To Catch a Creeper (7 page)

She turns to her computer for a second, then swivels in her chair and outstretches her hand.

‘So on behalf of us all at Younger and Wilding, let me formally welcome you into the fold. Your probation period has officially ended.’

‘Oh Rosa,’ I sigh, ‘you always put everything into perspective. How am I going to manage without you when you go on maternity leave?’

‘Look firstly, I’m not taking off until just before the baby’s born and you’ll be a tough old veteran by then, and secondly, I’ll only be gone a short while. Blink of an eye.’

A shadow steps across my soul. ‘You don’t know that for certain. I remember at ante-natal classes, the midwives saying mothers-to-be should never make important decisions while their hormones are all over the place. Not about sterilisation or about what their future’s going to hold or when or even if they’re going to return to work, though you have to say you will so HR keep your job open.’

‘Get this straight, Cathy. We can’t survive on Alec’s salary alone. I’m having minimum maternity leave. I’ll book the nanny in plenty of time. You’ll be on your own for a few weeks at most. Four maybe.’

‘
Four whole weeks
!’ I exclaim horrified.

‘By the way, what were you about to say earlier, before Alice came in?’ Rosa changes the subject. ‘The very odd thing that happened after Declan admitted killing Hugh?’

‘Oh that.’ I cast my mind back. ‘Well Declan went to bed and I spent another half hour or so tidying up, washing down surfaces, making packed lunches, putting on washing, loading the dishwasher, feeding the cat, sending Custard, the dog, out for a last wee, locking doors, checking windows – the usual, and then I found I wasn’t a little bit
tired. I kept thinking about N…’ I was going to say Neil and the burglar, but of course Rosa doesn’t know about Neil’s transvestite tendencies. ‘Er…Nauseous Vivien and upsetting Gurlet and everything.’

‘I told you before, ignore them all.’

‘I know and I’m doing my best…but anyway it made me anxious. So I tried sleeping for a while but that didn’t work, so then I tried reading and no joy, my eyes kept blurring. In the end I got up and watched an old forties film I’d recorded earlier.’

‘Ava Gardner?’

‘Bette Davis.
Dark Victory
. So then, it came to the credits and I was just about to turn the TV off when I realised that the channels were being switched over.’

‘How come?’

‘Well obviously Declan had watched the film too and then started channel surfing. Lucky he really likes Betty Davis too or I could have missed the last bit.’

‘Oh yeah, you’ve got that stupid ancient video recorder where it just records the channels you’re tuned into. Haven’t you changed that yet?’

‘Not got around to it. You have to buy an extra cable box or something. Anyhow it goes onto this new-agey spiritual programme.’

‘Bo-o-o-ring.’ Rosa gives a fake yawn.

‘Yeah, then a
Have I Got News for You
repeat, then History Channel, then some hot ITV drama, all sweaty bodies and naked writhings.’

‘Where it stayed, obviously. Boys will be boys.’ Rosa rolls her eyes.

‘No. And that was what was odd. It channel-hopped a bit more, then went back to the new-agey programme. All about rebirthing, repressed memories, Primal pain, etc. Not Declan’s type of thing at all.’

Rosa’s looking strangely flustered.

‘And there it stayed – right until it finished. What?’

She’s shaking her head.

‘Oh dear,’ I continue. ‘You don’t think it means anything, do you?’

‘No…I…I…’ she starts to stutter.

‘Alec’s not been doing the same has he?’ She’s looking really worried now, as if she knows something I don’t. As if there’s been a big conspiracy of some sort and the only one who doesn’t know is me. As if she’s about to break a confidence, she’s sworn never to break. ‘There’s something you’re not letting on to me about, isn’t there, Rosa?’ I prise gently.

‘No, Cathy,’ she grabs my hand, almost crushing it.

‘Yes there is. I can tell. There’s not been a cult movement infiltrating Wilson’s has there? They’ve not been taken over by the Scientologists, have they? Is it something Alec’s heard? Just nod when I guess correctly. Not about Hugh, is it? Declan didn’t really kill him, did he?’

She looks down at her lap, as if in deep mortal shame.

‘Or…’ I silently pass up a quick prayer. Please don’t say it’s to do with Neil and the Crouch End Creeper? ‘You know something about a lambswool coat?’ I pass her a meaningful look and take a quick bite of my éclair.

‘No,’ she says finally in an odd flat voice. ‘Help me, Cathy. Help me. I think the baby’s coming.’

