

  There is therefore, a great deal of mutual respect between them as he comes in, kisses her on the cheek and is solicitous about her well-being. He says all the right things about the horrific experience she has had and she makes as light of her injuries as sense allows. They are soon down to the business of keeping her School at the University operational and looking at the general implications for the year that is just about to commence. Linda is able to demonstrate by what she says and by what Thane already knows of her that she is the strong confident type for whom there will be little psychological scarring. Certainly, nothing will interfere with her capacity for work. He says that he knows her well enough to have expected her to say this and takes some time to reassure her that she should get back to work when she is truly fit and not before.

  Once that is said, they are both able to get on with the practicalities of getting her operational as quickly as possible. She laughingly points out that only her leg and her bruised rib cage are damaged, and not her brain. She has her office at home, of course, and is fully connected to the University by computer. The departmental secretary will liase routinely with her in terms of keeping the administration going and other staff can absorb her teaching programme for a week or two. They can always videoconference anything that requires that level of interaction, whether a lecture or a meeting. In any event, she is only thinking of being at home for the shortest time until she arranges transport and access to allow her to get back to work. She hopes to be mobile within ten days or so.

  As Robert is about to leave, he hesitates at the door and repeats that he is glad to see her looking so well in all the circumstances. There is one other thing that happened that he feels she ought to be aware of. She looks at him.

  “There has been an enquiry from the press about your personal life. We dispatched the journalist of course, someone from the Journal Daily. It was a woman called Sarah King, I recall. It’s outrageous nonsense of course, Linda. These tabloids are disgraceful, the way they jump at any misfortune and look to boost their sales. I don’t think it will come to anything, Linda – they are probably trying to capitalise on the publicity of two such high-powered women as Miss Blakely and yourself being attacked. Anything that makes one paper’s story different from another’s puts them ahead.”

  She waits. He seems to leave it at that and to change the subject.

  “Your colleagues have all been in touch and are passing on their good wishes. There is a lot of shock in the University about what has happened.”

  Linda knows that something else is coming. Thane takes a step back into the room.

  “You have built up an extremely sound academic team in the last few years. They are a very loyal group with impressive publications. And it is heartening to see international dimensions to your appointments these days. That young Doctor Gray, for example. She should go far. I imagine she will have a very successful career ahead of her, having worked here. That would be true for many of your other colleagues, of course.”

  So that’s it. Jane Gray has been named by the press, Robert is not going to allude to it but is hinting that it might be better all round if Jane progressed her career elsewhere. The University will not do anything; Linda should see to it.

  Linda just smiles at the literal content of Robert’s message and appears to ignore the implicit meaning.

  Robert Thane heads once again for the room door with,

  “Now you rest, my Dear Linda, and come back to us as soon as you feel able.”

  It is the classic door-handle communication. The critical message is left till the last moment and it is designed to be conveyed in such a way that there can be no discussion. Robert has done it cleverly – the story of Linda and Jane is out but it is no business of the University to ask questions. Nor do they seem to want answers to the questions. No, irrespective of the truth of the matter, the University is backing Linda, protecting her and its own interests, and suggesting – no more than that – that a move for Jane would be politic. There is nothing they could or would do in any formal sense, as things stand.

  Will she act as she has been advised to? Should she put career – hers – before her attraction for Jane? For a few seconds, she is tempted. It was a fling; that is all – a silly, dangerous fling. But no, she decides, in the minute after Robert’s departure, she will not. Jane is not an idle fancy on her part. It may threaten her future in every direction, but Jane is too important to give up. Her heart may be in the ascendancy over her head, and maybe she will live to regret it, but she will not push Jane out of her post at the University. She will do what Robert Thane probably now surmises – nothing.

  It will be a long wait to see whether the tabloid prints a story. She knows that any expose will be pretty ghastly. Tabloids like the lurid aspects of people’s lives and what is not lurid, they make lurid. Her ma
in concern is for the children and not for herself, or for Jane for that matter. She assumes Jane and she are both strong enough, as adults, to ride out any adverse publicity and they will both be able to survive somehow, in terms of employment. At least, she hopes so. She does not relish the prospect and the thought of being despised for what she feels is abhorrent; frightening even. But in reality, the children are the vulnerable ones. What would they read and how would they feel? How would their school chums react? What would she say to them? What would Ken say to them?

