She looks at me with amusement.
“So I was soft little booties until one day I was boots striding away from you?”
“Sort of. Actually I was quite proud of the analogy. Thought it said quite a lot—size getting bigger, with the subtlety of width fittings; supervised shopping versus independence.”
She smiles at me.
“Really,” I say. “It’s a sad day when there’s no longer width fitting. A milestone.”
It makes her smile more.
“You bought me the sparkly sandals, didn’t you, Mum?” she says.
“Yes.”
“I love them.”
Maybe I shouldn’t get so hung up on growing up as a loss.
I expect my nanny voice to say something cutting. She usually does when I venture a new thought. Nothing.
Maybe I’ve grown up too and finally managed to evict her.
“When will the transplant happen?” Jenny asks.
“Tomorrow morning. First thing.”
Penny is in the small institutional office where Baker once accused Adam. With her is an ashen-faced doctor. Ivo is waiting outside.
“And you’re sure you were next to her, all the time?” Penny asks.
“Yes, like I said. Right next to her.” The doctor pauses as Sarah and Mohsin come in, but Penny gestures at him to carry on.
“Someone must have walked past and quickly tugged out the endotracheal tube. It must have been quickly because I didn’t see. I mean, I didn’t take my eye off her for long. I was just looking at her chart and checking the details for her scan. I didn’t expect anyone to … Then I heard the alarm go off, the device that alerts us to a cardiac failure. And I was dealing with that. It was only when other people came to help that I saw the tube to the portable respirator. Saw it had been disconnected.”
“Thank you,” Penny says. “Could you wait in the corridor and a colleague will come to take a full statement.”
When he’s left the room, Penny turns to Sarah and Mohsin.
“The MRI suite has four scanning rooms and a waiting room, with changing rooms and lockers. It has a secure door, but it’s far busier than the ICU. There’s administrative staff as well as medical personnel—not only doctors and nurses who work with the MRI machines, but also porters bringing patients into the suite, and outpatients, some of whom bring a partner with them. I’ve got Connor interviewing the reception staff, and I’m hoping Jenny’s boyfriend might have something.”
“Have you got pics of Donald White and Silas Hyman to show?” Mohsin asks.
“We’re trying to organize it, but it’s not easy to get mug shots when we don’t know the whereabouts of either man. And neither wife is being helpful.”
She calls Ivo in.
It had once seemed to me as if he was lying on the pavement being punched by facts. But now he walks in determinedly tall.
“She’s not going to die,” he says.
He reminds me of you. Not the denial in the face of the facts, that bullish optimism, but the strength it takes to walk upright. So she’s gone for a man like her father after all.
All these revelations; all so quickly. No wonder nanny voice left; the landscape of my mind can’t feel like home anymore.
“Can you tell me what you saw?” Penny asks.
“Nothing. I didn’t see anything.”
He is furious with himself.
“If you could just tell me—”
“They wouldn’t let me in with her. Other patients had partners with them; I saw them going in, but I wasn’t allowed to.”
His voice so furious still, this time with other people. Because older adults had discounted Ivo as I once had—just a teenage girl’s boyfriend, a world away from married adults.
“I told her father I’d look after her. I said I’d be with her. So he could be with his wife for a little bit.”
“I’ll explain and he’ll understand,” Sarah said.
“How can he? I can’t.”
“Did you wait for her?” Penny asks.
“Yes. Outside the MRI bit. In the corridor.”
“Did you see anyone?”
“No one I noticed. Just what you’d expect. Doctors, nurses. Porters. And patients, some in normal clothes so I suppose they’re not staying in the hospital.”
Ivo leaves to return to Jenny. Penny answers her phone.
“She was already dying, for crying out loud,” Sarah says to Mohsin. “Already dying. Why shorten her life any more? Why do that to her?”
“Maybe Donald White or Silas Hyman—whoever did this—doesn’t know she’s dying,” Mohsin says. “When you’ve spoken about it, it’s been about her needing a transplant. Maybe that’s what he has heard too.”
