The Daughter (6 page)

 

Chapter 7

DORSET, 2010

ONE YEAR LATER

I
am immediately in a warm kitchen, tidy and teeming with color. I take in orange-­patterned linoleum, a dark red table, yellow cabinet units with white handles, a bright blue stove, and a red sofa by the wall. A fire is glowing, a television screen flickers from the corner, several large embroidered cats crowd on a chintz-­covered armchair. Bertie has followed us in; before I can stop him, he eats the small squashed pile of cat food in a bowl and then settles by the fire with a little grunting sigh. I put the old lady down on the sofa, slide off her shoes, then sit next to her. With my hand on her pulse, I scan the room quickly. There are photos on all the surfaces: an elderly man wearing a cap, digging in a garden, a dark-­haired young woman with a baby, a small boy at the edge of the sea, holding another child's hand. Family everywhere. I am taken back to our kitchen at home, so steeped in family that I used to think if I pressed my ear against the wall I would hear the children's voices, stored inside. When everything began to go wrong, going home was all I could think about.

BRISTOL, 2009

TEN DAYS BEFORE

I drove away from the hospital as fast as I could, overtaking a student driver and then jumping forward at a crossroads before the lights changed. As I accelerated down Park Road, little groups of words slid and twisted away in my mind.

I thought the bruises . . . there was never long enough . . . I know you told me . . . I'm sorry.

The sun was streaming through the windows at home, lying in unfamiliar lines on the floor. I rarely returned this early. Ana left the kitchen door bolted; no one would be at home now to let me in, so I used the front door. There was a pair of sneakers on their sides, just inside. I picked them up. Ed must be here. He didn't really need to take his shoes off because we'd taken the carpets out years ago. No curtains either. The rooms were empty spaces, shiny dark wooden floors, a piano, walls of books stacked and sorted. A refectory table so Ted could spread out his papers easily.

Now my footsteps sounded hollow as I walked through the echoing rooms. Despite their ordered perfection, we hardly used them. Ted always worked in his study, the children lived in their bedrooms or the kitchen. I went down the wooden stairs to the basement kitchen and the warmth rose to meet me. I held the sneakers closely against me, too closely because later I saw they had left an uneven muddy smear across my shirt.

Ed was sitting in front of the computer in the living space that opened off the kitchen. As I walked over to see him a screen folded down into the corner and another came up, full of numbers. I was so pleased to see him I felt slightly dizzy. I sat down near him on the arm of the sofa. I wanted to kiss his cheek, which always smelled of warm toast, and rest my hand on his springy dark hair. He winced away as I approached. I had to learn new rules all the time.

“Hi, darling.” I spoke to his back. “You're home early.”

“Math coursework.” He didn't look at me.

“Ed, I'm only saying . . .”

“Lessons canceled. There's a talk about that rapist.”

“Yes?”

He kept his eyes on the screen.

“I gave it a miss. It's for the girls. How to not walk home on your own, how not to talk to strangers. Tedious.”

“What did they say about the rapist? Why today?” Something else to worry about. “He's on the other side of Bristol, isn't he?”

“Christ, questions.” His fist was clenched on the table. “Some teacher thought they saw a random guy lurking about the girls' boardinghouse.” He looked at me quickly, eyes screwed up, hiding something. “I need to get this done. I'm way past the deadline.”

“Hot chocolate?”

“Yeah, okay.”

I made it quickly; as I put it in front of him, I let my hand rest on his shoulder for a second. Close up, I was surprised that he smelled stale. I hesitated, and he glanced up, frowning.

“Thought you were normally at work,” he muttered.

“Well, I am. Normally.”

“Cutting?” The dark eyebrows lifted, his attention was snagged.

I was startled. “'Course not. Are you?”

“Told you, it's just a talk for the girls. Once I've done this, I'm back on track.”

“Okay. Good.”

I wanted to tell him then that you can spin off track so easily, one mistake and you've lost your way.

I let myself sit close to him for a few minutes, absorbing his aura, his tall frame slouched in the chair, large feet with crumpled socks, and the smooth back of his neck. He turned to look at me again. Checking, not used to my stillness.

I started to explain. “Work things are a bit . . . I'm a bit stuck on something.”

“Yeah?” Shoulders hunched, eyes wary.

