The Risk of Darkness

But it hadn’t gone wrong. It had gone right from day one. Leah had never been away from her country but her English would do and soon got better and nothing else had seemed to matter. It was as if she’d been born to come here, Dougie thought, even though she had Filipino friends and met up with them quite a lot and emailed everyone at home now. He’d never asked Keith how they had met but Keith had always been a wanderer, always off with a backpack somewhere or other, so he’d supposed they’d met in a bar or on a beach or even an aeroplane.

“Internet,” Keith had said, laughing his head off. “Internet dating agency for English blokes to find Filipino girls.” And gone on laughing at the look on Dougie’s face.

“Hey, you here, that’s great, Dougie, I’ll make a cold drink or you want tea as usual?”

Always the same, he thought, always offering something, a drink or food and the best chair the minute anyone arrived. Like now, she was whipping into the shed, pulling out the deckchair, setting it up in the shade, brushing it down with the corner of her skirt.

“Hey, this is so nice, you sit here now, Dougie, tell me what drink you want.”

It had been the right thing to do. The right place.

“Keith is out, you know of course, you don’t expect to see him this time of day, but that’s all fine, if you want just to see me.”

Dougie sat down. He had to sit down. If he didn’t, he would offend her.

“You want cold drink or tea now?”

“A cup of tea would be just the ticket. Thanks, Leah.”

“No problem, only few minutes.”

And she was off, quick as a flash, into the kitchen.

The garden was like the house, bright and tidy as a new pin. Leah had never before had any such thing as a garden and she had taken to it with spirit, filling the beds and the hanging baskets and the windowboxes with flowers in as many vivid colours as she could and the rest of it with the little lanterns. Every evening from spring until autumn when it wasn’t raining, she went round lighting the candles inside the lamps.

Dougie closed his eyes. He had to say it, all of it, had to tell the whole story and think aloud about what to do and Leah would listen and not speak, not judge, not admonish.

The tea came on a tray with the best cups and a fresh cake. He knew better now than to offer to help her with anything.

“This is really, really nice, you know?” she said, smiling, handing him the tea. But her eyes were questioning.

Dougie took a bite of sponge cake, ate it slowly so that she saw him savouring it, drinking the tea before he set down his cup and said, “It’s Eileen. Something dreadful is happening, Leah. I don’t know what to do. I’m about at the end of trying to work it out.”

Fifty-five

“Hi.”

Ed didn’t look up.

“I’m Kath. I get called Reddy.”

The woman sat down next to her on the bench.

There was a badminton game going on. Ed had thought about asking to play, but in the end it saved the hassle to sit on the bench watching. It was the second time she’d been out among some of the others. Presumably they’d decided she wasn’t going to run amok.

“I know who you are.”

Ed moved along the bench a bit. The woman moved after her.

“We get to see the telly, get to see the papers. No probs. Edwina Sleightholme.”

“Ed,” she said. It was automatic.

“You’re shit paper.”

Ed stood up.

“Come on, Linda, slam it at her, slam it at her.”

Ed began to slide along the wall at the back of the sports hall. She hadn’t wanted to mix, she’d said so, she preferred being on her own.

“Yaay.” A cheer went up.

Ed slid nearer to the door. She would go back and read.

There was a push for the doors as the game was over. The woman called Reddy was there first, up against Ed. “Scum.”

Ed felt the pressure of something bullet hard in her lower back. The push to get out of the doors was getting worse and the pressure became a sudden excruciating pain that made her giddy.

The push freed like a cork out of a bottle as everyone burst out into the corridor.

“All right, all right, stop pushing and shoving, what’s the matter with you? Haven’t you heard about queues? Let’s have some order or someone will get hurt.”

Ed turned round but everyone was scattering. She couldn’t even see Reddy’s back. She made it halfway up the iron stairs in the midst of the clatter, then passed out.

Ed was never sick and she wasn’t going to start now.

“I’m not seeing a doctor. I was hot.”

“Really? Can you walk there?”

“I don’t need to see the bloody doctor.”

