Angel of Death (11 page)

‘No, it really is Pan – short for Pandora. I just met her husband, in the waiting room. He’s English, but she’s Greek.’

‘She’s a lovely girl, seems very cheerful but I could feel how sad she was underneath.’

‘And she’s so beautiful.’

‘Very,’ her mother agreed, but her voice was vague. ‘How about Italy?’

Miranda blinked at her, bewildered. ‘What?’

‘You could go to Italy, get a job there.’

‘I don’t speak Italian.’

‘You don’t speak any languages.’

‘I know a little French.’

‘A very little,’ her mother said drily. ‘I suppose you could go to France, though.’

‘I was thinking of America or Canada – at least they speak English.’

‘Or Australia,’ Dorothy suggested with enthusiasm. ‘You can cook and use a computer – I’m sure you could get a job there.’

‘It’s an idea,’ Miranda agreed. ‘I’ve often thought of having a holiday in Australia and working there would be fun.’

Ten minutes later Nurse Embry arrived to wheel her back to her own ward.

‘I’m sorry to break up your chat, but a consultant is expected soon and visitors cannot litter the wards while he’s here. He’d be outraged. He likes a tidy ward.’

‘He’s one of the older generation,’ Dorothy tartly explained to her daughter. ‘Thinks the world revolves around him, treats patients like dolls, not human beings.’

As she pushed Miranda back to their own ward, Nurse Embry said with a chuckle, ‘Your mother is very funny. I wonder how she gets on with Sister? She is one of the old-fashioned variety, runs her ward as a military operation. These days hospitals are very different, they aren’t as strict and nurses won’t put up with being snapped at and bullied. Nor will patients.’

‘My mother certainly won’t.’

‘I could see that.’

They passed the waiting room where Miranda had sat for a while talking to Charles Leigh. There was someone else in there now. Another man whose profile seemed familiar, unless she was becoming paranoid. Miranda turned to glance at him and felt her heart crash inside her ribs.

‘What’s wrong?’ Nurse Embry asked, bending over her. ‘Hey, you’re hyperventilating. What is it?’

‘Don’t stop,’ Miranda gasped. ‘Go on, take me back to the ward, please.’

Nurse Embry hurried her along the corridor. ‘Can’t you tell me what’s wrong? Are you in pain?’

‘No, just . . .’ Miranda took one quick look backwards as they turned the corner but he wasn’t in sight, he hadn’t followed them. Perhaps he hadn’t seen them.

‘Upset? About your mother?’

‘Yes,’ she lied, because she couldn’t tell the nurse the truth. Had he really been there, in the waiting room? In a black leather jacket and a black shirt with no tie, casually relaxed. Didn’t he ever wear any other colour?

Had she simply imagined seeing him? What would he be doing in the hospital? Who could he be visiting? Whatever the truth, it was another of these unbelievable coincidences which kept happening to her. Her life, her world, had become chaotic with them.

Was he going to come to her ward? Her ears beat with the sound of her own blood. Her blood pressure must be sky high. What would she do if he walked in here? Every time she set eyes on him something terrible happened. When she was a child, her mother had often told her she had a guardian angel looking after her, night and day. She had never told her the Angel of Death was likely to follow her around, haunt her.

Nurse Embry put her back to bed then insisted on taking her pulse, her temperature, her blood pressure, looking concerned as she took that.

‘Your pulse is a bit fast, but it’s your BP that bothers me. It’s far too high. You know, there’s no need to worry about your mother. She’s going to be fine. She’ll be going home tomorrow.’

And I’ll be left alone here, thought Miranda. What if he comes tomorrow, after she has gone? She grasped wildly at a way out.

What if she spoke to Neil Maddrell? Told him she was afraid of having visitors, apart from him, got him to ring the ward and insist that she had no visitors without warning, without the staff asking her if she wanted to see whoever had come.

‘Can I have the phone brought over?’ she asked Nurse Embry who looked uncertain, but finally agreed and went away and came back wheeling the portable phone. Neil had given her his number at the police station.

‘Sergeant Maddrell isn’t here at the moment,’ she was told. ‘He’ll be back later today. Can I take a message?’

She tried to think but her mind was in such a tangle she couldn’t work out what to say.

‘Hello?’ the operator at the police station asked.

