In a Dark, Dark Wood(63)

‘Thanks,’ I say. But I don’t add the question that’s buzzing in my head: why do they want my phone?

Here is how I know I’m getting better: I’m bloody hungry – I looked at the lunch that came in a couple of hours ago and thought, That’s it? It’s like when you get those toy-sized meals on aeroplanes and you think, who eats a tablespoon of mash and a sausage the size of my little finger? That’s not a meal. That’s a canapé in a pretentiously upmarket bar.

I am bored. Christ, I’m bored. Now I’m no longer sleeping as much I have nothing to do. No phone. No laptop. I could be writing, but without access to my laptop and my current manuscript there’s nothing I can do. I’m even getting angry with the radio. At home, where it’s just a background to my routine, I love the constant repetition, the reassuring cycle of the day, the fact that Start the Week follows Today, and Woman’s Hour follows Start the Week, as surely as Monday gives way to Tuesday and Wednesday. Here, it is starting to drive me a little mad. How many times can I hear the endless loop of news headlines before I go crazy?

But most of all, I’m frightened.

There’s a kind of focussing effect that happens when you’re very ill. I saw it with my grandad, when he was slipping away. You stop caring about the big stuff. Your world shrinks down to very small concerns: the way your dressing-gown cord presses uncomfortably against your ribs; the pain in your spine; the feel of a hand in yours.

It’s that narrowing that enables you to cope, I suppose. The wider world stops mattering. And as you grow more and more ill, your world shrinks further, until the only thing that matters is just to keep on breathing.

But I am going the other way. When I was brought in, all I cared about was not dying. Then yesterday I just wanted to be left alone to sleep and lick my wounds.

Now, today, I am starting to worry.

I am not an official suspect; I know enough from writing crime to know that Lamarr would have had to interview me under caution if that was the case, offer me a solicitor, read me my rights.

But they are groping around, searching for something. They don’t think James’s death was an accident.

I remember the words floating through the thick glass that first night, Oh Jesus, so now we’re looking at murder? At the time they seemed shocking but fantastical – all part of the drugged-up dream state I was caught in. Now they seem all too real.





23


WHEN THE KNOCK comes again I nearly don’t answer. I’m lying with my eyes shut listening to Radio 4 on the hospital headphones trying to block out the noise and bustle of the ward next door, imagine myself back home.

The nurses don’t knock – at least they do, but with a perfunctory tap and then they come in anyway. Only Lamarr knocks and waits for an answer. And I cannot face Lamarr, with her kind, calm, curiously dogged questions. I don’t remember. I don’t remember, all right? I’m not hiding anything, I just Don’t. Fucking. Remember.

I screw my eyes shut, listening over the sound of The Archers to see if she’s going away, and then I hear the door shush cautiously open, as if someone is putting a head round.

‘Lee?’ I hear, very quietly. ‘I mean, sorry, Nora?’

I sit bolt upright. It’s Nina.

‘Nina!’ I rip off the headphones and try to swing my legs out of bed, but whether it’s my head, or just low blood pressure, the room goes suddenly hollow and distant and I am overcome with a wave of vertigo.

‘Hey!’ Her voice is distant, through the hissing in my ears. ‘Hey, take it easy. They’ve only just sewn your brains back in, by all accounts.’

‘I’m all right,’ I say, though I’m not sure if I’m trying to reassure myself, or her. ‘I’m all right. I’m OK.’

And then I am ok. The wave of faintness has passed and I can hug Nina, breathing in her particular scent: Jean Paul Gaultier, and cigarettes.

‘Oh Jesus, I’m so glad to see you.’

‘I’m glad to see you.’ She pulls back, looking at me with critical, worried eyes. ‘I have to say, when they told us you’d been in a car accident I … well. Seeing one school friend bleed out was enough.’

I flinch and she drops her eyes.

‘Shit, sorry. I— it’s not that I—’

‘I know.’ It’s not that Nina doesn’t feel stuff. She just deals with it differently to most people. Sarcasm is her defence against life.

‘Let’s just say, I’m glad you’re here.’ She takes my hand and kisses the back of it, and I’m astonished and kind of touched to see her face is crumpled and soft. ‘Although, not looking your best, I have to say.’ She gives a shaky laugh. ‘Sheesh, I need a fag. Think they’d notice if I had one out the window?’

‘Nina, what the hell happened?’ I ask, still holding onto her hand. ‘The police are here – they’re asking all these questions. James is dead, did you know?’

‘Yes, I knew,’ Nina says quietly. ‘They came to the house early on Sunday. They didn’t tell us straight away but … Well, let’s just say you don’t expend that kind of man-power on a non-fatal shooting. It was pretty obvious after they started printing us and taking gunshot residue tests.’

‘What happened? How could that gun possibly be loaded?’