In a Dark, Dark Wood (22 page)

‘He … we used to be together,’ I say at last. It’s better to be honest, surely? Or at least as honest as I can be.

‘When did you break up?’

‘A long time ago. We were … oh … sixteen or seventeen.’

The ‘oh’ is a little dishonest. It makes it sound like a guesstimate. In fact, I know to the day when we broke up. I was sixteen and two months. James was just a few months away from his seventeenth birthday.

‘Amicably?’

‘Not at the time, no.’

‘But you’ve made up since? I mean, you were on Clare’s hen weekend …’ She trails off, inviting me to jump in with platitudes about how time heals everything, how betrayals at sixteen are the stuff you laugh about at twenty-six.

Only I don’t. What should I say? The truth?

Something cold is stealing around my heart, a chill in spite of the hospital heat and the warmth of the setting sun.

I don’t like these questions.

James’s death was an accident: a gun that should never have been loaded, going off by mistake. So why is this policewoman here, asking about long-dead break-ups?

‘What relevance does this have to James’s death?’ I say abruptly. Too abruptly. Her head comes up from her notepad, her plum-coloured lips forming a silent ‘oh’ of surprise. Damn. Damn, damn,
damn
.

‘We’re just trying to form a complete picture,’ she says mildly.

I feel cold all up and down my spine.

James was shot by a gun that was supposed to be unloaded. So who loaded it?

I feel the blood drain from my cheeks. I very, very much want to ask the question I asked before: am I a suspect?

But I can’t. I can’t ask, because to ask would be suspicious. And suddenly I very much want to not be suspicious.

‘It was a long time ago,’ I say, trying to recover. ‘It hurt a lot at the time, but you get over things, don’t you?’

No you don’t. Not things like that. Or at least, I don’t.

But she doesn’t hear the lie in my voice. Instead she smoothly changes tack. ‘What happened after James was shot?’ she asks. ‘Can you remember what you all did next?’

I shut my eyes.

‘Try to walk me through it,’ she says. Her voice is soft, encouraging, almost hypnotic. ‘You were with him in the hallway …’

I was with him in the hallway. There was blood on my hands, on my nightclothes. His blood. Masses of it.

His eyes had drifted closed, and after a few minutes I put my face down to his, trying to hear if he was still breathing. He was. I could feel his halting breath on my cheek.

How different he was to when we had been together – there were lines around his eyes, a five o’clock shadow on his jaw, and his face had become leaner and more defined. But he was still James. I knew the contours of his brow, the ridge of his nose, the hollow beneath his lip where the sweat beaded on summer nights.

He was still my James. Except he was not. Where in God’s name was Clare?

I heard footsteps behind me, but it was Nina, holding a length of white cloth which looked like a sheet. She knelt and began binding James’s leg very tight.

‘I think our best hope is to stabilise you until we get you to hospital,’ she said, very loud and clear, talking to James, but to me as well, I knew. ‘James, can you hear me?’

He didn’t respond. His face had gone a strange waxen colour. Nina shook her head and then said to me, ‘Clare had better drive. You direct. I’ll go in the back with James and try to keep him going until we get there. Tom had better stay with Flo. I think she’s in shock.’

‘Where’s Clare?’

‘She was trying to get a signal up the far end of the garden – apparently you can sometimes get one there.’

‘But there’s nothing,’ a voice came from over my shoulder. It was Clare. Her face was the colour of skimmed milk, but she was dressed. ‘Can he talk?’

‘He was saying a few words,’ I said. My throat was cracked and hoarse with tears. ‘But I … I think he’s unconscious now.’

‘Oh fuck.’ Her face went even whiter, even her lips bloodless pale, and there were tears in her eyes. ‘I should have come down sooner. I just thought —’

‘Don’t be silly,’ Nina cut her off. ‘It was the right thing to do – getting an ambulance was the most important thing, if we could only have got a fucking signal. Right, I think that tourniquet is as good as I can make it – I’m not going to try to do anything else now, let’s get him out of here.’

‘I’ll drive,’ Clare said instantly.

Nina nodded. ‘I’ll come in the back with James.’ She looked out of the window. ‘Clare, you go and bring the car as close to the front door as you can get it.’ Clare nodded and left to get her car keys. Nina carried on, talking to me this time, ‘We’ll need something to lift him on. It’ll hurt him too much if we just pick him up.’

‘What sort of thing?’

