It had not been a corpse-face that first night in the tiny recovery room off A&E. It had been an attractive, although rather weak face, young and desperately unhappy. Antonia could still remember how the unhappiness had filled the small room, and how the young man in the bed had shrugged away from the doctors in the classic but always heart-breaking gesture of repudiation. Face turned to the wall in the silent signal that said, I don’t want to be part of this painful world any longer. At first he had turned away from Antonia, who had been the on-call psychiatrist that night. She had been dozing in the duty room on the first floor when her pager went, and she had paused long enough to dash cold water onto her face, slip into her shoes and pull on a sweater before going quickly through the corridors of the hospital.
Straightforward overdose, they said resignedly. Stuffed himself chockful of sleeping pills–something prescribed by a GP–then downed the best part of a bottle of vodka. Poor boy. Or stupid sod, depending on your point of view. Whichever he was, he had been found near the riverbank, and an early-morning dog-walker had realized he was a bit more than just drunk, and had called the paramedics. Oh yes, he had been pumped clean, although he was still a bit drowsy and still very withdrawn. Yes, they had a name–Robards. Don Robards. They were giving him fifteen-minute obs and someone was trying to find out about family–there had not been any identification on him. But in the meantime he was stable, pretty much over the worst, and Dr Weston was welcome to him from here on.
The boy in the bed looked impossibly young. He had thick fair hair that would normally fall in a glossy thatch over his forehead; at the moment it was damp and matted from the sickness.
‘Hi,’ Antonia had said softly, sitting on the edge of the bed. ‘I’m Doctor Weston–Antonia Weston. I’m the on-call psychiatrist, and your doctors thought we might have a talk to see if I can help you.’
‘You can’t help me,’ said the boy. ‘I’ve found out something absolutely appalling, and I don’t want to be in a world where things like that can happen.’
He had turned to look at her then. His eyes were a very vivid blue; the pupils were still pinpoints from the sleeping pills, but they were perfectly sensible. He had reached in a questing, uncoordinated way for Antonia’s hand and without thinking much about it, she had taken his hand and held it hard.
Setting the nightmare in motion.
The blue car turned along a narrow lane winding off to the left, and was swallowed up by the trees and farmlands. Antonia discovered that she was shaking so violently she could barely grip the steering wheel. Half a mile on she came to a small village pub with a placard advertising bar food, and remembered that she could quite openly walk inside and order food and sit at a table to eat it. Parking as close to the door as she could manage, she locked the car and went thankfully into the dim cool interior.
One of the things that had improved in the almost forgotten world was pub food. Antonia was directed to a small table near an inglenook, and served hot soup with a twist of fresh warm bread, a plateful of delicious home-cured ham with a crisp salad, and a large cup of fragrant coffee.
Three quarters of an hour later, feeling able to face all the demons in hell’s legions, she got back in her car, consulted the map carefully, and drove on to Amberwood and Charity Cottage.
CHAPTER TWO