“It's all right, though. I'm sorting it.”

The broad shoulders relaxed. “Only, I need to finish . . .”

“Fine.” I picked up the sneakers again. “These are yours, darling, they'll need a wash. And, Ed . . . don't forget to chuck your clothes in the wash sometimes as well . . .”

He took the shoes, gave a little grunt. His face moved close to the screen again. I patted his shoulder briefly and moved away.

In the kitchen I made a cup of tea and looked at the garden through the curling steam. The trunks were fused in the darkening light. I phoned Ted and this time got through. He listened.

“God. That's hard for you,” he said when I paused. “Sorry, Jen.”

“Don't be sorry for me, be sorry for Jade.”

“I've done the same—­worse. Remember what happened with that young girl's spine? Paralyzed. Terrible.”

“Yes, of course. That was terrible,” I agreed. That mistake had almost led to a court case; Ted's guilt had deepened into depression. For a second I felt ashamed, I hadn't thought then to give him the comfort I needed now.

“But everyone knows the risks of neurosurgery. They sign consent forms. You explain things. The Prices didn't realize there was a risk in trusting me, and I never thought about leukemia. I didn't manage to hear anything that they said . . .” I stopped, remembering how I had ignored what they had told me, allowing my thoughts to spin in a different direction.

“I'm in the middle of something, Jenny,” he said quickly. “I can't talk now. I'll try to get home early. I'll get some wine.”

AFTER OFFICE HOURS
that evening I phoned the Prices. No one answered. Frank and I had arranged to visit them the following morning, but I decided to go now anyway. The street was empty. The windows of number 14 were dark. I knocked, waited, knocked again. I pictured Ma inside, listening, writhing in her seat in the dark. After a while I went home.

That night the boys were at a careers talk and Naomi at her play rehearsal. It was just Ted and me. We shared the bottle of wine and sat for a long time over the empty plates. Ted held my hand, and the warmth crept into my wrist.

“What shall I say to them, Ted?”

“Tell them the truth. You went on the evidence in front of you; it's all we can ever do.”

“She said she didn't know about the bruises. So did he. But I didn't believe them. They both told me about the cough. That was the evidence, but I'd made up my mind already.”

“We're not lawyers, Jenny. There isn't always time to weigh things up, not on a first meeting.”

“It wasn't the first meeting; anyway we do behave like lawyers. We make judgments all the time.”

“Judgments?”

“The Prices were guilty of being poor. Of not being able to tell me clearly, or at least in language I understood or believed. Guilty of having a bruised child. Now they're being punished.”

“You have to go by instinct sometimes.”

He leaned over and kissed me deeply. I tried to turn away, but his lips held me, his tongue pushing, nudging in.

He wasn't listening either. Going by instinct wasn't enough. I pulled my head away. Because of my preconceptions I hadn't referred her early enough, and then, when I eventually did, it was on the basis of the wrong diagnosis. Instinct had failed me completely.

The boys and Naomi came back. The boys ate quickly and went upstairs, catching up with work. Naomi shrugged off my questions about the rapist; the girls went about in groups, she said, and were checked in everywhere. She leaned against the table, eating spoonfuls of leftover gratin dauphinois that were stuck to the edges of the dish in front of us. She answered us between mouthfuls. The rehearsals were going brilliantly. The teachers were talking about drama school. Her expression was inward, secret. Possibilities were obviously beginning to unfurl. I watched her guarding her thoughts and decided not to push her with more questions. I was too tired anyway to focus on her answers. After a while she went upstairs.

Ted and I silently did the dishes, tidied up, and put food away. I loaded the last of the laundry. We walked upstairs, side by side, hands touching. My legs moved slowly, heavy with exhaustion. Halfway up, Ted put his arm around me, pulling me in. By the time I reached the landing my breath was coming quickly. The children had gone to sleep so we talked in whispers.

I forced myself to strip, shower, put on a new nightdress, comforted by its softness and lace. Ted came up beside me as I stood at the mirror. They say you marry someone who looks like you, but I've never seen it. Ted was tall and broad with a blue stare. I came up to his shoulders, and my Irish grandmother looked back at me with the face from the photos in our family album: dark curly hair, light eyes, freckles. Ted looked at me in the mirror and the hand on my neck tightened. His fingertips felt hot, widely splayed under the edge of my hair.

