Life as I Know It (37 page)

Jason was still hovering over me, his presence a horrible reminder of Lauren’s indiscretions and Grant’s overbearing possessiveness.

Karen leaned across from the passenger side and glared at him. “No matter what you say, she’s staying with her family, get it? She’s made her choice, and you’re not it. Now get lost.”

“You told me something that day in the park, too,” Jason pressed on, ignoring Karen’s comment. “You told me why you’d decided to come away with me as soon as the time was right.”

I peered up at him, the rain cold on my face through the open window. Something in his eyes reminded me suddenly of Dan. He was looking at me in that same sorrowful way that
Dan had looked at me last night, full of love and pity and desperation.

“Tell me,” I said at last.

“He hit you,” he said, raising his voice against the roar of the rain, watching my reaction with piercing eyes. “Before I could warn you that Grant had found out about us, you told me you already knew. He’d knocked you about badly, Lauren! You said he’d done it before. I begged you to come away with me there and then, but you refused to leave the retarded boy with him. You were afraid he’d take out his anger and frustration on him. You were going to find a new nanny for the other kids and put the boy safely out of harm’s way in a home. When they were settled, we were going to start a new life. You promised, Lauren. You said you loved me.”

I sat dumbly, trying to assimilate everything he’d told me. I remembered the bruises I’d seen on Lauren’s ribs when I had stood in the shower that first time in the hospital. I’d believed they were the result of vigorous CPR, but now I wondered if they had been the result of Grant’s anger. There had been the bruising to my arms, too, when he’d held me tightly after we’d met Jason in the restaurant. It would also explain why Lauren had been looking at special homes without her husband’s knowledge, I thought grimly.

“I’m not leaving the children, Jason,” I said quietly.

He leaned swiftly in at the window and kissed me full on the mouth. When I didn’t respond, he stood back, stared at me for what seemed like an eternity, then backed away from the car, revving his engine wildly. For an awful moment I thought he was going to come at us again and ram the car with his bike, but then he backed the bike up and turned the wheel away from us.

“If I can’t have you, he’s not having you either!” he shouted.

We watched, struck dumb as Jason gunned the bike and zoomed away, the sound of the bike quickly fading into the mist and rain.

The honking of a horn behind us made us both jump, and I realized we were partially blocking the access-road. Shaking, I pulled the steering wheel around until the car screeched and skidded off the bank, then I waved my thanks at the other driver for waiting, and headed back onto the main road.

“Was that a death threat?” I asked Karen fearfully as we headed for home, my voice trembling and my mouth dry. “Would he rather see me dead than living with Grant?”

Karen frowned, obviously worried. “The ranting of a jilted lover, certainly. But we have to hope he wouldn’t really do anything.”

“Should we call the police, do you think?”

“I don’t think there’s much they could do. He hasn’t hurt you, has he? And I don’t believe he would. I think he’s just besotted with you.”

Dan’s words came back to me, telling me that he was besotted with me, Jessica. Poor Jason, I thought. Poor Dan. Back at the house we made tea and drank it quietly, not sure what to say to each other while the rain pelted relentlessly down outside. It was nearly time for the school pickup, and I asked Karen if she’d mind coming with me, just in case Jason returned for another attempt to win his lover back.

“What am I going to do about Grant?” I asked as we drove through the rain once more. “Lauren was obviously scared for herself and Teddy.”

“Jason might have been making it up,” Karen cautioned. “He would have said anything to win you back.”

“No.” I shook my head. “It all makes sense. Grant is so controlling. He would never have let Lauren leave him, and he definitely knew about Jason, that’s why he was so reluctant to believe in the memory loss. He probably couldn’t believe his luck that just as his world was about to fall apart he was miraculously handed another chance. Lauren couldn’t remember the affair, or the fact that he’d hit her. And it explains why he didn’t know about the home for Teddy; Lauren was probably organizing that in secret.”

It was pitch dark by the time we got to the boys’ school and parked outside. If Jason had been lurking somewhere about we wouldn’t have been able to see him anyway.

