I think I came to briefly in the ambulance, but I can’t remember much about it, other than someone saying, ‘You hit your head.’ Even though I was almost entirely out of it, I remember feeling a little irritated by the patronising tone of voice, like I was a patient with memory loss who didn’t know what year we were in or who the prime minister was.
Funnily enough, back when I first arrived at the hospital, they did actually ask me all those questions to check my cognitive skills and general recall were still functioning without issue. I could give them the answers they wanted to the basic stuff – I even told them I thought the prime minister was a bit of a prick. None of that mattered much to me though, because something about the whole situation was very, very wrong.
I knew it as soon as the nurse told me that I’d been taken to hospital after falling over in the street just outside my home. Neighbours had supposedly seen me fall and taken me into their house, and when I’d passed out completely they’d phoned an ambulance, worried about concussion or a brain injury.
‘The good news is that surgery wasn’t necessary, although the arm and shoulder fracture will be a bit painful while it heals,’ the nurse said, giving my uninjured arm a squeeze. ‘You’re just so lucky you have such nice neighbours.’
Sitting here now, a day later, I mull the story over in my head as the TV by the bed of the person next to me plays out a news report on its weak, tinny speakers.
The explosion at the power station. The massive clear-up operation is now underway.
Memories float in and out of clarity in my mind.
Me, stepping out of my house and the sky dark with smoke.
Some rubble on the road.
Had I tripped over then and banged my head?
Memories of waking up on the Franklins’ sofa do seem real to me.
Trying to make sense of them feels like trying to catch fog in my hands. My head aches so I stop and just lie still.
The rest of the late afternoon of that second day is filled with dizziness and sleep. Nightmares cloud my spinning mind. I even tell a doctor about them. ‘Like hallucinations, they are,’ I say to him, while he peruses some papers about my head injury. I get the feeling the whole thing bores him a bit. Not life-threatening enough to be of interest, perhaps. He tells me I’ll feel better soon and then wanders away.
As the light outside dims into an unusually beautiful sunset, bathing the ward in a soothing yellow glow, I begin to think of my boy, and of Pete. And how there won’t be anyone to visit me or take me home. I’ll have to get a taxi, when the time comes. I’ll have to put myself to bed and wake up stiff and aching the next morning, in need of painkillers, with nobody there to bring me a hot drink or tell me everything is going to be OK.
It’s while I’m thinking about the boys that something sounds in my head, like a little alarm bell.
Danny.
Something about Danny.
It’s the same feeling I used to get when I was a teenager if I’d forgotten to do a bit of schoolwork or left my pencil case at home. The feeling of something incomplete, forgotten, not finished. A task left undone. And another image floats into my mind then too. An image of another boy, sitting on his bed, crying.
It’s Jonathan Franklin.
And Mimi, too, crying in the kitchen.
And the words… chilling words.
It’s about what he keeps in the attic.
Like a key, those words unlock a different sensation. The feeling of hands on me. The pressure of them. Pushing me. And then falling. Falling.
I sit up, causing a sharp pain in my arm and making me gasp.
‘You shouldn’t move too quickly, you know,’ a nurse says to me as if I’m three years old. ‘And your visitor is back. Now you’re awake…’ She turns to talk to someone just out of my field of view. ‘She’s woken up now. Just here.’
I hear footsteps, and then she comes into view.
Janet Franklin.
She’s even brought grapes.
‘Stephanie, how are you feeling?’ she says, in a not dissimilar voice to the nurse who’s just left us. ‘Are you in pain?’
I look up at her, struggling to speak. While she waits, Janet takes the plastic wrapper off the grapes and lays the box down on the table near my bed. ‘You gave us such a fright,’ she says, still in her smooth, slightly patronising tone. ‘You had a bump on the head, outside in the street. Do you remember?’
I open my mouth and close it again. Was she really doing this? I feel a creeping wave of disbelief and revulsion spread through me. She couldn’t… She wouldn’t…
‘I see you’re still a bit confused,’ she says, smiling and shaking her head.
