by Judy Astley
‘Hey, schoolgirl. Did you miss me when you were away in your gypsy van?’ Ned was beside her suddenly, pulling her in close to him. She had some more of her drink and giggled as he nuzzled her neck.
‘I did. You know I did – I texted you. Are you going to uni soon? Or gap year?’ He’d be doing one or the other, she thought, leaving her too soon after they’d met.
‘Like, no? Some time away then I’ll be an intern for a bit, you know?’ he said, plaiting his fingers through hers and leading her back towards the house. She could sense all the girls on the way turning to look at her. A pouty girl with blue pussy-cat whiskers drawn on her face actually hissed as she passed. She could feel them appraising her clothes, her hair, her body, and wondering where the hell she’d come from that she could actually pull the host, but she no longer cared. The evening had turned right around. She was with Ned and they weren’t. This huge, gorgeous place was his and he was her boyfriend. It felt good. She quickly drank some more of the punch because that made her feel good too.
‘Let’s get you a better drink. That cheap stuff’s shite and you don’t know what’s in it.’ Ned pushed through the crowd in the kitchen and opened the vast fridge, pulling out a bottle of champagne. ‘We’ll take it somewhere we can talk and I can give you your birthday present. This lot’s so fucking rowdy.’
‘You got me a present? You remembered!’
‘Course I did. Come with me, I’ll show you.’
Rachel followed him up the basement stairs, through the hallway to the next staircase and then hesitated, nervous, wondering quite what Ned had in mind. Part of her was excited and curious and eager. She decided not to listen to the other, boringly sensible part that was suggesting she tell Ned that today was only her fifteenth birthday. Two girls were sitting smoking on the stairs. They looked up at her with glittery hard eyes and smirked at Ned. ‘Starting early, babes?’ one of them commented, shifting aside to let the two of them pass.
‘Just getting a bit of peace and quiet,’ he told the girl as he led Rachel past them. ‘You can’t have a conversation out there.’
‘Conversation. Yeah, right,’ said the other girl sniggering. Jealous, Rachel thought, trying to concentrate on keeping her balance on the stairs. They seemed to undulate beneath her, uncomfortable and slightly scary. How was she supposed to get down them again if they kept wobbling about?
From Ned’s bedroom window Rachel could see right across the private garden square to the building where her dad lived, though she couldn’t tell how far away it was exactly because it kept moving nearer, so it felt right in front of her, then retreating, like it was a hundred miles away. Days later, she remembered she’d been telling Ned this and he’d laughed; she remembered the bang of the champagne cork popping but then everything else was blank till the bit in the hospital where the lights were hideously white and she was throwing up into a cardboard bowl and wondering why her mum was crying and shouting down the phone, calling her aunt Kate an evil, scheming bitch.
It was much later that evening when Viola, fresh from a soothing bath (with no hazardous candles) to ease the aches from spending the last daylit hours digging dandelions and sorrel and loosestrife from the flower beds, remembered the envelope that Kate had left for her. She wrapped herself in her white waffle robe, made a cup of tea, then flopped on the sofa and opened it. Inside was a big sheet of paper with a roughly scribbled family tree, in Kate’s handwriting.
‘Told you we were all related, even if it’s a bit distant!’ was written on a yellow Post-it note. Viola’s first thought was to bin the whole lot, but she absolutely couldn’t resist a really good look through the names. Whether engaging in a genuine hobby or through sheer cussed control-freak nosiness, Kate had certainly been thorough, and the names went back a few generations. Viola found their great-great half-aunt who had married a Fabian and who turned out to be really very distant, relatively speaking, from Greg. Though less distant, she realized, moving to her desk and switching on a lamp for a better look, from Mickey Fabian. For there she was, on the tree further up than Greg and connected by a series of second and third marriages: only a few years older than he was and yet aunt to him, just as he’d said. And in turn, ah, there was Mickey’s baby, one George Fabian, six-month-old cousin to Greg. ‘Oh God, how fucking typical,’ she breathed. ‘I am so stupid.’
