MUM BROUGHT THE children to see me when I first woke up after an operation to release the pressure on my brain, but it wasn’t a happy visit and we decided to spare them any more. No child should see its mother in such a frail, banged-up condition. Josh was the only one not remotely bothered. He sat on my stomach and stared at me before trying to pull the tubes out of the back of my hand. Tom is in another ward on another floor, floating in an induced coma, his body awash with someone else’s blood.
Jenny told us that after Josh was brought home, carried in the arms of a police officer, he slept for three hours solidly. The police said that he was bawling his head off when they got to him. The nurse who picked him up off the bench and missed her train was amazingly calm. She only broke down once they brought her into the canteen and gave her a cup of tea. I am so grateful to her for holding it together for as long as she did.
Hannah stayed for a week and my life was made bearable by Mum’s stories. I couldn’t hear enough about how my sister-in-law ironed the girls’ underpants and how her regimented rule over my household was constantly undermined by Polly. Since Hannah returned to the North, Magda has moved in temporarily. Mum thinks she’s the bee’s knees.
Grayling is coming this afternoon and I have made a decision. When I leave hospital I will have confessed everything, forced out every last drop of my story, laid myself open so that I can start again. Mum has already contacted the lawyer Jenny suggested and booked a provisional meeting for a week’s time, assuming I’m out of here. The system will suck me into its deep embrace and hopefully disgorge me some way down the line, a better, wiser person. I am terrified.
When Grayling arrives, Mum gets up to go and I notice a subtle change in her body language. She fancies him. I’ll have to tell her he is out of bounds. He sits down on the chair she vacated, twists it round so that he can fit his long legs between it and the bed, and drapes his big hands over his knees. He stays in that position until I’ve finished talking, then he leans back.
I reach for my water and clumsily knock it over. In the ensuing fuss, the nurse comes in and tells him it’s time to leave.
‘No,’ I say firmly. ‘Give us five more minutes.’
She treats us both to a disappointed glance, then leaves the room. I wait until her footsteps fade.
‘What will happen to me now? What will the charges be?’
‘Criminal neglect. Obstructing the police in the course of an investigation.’
On cue, my headache returns, right in the centre of my forehead. I rub at it with my forefinger. ‘Will I go to prison?’
‘I can’t give you any assurances, Vicky. A good lawyer should be able to get you a suspended sentence. I’d hope you’ll be allowed to stay with your children, but they’ll probably impose sanctions. You may have to get live-in help.’
‘I can do that,’ I say. Maybe Magda could be persuaded to stay on.
‘Vicky …’ He eyes me warily, as if I might have a relapse. My stomach turns over. ‘I am sorry, but you won’t be able to teach. You do understand that, don’t you?’
I take a deep breath and nod; it’s no more than I expected, even though part of me hoped. Grayling sees that I don’t want to talk about it and doesn’t attempt to commiserate or explain.
‘And I’ll have to formerly charge you.’
‘Are you going to arrest me right now?’
He stands up to go. His hands hang by his sides as he looks down at me, amused. ‘Not if you can give me your assurance that you’re not going anywhere.’
I raise my eyebrows and he smiles. He has dimples. I never noticed that before. No wonder Mum’s smitten.
A month passes before Tom regains consciousness. I’ve been at the hospital every day, dropping the children at school and coming straight over. I’ve had a lot of time to think, but he hasn’t. I’m not going to start rattling on about salvaging our marriage, or demand to know if Amber was telling the truth about them. For the record: I don’t believe her. Sitting at his bedside, watching his chest rise and fall, listening to the machines that keep him alive, I’m not intending to defend my own actions either. I have to be patient and give him a chance to catch up.
The worst has been the media interest. I’ve outdone the Pint-of-Milk baby by many column inches. Somehow or other they got hold of a family photograph and one of Amber, and have gone to town on the relationships between us. I’m only grateful that Tom hasn’t had to read it, or felt under siege in his own house. The CCTV footage of Amber walking into the station with Josh in her arms is chilling. It even captures the moment the nurse jerks and steps forward, her hand outstretched, her face a mask of horror.
I was protected from the immediate fallout, but I did watch the news on television. I couldn’t help myself. Mum and Hannah dealt with the initial door-stopping – separately they were pretty good, together they were dynamite. It didn’t make much difference though. The journalists gleaned plenty of information outside the school gates, and a few choice headlines made the red-tops. The broadsheets ran with it too, how could they not? A nice, middle-class mother, a teacher to boot, leaves her baby alone in the house and sets in motion a catastrophic sequence of events. The story has everything: neglect, secrets and lies, historic child abuse, extortion, house prices and poor Amber’s peculiarly urban death.
It’s time to leave Coleridge Street and the area. I’m too much of a coward to front it out, even after the fuss dies down. I have half a mind to try the coast: Hove perhaps, or Shoreham. Not too close to Mum, but close enough.
Tom is brought out of the coma slowly, and I set off when the ward sister calls me. He is sleeping and I wait, sitting with my hands on my knees, listening to the hospital function, the snatches of conversation, the doors opening and closing. There is no hurry. He’s pale and very thin, his eyes bruised, his lips chapped. His lashes curl on to his cheeks. His hair needs a cut.
His eyes open.
‘Hello,’ I say.
‘I was dreaming about you.’
‘What was I doing?’
‘You were kissing me.’
‘Did you hate it?’
His mouth twitches. ‘No. I liked it.’
Did he sleep with her? I keep brushing the question away, but it intrudes whenever I let my guard slip. At any rate, I refuse to let it erode my happiness in seeing him on the mend. Because he fought not to die, I’ll forgive him everything. If he won’t forgive me, I’ll forgive that too.
‘What’s happened to Amber?’ he asks. ‘Is she in custody? Oh shit, and Robert. Poor bastard. He must be devastated.’
‘Robert and Sophie are in Suffolk with his parents. He can work from anywhere, so I doubt he’ll be coming back.’
He narrows his eyes. He knows I’m keeping something back. ‘And Amber?’
There’s no way of putting it that will soften its impact so I just tell him straight.
‘She’s dead, Tom. She threw herself under a train.’