Pulling herself together, she hurriedly said, ‘Yes, would you tell him Miranda would like him to ring her at the hospital?’

She hung up. When Nurse Embry came to take the phone away Miranda said, ‘I’m tired, I think I’ll have a sleep. Don’t let any visitors in, will you? Except the police. And if I get a phone call from Sergeant Maddrell will you bring the phone over to me?’

‘Are you OK?’ The nurse hesitated, looking anxious.

‘I’m fine, just sleepy.’ She kept her eyes shut and after a moment heard the phone rattling away. She hadn’t expected to sleep, it had just been an excuse, a way of making sure she had no unwanted visitors. But as she kept her eyes shut and refused to listen to the desultory chat going on in the ward, from one bed to another, she slowly slid into a light doze.

Neil Maddrell rang hours later when she was eating her light supper. It wasn’t disgusting, but on the other hand she would rather have had something else than this salad with tinned tuna followed by a tinned pear with tinned cream.

‘I saw that man, here in the hospital,’ she broke out in a shaky whisper, afraid somebody might overhear. The other patients always eavesdropped on phone conversations. ‘You know, the man who I told you about, who is a customer of Finnigan’s, the boat builder, the one who I saw just before my accident and afterwards, among the crowd around me. He was sitting in a waiting room. I was being wheeled back to the ward. I don’t think he saw me, but I don’t want him visiting me – can you talk to the ward sister, leave instructions to make sure they don’t let him in?’

The policeman was reassuring. ‘Of course, don’t worry, I’ll make sure they keep him out, but . . . tell me, why do you find him so frightening?’

She couldn’t tell him; it would sound so stupid. ‘I don’t know.’

It was true, in a way. Whenever she tried to think about him her mind became confused, muddled, with different emotions churning inside her. ‘I just don’t want him near me,’ she insisted.

‘I’ll take care of it. Is that all?’

‘Yes.’ She couldn’t tell him that she had felt safe here, in the hospital, but now she didn’t. Would she feel safe anywhere in future?

‘How did you find your mother?’

‘She seems OK. Well enough to go back to Dorset tomorrow, she says.’

‘What are you going to do when you get out of hospital? Have you decided yet?’

‘Well, I can’t go back to my flat, obviously, and I don’t want to put my mother into danger by going to her house, in case they follow me down to Dorset and have another try at . . .’ She didn’t want to finish that sentence or contemplate what ‘they’ might do next. She plunged on huskily. ‘I may go abroad, I’m trying to decide where. My mother suggested Australia.’

‘Rather a long flight, especially for someone who has recently been ill. These long-haul flights are tiring. Also, we may need you to come back at any time. I would rather you stayed in Europe, where you can get back here quickly.’

She didn’t really care where she went. ‘I’ll bear that in mind,’ she promised.

He rang off a moment later and she finished her salad, then ate some of the pear, which tasted tinny.

‘Why can’t they use fresh ones?’ she complained when the nurse came round to remove the trays.

‘Tinned ones are cheaper and quicker. I had them – I thought they were quite nice. Nobody else said anything,’

I bet my mother did, thought Miranda. She would have said a great deal. Her mother had a pear tree in the garden, dropping snowy white petals in spring before the fruit began to develop. Dorothy bottled most of the pears and ate them through the rest of the year, just as she preserved raspberries, blackcurrants, apples, and other fruit. She led a very busy life in many ways.

Last year she had won prizes for her preserves, for the tomato chutney she made and for strawberry jam, thick with whole fruit, meltingly delicious on bread and butter, or on thick brown toast. Her mother made her own bread too, which always tasted far better than shop bought. When they lived in London, Dorothy hadn’t made bread or bottled fruit; all that had entered her life only when she left the city, as though that part of her had been liberated by her new life.

Once her mother had told her, ‘I used to dream about living in the country, lots of times, it was a fantasy, you know, like daydreaming about winning the lottery. It wasn’t really possible because I had to have a job and there was you, I wanted you to go to a good school and then maybe university, so I stayed on in London. We didn’t have room, either, for growing things. Once I was sure you were settled, I could afford to move out into the country. I would only have cramped your style by then, so I didn’t feel guilty. I knew you would need to be independent, free to live however you liked. I’ve been very lucky, I’ve achieved my dream, I’ve got the garden, and the life, I always wanted.’

