The Crossing

by Christina James

  “So you’ve been friends ever since?”

  “Yes. She comes here a lot. She’s like my sister.”

  Alice’s blue eyes swam with tears. Juliet patted her arm.

  “It’s all right Alice, we’ll take a break now. You’ve done really well. Shall we go and find your Mum and Dad?”

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  IT WORKED!

  Why did he choose not to kill us both? He’d be rudderless without me, though he has his above-world life as well. And Ariadne? He’s never shown the slightest affection for her and I believe feels none. But when I said he’d have her death on his hands, her murder by negligence, he was spooked.

  I say this without irony, because I know he is continually at war with himself. It’s not that he has no moral compass; he has, though it’s hideous and crazy. He works to no normal code of human conduct, but still he’s influenced by what his mother taught him. I’m not suggesting his subconscious tells him he’ll face the wrath of God if he goes too far, but despite all his clever precautions he may have felt an irrational unease that ‘something would happen’ if he let Ariadne die. And he can’t bear mess. There would have been the untidiness, the stench, the distastefulness of a decomposing body. The horror of how to rid himself of it without getting caught.

  Two days ago, when at last he came, Ariadne was failing. Previously, he’d taken one look at her and threatened to beat her if she didn’t stop pretending and he said he’d beat me if I didn’t nurse her back to health. I’d seen him like that before: raging in his impotence, running scared. But not as scared as he was when he took her limp hand to feel her pulse. It was weak and fluttery: I know, because I’d been taking it obsessively myself. Her whole body was bathed in sweat. She drifted in and out of delirium, sometimes muttering words I could not hear. She was barely aware of either of us.

  I see the panic flare in his eyes as he drops her wrist and grabs mine.

  “What have you done to her?” he demands, in a voice meant to sound angry but is squealing with fear. I stand my ground. I’ve been planning this for hours. I have to get it right.

  “I haven’t done anything,” I say. “She’s ill. I’ve done all within my power to help her. She can’t rally. We don’t have the medicines or the knowledge.”

  “I suppose we don’t,” he says thoughtfully, as if he’s just stumbled upon a shared flaw.

  “I know . . . I know . . .” I say, faltering.

  “What do you know?” he shrieks.

  “I know I can rely on you not to let your daughter die. I know you have enough kindness in you – enough goodness – to get help for her before it’s too late.”

  “What do you mean?” He knits his brows. There is a deep furrow at the top of his nose and there are crows’ feet around his eyes. The Lover is ageing: he is weary. “I won’t bring a doctor here, if that’s what you want.”

  “You know I wouldn’t ask that. This place is special, private to us. Besides, it’s too late for a doctor. Ariadne needs to go to a hospital.”

  “In your dreams!” He flings my hand away, turns his back on me. I am terrified he will leave us. I skirt the end of Ariadne’s bed so I can reach out to him. I put my arms around him, hug his back.

  “We won’t betray you,” I say. “Ariadne can’t speak. I’ll say she suddenly fell ill, that we didn’t know what to do, that we’re travelling in the area, so that’s why no-one knows us. I’ll say you’re an old family friend, that I called you because I had no-one else to turn to.”

  He twists round in my arms, pushes his lips against mine, forces his tongue between my teeth. That ancient smell of mint.

  “Do you love me?”

  “You know that I do.”

  “You were wrong about me, weren’t you, all those years ago?”

  “Yes. Yes, I was wrong. Forgive me.”

  “Perhaps we can have a normal life together. I’ve been planning the stages, but we don’t pass them. Perhaps we can try again.”

  “Yes. Yes, we can. I promise, we can.”

  “And you promise you’ll be good? If we go to the hospital?”

  “I promise. It will be all right, you’ll see.”

  He is suddenly preoccupied with the logistics of getting Ariadne outside.

  “You’ll have to dress her,” he says. “Does she have proper clothes?”

  I nearly laugh in his face.

