Where the Memories Lie (11 page)

to be there. No one was.’ He gripped my hand so tight it began to

hurt. Tears in his eyes glistened in the sunlight. ‘It was an accident, you see. But I buried her.’

I swallowed hard, kicking myself for bringing up her name

again. For some reason, whenever he thought about her, he got

confused and agitated again. ‘No, you’re getting mixed up, Tom.

There was no accident. Nothing happened to Georgia: she’s fine.

She’s alive and well.’ I pulled my hand from his and laid it on top, patting his cold skin. ‘You couldn’t have buried her.’

He shook his head angrily, a spray of spittle flying from his

mouth. ‘No, no, no. Not Georgia!’

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‘What are you talking about? I don’t understand,’ I said, trying

to keep my voice calm and even.

‘It wasn’t Georgia, it was Katie.’

‘Katie?’

‘Yes. Katie. You know her. Your friend.’

I dropped my hand from his and sat upright. ‘You’re talking

about Katie Quinn? Are you . . . You killed Katie? Is that what

you’re saying, Tom?’ A bitter taste washed through my mouth.

‘Why did you think it was Georgia?’ He gasped and tears fell

from his eyes. ‘It was Katie. I had to do it, though, don’t you see?

I buried her.’

Despite the hot sun beating down, my core temperature

dropped. Goosebumps broke out on my skin.

He wiped his eyes with the cuff of his shirt and nodded,

looking shrunken and shrivelled and broken, like a seventy-five-

year-old child.

His words snatched my breath away for a moment before

I forced myself to breathe. ‘Where did you bury her, Tom?’ My

voice came out a gravelly whisper.

‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I had to do it. It was an accident. It was—’

He clutched his chest and fell sideways on the bench.

‘Tom?’ I crouched over him.

His eyelids fluttered as he rasped for breath. ‘It . . . hurts . . .

chest.’

‘Tom!’ I patted his pale cheeks gently. ‘Stay with me, Tom.

You’re OK, do you hear?’ I put my arms around him and sat him up.

‘There. You’re going to be more comfortable sitting. Now, breathe.’

I stared him in the eyes, taking exaggerated breaths for him to copy.

‘That’s it. Just keep breathing. You’re doing great.’

He moaned.

I felt his pulse for rhythm and strength. His skin was grey and

sweaty. There was a blue tinge to his lips. I was pretty sure he was 75

Sibel Hodge

having a heart attack. ‘I’m going for help now. Keep breathing. Just keep breathing.’

He moaned again, clutching his chest.

‘I’ll be back soon. Don’t worry. You’re doing all right. We’ll get

you sorted in no time.’ I ran across the garden and burst through the front doors to reception. I knew that we couldn’t resuscitate him if his heart stopped. Tom had a DNR attached to his medical records –

a ‘Do not attempt resuscitation’ order to tell his medical team not to perform CPR should the need arise, although it didn’t affect other

treatment. It was Tom’s choice, one he’d made when he was first

diagnosed, and it supported his autonomy past the stages when he

could no longer clearly express his own wishes. But at least we could get him into bed and make him more comfortable and hopefully

pain-free.

‘I think Tom’s having a heart attack. We need to get him into

bed and start him on oxygen and Aspirin NOW,’ I shouted at Kelly

and rushed back outside. At least if he did go, I’d be by his side at the end.

Kneeling on the grass beside him, I monitored his breathing

which was slow and laboured. ‘Tom? Can you hear me? Tom?’

His eyes opened. ‘I’m . . . s . . . sorry.’

‘Shhh. Don’t talk. Just breathe, all right?’ I brushed his hair off his sweating, chilled forehead. ‘You’ll be OK. You’ll be fine.’

76

Chapter Eight

I’m so sorry, Ethan, but Tom’s had a heart attack,’ I said down

the phone.

‘What?’ He gasped over the noisy office sounds in the

background. ‘Hang on; I was just about to go into a planning

meeting. Give me a sec.’ The noise grew quieter until I could no

longer hear it. ‘Dad’s had a heart attack? Is he OK? Is he still alive?’

