The Innocents (32 page)

“He deserves to,” said Jasper bitterly, “for what he’s done to Lawrence. Bloody hell, what I’d give to be a fly on the wall in that house right now, Brooke must be going absolutely mental. But I mean, whatever, forget that for a minute. What about you lot?”

“We are all,” said Adam, quoting Lawrence’s rousing battle cry in a meeting earlier, “going to have to help each other. It’s a crisis. We’re going to have to support each other in a crisis. We’ll all do what we can, not that I can do much. But I think Lawrence and the other two partners are going to remortgage to try to get something back into the pension fund. It’s a nightmare. I don’t know where it leaves them all.”

“God.” Jasper whistled. “Well, I’m here if I can do anything. If you need another accountant … or anything. Oh, which reminds me, I saw Ginger Josh, and he said he was going to call you and Lawrence. He wants to help you, be there for people to talk to or whatever. I know he saw Jaffa when he popped into the hospital to visit her mother.”

Adam twined the cord of the phone round his finger absently. “Not exactly sure how a rabbi is going to help anything but tell him thank you.” He had been sitting still too long—the office lights, controlled on motion sensors, turned off and left him in blackness. He waved an arm above his head and they blinked back into life.

“Well, he can pray or something. Have a quick chat with the big man and sort out this mess. Dunno, I guess he wants to counsel the people who are desperate.”

“Everyone at GGP is desperate, he’s got his work cut out. Jas, I’ve got to go, it’s bloody late and I’ve got a long night here. We’re making an urgent claim; it’s going before the judge tomorrow morning.”

“Okay, mate. Good luck with it all, I’m thinking of you. It’s good to hear your voice. Tanya’s mother is dropping something into the Royal Free for Ziva tomorrow, by the way. Some audiobooks, I think.”

“Thank you.”

Adam put down the phone and picked up the end of a Mars bar he’d abandoned many hours earlier. It had melted onto his desk; a string of caramel slid sensuously from it and stretched across his mouse, as fine as spider’s silk. He swore, loudly, his voice a satisfying volume in the empty office. He balled the front of his T-shirt in his hand and rubbed the mouse irritably, threw the chocolate in the bin and glanced at his screen.

Two new e-mails had arrived while he’d been speaking to Jasper. Matthew Findlay had sent him an article about Ethan Goodman from the archives of the
L.A. Times
, describing a charitable donation that had halted the eleventh-hour closure of an old people’s home and had guaranteed that its residents would never have to move. A local councillor was quoted describing Goodman as a hero.
“Odd,”
Matthew had written,
“how people are not of a piece.”

The next was from Ellie.

When you wrote you weren’t coming I went down to the Camargue to stay with a friend for a few days. I can’t pretend that I was surprised you bailed
—
let’s just say I had a backup plan in place. We were in the middle of a lavender field, I’ve had no reception till an hour ago. I’m devastated about Ziva
—
will be on the first train tomorrow but Adam, how is she? Rachel barely explained anything. All I know is that she’s conscious. In the morning please tell her I’m coming as fast as I can. E xxx

He saw only one thing clearly—she would be here tomorrow. In the morning, Ellie would be in London and he could snatch a moment with her—legitimately—in the Royal Free basement cafeteria, where white-hatted staff ladled stir-fries and cubes of gelatinous lasagna onto white plates. They would be allowed, he felt, to sit there with propriety.

“Ziva’s okay, I promise,”
he wrote back.
“She’s going to be fine except maybe have a little more trouble walking. She misses you but she knew you’d come as soon as you could. You can’t imagine how it’s been here. Get some sleep, see you tomorrow.”

He considered this and then deleted the last line and wrote,
“I can’t wait to see you tomorrow.”
But she was coming because her grandmother had had a stroke. He wavered for a moment and then wrote instead,
“Call if you want a lift from the station. A xxx”
When she could see his face he could make her understand that he’d had no choice but to stay in London. In those three kisses he chose to see hope.