Mum was so lucky. Miranda wished she knew what she wanted, but she had no dreams, no ambitions. In fact, at the moment she had only fears, they darkened her horizon, were between her and the sun. She could think of nothing else, most of the time.

That night she woke up in the shadowy ward to hear footsteps. Sleepily she raised her head and there he was – the Angel of Death – walking towards her. In a state of panic she climbed out of bed, running towards the ward sister’s office, where the two night nurses sat drinking tea not looking in her direction.

One minute he was behind her, and the next he was between her and the nurses. She saw him too late to stop or evade him. She ran right into his arms which closed around her. Miranda looked up at him, eyes wide, barely able to breathe.

He gave her a strange slow smile, then his head began to descend towards her.

In terrified shock she realised he was going to kiss her.

His mouth was beautifully moulded, she thought, staring at it. A full lower lip, parting from the firm-cut upper one, a warm pinkish colour, his white teeth just visible.

She wanted him to kiss her. Yet she was appalled by the thought.

Miranda closed her eyes, afraid to watch.

At once she was back in bed, in the dark, with the dizzying abruptness of nightmare.

Was that what this was?

She leaned up on her elbow, out of breath, trembling – and there he was again, walking towards her down the ward.

God, what was going on?

She pulled back the bedclothes and climbed out, began to run and found him confronting her once more, his arms going round her, his head coming down.

This time Miranda closed her eyes without looking at him at all, and in the same strange, dreamlike way was back in bed. She lay still, listening, her eyes tight shut. This time she wasn’t looking at him if she heard him.

But the ward was still. Nobody moved. All she heard was the heavy breathing of the other patients, the sonorous tick-tick of the round-faced white clock on the wall, the distant sound of traffic somewhere in the streets round the hospital. She wouldn’t risk opening her eyes, though – she might see him again.

In the morning, as she faced her boiled egg and toast, she wondered if she had ever been awake in the night. Had she dreamt the whole thing?

Why had she dreamt of him kissing her? What did a kiss from death mean? But she would rather not know.

Later that morning her mother came to see her before she went home. To Miranda’s surprise she was not alone. The beautiful, black-haired girl walked with her. They were leaning on each other, moving slowly and carefully.

‘Miranda, this is Pandora Leigh, we’ve both been discharged – I gather you met her husband yesterday?’

The other girl smiled at her. ‘Hello.’

Shyly, Miranda said, ‘Hello,’ thinking how ravishing she was, what wonderful skin and hair, what luminous eyes.

‘Her husband has offered me a lift in their car, to get my train,’ said Dorothy. ‘I’m off back home right away. I’ll ring you tomorrow, maybe you’ll have news for me? Is there anything I can do for you? Book a flight, or a hotel somewhere?’

‘I haven’t made up my mind yet. The police don’t want me to go too far, I’m to stay in Europe, not go to Australia. In case they need me quickly.’

Pandora Leigh was sitting beside the bed, too. ‘Dorothy has explained your problem to me.’

‘You don’t mind, do you, Miranda?’ her mother interrupted placatingly. ‘We were chatting and it came out.’

Miranda gave them both a polite smile. ‘No, of course not, but I’d rather you didn’t mention it to anyone else, either of you.’

Pandora nodded. ‘Of course not. But . . . well, I wondered . . . we could offer you a job and somewhere to live, out of Britain, if you’re interested. I was going to be working as translator and courier, at our hotel, but the doctors want me to stay in bed as much as possible from now on, so we’ll have to get someone else to do my work. Does the idea of working in a hotel appeal to you?’

Miranda was surprised and uncertain. ‘Didn’t your husband say your hotel was in Greece?’

‘Yes, not on the mainland, though. On a small island. Delephores, in the Cyclades – the little group of islands between the mainland of Greece and Crete. It’s beautiful, you’ll love it.’

‘But I don’t speak Greek, I’m afraid, I couldn’t translate or talk to Greek people.’

‘That wouldn’t be important at first – you would be dealing with English tourists staying in the hotel, you see; and there will be plenty of Greek speakers in the hotel, who would help if you had a problem. You could have Greek lessons, too, I’m sure you would soon pick up enough to get by with. You would share a bungalow in the grounds with other members of staff, and you would have one whole day free every week, for whatever you wanted to do.’