‘Yes, he’s OK. It was only a mild one. I was with him at the

time. He’s on some anticoagulants to thin his blood, Aspirin,

and medication to reduce his blood pressure. They’re monitor-

ing him closely at Mountain View, which is the best thing in the

circumstances. With the DNR order, the staff felt it was better to

keep him in familiar surroundings, and I agreed. There wouldn’t be

much to gain by taking him to hospital.’

‘Shit.’

I pictured him running his hand through his hair, pacing up

and down.

‘I should come back. It’ll take me hours, though, before I get

there.’

‘Chris and Nadia are with him now, but he’d love to see you,

I’m sure.’

Sibel Hodge

‘Christ. How did . . . ? Oh, never mind. I’m leaving now, OK?

I’ll go straight to Mountain View.’

‘OK. Text me when you’re on your way back to the house and

I’ll sort something out for you to eat.’

‘Will do. Love you.’

‘Love you, too.’

With everything that had happened I’d forgotten to go food

shopping again so I grabbed my keys, which surprisingly were

where they should be in the pottery bowl.

I put my head round the door to the lounge. Since Nadia was

with Tom, her dinner plans for the girls had backfired and I had

them here instead. Anna was painting Charlotte’s toenails a glittery purple colour while she asked her history revision questions for an exam Charlotte had tomorrow. They both looked up with glum

faces when they saw me.

‘Is there any more news about Granddad?’ Anna asked, mouth

turned down.

‘Is he going to be OK?’ Charlotte gave me a sheepish look, as if

somehow this was all her fault.

I kissed Charlotte on the head before sitting down next to

Anna on the sofa and drawing her close. Anna was a sensitive girl,

taking on other people’s pain and anguish as her own.

‘Is he, Mum?’ Anna’s eyes welled up.

‘Come on, now.’ I stroked her hair. ‘He’s fine at the moment.

He’s resting and they don’t think he needs to go to hospital.’

She sniffed and nodded. ‘I want to go and see him, but . . . he

kind of scares me now. He’s not the same as he used to be.’

‘I know, darling.’ I sighed sadly. ‘But inside he’s still the same

man who loves you both very much. He’s probably had a bit too

much excitement for one day, anyway. Your Dad’s driving back now

so he’ll see him tonight. We’ll go soon, OK?’

Another sniff. ‘OK.’

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Where the Memories Lie

‘I want to go, too.’ Charlotte glanced up. ‘But I feel a bit like

Anna. And I never know what to say to him anymore. He doesn’t

even know who we are now,’ she said.

‘I know. It’s very difficult to see someone you love change like

that.’ I gave them both a solemn smile. ‘Let’s just see how he’s

feeling in the next day or so and then we can talk about you girls

visiting him again, OK? I’m going food shopping now. Is there any-

thing you fancy for tea?’

‘Pizza?’ Charlotte asked.

‘We had pizza the other day when you forgot to go shopping,’

Anna said, an edge of accusation to her voice.

‘Sorry, sweetheart, I’ll hand in my notice as your mum on the

grounds that there was no butter in the fridge and I made you eat

pizza for tea. OK?’ I forced a smile. ‘You can get a new mum from

MumsRUs who’ll do a better job, although most kids would love

eating pizza twice in one week.’

That got her smiling again. ‘How about spaghetti Bolognese?’

She was a pasta addict.

‘Sure.’ I glanced at Charlotte, who looked so pale she could

probably do with a hefty dose of red meat. Maybe she was anaemic.

I made a mental note to get Nadia to test for that, too, when they

went into the surgery. ‘That OK with you?’

‘Yep.’

I drove to the supermarket with thoughts jumping around in

my head.

Would Tom be OK? One heart attack didn’t necessarily mean

he’d have another anytime soon. He could go on for years, but was

it fairer on Tom if he did slip away quickly before the Alzheimer’s interfered with the part of his brain that made his lungs and heart stop functioning? Wasn’t it better not to suffer like that?

