Too Good to Be True

by Sheila O'Flanagan

  He was right. He felt himself panic at the thought that there was a dying man beside him and that he should be able to do something about it, but he wasn’t sure what. Part of him was afraid to move him, but Ben knew from the first aid classes he’d done before they opened the shop that getting the victim breathing was the most important thing of all.

  He opened the young man’s mouth and realized why he wasn’t breathing. Somehow he’d managed to swallow his tongue. This wasn’t as bad as Ben had feared; years ago he’d seen a referee at a football match help a player who’d swallowed his tongue. Ben knew that he could do this. He reached into the man’s mouth and hooked his finger behind the tongue. The problem, he thought worriedly, would be if he didn’t start to breathe straight away. It was all very well to know what you were supposed to do, but doing it was another thing altogether.

  “Ben!” He could hear Freya’s voice in the distance. “Ben, are you OK?”

  “A bit busy right now,” he muttered as he finally freed the tongue and looked anxiously at his patient. The man still wasn’t breathing. Ben knew that he’d have to start mouth-to-mouth. He pinched the man’s nose and breathed into his mouth, the lessons coming back to him. “Don’t make things worse,” the first aid instructor had told him. “All you want to do is keep the patient alive until somebody competent gets to him.” Ben prayed that somebody competent would get to him very quickly because he didn’t feel very competent himself.

  “Excuse me, sir.”

  Ben sighed with relief at the quiet authority in the voice beside him.

  “He swallowed his tongue,” Ben told the paramedic. “He wasn’t breathing. I don’t know how he is now.”

  “Leave him to us,” said the paramedic. “You’ve done all you can. Maybe you want to sit down.”

  Ben realized that there was a crowd of onlookers clustered around the Jeep. He shivered and a woman handed him a fleece.

  “Put it on,” she said. “You’ve had a shock.”

  “Ben! Ben!” Freya pushed her way to the front of the crowd. “Oh, God, Ben, I got such a fright. And I thought you — I knew you were down here and I didn’t see you.”

  “Susie knew I was OK.” Ben’s teeth were chattering.

  “Susie fainted,” said Freya.

  Ben smiled wanly. “I have that effect on women.”

  Freya’s return smile was shaky. “You really are OK then?”

  “I think so.” He shook his head and slivers of glass fell out of his hair.

  “Are you cut?” demanded Freya.

  “I don’t know.” Ben looked over to the Jeep. The paramedics had now strapped both driver and passenger onto trolleys and were wheeling them to the ambulance outside.

  “They got here really quickly,” said Freya.

  “Just as well.” Ben’s voice was sober. “I don’t know whether or not I was keeping that bloke alive. Without them he had no chance.”

  “Here.” A man in the crowd thrust a takeaway cup of steaming coffee into Ben’s hand. “That’s from the café across the road. They saw what happened.”

  “Thanks.” Ben accepted the cup gratefully.

  “You did really well,” said a woman. “You saved his life.”

  “I don’t know,” said Ben. “I don’t know at all.”

  “Given that they nearly killed you, I wouldn’t worry about it.” Another man in the crowd expressed his opinion. “Maniacs, that’s what they are.”

  “Your lovely shop.” Ben recognized the elderly lady who spoke. She came in every week for vitamin supplements and herbal teas. “It’s destroyed.”

  “Not destroyed.” But as he looked around him Ben knew that his words were hollow. The front of the shop was a wreck. What hadn’t been flattened by the Jeep was now being pulverized by the rain. And he had a feeling that he’d be picking glass out of everything for weeks.

  “Thugs,” said another man. “Thugs the lot of them.”

  “Maybe not.” Ben didn’t know why he was taking the side of the Jeep’s occupants.

  “You’re in shock,” said the elderly lady. “Once you come out of it you’ll realize that they probably were thugs.”

