‘Oh, you know, the usual: eating and drinking too much, presents I don’t really need, afternoon naps, arguing over Trivial Pursuit … all of that traditional stuff.’
They both nod, their mouths full. I don’t tell them about how, for the whole week with my family home, I felt like I was leading my childlessness behind me, a great elephant crashing into every room. My mum desperately searching for something to say that wasn’t related to Harry and Elsa, my dad’s silence from behind his newspaper becoming another presence in the room, and my sister’s careful, apologetic smiles. Drunk, she told me once she feels guilty that she produced two perfect, healthy, pink babies, and started talking about ‘other options’, which was when I had to walk away. I’m not sure I’ll ever be ready to talk about other options. I feel for them, I really do, I don’t know what to say either. Sometimes I wish we’re the sort of family to scream and shout, that we could exorcise our grief together, mourn our lost grandchildren, nieces, nephews, cousins and children. Perhaps that would make the elephant turn tail and leave us all alone, for a while at least.
There’s a pause for chewing and swallowing, before Carol says, ‘Pretty, isn’t she? This new Cassie.’
‘Yes, yes, she really is,’ I agree before Carol carries on.
‘I know it shouldn’t but it breaks my heart even more that she’s young and pretty.’ Half of the biscuit she’d been dunking falls into her tea. ‘Shit,’ she says under her breath and she starts trawling her cup with a teaspoon.
‘So what happened exactly?’ Mary asks, before putting a handful of crisps in her mouth.
I tell them what I know of Cassie’s story. ‘She came back from a local party earlier than her husband to check on her dog. The dog spooked, ran off, and Cassie went out to look for her. It’s happened before, apparently. Her husband walked home a couple of hours after her, heard the sirens just as he got home. They live about ten miles away, near Buscombe, so it was one of those little windy country lanes they’ve got out there, no lights, raining. You know how icy it’s been recently. Well, it must have been worse in the countryside. The police reckon she either slipped or it was a hit and run.’ Both Mary and Jen tut and shake their heads as I carry on. ‘She fell into a stream by the side of the lane, badly, hence the bruising. She was in the stream for about forty-five minutes; it’s only about four degrees. She was found just in time. Sharma reckons she’ll most likely have some permanent damage.’
‘Of course he does,’ says Mary. ‘Old Dr Doom. So what is the family like then? Weepers and wailers or stiff upper lippers?’
‘Bit of both really. Poor things. Obviously, still in shock.’
‘The husband was pretty easy on the eye.’
Carol’s like a sniffer dog when it comes to men. Neither Mary or I say anything.
Carol defends herself anyway. ‘Don’t tell me you weren’t thinking the same thing.’
I stand and put my Tupperware in the sink and wonder whether it’s a sign of age or contentment that I hadn’t been thinking about Jack, I’d been thinking about how close Jack and his mum seemed, their love for each other active and unashamed. But then, that’s what tends to happen, loved ones rally for the initial drama, attracted to the shock, and then slowly people wander away, disinterested in the long grind towards rehabilitation.
‘Jack’s mum waited with him all day yesterday while Cassie was in surgery. Jack didn’t want to leave Cassie and his mum wouldn’t leave him alone, so both of them waited all night as well,’ I say, just as there’s a knock at the door and Lizzie appears.
‘Hi, Liz,’ says Mary, ‘Carol was just telling us she fancies Jack Jensen. Did you see him?’
Lizzie smiles at Mary, blushes, and says to me, ‘There are two police officers here to see you, I think it’s about Cassie Jensen.’
I leave immediately. There’s one male and one female officer waiting for me. Lizzie showed them to the family room, so I meet with them there. The chairs are still arranged from my meeting with the Jensens. I sit in the chair Charlotte sat in. DI Anderson is prematurely bald and overweight, his head like a sweaty egg glistening above his too-tight collar. He makes a wheezy show of getting out of his chair as I come into the little room. He’s twitchy and uncomfortable.
‘Sorry, I hate hospitals,’ he says.
‘Most people do,’ I reply as I shake his pillowy hand.
He introduces his colleague, Constable Jane Brooks, a young woman with short, spiky hair, and ears dotted with old piercing scars, relics from another life. Anderson tells me they’ve reviewed the case at the station and because Cassie has significant bruising on her right side, concurrent with being hit, and because they found tyre marks at the scene, possibly from an old estate or similar, they currently think it was a hit and run.
‘People get so carried away this time of year. There was one guy a couple of years back, killed someone just outside Brighton and swore blind he’d only hit a badger.’ Anderson is, I suspect, the sort of man who has a story for every occasion.
‘What can we do?’ Anderson asks no one in particular. ‘She was walking on a dark lane early in the morning, no witnesses, no nothing. We’re talking to the neighbour who found her now, a Jonathan Parker. He called the ambulance when his dogs led him to her. But the nearest cameras are over a mile away on the Brighton Road, so I wouldn’t hold your breath that we’ll catch the bugger.’ He shakes his head. ‘Anyway, we’ve put signs up around the area and have the incident on our website, but, as I said, I wouldn’t hold your breath.’
Brooks keeps her head cocked to one side as Anderson talks. She squeezes the fingers of one hand with the other in her lap, like she’s trying to stop herself from saying something. She smiles at me quickly as we shake hands before they leave. It feels like an apology. She hands me her card before she dutifully follows Anderson, who’s already left the room.
I knock on Sharma’s office door exactly at 7.15 p.m. as he requested. I had been getting ready to go home but he said it was urgent and I’ve learnt not to ignore him. He calls out, ‘Intrare.’ I don’t know what it means, so I just open the door.
He sits behind his desk. It’s a boxy, bland office and Sharma has made no attempt to personalise it. There are no photos of his family, no home-made cards from his kids. There is no intimacy here. He seems slightly ruffled, less composed than normal. I have the sense that if I had entered two minutes earlier I might have caught him with his shiny head in his hands. It must be about one of the patients. I hope it’s not Frank. He asks me to sit and starts talking without preamble.
‘Nurse, Mrs Jensen had a full-body MRI downstairs in trauma before she was brought up to us.’
‘Yes, I thought she would.’