She began to regain consciousness in the ambulance, sensing its speed and hearing the scream of the siren.
She felt as if she were chained up but she understood why; American emergency procedures would be no different from British. They would have strapped her on to a spinal board and into a cervical collar with head restraints to keep her immobile, a precaution in case there was spinal cord injury which was a frequent consequence of road traffic accidents and, basically, that’s what the crash in the cemetery was.
As soon as they got to her, they would have carried out their primary survey, following the universal ABCD system: A for ‘airway’, B for ‘breathing’, C for ‘circulation’, with control of any external haemorrhage, which instinct and pain told her she had. Last of all there was D for ‘disability’. She wiggled her fingers and her toes and felt sure that she was not paralysed.
But she knew she must look a mess. The left side of her face ached and her mouth seemed twice its normal size. She moved her tongue around delicately, tasting the rusty tang of blood, and she wondered if she still had all her teeth. She was also having difficulty opening her left eye properly. The tissue round it felt heavy and hooded.
The ambulance stopped and she felt herself being placed on a gurney by the paramedics. They wheeled her in through big doors with the word ‘EMERGENCY’ lit over them. She saw the ceiling moving above her and the blurred faces of the medical staff peering down, asking her if she knew her name and where she was. She groaned groggy answers and then they told her not to try to talk any more.
She could hear someone say that you never knew with head injuries. She wanted to tell them they should look for any sign of a depressed fracture or any damage to the base of the skull, that they should ask the paramedics if they had found any blood or cerebrospinal fluid leaking from her ears. They would know, as she did, that the fact that she was conscious again was a good sign but not definitive; sometimes people suffering from intracranial bleeding, like a subdural haemorrhage, regained consciousness for a time, then lost it again. When that happened there was trouble.
With an awareness that was fragile, she listened to them and watched them work. They put sutures in her lip and above her eye but a local anaesthetic had made her face numb and she could not feel what they were doing. She would feel it later, that was for sure, when the anaesthetic wore off.
Finally they undressed her, releasing her from her wet, bloodied clothes, and put her into a gown, then they left her in a bed in a curtained area from where she would be taken for further, more detailed examination.
‘We’re going to keep you here,’ a nurse told her, ‘just to make sure everything’s OK. We’ve got you down for a CAT scan but don’t worry about it. Your face has taken a beating and you’ll look like you’ve gone ten rounds with Tyson for a while but there’s nothing broken and we don’t think there’s anything more serious to worry about. It’s just a precaution. So try to rest.’
The nurse pulled the curtain across and smiled at the patrolman who had taken a seat just outside the cubicle. Thirty seconds later, when all hell broke loose, she and the patrolman and everyone else in the ER had forgotten about her.
Somewhere out in the sticks, a huge branch impossibly laden with ice had cracked off a tree and fallen across a school bus. The driver had lost control of the vehicle and it had tumbled off the road and into a storm drain. One child was dead; most of the rest were on their way in with injuries ranging from minor to very serious.
Then there was the truck driven by a seventy-year-old man who had fallen asleep at the wheel and rammed his vehicle at high speed into a tollbooth out on the turnpike, demolishing the structure and injuring himself and the toll attendant badly. They were on their way in, too.
Here and now, though, there was the fire: three children, all under eight, rescued with their mother from a house at Munjoy Hill which had gone up like matchwood. They had severe burns, the youngest child in particular.
The doors of the ER burst open and the first of what threatened to be an endless stream of casualties came in, to be met by trauma teams on full alert, their numbers augmented by staff from elsewhere in the hospital. Even the patrolman joined in to help with the fetching and carrying.
From her cubicle Meg listened to the familiar soundtrack of an emergency. She heard the clamour of voices, instructions being shouted and information being passed in tones that were terse and urgent, the messages precise. She heard the sound of equipment being moved in a hurry, the dull thud of feet running, the squeak of rubber soles on rubber floors. And there were the unique smells of the ER: cleanliness and sterility mingling with harsher odours, like the damp cloying smokiness she could sense now, coming in from the world outside. And from there, too, came the sounds of pain: the crying of children, the wailing of a grieving woman.
The curtain had left a little gap and she tried to lever herself up on one elbow to see what was going on, but without her glasses all she got was the impression of moving shapes. She lay down again. Her lips felt the size of cushions. Her ankle was very painful too, but she wasn’t going to tell anyone about that, not just yet. They had more urgent tasks to attend to.
She felt a weariness weighing heavily on her and she told herself that was the shock taking hold. She needed rest; the nurse was right. And she needed to think about what had happened.
Someone had tried to kill her in that cemetery. She lay back on the pillow and closed her eyes.
In her mind, the doorway to her memory was opening and light was flooding in . . .
She had walked into her house that afternoon all those years ago, realising that she did not remember a single thing about the journey home. All she had seen while driving was her own rage and Noel Kennedy’s face.