“Ed, you don’t have any choice here. You fainted, you see the MO. It’s not like out there, it’s the rules. You OK to walk?”

She didn’t say no, that the pain in her back was still a molten poker stuck in her. Walking made the poker twist about. She clenched her fists and made herself stand upright.

She wasn’t bothered about being with other people. She’d rather be on her own, but she did want to be able to go about, outside, to the sports hall and the library, not be stuck in her room twenty-four/seven.

“You sure you’re all right?”

“I said.”

The poker was twisting the other way now but she wasn’t going to say. Provided the doctor didn’t want to strip her and go over every inch, she was all right, she’d get some painkillers for an invented headache, they’d do.

The walk along the last corridor to the end was the worst she’d ever taken. The poker was being pushed forward, twisted one way, twisted the other, pulled out and pushed in again. She made it because she made herself make it but it was close.

The MO had the sort of spectacles Ed hated, rimless and oval, and when she looked up she failed to smile. Ed wanted to scream at her. I’m remand, I’m not banged up, you smile at me.

“Good evening.”

Ed said nothing. Why should she?

“I hear you fainted just now.”

“Sort of.”

“Well, they had to pick you up.”

“It was hot.”

“Is that something you’re usually affected by—being hot?”

Ed shrugged.

“When did you last eat?”

“Tea.”

“When did you last see your GP?”

“Never. I’m never ill.”

“Right. Periods normal?”

“Yes.”

“Have you a period now?”

“No.”

“Your medical on admission was all normal by the looks of things. You’re not on any medication. Right, we’d better take a look at you.”

“I’ve had a headache all day. I need something for that, then I’ll be fine.”

“I’ll examine you first. Bad headache?”

Ed shrugged.

“Do you get many headaches?”

“No. I said, it was hot.”

“Fine. Go behind the screen and strip to your bra and pants please.”

“I said, I’m OK, I didn’t need to come here.”

“Are you refusing to strip?”

“Yes.”

The woman sighed. “All right, but I need to take your blood pressure. Low BP can cause you to faint. Would that be acceptable to you? If so, I’d like you to roll up your sleeve please.”

While she was pumping up the cuff on Ed’s arm, the doctor looked away from her and out of the window.

“That’s fine. Perfectly normal. Put your head back, I want to look into your eyes.” The light probed. The pain in her lower back was steady and still and red-hot. But at least the poker wasn’t twisting now.

She clicked off the torch. “Fine. I can’t find anything wrong.”

“I said. It was hot.”

“Yes. I’ll prescribe you some paracetamol for the headache. Drink plenty of water. If you get dehydrated that won’t help the headache or the faintness. If it happens again I’ll do a blood test.”

She pressed the button on her desk for the warder. At least she’d waited outside the door. Ed followed her out.

“Good evening,” the doctor said. It was sarcastic. Ed didn’t bother to reply.

Walking back was a nightmare again. The poker started to twist and dig the minute she moved. The doctor had given her four paracetamol tablets, two now, two in four hours if she needed them. Four bloody tablets. She needed forty for a pain like this.

“You want to watch the film? It’s Notting Hill.”

“No.”

“Great film. I’ve seen it three times.”

More fool you, Ed thought. It wasn’t her sort of film.

A memory slipped through a side door into her head, of sitting on the sofa with Kyra watching James and the Giant Peach. They’d loved it. Kyra had wanted it to go round again but it wasn’t a video so of course it hadn’t. Everything was there, in detail, in colour, the room, her plants on the window ledge, the ornaments, the leather of the sofa, the curtains, carpet, wallpaper. Kyra.

“Here are your tablets, take two, get a drink of water with them. Have a lie-down, why don’t you?”

Ed swallowed the white pills and drank two glasses of water. She was sweating now with the pain, and as soon as she had swallowed the tablets she felt sick. The pain was worse. Even lying down, it made her feel as if she was fainting. After half an hour the edge of it was only blurred so she took a third tablet and after that she slept until someone started banging at one in the morning, banging something hard and heavy on a door, which went through her skull and down her spine into her back and banged there.

