Caitlin shrugged, then in a deadpan voice said, ‘Yep, well, I’m quite worth loving really.’
‘Sometimes!’ Lynn retorted. ‘Only sometimes!’
Caitlin nodded, a resigned look on her face, and resumed her texting.
Lynn reversed out on to Crystal Hill, drove a short distance forwards and finally found the main entrance for vehicles. She turned left into it, passed a cluster of yellow ambulances parked outside the curved glass façade of an almost incongruously modern block, then finally saw the Bannerman Wing sign and turned right into the car park opposite a Victorian building that looked as if it might recently have had a facelift.
A couple of minutes later, carrying Caitlin’s overnight holdall, she walked past a man wearing a coat over his hospital pyjamas who was sitting on a bench beside a floodlit statue, smoking a cigarette, and entered the columned entrance porch of Bannerman Wing. Caitlin, dressed in a lime-green hoodie, ripped jeans with frayed bottoms and untied trainers, trailed behind her.
There were twin vertical perspex signs in front of them, printed with the words ROYAL SOUTH LONDON, and a row of white columns stretching ahead down the hallway. To the right was a visitors’ information desk, where a large black woman was on the phone. Lynn waited for her to finish the call, glancing around.
A bewildered-looking grey-haired man with a red holdall in one arm and a black handbag in the other was shuffling forwards in slippers. To her left, a cluster of people sat around in a waiting area. One, an old man, was in a motorized wheelchair. Another old man, in a beanie and tracksuit, sat slumped on a green stool, with a wooden walking stick out in front of him. A youth in a grey hoodie and jeans was plugged into an iPod. A young man, with despair on his face, wearing a blue T-shirt, jeans and trainers, was seated, bent forward, his hands clasped between his thighs, as if waiting for someone or something.
The whole place seemed filled with a late-night air of tired, silent desperation. Further along she saw a shop, like a small supermarket, selling sweets and flowers. A shell-suited elderly woman with blue-rinsed hair emerged, opening a chocolate bar.
The woman behind the desk ended her call and looked up pleasantly. ‘Can I help you?’
‘Yes, thank you. Shirley Linsell in the Rosslyn Wing is expecting us.’
‘Can you give me your names?’
‘Caitlin Beckett,’ Lynn said. ‘And her mother.’
‘I’ll tell her. Take the lift to the third floor and she’ll meet you there.’ She pointed down the corridor.
They walked along, past the shop, past signs reading, BUTT OUT, SMOKING BAN IN ALL NHS HOSPITALS AND DON’T INFECT. PROTECT and past weary-looking, disoriented people coming in the opposite direction. Lynn had always been spooked by hospitals, remembering the countless visits to Southlands Hospital in Shoreham when her father had had a stroke. Other than maternity wards, hospitals were not happy places. Hospitals were where you went when bad things happened to you or to people you loved.
At the end of the corridor they reached an area, in front of the steel doors of the lift, that was bathed in an iridescent purple light. It was more like the light she would expect to find in a disco, or on the set of a science fiction film, Lynn thought.
Caitlin paused from her texting to look up. ‘Cool,’ she said with an approving nod. Then, in a breathless rush of excitement, ‘Hey! You know what, Mum? This is a clue!’
‘A clue?’ Lynn questioned.
Caitlin nodded. ‘Like beam me up from Star Trek, right?’ Then she grinned mysteriously. ‘They put this on for us.’
Lynn gave her daughter a quizzical look. ‘OK. So why did they do that?’
‘We find out on the third floor. That’s our next clue!’
As they rode the slow lift, Lynn was pleased that Caitlin seemed to have perked up. All her life she had had strong mood swings and recently the disease had made them worse. But at least she was coming in here with a positive attitude, for the moment.
They stepped out on the third floor, to be greeted by a smiling woman in her mid-thirties. She was pleasant-looking, a classic English rose face framed with long, brown hair, and she was dressed in a white blouse, with a knitted pink top and black trousers. She gave Caitlin a warm smile first, then Lynn, then turned back to Caitlin. Lynn noticed she had a tiny burst blood vessel in her left eye.
‘Caitlin? Hi, I’m Shirley, your transplant coordinator. I’m going to be looking after you while you are here.’
Caitlin eyeballed her levelly for some moments and said nothing. Then she looked down at her phone and resumed her endless texting.
‘Shirley Linsell?’ Lynn asked.
‘Yes. And you must be Caitlin’s mum, Lynn.’
Lynn smiled. ‘Nice to meet you.’
‘I’ll take you along to your room. We’ve got a nice single room for you, Caitlin, for the next few days. And we’ve arranged an overnight room nearby for you, Mrs Beckett.’ Addressing them both, she added, ‘I’m here to answer any questions that you have, so please ask anything you like, anything at all that you want to know.’
Still looking down at her phone, Caitlin said, ‘Am I going to die?’
‘No, of course not, darling!’ Lynn said.
‘I wasn’t asking you,’ Caitlin said. ‘I was asking Shirley.’
There was a brief, uncomfortable silence. Then the transplant coordinator said, ‘What makes you think that, Caitlin?’
‘I’d have to be pretty fucking stupid not to, wouldn’t I?’
22
Roy Grace followed the tail lights of the black Audi TT, which was some distance ahead of him and drawing further away all the time. Cleo didn’t seem to fully understand what speed limits were. Nor, as she approached the junction with Sackville and Nevill roads, what traffic lights were for.
Shit. He felt a stab of fear for her.
The light turned amber. But her brake lights did not come on.
His heart was suddenly in his mouth. Being T-boned by a car running a stop light produced some of the worst injuries you could have. And it was not only Cleo in that speeding car now. It was their child too.
The lights went red. A good two seconds later, the Audi hurtled through them. Roy gripped his steering wheel hard, fearing for her.
Then she was safely over and continuing along Old Shoreham Road, approaching Hove Park on her left.
He halted his unmarked Ford Focus estate at the lights, his heart hammering, tempted to call her, to tell her to slow down. But it was no use, this was how she always drove. She was worse, he had come to realize in the five months they had been dating, than his friend and colleague Glenn Branson, who had only recently passed his Police High Speed Pursuit test and liked to demonstrate his skills behind the wheel – or rather, lack of them – to Roy at every opportunity.
Why did Cleo drive so recklessly when she was so meticulous in everything else she did? Surely, he reasoned, someone who worked in a mortuary and handled, almost every day, the torn and broken bodies of people killed on the roads would take extra care when driving. And yet one of the consultant pathologists for Brighton and Hove, Dr Nigel Churchman, who had recently transferred up north, raced cars at weekends. Perhaps, he sometimes thought, if you worked in such close proximity to death, it made you want to challenge and defy it.
The lights changed. He checked there was no one doing a Cleo coming across, then drove over the junction, accelerating, but mindful that there were two cameras on the next stretch of road. Cleo totally denied that she drove fast, as if she was blind to it. And that scared him. He loved her so much, and even more so tonight than ever. The thought of anything happening to her was more than he could bear.
For nearly ten years after Sandy vanished, he had been unable to form any relationship with another woman. Until Cleo. During all that time he had constantly been searching for Sandy, waiting for news, hoping for a call, or for her to walk in through the front door of their home one day. But that had begun to change now. He loved Cleo as much as, and maybe even more than, he had ever loved Sandy, and if she did suddenly reappear, no matter how good her explanation, he strongly doubted he would leave Cleo for her. In his mind and in his heart he had moved on.