Mary hurries over; she’s out of breath when she arrives at my bedside.
‘I don’t call this resting!’ Mary tuts at Lucy, and then winks at her, before she turns to me. ‘Come on, Frank, I could use some good news. Tell me you finally spelled out my name?’
The excitement has given me another rush of energy. I manage to blink twice. ‘No’.
‘Cheeky bugger,’ she says to me, in her mock West Country accent. I love that she takes the piss out of me.
Lucy laughs, impatient to share our news.
‘No, he spelt Jack! I think he’s trying to tell us that he knows even more than we think, that he’s aware of what happens here on the ward to other patients, to Cassie. Am I right, Dad?’
I manage one blink before my eyelids fall and darkness billows around me again.
Yes, my clever girl, you are. You’re right. But there’s more I need to tell you.
I’ve nudged a little closer to saying what I know. It’s my most important word yet. Now I need to think how to link it to another word, and what should that word be? Bad? How can I tell them ‘bad’ refers to ‘Jack’? Maybe if I try ‘Police’ …?
But Lucy kisses me and says, ‘I’m going to leave you to rest now, Dad.’ She ignores me blinking for her to stay. Mary’s already disappeared, so I’m on my own and feel my mind soften again into the drugs; like melting ice-cream, my thoughts drip from my brain. At least my lungs feel less sticky now. In, out, in, out. I count along with my breathing machine and I find myself imagining where Alice is now, on her sunny day off. Perhaps she’s gone to the coast, throwing sticks for Bob, the wind making her hair dance around her face. Soon someone will tell her that I blinked Jack’s name and then she’ll know what I was trying to tell her earlier; she’ll understand that Jack has fooled us all and she’ll go to the police and this whole sorry mess will be wiped clean. Is that an expression? I’m not sure. My mind slops and sloshes back to safety again; it finds Alice’s face. I imagine Alice smiling, the gap in her teeth, how proud she’ll be of me for helping. How much better she’ll feel about everything. In, out, in, out and, at last, I give in, and slide into the endless black.
I wake to a wet sucking sound, like boots walking through wet mud. It takes me a moment to realise it’s coming from my lungs. I feel like I’ve been asleep for a long time; someone’s cleaned me while I was out, but my lungs must be filling quickly. I feel the darkness tugging me towards it again before I remember her hands, brittle above Cassie, and a bolt passes through me, making my heart patter and, over the noise of my organs, I hear some unfamiliar footsteps approach. I’m sure Mary said they’d cancelled my physiotherapy because of my infection, so I tell myself to calm down, ignore them, assume they must be for Cassie, when I hear my curtain pull back and Lizzie saying, ‘Frank, good news: your niece is here to see you.’
Niece?
‘So bear in mind, he’s a little woozy because of the infection …’
I know Paul’s got boys, I know I’ve got nephews, but I don’t remember a niece.
More than one alarm starts ringing over the new patient’s bed, and feet immediately start pounding down the ward, drawn to the noise.
‘Oh, god,’ Lizzie says. ‘Sorry, we’re a bit run off our feet today. I’ll be back soon as I can …’ and Lizzie scurries off, joining the stampede to save whoever it is.
Perhaps the little brain coil with my niece in my memory died in the stroke, or melted with the drugs.
I’m still turned towards the window, on my right, so depending on where she’s standing, I can’t see this niece of mine, but I feel her come closer. Her footsteps are heavy; it sounds like she could be wearing leather boots. She smells smokey but sweet like joss sticks. She smells like a hippy.
God, don’t let my niece be a hippy.
She moves around my area, coming to standstill to where I’m turned at the right side of the foot of my bed. She’s wearing jeans. Her legs are long and slim but she stands solidly through them. She’s wrapped in a green coat, which she peels off and leaves to rest on my visitor’s chair. Her long red plait bounces down her back like a snake, but it’s hard to make out any more details from my position; my eyes are gummy and ache with exhaustion. I hear her pick up the well-thumbed folder the nurses use for my notes before slotting it back into place at the foot of my bed. Then she comes close, studies me like bacteria through a microscope. She breathes through her nose, long and deliberate, and, placing a cool hand on my forehead, she bends low and just an inch from my ear, says, ‘Hi, Uncle Frank.’
My organs squeeze. Recognition slices through me clean and quick as a razor.
She’s back.
I remember her bending over Cassie, how she shook with remorse.
What did you do?
I swear up a storm inside, but to her, of course, I must seem as still as a millpond. I’m forced to look at her; she stares down at me, as thorough as if looking at an X-ray. She has large, solid-looking features and alabaster white skin, patterned with freckles.
Why are you here?
At the end of the ward, there’s a white board with all our names written on it. I remember she paused there, the first time she appeared. She must have seen my name there. She inspects me, her eyes narrow slightly in curiosity, but she doesn’t wince; she must have a strong constitution. The alarms from my noisy new neighbour at the far end of the ward keep screaming.
She picks up a framed photo on my bedside unit; it’s of Lucy and me from our fishing trip to Wales. Lucy brought it in yesterday; she left the frame on my nightstand, too high for me to look at, and all I can see now is the black velvet back of the frame. I know what photo it is, though; I remember it was one of the happiest days of my life. Lucy’s about ten in the photo. I’m kneeling down by her side and we’re both wearing one of my dad’s old flat caps. We’re smiling at the camera; Lucy’s smile is so wide her eyes are almost closed. We’re each holding up a sea trout we caught in the River Towy behind us. Lucy caught loads, and the one she holds up to the camera is twice the size of my one and only catch, which always made Lucy laugh. The woman only looks at it briefly before she lets out a sad little sigh as she places it back where it was before, out of my sight.
Then she looks sharply away from me, and I know why she’s here.
No!
Our curtains twitch with her movement, but she walks almost silently, even in her heavy boots, across the ward to Cassie.
She casts her eyes over Cassie. I watch as she strokes Cassie’s cheek just once with her forefinger and then she says, ‘It should have been me, Cassie, not you. It should have been me.’
‘It should have been you who what, Nicky?’
I’d been listening so intently to this woman, this Nicky, trying to catch her words over the noise of the new patient’s alarms that I’d missed Charlotte’s clean footsteps on the ward floor.