Pulse(81)

I turned back to him.

‘Who is Geronimo?’ I asked.

I knew instantly I’d made a big mistake.

Jason Conway stared at me with such hatred in his eyes that my anger transformed from rage into sheer terror, and a shiver ran down my spine.

I wished I’d never asked the question. Indeed, I more than wished it. I longed to have that moment back again, to be more composed, more controlled.

But, of course, I couldn’t.

What was done was done.

I hurried along the endless hospital corridors, back towards the main entrance, my feet seemingly unattached to my body.

How could I have been so foolish?

I had promised, not just to Grant but also to myself, that I’d ask no more questions.

Stop asking questions. Next time I’ll run over your kid, not just his bike.

What had I done?

I rushed out into the car park desperate to get back to my boys, to check that they hadn’t been kidnapped, or worse.

They were both in the car, of course they were.

Calm down, I said to myself. Get a grip.

I stood by the open Mini door, scanning the car park through 360 degrees, trying to convince myself I wasn’t searching for a long black Mercedes with dark-tinted rear windows.

I was hyperventilating and could feel the beginnings of a panic attack in my fingers.

Calm down.

Breathe – in through my nose and out through my mouth – long deep breaths.

Slowly, things began to recover.

‘Come on, Mum,’ shouted Toby. ‘Get in the car. Olly and I are, like, ravenous.’

‘Sorry, boys,’ I said, sitting down in the driver’s seat and forcing a smile. ‘So, who wants a McDonald’s?’

‘We do,’ they chorused, bouncing up and down excitedly on the seats.

They might be fourteen but they could still be little boys again when they wanted.

They were my pride and joy. My reason for living.

How could I possibly have put them in so much danger?





30


We went to the McDonald’s Drive-Thru on Tewkesbury Road for a double order of Big Mac, large fries and banana milkshake.

Identical meals for identical boys.

‘What are you having, Mum?’ Toby said.

‘Nothing. I’ll get myself some fish when we get home.’

But, if the truth be known, I was feeling too ill to eat anything, and especially not a Big Mac and fries. The very thought of it made me feel sick.

‘How about Dad?’ Oliver shouted from the back seat. ‘Hadn’t we better get something for him?’

‘Your father’s at a work do this evening,’ I said. ‘That’s why I had to pick you up.’

I drove home as the boys ate their food and noisily slurped their milkshakes. I spent almost as much time looking in the rear-view mirror as I did watching the road ahead but, by now, the sun had long gone and it was almost totally dark, so all I could see were headlights anyway.

I drove all the way round the roundabout twice at Bishop’s Cleeve to check if we were being followed, and received a very strange look from Toby for doing so.

‘You all right, Mum?’ he asked.

‘Perfectly,’ I said. ‘My mind was just on something else.’

I could tell it didn’t reassure him much. Whereas Oliver had pretty much taken my psychiatric hospital stay in his stride, Toby had been seriously concerned that I would die.

For many years as a child, Toby had equated being in hospital with dying, ever since the mother of a good friend of his at primary school had gone into hospital for a supposedly routine hernia repair only to perish on the operating table from complications with the anaesthetic. The fact that I worked at a hospital didn’t seem to shake this conviction and he was desperate that I shouldn’t have to be readmitted as a patient.

So it did nothing to relieve his anxiety when, immediately after turning into the lane towards our village, I quickly pulled over and switched the lights off.

‘What are you doing, Mum?’ he asked with concern.

What could I say? It surely wouldn’t help if I told him the truth – that I was checking we hadn’t been followed.

But I was being crazy, I thought.

The man in the long black Mercedes didn’t have to follow us – he’d left Oliver’s broken bicycle on our driveway so he must already know where we lived. Not that the thought was particularly encouraging.

‘Nothing, darling,’ I said.

I restarted the car, turned the lights back on, and drove home.

Not that my worries were over. Not by a long way.

The house was in darkness and I imagined all sorts of evils lurking in the deep shadows cast by the solitary streetlight across the road. It was as much as I could do not to drive away altogether, and I had to force myself to park the Mini on the driveway.

No sooner had the wheels stopped turning than Oliver was out of the rear passenger door with Toby close on his heels.

Had they no idea of the potential danger?

No, of course not. It was me, not them, who was paranoid.

Needless to say, we all made it safely inside and I went round double-checking that the doors and windows were all properly closed and locked.

The boys started watching a DVD on the television in the sitting room while I sat in the kitchen wondering what the hell I should do now.