My heart misses a beat. ‘What? Get what?’
‘How did you cut yourself by falling on grass?’
I close my eyes. ‘I fell on the grass but I hit myself on the corner of a bench on the way down,’ I say. And as I say that, the image flashes into my mind of the woman falling, her knees collapsing beneath her weight. Her head smashing into the corner of the table. He notes down my answer before going over to introduce himself to the paramedic team. They are a man and a woman, their demeanour curiously casual. They seem too upbeat for ambulance people.
‘Hello, Xander, is it?’ the woman says brightly, coming next to me. Her eyes join her smile so that I am drawn to them a little – green flecks in brown irises. ‘Just going to ask you a few questions. Do you know your name?’
I sigh. ‘Why do I need to know my name when you know it already?’
‘I’ll put you down as conscious responsive,’ she says brightly and starts to check my pulse with a plastic clip she attaches to my index finger.
‘Well, we’re just going to run you up the road for a quick once-over at the hospital. With head injuries it’s always better to be safe.’
I pull my finger from the clip and get to my feet. All this commotion, the flashing lights, the noise, it is all making me queasy, dizzy.
‘Do you need my consent?’
‘Yes,’ she says. ‘But the sensible thing for you would be to—’
‘Great,’ I say, wrapping my coat around me. ‘Then I’m not going.’
7
Wednesday
I sit perched on the edge of a hospital bed as a nurse swabs around my head. She disappears and then returns with a small surgical-looking pack. Her eyes are so blue. If I had managed a few more steps before my legs gave way again, I wouldn’t be here.
‘Just going to pop some stitches in that for you,’ she says. Her tone is chirpy, chirrupy even; designed to neutralise fear.
‘Hopefully, it won’t scar too much, my love. Just hold still. There.’
‘Thank you,’ I say. ‘It wasn’t necessary really.’
‘Actually, that was a bleeder, that one there. You’d have got it all over your clothes,’ she says. By the time her thoughts have caught up with her voice, it’s too late. She pretends that my clothes would have been worse for a bit of bloodstaining.
My jeans were in decent condition when I pulled them out of a recycle bin at the supermarket. Clothes seem to be turned out nearly new these days – rejected just to make cupboard space. This large red-checked shirt wasn’t missing a button when I found it. And this grey jumper, ridiculously, is cashmere, from my life before. I keep it because it’s warm – there’s no room for sentiment. My greatcoat is from a charity shop. It was a bitter winter, colder than this one when I went in with a little begged money, looking for socks. I came out with this coat, heavy, woollen. The staff took pity on me and I was too cold to be proud.
‘So have you got far to be getting home to?’ she says as she works away.
She stops suddenly and closes her eyes slowly.
‘Well, the world’s my mattress,’ I say, as brightly as I can. I wince and the paper on this gurney tears as I shift on it.
‘I’m so sorry,’ she says. ‘Is there nowhere you can go, for a night even?’ she adds as she finishes up.
I slip off the bed and rub my hands. I want to shake hers but there is so much dirt on my skin that I daren’t. I see a tiny basin in the corner and go over to wash my hands, turning the levered taps with my elbows. Brown water streams on to the white porcelain.
‘Thank you for this,’ I say, pointing to my head. ‘I’ll be fine now. I’ve got a friend I can stay with who lives nearby.’ I did once have a friend nearby.
He is smiling – Seb. We were throwing a frisbee across an ancient, serious courtyard. His arms were brown from a summer at the family villa. When he threw the disc, it floated high and then coasted past me, sliding to a stop at two pairs of feet. Nina and Grace. It seems too long ago to reach.
I close my eyes.
‘You might feel a touch groggy for a day or two but there’s unlikely to be any lasting damage,’ the nurse says and then I’m back here. In a hospital bed.
I wipe my eyes with my sleeve. The woman from the house fights her way into my head, scarlet blotting her white shirt.
‘Ooh, careful there,’ she says. ‘You’ll pull away the stitches.’
‘Oh,’ I say, sitting up. ‘You stitched my eye?’ I feather my brow with the tips of my fingers.
‘Yes. Don’t worry. You might have some gaps here and there in your memory. But it’ll come good, don’t fret yourself.’ She smiles at me.
‘I should have done something though,’ I say.
She looks quizzically at me.
‘I let her die. I watched as she was murdered,’ I say.
She walks to the door. ‘I’ll just see if there’s a doctor about for that scan,’ she says and steps out.
I glance into the corridor. A different police officer from the one who had brought me is there. His face has the expression of a man used to killing time, scrolling through a smartphone with the expression of a child. He shifts in his bulky police gear as he sees me.
‘Done,’ I say, peering out.
‘Oh,’ he says, standing. ‘Good. Do you mind if I ask you a couple of questions?’
I return a look that must be more alarmed than I’d intended.
‘Just for my notebook. Have to account for the time that’s all,’ he says, tapping his notebook.
There is a TV screen above me, playing some old show. A wisp of music snakes out. Ma belle amie. You were the beat of a drum and a symphony.
And that music, through some path I can’t untangle, takes me back to Grace and when I first saw her. It was Freshers’ week. Arriving at the college, I had the sensation of having finally sloughed off a battered old skin. There was no sadness in leaving Mum, Dad and Rory behind. In no time at all I was at a desk signing up for a student union pass. I had just put the pass into my pocket and turned around when I saw her. Just there, standing behind me.
‘Grace Mackintosh,’ she said. The person at the desk checked her name on a long printed sheet and frowned. She repeated her surname and he found it.
‘Oh,’ he said, looking over at me. ‘You’re in the same class.’
I froze. She smiled at me and all I could do was stare at her, a white-blonde sun. That was how it felt, as if I was being bathed in her radiance.
‘Hi,’ she said, ‘I’m Grace. This is Nina.’ Nina was the darkness to Grace’s light. Sharpened slate, to Grace’s softened curve.
‘Hi,’ I said. ‘I’m Xander. Xander Shute.’ And once again I couldn’t move.
‘Xander Shute?’
I look up.
‘I am arresting you on suspicion of assault occasioning grievous bodily harm. You do not have to say anything but it may harm your defence if you fail to mention when questioned something which you later rely on in court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence.’
‘What?’ I say.
‘Sorry, sir, I am going to have to place you in handcuffs for your own protection.’
I recoil but his movements are so practised that my resistance is futile. The cuffs are heavier than I had imagined they would be. As they go on, the cold steel makes me shiver.
‘I am now going to search you. Do you have anything on you that could cause either of us any injury?’
‘What?’ I say again. ‘No.’
He gets down into a crouch and begins to pat around my legs moving slowly upwards.
He stops. He takes some surgical gloves from somewhere and puts them on. I do not know what he thinks he has found. My lighter?