In bed we turned to each other wordlessly. I was ready for his mouth now, and I let his kiss open me further and further. His mouth tasted of wine. I knew his smell, the way his muscles felt, his shoulders, his flat belly with the hair thickening at its base, the weight of him. I knew him by heart. But tonight it was different. Tonight it was rougher and faster. Ted pushed me down hard, then the nightdress was around my neck, and he was quickly deep inside and moving and I was moving back, as if the stress of the day and the exhaustion had tipped us into a different place from where we usually were, giving us space to plunder. No preamble. Not gentle. This was biting and held wrists, open mouths and eyes wide open, straining and pushing against each other like animals. Then suddenly, shockingly, pleasure.

Then falling apart so we lay with limbs sprawled, tangled. Unmoving. Not speaking. Ted bent over me, licking tears off my face I didn't know were there. He fell asleep almost immediately afterward, breathing deeply with his face turned away on the pillow. I lay awake for a while, letting my hand rest on the dip of his back.

Sleep, when it came, was like a blanket being thrown over me. Complete. No dreams at all.

 

Chapter 8

DORSET, 2010

ONE YEAR LATER

S
he has probably fainted, but it could be anything: a heart attack, a diabetic coma, a stroke. Maybe she's had a fit or an abdominal crisis of some kind, though her face is symmetrical and her abdomen feels soft. There could be clues—­medication on a table or a blood-­sugar-­testing kit somewhere—­but the house doesn't have the neglected air of chronic illness. She stirs, her lips move, then her eyes open, puzzled rather than frightened. She looks directly at me as I explain how I found her, and I notice her eyes have the milky rings of cholesterol around the iris. I hold her hand as she slowly gathers her words. The swollen joints and fragile skin are familiar; they feel just as my mother's old hands used to. I feel a tug of guilt that I am sitting with a stranger now, but I never had time for my mother the year before she died.

BRISTOL, 2009

NINE DAYS BEFORE

I was pushing notes into my bag when the phone went.

“Hello, darling.”

I was caught. Damn. “I can't be long, Mum.”

“Are you working today, then?”

“Yes, you know I work every day, except for Fridays.”

“It's just that dizzy thing again. Silly, isn't it? Last night I felt really poorly, so I thought—­”

“Poorly? What do you mean, Mum?”

“Just poorly. I can't explain, Jennifer.” The tone was accusatory, returning me to twelve years old. “Let's talk about something else.” Her voice picked up: “How's Jack?”

“Jack?”

“Your husband, darling.”

“Mum, Jack is Kate's ex-­husband.”

“Of course. Silly me. Who's your husband, then, darling?”

I can see her as clearly as if I am in the same room. She will be looking out at the empty paths around her sheltered accommodation; she sighs and touches her pearls, looking back at the television set with its bloom of dust and the neat piles of magazines. There's a smell of mothballs and Pledge. Her memory is bleeding away. I mustn't lose my temper.

“Ted. Look, Mum—­”

“I don't know what to do about the cottage. Kate doesn't want it.”

Not the cottage now. “I'll come and see you. We'll talk about it then.”

“Tomorrow?”

“Friday. My day off.”

“How lovely, darling. It's only that I feel poorly.”

FRANK WAS WAITING
in the parking lot at the medical office. I got in his car and was surrounded by taped chords of a violin concerto. He looked grim.

“Let's get this over with.” He eased the car out of the lot.

“Sorry you have to do this, Frank.” His patients had been canceled for the first part of the morning; we hadn't even had time to go through the day's results properly.

“Not like I've never made mistakes. It's you I'm worried about.”

“What mistakes have you ever made?” I looked at him; his eyes were focused on the road.

“Missing the case of hyperthyroidism, so that chap went off his head.”

“He was all right after he had treatment,” I reminded him.

“What about the ankle fracture I thought was a twisted ankle?” He shot a quick glance at me.

“You'll have to do lots better than that.”

“I'm not telling you the really bad ones. Look at the Medical Protection Society magazines. That'll make you feel better.”

I did look at them, often, picking them off the top of the lurching piles in our bedroom. They made difficult reading. Children with pyrexia left unvisited, then the midnight dash to the hospital with meningitis; the altered bowel habit that was cancer, not irritable bowel; the headache that was a brain tumor, not stress. I read them with a sinking heart.

