In a Dark, Dark Wood(69)

‘I don’t know,’ I say. My legs feel tired and wobbly from the effort of standing just for this short conversation and I let go of Nina’s arm and walk shakily to the bed. All this talk – of guns and bullets – it’s giving me a strange, queasy feeling. ‘I really don’t know.’

‘I just think—’ Nina starts, and then she stops.

‘What?’

‘I just think … Oh screw it. Look – whatever unmentionably awful thing happened with you and James, I just think you should tell them. I know—’ She holds up a hand ‘—I know it’s none of my business and I can f*ck right off with my unsolicited advice, but I just think, whatever it is, it’s probably not as bad as you think, and it’ll just look a whole lot better if you tell them now.’

I shut my eyes tiredly, and rub at the bloody bastard itching dressing on my forehead. Then I sigh and open them. Nina is standing there, hands on hips, looking an odd mix of belligerent concern.

‘I’ll think about it,’ I say. ‘OK? I will. I promise.’

‘OK,’ Nina says. Her lower lip is stuck out like a child’s, and I know if she still had it she would be clicking the ring she used to have there against her teeth. I remember the sound of it during exams. Thank God she took it out when she qualified. Apparently patients didn’t like seeing a surgeon with holes in her face. ‘I’ll get going. Take care, Shaw. And if they kick you out at short notice, call me, OK?’

‘I will.’

I lie there after she’s gone thinking about her words, and thinking about how she’s probably right. My head is hot and itching and words like bullet and spatter and cartridge are clattering around inside, and after a while I can’t bear it any longer. I get up, walk slowly across to the bathroom with my old-woman gait, and click on the light.

The reflection that greets me inside is, if anything, worse than yesterday. My face feels better – much better – but the bruises are blazing from purple through to yellow and brown and green – all the shades a painter might use to paint the Northumberland landscape, I think with a twisted smile.

But it’s not the bruises I’m looking at. It’s the dressing.

I begin to pick at the corner of the tape, and then, oh the relief, off it peels with a kind of delicious tearing pain as the tape takes off the small hairs at my temples and hairline, and the dressing itself plucks at the wound.

I’d expected stitches, but there aren’t any. Instead there’s a long, ugly cut, held together by small strips of tape and what looks like … Can it really be super glue?

They’ve shaved a very small semicircle of hair at the edge of my scalp, where the cut snaked beneath the hairline, and it has started to grow. I touch it with my fingers. It feels spikily soft, like a baby’s hairbrush.

The relief. The relief of the cold air on my forehead and the itch and pull of the dressing gone. I throw the bloodied pad into the bin, and walk slowly back to the bed, still thinking of Nina. And Lamarr. And James.

What happened between me and James has nothing to do with any of this. But perhaps Nina is right. Perhaps I should come clean. Maybe it would even be a relief, after all these years of silence.

No one knew. No one knew the truth except me, and James.

And I spent so long nursing my anger at him. And now it’s gone. He’s gone.

Perhaps I will tell Lamarr when she comes in the morning. I’ll tell her the truth – not just the truth, for everything I’ve said so far has been the truth. But the whole truth.

And the truth is this.

James dumped me. And yes, he dumped me by text.

But what I’ve held onto all these years, is the reason why. He left because I was pregnant.

I don’t know when it happened, which out of all those dozens, maybe hundreds of times, made a baby. We were careful – at least we thought we were.

I only know that one day I realised I hadn’t had a period for a long time, too long. And I did a test.

We were in James’s attic bedroom when I told him, sitting on the bed, and he went quite white, staring at me with wide black eyes that had something of panic in them.

‘Can’t—’ he started. Then, ‘Don’t you think you could have …’

‘Made a mistake?’ I finished. I shook my head. I even managed a bitter little laugh. ‘Believe me, no. I took that test like eight times.’

‘What about the morning-after pill?’ he said. I tried to take his hand, but he stood up and began pacing back and forward in the small room.

‘It’s much too late for that. But yes, we need—,’ There was a lump in my throat. I realised I was trying not to cry. ‘—we need to d-decide—’

‘We? This is your decision.’

‘I wanted to talk to you too. I know what I want to do, but this is your b—’

Baby, too, was what I’d been going to say. But I never got to finish. He let out a gasp like he’d been smacked, and turned his face away.

I stood up and moved towards the door.

‘Leo,’ he said, in a strangled voice. ‘Wait.’

‘Look.’ My foot was already on the stairs, my bag over my shoulder. ‘I know, I sprang this on you. When you’re ready to talk … Call me, OK?’

But he never did.