“But the transplant was never really going to happen. Not really. We just wanted to … It was a million-to-one shot … in the time that she had left. And now …”
Mohsin takes her hand.
“Perhaps he didn’t know that,” he says. “Perhaps he was worried about her getting a transplant.”
“I was here, all the time, I was fucking here and I didn’t stop it. Didn’t look after her. Right here.”
She breaks down. Mohsin holds her.
“Darling …”
“How can I help Mike?” Sarah says. “How?”
A father’s voice now, wanting to do something; because she’s been a father as well as a mother to you and I’d never thought about that before.
She abruptly pulls away from Mohsin, furiously blows her nose.
“We need to find the bastard.”
“Are you sure you—”
“His daughter is dying and his wife is dead in all but name and there’s nothing I can do to help. All I can do for him now is what I am trained to do. And he won’t care at all about justice now—what difference will it make to him, for God’s sake? But maybe in time, years, it will be one thing that was done right. Just one thing. Besides, it’s all I can do for him.”
Penny gets off the phone. “Baker wants us to wait for him before talking to Rowena White. Fifteen minutes. This time, we’ll get the truth out of her.”
You’re at my bedside. You’re silent, but I am used to that now, as if you can tell when I’m actually with you.
Ivo is with Jenny, and I’m glad you’re demonstrating your trust in him by letting him guard her again.
I reach you and put my arms around you.
You tell me the doctors have said she will only live another two days.
“Just two days, Gracie.”
And as you tell me, the truth of it hits you. That open green prairie of your mind, with its stockade of hope, is flooded with terror for her. You can’t hope any longer.
I want you to tell me about the person who did this! I want you to vow vengeance. I want you to be Maximus Decimus Meridius.
But if your anger is still there, you don’t notice it.
I think of the tsunami on Christmas Eve and the film of a woman in labor clinging high in the branches of a tree, too overwhelmed by childbirth to look at the violent destruction around her. Only she and the life of her child could matter.
You hold my hand and I feel you shaking and I can’t help you.
A nurse and a porter arrive to take me for a scan. The one where you need to pretend to hit a ball for yes, to light up a part of your brain for their monitors.
The porter unclips the wheels of my bed, like I’m in a stroller.
“Hit it for yes, Gracie,” you say. “Hard as you can. Please.”
I remember telling Mum that I was going to be Roger-fucking-Federer.
The porter wheels me out of the ward, a nurse at my side.
But I stay with you, holding your hand.
I’m sorry.
33
Rowena and Maisie are waiting in an office, with a young police officer I don’t recognize.
Sarah is just outside with Mohsin and Penny.
“Baker’s on a call. He won’t be long,” Mohsin says. “I’m still
not sure about allowing Maisie White to be present at this.”
“We’ll be able to watch her reaction too,” Penny replies. “And questioning Rowena might tip Mum finally into telling us the truth. If it doesn’t work, Jacobs is finding a social worker to act as a competent adult.”
Baker arrives. I see him meet Penny’s eye and something is communicated between them, but I can’t interpret it. Perhaps it’s the closest Baker gets to shame.
“Has Maisie White told us yet where her husband is?” Sarah asks.
“Claims she has no idea,” Penny says. “The stupid bitch is lying again for him.”
I am shocked by the ugliness of her epithet for Maisie. Odd that language can still have the power to shock me.
They go in, while Sarah waits outside.
The air is thick with heat, the plastic stacking chairs sticking together. The nylon fibers in the carpet tiles glint in the harsh light.
Rowena looks frail in her nightdress and dressing gown, her damaged hands still bandaged. Maisie fusses around her, sorting out her drip stand.
Mohsin formally introduces everyone in the room while the young police officer records it.
“Are you sure you’re comfortable?” Mohsin asks Rowena.
“I’m fine. Yes. Thank you.”