She reached immediately for her phone and clicked on Greg’s number before she could dither about and think of how she was to explain how she came to be studying his family tree in such fine detail, or at all, because what kind of sane person would, frankly?
‘Viola. This is a surprise.’ It didn’t sound like it was such a good one and Viola almost hung up.
‘I just wanted to apologize.’
‘You’re not keen on gladioli, then,’ he said, laughing, but sounding as if that were just a nervous reaction.
‘I’m so sorry. I had no idea they were from you. I only found the card a few days later. I’m so, so sorry. I’m a total idiot but I can explain about it all and I’d like to. I did call and left a message with Mickey, but you didn’t call back. So I assumed …’ She was rambling now, sounding a bit desperate.
‘Did you? I didn’t know. If it was the day I forgot my phone, then Mickey wasn’t exactly on speaking terms with me. And I’m a bigger idiot. I walked past a bin bag overflowing with my totally wrecked flowers and still pruned your sodding roses. I don’t think I twigged, if you’ll forgive the pun. It didn’t cross my mind that you could be so brutal to them or to me, not after we … And then I thought about it, and your trip to Paris. Well, you know, I can just about put two and two together, even though I’m a mere man.’
She hated how sad he sounded. She hated how untrusting she’d been.
‘Greg, believe me, I had plenty of reason to assume they were from someone else. To say it’s been … well, difficult over the past year or so doesn’t really begin to cover it.’
‘You kept it very much to yourself. You could have said.’
‘I know. Well, no, I couldn’t really. It’s not something I talk about. But I will, if you still want to hear.’
‘OK. I do. So come and tell me.’
‘What, now?’ Viola glanced at the clock. It was close to midnight. What had she been thinking of, calling him at that time? Herself, Miles would probably have said. He wouldn’t be wrong there.
‘Yes, why not? Can you?’
‘Rachel’s out tonight so … well, I suppose I could. Where are you?’
‘On the big sloping grassy bit by the railway embankment, just over that roundabout where I planted the quince. The crocuses, remember?’ He sounded warmer now.
‘Shall I bring a dibber?’
‘You must never leave home without one,’ he said. ‘Don’t be long.’
‘OK. This is completely mad but, yes, I’ll come.’
Viola was halfway down the stairs, hurriedly dressed in jeans and a dark top and feeling an excited anticipation that she’d thought was no longer part of her life, when the house phone rang. It was nearly 12.30 a.m. She picked up the phone, her hand trembling and excitement leaking away fast, leaving only fear, because a call after midnight, when your daughter is out somewhere, is never going to be good news.
TWENTY-NINE
OH GOD, OH God, please let Rachel be all right. Viola almost flung herself at the Accident and Emergency desk, just willing the girl behind it to tell her it was all a mistake, that Rachel was fine, all a fuss about nothing. A splinter, a tiny cut, a sprained ankle, something trivial, fixable, anything they could laugh about one day soon when the cold terror of the moment had long gone. It must have been like this for Naomi, back in Viola’s childhood when it seemed she was forever falling over something, losing possessions, breaking the odd bone. Could it run in families? Awful to think so – Viola wouldn’t wish her own unlucky track record on anyone, least of all her own daughter.
Viola had been to this hospital only once before. This was where she’d had to come on the ter
rible night of Rhys’s crash. Only minutes passing through A & E that time though, on the way to the mortuary to identify him. Miles had been with her, efficiently and briskly steering her through the corridors, offering to do the identification for her, saying she wouldn’t want to see Rhys all mashed up, but she’d insisted, and besides she was his next of kin, and in fact he’d looked surprisingly peaceful. The injuries that killed him had left his face still beautiful. She remembered thinking how pleased he’d be about that; such a horrible irony. Right now, she just prayed hard that she wasn’t going to have to go through anything like that tonight.
‘Mrs Hendricks … er, yes, I’ve got your daughter’s notes here.’ The girl at the desk was taking it slowly, managing to look as if finding patients’ records was not something she had to do every day, and her brow was furrowed with concentration. Viola could see a half-eaten sandwich on the desk, a smear of mayonnaise on a booklet about bereavement.
‘She has notes?’ Rachel had surely only been in the building less than an hour: what was to write up?