“Makes me feel much worse.”

Jeff Price opened the door and stood aside, stony-­faced.

We crowded awkwardly into the narrow hall. His face was so near mine I could feel the heat from his skin. He jerked his head in the direction of the kitchen.

“Come down here. Don't want Ma to have to hear this.” He led the way to the kitchen, where he stood with folded arms, waiting.

“I made a mistake,” I said, my face felt hot. I had the sudden sensation that I might start crying.

“That's great, that is.” It was obvious Mr. Price was not going to forgive me. “My child is taken into the hospital on suspicion of abuse, I get arrested and cautioned before they let me go, and you're telling tell me you made a mistake?”

I'd been taught to own up to mistakes in medical school, but now I wondered if that was the right advice. It seemed to be making everything worse. The vein that ran down one side of his forehead began to throb visibly as he spoke.

“Mr. Price,” said Frank evenly, “Dr. Malcolm has come round with important things to tell you.”

“I asked a hospital doctor to see her because of her bruises.” I tried to keep my voice from trembling. “We didn't know—­”

“I told you that I didn't know about them bruises. I told you when you came snooping around here before, when I thought you was trying to help.”

“I'm sorry.” The words sounded small in his kitchen.

“So? It's not going to go away just because you decide to feel guilty all of a sudden. She's still in there, isn't she? They cut her hair and all. Just for flipping lice. When can we get her?”

“Not yet. They told me yesterday when I went to the hospital . . .” I paused; this should be told gently, bit by little bit, but it was too late for that. “This is not good news, Mr. Price.”

“What are you on about now? Hang on.” He raised his voice. “Trace. Tracey, get down here, will you?” He stared blackly at us, and pulling a cigarette from a crumpled packet on the table, he lit it and inhaled deeply.

I sensed Frank watching closely and I fought the impulse to step behind him.

Mrs. Price came into the room in a dressing gown. She was smoking and had been crying; the mascara had run down her cheeks in black lines.

“Hello, Mrs. Price.”

She looked at me with no expression.

“I'm sorry but I have some difficult news for you both.”

“Difficult for who, Doctor?” Mr. Price's voice got louder. “Out with it, then, for Christ's sake.”

His wife put her hand on his arm. Her fingernails looked different today, bitten to the quick.

“I'm afraid she has a disease in her blood.” I paused, looking at their faces, which had suddenly become blank with disbelief. “It's called leukemia.”

“That's cancer, isn't it?” Mr. Price's voice had dropped.

“Yes, it is; a kind of cancer, one that we can treat.” I was nodding as I spoke, trying to project a confidence I didn't feel.

“Bleeding Christ,” he whispered.

Mrs. Price sat down heavily, her eyes fixed on me.

“How do they know? Could be wrong, couldn't it? Hospitals get things wrong all the bloody time.” Her voice was defiant.

“From the blood tests. They've done them twice. I'm afraid there is no doubt.”

They stayed silent for a minute; I watched Mr. Price's head sink between his shoulders.

“What now?” Mrs. Price was twisting her hands, her eyes fixed on mine.

“She needs to stay in the hospital for the moment.”

“Then what?” her husband asked.

“She will have some powerful drugs, which have been shown to be helpful.”

“No.” He spoke slowly. “I mean, will she die?”

By now I should have been able to answer questions like that, but there was never an answer, or at least not an easy one. “It's a serious diagnosis. Many children survive and go on to have normal lives. I can show you statistics—­”

“Let's go to the hospital.” Mrs. Price got up. “Now. I can't listen to her anymore, not with my child going to die.”

“She has a good chance. We can't know yet—­”

“If she dies that will be your fault.” She turned her head away as she said it, as if she couldn't bear to look at me anymore.

“Dr. Malcolm made sure Jade got to the hospital.” Frank spoke carefully. “She knew the bruises were serious. The tests were done immediately. That wouldn't have happened without her intervention.”

I don't think the Prices even heard him.

Mr. Price looked at me. “The wife brought her to see you four times. Four times. You could have done something and you never bothered. I'll bloody have you for this.”

Although, afterward, I could never remember if that was what he actually said or if that's what I thought he said. In any case, his eyes told me exactly what he was thinking. They had looked at me with loathing.