‘What’s your problem? I’m not getting in their way, I’m helping. I’m looking at things they might have overlooked. As a villager, I might be able to spot things they’ll miss in an official investigation. People might open up to me more.’
‘Have you heard yourself? Leave this to the experts, okay? Don’t you have enough on your plate without going round pointing the finger at all and sundry?’
‘At least I’m doing something, Jacob. Unlike you, sitting back and letting the police get away with letting their investigation slide.’
‘They’re the experts. Not us,’ he snapped.
I turned back to the window, resentment festering. God, I wanted a drink. I wanted to beg Jacob to drop me back home so I could talk things through with Glenn. He’d listen; he’d understand and not judge me. What was the point of going to the hospital so that we could stare at your corpse-like body, when I could be doing something far more productive? Something that would actually help you?
Love hearts covered the entrance to the children’s ICU, and I realised with a jolt that Sunday would be Valentine’s Day. Time was passing; it was three weeks to the day since you had been attacked, and you weren’t showing any signs of improvement.
The ventilator still breathed for you.
The monitor showing your heart rate, respiratory rate, oxygen saturation percentage and blood pressure were all as constant as Lincolnshire’s horizon.
Your MRI scans showed no change.
A nasogastric tube still fed you.
There had been a time when those words meant nothing to me. Learned by rote, I could now recite them.
Likewise, the team of people looking after you had felt overwhelming at first, but now I knew the difference between the ward consultant and the neurological consultant surgeon. I understood the differing roles they had in your care, and the duties of the nurses, whom I had got to know and become friendly with over the past weeks. We often brought a cake for the team, as a thank you for their continuing hard work caring for you. Sometimes I baked it, but I’ll admit it, Beth, a lot of the time I bought them from Seagull’s Outlook Café. Ursula probably wouldn’t want my custom any more, though; not after threatening legal action on me the day before.
When were you going to wake up, Beth? I wanted to shake you, shout at you, do whatever it took to rouse you. I wanted to take a chunk of my soul and gift it to you, to give you the strength to fight.
‘Take whatever you have to take from me,’ I begged. ‘Take it all, everything I have. Just get better.’
There was no gentle squeeze of my fingers in reply. No flutter of eyelids. Only the usual beep, beep, beep that made me want to throw the machines out of the window.
You weren’t in the hospital room, were you, Beth? You’d gone. You were on the marsh.
My only child. Every ounce of love in my body and soul had been poured into you, my sweetheart, my Beans. More love than I’d thought a person was capable of feeling. To bits and whole again.
Please get better, Beth. Please, please, please…
I wanted to scream. I wanted to run. All I could do was sit and watch the ventilator filling my daughter’s chest with air, making it rise and fall. Hold your limp hand. Watch your face, so pale that even the freckles seemed to have faded.
You know, sometimes I used to catch myself with a soppy grin on my face, just from watching you walk into the room and flop on the sofa. The wonder of you, Beth Oak. Seeing your face glowing with enthusiasm as you spoke about a bird you had spotted. The look of delight at Christmas when you realised we’d bought you those ridiculous platform boots, and you had paraded around in them still wearing your pyjamas. I’d almost got a crick in my neck looking up at you, they made you so tall!
Thinking about those good times made me feel I was teetering on the edge of a cliff. Any second the pain might make me decide to jump.
Think of something else. Anything else.
So I considered the conundrum of who hurt you.
Something about my conversation with Alison bugged me, but I couldn’t think what. I kept replaying it, sure I’d missed something, but whatever was wrong wouldn’t come to me. Like trying to remember a dream, the more I tried the less substantial it became.
I’d talk it over with Glenn, I decided.
Glenn. Talk about cometh the hour, cometh the man. His reappearance in my life had been perfectly timed. I owed him so much.
Looking at you and thinking of Glenn made me imagine the pain he must be suffering at losing his own daughter. But it didn’t have to be like that for him; something could be done to get his daughter back. It was time for me to start repaying him for the kindness, patience and support he had shown me. Speaking selfishly, solving someone’s problem might give me a little respite from my own too. Maybe I’d get a step closer to the kind, thoughtful person I’d been before anger and frustration chipped away at me.
Resolved on a plan of action, I stood, my chair making a scraping noise that seemed horribly loud in the quiet hospital room.
Jacob looked up. ‘Where are you going?’
‘Just nipping to the loo. Thought I’d give Mum and Dad a quick call, too; see how they are, and if Wiggins is okay.’
He nodded. ‘Give them my love.’
Finding a quiet table to sit at in one of the hospital’s cafés, I pulled out my smartphone and got to work. I had a few journalist’s tricks up my sleeve. Piecing together the bits and bobs that Glenn had mentioned about his former life, I pinpointed the area he used to live: Dunkirk, Nottingham.
It took mere seconds on a website, using the newspaper’s password, to access the electoral register and discover his exact former address. A simple cross reference using his wife’s name, Marcie, ensured it was correct. Another tap to get her landline number.
It had taken about five minutes. Jacob wouldn’t be getting suspicious yet.
Dialling the number, I held my breath.
A woman with a strong Nottingham accent and a thin, reedy voice answered the phone. She didn’t sound like a strident bitch, but that meant nothing.
There was no subtle way of doing this; I’d have to come right out with it.
‘Oh, hi, is that Marcie Baker? My name’s Melanie Oak. Umm, you don’t know me, but me and my husband,’ I was careful to add that so she knew I wasn’t a threat, ‘are friends of your ex, Glenn Baker.’
‘You know where he is? Is he okay?’
‘Er, yes, he’s fine.’ Not the reaction I’d expected. Perhaps Marcie had calmed down and would welcome hearing from him. ‘I wanted to let you know what an amazing thing he has been doing for us. You see, my daughter was attacked a few weeks ago. She’s in a coma, and Glenn has been such a pillar of strength for us…’
‘Well, good for him. It’s a shame he can’t be the same for me – he just upped and left, you know. Barely an explanation—’
‘The thing is, I know this has nothing to do with me, but I think he’s really missing his daughter.’
Silence.
‘He hasn’t got a daughter.’