After the End(53)

“The family lodged a formal complaint with the trust, and when Emmett went to the paper, the hack coughed his source.”

“Nick . . .” Leila had felt so sorry for Jim. She thought he understood what she was going through with the Adams case, and that he would listen without judgment. She trusted him. Habibeh, lost in the conversation, excuses herself to bring in more food they won’t eat. “Nick, I told him about Dylan Adams.” Sickness wells in the pit of her stomach.

Only a single eyebrow, raised the smallest amount, indicates that Nick has heard at all. Leila waits for him to say something, but he takes a mouthful of tea, and his deliberate silence means Leila is the one who has to speak.

“I fell off my bike. He checked me over—Jim Laithwaite, his name’s Jim Laithwaite—and gave me a lift to work. I bought him a drink to say thank you.”

We should do this again. Her face burns with the memory of how stupid she was. No wonder he didn’t call. He already had what he wanted. Leila imagines him picking up his mobile even as he watched her walk away.

Mate, I’ve got a cracking story for you . . .

“Did you realize he was fishing for information?”

Leila screws her eyes shut. “He didn’t need to fish. I volunteered it.” She doesn’t tell Nick that she’d been crying inside, that day; that watching Pip and Max Adams’s world fall apart had almost broken her.

Nick surveys Leila, thoughtfully, then his shoulders lift a fraction. “We’re all on the same side, Leila. We should be able to trust each other. When that trust is broken, it hurts. But it’s not your fault.” He sits back in his chair, a puzzled look on his face. “Why are you taking this so hard?”

“It’s a sensitive case. Dylan’s parents should never have been thrust into the public eye until they were ready, until it was unavoidable.”

“It was unavoidable from the outset. You know that. What aren’t you telling me?”

Leila feels heat rising, creeping up her neck and across her face. “I liked him,” she says eventually.

There’s a long pause. Leila doesn’t need to look at Nick to know he’s uncomfortable; that he’s wondering how he can change the subject. But he asked, and Leila is going to tell him.

She stares at the table. “I’m thirty-four, and single—as my mother regularly reminds me. And then I met Jim, and I liked him, and I thought he liked me and . . . well, anyway. That’s why.”

There’s a long pause.

“Plenty more fish in the sea.”

Leila allows the table a halfhearted smile. “I think there’s a hole in my net.”

And then Habibeh comes back, and Nick stands to help her with the dishes, and he asks questions about Norooz, and about Iran, and Habibeh unfurls like a flower finding sun. And it is much later, when their bellies are groaning, and their empty plates are stacked in the sink, that Nick leans toward Leila.

“That paramedic?” The corners of his mouth lift just a fraction. “He didn’t deserve you.”





twenty-one





Pip


Max is sitting on a red sofa. He is wearing grey suit trousers, but instead of a jacket, he has a T-shirt pulled over his long-sleeved shirt. The T-shirt has a picture of Dylan on it, and it looks as though someone handed it to Max as he walked on set, and said Quick, put this on—it’ll look great for the cameras. It doesn’t look great. It looks . . . it looks a bit pathetic, like fifty-five-year-olds in baseball caps, or mothers who borrow their teenagers’ trainers. Max is clearly uncomfortable. His shoulders are slouched, and he looks older, broken. In contrast, the woman next to him—Max’s barrister, Laura King—wears a suit cut like a dinner jacket, and black shoes that show red soles when she crosses her legs, which she does frequently. Occasionally, she touches Max on the arm, and I find myself talking to the television.

“Leave him alone, for God’s sake.”

The presenters—a man and a woman with too much chemistry to be husband and wife—are summarising the “story so far,” ahead of tomorrow’s court case. As the presenters talk, photographs of Dylan scroll in the top right-hand corner of the screen. They are my photo-a-day pictures—my record of his life before St. Elizabeth’s—and I feel a surge of anger that Max didn’t ask before sharing them.

“This must be a living nightmare for you.” The female presenter tilts her head on one side. She has actual tears in her eyes.

“No,” Max says. “Dylan is the one trapped in a nightmare. He’s the one fighting for his life. What I’m going through is nothing compared to what he’s been through over the last few months.”

The male presenter leans forward. There are no tears in his eyes, I notice. “Sadly, this isn’t the first time we’ve spoken to a parent who is fighting the medical team looking after their child, but there’s one major difference in your case, isn’t there?”

Laura King puts her hand on Max’s arm again.

“He’s not paying you to maul him,” I mutter.

“Every case is different,” Laura answers smoothly. “Our hope is that this week, justice will be done, and Max will be able to exercise his right as a parent, to give Dylan the medical care he so desperately needs.”