Maisie rests her hand on Rowena’s arm, unable to hold her hand. She’s again wearing a long-sleeved shirt, no sign of the bruises underneath.
“Your father has an alibi for the time of the fire,” Mohsin says, his voice matter-of-fact; but I see him studying Rowena’s face intently. Penny is watching Maisie.
“Yes,” Rowena says, barely reacting. “Daddy was in Scotland on Wednesday.”
“Did your father ask you to light the fire, Rowena?” Mohsin asks, still matter-of-fact.
“Of course he didn’t,” Maisie says, her voice too high. A vein is flickering in her temple.
“What about Silas Hyman?” Mohsin says to Rowena, his voice sterner. “I asked you before—”
“No, I told you,” Rowena says, distressed. “He didn’t ask me to do anything.”
“An hour ago someone tried to kill Jennifer Covey,” Baker says. “We don’t have the time or patience for you to protect the man who did it.”
I hear a sharp intake of breath. Maisie has gone white. She looks clammy, as if she might vomit.
Rowena is silent, struggling. She turns to her mother.
“I think it’s best if you left.”
“But I have to be with you.”
“We can find another competent adult to be with Rowena,” Baker says.
“Is that what you’d like?” Mohsin asks Rowena.
She nods.
Maisie leaves the room. I don’t see her face. But I see her stumble as she’s rejected.
The door closes behind her.
“If you just give me a little while,” Penny says to Rowena. “We need to find someone—”
“I have to tell you the truth now. Because of Jenny. I have to. It wasn’t Dad. It wasn’t anything to do with him.”
I think of Silas Hyman flirting with Jenny, then moving on to Rowena. I think of him swearing and raging at the prize-giving. I think of the flowers he gave to the nurse and the door to the ICU opening.
“It was Mummy,” Rowena says.
Maisie?
I see her loving face and feel her encompassing hugs.
I think of her that day at the sports field, handing me a little something for Adam, beautifully wrapped, a spot-on present inside.
She’d known it was his birthday.
Of course she had! She’d known him since he was born. And three hundred other people knew it was his birthday.
She went to the school just before the fire.
To find Rowena. To give her a lift. Because the tubes were up the spout. “Chauffeur-Mum to the fore!”
The spool of our friendship stretches back through the years we’ve known each other and won’t unravel.
“Mummy’s afraid of being poor,” Rowena quietly continues. “She’s always had lots of money. My grandparents were rich and she’s never had to work.”
But Maisie said it wouldn’t matter to her being poor and she didn’t mind working. “I’d quite like a job, actually.”
“She went into Sidley House to read,” Rowena continues, “so that she could keep a check on what was happening after I’d left. Sally Healey didn’t tell anyone that there were no new admissions. Even Dad. Well, not for ages. But Mum found out from Elizabeth Fisher that no one was phoning anymore.”
But she didn’t go in to spy! She went in to read because she loves being around young children.
I feel our friendship. So heavily substantial; so many years invested in it, each one adding to its weight.
“Did she ever leave your room?” Mohsin asks.
“Well, yes, she goes and gets things to eat. She went home to get me a clean nightie and my washbag. She goes out to use the phone, too. You’re not allowed a mobile in here.”
“An hour or so ago, when we left you with your mother,” Mohsin says, “did she leave your room again then?”
Rowena’s voice is so quiet that I have to strain to hear it.
“Yes. Almost right away.”
There is no way, no way, that Maisie tried to kill Jenny. Everyone’s got this wrong.
“Thank you, Rowena. We need to interview you again, formally, with what’s known as a competent adult present with you.”
Outside the office, Baker turns to the young policeman.
“Chase up that social worker. I’m not going to give a defense lawyer any rope on this one.”
“Maisie White must have seen Jenny being taken out of the ICU and followed her,” Mohsin says. “Got lucky with the MRI suite. Security’s not as tight.”