Toby and Teddy came out together. We listened to them chattering excitedly about having had to spend both break times indoors, but my thoughts were elsewhere. The girls were in gloomier moods, since they had both been given double homework, but I soon cheered up Nicole by reminding her that she could take Ginny to school in the morning.

As soon as we walked into the house we could detect the delicious smell of Karen’s casserole cooking in the oven, and the children clamored to be fed at once. Hurrying into the kitchen, I paused only to tie an apron around my waist, and was about to serve up the food when I heard the front doorbell ring.

“Can you get it?” I called to Karen as I placed the ovenproof dish on the counter and removed the lid. I grabbed a soup ladle and had begun to dish the chicken portions onto plates when Karen came into the kitchen, her eyes wide and staring, her face ashen.

I froze.

“What?”

Behind her, two uniformed figures appeared, their navy blue coats slick with rain, flat caps twisting in their hands.

“What’s happened?”

“It’s Grant,” Karen said tonelessly. “He’s been involved in a traffic accident.”

“I’m very sorry, Mrs. Richardson.” One of the police officers stepped toward me. “Your husband’s car was involved in a multiple collision and he has been taken to St. Matthew’s Accident and Emergency by ambulance.”

“Is he all right?”

“The doctors were working on him when we left.”

I gripped the ladle tightly as I stared at their solemn faces, unaware of the gravy pooling on the counter beside me. “What happened?”

“It seems from initial witness reports that a motorbike jumped a red light at the crossroads. The driver behind your husband’s Mercedes says your husband swerved to avoid it and collided with a container truck coming in the other direction. The bike’s momentum apparently carried it right on and it skidded into both vehicles. In these wet conditions there was nothing either Mr. Richardson or the truck driver could have done.”

“What are you saying?”

The police officer looked decidedly ill at ease. “I’m afraid the motorcyclist didn’t make it.”

“You mean he’s dead?” I grabbed the corner of the kitchen counter for support, my mind whirling frantically. Had the motorcyclist been Jason? Had he done it on purpose?

The officer nodded. “I’m afraid so.”

Coming to my senses, I propped the ladle in the casserole dish, untied the apron, and threw it on the counter. “Can I go and see my husband?”

The police officers exchanged glances. “We’ve got instructions
to take you to the hospital right away, if you’re ready, Mrs. Richardson.”

“Mummy, what’s happening?”

I looked down to see Sophie staring up at me, her eyes wide with fear.

“It’s Daddy. He’s in the hospital. I’m going to see him now.”

“Can I come?”

I glanced down at her, then up at Karen. “Can you give the children their dinner and then bring them along later?”

Karen nodded and I turned my attention back to Sophie. “Auntie Karen will bring you and Nicole and the boys to the hospital when you’ve eaten.” I turned to follow the officers into the hall, grabbing my coat and bag from the banisters as I went. “Be a good girl and help Auntie Karen,” I called back to Sophie from the hall. “I’ll see you later.”

My first view of the entrance to the emergency unit at St. Matthew’s Hospital was through a haze of teeming rain. Lights shone out onto the tarmac from the double doors, illuminating the bouncing drops and sending them skyward in a fine spray. The police car pulled up at the entrance, turned off the windshield wipers, and killed the engine. I thanked both officers, who followed me as I scrambled out into the dark night and hurried toward the lighted entrance. Once inside, the police officers removed their hats and stood quietly against the far wall while I gave a woman at the reception desk my name.

Recognition passed over her face when I told her I’d come to visit my husband, who had been brought in from a traffic accident. She asked me to take a seat on one of the waiting room chairs among a group of anxious and resigned-looking patients while she rang for a member of staff.

It seemed that I had only just sat down when a uniformed nurse arrived to escort me through the double doors into the inner sanctum of the emergency room. I eyed the row of curtained cubicles apprehensively, but she led me past them to an open area where several medics were working on a patient lying on a stretcher, surrounded by carts overflowing with machinery, wires, and hospital equipment.

“I’ll fetch a doctor to come and speak to you,” she said as she scurried toward the group.

I waited anxiously, running the strap of my bag nervously through my fingers, watching as the nurse tapped one of the doctors on the shoulder and motioned toward where I was standing. I couldn’t see Grant and assumed he had been separated off into a side room or taken up to a ward.