  “I suppose.” He shrugged and drank some more of the scalding coffee. He was freezing now, and wet from the rain. He wished everyone would go home and leave him alone. The crowd suddenly parted and he thought he was getting his wish. Then he realized that the police had arrived and wanted to talk to him.

  He tried to be coherent, but he knew that he wasn’t. All he could do was repeat over and over again that the Jeep had quite suddenly swerved towards the shop and there was nothing anyone could have done to stop it. The police, no doubt covering all bases, wanted to know if he’d had any threats made towards him or the shop, and he stared at them in utter disbelief before saying that he ran a bloody health food store, not some drug-dealing den, and that there was no need to threaten him because he had nothing to give anyone. The younger of the two gardai shrugged and said that you never knew these days, and that sometimes gangs tried extorting money from keyholders and had anything like that ever happened?

  Ben shook his head wearily. The guard got up and shook his hand and said that he’d had a narrow escape, and Ben, looking at the damage to the counter he’d jumped over, agreed. Then they talked to a revived Susie, who couldn’t tell them anything more and whose teeth were chattering so much that anything she did say was totally incomprehensible. Ben suggested that she should be taken home, and since she lived close to the police station in Rathmines, the gardai offered to drive her. She kissed Ben tearfully on the cheek and told him she’d be in tomorrow. At which he told her not to bother. There was no chance of them being open for business; she should take the day off and he’d phone her later.

  “We’ll have to get on to the insurance company,” said Freya after Susie had gone, “and see what we can do about getting plastic put over that hole.”

  Ben nodded, then shivered again.

  “Are you really OK?” asked Freya. “Maybe you should’ve gone to hospital too.”

  “I just can’t believe what happened,” said Ben. “One minute everything was fine. Next — bang!”

  “Was it deliberate?” asked Freya. “I mean, I know it sounds fantastic, but have we ever been threatened by gangs demanding protection money or anything?”

  “No.” Ben made a face at her. “Honestly, no. Nobody is out to get me…” His voice trailed off.

  “What?” Freya looked at him anxiously. “Who have you thought of?”

  Ben grinned. “Both my wife and my girlfriend might want to have a go.”

  “Ben!” Freya gasped. “You surely don’t think…”

  “Get a grip, Freya,” he said. “I was only joking.”

  “Right now I’m not able to take a joke.”

  “I’m sorry.” Ben put his arm round her shoulder. “I felt like being silly for a moment.”

  “If only it was just a moment!”

  “Don’t worry about me,” he said. “And don’t worry about the shop either. We’ll get through it.”

  “I hope so,” she said as she picked a glittering shard of glass from his collar.

  Carey had decided that it was not having a definite place to live that was making her feel so unsettled. She’d had three different homes since the end of January and she missed the security of knowing that the place she was coming back to after work was the place where she was staying for good. Of course, she’d always known that she wouldn’t stay with Gina forever, but it had been a base for three years. Living with Peter was uncomfortable. She’d got over her inclination to lock herself away in the bedroom and now sat in the living room with him on the evenings she wasn’t working, but she never felt relaxed.

  There were two reasons for her unease. The first was that this was the home that he’d shared with Sandra at the same time as he was having an affair with her, and she felt, very strongly, that she really didn’t belong here. The second was that platonically sharing a house with a
man with whom she’d once slept was a difficult thing to do.

  It wasn’t as though Peter was jumping on her at every available opportunity — quite the opposite, in fact. He was being nice and sympathetic and utterly caring. But there was an undercurrent between them that was impossible to ignore. So they were ultra-polite to each other and carefully avoided talking about anything other than the most superficial of things, but it seemed to Carey that if she wasn’t careful she could suddenly find herself involved with Peter Furness again, and she really didn’t want that to happen.

  Now they sat at opposite ends of the sofa while Peter watched the nine o’clock news and Carey flicked through the newspaper and hoped that the purchase of her apartment would come through quickly.

  “Two men were seriously injured and another had a lucky escape when a Jeep went out of control and plowed into a shop in Rathmines earlier today.”