‘Something flat ideally, like a stretcher.’ We both gazed around but there was nothing obvious.

‘We could take a door down.’ Tom’s voice came from behind us, making us both jump. He gazed down at James, now fully unconscious on the floor in a spreading pool of his own blood. There was a kind of horror in his expression. ‘Flo’s out cold in the bedroom. Is he going to be OK?’

‘Honestly?’ Nina said. She glanced at James and I saw her face was weary and, for the first time since she had taken over, showing traces of fear. ‘Honestly, I don’t know. It’s possible he’ll make it. Door’s a good idea. Can you find a screwdriver? I think there was a box of stuff under the stairs.’

Tom gave a short nod and disappeared.

Nina put her face in her hands. ‘Fuck,’ she said, into her cupped, muffling palms. ‘Fuck, fuck, fuck.’

‘Are you all right?’

‘No. Yes.’ She looked up. ‘I’m fine. Just – oh my God. What a fucking stupid wasteful way to die. Who the hell fires a gun when they don’t know what it’s loaded with?’

I thought of Tom, waving it around yesterday as a joke, and I felt suddenly sick.

‘Poor Flo,’ I said.

‘Did she pull the trigger?’ Nina asked.

‘I – I assume so. I don’t know. She was holding it.’

‘I thought you were.’

‘Me?’ I felt my jaw drop with surprise and horror. ‘God, no. But it could have been anyone who jolted her – we were all standing so close.’

There was a growl from outside and I heard Clare’s tyres crunching through the snowy gravel outside the front door. At the same time there was a thud from the living room and Tom appeared, dragging a heavy oak door with the handles still attached.

‘It weighs a ton,’ he said, ‘but we’ve only got to get it as far as the car.’

‘OK.’ Nina took charge again, her authority effortless. ‘Tom, you take his shoulders. I’ll take his feet. Nora, you support his hips as we lift and shift them onto the door; try not to disturb that dressing on his thigh and be careful not to catch anything on the door handle. Ready? On my count of lift; three, two, one, lift.’

We all heaved, there was a kind of groaning involuntary whimper from James that brought a fresh spatter of blood to his lips, and then he was onto the makeshift stretcher. I ran to open the huge steel front door – thanking God for the first time for the scale of this house, that the internal door would fit through easily – and then back to help Nina with the foot end of the door. It was immensely heavy but we wrestled it down the hallway and out into the freezing night where Clare was waiting, the engine ticking over, the exhaust a white cloud in the cold air.

‘Is he OK?’ she asked over her shoulder, reaching to open the rear door. ‘Is he still breathing?’

‘He’s still breathing,’ Nina said, ‘but it’ll be touch and go. OK, let’s get him off this door.’

Somehow, in a horrible, trembling, blood-spattered rush, we got him into the back seat, where he lay slumped, breathing in a shallow rasping way that frightened me. His leg was hanging out of the car, and, grotesquely, I saw that the seeping blood was steaming in the chilly air. The sight stopped me in my tracks, and I was just standing there, too shocked to think what to do next as Tom folded the leg gently into the footwell and then shut the door.

‘There’s not going to be enough room for both of us,’ Nina said. For a minute I didn’t know what she was talking about, and then I realised: James was taking up all the back seat by himself. There was no way Nina could fit in the back as she’d suggested.

‘I’ll stay,’ I said. ‘You should go with them.’

Nina didn’t try to argue.

‘Nora?’ Lamarr’s voice is gentle but insistent. ‘Nora? Are you awake? Can you tell me what you remember?’

I open my eyes.

‘We got James out to the car. We didn’t have anything to carry him so Tom took down a door. Clare was driving – Nina was supposed to go in the back seat with James, and I was going to direct.’

‘Supposed to?’

‘It … there was a misunderstanding. I’m not sure what happened. We got James into the car and we realised there wasn’t going to be room for all of us. I told Nina she should go with him – she’s a doctor – and I’d stay. She agreed, and we ran back into the house to get her phone and blankets for the car. But something happened …’

‘Go on.’

I shut my eyes, trying to remember. The events are starting to blur together. I remember Clare gunning the engine, and Tom calling something over his shoulder. ‘Why not?’ Clare shouted back. And then, impatiently, ‘Oh never mind, I’ll call when I get there.’

And then there was the grinding sound of tyres on gravel and I saw the red of her tail-lights as she bumped off down the rutted track to the road.

