The world tipped and roared; my blood cascaded down my veins; my heart pounded in my chest. Then everything became ominously quiet and clear. I knew what she was going to say and I waited for the words I’d been dreading ever since Charlie had disappeared. ‘Yes?’
‘We’re nearly there. Try to remain calm.’
‘Is she going to be all right?’
‘We’re doing all we can. She’s a resilient young woman.’
‘I should have known where she was.’
‘Try to stay calm.’
‘I should have known. If only I’d got to her earlier. I came too late.’
I put my hands over my face and in my own private darkness I let myself think of Charlie’s face tipped up like a submerged water-lily in the churning black waters, and of the way her body felt when I’d tugged it up the beach: slack, cold and dead. I could scarcely bear to think of the terror through which she had passed today, or bring myself to imagine what she had experienced as she waited to be rescued, watching the light fail and the waters rise. I just wanted her to know I was still here, beside her, and that she wasn’t alone any more.
I felt the bumping and creaking of the ambulance as it swung through the curves. There was a hand on my forehead
and dimly, distantly, I heard voices but it seemed impossible to make out the meaning of the words. I thought I made out the words ‘losing her’. But everything was jumbled and I was sinking into the darkness behind my eyes. The voices got shriller, and then my body was being manipulated, except that it felt like someone else’s body and I was only its temporary tenant. I could feel the ambulance slowing and making a turn. The surface of the road was rougher, then smoother. I could see lights outside and hear sounds. The doors were pushed open and there was a rush of cold air. There were people outside with trolleys, two of them. Life had slowed down in the ambulance. It was all about maintenance and waiting. Now things were happening quickly, with noise and bustle and surprising roughness. As Charlie was bundled out on her stretcher, I wanted to shout that they must be careful with her. They mustn’t drop her. She was fragile.
‘I want to go with her,’ I said weakly.
‘You’ll see her,’ said the sandy-haired man, covering me with several blankets. ‘But she needs attention. And so do you.’
As I was lifted out, I looked for Charlie but she was already gone. I was wheeled past several police officers through flapping doors and into a curtained-off cubicle where a nurse followed me with a clipboard and immediately started to ask questions. It was so bureaucratic and pedantic it almost made me scream. She wanted my name and address and date of birth.
‘I’m not ill,’ I said, though the words came out in a slur and I’m not sure she understood them. ‘Just tired, cold. Is Rory here?’
She asked if I was allergic to anything, if I was on any medication, if I had eaten in the last four hours.
‘I don’t want to be operated on,’ I said. ‘I withhold my permission.’
‘Ms Landry,’ she said, very sternly, ‘your daughter is being looked after. It does nobody any good if you don’t let us look after you as well. For a start, I need to take your temperature and monitor your –’
‘I need the toilet,’ I said. ‘Now.’
‘Someone can bring you a bedpan.’
‘No, thank you. I can manage quite well on my own.’
‘I don’t think that’s a very good idea,’ she said, with such forbidding grimness that on any other day I would probably have obeyed her. But I needed to see Charlie. They’d said she was resilient, but I’d seen her white face and her closed eyes and I remembered what her body had felt like as it lay heavy and slack in my arms. How could I rest until I knew that she was all right; why should I get better if she wasn’t going to?
So I levered myself into a sitting position, the bright lights burning into my sockets, my head woozy and aching, swung my feet to the floor, then gathered the blanket that covered my near-naked body and stood up. Astonishing pain shot up my injured leg and my knee throbbed, sending sharp pulses through my whole body. My head spun so disastrously that I had to lean over, holding on to the edge of the trolley for support while the ground tipped and the walls fell towards me. I thought I would be sick, and for a few moments I simply stood there, gasping and looking down at my bare, filthy feet on the shabby lino, my leg caked with mud. I saw that my hand clutching the trolley was streaked with grey,
that a nail had been ripped off and that the knuckles were raw and bleeding.
‘Where is it?’ I said, when I could speak.
‘Just down the corridor on the left. Shall I help you?’
‘No. I can manage. I’m fine.’
I clutched the blanket round me and shuffled towards the ladies’. Beck was standing by the desk, speaking to a doctor, nodding energetically, and beyond her, near the door, were two uniformed policemen. I turned away and limped into the toilet, locking the door behind me. For a moment, I let myself lean against the wall and shut my eyes, breathing in the disinfected air. The world felt infinitely strange and unreal. My day lay behind me as a trail of ruin and this was where Charlie and I had been washed up.