The doctor looked around at the nurse’s whispered words and I recognized him at once. It was Dr. Shakir, who had attended me when I’d been in the hospital myself less than two weeks before. He hurried across to greet me, his hand outstretched.

“I’m sorry to have to meet you again under such difficult circumstances, Mrs. Richardson.”

“Where is my husband? Is he all right?” I asked, realizing through the numbness in my brain that it was a pretty foolish question. But I still wasn’t sure where Grant had been taken or how badly he was injured.

“Your husband has been in a very bad accident,” Dr. Shakir explained. He turned to indicate the patient behind him on the stretcher, and I realized with a sickening jolt that the patient who was warranting all the attention must be Grant. I tried to look past Dr. Shakir but the other medical staff blocked my view.

The doctor took my elbow and guided me smoothly back out
into the corridor, where he waved me down onto a chair and perched on the corner of another one beside me.

“Can I see him?” I fixed frightened eyes on the doctor. “How bad is he?”

“We are trying to get him stabilized, so we can take him to the operating room.”

I breathed out a sigh of relief. “So it’s fixable? Has he broken something?”

Dr. Shakir’s expression became infinitely sympathetic. “Mrs. Richardson… Lauren, wasn’t it? Apart from multiple cuts and contusions to his head and body, your husband suffered severe crush injuries when he was trapped under the truck. The fire brigade freed him as swiftly as possible, but, as with many crush injuries, there are complications.”

I felt my mouth go dry and I glanced past him to where a blue curtain obscured my view through the low window to the emergency room. “Will he be all right?”

“At this stage it is difficult to say. Your husband is presenting with severe hypovolemia—that is, decreased blood volume—due, we believe, to the possible hemorrhaging of internal injuries sustained in the accident. He hasn’t long come in and we are at present in the throes of assessing him while administering intravenous fluids. We have ordered an emergency full-body MRI scan to locate the source of the bleeding… but”—Dr. Shakir avoided my anxious gaze—”there is a danger that a combination of the shock and dehydration may result in acute renal failure.”

I looked at him blankly, not willing to understand what he was saying. Taking a deep breath, I asked the question again. “You mean you don’t know where he’s hurt?”

“We believe Mr. Richardson has multiple internal injuries,
but until we have the scan and we have him stabilized, we can’t risk opening him up.”

“Is it very serious?”

“Your husband is fighting for his life.”

My whole body seemed to deflate. For a moment the room swam woozily before me, and then I raised my head and looked the doctor in the eye. “Can I see him?”

Dr. Shakir rose to his feet and waved me back toward the emergency room. As I approached the bed, the other nurses and doctors stood back and I could see Grant at last, although I hardly recognized him, surrounded as he was by tubes, wires, and catheters all connected in turn to bags of fluid, oxygen, blood, drainage tubes, and rhythmically beeping machinery. His head was dotted with heavy gauze dressings and I wondered how bad the cuts and contusions were.

“The head wounds are minor”—Dr. Shakir was at my elbow and seemed to be reading my thoughts—“in comparison to his other injuries.”

“Can he hear me?” I crept closer to the bed and stared down at this man whom I had only known for such a short time, yet who had played such a significant part in my life as Lauren and in the lives of the children. I tried not to think of my bruised ribs and Grant’s duplicity in allowing me to believe all had been well between us before the lightning strike. Taking one of his bloody hands in mine, I squeezed it gently, remembering how he had been there for me when I had come around in hospital that first time, confused and in denial about what was happening.

“Grant,” I whispered, bending low so he could hear me, “Grant, you have to fight. The children need you.”

Grant’s eyes flickered open and he squinted up at me. “Lauren? Is that you?”

His voice was thin and rasping, as if the strain of speaking was almost too much for him. The beeping of the machines increased in intensity with the effort and the medics clustered around, checking his pulse, drawing blood, and checking his drainage bags.

“I’m here, Grant,” I told him, still holding his hand, although I stepped back slightly to allow Dr. Shakir to examine him again.

“We can’t wait for the MRI. I think we’ll have to risk opening him up.” Dr. Shakir was shaking his head.