‘What the fucking fuck?’ Nina had shouted from upstairs. She skittered down the stairs and bellowed ‘Clare! What are you doing?’

But Clare was gone.

‘There was a misunderstanding,’ I say to Lamarr. ‘Tom said that he told Clare we were just coming, but Clare must have thought he said “They’re not coming.” She started off without Nina.’

‘And what next?’

What next? But that’s what I’m not sure of.

I remember Clare’s coat was hanging over the porch rail. She must have intended to take it and forgotten. I remember, I picked it up.

I remember …

I remember …

I remember Nina crying.

I remember standing in the kitchen, with my hands beneath the tap, watching James’s blood run down the plug hole.

And then … I don’t know if it’s the shock, or what happened after, but things begin to fragment. And the harder I push, the more I’m not sure if I’m remembering what happened, or what I
think
happened.

I remember picking up Clare’s jacket. Or was it Clare’s? I have a sudden picture of Flo at the clay-pigeon shoot, wearing a similar black leather jacket. Was it Clare’s? Or was it Flo’s?

I remember picking up the jacket.

I remember the jacket.

What is it about the jacket I can’t remember?

And then I’m running, running through the woods, desperate to stop them.

Something started me running. Something had me shoving my feet into my cold trainers with panicked desperation, and tumbling headlong down the narrow forest track, the torch swinging wild in my hand.

But what?

I look down. My fingers are cupped as though I’m trying to hold onto something small and hard. The truth, perhaps.

‘I can’t remember,’ I say to Lamarr. ‘This is when it starts to get really fuzzy. I can remember running through the trees …’

I stop, trying to piece it all together. I gaze up at the harsh striplight, and then back down at my hands, as if they can give me an inspiration. But my hands are empty.

‘We’ve got a statement from Tom,’ Lamarr says at last. ‘He says that you were holding something, looking down at it in your palm, and then you just took off, without even putting your coat on. What made you set off?’

‘I don’t
know
.’ There is rank desperation in my voice. ‘I wish I did. I can’t remember.’

‘Please try, it’s very important.’

‘I know it’s important!’ It comes out as a shout, shockingly loud in the small room. My fingers are clenched on the thin hospital blanket. ‘D-do you think I don’t know that? This is my friend, my – my—’

I can’t speak. I can’t come up with a word for what James is to me –
was
to me. My knees are drawn up to my chest, and I am panting, and I want to hit my head on my knees, and keep on hitting until the memories bleed out, but I can’t, I can’t remember.

‘Nora …’ Lamarr says, and I’m not sure if her voice is trying to soothe or warn me. Perhaps both.

‘I want to remember.’ My teeth are gritted. ‘M-more than you can believe.’

‘I believe you,’ Lamarr says. There is something sad in her voice. I feel her hand on my shoulder, and then there’s a bang at the door and the nurse comes in, pushing a trolley.

‘What’s going on here?’ She looks from me to Lamarr, taking in my tear-stained face and unconcealed distress, and her pleasant round face puckers in disapproval. ‘You, Missie, I’ll not have you upsetting my patients like this!’ She stabs a finger at Lamarr. ‘She’s not twenty-four hours after nearly killing herself in a car crash. Out!’

‘She didn’t—’ I try. ‘It wasn’t …’

But it’s only partly true. Lamarr
has
upset me, and in spite of my protest I’m glad to see her go, glad to curl on my side under the sheets as the nurse dishes up cottage pie and limp green beans, muttering under her breath about the high-handedness of the police, and who do they think they are, barging in here without so much as a by-your-leave, upsetting her patients, setting them back days if not weeks … A school-dinner smell fills the room as she plops and ladles and sets the tray down beside me.

‘Eat up now, pet,’ she says, with something close to tenderness. ‘You’re just skin and bone. Rice Crispies are all very well but they’re no food to get well on. You need meat and veg for that.’

I’m not hungry, but I nod.

When she’s gone though, I don’t eat. I just lie on my side, holding my aching ribs, and try to make sense of it.

I should have asked how Clare was, where she was.

And Nina, where is Nina? Is she OK? Why hasn’t she come and seen me? I should have asked all this, but I missed my chance.

I lie, staring at the side of the locker, and I think about James and about all we meant to each other, and everything I’ve done and lost. Because what I realised, as I held his hand and he bled all over the floor, was that my anger, which I had thought was black and insuperable and would never fade, was already going, bleeding out over the floor along with James’s life.