she’d barely slept and it was the furthest she’d ever gone from home on her own. When she thought about that day, it was through a fog of guilt, the horror of what she’d done weighing down on her with each day she got older, each day she spent at Ashdown. Mr Robertson might understand, but she knew this man never would.
‘I only remember there being a road sweeping up ahead of me,’ she said, and the muscles round her mouth twitched oddly as she fought back tears. ‘There was a bank of loose earth and stones. That’s where … that’s where …’
‘It’s okay.’ Miss Silver stepped closer, patting her arm.
‘It’s bloody well not okay,’ interjected the policeman. ‘How far from the site perimeter was this road? How far did you have to walk to get to it?’
Katy shook her head. She couldn’t answer.
‘How was the road orientated? Which direction did it go in?’
‘I don’t know.’ Her lips formed the words, but there was no voice.
The man’s face was in hers now. She could see the smattering of ginger hairs in his brown moustache, and the spittle catching at the corners of his lips.
‘There were signs bloody everywhere; what did the signs say? How high was this banking? How far were you from the building itself?’
Eventually it was over. The little group picked its way across the field and back to the car park, the policeman muttering darkly about not having any more of this sort of little jolly. Katy managed to keep her silence, though a few tears escaped down her cheeks. They didn’t sting like they had in the cold of January. The inspector went ahead to where Etta Gardiner stood, the same constable still by her side. Katy couldn’t hear what he said, but she heard Etta’s loud gasp and saw the inspector’s white handkerchief flutter as he pulled it out to comfort her. Although they kept a good distance away, Katy’s cheeks burned as they walked past, feeling Etta’s gaze track her all the way to the Austin.
That was it. They wouldn’t be back in time for dinner and would have to get something on the road, Mr Robertson noted with a strained cheerfulness. For a moment, Katy imagined running. Never having to go back to Ashdown with its menace and melancholy and stink of boiled cabbage. She could bury her face in the smell of the wet earth and go to sleep cradled in the scent of honeysuckle without ever waking up.
She didn’t run. It would give the creep with the moustache too much satisfaction.
As Mr Robertson made heavy weather of turning the Austin, she caught a final glimpse of Etta through the window. There was a man beside her, his slim, slightly hunched figure unmistakable. Simon Gardiner handed his wife a posy of white narcissus and linked arms with her to walk towards the fence where Katy guessed the flowers were to be laid. Etta leant in to him as they walked the few steps, almost collapsing in his arms as they drew to a pause.
White for innocence, Katy thought. If only you knew, Etta Gardiner.
The Austin wheeled round abruptly and the tableau was gone.
Katy made a silent vow. One day I’ll show her what he is. One day I’ll show everyone.
Helen
Giving up on sleep, Helen had gone to get a coffee. It was after two a.m., but there was a twenty-four-hour kiosk in the main foyer. She strolled around the deserted tables to stretch her legs, nodding to a couple of medics on their break. She paused to look at a gaudy poster about the fundraising efforts for a new cancer centre.
Not wanting to be away for too long, she returned to Barbara’s ward, still clutching her paper cup, and slipped through the doorway. A nurse was bent over paperwork at a small desk that had been empty before. She lifted her head to smile and Helen caught the faint scent of toothpaste as she walked past. The late shift at the hospital was giving way to the early one.
In Barbara’s cubicle, the figure in the bed looked exactly the same as when Helen had left her: still lying on her back, the same shallow breathing lifting the cellular blanket only a touch with each inhalation. Helen felt an unexpected surge of relief.
She settled herself, then simply sat and held Barbara’s hand, just as she had done before. She was achingly tired, and her mind felt dull. How many people were awake in this building just now? she wondered. There must be babies being born here – as she had been born here. There must be other grown-up children holding the hands of parents and wondering if their time together was coming to an end. Did any of them feel only numbness instead of the grief and worry that she’d expected to feel? Did this distance and lack of feeling make her a bad daughter? No, ‘bad’ was the wrong word – an unnatural daughter, that was more what she felt. And if she was an unnatural daughter, was it her fault or Barbara’s?
She swept back through her memory, looking for moments of love, special times that she and Barbara had shared, trying to conjure some missing fondness, almost in the way that, as a child, she found thinking of her neighbour’s dead cat helped to stop her getting the giggles when she was in trouble with a teacher.
There were certainly happy images. Her disbelief when she was allowed the biggest chocolate sundae in the world at an ice cream shop in Italy. Jumping the waves on a beach in France the day after a thunderstorm. Her tenth birthday party, which had been a surprise, with all her school friends jumping out from behind the sofa when the family returned from a ‘grown-up’ celebratory pub lunch.
Her childhood, on the whole, had been a happy one. But in every mental picture her dad’s face was clearer – shining with joy, sharing her laughter, showing tender concern about some childhood malady. Neil had worked full-time until his retirement. Barbara worked on the newspaper only two days a week when Helen was in primary school, a little more after she went to the high. Those hours together had made little imprint on her memory, it seemed. The best she could recall was that they were filled with books and TV and homework. That she kept out of her mother’s way, without really knowing why. Or was it Barbara who had been keeping out of hers?
There was a movement from the bed and the limp hand Helen had been holding gripped back. When it was clear that Barbara was waking up, Helen manoeuvred the bed and the pillows to prop her up a bit, and then held the glass that she’d filled to her mother’s lips.
‘So how do you feel, Mum?’
‘Okay,’ she said, then sipped again. ‘Sore.’
The nurse from the desk appeared, gently tugging the curtain back.
‘I heard your voices,’ she said. ‘Doing okay this morning?’
‘Just sore,’ Barbara repeated, and the nurse nodded sympathetically. ‘There’s a painkiller in your drip, but I can get you a tablet too if you can take it. And breakfast will be around in an hour or so. I’ll tell them just to try you on some toast for now.’
Helen wasn’t sure if Barbara had heard. Her eyes closed slowly and the rhythm of her breathing changed.
‘She’ll be dozy after the anaesthetic,’ said the nurse, a little unnecessarily.
Helen nodded. She was so tired that she was still nodding to the nurse’s back as she replaced the clipboard