Well, it was done now, wasn’t it?
‘You bastard,’ she said out loud and she didn’t give a toss whether the neighbours heard her or not.
She poured herself a large vodka and tonic and paced round the tiny kitchen with the glass in her hand. She took the drink in gulps and finished it quickly.
‘Not the appropriate remedy for stress, Dr Winter,’ she said, looking at the empty glass. But she ignored herself and poured another, then she went and ran a bath. While the water thundered in, she sprinkled some aromatic oil over the surface, undressed and pinned her hair up.
The combination of the drink and the hot bath did not relax her; instead she felt supercharged and her heart was racing. Tomorrow she would think about what she had done and, perhaps more important, about what she was going to do now, but tonight she would go out somewhere. She felt the need to – if not celebrate exactly – at least mark this occasion, whatever it was.
Half an hour later, she sat in her robe in the kitchen with the TV on, doing her nails. Carefully and evenly, she stroked each one with the soft varnish brush. The task calmed her and she started to think about what had happened.
She saw Kennedy’s office. Her resignation letter. But she didn’t want to think about any of that.
She got up abruptly and poured herself another drink. It was important to maintain the buzz. If she were to let it die, that would be a disaster. It would mean thoughts of regret, self-recrimination, more anger and the feeling that Kennedy was right. Maybe she was too impetuous.
Look where it’s got you.
She brushed the thought away, blew on her nails and drank some more.
The local news programme had an item about an event at the Clarendon Dock, some kind of blues night. There were shots of a marquee where the bar would be and on a stage with the word Guinness emblazoned all over it, a band was rehearsing.
The reporter was a young woman who stood with her back to Belfast Lough, the wind blowing her hair into her eyes.
‘From seven o’clock tonight there’ll be bands from all over Ireland at what promises to be a great night for blues fans young and old. There’ll also be a special mystery guest and word has it that it will be none other than Belfast’s own Van Morrison.’
Clarendon Dock was part of an area earmarked for upmarket redevelopment, peace and tranquillity permitting. Meg had never been there; that whole corner of the city was a mystery to her. But why not go tonight? It would be somewhere to have some fun and get lost in the crowd.
A spot of company would be good, though. She picked up the phone and dialled a number. ‘Elizabeth? Hi, it’s Meg. How are you?’
‘Well now, here’s a surprise. Where the hell have you been for the past six months?’
‘It hasn’t been that long.’
‘It has, you know. I thought you’d forgotten about me.’
‘No – how could I do that? I just didn’t get around to phoning, that’s all.’
‘I tried you a couple of times,’ Elizabeth told her, ‘but then I just gave up on you.’
‘Oh, Elizabeth, I’m sorry. Do you still love me?’ she implored in a poor-little-me voice, then giggled.
‘What are you on about? Have you been on the sauce?’
‘Just a bit. To deaden what has been a dreadful day. Listen, I really would like to go out somewhere tonight and wipe away all memory of it, thank you very much. Want to come with me?’
‘That depends. What had you in mind?’
‘There was a thing on the news just now. That Clarendon Dock place – have you ever been?’
‘Is it down at the docks?’
‘Well, it would be, wouldn’t it?’
‘Heard of it,’ Elizabeth said, ‘But I’ve never been there.’
‘Well then, do you fancy going tonight? There’s some big blues thing on – not that it’s my kind of music exactly – but it might be fun. Van the man and all. And . . . and, well, there’s things I have to tell you.’
‘Such as?’
‘Mmm . . . I’ll save it until later. It would take too long.’
‘Juicy?’
‘Yeah, well – depends on your point of view.’
Temptation plus a lifetime of friendship did the trick. They arranged to meet at Clarendon Dock at nine thirty.
Meg left her house at eight, after vodka number four, and walked along the Lisburn Road to the Chelsea wine bar. The evening was warm. She was wearing a jacket over a short dress with a low neckline and as she walked into the bar the bow-tied bouncers at the front door eyed her with a mixture of appreciation and curiosity. A woman going into a pub alone was a rare enough thing in this city.
Once inside, no one noticed her much. The place was crowded with people who were either out early or who had not yet gone home from work. She ordered a glass of wine and sat with it and the Belfast Telegraph thinking, why the hell not. If a man could do this, come into a pub and have a quiet drink, then why couldn’t she? She was a professional woman with a responsible job . . . except, she reminded herself, now she didn’t have one. Sinking feelings began to return. She left and got a taxi to the Clarendon Dock.
The cab driver dropped her at the end of Pilot Street. ‘This is as far as I can go, love. They have it all blocked off down there with them hamburger vans and everything.’
She got out. Somebody was singing about his ‘Sweet Home Chicago’, the thud of the bass line bouncing off stone walls.
‘Will I be able to get a taxi back?’ she said, counting out change from her handbag.