‘I’m not confused.’ I say the words very quietly, but even amidst the bustle of the hospital ward, she can hear them. And I see her face harden.
‘It’s only natural,’ she says, her eyes now fixed on mine, ‘to feel a little bit overwhelmed when you’ve had such an ordeal. I couldn’t bear you being alone, so I just had to come and see you. Check you’re remembering everything clearly.’
I take a deep breath. ‘I wasn’t in the street. I was in the attic. We were in there. Me, you, and Mimi. And we’d found—’
‘In the attic?’ she says, cutting across me, a frown now troubling her face, the smile replaced with a look of apparent concern. ‘No, no, Stephanie, you’ve got the whole thing very muddled in your head. Nobody’s been in the attic in our house for years.’
‘But,’ I splutter, ‘Richard’s study is in there. It’s where he works.’
She’s still shaking her head. ‘We don’t really use it much. Anyway, you didn’t even go upstairs. We’d only just helped you into the house after your fall when you collapsed and we had to phone 999.’
I can feel my breathing starting to quicken. She isn’t going to do this. I’m not going to let her do this. ‘Did you push me?’ I keep the words quiet but emphatic, determined that she hear them clearly. I don’t want to sound hysterical or confused. I want her to know I am giving her this chance to explain properly what happened.
It doesn’t surprise me when she opts not to take it.
‘Push you? My dear, I was inside the house when you fell. And you were across the street. Nobody pushed you. You fell and hurt yourself. We’ve all been so worried about you.’ Her voice stays sweet and smooth, but there’s something else buried within it. Something hard and cold, like she’s embedded ice inside each word.
Then a memory arrives in my mind without warning, like a vivid scene being replayed before my eyes. And suddenly I know what to say.
‘Who are Alexa and Logan?’
It gets a reaction. Her eyes, which had been cool and steady, now widen quickly, then narrow.
I carry on, before she can speak.
‘I saw a note you wrote to them. Or one of your practice attempts. I suppose you thought you’d binned it? Kept it out of sight? Why did you need to go to stay with them? Why did you need time to heal?’
She takes a deep breath and says, ‘I don’t know where you’re getting all this from, Stephanie, but I’m not ashamed to say that I was… well, I needed a small operation last year and I stayed with them. Some friends. I didn’t want to bother my husband and children. Didn’t want to worry them. So I just said I was staying with them for a week, just to… um… see the sights around… um… Berwick-upon-Tweed. Not that much to see, but they do have an Elizabethan Wall, which is worth a look, I suppose…’
She seems to have drifted off in her mind a little because her expression is now glazed. Then it snaps back to me, full of a fierce, precise attention, as if a switch had just re-activated her.
‘So what did you expect to be able to do with this knowledge, Stephanie? Talk me round to believing your bizarre fantasies? Or perhaps even blackmail me? Threaten to tell my husband secrets you suppose you have about my health? What a troubled person you are. I really do feel sorry for you.’
She stares at me. I stare at her. We stay like that, looking at each other for what feels like an eternity. Her eyes never leave mine and mine never leave hers. Eventually I can’t bear the idea of being in her company for a single second longer. ‘You’re monsters,’ I say through clenched teeth. ‘You and your husband. And I pity your children.’
Her face twitches ever so slightly when I say those final words. For a moment, I think she’s going to say something. A cruel retort, perhaps, or further feigned concern. But she doesn’t. She just clutches her handbag to her side, walks around the bed and out of sight, leaving me alone.
I wait until she’s definitely gone. I couldn’t bear a forceful confrontation – not now. And besides, Janet won’t run off anywhere. She’ll try to keep up the front, go back to normal. Once I’m sure she’s safely down the corridor and out of earshot, I catch the eye of a nurse walking down the ward with a water jug.
‘Excuse me,’ I say, as loudly as I can manage.
She looks over to me and offers a kind smile. ‘Can I get you anything?’
‘Yes,’ I say, giving a small nod. ‘I want to speak to the police.’