Chapter 15

FIFTEEN

The room Joanna was shepherded to this time was at the other end of the corridor and smaller than the one she'd last waited in. Intimate and quiet, the muted restful colours clearly chosen for their calming effects did nothing for the trembling that had overtaken her whole body. In place of the torn and curling posters instructing viewers how to wash their hands, a solitary painting hung on the pale-green wall.

Inside the gold frame, a wild rugged landscape covered half the canvas, sloping towards the left where, at the very top, a small wooden house balanced at the edge of a clifftop. It's rough-hewn weather-worn planks so precarious that one breath of the sea air would be enough to make it fall over the lip of rock into the crashing waves below. In the foreground, a small clutch of wild flowers pushed up through the coarse grass, fragile yet determined.

Since Steve's funeral, people had been so kind, but still the loneliness of his absence had hollowed her, battered her, left her a shell. Through the last year, Charlotte had been the only thing that had kept her upright, moving on, living. Knowing that she had to be there to comfort her daughter had got her out of bed in the morning. How would she live if Charlotte didn't?

Waiting for news was unbearable. What was going on in there? According to her watch it'd only been four minutes since the young nurse had backed out of the room with an apologetic promise to be back soon, but it felt like forty. It could be a good thing, couldn't it? Charlotte might be waking up? She tried to hold on to that hope with her fingernails and not think of the tone of the doctor's voice – get the mother out of here! – which terrified the very breath from her lungs. Pacing up and down, up and down, in that tiny room intensified the thudding of her heart, the beating of her blood through her veins. Every atom of her was on high alert. What was going on? When would someone come? Was Charlotte going to be okay? I'll do anything. Please let her be okay.

When the door opened, she almost jumped on the young nurse who'd brought her here. ‘What are they doing? What happened in there?'

Her voice was kind, but painfully calm. ‘The monitors registered a change in Charlotte's condition. I'm sure we'll get an update soon.'

Change? That could be a good thing, couldn't it? Maybe she was starting to breathe on her own? Maybe the visit from her friends had worked? ‘Could you go and find out? See if there's any news?'

‘I'm sure the?—'

The door opened to cut her off and one of the doctors from Charlotte's room came in. ‘Please sit, Mrs Woodley.'

She couldn't feel her legs but somehow Joanna managed to do as he'd asked. Her breath was ragged and she battled to get it under control; gripping the arms of the chair so hard that her knuckles turned as white as the doctor's face. ‘What is it? What's happening?'

‘Charlotte's vital signs dropped and that's what caused the alarms that you heard. We believe that she's had a further bleed on the brain and she's being prepped for surgery as we speak.'

A further bleed? Surgery? How bad was that? Dizzy and weak, she couldn't quite organise her thoughts. He'd paused to let her take his words in, but she wanted him to keep going until she'd heard all of it. ‘Does surgery mean you can repair it? You can stop the bleeding?'

He had that face on. The kind face she recognised from the doctors who'd looked after Steve. She couldn't bear it. She pushed her fist into her mouth to stop herself from screaming at him to tell her everything.

When he spoke, it was agonisingly slow. ‘Until the surgeon has been able to locate the bleed and found the extent of it, we won't know what we're dealing with. Unfortunately, because of your daughter's existing brain injury, she's already in a weakened state so I'm afraid it's just a case of waiting to see what happens. I'm sorry, I know that this isn't easy to hear.'

He did look sorry, but that didn't help one bit. She could barely get the words out, but – as if she had her head under the guillotine and her own hand on the rope to bring it down – she needed to know. She needed to know everything. ‘Could this bleed…could it kill her?'

He took a deep breath. ‘We can't speculate about anything until the surgeon is able to locate the bleed. We'll keep you informed as much as we can.'

He already had his hand on the door handle when another question occurred to her. There was more than one life at stake here. ‘What about the baby? What will happen to the baby? You know that she's pregnant?'

Still with his hand on the door, he nodded. Too slowly. Too slowly. The clock ticked another three times before he answered. ‘The body is designed to prioritise the life of the mother before the baby. It may be that the shock of this bleed could cause the body to terminate the pregnancy. But as we got to Charlotte almost immediately, we will obviously do all that we can to keep the foetus alive.'

She didn't want this textbook response. She wanted to know what he thought. Will they live? Will they both live? But she knew he couldn't tell her. ‘How long will she be in surgery?'

‘It might be a while. If you wanted to go home, we could call you?'

As if she would be anywhere in the world except here. ‘No. I'll stay. I'll be here if you have any news.'

He nodded and left. The nurse must need to go back to work, too. There was no point them sitting here just looking at each other. ‘Can I stay here while she's in surgery?'