She took the fourth tablet but they slid the grille back every hour to check on her, so that every hour she was woken. It was only around dawn that the pain finally dulled.

Fifty-six

“Sam, stop it. How many times have I told you … don’t wind her up. You just make everything worse. Go and see if there are any eggs.”

“I went and there weren’t.”

“Go and read.”

“I’ve read all my books.”

“Well, read one of them again.”

Sam gave her a pitying look and trailed outside, scraping his feet as he went.

“Do they have to make such a noise? I’m trying to read the paper,” Chris said.

“Bully for you.”

“Sorry, but you weren’t up half the night.”

“Actually I was up half the night, with Felix.”

“Not the same.”

“Well, don’t worry, any minute now you won’t be on night call ever again. When the new system comes into operation, you can sleep—I’d say like a baby, only I never knew a baby that slept—you can sleep and if you think that’s fine and dandy, fine and dandy.”

Chris lowered the paper. “I don’t want to have a boring political row about health directives. It’s Saturday afternoon, it’s warm and sunny and I am trying to forget about anything to do with medicine, the NHS, night calls, day calls, patients, surgeries—”

“You think I do want a row about all of that? You think it’s my favourite way of spending a fun weekend?”

“Mummy, Sam’s thrown my Rapunzel Barbie into the hen muck.”

Cat closed her eyes. “You think I don’t understand but I do. I honestly do.”

“Right.”

“God, you’re so bloody male. Listen, it’s not you, it’s the system. You know how it used to be. When Mum and Dad were practising, doctors could start in hospital, go into general practice, then slide back into some sort of part-time hospital consultancy—it made for better doctors. It certainly made for more all-round doctors. But it just isn’t possible now. Or rather, it is but—”

“I’m too old. I’ve been told that quite a lot lately.”

“If you want to do it, I’ve said, I’ll back you.”

“Forget it.”

Chris was angry, his pride was hurt, he was frustrated. Cat knew it, and minded. She also minded his reaction. He wanted to leave general practice and retrain so that he could work in hospital psychiatry and he had found out that the only way he could do it would be to start over as an SHO, on roughly a quarter of his present salary, and try to move up. He was forty-one. Ten years?

“I hate you being unhappy. No one ought to feel like this. Just because I don’t, doesn’t mean I can’t sympathise.”

“So you keep saying.”

“Mummy …” Hannah came roaring across the grass towards them, furious tears streaming down her face, her hands filthy.

Cat got up. “OK, if he really did throw Barbie in the hen muck, he’s for a roasting. But if it was because of something you did to him or said to him, Hannah, you’re for frying. Come on.”

Chris watched them march off, his wife, his daughter, Cat feisty, straight, fair-minded, Hannah less so. Hannah was what Sam called a wimp. He turned back to the paper, then thought better and went into the house. Ten minutes later, Sam and Hannah were both in their rooms, banned from re-emerging for half an hour, and Chris had made a jug of iced coffee and brought it out to the garden, where Cat had taken over the paper.

“What are we thinking?” she said, looking up.

“Why?”

“Max Jameson.”

“Yes.”

The inquest had been opened and adjourned for further reports but it was clear that the verdict would be suicide. There were no suspicious circumstances. Max had lain down on a bench in the garden of the hospice and slit his wrists and his body had eventually rolled off, on to the grass. The police report was incomplete. Cat had given a statement and might be called on by the coroner. She sat staring down at the newspaper, at the photograph of Max, her eyes full of tears.

Chris put out his hand to her.

“We mustn’t quarrel. Anything can happen. I’ll tell the kids they can come down.”

“Oh no. They were both being brats, they can cool off.”

“Thanks for making this. And I do mean it—about work.”

“I know. But it would put too big a burden on you, and if I failed, it would be very hard to get back into general practice. Forget it. Only …” She knew what he was going to say. “Would you think about taking three months off? Paying someone to take over for the whole of that time?”

“Australia?”

“The children are still young enough to have that time out of school but this will be the last year we can do it. They’d have the trip of a lifetime and we’d recharge our batteries.”