Chapter Sixteen

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Glasgow

May 2024

CLEM

Text messages, phone calls, emails to everyone she can think of who might have information. Erin’s employer and colleagues at the café, her former schoolmates, her midwife. All are sympathetic and saddened by the events, but there is little in the way of what seems like useful information.

“I’ve lowered her morphine dose,” Bee says when they go back into Erin’s room. “She seems to be comfortable but let me know if you need me to come and increase it, okay?”

Clem nods. “Of course.”

“How about we try a twenty-minute visit today?” Bee says with a smile. “See how it goes?”

“If we see her start to look tired we’ll call you back in,” Quinn says.

“Great.”

Erin looks better, brighter, her cheeks flushed and her good eye not as dilated and glassy as before. She is sitting upright, a remarkable improvement, the bed raised and pillows propping her up.

Clem sits next to her daughter, holding her breath. Quinn sits on the other side of the bed, similarly tense.

“Hello, love,” she says gently. She is holding her breath.

“Good to see you sitting up, Erin,” Quinn says. “How are you feeling?”

“I’m scared,” Erin whispers.

Clem moves close to her, her heart breaking for her. “You have nothing to be scared of, okay? Dad and I are here for you.”

“We can get you a lawyer,” Quinn adds, holding Clem in a meaningful look. She nods—it’s a wise move. “It would be great if you could tell us what happened on Fynhallow, though. Before we get you legal counsel.”

Clem studies Erin’s reaction. She seems lucid, her eye still scanning the room as if it holds some secret code. But her expression is unreadable, and Clem realizes that Erin hasn’t mentioned Freya. It’s so unlike her. It’s all she asks about, anytime they’re apart. But not a mention of her.

Stephanie’s words ring in her ears. People have secrets. Especially our children.

“I think it’s too early for that,” Clem tells Quinn.

“Rubbish. That detective’s going to interrogate her first chance she gets. That’s why they’ve lowered the morphine, you know. It doesn’t count as an interview if she’s loaded on drugs.”

“Is that even true?” Clem asks, but he’s already moving his chair to sit closer to Erin, his manner firm and insistent.

“Erin?” he says. “What’s the last thing you remember in Fynhallow?”

“I saw her burn,” Erin says, her voice breaking. “In the book. I need to stop it.”

“What book?” Quinn says, puzzled.

“Please don’t burn her,” she whispers. “I beg you.”

Clem stands up, bending to Erin. She can see she’s frightened, her face folded in discomfort. “Do you mean Senna?” she asks gently. “Or someone else?”

“I know I’ve been wicked,” Erin says.

“What do you mean, ‘wicked’?” Quinn says, glancing from Erin to Clem.

“I should never have given it to him,” Erin whimpers. She turns to Clem, a look of pleading on her face. “Make it stop. Please.”

“Oh, darling.”

Erin reaches out to Clem then, and one of the bandages bursts open. The catheter tube scratches the raw flesh of her right arm, and Erin gives a shriek of pain. Clem grabs the tube and lifts it away, but the flesh is pink and wet, blood beginning to plume where the tube touched it.

“I’ll get the nurse!” Quinn says, and he dashes for the door.

Erin’s cries pierce the air, shrill gasps of pain bouncing off the surfaces. Clem watches on, helpless and frantic, still holding the tube. She dare not touch the bandage, and although she wants to wrap her arms around Erin and console her, she cannot touch her.

In a moment, Bee is there, administering morphine, and soon the room falls quiet, Erin’s head dropping back as she falls to sleep.

···

It’s seven thirty in the evening, but they manage to find Dr.Miller and ask him questions about Erin’s behavior. In the family room, she and Quinn describe their encounter with Erin before.

“I don’t understand,” Quinn says. “I mean, I get that she’s just come out of a coma but she’s not the daughter we remember.” He shakes his head, lost for words.

“Have you seen any other patients experience this?” Clem asks.

“We’ve had a variety of responses,” Dr.Miller says carefully. “I’m not going to pretend I can offer a concrete reason for why Erin is saying these things. I think we can contact one of our consultants from the psychology unit and ask for some input.”

“?‘Trauma’ is such a small word for a massive range of events and responses,” Bee says soothingly. “And remember, it’s likely she witnessed Arlo burn to death. Horrific, right?”

“It’s dreadful,” Clem says, feeling shaken all over again at the thought of it. Her heart breaks for Erin, and for Arlo’s parents.

“It would have been hugely traumatic for her,” Bee continues. “The brain devises all sorts of coping mechanisms to protect us from mental collapse. It’s just that sometimes those mechanisms look strange to the people around us.”

Clem shivers at the thought of what Erin has gone through. She hadn’t considered that she witnessed Arlo die, but it makes sense. And the burns on her arms…Did Arlo catch fire, and she tried to save him? Is that why she got injured?

Why did she mention a book?

Suddenly she feels a sweep of sorrow for Erin, the confusion stirred up by Erin’s strange behavior resolving with this new knowledge. Of course she has blocked out what happened.

···

Another night spent on the narrow cabin bed in the family room, thin window blinds doing little to block out the light of the moon.

Clem’s arms crave her granddaughter’s soft warm body nestling close, the occasional squelch of Freya sucking her dummy. Despite how much Erin’s pregnancy had confounded her, Clem has spent every second of Freya’s life falling in love with her. It surprised her, that profound affection resurrecting itself for the small red creature that came out of her daughter.

Quinn snores loudly, something he never did when he was married to Clem. But that was almost twenty years ago. She suspects he’ll go home later today, return to Yorkshire, to Heather and their boys. She is surprised he even turned up at the hospital at all, is positively staggered that he wept by Erin’s bedside. Maybe he has changed, softened by his three boys and his perfect wife. Whatever quality Heather possesses that makes her so gifted at smoothing corners, at transforming the wilderness of her marriage into a garden, at raising three versions of Quinn with such balletic grace—Clem knows she hasn’t got it. She has always felt wrong-footed by details, too focused on pragmatics to ever be elegant.

After several hours’ tossing and turning she leaves Quinn to his deafening snores and tiptoes into Erin’s room.

She stands at the foot of the bed, alternating between guilt at waking Erin from her much-needed rest and hope that she’ll recognize her mother. Clem’s shock at Erin’s terrifying behavior earlier has lingered, all her maternal instincts and cravings brazen in their sudden want. What did Erin mean about stopping the fire? About seeing something in a book? She tells herself these are ravings induced by trauma, or morphine, but she feels there’s something to it.

The uncertainty of the present situation feels like a stone dropped on a frozen surface, sending cracks in every direction of her life. And there is the matter of her heart, more of a ticking clock than an organ, stuttering and seizing in her chest. Reminding her with each flickering pulse that she is living on borrowed time.

She was thirteen when they first cut her open and discovered the defect in her valve. Dilated cardiomyopathy. She has had five surgeries since then, two myectomies and three septal ablations. Even so, the prognosis remains: her heart will give up before she’s fifty. She’ll need a full heart transplant. She’s on a waiting list, has spoken to more cardiologists and consultants over the years than she can recall. She has a fifty-fifty chance of surviving the operation. If she does survive, the transplant may not take.

And now, with the new, unthinkable situation, Clem feels like everything around her is collapsing at long last into an endless vortex. And she is certain that seeing Erin’s smile return, the spark in her eyes and the word Mum on her lips would give her the courage to face all of this.