What did he mean about Katie, though? How could he possibly

be telling the truth?

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He couldn’t be. It was a simple as that. Yes, Katie had run away

from home when she was eighteen, and no one had heard from her

since, but she’d left a letter. A goodbye letter. So Tom couldn’t have killed her, could he?

What was it he’d said?
It was an accident but he’d had to do

it.
Those two statements completely contradicted each other. He was confused. Delusional. Maybe even hallucinating. He obviously

remembered that Katie had run away but had distorted things in his

mind. He was getting mixed up again. His memories were lying to

him, that was all.

I walked round the supermarket, flinging the usual things into

the trolley. Wholemeal bread − I kept trying to like it since it was supposed to be healthy − orange juice with no ‘bits’ in as Anna

hated that one − milk, ham for sandwiches, butter, plus another

butter since I obviously couldn’t have enough in my house and

needed a spare, potatoes.

A picture of Katie swam before my eyes. It was during a

netball lesson one day when we were about thirteen. She’d just

dived to her side to catch the ball but misjudged it and went crashing to the floor, landing awkwardly on her arm and breaking it. She sat on the ground, staring at the bone which was actually poking

through the skin. The teacher almost threw up when she saw it, as

did several other girls, but Katie just stood up calmly, supporting her injured arm with the other and asking the teacher if she could

have a lift to A&E. She never cried. I would’ve been screaming in agony, tears streaming down my face, but she never did. Not then.

Not ever.

Katie usually hid her feelings well, whereas I wore mine on my

sleeve. If she was upset about something that had happened with

Rose or Jack, she never really talked about it; she kept it all inside.

The only way I could tell things were really bad would be if she

turned up at my house late at night after a row with her parents or 80

Where the Memories Lie

something. She’d throw gravel up at my bedroom window to wake

me up, not wanting to go back home, and I used to make up a bed

for her on the floor with a couple of huge beanbags I had. The next morning she was always gone before I woke up. Even though I had

repeatedly asked her over the years about her home life, she always refused to tell me.

She didn’t seem able to hide her grief about splitting up with

Chris, though. They’d been together for nine months, and although

she never told me she was in love with him, I guessed she was.

It seemed obvious to me by how she acted around him. Whenever

she looked at Chris she softened around the edges. Her face lit

up. She was happier, freer, lighter somehow. He had loved her,

too, but it just wasn’t meant to be. When he’d finished with

her, she was devastated. She’d refused to come out anywhere

with me, preferring to cry and mope around at home, which I’d

never seen her do before. Katie was usually strong, resilient and

independent − she had to be. She always had a strength that I

envied − although I’m sure some people would call her hard,

bitchy and selfish. The thing is, you can never understand some-

one until you’ve walked in their shoes, and even then it’s probably impossible. No one’s perfect, are they? So maybe she had a reputation, for a lot of things, but maybe it wasn’t her fault. Anyway, she was my friend, and I was nothing if not loyal. I tried to get her

out of the house when she split up with Chris. Tried to get her to

do things with me again, take her mind off the break-up, but she

wasn’t interested. The last time I saw her, after weeks of being

heartbroken, she’d looked like her old self again, like there was

a kind of determination about her. A new resolve. I’d thought it

was just that she’d made a decision to herself to go out and get on with her life again, but it wasn’t that at all. She’d decided she was leaving the village. Running away from Rose and Jack and her

broken heart.

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I studied the freshly made pizzas under their shiny cellophane

wrapper. Ham and cheese or roasted veg?

Who cared? Who cared what pizza I bought if what Tom had

told me was true?

But, of course, it wasn’t true. Couldn’t be.

So why hasn’t anyone ever heard from Katie again? In twenty-five
years, why hasn’t she contacted you?

Because you were a bad friend. A friend who obviously ignored

her when she was in need and she felt the only thing to do was run
away. A friend who was too busy with her nursing diploma and

her fabulous boyfriend to notice how much she was hurting. Yes, a
selfish friend who never stopped to think what was really going on in
Katie’s life.