You are in the corridor of ICU with Sarah, keeping watch on Jenny through the glass.
‘But there must be some way they can find him?’ you say, incredulous; furious.
‘We don’t even know if he’s actually working on a building site, or if that’s a line he spun his wife. We’ll keep looking for him. And Donald White.’
‘I only spoke to Donald at school things. And it was years ago. But I don’t think he’s the type of bloke to do this.’
‘There isn’t really a type,’ Sarah says. ‘Have you spoken to Ads?’
Emotion tenses your face. You shake your head. ‘I’ll go and see him as soon as you’ve found them both.’
Sarah nods. ‘Maybe when the arsonist is locked up it’ll be different for Addie,’ she says.
Will he speak then? Surely he will.
Ivo walks past you and into Jenny’s ward. But only I see that Jenny is with him. They go up to her bed.
This is the first time she has seen herself since right after the fire. Her face looks worse than it did then, more swollen and blistered. Even though she knows she won’t be scarred, I dread what she must feel as she sees her burnt face; her plastic-encased body.
I make myself look at her.
Her tears are falling onto Ivo’s face and he wipes them away as his own.
I think she was afraid of his rejection before and she was protecting herself. And now she doesn’t have to. It’s his love that gives her the strength to look at herself.
Sarah comes up to Ivo, moved by his distress.
‘She’s not going to scar,’ she says to him.
‘Yes, her dad said.’
But I know it’s not her appearance that distresses him. It’s what she must have suffered.
You tell Sarah and Ivo that you need to see me for a little while. Sarah wants to catch up with the police, but there’s now Ivo as a member of the guard rota at her bedside. And I trust him, as you do.
Jenny and Ivo stay at her bedside together.
I join her.
‘Dad’s got Ivo guarding me now?’
‘Yes.’
For the first time she doesn’t argue that there’s no need for a guard; doesn’t say it’s ridiculous. Maybe now Ivo’s here she can face this fear, as she’s facing her body.
You reach my bed and hold my hand. My fingers look pale after being out of the sun for nearly four days; my ring mark is disappearing. But your fingers, with the dark hairs and square-cut nails, still look strongly capable.
‘Ivo’s with Jenny, darling,’ you say to me. ‘I think that’s what she wants.’
‘Yes.’
Because I was right about Jenny after all – she does love him. But I was right too when I said I don’t know her; not all of her. Just as I can’t physically pick her up any more, she is no longer entirely knowable by me.
‘You think she’s too young for something to be so serious,’ you say. ‘But…’
‘She’s nearly grown up now,’ I finish off. ‘And I ought to see that.’
She’s become an adult; a young adult, yes, but still an adult with spaces that are hers alone.
‘I know she’ll always be little Jen too, to us,’ you say.
‘Yes.’
‘But we have to kind of disguise that. For her sake.’
You understand.
‘I don’t think any parent really ever lets go,’ I say to you.
‘Some parents are just better at pretending,’ you say.
As we talk, with only me hearing both of us, but you intuiting my words, I remember, again, that we have spoken every day since we first met. Nineteen years of talking to each other.
When you were away filming, we spoke long distance, the words between us hissing and fading in and out, but I still painted a picture of my day, and you – well, I was going to say you framed it, neat and pat, but it’s not that. Because we might not have young love, or find each other beautiful in that eyebeams-threading way any more, but you give me the canvas to paint on tomorrow.
And it’s only now, right now, that I properly appreciate you sitting with me and still talking to me. Every chance you get, whenever Sarah and now Ivo can guard Jenny, you come to me.
Do you remember Sarah’s reading at our wedding?
At the time I didn’t take much notice. We were only in the church to please my father (‘It’ll mean so much to him’ and I’d wanted to make up for being a pregnant bride) and we’d gone for the usual off-the-shelf ready-made-for-weddings reading from Corinthians.
‘Love is patient and kind,’ Sarah read out, standing in the pulpit. But I felt far from patient or kind as she read, so bloody slowly! My shoes were much too high, Mum had been right about that, and my toes were pinched. How come the guests were allowed to sit down but we weren’t?