‘On the computer here.’ The girl still seemed confused, and kept tapping the side of her head with her pen.
‘Vo?’ Benedict Peabody suddenly appeared next to her, looking pale and scared.
‘Benedict, hello! What are you doing here? Are you all right?’
‘Friend. Girl.’ He looked hunched and worried, his Cornwall-surfer-tan grey under the harsh hospital lights. ‘Are you ill?’ he asked.
‘No, no, it’s Rachel, my daughter. I had a call …’ She gabbled the words as she looked past him, frantic and frightened, hoping to see Rachel come bouncing through the double doors beyond the department. Drunks were slumped in chairs, a mother and child were both crying quietly in a corner and several other patients sat staring blankly, waiting to be called.
‘Oh Jeez. What? Rachel? No shit.’ He was looking at the floor.
‘Sorry, Benedict. I need to find her, can’t talk. I do hope your friend is OK.’
She turned back to the dithering receptionist. ‘Sorry, but where can I find her? Have you got her name right? Rachel Hendricks?’
‘She’s through there with her mate.’ Benedict pointed to a pair of swing doors as the receptionist carried on clicking the computer and tapping her head. ‘They wouldn’t let me in. I didn’t know … I mean, I had no clue, honestly. I just, like, met her, you know, down Portobello.’
‘You know Rachel? My daughter Rachel? Are you sure?’
‘I didn’t know her surname. Didn’t connect her with you, not once, no way.’ He was defensive now, clearly waiting to be told off. ‘I didn’t give her anything. But …’
‘Give her anything? Give in what sense? Tell me what you know, Benedict: what the hell is wrong with her? Has there been an accident?’
‘No, not an accident. Or, well, yeah, in a way. Her drink got spiked at my party. She’d had quite a lot of drink as well and she went all weird and collapsed so we got an ambulance. I didn’t know she was only fifteen.’ He kicked out at a pillar. ‘Fuck, why didn’t she say?’
Viola could almost have let herself smile at that. Why on earth would any just-fifteen-year-old girl tell a boy she fancied that she was way too young for him? ‘And I didn’t know she’d be at your party! I had no idea you even knew her. She never said,’ she snapped at him. Poor boy, she then thought, it was hardly his fault. ‘So what the hell did this “someone” give her?’
‘Not sure.’ He shrugged. ‘OK, it was ketamine. Soz.’
‘Jesus, what completely stupid idiots your so-called friends must be!’
‘Sorry. I didn’t know. I wouldn’t have let them.’
‘Mrs Hendricks?’ The tapping receptionist looked as if she’d had a breakthrough. ‘Your daughter’s been a patient here before, hasn’t she?’
‘No. No, she hasn’t. Look, I do want to see her, please. Have you got it right? Rachel Hendricks.’
‘Oh!’ The mists cleared from the receptionist’s face suddenly. ‘My mistake! I’ve got her down as Katherine Hendricks – to be called Kate, it says here.’
‘Kate is her middle name; now can I please …’
‘Oh, well, that explains it! Silly me. See, I thought she was the same as this other one, but the age doesn’t tally. I had her down for a head injury, about a year and a half ago. Right, I’ll book her in again then.’ She started pecking at the keyboard with her long blue nails.
Something shifted in Viola’s brain, something about as seismic as it could get. ‘What date, the head injury?’ she asked, hardly more than whispering, already knowing exactly what she was going to hear.
‘I can’t tell you that, sorry. Patient confi—’
‘February 24th?’ Viola interrupted.
‘How did you know?’ Viola was looking at a big smile and wide blue eyes as astonished as if she’d accomplished an especially amazing trick.
‘Lucky guess,’ she said. Lucky. Hardly. The photograph she’d found in Kate’s bedroom of Kate, Rhys and herself at her wedding came to mind. Rhys and Kate, looking at each other and laughing. Had it been going on even then?
‘Your daughter’s through there.’ The receptionist pointed. ‘Cubicle three.’
