‘Why the hell can’t I get a frigging decent cuppa tea in this shithole?’ Letitia said, pushing the cup back towards George with such unveiled disgust that the contents slopped onto the pristine hospital sheet. Turning to her sister and sucking her teeth slowly, she scratched at her matted hair-extensions. ‘Are you hearing this, Shaz? Fucking Liptons, innit? I ain’t drinking that pisswater after I’ve been locked up like some dog what’s got rabies with my dodgy pulmonaries and sickle cell anaemics. On a houseboat. A boat, like some fucking vagrant. By a man whose name is “stain” but spelled wrong. Stain, I axe you! For a full year, though!’ She widened her eyes, which was a feat in itself, considering how swollen they still were. ‘I get seasick when it bloody rains too hard. That bastard left me on my own for a month at a time with nothing but a freezer full of bread and forty-six tins of ham. Ham! And it was from some shitty bargain bin supermarket like Lidl. I don’t even fucking like ham, do I, Shaz?’
Aunty Sharon folded her meaty arms and shook her head so that her super-sleek bobbed wig wobbled with indignation. ‘No, love. You said it gives you wind. And that tinned ham’s rough as arseholes. I wouldn’t have ate it.’
Amid the riotous family reunion that had temporarily seen a truce between Letitia and Aunty Sharon, George helped herself to a blob of antibacterial gel and allowed herself a satisfied smile. Massaging the gel in thoroughly between her fingers and under her nails.
‘What you grinning at, girl?’ her mother said. Sneering at George’s father who was sitting at the side of her bed in a day chair. ‘And what’s he got to be so happy about, and all? It’s like the two of yous is in cahoots.’ She wagged her finger between them. No shellac nail extensions on them today.
‘We saved your life,’ George said. ‘Your mate Stijn is banged up for good. Anyway, are you even going to ask about poor Jan?’
‘Who the fuck is Jan to me? What do I give a shit about some old hippy white feller?’ She grabbed dramatically at her throat. Jabbed her thumb in Michael’s direction. ‘If it weren’t for Julio bleeding Iglesias, here, dicking around with that wasp killer when he should have been cutting me down, I wouldn’t have big marks on my sodding neck. I’m gonna have to wear a scarf now! How can I wear a low-cut top to bingo, if I’ve got a fucking scarf wrapped round my neck? It’s diabolical, is what it is.’
‘Papa’s a bona fide hero,’ George said, reaching out to squeeze her father’s hand.
Letitia treated her ex-partner to a sour, downturned smile. ‘An hero? Maybe you could get a job in pest control killing invisible wasps, darling, but I don’t think you’ll be getting a call back to audition for the next Batman film. Certainly not with them legs. Know what I mean?’
Aunty Sharon stood with a flourish, all dressed to impress in her Designers at Debenhams Sunday best with her bloated feet stuffed into her favourite Betty Boop shoes. She marched over to Michael and clamped his head into the sort of hug George had craved all the while she had been travelling with the transportistas. The sort of hug that made anyone feel safe.
‘Take no notice of her, love,’ Sharon said, patting his newly cropped hair. ‘She’s got that PSTD.’ She lowered her voice. ‘She ain’t changed, you know. She still wins Olympic gold at being a cow. But I’m glad she’s alive. And you got a diamond of a girl in our George. You should be very proud.’
George’s father nodded, blinking fast and blushing. ‘I am. I’m the luckiest man in the world.’
‘Oi!’ Letitia shouted over Tinesha and Patrice’s heads to her sister. ‘Get out the way, you disrespectful little rarseclarts! I’m trying to have a conversation with your mother, here.’ She reached out, swatted her niece and nephew with the hospital lunch menu. ‘Did you just call me a cow?’
‘Nah.’ Aunty Sharon kissed George on the head. She didn’t smell of baking or the stale, dry-ice smell of the titty bar today. She smelled of her expensive perfume that Tinesha had bought her for Christmas. ‘You got defective ears on top of all the other shit what’s wrong with you,’ she said, sitting heavily back on her vinyl armchair so that the air in the cushion hissed out noisily like a well-aimed cuss.
‘I’ve only got four years to live!’ Letitia said, her bottom lip wavering though there was no sign of tears. Calculating her next move.
George cleared her throat, drinking in with no small degree of satisfaction the sight of her entire family, gathered together at short notice in that cramped hospital room. Relieved that Jan was down the hallway, already complaining that the doctors were trying to poison him with untested pharmaceuticals. And there was Van den Bergen, visible through the window, chatting to one of the doctors in the corridor about Elvis’ condition, no doubt.
‘Well,’ George said. She rose from her seat, ushering Aunty Sharon, Patrice and Tinesha to their feet. ‘If you’ve only got four years to live, Mother Dearest, how about you spend five minutes talking to your long-lost baby-father. We’ve all got some place we need to be, haven’t we, Aunty Shaz?’
‘Yeah,’ Sharon said, linking her by the arm. ‘I need a smoke and I’m having cake withdrawals. We’re going to the caff. I’ll bring you back a slab of chocolate-flavoured arsenic, if you behave.’ Chuckling mischievously. They walked in unison to the door.
‘Smuggle me some cigs in, will you, Shaz?’ Letitia called out. ‘The doctors said I mustn’t get stressed, innit? And get your face scrubbed, girl!’ A comment clearly intended for George. ‘You look like a bleeding mental case with that magic marker all over your mush. They’re gonna take the piss out of you something rotten when you get home.’
‘Bye, Letitia,’ George said, grinning at her mother; turning to wink at her father.
He smiled back at her and raised a thick, black eyebrow, exactly as he had done when she had been a child.
In the middle of a busy hospital corridor, surrounded by her family, standing by the side of Van den Bergen, George considered the journey she had embarked upon. Reflected on where she was now, in relation to where she had been some fourteen months earlier – a girl in a restaurant who had lost everything and had gained only an eye and a bellyful of blind panic. She had followed a trail that had led her halfway across the world in pursuit of the truth and in pursuit of justice, under the guise of investigating the mysterious deaths of six young people. There, high in the peaks of Honduras and Chiapas, deep in the jungle of the Yucatan and lost in the middle of the Caribbean Sea, she had faced her worst nightmare. Her only real fear. Not anxiety about dying, but the fear of being utterly on her own.
There, in the midst of that bustling hospital ward, George McKenzie, the consummate loner, realised that she was anything but alone. For now, at least, there was nothing left to be afraid of.