The ambulance drove off and Dillon was left there, watching Hugh’s car being hoisted onto the tow truck. There was the sound of hydraulics and clanking chains, the mechanics shouting instructions to each other. A remaining policeman removed the accident sign.
And suddenly, everyone was gone and it was deathly quiet. It was as if the accident had never happened, except for the scar on the old oak tree. Dillon stared at it and wondered how fast Hugh had been going. He felt sick thinking about it. He felt totally helpless. What could he do? Pray, he supposed, but he’d never been a praying man. As far as he was concerned, nature took its course, man interfered from time to time, and what happened, happened. No greater force had any influence.
He went back to his car, still parked in the gateway. He drove slowly home, seeing ghosts in the shadows as the light turned from granite to gun-smoke. If he phoned the hospital, they wouldn’t give him any information: he wasn’t family. Was Alice a cadaver, under a white sheet, eyes shut? Was she on an operating table, waiting for a surgeon to perform his magic? Was she sitting up in bed, pale and shaken but laughing, drinking tea and chatting to the nurses? How was he going to find out?
At Peasebrook Manor, when Sarah Basildon heard the sound of a bell drill through the house, she sat up in bed and thought, Oh God, no. Please. Not so soon after Julius. Not someone else. I can’t take it.
Nine
Sarah sat upright, her hands pressed between her knees, staring at an awful painting of a wood in autumn hung on the pale green wall of the hospital waiting room. Waiting, she thought. Waiting for news. A diagnosis. A prognosis. Suddenly nothing else in life held any import or urgency. Eating, sleeping, drinking – all were irrelevant. They’d been here since two o’clock in the morning. Alice was having a brain scan, or an X-ray, or was in theatre, or something – she couldn’t remember which, or in what order. The information was a jumble and Alice was the staff priority, not giving out information. And they couldn’t give information until they had answers. Sarah kept telling herself everyone was doing their best, but it was agony.
Ralph came in with a mug of tea in each hand and held one out to her. He’d gone off to find the friendly Scottish nurse with the bleached blonde hair and the smiling eyes, to see if she had any idea what was going on.
Ralph, for all the blundering blustering hopelessness he usually used to dissemble, had come into his own. His mantle of fecklessness slipped away, and out came a man of integrity and grit. It must have been his army training. He’d only had a couple of years in the Blues and Royals, but it must have been lying dormant in him. Maybe that was what had been lacking in his life over the past years? A proper crisis.
Sarah stared down at her tea.
‘Come on,’ he said. ‘Drink up, darling. We’re going to need all our strength.’ He fished in his pocket and brought out a brace of digestives. ‘Not much of a breakfast, but they’ll see you through. An army marches on its stomach.’
Sarah took the mug and one of the biscuits. A tentative sip told her the tea was too hot, so she dunked the biscuit in.
‘The consultant should be here in a few minutes,’ Ralph added, and their eyes met. It was the moment they had been longing for and dreading, the consultant’s verdict. Ralph put a hand on her shoulder. ‘We’ll get through this, darling. She’s a fighter, Alice. That spirit of hers …’
He trailed off and his voice caught on his words. Sarah put up her hand and squeezed his arm. He needed reassurance too. He looked down at her, surprised and grateful, and she realised with a start of guilt that they barely had any physical contact any more. It hadn’t been a conscious decision, but a gradual withdrawal. Sarah wondered for a moment if he had noticed, or, indeed, if he minded. She felt a rush of regret, tinged with guilt.
The door opened and they both stood to attention, Sarah sliding her arm into Ralph’s. Now she had touched him, she felt the need to be close. They both stood there, clutching their mugs of tea, staring at the young doctor in the maroon jersey.
He smiled. ‘Mr and Mrs Basildon?’
They nodded, mute with dread. They couldn’t read into his smile. Was it just a greeting, or a barometer? If it was bad news, would he bother smiling?
‘Well, she’s in a bit of a pickle, I’m afraid.’ He grimaced. ‘But the good news is we’ve done a brain scan and there doesn’t seem to be any great injury. Obviously we need to keep her monitored. There’s never any guarantee. Bleeds can occur unexpectedly after trauma. But so far, so good.’
‘Oh, thank God.’ Sarah leaned against Ralph, limp with relief.
‘It’s not all good news. Her left leg is in very bad shape. There are multiple fractures, and we’re going to have to operate and pin it all back together. It’s a bit of a mess. It’s going to be a while before she can walk. There’ll be a lot of rehab work. A lot of physio.’