Chapter 6

‘She’ll be tickled pink to see you.’

‘Let’s hope so.’ Declan pulls up at a traffic light and tugs on the handbrake. ‘Poor love.’

Thursday again. One week since Rosa was taken to hospital.

It was all blaring sirens and blue lights and everyone rushing blindly around, holding up lifts, propping open doors, etc. Then a whole gaggle of guys dressed in fluorescent jackets like something out of outer space came running into the office with a stretcher, oxygen tanks, defibrillators, the lot. All very dramatic.

I may have exaggerated the problem slightly, but it wasn’t really my fault, the operator got it all wrong. I was rather bewildered at first, you see. I think my worry about Jim Pansy, Declan killing Hugh and Scientologists infiltrating Wilson’s had thrown me off because when Rosa mentioned the baby being on its way, I was initially excited, actually clapping with glee, thinking about names and considering calling Declan to nip out and buy a pressie when all of a sudden I realised why she was looking so horror-struck. Turned out it wasn’t the thought of childbirth; she’d been looking forward to that part in a macabre kind of way, but that the baby wasn’t due for ages. Much too early. And although some premature babies do survive, many of them haven’t had their lungs formed properly and it was a hugely dangerous situation.

So I shoved the éclair in my hand into my mouth, dialled 999 and when I got through to the operator, I said, ‘It’s my best friend, Rosa. She’s bleeding…’

‘Breathing?’ The operator queried.

‘No, not breathing.’ I chewed a lot and swallowed fast before adding, ‘Bleeding.’

And so then there was a crackle on the line and she said. ‘NOT BREATHING!’ in an alarmed voice and requested my address and details, before telling me to wait a second in a firm tone. Then someone else, a man, came on the phone and asked me to put two fingers in her mouth, lift up her chin and stare hard at her chest…

Rosa followed my instructions at first, but then she rebelled, even though I assured her it was what I’d been told. So I reported back to the man on the end of the phone who sounded quite startled when I told him that Rosa was cool with the chin being lifted and her nose being pinched, but was refusing point blank to let me blow into her mouth and pump her chest to the rhythm of Nelly the Elephant. And that was about when the paramedics burst through the door.

‘At least the hospital’s not far from your office.’ The traffic lights turn green and Declan speeds off again.

True. Just a tube ride away. I’ve managed to spend every lunchtime with her and am also dropping in after work each day. Pimple, my cleaner, is being really sympathetic and stepping in as a temporary childminder, just for the hour or so before I arrive home. In fact I’ve visited so often that some of the patients mistake me for one of the staff.

‘Not great for Alec, of course, having to work his way through all the jams.’

‘No,’ I agree. ‘Indeed if you counted the times
I’ve
visited, with the times
he’s
visited, I’ve probably visited her far more – and probably stayed longer.’

Not being sexist or anything but women are probably better in this type of situation anyway. The motherly role. Looking after Rosa, bringing in little luxuries, encouraging her to drink my flasks of home-made chicken soup (well OK, Campbell’s Condensed, but I added the milk), ensuring she takes her medicines at the right times.

I chuckle as I think about it. ‘Yesterday, this old lady in the bed next to Rosa asked if I could fetch her a bedpan.’

‘You weren’t wearing that blue striped tunic dress with the starchy white bib in front, were you?’ Declan grins.

‘It was blue striped, but there was definitely no bib.’

‘Come off it, Cath,’ he squeezes my hand. ‘I know you always held a secret desire to be a nurse.’

‘Or rather
you
held a secret desire for
me
to be a nurse.’

‘Hold that thought,’ he winks and pinches my thigh in a meaningful way.

The doctors gave Rosa some injections and found her a bed. Then apparently the bleeding stopped. She has to stay in though, just for a while longer they say.

Isobel, when I told her, thought it seemed slightly overkill but when I said Rosa was on BUPA, another of our firm’s little perks, she nodded knowingly. ‘Ah, that’ll be why. They’ll be getting their money’s worth. It’s all a big insurance fiddle.’

Personally I don’t care if it is. All I care about is that they’re giving Rosa the best possible treatment so that the baby stays inside her and she’s fully recovered. Once she’s released, she’s going to recuperate for a few days at home before coming back to work.

Thank God, because, although I’m trying my hardest at Younger’s to hold the fort and ignore any back-biting by keeping my head low and concentrating on work, I’m still managing to get behind and the pile waiting for her to sort out when she returns is growing ever larger.