‘Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.’
Apart from killer-heels on a hard church floor.
But I do remember the ending of her reading.
‘… now faith, hope and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.’
And I think that you loving me still takes faith.
And your faith that I can hear you now takes love.
Again a watched-pot hope as we return to Jenny’s bedside together.
She isn’t here.
A nurse sees your panic and tells you she’s just been taken to the MRI suite and her boyfriend and a doctor from ICU have gone with her.
You hurry out.
ICU is secure with its locked door and high ratio of medical staff but out here danger prowls the corridors and jostles into the crowded lifts and maybe a murderer is striding towards our vulnerable daughter.
I try and still my panic. Ivo is with her. And there’s a doctor with her too. They won’t let anything happen to her. Besides, surely both Donald and Silas are too intelligent to risk another attack.
I slow my pace to a walk while you race on.
I pass the chapel door and hear a low, animal keening sound. I go in.
She’s kneeling at the front of the church. Her crying is the sound of despair; a scream fragmenting into tears.
Every nerve in me jangles into a run to her. I put my arms around her.
‘I didn’t want to be with him, Mum.’
‘But he loves you. I saw that. He’s only left you now so that he could go to the MRI suite, because Dad was with me. He hasn’t rejected you, if that’s what you-’
‘I know he loves me. I’ve always known that.’
She turns to me and I can hardly bear to look at the anguish on her face. As bad as looking at her burnt face. Blistering with pain in front of me.
‘I knew that if I saw him I’d want to live too much.’
‘Jenny-wren-’
‘I don’t want to die,’ she shouts; and her shout echoes around the chapel until it’s a sonic boom of emotion that breaks bones.
‘I don’t want to die!’
‘Jen, listen-’
Her face is starting to shimmer. She’s getting too bright to look at. When this happened before her heart had stopped.
This can’t happen. Not now. Please.
This can’t happen.
And I’m running to the MRI suite, down corridors, through swing doors, passing too many people, their faces so harsh in the barred overhead lights.
She needs a heart. Right now. Right this moment. The surgeons need to be taking her old damaged one out and putting in one that will keep her alive.
I race to the lifts and get in as the doors close.
But Miss Logan had told you, rammed it home, that she had to be stable first. Not dying. Not this.
I think of that awful sound in the chapel.
She’s been so frightened as she faced death. Terrified. But all along standing tall and sheltering me with her humour.
Sheltering me.
I’d discovered she’d grown up, but I hadn’t seen her courage.
The lift is going too slowly. Too bloody slowly.
I think about the red paint. ‘She said her parents would be so upset, she didn’t want to worry them…’ But I hadn’t paused to hear her words.
How long has she been protecting us? And I called her immature.
I remember Sarah hadn’t looked surprised.
The lift stops, stops! People politely waiting to get in. I run to the stairs.
I think of the gravel cutting into her feet and the sun scorching her as she made herself remember back to the fire, to help Adam. Because she loves him and is courageous in her love for him.
I reach the ground floor, and hurry to the MRI suite.
I think of the times that I’ve been tactless and insensitive and patronising and she’s just teased me; her generosity of spirit.
Nearly there. Nearly there.
Why haven’t I seen this before? Seen Jenny? The extraordinary person that she has grown into.
No longer a child; an astonishing adult.
‘But your daughter, yes. Always.’
There’s a cubicle and medical staff are hurrying towards it.
I go in.
Doctors surround her and their machinery makes inhuman noises and you are there and I think of the river Styx and Jenny being rowed towards the underworld. But the doctors are trying to reach her, throwing ropes with grappling hooks over the side of the boat, and they’re pulling it, pulling her, back to the land of the living.
You are staring at the monitor.
It has a trace.
It has a trace!
I feel euphoric.
‘Her physical condition has drastically deteriorated,’ Miss Logan tells you and Sarah at Jenny’s bedside. ‘We can keep her stable for two, maybe three, days.’
‘And then…?’ you ask.