27

Adam had worked straight through until 10:00 on Monday morning, when Kristine had loaded him into a cab and sent him home. He had gone past fatigue into hyperactivity and the final few hours, making the last amendments to the affidavit advised by the barrister, had been some of the most productive of the weekend. Jonathan, overseeing him, had been pleased with the work. But when he got back to the flat the exhaustion had resurfaced and redoubled, weighing in his limbs until Adam felt as if he were wading through thick mud. He was asleep before he had time to eat or to call Rachel at the Royal Free or even to remember to plug his phone into its charger. When his alarm went off early that afternoon he felt more exhausted than before he’d slept, but the sensation of heaviness had gone at least, and his only assignment from Lawrence had been to pop in and check on Ziva. The partners were now locked in a council of war in Tony’s office. Later that day they had a call scheduled with the trustees of the pension fund and until after the call, Adam was on standby.

He arrived at the hospital just after Rachel had left it. She and Jaffa had spent the weekend at Ziva’s bedside overseeing a constant stream of well-wishers—the community had mobilized, and a rota was required to manage the deliveries. If left alone, it was possible Ziva might actually be walled in behind boxes of Marks & Spencer biscuit assortments. When Adam had said he could visit her, Jaffa and Rachel had both jumped at the opportunity to go home, briefly, and cook. “
Ima
wants to make some chicken soup to bring in because the food’s so disgusting, and Granny likes my brownies so I wanted to make some. I know millions of people keep dropping stuff off for her, but there’s so little we can do for her that makes a difference and nice things to eat must help,” Rachel had told him on the phone. Adam was inclined to agree. Even if the hospital meals hadn’t been quite so execrable, Jaffa’s chicken soup and Rachel’s brownies were good enough to heal for.

Ziva had been moved up a floor, the ward sister told him when he arrived, because she was doing so well.

“I am now officially classified as geriatric,” she told him when he found her new room. “Not that I had before delusions of youthfulness, but now it is on the door of the ward it is official. We get our own zone. It is quite an achievement, no?”

She was sounding better, but nonetheless Adam felt awkward. She wore a floral nightgown and a fleecy, royal blue bed jacket. The nurses had washed her hair and it was combed back on her head in thin white strands, pink scalp visible in small, vulnerable patches. He had never seen her without it set into a high, proud puff around her head. She looked shrunken and her hands, resting on ruthlessly bleached hospital covers, were mottled with liver spots that he’d never noticed before. But just twenty-four hours earlier she had been speaking a strange salad of languages and slurring a little when she did remember to address them in English, whereas today her speech was labored but clear. The difference was remarkable. He forced himself to focus on her eyes.

“How do you feel, Ziva? You look great,” he said, carefully avoiding the trailing plastic tubes as he leaned over to kiss her.

Ziva laughed weakly. “I will not call you disingenuous because I presume that you are using the term relatively. I did not, I understand, look particularly ‘great’ when Ashish found me. I am feeling not so bad, Adam. But still I cannot walk. They tell me maybe never. I will have to be carried in a litter like an empress.”

“Well, being treated like an empress is no more than you deserve,” he told her. In the previous cubicle the Gilberts had appropriated chairs of blue plastic from all over the ward and had lined them up at Ziva’s bedside; in this room there was only one, light wood with a fraying wicker back, and it had a bag of fruit from Marks & Spencer on it. He moved the bag to the bedside table and sat down.

“Have you been sleeping?” he asked.

“
Ach
, I can sleep in the grave. For me it has been far more healing to have Ellie here.”

“Is she here?”

Involuntarily he cast an anxious glance around the small room, as if she might have escaped his notice.

“She is having a cigarette and making some phone calls. She had of course work today that she is missing. She will be back in a minute.”

“She smokes too much,” he said, with feeling.

