‘It’s too early to say,’ said the nursing sister who had agreed to give me what information she could.
I pushed the point, and made myself be blunt. ‘Look, is Julia likely to suffer long-term brain damage?’ I asked.
There was a pause. ‘Your friend has a serious head injury and is having brain surgery,’ said the sister eventually. ‘Of course, that may be a possibility. We just don’t know yet...’
I was shaking even more by the time I made the next call. Before I could change my mind I dialled the number of Barnstaple Police Station, and asked to speak to Superintendent Todd Mallett. It was just on eight o’clock and I was hoping that Todd was at his desk as early as I knew to be his habit. But when he picked up his extension I was unsure whether I was glad or not to have reached him.
I gave him a brief summary of events and he suggested that we should meet at once. He reckoned the time had come for another formal interview and I couldn’t argue with him about that. I did say I was not prepared to travel west all the way to Barnstaple because I desperately wanted to go to London to see Julia. For a moment I thought Todd was going to insist, but ultimately he relented and we agreed to meet at the nick in Tiverton.
Within little more than an hour and a half I was sitting in an interview room facing Todd, his regular sidekick, Detective Sergeant Pitt, who had interviewed Robin after Natasha had died, and a double tape recorder. The two men interrogated me thoroughly, questioning me repeatedly, in the way in which I had myself done with witnesses and suspects so many times. It was a new experience to be on the receiving end. But what had happened to Julia had gone through me like a cheese wire. Certainly I had no intention of prevaricating any more. I told Todd and Sergeant Pitt, whose manner indicated quite clearly how unimpressed he was with a senior officer who had got herself into such deep waters, everything that Julia had told me, all my doubts about Robin and all my fears.
When I had finished Todd sat silently for half a minute or so, tapping the end of a biro on the wooden desk between us. Momentarily I wondered if he was going to say, ‘Told you so’, and I was grateful that he didn’t, although it was beginning to appear as if he might have every right.
‘Where is Robin supposed to be, exactly?’ he asked eventually.
I gave him the address and telephone number, a number I had not dared ring myself, of the hotel just outside Waterford which Robin had told me would be his base.
Todd glanced at Sergeant Pitt, who jotted down the details, then he stood up, and put a big hand on my shoulder.
‘Go to your friend, Rose,’ he said quite softly. ‘Try not to have any contact with your husband until I have spoken to you again. Just concentrate on your friend and leave everything else to us. OK?’
I nodded, and took my leave. But it wasn’t OK, of course. Not at all. I feared that my final nightmare was about to be realised.
It was just before noon when I left Tiverton Police Station and I drove straight to the Charing Cross Hospital. Normally I used the train for trips to London, as indeed I had intended to do earlier that morning, but Charing Cross was the right side of town coming in from the west, and at least if I stayed in the car I did not have to face people and could have some time alone. I even switched off my mobile phone, not just to avoid Robin but also because I did not want to speak to anyone at all.
I stopped just once on the way for petrol and strong coffee — I couldn’t face food which was rare indeed for me — and started searching for a parking space at Charing Cross bang on 3.30 in the afternoon. The drive up had been remarkably trouble free, no hold-ups and, even though it was December, the weather was dry and bright, excellent driving conditions. Although I should have been beginning to tire, a combination of that and the adrenaline flowing through my veins meant that I had yet to feel weary. I parked eventually and half-ran into the hospital.
Julia, I quickly learned, had come out of surgery several hours earlier, but remained deeply unconscious. It was still too early to predict her level of recovery. Her mother Rachel, who still lived in our home town of Weston-super-Mare, and her brother Ronald, both of whom I knew well, were already at the hospital and looked strained and upset. They were touchingly pleased to see me and I felt, although perhaps I was being unduly hard on myself, like some kind of Judas. Certainly I could not begin to tell them anything of my fears about what had happened to Julia and how I could be involved, however unwittingly. Keeping silent added to my tension and distress.
The three of us were invited to take a peek at Julia in intensive care and although we had been warned of her condition it was still a terrible shock. Julia lay with tubes sticking out everywhere, her face, particularly around the eyes, was badly swollen and discoloured and her head was swathed in bandages. I could barely recognise my dear old friend. Rachel and Ronald both had a bit of a weep, and I didn’t blame them. For myself, I think I was past crying.
That night the hospital found a bed for Rachel. Ronald, who did something or other in the city and was married with a young family, returned to his home not far away in Chiswick, and I booked myself into a nearby hotel. In the morning when I returned to the hospital I was at least cheered to learn that Julia was coming round, and overjoyed to be told soon afterwards that the prognosis was perhaps surprisingly good. The surgeons now thought there was an excellent chance that she would make a full recovery eventually.
Julia drifted in and out of consciousness throughout the day during which her mother, brother and I took it in turns to sit anxiously by her bedside.
I checked my messages at home and on my mobile every couple of hours, waiting for Todd to call. All I picked up was message after message from Robin in Ireland which I ignored — if indeed he were in Ireland, I thought with my now customary disloyalty. I wasn’t slavishly following Todd Mallett’s instructions, I just would not have known what to say to Robin. There was a distinct note of anxiety in his later messages, but merely about my welfare. If he knew what had happened to Julia — either from first-hand knowledge, which of course was my dread, or had learned of it in some other way — he said nothing in any of his messages.
Eventually in the early evening Todd did call and I got back to him at once.
Typically, I thought, the first thing he did was to enquire about Julia’s welfare.
‘We’ll be up to see her as soon as the docs give us the say-so,’ he said.
I knew that Julia’s ability to remember was going to be crucial, but it only became apparent just how crucial when Todd related to me the progress he and his team had made in their investigation. Or lack of progress almost, it seemed. But that could be very good news for me, I thought, in the state of confusion which now passed for my normal frame of mind.
If the Natasha Felks letter had been in Julia’s flat, it, along with almost everything else, had been completely destroyed. The London Fire Brigade had already discovered that a gas burner had been left turned slightly on in the kitchen and they suspected there may have been a candle alight on the dining-room table. The gas had gradually filled the room and burst into flame.
‘Simple but effective way of doing someone in,’ said Todd.
I gulped.
‘Only thing is there’s no sign of any forced entry. The flat was securely locked. It seems incredibly careless but to the fire brigade it looks as if your mate quite simply went to bed and fell asleep leaving the candle burning and a gas tap not properly turned off. Nothing yet to prove anything different anyway.’
Todd hadn’t wasted any time. He had sent a team to interview Jeremy Cole who claimed that the letter from Natasha Felks which Julia had described to me in such detail, had never existed. The interview with Julia, which he at least admitted had taken place, had been totally about his new TV show, he said, and Natasha Felks had not even been mentioned.