They didn’t let me out of hospital on Monday after all. Some of it was the languor of the wards during a bank holiday when the staffing levels were low. Some of it was genuine concern about how I was, and whether my collarbone was likely to heal without an operation. If it had been up to my mother they would have kept me in for at least a week, if not two, because I couldn’t get into trouble in hospital. In much the same way that I appreciated the care I was getting in hospital but couldn’t wait to go, I was fretting under her attention even though I was glad of it. She arrived as soon as visiting hours began on Monday, armed with Lucozade and chocolate biscuits and books, and commandeered two extra chairs for beside my bed, one for my father and the other for her belongings.
‘Look at the state of you. Your lovely face, Maeve.’
‘It’ll heal.’ That was the wrong thing to say.
‘Yes, well one of these days you’re not going to heal. You need to take care of yourself. Did you chip your teeth?’
‘I didn’t chip anything. I didn’t do this to myself, Mum.’ I relented. ‘My teeth are fine.’
‘So it’s just everything else.’ She looked me over with the proprietary air of a farmer inspecting her favourite cow, and I returned the look, admiring her fine-boned good looks that were lasting well despite her official status as a grandmother, and her general air of elegance that she had somehow managed not to pass on to me. ‘You haven’t been eating properly either. I can tell.’
‘I’ve been busy.’ I wanted to smile but it hurt too much. ‘I’m not in here because I haven’t been getting enough protein.’
‘No, you’re here because of that – that – shit.’
It was so unlike her to swear that my mouth popped open in pure shock. My father moved from his stolen chair to sit on the end of the bed where he held on to my ankle through the bedclothes.
‘Maeve, are you all right in yourself?’
‘I will be.’ I was in the state of mind where I was perpetually on the verge of tears and kindness seemed to tip me over the edge every time. ‘I’ll be OK.’
He nodded. ‘Good girl.’
They stayed for the whole day, my mother taking the opportunity to tell me long and detailed stories about their neighbours and the extended family and even neighbours of the extended family until I was desperate for some peace and quiet. The ward was hot and my whole body ached viciously. But when they gathered their things to leave, I found myself asking what they were doing the next day – would they call me?
‘We’ll see you tomorrow of course.’ Mum looked at me as if I was insane. ‘We couldn’t have you here on your own. Besides, we want to know what the doctors have to say and we know there’s no point in waiting for you to pass it on. You never tell us anything.’
You were never so low that you couldn’t be taken down a peg or two by your mother, I mused after they had gone. I missed them though, and I missed my phone, and I missed being able to move without catching my breath. I was acutely conscious that Derwent hadn’t come as he’d said he would. It was the bank holiday, I reminded myself. He would have had other places to be. I still half-expected him, late into the evening, since visiting hours were the kind of rule that he regarded as an irrelevance. I stayed awake longer than anyone else in the ward, jumping in case every movement from the hall meant he was about to saunter in. And then, when I settled down to try to sleep I found myself tormented with worry about why he hadn’t come, if he blamed me for what had happened or if he blamed himself – if things would never be the same.
I managed to get some sleep at last but the hospital machinery began to grind early, breakfast arriving long before I was ready for it. My mood deteriorated after an agonising session with a bright and cheerful physiotherapist who left me with a handful of leaflets, a sheet of exercises and strict instructions to limit myself to light desk duties for two or three months.
‘You’re going to have to go easy on yourself,’ my mother said, nodding in support. ‘You have to listen to them, Maeve.’
I did listen, and I listened to the doctors who came and offered various opinions about my injuries, and I asked very politely if I could be discharged sooner rather than later, and then I asked less politely, and then I offered to discharge myself if they wouldn’t agree to do it, and then I told them I was going to walk out. At that point I got official permission to leave, plus a goody bag from the hospital pharmacy.
‘You don’t even have any clean clothes,’ Mum fretted. ‘Those clothes you came in are filthy.’
‘They’ll do. I’m only going home,’ I pointed out, by which I meant my parents’ house because I was not remotely ready to be on my own again.
‘These might help.’ A bag landed on the end of the bed and my parents leapt up to embrace Derwent, who they adored. I was hugely relieved to see him and covered it by going through the bag to see what he’d brought me from the flat: jeans, a loose short-sleeved shirt, underwear, trainers.
‘Not bad. I’m not sure how I feel about you pawing through my knicker drawer, though.’
‘I didn’t look at anything. I did it by touch alone.’
‘Oh God, why is that worse?’
He grinned. ‘You’re looking nice, by the way.’
‘You should have seen me yesterday. It wasn’t as colourful then.’ I had seen myself in a number of mirrors by now and my appearance was getting worse as I healed.
‘Her poor face, Josh.’ My mother’s face crumpled. It was only then I realised that she’d been holding herself together for two days, hiding her feelings by talking compulsively and sniping at me for my many shortcomings.
Derwent took her hand and patted it. ‘She’s tough. She’ll be fine.’
‘She’s not as tough as she thinks she is,’ my mother snapped.
I rolled my eyes and Dad, the soul of tact, put his arm around her and guided her away. ‘We’ll get a cup of tea in the café down the hall while you’re talking.’
Derwent waited for them to move out of earshot, then turned to me. ‘How are you, really?’
‘I’m really OK. Ready to get out of here.’
‘I believe you.’ He sat down in one of the chairs and stretched out his legs. ‘Are you pressing charges?’
Wrong-footed, I started re-folding the clothes he’d brought. ‘I haven’t decided.’
‘They can prosecute him without you, but it’ll be better if you’re involved.’
‘I know that.’
He watched me, saying nothing, and I wondered why I had wanted to see him.
‘Look, it’s difficult.’
‘Thought you might say that.’
‘Don’t make me feel bad about it.’