  “She has what you’ve brought. Supermarket clothes. Mainly cotton dresses, some too small for her. We both spend our time wearing sweats, because we feel the cold. You know that.”

  “The supermarket clothes won’t make a good impression, especially if they don’t fit. They’ll look cheap, as if she’s been neglected. Don’t you have any other clothes?”

  “Yes. The ones from my suitcase when you first . . . when I first came here. I’ve barely worn them. They aren’t practical.”

  “Will they fit her?”

  “Probably. She’s tall, but so am I. They’re dated, though.”

  He looks at me shyly through his neat little fringe, like a boy on his first date.

  “You always had classic taste. They won’t look so out of place. Choose something easy and get her into it. Something good quality. And change into something smart yourself. I’m going out for a bit. I’ll come back . . .”

  “No!” I say, my heart lurching with alarm. “Please don’t go. I won’t be long. I’ll change now and bring the clothes for Ariadne. We won’t be more than a few minutes.”

  “All right,” he says. He looks at his watch. “But you’ll need to hurry, because it’ll be daylight soon. I don’t think Ve . . .” He pulls himself up short, fakes a coughing fit.

  “What don’t you think?”

  “Nothing. Get yourselves dressed. I’ll wait.”

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  THE JOHNSON HOSPITAL was a low-slung, futuristic building set at the end of a wide white sweep of approach road. It had been built in 2009 and, although also called the Spalding Community Hospital, it was sited in Pinchbeck, the large village due north of Spalding. Pinchbeck was arguably even older than Spalding itself. In the past there had been competition between the two communities, but town and village were now virtually one: the main Spalding Road to Pinchbeck was dotted with houses all the way. The hospital was smart and efficient, proud of its record for treating A & E patients with minor injuries. It didn’t pretend to offer specialist treatments and couldn’t deal with serious accidents or patients who were critically or chronically ill.

  Staff Nurse Marianne Burrell was standing in the reception area, feeling pleasantly tired and waiting for the last few minutes to elapse before she could go off duty after a busy but not traumatic shift. She’d spent the night supervising the usual flurry of cuts and bangs on the head sustained by those who ‘had only had one drink’ and helped to reassure the insomniac worried well who’d come in panicking about irregular heartbeats or because they thought they weren’t breathing as easily as usual. She glanced idly out of the window. An interesting little tableau caught her eye.

  A man had parked his car as close to the hospital entrance as he could. Under the glow of the street lamps, the nurse observed him as he climbed out of it and tried to remove a very large bundle from the back seat, aided by a painfully thin woman who could barely stand. She kept stumbling and clutching at the open rear door for support. The watching nurse wondered if she was yet another drunk.

  Together the couple managed to slide the bundle from the car. The man hoisted it into his arms. Apparently it was awkward to carry rather than heavy: he seemed not to flounder beneath its weight. The woman held on to one of his arms and haltingly walked beside him, peering into the top of the bundle now and then. It was only a short walk to the automatic doors, but twice they had to stop for her to rest and regain her balance before they finally entered the building.

  S
taff Nurse Burrell, rushing forward to help, recognised the man.

  “Mr Start!” she said. “Matthew, isn’t it? Let me help you. I hope that isn’t . . .”

  “I’m fine,” he said brusquely, cutting her short. “I can manage perfectly well, thank you. Just tell me where to take her. This is her mother,” he added in a rush. “She’s someone I met years ago. They were travelling in this area when the daughter was taken ill. They came to my house and I offered to help. I . . .”

  “Steady on!” The nurse smiled. “First things first. Follow me. We’ll get her onto a bed first, shall we, then you can tell us what’s wrong.” Her eyes swept the face of the woman who’d been described as the mother. She was looking down at the floor. The woman was fair – very fair – but the nurse had never seen anyone with such a chalk-white complexion. Her skin was like paper, with an unhealthy, pearl-like sheen. And her pinched features and emaciated body were shocking when viewed close to. Staff Nurse Burrell touched the woman’s arm.