‘We’ve run out of options. I have to tell you that the chance of finding a donor heart in the time frame left to her is non-existent.’
I feel your exhaustion. The boulder of love you’ve been carrying up that mountain has slipped all the way down to the bottom. And you have to start that Herculean task all over again.
‘You’ve got it wrong, Mum!’ Addie told me. ‘The boulder wasn’t Hercules. Hercules had to kill loads of monsters, the really awful ones, you know, like Cerberus? Although he did have to clean out a cow-shed too.’
‘That sounds easier.’
‘No, cos the cattle were special god-cattle and they made huge amounts of poo and he had to divert a river. It was
‘Poor Sisyphus.’
‘I’d rather push a boulder than fight a monster.’
Mohsin arrives in the ward.
‘I’m sorry, but I thought you ought to know straight away. It was deliberate. Just now, while she was in the MRI suite, someone disconnected her respirator.’
In the parched garden, I sit with Jenny.
‘They’ll give you proper protection now,’ I say. ‘Apparently Baker’s sending half of Chiswick police station down here. And Penny’s already started taking statements.’
‘Bolting the stable door and all that…’
‘Yes.’
Then we talk, properly; privately.
It wouldn’t be right to tell you our conversation, that’s up to Jenny – one day; if she can remember. But I can tell you I apologise to her. And that I’m now going to tell her my shoe analogy because I think she’ll like it.
She looks at me with amusement.
‘So I was soft little bootees until one day I was boots striding away from you?’
‘Sort of. Actually I was quite proud of the analogy. Thought it said quite a lot – size getting bigger, with the subtlety of width fittings; supervised shopping versus independence.’
She smiles at me.
‘Really,’ I say. ‘It’s a sad day when there’s no longer width fitting. A milestone.’
It makes her smile more.
‘You bought me the sparkly sandals, didn’t you, Mum?’ she says.
‘Yes.’
‘I love them.’
Maybe I shouldn’t get so hung up on growing up as a loss.
I expect my nanny voice to say something cutting. She usually does when I venture a new thought. Nothing.
Maybe I’ve grown up too and finally managed to evict her.
‘When will the transplant happen?’ Jenny asks.
‘Tomorrow morning. First thing.’
Penny is in the small institutional office where Baker once accused Adam. With her is an ashen-faced doctor. Ivo is waiting outside.
‘And you’re sure you were next to her, all the time?’ Penny asks.
‘Yes, like I said. Right next to her.’ The doctor pauses as Sarah and Mohsin come in, but Penny gestures at him to carry on.
‘Someone must have walked past and quickly tugged out the endotracheal tube. It must have been quickly because I didn’t see. I mean, I didn’t take my eye off her for long. I was just looking at her chart and checking the details for her scan. I didn’t expect anyone to… Then I heard the alarm go off, the device that alerts us to a cardiac failure. And I was dealing with that. It was only when other people came to help that I saw the tube to the portable respirator. Saw it had been disconnected.’
‘Thank you,’ Penny says. ‘Could you wait in the corridor and a colleague will come to take a full statement.’
When he’s left the room, Penny turns to Sarah and Mohsin.
‘The MRI suite has four scanning rooms and a waiting room, with changing rooms and lockers. It has a secure door, but it’s far busier than ICU. There’s administrative staff as well as medical personnel – not only doctors and nurses who work with the MRI machines, but also porters bringing patients into the suite, and out-patients, some of whom bring a partner with them. I’ve got Connor interviewing the reception staff, and I’m hoping her boyfriend might have something.’
‘Have you got pics of Donald White and Silas Hyman to show?’ Mohsin asks.
‘We’re trying to organise it but it’s not easy to get mug shots when we don’t know the whereabouts of either man. And neither wife is being helpful.’
She calls Ivo in.
It had once seemed to me as if he was lying on the pavement being punched by facts. But now he walks in determinedly tall.
‘She’s not going to die,’ he says.
He reminds me of you. Not the denial in the face of the facts, that bullish optimism, but the strength it takes to walk upright. So she’s gone for a man like her father after all.