She smiled. ‘You can. But we have a Visitors' Lounge nearer to the surgical wards which might be nicer. It has a coffee machine and a little garden, too, if you want some fresh air. Is there anyone who can come and wait with you?'

Sally would be here soon. ‘My friend is on her way.'

‘Good. Shall I show you where it is?'

Lounge was a bit of a euphemism for the three rows of chairs and a vending machine. But it was empty, at least, and an improvement over the claustrophobic room she'd come from. Outside the heavy-duty glass doors, there was a large square of grass with two benches and weighty plant pots. According to the sign on the window, it was looked after by the ‘Friends of the Hospital'. She pushed open the door and walked outside.

Encased in the slate-grey walls of the building, the dark-blue night spilled around her. Carefully tended plants softened the industrial architecture. Blinds pulled down at the windows allowed a harsh metallic light from the corridors only the merest escape. Behind, the muted glow from the glass door dissolved across the courtyard, not quite reaching the far corner, where a fountain peered over a shallow upturned cask. Dark orange flecked its surface. Heavy and suffocating, a neatly ruled square of sky pushed downwards. Beneath her feet, the sharp gravel path cast tiny shadows of charcoal and darkness.

How long had it been since she'd breathed in the outside air? Was it really only forty-eight hours since she'd got the visit from the two police officers? The warmth of the sun had left behind traces of its strength and – when Joanna sat on the bench, closed her eyes and let her shoulders drop from her ears – for the briefest of moments, she let her mind travel back to summer holidays with Steve and Charlotte. As a child, she'd loved the beach and Steve would have endless resources of patience building the most elaborate sandcastles. He'd run into the cold sea with her on his shoulders. Buy her the biggest ice creams with all the sauces and wafers and sprinkles that she wanted. He made life fun.

Beneath her closed lids, tears warmed her eyes. In this quiet empty garden, there was no one to hear her whisper to him, ‘Why did you have to go?'

Right up until the end, he'd tried to look after them both. It'd been his idea that she had to book a party for her fiftieth birthday last month. How stupidly hopeful she'd been to go along with it, to book a hall and a band. He'd promised her he would still be here. ‘I'll whirl you round the dancefloor one last time.' But he hadn't and she'd cancelled it and, if it hadn't been for Charlotte's stubborn insistence, she'd have pretended her birthday wasn't happening at all. Nothing was worth celebrating once he was gone. Nothing.

The tears pushed under her lids onto her eyelashes, but she didn't move to wipe them away. With her eyes closed, she could see him. Tall, broad shouldered, sandy haired. Dressed in jeans and a shirt with a V-neck jumper. Blue. He always liked blue. Charlotte used to tell him that it matched his eyes and he would smile. That smile, which could say so many things. I love you. I'm ready. You sound crazy but I'm going to go along with it anyway. How she missed it. Her quiet, strong, dependable husband. ‘Oh, Steve. I need you here. I really need you.'

Why hadn't she pushed him to go to the doctors sooner? If it'd been caught early, maybe he wouldn't have got so sick, maybe he'd still be here with her.

And if Charlotte hadn't wanted to be at home with him, she would've gone travelling with her friends, seen the world, realised that there was more to life than Freddie Knight-Crossley.

And later, once Charlotte had announced that they were serious and she was going to move into his flat, Steve would've handled it so much better than she did. He wouldn't have had the rows that they'd had. He would've oiled the sticking points, eased the tension, made them realise what was important. With him there, it would never have got to the point where they hadn't spoken for the last two weeks.

How had she let that happen? She'd dealt with this so badly. How many times over the years had Steve tried to tell her that she couldn't keep such a tight rein on Charlotte? That she had to let her find her own way?

A breeze whispered past the back of her neck and she shivered. When she opened her eyes, it seemed darker than it was before. From the bag slung across her chest, she pulled out her mobile to text Sally to tell her where she was. She didn't want to call her while she was driving, didn't want to cause her to drive fast to get here.

Once the text was sent, she stared at her screen, the picture of the three of them on holiday. What would she give to be back there now? Why had she not realised how lucky she was? How easy life had been then. So much time spent worrying about the most ridiculous things. When Steve had told her that they didn't matter, why hadn't she listened to him? Why did it have to take such awful events to wake her up to what was important in life?

She only realised there was someone else there when the door squeaked as it opened onto the garden. When she turned towards it, Dr Doherty was in the opening, framed by electric light. The shadow cast on his face by the canopy above the door made it impossible to read his expression. He called out to her. ‘Mrs Woodley?'

‘Yes, I'm here.'

As she walked towards the door, she sent up a silent prayer.

Please let her be okay.