Viola pushed past Benedict and was through the doors before the girl had finished her sentence. Rachel was lying on a trolley with a blanket over her, looking pale and sickly. Emmy was beside her and a nurse was checking Rachel’s blood pressure.
The nurse looked up, smiled and said, ‘She’s going to be all right, don’t worry. Teenagers – we get this.’
‘I’m sorry, Viola,’ Emmy muttered, her eyes filling with tears. ‘It was, like, so someone else’s fault, not ours.’
‘It doesn’t matter, Em. Nobody’s died. It doesn’t matter.’ Viola took her daughter’s hand and squeezed it gently. Rachel opened her eyes and squinted at her mother. ‘’m OK, Mum. Please don’t fuss about it, will you?’
‘No. I won’t fuss. Not right now, anyway.’
Rachel looked a lot younger than fifteen, more like a small, ill child. Would police be involved? If so, that was probably going to be more Benedict’s department, poor lad.
‘She’ll be fine,’ the nurse said. ‘Vital signs are all normal and she’s thrown up all the alcohol as well, so that’ll help. I just need her to stay for an hour or so to be on the safe side, then the doctor will sign her off and you can take her home. I’d get a cup of tea if I were you. You look like you could do with one. Machine’s in the corridor, in reception.’
‘I will, then I’ll come straight back and wait with Rachel. Emmy, tea?’
‘Yes, please. Two sugars?’ Emmy’s voice was small and defeated-sounding.
Viola leaned forward and gave her a hug. ‘It’ll be OK. You did the right thing, bringing her here and calling me. Give me a minute, I’ll be right back with the tea.’
Viola went out of the building and moved a little way apart from the small collection of nervy smokers exiled from the department. The night was soft, still warm and heavy-aired as if a thunderstorm wasn’t far away. She pulled her phone from her bag and scrolled down to Kate’s number, feeling anger and hurt deeper than any she’d ever, ever, experienced before. Oh yes, bad news definitely came in the middle of the night: Kate was about to get some right now.
‘Waited till 2, planted and left. Take it you changed mind.’ Oh God, Greg! At nine in the morning, Viola emerged from nowhere near enough sleep and found his message on her phone when she went down to the kitchen to make tea. The night before, all thoughts of hanging out in the dark and planting a load of bulbs had gone from her head the moment she’d had the call from Emmy. He’d understand, wouldn’t he? She hoped so, but for now, with all that was on her mind, it was a little as if she wanted to put him in a cupboard and bring him out later after she’d dealt with Kate, wherever she was. She hadn’t been at home – at 1.30 in the morning. To Viola’s furious frustration, nobody had answered either Kate’s home phone or her mobile, and she’d shouted impotently into th
e cold void of voicemail.
She quickly texted Greg: ‘So sorry – was a daughter emergency. Talk later?’
Viola took tea upstairs to Rachel, but she was fast asleep still. For about the fourth time since they’d got home, Viola gently felt her forehead for signs of fever, but her skin was cool and soft. The poor girl was going to have one hell of a hangover when she did wake, so Viola left her to sleep and went and had a shower. Marco, who she’d called as soon as she woke, was on his way over. Kate she would see later that morning, and then … oh God, what actually to say?
After she’d been unable to contact her sister, the momentum of the spontaneous fury that would have given her the immediate words she needed had died down, and she had spent the whole restless night rehearsing all kinds of speeches, every sort of confrontation. If only this didn’t have to happen at all, but it was going to be today, and it looked like it was going to be more public than she’d anticipated. Naomi had phoned, rounding all three of her children up for a family conflab later that morning, and making it sound important and serious enough for there to be no excuses for backing out. There would be no chance to get Kate alone before then, so it would have to be then.
‘Oh my goodness, look at the state of you!’ Marco, clutching tissue-wrapped flowers, came out to the garden with Viola to where Rachel was lying on a lounger in the sun with sunglasses on, and an expression of ongoing agony. ‘Do we feel sorry for ourselves or what?’
‘I so do,’ she agreed. ‘Never, ever, going out again. Not that Mum will let me, anyway, I’m certain sure.’
‘Oh, you’ll be over it soon. Here, a nice little posy of get-well sweet peas for you.’
