I had the absurd fear that I’d died, and that this was my Hell – to spend forever in a juggernauts’ graveyard, phoning people who never answered, under the unforgiving glare of a fluorescent strip light that made my puffy white hands and arms look like marbled meat. I shook my head, but only succeeded in making my shoulder twang painfully.
I leaned my throbbing head on the back of my hand. I should call the police. I should pick up the phone and dial 999 and tell some stolid citizen in a dark blue uniform exactly what had happened to me. But in my weak and fevered condition the prospect horrified me. I felt the same way about the hospital. The thought of strange hands touching me, and unknown faces leaning over me, questioning me, challenging me, a myriad of voices buzzing in my ears like a nest of wasps… The idea repulsed me.
Of course, this was stupid. My home had been ransacked, I had been attacked and nearly killed. I lifted the receiver again.
I replaced it. I did not want to entrust myself to the police. It had never worked before. I remembered Lily saying, ‘But he doesn’t know all about you, does he?’ in that horrid, insinuating tone, during our argument, that smug tone that undermined my reality regardless of the facts. The police would do the same…
Well, I thought, some kind of resolve thickening around my dreamy head, they can try. My house has been broken into and I’m injured, I’m cut, and it’s swollen and hot in my shoulder and it’s making me giddy and I’ve got to call somebody.
But in a minute.
I rested, to muster my courage and word my explanations, which was proving difficult. My head swam deliriously, and just then, one last sharp idea shot through it, like a little silver fish through a thick sea.
‘What city?’ said the bored voice of the operator.
My mouth, when I opened it, was as dry as dust.
‘Cambridge.’
‘What’s the name?’ Her voice was flat and contemptuous. She thought I was drunk, most likely.
‘Martin Forrester,’ I said, then tacking on needlessly. ‘It might be Dr Forrester.’
‘I see,’ she said. That in all of my terrors, borne of fatigue, pain and loneliness, the only human company that I could lay claim to was a woman who despised me sight unseen made me want to weep.
I think, as I phased in and out of consciousness at this point, that I must actually have cried, because I remember that her voice became somewhat softer as she gave me the number. I wrote it down on the pad with a well-chewed pencil. My hand was feather light.
He was in.
My head felt on fire, the four walls seemed to buckle around me. The tape on my bandages cut into me like a vice, the thin shirt I wore seemed like a tent designed purely to keep heat all over me. Heat, heat, too much of it altogether and it was everywhere. The sheet was soaked. I looked at the floor, with its unfamiliar carpet. The floor would be cooler. I tried to get out of the bed but it was just too much work. Gravity itself had changed, and a pillow weighed a ton, a sheet a thousand tons, a blanket a million tons. My shoulder throbbed ceaselessly. I wanted to cut it off and be rid of it, for good.
I closed my eyes, and when I opened them Bethan Avery was there, which seemed perfectly natural. She was dressed in a little hooded Parka and a short tartan skirt over black cotton tights. She obviously wanted to continue the conversation we’d been having while I’d been waiting for Martin to pick me up.
‘When will you see me?’ she asked with exasperation. I thought she was being a bit pre-emptory, since she was already here.
‘Oh, soon, soon.’ Speech was an effort. The ghastly heat had filled my mouth and dried it all up. ‘Soon, darling.’
‘Margot, you can’t lie about in bed all the time.’
‘I know, I know…’
‘He’ll come to get me soon. We have to do something or I’ll die, Margot, we-’
‘I know!’ I shouted.
Her face softened. I wanted to cradle her in my arms, her bottom lip seemed so tender, her eyes so large and dark. But I couldn’t raise my arms just then so she remained remote and hazy.
I thought she was about to leave. I couldn’t have borne the heat and timelessness alone so I reached out a supplicating hand, which rose for a moment and then fell weakly to the bed.
‘I’ll get you, Bethan. I promise. I’ll take you home.’
‘Home,’ she said, considering the word.
‘It’ll all be all right.’
‘It’ll never be all right.’ She rubbed the side of her face thoughtfully. ‘I can never go home. But I know what I want. I want a future. Bring me a future. Do that and I’ll let you go.’
‘What kind of future?’ I asked dreamily, not really following her.
‘Any future will do.’
I sighed and shut my eyes, and Martin was there, with a couple of pills and a glass of water. He looked exhausted, and there were tiny tight lines around his eyes.
‘Where is she?’ I asked, pushing at his hand, which was gently offering the pills. ‘Where did she go?’
‘There’s no one here, Margot. Open wide and stop scaring me.’
‘No, no,’ I said, still weakly resisting his warm arm. ‘Didn’t you hear us?’
‘I didn’t hear anything,’ he said. ‘Take these. You’ll feel better.’
‘I don’t like pills.’
‘They’re only painkillers.’
‘They keep telling me to take pills. Everything will be fine if I take the pills. Well I prefer things not to be fine. I prefer them to be real. I won’t take any fucking pills.’
‘You took them before. And see, you’re better already. You know who I am, that’s a start. Just take them. They’re nothing sinister.’
I wavered. ‘All right.’
I opened my mouth and he poked them in. They stuck to my dry tongue. He held the glass gently up to my lips and I took a few weak sips of water.
He tried to take the glass away but the water turned to nectar in my mouth. He patiently held it still while I drained it very slowly.
‘Want some more?’
I nodded. My head felt heavy on my neck.
He left me and I could hear a tap being turned. He came back with a full glass. I drank greedily.
‘D’you know where you are?’ he asked eventually.
‘No. But I think this must be your house, so we’re in Cambridge, right?’
‘You are a lot better. Do you remember getting here?’
I sighed, suddenly exhausted again. ‘No. Wait. Yes. There was a hospital, and a doctor who said he was from Tobago. And policemen came.’
‘Quite right,’ he said. He took the glass away. ‘No more for a few minutes. No need to overdo it.’
I thought for a moment. The mist seemed to be clearing. God, thought a nonsensical part of my head, that stuff’s hot shit.
‘So, how did I get here?’
‘The police picked you up from the warehouse, remember?’ He looked very kind in the dim light, his long hair loose around his face. ‘They took you to the hospital in London.’
‘No, I don’t remember that part.’ At least, I didn’t remember anything that I hadn’t just imagined. ‘What was I saying to you?’
‘Nothing that made much sense. I thought you were dying. I was trying to get you to phone the police and you were getting hysterical.’ He shrugged. ‘So I ratted you out to the ambulance service. Sorry. Then I thought, she sounds terrified, I’d better go up there and see her.’
I frowned. ‘You drove all the way to London?’
‘No, not London. Essex. Well, what else was I supposed to do? Just hang up on you? I thought you were going to die on me just when our acquaintance was becoming interesting…’ He pondered the empty glass in his hand. ‘Fortunately, it’s not that bad… your shoulder, that is. It’s just a cut, not too deep. It needed a few stitches.’ That intense green gaze turned on me. ‘They say that the reason you, um, are feeling a little strange right now is that you’ve discontinued your medication.’