I let the blanket slither to the floor and lowered myself painfully on to the lavatory. Then, using my hands to pull myself up, I got to my feet and moved across to the basin. I lifted my face and, in the square mirror, met my reflection. I almost shrieked in terror at the stranger staring back at me. She wasn’t me. She had wild snakes of damp black hair, bloodshot eyes, a violet bruise flowering across her muddy cheek and swelling her nose. A smear of blood ran from the corner of her mouth and her lips were puffy. She looked old.
Charlie mustn’t see me like this. I turned on the tap and, when the water was running warm, pulled a paper towel from the dispenser and soaked it, then gingerly wiped away some of the mud and blood. I cupped my hands and splashed water over my face. I bent down and twisted it sideways so that water ran over my hair, which was thickly encrusted with sand and grit. When I stood upright again, I didn’t look much better, but there was nothing more I could do except
squeeze the water out of my hair and push it behind my ears.
I wrapped myself once more in my blanket, then eased open the door. There was no sign of my stern nurse, so I stepped out and looked around. There was a flurry of movement at the far end of the corridor – a young man in white overalls coming out, a nurse pushing a trolley going in – and I guessed that was where Charlie lay.
It seemed to take me a long, hard time to get there. As I made my way down the echoing space, I thought that this was the final stage of my journey. I had spent the day tearing around the island searching for my daughter, striding along beaches and over fields, wading in ditches, clambering into sinking wrecks of boats, scrabbling through her precious possessions, interrogating her friends and lovers, smashing up beach huts and struggling in the cold darkness. And now, at last, I was here, creeping slowly through a hospital towards the bed where Charlie lay. Just a few more steps now, and then there would be nowhere left to go and nothing left to do.
As I reached the door, it opened, and DI Hammill came out. I saw the startled expression on his face as I reeled past him like a drunken boxer, my blanket trailing behind me and my breath coming in cracked, high-pitched gasps. He reached out to stop me, then halted and let me pass. I saw his face, and I saw the figures in white coats standing beside Charlie’s bed, but as in a dream. For my eyes were on Charlie, lying in the metal bed surrounded by machines, with the white sheet and the several thick blankets pulled up over her body, the needle taped to her thin arm and her face so pale and small on the pillow.
I staggered across the gap that divided us and sank to my
knees beside her. I took her cold hand in mine and held it to my cheek. ‘Charlie?’ I said. ‘It’s me. I’m here.’
‘What are you doing here?’ said a voice. ‘Who let you in here?’
‘I’m her mother,’ I said.
‘I know who you are.’
‘How is she?’
The doctor gave me a faint, exasperated smile. ‘She was severely hypothermic. But her core temperature is rising. She’s a fighter. She’s not fully responsive yet but…’
Charlie’s eyes half opened. ‘Mummy?’ she whispered.
‘I’m here,’ I said. ‘You’re safe now.’
Her eyelids started to close again. Her fingers relaxed in mine. Just as I thought she was asleep, she mumbled: ‘Happy birthday.’
‘It’s been different, I’ll give you that,’ I said. ‘Next year, I’d like to do something a bit quieter. Hey, you’re wearing my bloody watch. So that’s where it was. I needed it today.’
A muffled sound came from her, then just regular breathing. She was asleep. I thought of when she was a baby. Sometimes I would creep up in the middle of the night, lean over her cot and listen for her breath. And even though I had often spent hours lulling her into sleep I would bend down and nudge her to wake her up, to make sure she was still alive. But this time I just stroked her hair as gently as I could. I needed to touch her to reassure myself that I wouldn’t suddenly wake up and find myself still in some muddy corner of Sandling Island, running and running in an eternal quest to find her. So I stroked her matted hair and closed my eyes.
I had expected joy from this moment, euphoria – but what
I felt instead was a peace such as I’d never experienced before. The nearest equivalent was that mysteriously beautiful moment after giving birth, when the struggle is over and there’s nothing left that you have to do.
‘I thought I’d find you here,’ a voice said, from behind me. I opened my eyes and smiled blearily up at her.
