‘You must be her sister; I can see it round the eyes. Can I offer you some coffee?’ she says. ‘I’ve just made a pot.’
I’m about to tell her to get lost, but then I think, Be nice, Marlena, you owe her. If it wasn’t for her, after all…
‘Thanks,’ I say again, but if she’s come for information or emotion, she’s come to the wrong place.
There is no room for grief here. There is only room for answers.
The woman brings the coffee round on a tray and tells me to leave it on her garden table when I’m done, no rush, and she doesn’t ask any questions.
I drink the coffee, trying to clear my head. I clean my teeth in the kitchen sink, and then, palms sweating, I ring the hospital.
My fingers are crossed behind my back like I always used to cross them when I was a scared little kid.
No change, they say. She’s in a medically induced coma; it’s safer for now. The worry is – the worry is – she may be brain dead.
I try to ring Frank; I leave him a message to call me back, but I don’t say anything else.
I find myself wishing very briefly that I had someone else to call, someone waiting for me at home, someone who cared, someone to whom I could say, ‘I’m really fucking terrified – what will I do if she dies?’
My mind turns to Levi – to his big grin, his teeth very white against his dark skin, his warm muscular arms, the terrible QPR tattoo on his left hip. And then I think away again. We were getting too close – so I finished it last month.
I don’t need anyone. Because if I had anyone, they could do this thing that Jeanie’s threatening to do. They could leave me too.
I smoke my last cigarette and check the news on my phone – nothing about Matthew. I Google him. Nothing new.
I sit and think for a minute or two, then I text my mate Jez in the ITN newsroom.
Can you hook me up with a stringer who can check out this guy Matthew King; I’ll pay ￡￡
Half an hour later I get a call from a Welsh-sounding girl called Sal.
‘What do you want to know?’
‘Can you get to him? Talk to him?’
‘I can try, babe.’ Sal is cheerful and efficient sounding. ‘What you paying?’
‘What do you want?’
She sets out reasonable terms, and I agree.
‘I need answers – quickly,’ I say. ‘And, Sal…’
‘Yeah?’
‘I need all the help I can get please. Social workers and police, I guess, are the way forward.’
‘Sure thing,’ she says quietly, and I reckon Jez must have told her why. ‘I’ve got my contacts. No worries, babe. I’ll do my best.’
When I hang up, I go back through the cottage, and I open every drawer, every cupboard. I go through everything, through Jeanie’s bag, through her phone.
At some point I realise I’m muttering and cursing, sweating as I rush round the tiny house.
I take the phone, and I take the diary, and I put them in my own bag.
I knock on the cottage next door and ask that Ruth contact me on my mobile if anyone at all comes to the house. I give her my card.
‘I really do hope she’s all right,’ Ruth says, and she seems quite upset. ‘She seemed like a nice lady…’ And then she stops, thinking better of whatever it was she was going to say.
‘Yeah, I really hope so too.’ Don’t cry, Marlena. ‘Can I ask – how come you noticed she was gone?’
‘I had a sort of – hunch maybe? I don’t know. I saw her on Sunday. She seemed – disoriented. She was walking out on the back fields, and she looked…’
She is embarrassed.
‘Go on please,’ I say.
‘I don’t know. I just got the idea something wasn’t right. She seemed very – shaky. And I’m afraid – I heard her crying a few times in the night.’
Oh God.
‘You can hear everything when the windows are open, we’re all so near.’ She looked apologetic. ‘And when her door kept banging in the early hours, I thought – I’d better go in…’
‘Thank God,’ I say.
‘I just wish…’ She trails off. ‘Well. I wish I could have helped her more.’
She offers me a lift to the station, but I don’t want to talk any more, so I thank her again, as sincerely as possible, and say goodbye.
I walk down to the town square and call a cab. The air here is so fresh and so clean; I can see why Jeanie liked it. She could have been happy here, I can see that. I feel like it might have been the right place.
The cab drops me at the Royal Derby Hospital, and I sit with Jeanie for an hour before I catch the train. There’s no change, though I’m sure I feel a flicker of her hand in mine at one point, when I rest my forehead on her fingers.
When I leave, teary and fraught, I head back down south. I research Berkhamsted, the town I will finally visit later. Apparently this pleasant ‘commuter town’ was once the home of Graham Greene. It has a Waitrose, of course – but Jeanie’s no longer there.
And how ashamed am I that it’s taken this disaster for me to go? How ashamed am I?