All these revelations; all so quickly. No wonder Nanny Voice left, the landscape of my mind can’t feel like home any more.
‘Can you tell me what you saw?’ Penny asks.
‘Nothing. I didn’t see anything.’
He is furious with himself.
‘If you could just tell me-’
‘They wouldn’t let me in with her. Other patients had partners with them, I saw them going in, but I wasn’t allowed to.’
His voice so furious still, this time with other people. Because older adults had discounted Ivo as I once had – just a teenage girl’s boyfriend; a world away from married adults.
‘I told her father I’d look after her. I said I’d be with her. So he could be with his wife for a little bit.’
‘I’ll explain and he’ll understand,’ Sarah said.
‘How can he? I can’t.’
‘Did you wait for her?’ Penny asks.
‘Yes. Outside the MRI bit. In the corridor.’
‘Did you see anyone?’
‘No one I noticed. Just what you’d expect. Doctors, nurses. Porters. And patients, some in normal clothes so I suppose they’re not staying in the hospital.’
Ivo leaves to return to Jenny. Penny answers her phone.
‘She was already dying for crying out loud,’ Sarah says to Mohsin. ‘Already dying. Why shorten her life any more? Why do that to her?’
‘Maybe Donald White or Silas Hyman – whoever did this – doesn’t know she’s dying,’ Mohsin says. ‘When you’ve spoken about it, it’s been about her needing a transplant. Maybe that’s what he has heard too.’
‘But the transplant was never really going to happen. Not really. We just wanted to… It was a million-to-one shot… in the time that she had left. And now…’
Mohsin takes her hand.
‘Perhaps he didn’t know that,’ he says. ‘Perhaps he was worried about her getting a transplant.’
‘I was here, all the time, I was fucking here and I didn’t stop it. Didn’t look after her. Right here.’
She breaks down. Mohsin holds her.
‘Darling…’
‘How can I help Mike?’ Sarah says. ‘How?’
A father’s voice now, wanting to do something; because she’s been a father as well as a mother to you and I’d never thought about that before.
She abruptly pulls away from Mohsin, furiously blows her nose.
‘We need to find the bastard.’
‘Are you sure you-’
‘His daughter is dying and his wife is dead in all but name and there’s nothing I can do to help. All I can do for him now is what I am trained to do. And he won’t care at all about justice now – what difference will it make to him, for fuck’s sake? But maybe in time, years, it will be one thing that was done right. Just one thing. Besides, it’s all I can do for him.’
Penny gets off the phone. ‘Baker wants us to wait for him before talking to Rowena White. Fifteen minutes. This time, we’ll get the truth out of her.’
You’re at my bedside. You’re silent, but I am used to that now; as if you can tell when I’m actually with you.
Ivo is with Jenny and I’m glad you’re demonstrating your trust in him by letting him guard her again.
I reach you and put my arms around you.
You tell me the doctors have said she will only live another two days.
‘Just two days, Gracie.’
And as you tell me the truth of it hits you. That open green prairie of your mind, with its stockade of hope, is flooded with terror for her. You can’t hope any longer.
I want you to tell me about the person who did this! I want you to vow vengeance, I want you to be Maximus Decimus Meridius.
But if your anger is still there you don’t notice it.
I think of the tsunami on Christmas Eve and the film of a woman in labour clinging high in the branches of a tree, too overwhelmed by childbirth to look at the violent destruction around her. Only she and the life of her child could matter.
You hold my hand and I feel you shaking and I can’t help you.
A nurse and a porter arrive to take me for a scan. The one where you need to pretend to hit a ball for ‘yes’, to light up a part of your brain for their monitors.
The porter unclips the wheels of my bed, like I’m in a buggy.
‘Hit it for yes, Gracie,’ you say. ‘Hard as you can. Please.’
I remember telling Mum that I was going to be Roger-fucking-Federer.
The porter wheels me out of the ward, a nurse at my side.
But I stay with you, holding your hand.
I’m sorry.