  Carey glanced at the TV as the news announcer’s words penetrated her consciousness. “The owner of the shop, Mr. Ben Russell, saved himself by jumping out of the path of the vehicle. He subsequently administered first aid to one of the Jeep’s occupants.”

  She stared at the screen, her mouth open. The news crew had arrived on the scene before the Jeep had been removed, and the cameras lingered on its battered bonnet as well as the destruction it had wrought on the shop.

  “Can you describe what happened?” The reporter was talking to one of the bystanders, a young woman with a toddler dragging out of her arm.

  “All I saw was the Jeep suddenly turn towards the shop,” she said. “It didn’t slow down or anything. And there was a terrible noise.”

  The cameras panned out from the shop again.

  “Ben Russell is the owner of Herbal Matters,” said the reporter. “He saved the life of the passenger in the Jeep after miraculously escaping being killed himself. How are you feeling now, Mr. Russell?”

  “I’m fine,” said Ben. “I wasn’t injured. I got out of the way in time.”

  “You saved the life of the passenger,” repeated the reporter. “It was an act of bravery following your own narrow escape.”

  “Not bravery,” said Ben. “The man was unconscious. And I didn’t save his life, the ambulance people did.”

  “Have you any idea what caused the accident?”

  Ben shook his head. “None whatsoever.”

  The cameras panned away from him and back to the reporter.

  “That’s him?” Peter turned to Carey. “That’s your Ben?”

  She nodded slowly.

  “A hero,” said Peter.

  Carey glanced at him. “Lucky to be alive.”

  “So it seems.”

  “I wonder what it was all about.”

  “Maybe the driver lost control,” said Peter. “Maybe he was high on something.” He shrugged. “If your Ben hadn’t been agile enough to get out of the way, you’d be a widow right now.”

  “Don’t!” She reached for her mobile phone, which was on the coffee-table beside her. “I should talk to him.”

  “Why?” asked Peter.

  “I just —” She was about to hit the speed dial when the reporter began talking again, giving some more information about Ben and the shop. The cameras moved to Freya, who was now standing beside Ben, then quickly to the other side of him, where they stopped and focused on Leah Ryder. Carey held her breath as the reporter spoke to Leah.

  “You’re a close friend of Mr. Russell,” he said. “How did you feel when you heard about today’s events?”

  “I rushed over straight away.” Leah looked directly into the camera, her eyes wide. “I heard the reports on the radio and I was so worried I had to come immediately. Fortunately Ben was unhurt. But I think he did a great job in looking after the man who was.” She turned and smiled at Ben.

  “Is that her?” asked Peter.

  “Shut up,” said Carey. “I want to listen.” But the reporter was now wrapping up the piece and had nothing new to add.

  “Are you OK?” asked Peter.

  “Of course,” said Carey. “I wasn’t there, was I? I didn’t nearly get run over by a Jeep.”

  “Nor did he,” said Peter.

  “If he didn’t, he probably got the most awful fright. And the shop is ruined.” Carey felt tears prick at the back of her eyes. “His lovely shop.”

  “Insurance will pay for it,” said Peter practically.

  “I know, but…”

  “Was that the girlfriend?” Peter asked the question again.

  “Leah,” said Carey. “That’s her.”

  “Very pretty.”

  “I know.”

  “Back by his side.”

  “Never fucking left it,” said Carey.

  Freya turned down the volume on the TV in her apartment and grinned at Ben.

  “My hero,” she said with a hint of amusement in her voice. “Hopefully people will see you and think that herbal remedies are responsible for your rugged charm and amazing agility.”

  “Sod off,” he said amiably. “At least they managed to show the shop name quite a bit. Even if we can’t get any sales in Rathmines, with a bit of luck the Tallaght and Drumcondra branches will draw in a few customers looking for the healthy option.”

  “Oh, Ben, surely you’re not really thinking of customers at a time like this?” Leah turned her brown eyes on him. “I’m more concerned with your health than anyone else’s.”

