won’t be able to help with,’ I added, before Mike could. (He was something of a pedant when it came to people going to doctors when they had viruses, having seen a programme on telly about how the over-prescription of antibiotics was causing all the terrifying superbugs in the world.) ‘I just think it wouldn’t hurt for her to have a bit of a once-over, would it? Specially if she’s been sleeping rough for a while. And she’s so thin. And let’s face it, we don’t know the first thing about what she’s been up to or who she’s been with. She could have anything wrong with her, couldn’t she?’
‘No, I think that’s a good idea, love,’ he said. ‘Put our minds at rest, too. We can’t just keep feeding her paracetamols, can we? She needs to be up and eating. Can’t be doing her any good, being holed up in that bedroom morning, noon and night, can it?’
Which sentiment I agreed with, even given the usual teenage propensity for sleeping the day away. Adrianna, however, seemed to have other ideas.
‘No, no. Am ok-ay,’ she assured me when I went up to suggest it mid-morning, Tyler having long since left for school. ‘Am ok-ay. No problem.’ She rubbed sleep out of her eyes. ‘Please. No doctor.’
But there was no dissuading me, not least because of the uneaten sandwich from the previous evening currently curling on the bedside table, the sheen of sweat on her brow and the faint but still palpable smell in the room. It wasn’t exactly fetid, in the usual teenage-boy’s-trainer-pile kind of way. Just distinctive and familiar. A smell every mother learns to recognise. The smell of sick child. Of fever and sweat – of malaise.
And something else. Something familiar but which I couldn’t quite put my finger on. A sweetish smell. Odd. Definitely not right. ‘Yes doctor,’ I said firmly, picking up the plate and the empty mug beside it. If there was one thing she could clearly stomach, it was coffee. ‘Just to check you are okay,’ I added gently. At which she pushed back the duvet.
‘I get up,’ she said. ‘Am okay. See? No doctor. I have bat?’
It took me a second. Then she pointed towards the bathroom and I realised. ‘Bath?’
She swung her legs out of bed and stood up, her pale feet looking stark against the hot pink of her pyjama bottoms. ‘Bath,’ she confirmed, nodding. ‘I have bath. Am okay, Casey. No doctor.’
I stood aside so she could pluck her fleecy dressing gown – formerly Riley’s – from the back of the dressing-table chair. ‘I don’t know, love …’ I began, my mind now filling with a whole new set of questions. Why the great reluctance to see a doctor? What did she imagine he’d do to her? Was it a reticence born out of fear of further questioning by someone in authority? She was clearly terrified of being sent away again, after all. Or did she have something else to hide – something physical, that she didn’t want him to see? Scarring, perhaps? Bruising? I couldn’t help but wonder because, these days, such thoughts kicked in so automatically; I’d seen so many damaged children – as in burned, battered and beaten – that now it was an instant response in me. Where had she come from? Had she perhaps been abused?
‘Dzieki,’ she said, as she hurried across the landing and went into the bathroom.
‘Adrianna!’ I called before she slammed the door. I’d just had another thought and slipped into the bathroom as she stood there looking surprised. I opened the bathroom cabinet and gestured with my hand that she should look, so that she could see I had a stock of sanitary protection in there, just in case. I could have kicked myself – perhaps that was all it was after all. She was the right age, and if I remembered correctly, Riley had suffered terribly with her periods as a young teenager – cramps, fatigue and a roaring temperature. Why hadn’t that occurred to me before now?
I went downstairs and called the doctor anyway.
Though we’d moved twice in the last decade, we’d stayed with the same GP surgery, not least because Dr Shakelton, who was now approaching (his long overdue) retirement and only working part-time, was such a brilliant and caring GP. Just not an available one right this minute, as it turned out. Despite it being one of his days in the surgery, he was off work with a virus himself. So the doctor who appeared on our doorstep at the end of morning surgery was one of the newer partners, a young, fresh-faced GP I’d seen a couple of times around the surgery but had never had any dealings with before. Stepping into the hall, he introduced himself just as ‘Joe’, in the modern way they usually did now.
He looked like a Joe, too. Bright and friendly and approachable. ‘She’s not a refugee, exactly,’ I explained to him, once we’d dispensed with the usual pleasantries and I’d given him the lowdown on why Adrianna had come to us. ‘She’s been in the country a while now, as far as we know – albeit under the radar – and she’s by all accounts Polish, which makes her an EU national obviously. But she’s not well. Hasn’t been right since she came to us. She spends most of her time sleeping, and lives off little more than coffee and paracetamol. And she’s definitely feverish.’
Joe nodded. ‘Any vomiting?’
I shook my head. ‘Not that I know of. I’m sure not, in fact. I’m a bit of a sleuth like that,’ I added, grinning. ‘You get to be in my line of work. So I’m pretty sure I’d know if she had been sick. And no light sensitivity, either. And no rash, as far as I can see. Though I have actually managed to see very little of her.’ I spread my hands. ‘So it might be nothing – well, nothing more than a mild virus, anyway. Or she might just be exhausted – she probably is. Or depressed – that was my other thought. And then it’s just occurred to me that it might simply be that time of the month and she’s too embarrassed, or doesn’t have the language to tell me. It’s so hard when you don’t speak the same language, isn’t it? And there was no way in the world I’d be able to coax her down to the surgery …’
‘So the surgery has come to her,’ Joe the GP reassured me, grinning back at me as he hefted his heavy case. ‘Though I must confess I don’t speak much Polish myself. I was trying to think of a some words in the car on the way over – I do have a few Polish patients, so I’m not entirely clueless. I know “Polski”, of course – much use that’s going to be – and “czemu”, which means “why”, and “nie rozumiem”, which is Polish – or so I’m told – for “I don’t understand”.’ He laughed as he shrugged off his jacket and began rolling up his shirt sleeves. ‘Which both come up quite a lot, as you can imagine. But which aren’t going to be a whole lot of use to us, are they? But that’s okay. Let’s take a look at her. That’s the main thing. Check her over. Upstairs, I presume?’
‘Upstairs,’ I confirmed, leading the way up the stairs. ‘And, doctor, I’m so sorry if it’s something and nothing and I’ve got you here on a wild goose chase.’
‘Oh, think nothing of it,’ he said, smiling. I decided I liked Dr Joe.
Adrianna was back in bed again when I pushed the bedroom door fully open, having noted the welcome development that at least she had left it ajar. She was a small S shape under the covers, curled up with her head facing the wall, and her hair, which was obviously still wet from her bath, gathered up inside a turban of towel.
‘Sweetie,’ I said softly as I entered, ‘are you awake?’
Clearly yes. She turned over to face me with a wan smile. Then saw the doctor behind me and stiffened.
‘It’s
