Sheer Abandon (72 page)

He saw a door marked ITU. He tried to open it, but it was locked; there was a bank of numbers on the door. Bloody combination lock. Shit. He hammered on the door. An irritable face appeared.

“I think my girlfriend’s in there. Martha Hartley?”

“If she is, you certainly can’t see her. This is ITU. No visitors.”

“Oh, God. Please, PLEASE!”

“I’m sorry, no. Please wait outside, and someone will help you in a minute.”

“But—Oh, Mr. Hartley. How are you? I mean, how is she? I mean—”

Peter Hartley’s face was ravaged with grief.

“She’s not very well, Ed,” he said simply. He showed no sign of surprise at seeing him there. “Couldn’t you let this young man in, Sister? Just for a moment? It can’t make any difference now…”

Bob stood in the doorway of Janet’s study. His face was very cold, very blank.

“Janet—”

She raised her finger to her lips, put her hand over the receiver. “Sorry, talking to the
Sun
. Won’t be long—”

Bob walked forward and put his hand on the receiver.

“Bob! What are you doing, you’ve cut me off!”

“Good,” he said, “that was what I intended. And before you ring them back, I have just one thing to say to you, Janet. If you tell the
Sun
anything at all unpleasant about Martha Hartley, I shall tell them a great many unpleasant things about you. Starting with your rather odd relationship with Michael Fitzroy.” He smiled at her, quite politely, and then turned and walked out again. Janet sat staring at the telephone, listening to his footsteps going along the corridor.

Martha’s eyes were closed; she looked perfectly peaceful, her face slightly swollen and bruised, but no worse. Tubes seemed to be coming out of every part of her; drips hung above her on both sides of the bed, one delivering blood, the others, he supposed, drugs of some sort. A bank of monitors to her right blinked various incomprehensible messages: the one comfort he could find was that there was no dreadful straight line on any of them, the line so familiar to viewers of hospital soap operas, signalling, as it did, the end of a story.

But this was not a soap opera and this was not a story line. And the person on the bed was not an actor, but Martha, his Martha, whom he loved more than he had ever even realised. And who it seemed he was about to lose.

He looked, panic-stricken, at the Hartleys: Grace was very calm, sitting by the bed, her eyes fixed on Martha’s face; Peter was holding one of her hands.

Ed moved round the bed, and carefully picked up the other hand. She had very small hands, she was quite small altogether, he thought; it was rather as if he was realising this properly for the first time. The hand felt warm. Well, that had to mean something good.

“Can I—am I allowed to speak to her?” he said, very quietly, remembering, from his own father’s death, that hearing was the last sense to go.

“Yes, of course,” said Grace.

She sat there watching him now, as he bent down, totally unselfconscious, and said very gently, very quietly, “Martha, it’s me. Ed. I’m here now. I’m here with you.”

If this was
Casualty
, Grace thought, Martha’s eyelids would flicker, she’d move her head, she’d squeeze his hand. But it isn’t, it’s real life and none of those things will happen. Real life isn’t like
Casualty
; real life is much harsher, much crueller than that.

And Peter thought, if she recovers now, it would be a miracle. And struggle as he might, in that moment he didn’t believe in miracles.

Ed was still talking in the same gentle voice: “Martha, I’m so sorry. What I said last night. So sorry.”

Still real life. Still no miracles.

“I don’t care about Kate. I don’t care about any of it. I love you, Martha. Very, very much. I really, really love you.”

And then it happened, against every possible expectation, and Grace and Peter watched, awed, as Martha’s eyelids did indeed flicker and she turned her head, just very slightly. No more than a hair’s breadth but enough to be seen, in Ed’s direction, and a glancing shadow of a smile touched her face; and two great tears, Ed’s tears, fell on the hand that had—almost imperceptibly—squeezed his.

It was only a small miracle: but in some ways it was enough.

Afterwards, real life came swiftly in again: the line on the monitor grew straight and Martha’s story was written gently out of the script. But Ed, who had both worked and experienced the miracle, felt, as he bade her farewell, just a little comforted.

And thought later, as he sat outside the room, numb with shock, while Martha’s parents said their own goodbyes to her, that it had actually been the second miracle that day.

Chapter 38

         “I don’t know why I feel so upset,” Jocasta said. She was sitting in Nick’s flat in Hampstead, weeping; his arms were round her, and he was tenderly stroking her hair. “It’s not as if I’d been close to her, or anything. I suppose it was Kate; she came with Kate, in a way. Oh dear. Nick, it’s so sad.”

“It is sad,” he said, “dreadfully sad. I can’t believe it, not any of it.”

