After the End(46)

“The poor woman.”

“Her husband, on the other hand, seems to have embraced the opportunity. He’s already given a statement.” Emmett takes off his glasses and rubs his face. “I take it I don’t need to ask whether you’ve spoken to the media?”

“No—of course not.”

“The story would have broken eventually, but this has put us on the back foot. Any press release we put out now will look defensive, even if it’s what we’d planned to say anyway.” He pauses. “They knew detail, Leila. Not just about the court order, but about the Adamses being in dispute. Information that could only have come from the Adamses themselves—something both of them vehemently deny—or”—there’s a beat—“from the hospital.”

Leila feels hot. “I haven’t spoken to any journalists. I wouldn’t.” But even as she says it she remembers her phone call to Ruby; her use of the Adamses’ tragedy to explain away her rudeness. Ruby wouldn’t. She wouldn’t. Not intentionally. But might she have mentioned it to someone else, thinking it didn’t matter?

Emmett’s eyes have narrowed, and Leila feels her cheeks reddening further. “What can I do to help the situation?”

“Brief staff on their obligations in relation to data protection, and give them all the aide-mémoire on dealing with the press.” Is Leila imagining it, or has Emmett’s tone cooled? “And move the patient to a private room, where there’s less likelihood of being overheard.”

Leila does a mental audit of the space in PICU. Rather than move Dylan, she will move Liam onto the main ward, and leave the Adamses alone in Room 1. It’s not ideal—two beds is a lot to lose in a department like PICU—but these are exceptional circumstances.

“I’m sorry this has happened,” she says to Pip, when the beds have been moved, and the blind pulled down over the window between the corridor and Room 1. The space seems cavernous, and there’s a portentous echo to Leila’s words. She returned to the ward from Emmett’s office to find a cardiac arrest and a doctor off sick, and so she is eight hours into her second, unscheduled shift. Tiredness has become an abstract concept, one removed from the reality of here and now. She knows she is tired, but it has no relevance. She has a job to do.

“They’ve got hold of my mobile number somehow.” Pip is shaking. “They keep calling, again and again.”

“I’m going to show you an alternative way in and out of the building.” Leila unhooks Dylan’s chart from the end of his cot, and puts it on the side, where it can’t be seen when the door is open. “It’s a little longer, but it means you can avoid any photographers waiting outside the main entrance.”

Pip looks at the clock, then stands up. “Would you show me now, please?” Leila looks, too. There is another quarter of an hour until Max is due.

Leila pauses. “Things must be . . . difficult.”

“It’s as though I have to choose between my son and my marriage.” Her words are stilted. She is trying not to cry. “I want both of them, but—” She loses the battle, and tears flow down her cheeks.

But now it feels like you might lose them both, Leila thinks. She wants to comfort Pip, to put her arms around her, but it isn’t her place, isn’t her job. And so she asks Paul the porter to show Pip the staff exit, and she repeats her apology to a stony-faced Max, when he arrives ten minutes later.

“They’re all on Dylan’s side,” he says. “All the reporters, the photographers. They want him to live, too.”

What they want is a story, Leila thinks, but is wise enough not to say it. That isn’t her place, either. And she is relieved when she eventually finishes work. Relieved, for once, as her bike draws closer to home, that her mother doesn’t read the papers, doesn’t watch the news. When Leila gets home, Habibeh will be watching QVC, and Leila will sit next to her and they will discuss the relative merits of steam cleaners over elbow grease.

There is a box in the hall with contents declared by the packing tape to be fragile. Leila is wondering what her mother’s latest purchase is, when she hears a voice she recognizes. In the kitchen, sitting next to Habibeh, is Leila’s next-door neighbor, Wilma. In front of them are two glasses of tea, and an iPad, the screen showing the double white boxes of Google Translate.

“Hello, Leila!” Habibeh greets her daughter in English.

“Your mother was telling me how to make kofte.” Wilma smiles.

At the mention of the meatballs, Habibeh holds up a hand. “Yek lahzeh lotfan.” Just a second . . . She gestures to the iPad.

“Of course, go ahead.” Wilma looks at Leila. “I brought it round—I thought it might help us get to know each other.”

Habibeh is tapping on the screen. She stops and reads the translation, speaking slowly but perfectly, a triumphant smile emerging as she finishes. “I will give you mint.” She opens a cupboard and gives their neighbor one of the bags of dried mint she brought with her from Tehran.

“Merci, Habibeh.”

“You are welcome.”

The two women beam at each other, and Leila is glad to have a neighbor who cares so much, when Leila’s own heart is already too full.





nineteen