In a Dark, Dark Wood (21 page)

I nod and she says, ‘Last night … Can you tell me what you remember?’

‘Nothing. I remember nothing.’ It comes out harder and terser than I meant. To my horror I feel a lump in my throat and I swallow fiercely. I will not cry! I’m a grown woman, for fuck’s sake, not some child who’s scraped her knee in the playground, wailing for her daddy.

‘Now, that’s not true,’ she says, but not accusingly. Her voice is the gently encouraging tone of a teacher, or an older sibling. ‘Dr Miller tells me that you’re pretty clear about events leading up to the accident. Why don’t you start at the beginning?’

‘At the beginning? You don’t want my childhood traumas and stuff, do you?’

‘Maybe.’ She sits on the foot of the bed, in defiance of hospital regulations. ‘If they’re relevant to what happened. I tell you what, why don’t we start with some easy questions, just to warm up? What’s your name, how about that?’

I manage a laugh, but not for the reasons she thinks. What
is
my name? I thought I knew who I was, who I had become. Now, after this weekend, I’m no longer sure.

‘Leonora Shaw,’ I say. ‘But I go by Nora.’

‘Very well then, Nora. And you’re how old?’

I know she must know all this already. Perhaps it’s some sort of test, to see how bad my memory really is.

‘Twenty-six.’

‘Now tell me, how did you end up here?’

‘What, in the hospital?’

‘In the hospital, here in Northumberland, generally, really.’

‘You haven’t got a northern accent,’ I say, irrelevantly.

‘I was born in Surrey,’ she says. She gives me a little complicit smile to acknowledge that this is not quite procedure, that she should be asking questions, not answering them. But this is a little token of something, I can’t quite work out what. An exchange: a piece of her for a piece of me.

Except that makes me sound broken.

‘So,’ she resumes, ‘how did you end up here then?’

‘It was …’ I put my hand to my forehead. I want to rub it, but the dressing is in the way and I’m afraid to dislodge it. The skin beneath is hot and itchy. ‘We were on a hen weekend, and she went to university here. Clare did, I mean. The hen. Listen, can I ask you something – am I a suspect?’

‘A suspect?’ Her beautiful, rich voice makes music of the word, turning the chilly, spiky noun into a sol-fa exercise. Then she shakes her head. ‘Not at this stage of the investigation. We’re still gathering information, but we aren’t ruling anything out.’

Translation: not a suspect – yet.

‘Now, tell me, what do you remember of last night?’ She returns to the subject like a very beautiful, well-brought-up cat circling a mousehole. I want to go home.

The scab beneath the dressing tingles and tickles. I can’t concentrate. Suddenly out of the corner of my eye I see the uneaten clementine sitting on the locker, and I have to look away.

‘I remember …’ I blink and, to my horror, I feel my eyes fill with tears. ‘I remember …’ I swallow fiercely, and I dig my nails into my torn and bloody palms, letting the pain drive out the memory of him lying on the honey-coloured parquet, bleeding into my arms. ‘Please, please tell me – who—’ I stop. I can’t say it. I can’t.

I try again. ‘Is—’? The word chokes in my throat. I shut my eyes, count to ten, dig my nails into the cuts on my palm until my whole arm is shaky with pain.

I hear an exhalation from DC Lamarr, and when I open my eyes she looks, for the first time, worried.

‘We would like to get your side of the story before we muddy the waters,’ she says at last, but her face is troubled, and I know, I know what it is she is not allowed to say.

‘It’s all right,’ I manage. Something is coming apart inside me, breaking up. ‘You don’t need to tell me. Oh G-god—’

And then I cannot speak. The tears come and come and come. It’s what I feared. It’s what I knew.

‘Nora—’ I hear from Lamarr, and I shake my head. My eyes are shut tight but I feel the tears running down my nose and stinging the cuts on my face. She gives a small, wordless sound of sympathy, and then she stands.

‘I’ll give you a moment,’ she says. And I hear the door of the room creak open, and then flap shut, swinging on its double hinges. I am alone. And I cry and cry until there are no tears left.

21

I RAN DOWN
the stairs as quickly as I could, trying not to cut my feet on the glass, holding onto the bannister so as not to slip in the wetness of the man’s blood, and there he was, curled in a small pathetic heap at the bottom of the stairs.

He was alive. I could hear his soft whimpers as he struggled to breathe.

‘Nina!’ I bellowed. ‘Nina, get down here! He’s alive! Someone dial 999!’

‘There’s no fucking signal,’ Nina shouted back as she scrambled down the stairs.

