Lizzie
Lizzie dove towards her backpack and reached her arm inside. Her fingers prodded through her clothes until she felt the familiar hard plastic of her mobile.
She pressed her finger onto the power symbol. After a pause it lit up and vibrated. It felt as though months had passed since she’d turned it off and left it forgotten at the bottom of her bag. So much had happened since their time on the Gold Coast, it hadn’t occurred to her to switch it back on again.
Until now.
Dr Habibi had been her neurologist for twenty-six years. He knew her. He knew everything. If he was contacting her, it could mean only one thing.
Lizzie held her breath as her mobile connected to her messages. A stiff electronic voice announced one new message.
‘Hello, my name is Hal Fitzgerald. I’m a neurologist in San Francisco. Perhaps my friend Dr Moss mentioned me to you.’ The tones of the man’s Californian accent rose at the end of each sentence, so that each one sounded like a question. ‘She sent your MRI scans to me, you see, which I’ve spent some time looking at. I’ve tried to speak with your own Doctor, Dr Habibi, but it appears he’s out of town. Please return this call. I’m looking at the scans right now, and I’d very much like to talk to you about them.’
Lizzie’s mind reeled as the electronic voice spoke again; ‘Nine old messages. First old message.’
‘Miss Appleton, this is Dr Moss from the Gold Coast University Hospital. Please call me regarding your MRI scan results. You may remember me mentioning a friend of mine in America who is a neurologist and a specialist in brainstems – Dr Fitzgerald – and it’s imperative that you call me or him immediately.’
Lizzie skipped through the recordings from Dr Moss. Her tone hardened with each message, and they all ended with the same urgent plea to get in touch.
Another message started to play. ‘Lizzie, Dr Habibi here. Please call me as soon as you get this.’ His voice sounded muffled as if he was holding the receiver too close to his mouth. She could hear every inhale and exhale of breath. ‘A doctor from America is calling me. I need to know what I should say.’
Lizzie slumped into the armchair and stared at the screen of her phone. From the moment she’d been wheeled into the MRI machine in Australia, her hold on the situation had loosened. She’d been unable to stop the edges from unravelling. With Ben’s suspicions and the calls from Dr Moss, it had seemed only a matter of time before everything fell apart. Then nothing had happened, and like a fool she’d allowed herself to relax.
Lizzie swallowed and held down the power button on her phone. Her eyes remained fixed on the screen until it transformed into an inanimate object once more.
She knew she should call Dr Habibi, but she couldn’t. Time was running out. She could see the end.
Lizzie drew in a sharp intake of air, her eyes widening as another, far more worrying realisation struck her. If this was the first time that she’d switched on her phone in weeks, and the first time that she’d listened to her voicemail, then why weren’t all the messages new, instead of just the one from Dr Fitzgerald? Someone else had listened to them, but who? The blotches returned, swarming in front of her eyes until her vision was like looking through a stained-glass window. She replayed the messages in head. How much would someone learn by listening to them?
A scuffling of feet sounded from Ben’s room. There was a light knock and then the door opened.
‘Did you get through to him?’ Ben said from the doorway.
Her mind blanked. ‘Huh?’
‘Your doctor. You came in here to call him.’
‘Oh, yes.’ Lizzie dropped to her knees and shoved her phone back to the bottom of her bag. ‘He didn’t answer.’
‘Are you OK? You look really pale.’ Ben said, moving towards her.
She stood up and turned to face him. He’d trimmed his beard since they’d kissed, and had his head shaved again. Without his glasses he looked less like the Ben she knew, and more like the faceless cameraman she’d met at the check-in desk at Heathrow Airport. Then she looked into his eyes and the magnetic field drew her in.
Ben reached for her hand, causing a tingling to radiate from his touch.
‘I’m sorry we haven’t spoken since Friday,’ he said. ‘I didn’t want you to think I was avoiding you, or that I regretted what happened. Now that the film crew have gone, we can talk …’
Lizzie took an unsteady step back and pulled her hand free from his hold. She needed to think, to focus, and Ben wasn’t helping. ‘Have you been going through my phone?’ she snapped.
‘What?’ Hurt registered on Ben’s face.
‘Someone’s listened to my voicemails. Was it you?’ Panic carried in the tone of her of voice.
‘No, of course not. Lizzie, what’s going on?’
‘Nothing.’ She shook her head. ‘Look, I’m sorry but I can’t do this with you. I can’t drag you into it.’
Ben threw his hands up and exhaled. ‘Can’t drag me into it. Into what, Lizzie? I’m already in as deep as I can get. I care about you. I care about what happens to you.’
‘You know what’s going to happen to me, the whole world knows.’
Lizzie stared into Ben’s eyes as the truth caught in her throat. She scooped her backpack from the floor and turned towards the door. ‘I’m sorry, I can’t do this.’
A solitary tear ran down her cheek as she walked into the living room. It seemed a lifetime ago that she’d stood in the dressing room of the Channel 6 studio. ‘It’s too late to put the lid back on the can of worms,’ Jaddi had said. If it was too late then, she had no hope now.