  “Are you all right, lovey?” she said. “Not sickening for the same thing, are you? I think we’d better have you examined as well.”

  “She’s fine,” snapped Matthew Start. “Just a bit worried about the girl, that’s all.”

  “Even so . . .”

  “I don’t need any help for myself,” said the woman in a voice at once colourless and inflected. She spoke English well, but Nurse Burrell would later hazard a guess that English wasn’t her native language. “Please, just show us where to take Ariadne. I think she’s quite sick.”

  “Follow me, if you can manage to carry her further.”

  She led them through some double doors to an A & E treatment area and took them to a cubicle, pulling the curtains around it deftly as she pointed to the bed.

  “Put her down there. Take the blanket off her. Is she dressed?”

  The woman identified as the mother nodded. The nurse took in her whole appearance for the first time. She was wearing a black suit with a fitted jacket and quite a short skirt and a purple blouse made of some very shiny material. The suit looked as if it was meant to be tight-fitting, but it hung off the woman, as if she’d lost a lot of weight since she bought it. The stockings that encased her stick-thin legs were sheer – the nurse noted a ladder in one of them – and she was wearing black suede high-heeled pumps with cut-out toes. She carried a shiny red handbag with a thick strap. It was dark and cold outside and the woman was shivering, but she had no coat.

  Her clothes were smart enough, but there was something strange about them that the nurse couldn’t quite put her finger on. The same went for the woman’s silver-blonde hair, which had been smoothed down against her skull and kept in place with metal pins in several neon colours. Her long pony-tail was fastened at the nape of her neck with a multi-coloured ‘scrunchie’.

  The man stood back while the woman slowly unwound the blanket that shrouded the patient, untangling it with some awkwardness. What she revealed was not a child, as the man had implied, but a young woman. Like her mother, she was very pale and thin. Also like her mother, she was dressed in a shirt of shiny satin material, predominantly green, with a swirling paisley pattern and a dark skirt.

  The similarities ended there. Staff Nurse Burrell took one look at the supine patient and understood that she was very ill indeed. The young woman was holding her arms rigidly to her sides and appeared to be deeply unconscious. Her face was greasy with sweat.

  “How long has she been like this?”

  The man shrugged.

  “A day or so,” the woman said carefully.

  “But I mean how long has she been unconscious?” The woman did not reply.

  “I don’t want to alarm you, but I think she’s critically ill. I’m going to fetch a doctor right now. I’ll send in another nurse to cover while I’m away. Don’t leave her.”

  Half an hour later the young woman had been hooked up to drips and a sac of blood and was being rushed by ambulance to the Pilgrim Hospital in Boston. Dr Sharma had explained that although he couldn’t provide a diagnosis, Ariadne’s symptoms indicated she was suffering from a condition too serious for the Community Hospital to treat. She needed help from the best-equipped hospital in the region, and as soon as possible. He didn’t spell it out, because the mother seemed so fragile, but privately he thought the girl was close to death. He was very puzzled by her condition. On the face of it, she seemed well cared for in a basic way, in that she was clean and there were no signs of physical abuse on her body. Nevertheless, some of her symptoms indicated prolonged privation: her muscles were wasted as if she never exercised them, the poor condition of her teeth suggested that she’d been malnourished over many months, if not years, and her extreme pallor suggested that she was not only habitually confined indoors, but had had little or no access to natural light. Her mother said they’d been travelling when Ariadne was taken ill, but he couldn’t believe that this young woman had recently been in a fit state for a holiday. The mother herself seemed too frail for such a venture.

  Curiously, her mother did not accompany her to the Pilgrim Hospital, even though Dr Sharma explained the gravity of the situation as clearly as he could. Matthew Start, the man who had introduced himself as the mother’s old friend, said she needed to return to where she came from because she had other children to look after. He said he would take her back to them and then himself drive to the Pilgrim Hospital to check on Ariadne. The mother seemed to be briefly angered by his words, but she didn’t contradict him. In fact, she said nothing at all. Yet she was clearly distraught about the girl.