“But at least Ed got there. That’s something. He was so distraught, Nick, I can’t tell you. He said he was going to stay with his mum tonight, in Binsmow, and he’d see us tomorrow. He said”—she swallowed hard, sniffed loudly—“he said he thought they’d like us to be at the funeral. He said we’d done so much for her. I wish.”

“Well, we tried,” said Nick. “We did our best. I think Janet must be feeling pretty bad.”

“I bloody well hope so,” said Jocasta.

“That’s dreadful,” said Helen, “I’m shocked. I mean, I never even met her, but obviously—well, she’s part of us now, after all. It’s an odd feeling. Kate’s in a very strange state.”

“I expect she is,” said Jocasta, “poor little thing.”

“I feel awful,” said Kate. “Really bad. Just think, my mother, all my life I’ve been looking for her, and then I find her and all I ever said to her was horrible things. God, Nat, I really am a right cow!”

“No, you’re not,” he said. “You weren’t to know. And you don’t owe her nothing, don’t forget. It’s not like she was your real mum.”

“Nat!” said Kate. “She
was
my real mum. That’s the whole point, don’t be stupid.”

“No, she wasn’t. She didn’t, like, look after you, did she, didn’t bring you up? I’d say your mum, downstairs, she’s your real mum. Think how you’d feel if it was her.”

“Oh, don’t!” said Kate. “I’d rather die myself.”

“Well, there you are.”

“I know, but she, Martha, must have died thinking I hated her. That’s not very good, is it? And then, just think, finally I found her, finally I could’ve got to know her, and now I’ve lost her again forever. It’s not fair, Nat, it really, really isn’t fair!”

Nat left shortly after that. Kate was crying again and he was beginning to feel he’d had enough. But before he went, he looked in on Helen, who was in the kitchen, rather feebly peeling potatoes, and told her that Kate had just said that, if it had been Helen who’d been killed, she’d prefer to be dead herself. He thought she’d like to hear that, but it seemed he was wrong. Helen burst into tears.

Nat’s dad had often told him women were a complete mystery and it was a waste of time and energy to even try to understand them. Nat decided he agreed with him.

“Oh, it’s so, so sad,” said Clio. Her eyes were red with weeping; like Jocasta she couldn’t quite work out why she was so upset. Fergus told her it was because she was tenderhearted, but she knew it was more than that. In a few short weeks Martha had wound her way into their lives, just as insistently as if they’d had the annual meetings they had promised one another all those years ago. She kept thinking of Martha as she had last seen her on the beach in Thailand, brown, smiling, her hair sun-streaked, no longer touchy and inhibited, but happily easy, and thought of the dreadful ending to that happiness, the long days in the hot, filthy city, waiting in dread for her baby to be born, and then of what must have been the nightmare of that birth, all alone, with nothing and no one to help her through the pain. And then she thought of her making her new life, her perfectly accomplished and successful new life, and all the time with her dreadful secret, and she thought that Martha was, without doubt, not only the bravest person she had ever met but the bravest that she was ever likely to meet.

Beatrice had called Jocasta for news of Martha; she expected to be told she was better, or at least holding her own. She went to tell Josh, and he had been clearly upset as well; it was just that it was a shock, they agreed, as they sat drinking larger-than-usual gin and tonics before dinner that night. Of course neither of them had known her at all well, they said, in fact Beatrice had scarcely met her, it was just the thought of that lovely, brilliant girl, with so much promise and life before her, being no more, her light put out forever.

They agreed that there was no reason for them to go to the funeral, but that they would send some flowers.

Jack Kirkland called Janet Frean. “It’s about Martha. Dreadful thing. She’s died.”

There was an endless silence, then: “Died! But I thought—Jack, are you sure?”

“I’m very sure. Nick Marshall just rang me.”

“Nick Marshall! What’s it got to do with him?” Her tone was very harsh.

“She and Jocasta were friendly, as you know. They went travelling together when they were girls. Anyway, she died. Around lunchtime today. Janet, are you all right?”

The line went suddenly dead; puzzled, he rang off, waited for her to ring him back, and then called Eliot Griers and Chad Lawrence.

Half an hour later, he rang again. Bob answered the phone.

“Hello, Bob. I was talking to Janet about half an hour ago, and we were cut off. Could I speak to her?”

“I’m afraid not.” Bob sounded awkward. “She’s—lying down. Not very well.”

“Oh, I’m sorry. She does too much. I thought she sounded rather odd when I told her about Martha. She was very fond of her, of course.”

“Indeed.”

“It was about the funeral. Obviously we should all go. It’s at her father’s church in Suffolk; he’s taking the service, poor man. Next Monday. Chad and Eliot and a great many others will be there. I know Janet will want to come.”

“Yes, of course. I’ll tell her. I’d like to come myself, if that would be all right. I was very fond of Martha.”