  “I’m perfectly OK,” Ben assured her. “I know that I got a fright when it happened and I’m sure I was in shock afterwards, but everything’s all right now.”

  “Although the shop is a disaster area.” Freya sighed. “And those bloody insurance people will probably wait for ages before paying out.”

  “I’ll have a word with Mick Delahunty,” said Brian. “Make sure there’s no delay.”

  “Thanks, Brian,” said Ben. “It’s good to have a financial brain in the family.”

  Ben didn’t see the dark flicker in Freya’s eyes as Brian replied that it was due to his recommendation that they’d taken the insurance out with Mick’s company and he’d do his best to get things sorted out as quickly as possible.

  “How long will it be before you can open the shop again?” asked Leah.

  “I don’t know,” said Ben. “We’ll have to assess it when the insurance guy comes round. If we get it sorted quickly, then obviously we’ll re-open as soon as we can.”

  “You know I almost died of fright myself when I heard it on the radio news,” she said.

  “I almost died of fright when I heard the sound of the Jeep coming through the window,” Freya told her. “I thought it was an earthquake. Or a bomb. I was on the phone to Gerry Donovan and I just dropped it onto my desk without telling him what was going on.”

  Ben yawned and then looked at his watch. “I’d better get home. I’m really tired now and I could do with falling into bed.”

  “I should get going myself.” Leah stood up and reached for her red velvet jacket, which was draped over the back of a chair.

  “Thanks for calling round,” said Freya.

  “I’m just glad you’re both OK,” Leah told her.

  “Needs more than a four-by-four to take out a Russell.” Ben grinned. “Come on, Leah. Do you want to share a cab as far as Portobello?”

  “Fine.” Her smile was brief.

  “See you tomorrow, Freya,” said Ben, and kissed his sister on the cheek. “Look after her, Brian. Make sure she doesn’t suddenly start to panic about how secure the premises are tonight and all that sort of thing. You know she’s a worrier.”

  “I am not!” Freya looked affronted and then relented. “Oh, all right, I am.”

  “Good luck,” said Brian. “See you soon, Ben. And I’d milk the hero thing if I were you. That guy probably would’ve choked to death if you hadn’t done something.”

  “Maybe,” said Ben. “Though looking round the place afterwards, I have to say that I could’ve cheerfully choked him myself.”

  W
hen her brother and Leah had left, Freya leaned her head back and closed her eyes.

  “You OK?” asked Brian.

  “Sure,” she said.

  “So what’s all that about?”

  “What?”

  “Ben and Leah. Together.”

  “God knows.” Freya opened one eye. “I’m past caring. If he wants to start going out with her again, that’s fine by me.”

  “Actually I thought you might be pleased.”

  Freya opened the other eye. “So did I. But I don’t know how I feel about him and his women anymore.”

  Brian laughed. “Him and his women? You make it sound like there’s a queue.”

  “He’s a philanderer,” said Freya. “You know that. Maybe he just wants someone new every so often.”

  “He’s a good-looking bloke,” said Brian.

  “Looks aren’t everything,” snapped Freya. “Not that it matters. It’s his life.”

  Brian looked at her curiously. “Are you totally stressed out about today?” he asked. “Don’t be. Insurance will cover a lot of it and you’ll get back on track.”

  “It’s not that.” Freya swallowed. “I was shattered when it happened, of course, but you’re right. It’s only money or property. It’s not important.”

  “Goodness, Freya, that sounds odd coming from you.”

  “Why?” she asked. “I gave up my exciting job in banking to pursue alternative remedies. Why should my lack of concern bother you?”

  “Because you might have gone another route, but you’re still a businesswoman at heart,” said Brian. “And there’s something wrong, isn’t there?”

  “Like what?”

  “Freya, don’t play games with me.”

  “I’m not,” she said.

  “Well, what’s up with you?”

  “Our — engagement,” she said slowly.