  She decides against forewarning Ken and the children. The family do not have tabloid papers in the house and she can get to the children as soon as anything is printed. To say anything to Ken at this stage would be to give him the satisfaction of being self-righteous. It would fuel his wrath. If press exposure happens, it happens. She is not ashamed of Jane - quite the contrary. But she knows that anything that the press write will be chalk and cheese different from their relationship. If it happens, she will just have to talk to the children openly about what her feelings for Jane really are.

  She wonders whether she should try to alert Jane but knows that it will be too late already. If the paper has been to the University, they have undoubtedly been to Jane first. She assumes that the only person they have not been to is Linda herself, possibly because the police have cordoned her off within the hospital from any publicity. She suspects though, that it will now only be a matter of time.

  She will have to decide what to say if she was accosted – and that is the word for what she imagines will happen. Should she deny the relationship, or admit it? Or give a ‘no comment’ brush off? The last option certainly seems the attractive, if not the only possible, route. How can she deny what is true? Or admit the truth and be exposed to ridicule and who knows what else? The children have to be protected from that.

  She wonders again about the employment issue. Jane needs to be protected professionally. Maybe she does too. She knows there is now protection in employment legislation for people in same sex relationships. But victimisation is an insidious process, often out of synch with the words in law and regulations. And personal relationships in the workplace, certainly in the university, are still frowned on. These two issues together put both women in a dangerous situation. The University would react to protect its interests; she knows enough of the politics of this to believe that. She has been involved in the self same politics often enough herself, looking out for the reputation of the institution. It would come down to damage limitation at the University. If damage limitation meant that the University would say or do nothing about Jane and her, they are safe. But if the University has to take any action to protect its interests as a corporate entity, there could be problems.

  Something from her work with the University Press Relations Officer comes back to her now. It is that the ‘no comment’ route is not helpful. It infers guilt and gives the press the opportunity to put their particular spin on whatever the issue is. They can put any number of constructions on those two words. She faces a trap. She has not the first idea, she realizes, as to how to react if this Sarah King woman contacts her.

  Thanks to newspaper deliveries in hospitals organised by the voluntary sector, she is able to monitor the papers on Monday evening and Tuesday morning. There is nothing in them to worry her – only a very full coverage of the two high profile women being the victims of a vicious car hit and run. Susan attracts more coverage, of course, but Linda is also named in all the papers and in the broadsheets, and her academic career is covered in some detail. In other circumstances, it would have been welcome and gratifying publicity. Now she just wonders if this Sarah King will use Linda’s heightened profile to further her own ends of exposing Jane and herself.

  By the time she is watching the Monday evening TV news the subject has been covered as a crime from every angle, but there is no new news. The police are still asking for witnesses to come forward.

  After what seems like a lifetime, Linda leaves hospital on Tuesday morning. Ken comes to the hospital in the mid-morning, his morning surgery over, and he assists as her nurse pushes her in a wheelchair to a waiting ambulance. He is at the house ahead of her and Tina has the front door open as the ambulance drives down the drive. She is taken up to her room on a stretcher where a number of aids and adaptations give the bedroom a clinical atmosphere. Flowers and cards soften the impression. A pull above the bed allows her to haul herself up in her bed and a bell has been installed so that she can call for Tina and the family. Struggling with mobility inside her plaster cast and with the pain of the wound, Linda realizes that her recovery is not going to be as easy as she thought when she was in the relative security of the hospital bed. She is home though, and that is an enormous relief.

  A district nurse calls - she is from the same health centre as Ken so there is a friendliness and a social atmosphere as they all move through settling her in and making all the health and practical decisions needed. A home care worker will come in each morning and evening to help her to wash, dress and undress. Otherwise, save for the nurse calling regularly to see to her wound, she and Tina will be alone in the days ahead and the family and Tina will be together in the evenings.