Bob went into the bedroom that he and Janet occasionally shared. Most of the time he slept in another room, on the next floor. She was lying on the bed, staring up at the ceiling, ashen-faced, very still. She looked almost lifeless herself.

“That was Kirkland.”

She said nothing.

“It was about the funeral. Martha’s funeral.”

Silence still.

“It’s next Monday. Jack said they were all going and naturally would expect you. I said we’d both go.”

“I can’t go,” she said, her voice as expressionless as her face.

“Janet,” he said, “you’re going.”

Martha had not been unlike her in some ways, Bob thought. She had that same capacity for self-control. The same near-fanaticism in pursuit of her own success. But she was a much nicer person. Janet was not a nice person.

He’d had no clear idea what she was going to tell Nicholas Marshall or the
Sun
about Martha; but he knew something was going on by simply reading her e-mails, latterly on her BlackBerry. He had been doing that on and off for a while. Thus Bob learnt about a great many tedious things—select committees she was asked to serve on, local planning laws she had pledged to fight, NHS reforms, the Lords Reform, European regulations, important divisions, and a few more interesting ones. Such as this latest, concerning Martha. It astonished him that Janet had never realised he might do so: perhaps she did, and her contempt for him was such that she never thought he would do anything with the knowledge.

“How did you know?” she said that morning, lying on her bed, white-faced and hollow-eyed.

“Oh, Janet,” he said in his courteous voice, “you really think I’m very stupid, don’t you? I’ve been reading your e-mails, of course.”

“But you couldn’t have. The most recent ones hadn’t even been opened.”

“I’m afraid they had. That latest little gadget of yours, the BlackBerry, I’ve had a lot of fun and games with it. You’d be surprised what you can do with a password and a bit of know-how. Not nice, what you had planned for Martha. Well, I’ll leave you to rest, shall I?”

As he went back to the garden, he thought sadly that although he might have saved Martha from Janet, it was of little use to her now.

Gideon Keeble found himself very moist-eyed when Jocasta told him the news. “Silly old fool that I am,” he said to her, “but she was a lovely thing, and so charming and clever. What a waste, what a dreadful waste.”

“The funeral’s next Monday, Gideon, will you be able to come? Will you be back? I’d so love it if you would.”

“Of course I’ll come. If that’s what her parents want.”

“I think the more people who come, the better. Nothing worse than a small funeral. And they’ve invited me, through Ed, who seems to be doing a lot of the organising, and if I’m there, I want you to be.”

“I’ll be there.”

“Thank you. I love you, Gideon.”

“I love you too, Jocasta. Where are you, incidentally? I’ve been calling the house.”

“I’m at Nick’s,” she said, without thinking.

Before Ed went home to Binsmow, he drove back up the A12 to the petrol station where he had filled his car earlier in the day. The same man was on duty.

“Hi,” said Ed heavily, “remember me?”

The attendant looked uneasy. “Yeah.”

“I wondered if you could very kindly give me that twenty-pound note back. Here’s another.”

He had found his wallet on the floor of the car, under his seat. Had he been calmer, he’d have noticed it.

“You want the same note back? You’ll be lucky.”

“Yes, I realise that, but I’d like you to try. It…was signed. By my girlfriend.”

“Oh yeah? The one that was in intensive care? S’pose she’s OK now, is she?”

“No,” said Ed, very quietly, “she isn’t. She died.”

He hadn’t often seen a jaw drop; he saw it now. And a red flush rising from the man’s neck, up to his forehead.

“Sorry, mate,” he said, “very sorry.”

“Yes, well, perhaps you’d be kind enough to look through your till. You’ll know it, if you see it—I’m sure not many of them are signed.”

The man pulled out the drawer, sorted through the row of notes. After a minute he pulled one out, handed it to Ed in silence. Ed walked back to his car, looking at the note, at the writing, the neatly inscribed “Love from Martha.”

It wasn’t much to have of someone, but it was something. He had very little else: a few shirts, a couple of books—they, too, were signed the same way, nothing effusive, but then she wasn’t, hadn’t been, effusive—a few CDs. A couple of photographs of the two of them on her balcony and the one in her bed, that he’d framed, all taken with the auto on his camera. And a lot of memories.

The loss of her suddenly hit him, almost physically; he felt breathless, weak, and absolutely alone. He put his head on his arms on the steering wheel and sobbed like a small child.

“I think I’d like to go to the funeral,” said Kate.

Helen stared at her; she was pale, but otherwise composed, not hysterical. “Kate, love, are you sure?”

“Yes, of course I’m sure. Perfectly sure. Why shouldn’t I be?”

“But you didn’t know her,” said Helen, realising the absurdity of this statement, even as she made it.

“Mum! I know that. But I’d like to say goodbye to her. Properly. I…well, I wasn’t very nice to her when I met her. I feel bad about it.”