The stern nurse led me back along the corridor the way I had come, a firm grip on my upper arm. She told me as I shuffled along that I might be in shock and that people died of shock, and if I died she would be held responsible. I apologized humbly, like a toddler, but I couldn’t stop grinning, though it hurt my face.
The hospital seemed to consist almost entirely of long corridors going off in different directions, and it was along one that I saw a small huddled group: DI Hammill, Beck… and someone else. Rory. They were awkwardly far away when they noticed me, too far for us to speak to each other. The two detectives looked embarrassed. Rory was evidently aghast at the sight of me and for the second time that day he started crying. He took a few steps forward, then ran towards me and gave me a hug, but stepped back when he felt me flinch.
‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘Sorry. You look – but Charlie’s going to be all right, isn’t she? She’s going to make it.’ Tears streamed down his face and into his mouth.
‘Yes. She’s pulling through,’ I said. ‘I thought I’d lost her, Rory, but she’s safe.’
‘We,’ he said.
‘Sorry?’
‘We’d lost her. We. You and me. I’m still her father. Is she really all right?’
‘She’s fine,’ I said. I reached up with my free hand and brushed the tears off his face.
‘I should have been there too,’ Rory said. ‘We should have done it together. And I would have been. If I hadn’t been in custody. I hope you can see that I was telling the truth.’
‘You weren’t…’ I started to say, then stopped. It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered. Charlie was safe. She had opened her eyes and smiled at me. I had stroked her hair and left her sleeping quietly beside a machine that pulsed steadily with the beat of her steady heart. Doctors and nurses watched over her.
‘You should go and see her,’ I said. ‘They’ll probably let you sit by her bed. It might be good to talk to her, even if she’s asleep.’
‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I didn’t mean –’
‘We never do,’ I said. ‘I’m sorry too. Sorry for everything. But she’s alive, she’s all right.’
‘Yes.’
‘Can you do something for me? Phone Jackson. He’s at Bonnie’s house. The number is –’
‘I can get the number.’
‘I need to see him,’ I said. ‘He’s had a terrible day. You’ve no idea how terrible.’
‘I’ll call him.’
‘Now.’
‘Now,’ he said. ‘And I’ll come and see you later. If you want.’
I didn’t reply. I didn’t know if I wanted him to come and see me. All I wanted now was to hug Jackson and tell him I was proud of him, then turn my face to the wall and close
my eyes. I waited for Rory to tell me I’d done well, but he only gave his characteristic helpless shrug and walked away. So now it was just me, the two detectives and, I could see from her nametag, Nurse Steph Bowles.
‘This way,’ she said.
‘Did you find Rick?’ I asked.
Hammill and Beck looked at each other. Their expressions darkened.
‘It took a while,’ said DI Hammill. ‘It was dark and muddy. They weren’t able to revive him.’
We had to move aside as a patient on a trolley was wheeled past us.
‘I tried to save him,’ I said.
‘Why?’ said Beck.
‘Does it seem stupid to you?’ I said. ‘Maybe it is. I don’t know why. Perhaps I wanted him to live so that he could think about what he had done.’
‘I think he’s better off dead,’ said Beck.
‘Do you?’ I said, then started to shiver violently.
‘We need to go,’ said Nurse Bowles, with a bossy solicitude that I was grateful for. ‘There’ll be time enough for questions later. We need to get Ms Landry into bed. She’s in no fit state. Look at her.’
‘I don’t mind,’ I said. ‘I’d prefer to get it over and done with. I need to.’
‘You’re in no fit state,’ she repeated. I could feel myself swaying and her grip tightened. She waved at a porter walking past and barked for a wheelchair.
‘I don’t need a wheelchair,’ I said, but half-heartedly. All I really wanted was to lie in a bed, pull the sheet over my face, close my eyes and wait for the images to recede. But I needed
to see Jackson first. Then I could let go, be swept out by the tide.
I was wheeled along the corridor by the porter, Steph Bowles stalking ahead and the detectives following. I was shivering violently now and a flooding weariness was sweeping over me so that my eyelids felt leaden, my limbs heavy and boneless. We went into a small room at the start of an open ward, where I was lifted into a narrow bed and had more of the thin, pale-blue blankets piled on top of me. Hammill and Beck hovered awkwardly at the foot of the bed, waiting to be given permission to ask more questions.