‘It’s kinda hard,’ he told her. ‘But sometimes the people who run these things organise a free bus back into the city and everybody gets taxis from there.’
‘That’ll do me,’ she said and gave him a decent tip with the fare.
‘Thanks very much, love.’ He grinned at her and ground the gears into reverse. ‘Enjoy yourself now. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t.’
There was a gate into the dock and an entrance fee of six pounds. Hamburgers were sizzling on a grill in the open air and she could smell fried onions, too. She was starved. She bought a burger with lots of mustard and walked on in.
One way or another, there were a couple of hundred people scattered round the site, sitting on steps, lined up three or four deep at the bar in the marquee or just standing in front of the stage listening to the music. Most were drinking Guinness out of plastic pint tumblers.
She looked at the band. There was a grizzled, grey-bearded bass player with a pony tail and a kind of fez. Beside him, the lead guitarist’s face seemed pained with the effort of hauling strings of notes out of an instrument reluctant to give them up.
After the first couple of bites, the burger turned rapidly from an object of desire into a greasy mess. She dropped the remains into a litter bin and headed for the bar where she ordered a half-pint of Guinness. When in Rome and all that.
By ten o’clock, she had had a second one and at last she had to admit she was feeling a bit drunk. She was not noticeably out of her head, she was sure of that, and not loaded enough to stop. Not just yet.
She was also getting tired of looking round for Elizabeth who had still not appeared and now, damn it, it was starting to rain. She had seen that there was a bar over on her right: Pat’s Bar, it was called. She pushed her way across the courtyard towards it, thinking that she should get there quickly before everyone else had the same idea.
The pub was small and dark and crammed full of people. A couple of women were standing outside the ladies’ so she fell in behind them. As she waited, her gaze roamed over the walls. Faded theatre bills were mounted alongside signed black and white pictures of actors long since forgotten.
When she came out of the lavatory, she heard a woman’s laugh. It was a hearty, natural laugh and she looked instinctively for its owner, thinking that if Elizabeth turned up it would not occur to her to come in here. At a table in a corner a dark-haired woman in black trousers and black jacket was sitting beside a young man in a smart office suit. A mobile phone lay on the table with their drinks and they looked as if they had come straight from work.
Meg went to the bar and got another half-pint, watching them out of idle curiosity. Another man joined them. Meg thought they might be lawyers. Doctors, maybe. The world was full of them. Even out-of-work doctors.
She could hear their conversation. ‘So – did you find out?’ the first man was asking.
‘Yeah – he won’t be appearing,’ the newcomer said.
‘He’s not? Ah, that’s crap. What’s the problem?’
‘Some contractual hassle, apparently. He’s doing a concert in Botanic Gardens in a couple of weeks and the deal is that he can’t appear anywhere in the vicinity within a certain time limit either side. Bit of a bummer that, isn’t it?’
‘Too bloody right,’ the first man said. ‘Shit, that’s the only reason I came.’ He downed his drink, then stood. ‘Right then, I’m off.’
‘Me too,’ the second one said. ‘What about you?’ They looked at the woman. ‘You coming?’
She shook her head. ‘Not just yet. I’ll finish my drink.’ She had a tall glass with something icy. She lifted the mobile and gave a little smile. ‘I’m waiting for a call anyway.’
‘Oh, very secretive,’ one of the men said and grinned. ‘OK, then, we’ll see you tomorrow.’
They kissed her on the cheek and left. As they opened the door Meg could see that it was pouring outside.
The blues burst in. ‘I went down to the crossroads. Got down on my knees.’
She had been standing for a long time and she was tired of it. There was only one place where she could sit. She took her drink over to the table.
‘Excuse me, do you mind if I sit here?’
The woman gave her a quick once-over and a smile that looked slightly amused. ‘Help yourself.’
‘Thanks. Hope I’m not disturbing you.’
‘Not at all.’
They sat for a couple of minutes, sipping their drinks, not speaking, alone in their separate worlds. The room was buzzing in Meg’s head. She could feel the woman watching her.
‘On your own then?’
‘Sorry?’
‘Out on your own?’ the woman said.
Meg made a face. ‘Sort of. I was supposed to meet a friend but she didn’t show and I’m not going out into that rain to look for her.’ She gestured at the vacant seats. ‘I see your friends have abandoned you.’
The woman smiled. ‘A couple of colleagues. Friends from work. We really only came because we heard Van Morrison would be on. Apparently it’s a false alarm.’ She twisted her glass which was empty now. She gave Meg a quizzical look. ‘Listen, I’m going to the bar to get myself a drink. Will you join me in something?’
Meg looked at her, trying to read the offer. Was she coming on to her? If she was, she would not get very far. She should say no. But she hesitated instead.
It was only a drink; that was all. She could look after herself.
‘Sure, why not. But I think I’ve had it with the Guinness. A vodka and tonic would be nice.’