Sarah nods. “When Jenny’s ventilator was tampered with the first time, it was in the burns unit. Maisie was staying in Rowena’s room just down the corridor. No one would have questioned her being there.”
“So you think it was Maisie, not Natalia Hyman?” Mohsin asks.
“Yes.”
I’d only seen a back view and hadn’t gotten close—but it couldn’t have been Maisie. It couldn’t have been.
“Jenny must have seen her at the school,” Sarah says.
“And she had Jenny’s mobile,” Mohsin says. “If there was anything incriminating on it, she’d have had plenty of time to delete it.”
As they speak it’s as if a painting-by-numbers portrait is being filled in, one color at a time.
But I won’t look at their vicious portrait of my friend.
Because Maisie’s known Jenny since she was a little girl of four. She’s heard me talk about her and Adam, all the time. All the time. She knows how much I love them.
She’s my friend and I trust her.
I can’t add this to what has happened.
I can’t.
So I turn away from their picture of Maisie.
“What about the domestic abuse?” Mohsin asks.
“God knows what’s been going on in that family,” Sarah says.
“Find Maisie White,” DI Baker says to Penny. “And arrest her for the arson attack and attempted murder of Jennifer Covey.”
“She’s in Rowena’s room,” Sarah says. “I saw her there a few minutes ago.”
Sarah’s been keeping tabs on her, I realize.
Penny goes to arrest Maisie. I don’t go to watch, but instead follow Sarah back into the stifling office.
“OK, Rowena, we’re waiting for a social worker. In the meantime—”
“Will Mummy be taken away?” Rowena asks.
“I’m sorry, yes.”
Rowena says nothing, staring at the floor. Sarah waits.
“She didn’t think I’d tell anyone,” Rowena says, and she looks ashamed.
“But she told you?” Sarah says.
Rowena is silent.
“You don’t have to say anything. This isn’t an interview. Just a chat. If you’d l
ike it.”
I don’t think Sarah is seizing an opportunity. I think she’s just being kind to Rowena. Or perhaps she just needs to know right now, unable to wait.
“Mummy feels so bad. Really guilty. It’s been awful for her,” Rowena says. “She needed to tell someone. And maybe because I got hurt … maybe she felt she owed me something.” She starts to weep. “She’ll hate me now.”
Sarah sits down next to her.
“This is awful, but I was glad that she told me,” Rowena continues. “I mean, that she confided in me. She doesn’t do that. Never has. Everyone thinks we’re close, but we’re not. I’m her ‘little disappointment.’ ”
But Maisie adores her.
“When I was little, I was pretty, you see,” Rowena continues. “She was proud of me then. But as I got older, well, I stopped being pretty. And she stopped loving me.”
Argue with her, I urge Sarah. Tell her that mothers don’t do that. They don’t stop loving their children.
“I know this sounds silly, but it was my teeth to begin with,” Rowena says. “She made me go to an orthodontist because they were so crooked, but they were yellow too. Something to do with an antibiotic I’d had as a baby. Mummy tried everything, had me bleaching them at home every night, even though the dentist said it wouldn’t work with that kind of staining. And then it was the usual, you know; blond hair goes mousey brown and my eyebrows got all big and my face got larger but my eyes didn’t. The ugly duckling in reverse, I suppose. I wasn’t the kind of daughter she wanted anymore.”
And still Sarah says nothing. But surely to God, if there is one thing about Maisie that I am absolutely convinced of, it’s that she loves Rowena.
“It’s hard, you know,” Rowena says. “Not being pretty. I mean, at school the popular girls are the ones with the pretty faces and long hair who are good at music and English and art. Not the clever girls with bad skin. Not me. A cliché really, isn’t it, for a clever girl to be unattractive? And then you go home and it’s the same.”
“You’re going to Oxford, aren’t you?” Sarah asks.
“To read natural sciences. She doesn’t tell people that bit. Pretends I’m off to May balls and parties and handsome undergraduates, not a science lab and an all-girls’ college.