‘If you’re wondering why I didn’t come to see you yesterday, I spent some of it at the flat with the coppers who are investigating the case. When we got there, what do you think we found?’
‘I can’t begin to guess,’ I said shortly.
‘The phone, and it was working perfectly. Your police radio and your ASP and your PAVA spray were all there. The router was plugged in. The cutlery was in the drawers and the knives were in the block. The blinds were all up – they had little holes in them, but you might not make much of that if you didn’t know how they’d been before. And your keys were on your bedside table along with your mobile phone.’
I had started to tremble again. ‘There was blood everywhere.’
‘Yeah, there was. And you’re injured. But there’s no sign he intended to do anything more.’
‘He trapped me there. You know I’m telling the truth.’
‘I do. But you need to convince a jury of that.’
‘You saw it.’
‘And I’m happy to give evidence to that effect. But it will only work if you’re prepared to step up and say what he did. Your injuries are one thing – the way he left you is another. And you need to give that evidence in court.’
‘I know I should.’
‘When I saw he’d put everything back—’ he shook his head. ‘This wasn’t a moment of madness. He didn’t lose his temper and punch you, and he doesn’t regret anything except that he missed his chance to go to the flat while you were there. He planned this, over time. I know you have feelings for him, but he’s dangerous, Kerrigan. He needs locking up.’
‘I don’t have feelings for him. That’s not why I don’t want to take it further.’
‘Why then?’
I’m ashamed. I couldn’t say it. I looked down instead, folding the sheet in concertina pleats.
‘The other thing I did yesterday was talk to a girl called Rae. Did he ever mention her to you?’
I shook my head.
‘He went out with her last year for about six months. It ended when he beat her so badly she had double vision for weeks afterwards. She still gets headaches. She didn’t report him because she thought no one would take her side against his – he told her they wouldn’t believe her. She’s terrified of him. He locked her in her home and told her he would kill her if she ever told anyone. She promised him she’d keep her mouth shut and until I talked to her, she did.’ He leaned forward. ‘It’s not you, Maeve. You didn’t make him do this. You aren’t the first person he’s treated this way and you won’t be the last, unless he’s stopped. You don’t want to go to a house and find a dead girl because you didn’t do anything in time, believe me.’
‘How did you find her in a day?’
His face went completely blank; by chance I had asked the one question he didn’t want to answer. ‘I didn’t. I found her last week. I looked Taylor up online. There was a picture of them together at a legal party last year. She’s another solicitor and the caption mentioned her by name. I tracked her down through her LinkedIn profile.’
‘You did this last week?’
‘After he gave you the flowers.’ Derwent winced. ‘I knew something was wrong. I thought he was up to something. I should have said as much to you. But you’d told me to stay out of your private life—’
‘And you were angry with me about Luke.’
He looked shocked. ‘I would never have left you in harm’s way because of that. I was trying to work out how to talk to you about it. I thought I had time.’
‘So when you came to the flat on Sunday …’ I said slowly.
‘I thought I was too late. I thought he’d killed you.’ He managed a particularly grim smile. ‘You might understand now why I don’t want you to have that experience.’
I moved over to sit on the edge of the bed, close to him. ‘If you hadn’t come to find me, I don’t know what would have happened. You’ve told me not to blame myself, but you shouldn’t feel guilty either. If you’d warned me about him, I probably wouldn’t have listened.’
‘You were in love with him.’ Derwent was taking a keen interest in the floor so he didn’t have to look at me.
‘No, I wasn’t. But I wanted to be.’ It was hard to admit it, but I had to be honest. ‘He seemed as if he was completely right for me. He could be really charming and persuasive, and he pretended to be in love with me. He made me think I was lucky to have him. I wanted to believe it was all true. I thought I was the problem. I should have realised that he really was too good to be true.’
‘You haven’t had much luck with men lately.’
‘You can say that again.’
He glanced up at me with a quick grin, but before he could reply his phone began to ring and he took it out, frowning at the screen. He killed the call, but his expression had faded to a tired kind of resignation.
‘It’s Melissa.’
‘You should go.’
‘Yeah.’ He made no move to get up though.
‘You spent so much time on me over the last couple of days.’ I felt ashamed for having expected him to come and see me the previous day, and I was glad I hadn’t complained about it. ‘I hope you got to do something with Thomas and Melissa yesterday.’
His mouth tightened. ‘That wasn’t the most relaxing part of the weekend.’
‘Did you have a fight?’ Not the sort of question I would have dared to ask usually, and not the sort of question he would answer, but he had seen me at my most vulnerable two days earlier and maybe it made him feel he could talk openly.
‘She’s not happy about Luke. She’s jealous.’
‘What happened with Claire happened a long time before you met her.’
‘Yeah, obviously.’
‘And you don’t want to be with Claire. You never did, as I understand it.’
He shook his head. ‘She thinks I won’t stay with her now. That I won’t need Thomas any more because I have a son of my own.’
‘That’s ridiculous. You’d never lose interest in Thomas. You love him. And there’s more to your relationship with Melissa than him, isn’t there?’
He looked at me for a beat, his eyes shadowy and unreadable. Then he stood up. ‘Look, I’d better head off.’
‘Of course.’
‘I’ll swing by the café and tell your folks you’re getting changed.’
‘Thanks,’ I said, meaning it. He nodded and turned to go, and I couldn’t let him leave without saying the last thing that was on my mind, in case I didn’t get another chance.
‘Josh, I’m really sorry for not telling you about Luke.’
He looked back at me. ‘I know you are. I’ll get over it.’
‘Will you?’ I sounded dubious, because I was.
‘Yeah. Probably.’ His phone started to ring again and he walked out, his shoulders bowed as if he was supporting the weight of the world on them.