Every Woman Knows a Secret

He began to walk, pushing himself into a rapid clockwork stride although his body felt disjointed, almost dismembered. An hour later he was waiting in a legal aid solicitor’s reception area. The solicitor’s girl receptionist took one look at him and hurried into a back office.

A man came out to see Rob. He was young, dressed in a tie and a clean shirt, Hugh Grant hair. A public schoolboy, Rob thought, as the solicitor held out his hand for Rob to shake awkwardly with his left one. He introduced himself as Michael Blake.

‘You’d better come and tell me what’s happened,’ he said, showing Rob into an office.

In a flat monotone Rob described the previous evening and Michael Blake listened without interrupting.

At the end Rob said, ‘I’m in trouble. How bad is it likely to be?’

Blake put his head on one side, thinking before he spoke. Rob warmed to him a little.

‘It depends partly on what happens to your friend. And on what charges the girls decide to press relating to the earlier part of the evening.’

Rob nodded tiredly. ‘I’ve got some form,’ he admitted.

‘You’d better tell me about it.’

It had happened in an empty car-park, three years ago. He had been taking a short cut across it on the way to meet a girl. He had been nineteen, Danny’s age. He remembered the exact shade of the summer twilight, the tarmac blotched with oil, cinema and gig posters peeling off a hoarding. There had been three of them sitting on a low wall, a big shaven-headed boy, pink and bristly as a prize pig, school bully grown up, and two of his smaller, feral-looking mates.

The big one crooned, ‘Look ‘ere, it’s Bits. C’mon, Bitty. What you got in your lunch box, Bits?’ The others laughed and Rob crossed over to them, pushing his face close to the big one.

‘Shut the fuck up,’ he said.

He thought he had grown out of both the nickname and the shame of it. They belonged to the time when he was much younger, when he was being shuttled between the children’s home and foster care. ‘Bits’ referred to the clothes he was dressed in and the food he was fed on, and also to a day when he was hungry and envious of another boy’s packed lunch. ‘Give me a bit,’ he had demanded.

By the time he was sixteen Rob had become big and tough and independent enough for the old name not to stick any more. To hear it again after so long stripped him down to a discarded version of himself.

‘Who are you telling to shut up, Bitty?’

There had been a fight, in which he came off badly. As he hauled himself out of the car-park Rob heard his attackers laughing. A thick, red pall of anger dropped around him like a curtain, overcoming all restraint. Suffocated by rage, he saw a short length of scaffolding pole in a skip at the roadside and armed himself. He crept in a wide circle back to where the three men were sitting on the wall, drinking canned lager. Then he came out of the shadows and hit the big one on the back of the head with the pole. He went down like a pig in an abbatoir.

Rob was charged with common assault. He was fined and placed on probation.

Michael Blake nodded. ‘I think I can understand the provocation,’ he said.

Rob did not discuss his fear of violence, most of all of his own which seemed buried in him like some atavistic threat.

They went to the police together, in Michael Blake’s car.

‘We were about to come looking for you, my son,’ said the officer who met them.

Rob was interviewed under caution and not re-arrested. In an interview room a police inspector tape-recorded Rob’s account of the day before. As Rob talked he could hear Danny’s voice, his laughter, as if he and not Michael Blake were sitting beside him.

Before he came to the crash itself the inspector interrupted him.

‘You can have a break for a cup of tea, if you want.’

Rob drank the thick brew gratefully. When the interview began again he sat with his head bent, trying to remember. The opaque spot at the centre of his recollection had thickened and spread. One minute he had been racing away from the police, the next Danny was lying on the grass and the whole world had changed.

‘Do you have any more to add?’ asked the inspector.

Rob shook his head. Nothing.

The inspector told Rob and Michael Blake that the breath test performed at the roadside had shown an immediate positive. The result of the blood test would not be available for some weeks, and in the meantime the police would collect evidence and statements. Officers would interview Cat and the other girl, and statements would be prepared. After that a report would be submitted to the Crown Prosecution Service, with a recommendation as to what the charges should be. Until that time, Rob was free to go.

‘By the way,’ the inspector added, ‘it seems from the accident investigator’s preliminary report that your nearside rear tyre deflated before the crash.’

Rob nodded his head again, too numb to make much of the information.

‘Is there any more news from the hospital?’ he asked.

‘There’s no change.’

Michael Blake said, ‘Mr Ellis is a self-employed carpenter and cabinet maker, and all his tools necessary to conduct his business are in the back of the van. When can he expect to have them back?’

The inspector looked at his notes. ‘After the examiner has finished with the vehicle the contents of it will be put in our store. Mr Ellis can collect them once they are approved for release. Probably in about a week’s time.’

Outside, Michael said, ‘You’ll be able to work when the plaster comes off, at least.’

A bus filled with shoppers passed beside Michael’s parked car. A boy with a school bag slung over his shoulder ran and jumped on to the platform.

‘Yeah,’ Rob said softly.

‘Can I give you a lift somewhere?’

‘No thanks,’ Rob told him. He walked away, in no particular direction, only wanting to place himself somewhere else.

The waiting stretched into the next day and the days that crept after it. The ward and the stuffy waiting room became as familiar to the women as their own bedrooms. They sat on the plastic chairs and held one another’s hands. When they spoke they talked about the past, editing it for one another so that it seemed to consist only of happy times. For the present they watched the hands of the clock and the nurses and the flickering screen above Danny’s bed. They tried not to consider the future at all.

Lizzie drove home to Sock for part of each day, and when they could stay awake no longer Jess and Beth took it in turns to snatch a few hours of sleep in the cramped bedroom near the unit.

Danny’s condition did not improve. He did not stretch out his arms again, or clench his fists when the nurses pinched his bruised flesh or pressed on his sternum. The machines did their busy work and Danny lay inert between them.

In the middle of the third day Ian arrived from Sydney.

It was more than two years since Jess and Ian had separated, and over a year since she had last seen him.

In the shabby hospital surroundings he looked fresh and fit, even after the long flight, and his suntan was incongruous beside the women’s strain-etched faces.

Beth leapt up and ran to him with a cry of relief. She clung to her father.

‘I’m here,’ he soothed her with his mouth against her hair. ‘I’m here now.’

As if the mere fact of his arrival altered everything, Jess thought, then let the thought and its bitterness slide away from her. She had no capacity now to focus on anything but her fear for Danny, and beyond it the dark bulk of awakening grief that was beginning to diminish even the fear.

When Ian looked to her she awkwardly extended her hand, but he pushed it aside and took her in his arms. They stood without speaking as the old familiarity of touch and shape and scent reasserted itself. Jess resisted a sudden blind impulse to give way and hide her face against her husband’s shoulder. She would not allow herself to weep here, not yet.

‘How is he?’ Ian asked.