Inheritance

by Thomas Wymark

‘Christine?’

  Who was that? The back of my head hurt. I moved my fingers and they touched carpet. I was lying on the ground. On a carpet.

  ‘Christine, can you hear me?’

  I didn’t recognise the voice. I was scared to open my eyes. I didn’t know what I was going to see. And it felt like an explosion of pain might burst into me if I opened them too soon.

  I tried to nod my head without moving it.

  A hand squeezed mine.

  ‘Squeeze my hand if you can hear me.’

  I squeezed.

  I squeezed my other hand at the same time. There was something in it. I squeezed again. The box of tablets.

  I felt something moving on my chest. Sliding across it from one side to the other. I decided to risk opening one eye. A little.

  It was difficult to focus with just one eye, so I opened the other one too.

  A man and a woman were crouched down by my side. Both dressed in green. Both paramedics.

  The woman slid a stethoscope across my chest. Either my heart was on the move, or she was listening for something else.

  The man said my name again.

  ‘Christine? How are you feeling?’

  He smiled at me. His voice was calm. Comforting.

  I smiled back.

  ‘I’m OK,’ I said.

  Apart from the back of my head, I felt no other pain. I wanted to touch my leg wound, but I knew it wasn’t there. I made a move to sit up.

  ‘Wait just a moment, Christine,’ the man said.

  He restrained me with a gentle hand. I had no desire to fight back.

  The woman took the stethoscope from her ears and nodded to the man.

  ‘OK,’ he said. ‘You can sit up now. But slowly please.’

  As I moved, he moved his arm under my body to help. I felt another arm come under me from the other side. It was Neil. He looked like he had completely recovered from the illness that had laid him out on our bed when I had left him upstairs earlier. I wondered how much earlier that had been.

  ‘How long?’ I said.

  ‘Just a few minutes,’ Neil said.

  Even in my slightly confused state, a few minutes didn’t make sense. Not unless the paramedics had been waiting outside our front door — just in case I had some need of them.

  I heard the crackle of a radio. The police officer. The noise came from the stairs. I looked over and saw a larger, older police officer than the one who had been questioning me earlier. Neil looked up at him.

  ‘Well, everything seems OK,’ the officer said. ‘There certainly isn’t anyone else here.’

  Neil thanked him.

  To my left the young police officer appeared from the dining room. I noticed a red mark on his cheek. He walked directly over to me.

  ‘How are you feeling?’ he said.

  I could see the red mark was blood. His cheek bore a scratch. I wondered what else I had done.

  ‘I’m OK, thank you,’ I said. I ran a finger along my cheek and pointed up at his scratch. ‘Was that me?’

  He touched the scratch with a curled finger and smiled.

  ‘It was me, actually,’ he said. ‘When you collapsed I tried to hold you, and use my radio at the same time. I scratched myself as I reached for the radio. My wife’s always telling me my nails are too long.’

  Old enough to drive and old enough to have a wife.

  ‘Did you know there is soil and fragments of broken crockery on your kitchen floor?’ he said. ‘And what looks like a hand smear mark on the kitchen window?’

  The male paramedic reached down to my wrist and started monitoring my pulse. I wondered if this was standard paramedic procedure once the police started asking questions and they were on the scene. Was it some sort of rudimentary lie detector. If my pulse went up — I was lying. If it went down — the truth.

  I thought good luck to him with my pulse.

  ‘That was the plant pot,’ I said. ‘I mentioned it earlier? The hand marks on the window were probably me, when I looked out of the window, then tried to pull it back shut again.’

  He glanced at my hands, but said nothing.

  For the first time since becoming fully conscious again, I saw Michael and Rose sitting quietly on the sofa, both looking at me. I smiled at them and made a move to stand up. Neil held me fast and looked at the male paramedic.

  ‘I think we just need to take you into hospital,’ the paramedic said. ‘Just to give you the once over.’

  If he was still monitoring my pulse, he would certainly feel something now.

  ‘I’m fine,’ I said. ‘Really. I don’t need to go into hospital. I just need a glass of water. Really, I am fine.’

  The male paramedic looked over at Neil, then the young police officer. Then back down at me.

  ‘It’s always advisable, if the patient has lost consciousness, to have them looked at,’ he said. He looked at his wrist watch. ‘It probably wouldn’t even take long. We would certainly recommend it.’

  My pulse hammered up a notch or two more. I was scared. Something inside me was screaming at me not to go into hospital. Not even for a check up. I knew I was already on the edge — or even perhaps slightly over it. It would only take a quick call to Doctor Jones, or a brief look at my recent medical history, to realise that I might have serious psychological issues.

  Although I had already considered turning myself in to be hospitalised only that morning, I felt as though things had changed. I was already sorting out the children's safety by having them stay with Abi, and it now seemed essential to me to sort myself out. I didn’t want to be kept in a hospital. There was every chance that if I was committed to an institution of any kind, the future for Michael and Rose would, almost overnight, become darker and more uncertain. With a mother committed, and a father working, what future for the children? What would the social services make of it?

  I looked at Neil and tried to speak to him through my eyes. At first he didn’t seem to get it.

