CHAPTER 28
10 years AC
‘LeMan 49/25a’ - ClarenCo Gas Rig Complex, North Sea
Walter held her hand. He knew she wasn’t hearing any of this, she was elsewhere, the place people go when they’re dosed up on enough codeine to knock out a horse.
‘The explosion shredded the feed pipes, it doubled back into the methane storage cylinder and blew that to pieces. The shards of that lacerated the other two of our three digesters. So, before we’re going to have some power again, I’m going to need to find replacements for those as well.’ He sighed. ‘They were bloody well perfect for the job as well. I suppose if I can find another brewery nearby . . .’
Jenny lay still, her breathing deep and even. The right side of her face, her right shoulder and arm and her torso were bandaged. The burns from the flash of gas igniting had been third degree across her shoulder and arm, and second degree across her neck and the right side of her face. Dr Gupta had told him Jenny had something like fifteen to twenty per cent damage to her BSA - body surface area. A person could quite easily die from that amount of damage, she’d added.
An infection and a fever had threatened to complicate the matter. So there was little more she could do but dress the knitting skin and keep it as clean as she could and bombard her with antibiotics.
It looked as if the infections were clearing up and the fever lifting. Jenny’s temperature was down, although the skin, where it had burned badly, still radiated an almost fever-like heat. Tami was still keeping Jenny out for the count; sedated and anaesthetised with a cocktail of drugs - as much as she dared use together.
‘There’ll be extensive scarring,’ she had told Walter. ‘This side of her face, her neck and her shoulder. There’s a chance some of her hair may not grow back on the right side. For a woman that’s, well, that’s not easy to accept.’
The scars were always going to be there, across her cheek and neck where she could easily see them every time she faced a mirror; always reminding herself of the day she lost a granddaughter.
He sighed, squeezing her hand gently.
Life’s a complete bastard, isn’t it? A completely cruel malicious bastard.
Truth was, Hannah died because she was playing where she shouldn’t, and had kicked the feed pipe by accident. That would do it, he realised. That would have been enough to dislodge the G-clamp.
But that’s what they’re saying, isn’t it? He kept overhearing mutterings that it was his shoddy workmanship that had killed the poor girl. Nasty spiteful assertions that the silly fool had cut too many corners, eager to hurry up and make electricity so he could impress Jenny - woo her into his cot with a spectacular display of his practical ingenuity.
Bitches.
And with Jenny out of the loop for now, for quite a few weeks, if not months, according to Dr Gupta, Walter was having to stand in as her replacement. No one seemed to be particularly happy with that idea. Certainly not that sour-faced bitch, Alice Harton, who seemed to be taking every opportunity to be canvassing support and stoking dissent.
Oh, yes, she sees herself as Jenny’s replacement all right.
Without Jenny at his side he suddenly felt very lonely. Not even the other old boys, Howard and Dennis, were bothering to stand by him. David Cudmore, the chap Alice was bedding right now, must have talked them round for her. They all bunked together on the drilling platform, all thick as thieves.
And there was that Latoc fella, too. He was over there - he seemed to have attracted something of a following.
Groupies. That’s what they were. His adoring bloody fan club.
Walter didn’t have a cluster of people around him that could shore him up. If Jenny’s kids hadn’t buggered off and left him, he’d at least have had them gathered close and giving him some support. But instead, all he had was Tami, and perhaps Martha, although she seemed to be increasingly interested in spending time up the far end of the platforms.
Another bloody groupie probably.
Everyone else . . . they were carrying on with their duties as they were spelled out on the whiteboard and turning up for their correct meal sittings; doing their bit and politely nodding at Walter when he had to issue instructions. But that was hardly support.
‘Jesus, Jenny, hurry up and get better,’ he muttered.
She stirred in her sleep, her clogged voice calling softly for someone.
He wondered how much she was aware of things. Every day there were periods when her glassy eyes were open and she was groggy but awake; moments when she could manage a few muddled words through the fog of drugs, as she sipped carefully spooned tepid stew - not hot, that would hurt the raw skin around her lips. But those were snatched moments amidst a chemical haze. He wondered if she even knew Hannah was gone, that her children had deserted them.
Oh, Jesus.
Thing is, it would be down to him to tell her; news that was going to break her heart. Not now though - not now. If she really could hear him, then that was news she could do without knowing at this point in time.
He looked at her hand, strangely untouched by the explosion, a lean and elegant hand. A grandmother’s hand. A mother’s hand . . . a beautiful hand. He raised it to his lips and kissed it gently, wishing he was twelve years younger and more her type; wishing he was a bit more like the husband she had lost in the crash. He knew she still mourned him, still spoke to him in quiet moments.
He sighed. Only with her like this, unconscious, did he have the courage to say what he’d yearned to say for a number of years now.
‘I love you, Jenny,’ he whispered. ‘I’d do anything for you. You know that, don’t you? Absolutely bloody anything.’