Ziva considered this for a long time and then said very slowly, “That is probably true, but my darling battles bigger demons than nicotine, and so if these
papirosn
keep her steady, then it could be worse. She’s back with us, you know. And she was gone for a long time. So everything is—Whatever she needs, it is okay.”

Ziva seemed exhausted by this speech. She closed her eyes and they had been silent together for some time when Ellie came back, wearing reflective, gold-framed aviator sunglasses and holding two takeaway cups. Ziva held out a shaking hand to her and Ellie put down the drinks and went to her side, sitting down on the bed and steadying Ziva’s outstretched arm in a firm clasp. Adam jumped to his feet. She hadn’t called him from the station. She hadn’t called him at all, though she must have been in London for hours.

Ziva grasped her granddaughter with a desperation that Adam had never seen in her. She seemed frightened, and he was ashamed of where his mind had been only seconds before.

“
Bubele
, I missed you so terribly just now. Time is doing strange things to me. Ninety years feels like it’s gone
chik-chak
but you go out for five minutes and already I’m missing you. Perhaps it is that one experiences time as a fraction of what one has left rather than what has gone before.”

Rachel would have squawked a protest to this, insisting that Ziva had many long years ahead of her. She never permitted Ziva to discuss mortality—her own or anyone else’s. But Ellie merely said, “Is that your own?” She had not yet looked at Adam.

“I believe it is mine. Formulated just now. Certainly it is a new theory to me even if others have thought of it first.” Ziva looked down, watching her own hands stroking Ellie’s on the thin hospital sheets.

“I think if you’ve started philosophizing it means it’s soon time to get you out of here. Too much thinking time. I brought you a hot chocolate from Starbucks.”

She turned, finally, to Adam. “I didn’t get you anything,” she said levelly, “because I didn’t know you were here.”

“No problem, I don’t want anything.”

An eyebrow arched above her sunglasses. “You don’t want anything? What a painless life you must lead if there’s nothing at all that you want.”

“There are very few things I want,” he said, staring at his own reflection in her glasses. He could not look away from her, nor could he stop himself from adding, “But the things I do want, I want more than anything.”

“And what if you have to choose between those things? What if you can’t have both?”

Ziva had been sipping slowly on the hot chocolate that Ellie held to her lips but her eyes moved between her two visitors, quick saccades from one to the other. When Ellie put down the cup for a moment Ziva struggled to sit up.

“What can I get for you?” Ellie asked her. She took off her sunglasses and began to look at the sides of the bed. “There must be a button here if you want to sit up a bit more comfortably.”

“Adam must do a favor for me, a little thing, if he does not mind so much. I have on the table there a list of things that I will be needing from the house. Would you mind so much to get them for me? You have just arrived, I know, but my granddaughter will stay with me.”

Adam nodded, feeling a dull rush of disappointment that he had been dismissed without a chance to be alone with Ellie. “Do you need them now?” he asked.

“If you please.”

There was a rap on the door and a nurse came in wearing a faintly nervous expression. Adam wondered if she was looking around for Jaffa.

“It’s time Mrs. Schneider had a bit of a rest, if you don’t mind. She’s had a real party going in here all day, haven’t you Mrs. Schneider?” She spoke very loudly and cheerfully, in what Adam imagined to be the prescribed geriatric ward bedside manner. It was probably driving Ziva wild with irritation.

Ziva didn’t answer but closed her eyes again. She looked very tired, and as if she were in pain.

Ellie had unpacked the fruit and arranged it on the bedside table that loomed high on its practical wheels above the bed, and was now collecting rubbish—the Starbucks cups, yesterday’s newspaper, some free scratch cards and flyers that had tumbled out of a magazine—into the plastic bag.

“In that case,” she said, “I’m going to let you rest just for an hour and pop back to the house with Adam. I’ve got to make sure that Rocky isn’t wreaking havoc. You know what he’s like when he’s left alone. I’ll just feed him, close him in the kitchen and come back. I’ll be back really soon.”