  ‘I think it wouldn’t be a bad idea, Chris,’ he said. ‘Just to make sure you’re OK.’

  I intensified my eyes so that they went from speaking to screaming at him. Why were men so bloody stupid sometimes?

  ‘Unless,’ he said, ‘you really do feel better.’

  At last. I smiled at him and turned to the paramedic. He looked again to the young police officer.

  ‘It might be for the best, Mrs Marsden,’ he said.

  I sat up straight and did my best to look as calm and happy as possible. As though I was sitting on a picnic rug on a summer afternoon, rather than recovering from some sort of breakdown on my living-room carpet.

  The female paramedic spoke.

  ‘We need to make sure that there is nothing more serious happening to you,’ she said. ‘It’s not that common to have a blackout without something triggering it. And you are still recovering from a couple of head wounds, it really would be sensible to come along.’

  Why were women so bloody stupid sometimes?

  Surely she could understand. I didn’t want to lose my children. What woman would? Could she not read my eyes either?

  ‘I think she seems OK,’ Neil said.

  I squeezed his hand. My pulse slowed a little. I breathed a little easier.

  ‘I am,’ I said. ‘Really, I am fine.’

  It was with some reluctance that the paramedics left. They told me that it was essential to ring them should I have any ill effects at all, no matter how trivial they might seem. Particularly with my vision and balance.

  The police officers seemed even more reluctant. In fact they were almost like petulant teenagers when they finally walked out through the front door. They gave us no advice of what to do should anything take a turn for the worse. I got the feeling that they would be overjoyed to never hear from us again. At that moment, that suited me too.

  I tried to reassure Michael and Rose that I was fine. We sat and cuddled. We laughed about how young one of the police officers had been. And that he scratched himself
while reaching for his radio.

  Michael looked at ease. Rose still slightly on edge. We cuddled some more.

  Neil brought me a large glass of water. He really did look very well now. I wondered what had happened to stop him feeling ill.

  After ten minutes of cuddles and laughs, I told the kids to go up and get ready for bed, and to come down when they were both ready. I figured that would give Neil and me at least twenty minutes talk time. Michael would get distracted on a video game, and Rose would play out some sort of search and rescue story with her cuddlies.

  ‘I’m pleased you’re feeling better,’ I said to Neil. ‘Thank you for being there for me.’

  The first ten minutes of our chat were taken up with me trying to explain what had happened with the police officer. Why they had come round in the first place, and why it had been so essential for me to avoid hospital. Neil listened to everything I said. He heard it all. I’m not sure he understood. I told him more about the intruder I thought had broken in through the kitchen window. The scratching noises I had heard and the shadows I had seen. Then I told him about the kids staying with Abi for a while.

  At first, he was adamant that Michael and Rose should stay at home. But I think he misunderstood the reasoning behind it. I explained it all again.

  ‘Do you really think it’s necessary though?’ he said.

  I ran over it a third time. A shortened version.

  It was much easier telling Michael and Rose. The excitement grew in them as the prospect of staying away for more than one night sunk in. It was only later, when I said goodnight to Rosie in bed, that she started crying.

  ‘I don’t want to go away,’ she said. ‘I’ll miss my bedroom and all my cuddlies.’

  ‘You can take your cuddlies with you,’ I said. ‘And you’ll only be sleeping there. You can come here after school if you like, with Abi. But I’m going to be staying with Nanny and Grandad for a few days because I need to rest and get better.’

  ‘I want to stay with you at Nanny’s,’ she said.

  I kissed her on the forehead and brushed her hair back with my hand. She didn’t like the feeling.

  ‘Mum!’

  I smiled and pulled my hand back.

  ‘You’ll have such a lovely time,’ I said. ‘I love you Rosie Lee.’

  By the time I plonked myself down on the armchair in the living-room, I felt exhausted. I looked over at Neil and he closed the TV guide and tossed it onto the coffee table. I climbed up from the armchair and joined him on the sofa. He put his arm around me.

  ‘I’m so sorry about all this,’ I said.

  ‘Don’t be so bloody stupid,’ he said.

  ‘I just don’t know what’s real and what’s imagined anymore,’ I said. ‘I was convinced there was someone in our house earlier. But I didn’t actually see anyone. Even when I looked out of the window I saw no one.’

  Neil pulled me into him.

  ‘You’ve gone through so much,’ he said.

  ‘We’re all going through so much,’ I said.

  I pushed my head back into his arm, eased some of the tension from me into him. I knew he wouldn’t mind. That was what he was there for. We were both there to help ease each other’s tension. I squeezed my eyes tight and breathed out. Neil’s body was warm against me. My mouth formed a tiny smile and I determined once again to feel bright and cheerful.

  But when I opened my eyes I was staring at the bare wall behind the TV. A chill I couldn’t stop crawled over my upper back, starting at my spine and prickling its way out to my shoulder-blades and beyond.

  I shouldn’t have been looking at a bare wall. There should have been a picture there. A picture of us, celebrating out tenth wedding anniversary.

  There was something missing after all.

  45