  “Before you go, I’ll need you to sign a consent form as her next of kin and we’ll also need Ariadne’s address, and your own,” said Dr Sharma. Wordlessly, the woman took the pen that he held out to her. The staff nurse had fixed the form to a clipboard, which she passed across. The woman hesitated and frowned, knitting her pale brows.

  “I don’t know the address . . . of the boarding house,” she said to Matthew Start. “Perhaps I could use your address?” Her manner was tentative, as if she were afraid of him.

  “No, don’t do that, Lucy,” Matthew Start said cheerfully. “It’s bound to cause confusion. I think I know the name of the guest house. It’s called Twelvetrees. It’s in Surfleet. I’ll find out the rest of the details and phone them into you later.” His final sentence was addressed to Nurse Burrell.

  “Could you give me a contact telephone number?”

  “I . . .”

  “You’d better use my mobile number,” said Matthew. “Lucy’s might not work here.”

  “Am I to understand that you’re not a British citizen?” said the doctor, addressing himself to ‘Lucy’.

  “Lucy’s Dutch,” said Matthew affably.

  “If she’s from the Netherlands, her mobile number probably will work.”

  “Better have my number to be on the safe side,” he said, taking the clipboard from her and scribbling it down. “We have to go. We don’t want to get into trouble for leaving the other children on their own.”

  “Just a minute,” said Dr Sharma to Lucy. “We still don’t have your signature.”

  Silently she took the clipboard from him and carefully inscribed something. Matthew Start watched impatiently. Staff Nurse Burrell, anticipating that he intended to take the clipboard back again, quickly relieved Lucy of it herself.

  “Here’s the number of the Pilgrim Hospital,” she said, handing her a slip of paper. “It’s a generic number for patients’ relatives to call. After the first time, they’ll probably let you know how to get through to the right ward.”

  “Thank you,” said the woman called Lucy in a barely audible voice. She opened the red handbag and tucked the number inside.

  “Come on,” said Matthew Start. He crinkled his face into a grimace of a smile.

  “Thank you for all your help,” he said. “I’ll get to Boston as soon as I
can.” He took hold of Lucy’s elbow and steered her towards the door. Dr Sharma followed them out into the reception area, Marianne Burrell behind him.

  Lucy turned and held his eye. He had seldom seen anyone in so much despair.

  “They will look after her, won’t they? They will make her better?”

  Faced with such a direct question, he felt unable to offer false hope.

  “Lucy,” he said gently, “I’m sure my colleagues at the Pilgrim Hospital will do everything in their power to help Ariadne and as I’ve already explained they have much more equipment than we do. But you must understand that she’s very seriously ill. Since I can’t give you a diagnosis I can’t quantify the danger, but my advice is to find someone to look after your other children as quickly as you can so you can go to the hospital to be with her yourself. You may regret it if you don’t.”

  The woman burst into tears immediately and lost her footing, as if she was about to faint. Marianne Burrell went to her aid, but Matthew Start got there first. He caught her and held her upright. For an instant she beat feebly on his chest, but he took both her wrists in his own and held her still.

  “Thank you,” he said again, bowing his head slightly in an incongruous gesture of courtesy. Gripping Lucy firmly, he half-carried her back through the automatic doors. Dr Sharma walked forward to observe them. He watched Matthew Start fix Lucy’s seat belt. She was swatting him with her hands and sobbing. He was shouting at her.

  “What do you make of that, Dr Sharma?” asked Staff Nurse Burrell. She was shaken both by the state of the girl patient and the bizarreness of the scenes she’d just witnessed.

  “I have no idea what to make of it, but I’m certain of one thing: we need to tell the police. I think it’s unlikely this girl’s life will be saved, but if it is she’ll have to be protected from whatever it is that’s made her so ill. And whether she survives or not, we have to find out the truth: I’ve never been so convinced I’ve just been told a pack of lies.”