  By Tuesday afternoon she is tired and glad to doze in bed until the children, collected by Tina in the family estate car, return home from school. An air of excitement fills the bedroom as the children arrive. Angela carries the bunch of flowers for her that they purchased on the way home. There follows an hour of excited chat as they tell Linda about their day at school and what their various friends said to them about Linda being on the TV news.

  Tina persuades them downstairs to eat supper just before the evening news. Linda can watch it in peace. The regional news comes on at six fifteen and Susan and she are the lead item. It starts with a shot of the street where the attack happened and a photo of Susan follows. The newsreader’s voiceover breaks the news.

  “Police are interviewing a thirty six year old man in connection with Friday night’s hit and run attack on TV presenter Susan Blakely and her friend Professor Linda Pilar. It is not yet certain who the man is but he is believed to be David Ramsey, a minister who worked until recently at the city Cathedral and at the church mission’s centre for the homeless, also here in the city. The Reverend Ramsey – seen here being interviewed on Mull – was the minister who led the church response several years ago, when a serious boating accident off Mull cost the lives of two young people. It is believed that the Reverend Ramsey walked into the police station himself earlier today and this would indicate that he has confessed to the attack. A man is expected to appear in court tomorrow.”

  A section of Dave Ramsey’s interview on Mull is shown but Susan’s presence as interviewer is not drawn out – yet. Linda thinks that that will be next.

  So, she concludes, it was a deliberate car attack by the looks of it. And it also looks as if her first, only tenuous, suspicion is confirmed. It was Ramsey. Anger grips her. How could someone do this to her deliberately when she was not involved? And how could Ramsey attack Susan when he cared for her at some point? He has to be one sick bastard – she can hardly contain her loathing for him as she sits in bed, legs still encased in a bed tent. She hopes that the courts throw the book at him.

  The phone rings within a few minutes. Predictably, it is Susan, ringing from the hospital. Clearheaded now, Susan has one question,

  “Have you seen the news?”

  “Yes, I have. How are you feeling, Susan?”

  “Dreadful, Linda. I am so sorry. This is my entire fault. If I hadn’t got tangled up with him – or if I’d dealt with it differently – this wouldn’t have happened. This attack was meant for me and you are the one with the serious injuries.”

  “Susan, we both got hurt. It is simply not your fault. I mean it, Susan. Dave Ramsey must be insane. He did this and no one else. He is responsible.” She says the words; wishes she truly meant them.

  It is a stressful call but both women are at le
ast relieved that the person has been found. And Susan tells Linda that she knows for definite that it was Ramsey who was interviewed – the police advised her just before the news went out. The fantasy fear of some stranger waiting to pounce again is gone. Linda cannot stop worrying, though, about the children’s safety. And although she did not really believe that she was the target, Linda is relieved to have it confirmed.

  The children arrive back into Linda’s bedroom during the call and she changes the conversation, asking about Susan’s recovery. Susan is still being monitored, as they are worried about her vomiting and has not yet been given a discharge date. Susan will be watching the papers in the morning, she says, to see what they say about Ramsey and how much has leaked about the minister and her. Linda agrees to speak to her in the morning and puts the phone down, knowing, in fact, that both women have cause to watch the papers. She has not troubled Susan with her fears about Sarah King and the possible exposure of Jane and herself. Susan has enough to worry about overnight. But she was tempted to say something, even if she does know it is the inner child in her is wanting to say “now see what you have done” to Susan.

  She sleeps fitfully from about nine o’clock onwards. Ken vacated the bed until, he said by way of excuse, she was more comfortable. She did not object, even if the old adage about never vacating the marital bed did flit through her mind. The phone rings, waking her from sleep, somewhere around ten. It is Sarah King, the voice says from the Journal Daily. Will Professor Pilar confirm that she and Jane Gray are lovers? Linda takes the option she has not considered before. It is an instinctive reaction, born of anger and fear. She puts the receiver down and blocks the phone to incoming calls.