The Breakdown(73)

Aware that there’s something terribly wrong, I try to get out of bed but my legs won’t hold me up and I fall to the floor. I can feel sleep pulling me back but some sixth sense tells me that I mustn’t give in to it and I focus instead on trying to move. But it seems impossible and all I can think of, through the fog in my brain, is that I’ve had a stroke of some kind. My survival instinct kicks in and I know my only chance is to get help as quickly as possible, so heaving myself onto all fours, I make it to the top of the stairs and half fall down them to the hall The Breakdown





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below. The pain makes me almost lose consciousness


but with superhuman effort I use my arms to pull my body along the floor towards the table where the phone sits. I want to call Matthew but I know I have to call the emergency services first so I dial 999 and, when a woman answers, I tell her that I need help. I’m slurring so much I’m terrified she won’t be able to understand what I’m saying. She asks for my name and I tell her it’s Cass, then where I’m calling from. I just about manage to tell her our address when the phone slips from my grasp and clatters to the floor.

*

‘Cass, Cass, can you hear me?’ The voice is so faint that it’s easy to ignore. But it comes back so insistently that I end up opening my eyes.

‘She’s here,’ I hear someone say. ‘She’s waking up.’

‘Cass, my name’s Pat, I want you to stay with me, all right?’ A face comes into focus somewhere above me.

‘We’re going to take you to hospital in a minute but can you just tell me, is this what you took?’ She holds the box of tablets that Dr Deakin prescribed for me and, recognising them, I give a little nod.

I feel hands on me, lifting me, and then cool air on my face for a few brief seconds as I’m carried out to an ambulance.

‘Matthew?’ I ask weakly.





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b a paris


‘You’ll see him at the hospital,’ a voice tells me. ‘Can you tell me how many you’ve taken, Cass?’

I’m about to ask her what she means when I start

vomiting violently and by the time we arrive at the hospital I’m so weak I can’t even smile at Matthew as he stands looking down at me, his face white with worry.

‘You can see her later,’ a nurse tells him briskly.

‘She’ll be all right, won’t she?’ he asks, distraught, and I feel worse for him than I do for myself.

There’s a blur of tests so it’s only when the doctor starts asking me questions that I realise she thinks I’ve taken an overdose.

I stare at her, appalled. ‘An overdose?’

‘Yes.’

I shake my head. ‘No, I would never do that.’

She gives me the kind of look that tells me she doesn’t believe me and, bewildered, I ask to see Matthew.

‘Thank God you’re all right,’ he says, reaching for my hand. He looks at me in anguish. ‘Was it me, Cass?

Was it what I said? If it is, I’m so sorry. If I thought for a minute that you’d do something like this I’d never have been so harsh.’

‘I didn’t take an overdose,’ I say tearfully. ‘Why does everybody keep saying that I did?’

‘But you told the paramedic you did.’

‘No I didn’t.’ I try to sit up. ‘Why would I say something that isn’t true?’

‘Try to stay calm, Mrs Anderson.’ The doctor looks

severely at me. ‘You’re still very ill. Fortunately we didn’t The Breakdown





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have to pump your stomach as you brought up most of


the pills in the ambulance but you’re still going to need monitoring for the next twenty-four hours.’

I clutch Matthew’s arm. ‘She must have misunderstood. The paramedic showed me the pills Dr Deakin

prescribed for me and asked me if they were the pills I took, so I said yes, because they’re the pills I take. I didn’t mean I’d taken an overdose.’

‘I’m afraid our tests show that you did,’ the doctor says.

I look beseechingly at Matthew. ‘I took the two you brought me with my breakfast but I didn’t take any after that, I swear. I didn’t even go downstairs.’

‘These are the boxes the paramedics took from the

house,’ the doctor says, handing a plastic bag to Matthew.

‘Would you know if there are any missing? We don’t

think she took a lot, maybe a dozen or so.’

Matthew opens the first of the two boxes. ‘She only started this one a couple of days ago and there are eight pills missing, which is right because she takes four a day, two in the morning and two in the evening,’ he says, showing the doctor. ‘As for the other box,’ he goes on, checking the contents. ‘It’s full, just as it should be. So I don’t know where she would have got them from.’

‘Is there any way your wife could have stockpiled

some of them?’

Upset at being dismissed from the conversation, I’m about to remind them that I’m present when I suddenly remember the little pile of pills in my drawer.