‘It’s me.’
‘Hi!’ Pleased, as always, to hear her brother’s voice, Cat Deerbon sat down ready to talk. ‘Hang on, Si, let me shift myself.’
‘You OK?’
‘Fine, just don’t know how to get comfortable.’ Cat’s baby, her third child, was due in a couple of weeks.
‘OK, I’m as settled as I can get … but listen, it costs a fortune on the mobile from Italy, let me call you back?’
‘I’m at Heathrow.’
‘What …?’
‘Dad rang. He said I’d better come home if I wanted to see my sister alive again.’
‘Oh, tactfully put.’
‘As ever.’
‘Ma and I decided we weren’t going to tell you.’
‘Why?’
‘Because you needed your holiday and there’s nothing you can do, Martha won’t know you …’
‘But I will know her.’
Cat was silenced for a second. Then she said, ‘Of course you will. I’m sorry.’
‘No need. Listen I won’t be back till pretty late but I’ll go straight to the hospital.’
‘OK. Chris is out on a call and he may well go in to see her again if he’s up that way. Will you come over here tomorrow? I’m getting too big to be behind the wheel safely.’
‘What about Ma?’
‘I just can’t tell what she’s feeling, Si, you know how it is. She goes up there. She goes home. Sometimes she comes here but she doesn’t talk about it.’
‘What exactly happened?’
‘The usual – cold then chest infection now pneumonia … how many times have we been there? But I don’t think her body is up to fighting it now. She’s barely responded to the treatment and Chris said they’re now wondering how aggressive that ought to be.’
‘Poor little Martha.’
Her brother’s voice, concerned and tender, echoed in her ears as Cat put down the phone. Tears filled her eyes, as they did so easily in pregnancy … even the sight, that afternoon, of one of her daughter’s soft toys, lying scrumpled on the grass after it had been left out in the rain had made Cat soften to weeping. She heaved herself awkwardly off the sofa. She had forgotten almost everything about how it felt to be expecting a baby. Sam was eight and a half now and Hannah seven. They had not planned this third child. She and Chris were the only two partners in their general practice and stretched to the limits of their time and energy. But though she meant to take the odd surgery as soon as she could, realistically Cat knew that she would be out of action for the next six months and part-time at work for the year after that. Besides, now the baby was coming and she had got used to the idea, she wanted to be at home with it and give more time to the other two, not rush back to the exhausting grind of medical practice. There would not be a fourth child. This one was precious. She was going to enjoy it.
She lay on the sofa trying to sleep but unable to stop the cycle of thought. How odd and yet how typical of their father to make the phone call to Venice and in those terms. ‘If you want to see your sister alive, you’d better come home.’
Yet how often did he ever see Martha? Cat had scarcely heard the girl’s name cross his lips though he had once infuriated her by calling Martha ‘the vegetable’ in Sam and Hannah’s hearing. Was he ashamed of having a brain-damaged child? Or angry? Did he blame himself or Meriel?
And what had been the reasoning behind his call to Simon, the other child for whom he had precious little time?
Simon, the person she loved, aside from her husband and children, above all other.
The cat Mephisto appeared from nowhere to leap softly on to the sofa beside her and settle down.
All three of them slept.