‘Leo,’ the man whispered, and my heart froze. And then he raised his face from his painful hunch, and I knew. I knew. I knew.

I remember that moment with complete, heart-stopping clarity.

‘James?’ It was Nina who spoke first, not me. She slipped rather than walked down the last few stairs, landing in a heap beside us on the floor, and her voice cracked as she gently felt for his pulse. ‘James? What the fuck are you doing here? Oh my God!’ She was almost crying, but her hands were doing their automatic work, checking where the blood was coming from, checking his pulse.

‘James, talk to me,’ she said. ‘Nora, keep him talking. Keep him awake!’

‘James …’ I didn’t know what to say. We hadn’t spoken for ten years and now – and now— ‘James, oh my God, James … Why, how?’

‘Te …’ he said, and he coughed, blood flecking his lips. ‘Leo?’

It sounded like a question, but I didn’t know what he meant. Tell? Tell Leo? I only shook my head. There was so much blood.

Nina had his hoodie unzipped and she had found scissors from somewhere and was ripping up his T-shirt. I almost shut my eyes at the sight of his body, that skin that I had kissed and touched, every inch, spattered with blood and shot wounds.

‘Oh fuck,’ Nina moaned, ‘we need an ambulance.’

‘Did …’ James was trying to speak, in spite of the blood bubbling at his lips. ‘Did she … tell you?’

About the wedding?

‘He’s got a punctured lung. He’s probably bleeding internally. Press on this.’ Nina guided my hand to a pad of torn-up T-shirt pressed against James’s thigh, from where blood was pumping frighteningly fast.

‘What can we do?’ I was trying not to cry.

‘For the moment? Try to stop him bleeding out. If that artery keeps going like that, he’s dead no matter what. Press harder, it’s still bleeding. I’ll try a tournique but …’

‘Oh my God.’ It was Flo. She looked like a ghost standing there, her hands over her face. ‘Oh my God. I’m … I’m so sorry – I can’t … I can’t deal with b … blood …’ She gave a little gasping sigh, and collapsed, and I heard Nina swear under her breath, long and low.

‘Tom!’ she bellowed. ‘Get Flo away from here! She’s fainted. Get her to her room.’ She pushed the hair back from her face. There was blood on her cheekbone and on her brow.

‘Clare …’ James said. He licked his lips. His eyes were fixed on mine, like there was something he was trying to tell me. I squeezed his hand, trying to hold it together.

‘She’s coming.’ Where the hell was she? ‘Clare!’ I shouted. No answer.

‘No …’ James managed. ‘Clare … text … Did she say?’ His voice was so faint it was hard to work out what he was trying to say.

‘What?’

He had closed his eyes. His hand in mine was relaxing.

‘He’s dying,’ I said to Nina, hearing the hysteria rising in my own voice. ‘Nina, do something.’

‘What the fuck do you think I am doing? Playing tea-parties? Get me a towel. No, wait – don’t let go of that pad on his thigh. I’ll get it. Where the
fuck
is Clare?’

She got up and ran for the kitchen, and I heard her banging through drawers.

James lay very still.

‘James?’ I said, suddenly panicked. ‘James, stay with me!’

He opened his eyes, painfully, and lay looking up at me, his eyes bright and dark in the soft light from the hall. His T-shirt was split open like a peeled fruit, and his blood-stained chest and belly were bare to the cold air. I wanted to touch him, to kiss him, to tell him everything was OK. But I could not. Because it was a lie.

I gritted my teeth and pressed harder on the pad on his thigh, willing the blood to stop pooling and pooling.

‘I’m … sorry …’ he said, very faint, so faint that I thought I had misheard.

‘What?’ I put my head closer, trying to hear.

‘I’m sorry …’ His hand squeezed mine, and then, to my astonishment, he reached up, his arm trembling with the effort, and touched my cheek. His breath rattled in his throat, and a thin trickle of blood came from the corner of his mouth.

I squeezed my eyes shut, trying not to cry. ‘Don’t be silly,’ I managed. ‘It was a long time ago. It’s all over now.’

‘Clare …’

Oh fuck, where was she?

A tear dripped off my nose onto his chest, and he reached up again and tried to wipe it away, but his arm was too weak and he let it fall back.

‘Don’t … cry …’

‘Oh James,’ it was all I could manage, a gulping exhortation that tried to say everything I couldn’t. James, don’t die, please don’t die.

‘Leo …’ he said softly, and he closed his eyes. Only James ever called me that. Only him. Always him.