‘You were lucky with Josh and Sophie, really, weren’t you?’ Declan taps his fingers on the steering wheel to Mumford & Sons. ‘Both straightforward pregnancies.’

‘Although I did have caesareans…and adhesions,’ I say indignantly. Part of me is proud as Punch that I sailed through such a momentous thing as childbirth and popped out two robust children, but part of me still doesn’t want to miss out on the sympathy that I did have
some p
ain, even if it wasn’t the same kind of pain as a natural childbirth.

‘It’s not a competition, Cath.’ He pulls into a parking place and we both climb out. ‘I know you suffered, I just meant…in the pregnancy you know, you weren’t sick like Rosa was, and you had no false alarms or anything.’

‘I might have done.’ I trot behind him. ‘I might have been vomiting half the day and having all sorts of alarms, but I might not have wanted to tell you about it. So as not to worry you. With all your work problems.’

‘Oh, so you did then?’ He scrambles in his pocket for change.

‘No,’ I say very quietly, so quietly, I can’t even hear it myself although I feel my lips move.

He sighs and stares in the middle distance. ‘I expect I miss a lot of things by spending so much time in the office. Life’s so–’

‘Sacred?’

‘No. So–’ He taps three digits from his number plate into the Pay and Display keypad and presses the green button for his ticket.

‘Sweet? Short? Sad?’ For some reason I’m only coming up with suggestions beginning with S. What’s after S? Oh yeah, T. ‘Tumultuous? Terrible? Terrifying?’

‘I was going to say, perilous,’ he stops my flow. ‘One minute everything’s going according to plan, like Rosa’s pregnancy, the next there’s floods, earthquakes, tsunamis, forest fires, tornadoes, hurricanes. Thousands perish and then we all seem to carry on, as if nothing’s happened.’

‘Not exactly as if
nothing’s
happened,’ I correct as he sticks the ticket onto the windscreen. ‘Bob Geldof or someone similar steps in, everyone pledges on telethons then they set up Help the Victims charities, Anneka Rice does a come-back in a helicopter still looking the same as ever and coerces people to build buildings in twenty-four hours.’

‘Maybe, but it’s still odd how soon we forget and revert back to the status quo. Do you know how insignificant we are? Do you know…’

I tune out as we head up the corridor. In one way I know what he’s driving at. I was insignificant once. Or felt it. The first few years of being at home with my newborns and I couldn’t be bothered getting dressed hardly, let alone applying make-up. Although in one way I was blissfully happy, wrapped up in first steps and obsessed with counting teeth and things, in another, I was downright depressed, having lost my identity, having gradually grown…I don’t know, so old and staid and sensible, I guess. I wasn’t the adventurous, optimistic girl of my twenties with the slim figure, constant bright smile and queues of admirers. No I was in my early thirties, tied to the house, and Rosa, my elixir of life, was living in another country. Henrietta, my near neighbour, saved me in a way, co-founded the Tuesday Twice Monthlies, now Wednesday Once Weeklies, gave me something to live for every fortnight.

‘…grains of sand as all the stars…in all the galaxies…’

We wander up the corridor and enter a lift. Declan’s still mumbling in the background.

Ah well. Those were the days my friend. All behind me. Not so insignificant now.

***

‘This is it,’ I say eventually, ‘Ifield Ward. She’s third from the end on the left. Hey, Rosa, how are you?’ I rush to greet her. She’s sitting propped up in bed, white crocheted blanket over her legs, her long blonde hair loose and flowing around her shoulders. Like an angel. ‘Guess who I brought in to see you?’

‘Deccers!’

He leans forward and she puts her arms around his neck. They kiss once left cheek, then once right, then left again…finishing it off with a big long hug.

‘Oy, steady on,’ I protest. ‘Watch you don’t start anything down below…’

They both turn their heads and give me odd looks. ‘I meant the baby,’ I add and then both their expressions turn to grins. They know I’m only kidding. I’d never be jealous of those two. Rosa loves Declan almost as much as I love him, but in a strictly platonic way, and vice versa. It’s so sweet. We’re really like one big happy family. And now with Alec making our triangle a square, it’s just ideal.

‘How’s everything?’ She says patting for me to sit next to her. ‘How’s Josh and Sophie?’

‘Oh they’re fine.’ I plump up her pillow and tuck in her bedclothes. ‘Pimple’s got them well under control. They send their love.’