I am still crying when the knock on the door comes, and I struggle up against the pillows, before remembering the electric button that raises the bedhead automatically.

The bed grinds me into a sitting position, and I take a deep, shuddering breath and swipe at my eyes.

‘Come in.’

The door opens, and it is Lamarr. I know my eyes must be red and wet, and my throat croaky, but I can’t find it in myself to care.

‘Tell me the truth,’ I say, before she can say anything else – before she’s sat down, even. ‘Please. I’ll tell you everything I can remember, but I have to know. Is he dead?’

‘I’m sorry,’ she says, and I know. I try to speak, but I can’t. I sit, shaking my head, and trying to make the words come, but they don’t.

Lamarr sits in silence while I struggle for control, and then at last, when my breathing eases, she holds out the paper tray she’s carrying.

‘Coffee?’ she asks, gently.

I shouldn’t care. James is dead. What does coffee matter?

I nod, half-reluctantly, and when she hands it to me, I take a long sip. It’s hot and strong. It is as unlike the watery hospital gravy as chalk from Gorgonzola and I feel it running into every cell of my body and waking me up. It is impossible to believe that I can be alive and James can be dead.

When I put the cup down, my face feels stiff and my head aches. ‘Thank you,’ I manage, my voice rough. Lamarr leans across the gap between us and squeezes my hand.

‘It was the least I could do. I’m sorry. I didn’t want you to find out like that, but I was asked—’ She stops and rephrases. ‘It was thought advisable not to tell you more than you knew already. We wanted to get your version. Uninfluenced.’

I don’t say anything. I just bow my head. I have written about this kind of thing, this kind of interview, all my adult life, and I never imagined for one moment I would be here.

‘I know this will be painful,’ she says at last, as the silence stretches, ‘but please, can you think back to last night? What do you remember?’

‘I remember up to the – the shooting,’ I say. ‘I remember running down the stairs, and seeing him … seeing him, lying there …’ I grit my teeth and pause for a moment, the breath hissing between my teeth. I will not cry again. Instead I gulp at the coffee, not caring that it scalds as I swallow. ‘You must know about the shooting?’ I say at last. ‘Did they tell you, the others? Nina and Clare and everyone?’

‘We have several different accounts,’ she says, a hint of evasiveness in her voice. ‘But we need to get all the perspectives.’

‘We were scared,’ I say, trying to think back. It seems like a hundred years ago, swathed in a fog of adrenaline as we all crept round the house, half-hysterical with a mixture of drunken excitement and genuine fear. ‘There was a message on the ouija board – about a murderer.’ The irony, as I say it, is almost unbearable. ‘We didn’t believe it – most of us, anyway – but I suppose it made us edgy. And there were footprints, in the snow outside. And when we woke up, the first time I mean, the kitchen door had come open.’

‘How?’

‘I don’t know. Someone had locked it – or said they had. Flo I think. Or was it Clare? Someone had checked, anyway. But it blew open, and it just made us all more crazed and frightened. And so when we heard the footsteps …’

‘Whose idea was it to get the gun?’

‘I don’t know. Flo had it from earlier, I think. From when the door blew open. But it wasn’t supposed to be loaded. It was supposed to have blanks.’

‘And you were holding it, is that right?’

‘Me?’ I look up at her with genuine shock. ‘No! It was Flo, I think. It was definitely her.’

‘But your fingerprints are on the barrel.’

They have fingerprinted the gun? I stare at her. Then I realise she’s waiting for an answer. ‘On the b-barrel, yes.’
Fuck, do not stammer
. ‘But not the – the other bit. The handle bit. The stock, I mean. Look, she was waving it around like a crazy thing. I was trying to keep it away from us.’

‘Why, if you thought it wasn’t loaded?’

The question takes me aback. Suddenly, in spite of the sun, the room feels cold. I want to ask again if I’m a suspect, but she has said I’m not, and won’t it look strange to keep asking?

‘B-because I don’t like having a gun pointed at me, no matter what it’s loaded with. All right?’

‘All right,’ she says mildly, and makes a note on her pad. She flips over a sheet and then turns back. ‘Let’s go back a bit. James – how did you know him?’

I shut my eyes. I bite the inside of my cheek to keep from crying. There are so many options open to me: we went to school together. We were friends. He is Clare’s fiancé.
Was
, I correct myself silently. It is impossible to believe he is gone. And I realise, suddenly, the selfishness of my grief. I have been thinking about James. But Clare— Clare has lost everything. Yesterday she was to be a bride. Today she is … what? There’s not even a word for what she is. Not a widow – just bereft.