As she opened the door the phone rang. She let it ring, looking around to see only one toothbrush, one set of towels. The answering machine clicked into action and she waited, listening.
“Jane, it’s your mother…” Jane saw the white envelope propped against the phone and reached for it. “Didn’t you get my message this morning about Pam? Well, in case you didn’t, she’s had a girl, eight pounds seven ounces, and she’s beautiful! She was rushed into St. Stephen’s Hospital last night, I’m calling from her room…”
Jane picked up the phone as she ripped the envelope open. “Hallo, Mum! I just got home.”
Jane drove to the hospital and parked, with the unopened letter from Peter on the seat beside her. She turned the lights off and reached for the white manila envelope with her name hastily scrawled on it.
It contained one sheet of her own notepaper. Sweetheart, she read, I took on board everything you said this morning. I can’t quite deal with you, or the pressures of your work, and at the same time get myself sorted out. I am sorry to do it this way, but I think in the long run it will be for the best, for both of us. I still care for you, but I can’t see any future in our relationship. Maybe when we’ve had a few weeks apart we can meet and have a talk. Until then, take care of yourself.
It was signed simply Peter. She laid it face down on the seat and sighed, then realized that there was a postscript on the back.
I’m staying with one of my builders. When I get an address I’ll let you know where I am, but if you need me you can reach me at the yard. Then he had put in brackets: (Not Scotland Yard!).
Jane opened the door slowly, but remained sitting. Was it always going to be like this? Peter wasn’t the first, she’d never been able to keep a relationship going for more than a few months. She flicked her compact open and delved into her bag for a comb, stared at her reflection in the oval mirror for a long time. She looked a wreck, her hair needed washing and the make-up she had dashed on in a hurry that morning had long since disappeared. She studied the lines around her eyes and from her nose to her lips, the deep frown lines between her brows. She fished in her bag and brought out her lipstick, closed the mirror and ran the lipstick around her mouth without looking at it. She was so used to freshening up in a hurry that she didn’t need a mirror.
Locking the car, she walked briskly towards the bright hospital entrance. An anxious-looking woman in a wheelchair was holding an unlit cigarette. Jane smiled at her and she gave a conspiratorial grin.
“I don’t suppose you’ve got a match, have you?”
“Yes, love.” Jane took a half-used book of matches from her pocket. “You keep them, and mind you don’t get cold. It’s freezing out.”
As Jane headed for the night nurse at reception, she thought to herself, So what if you’re going home to an empty flat? You’ve done that most of your adult life. By the time she reached the desk she had persuaded herself that she preferred it that way.
She gave the nurse a cheerful smile. “I’ve come to see my sister. I know it’s late…”
After signing the visitors’ book she headed towards the lifts, as directed. The woman in the wheelchair called out, “Thanks for the matches!”
“That’s all right, love. Good night, now!”
The corridor was deserted. Jane checked each room, peering through the little windows, until she found the right one. She could see Pam through the glass, holding the new baby, Tony’s arm resting lightly around her shoulders. Although it was way past their bedtime her two little boys were there too, spick and span, swarming over the bed and admiring their new little sister.
Watching them, Jane’s hand tightened on the door handle, but she found she couldn’t turn it. They formed a picture of a family in which she had no place. She turned away and walked slowly back down the corridor.
She headed automatically towards the river, needing quiet, space to think. It was an ordeal to cross the King’s Road; she found herself shrinking from the traffic, from the faces passing her in their shiny cars; happy faces, drunken faces, all going somewhere, all with a purpose, with someone…
She found herself in Cheyne Walk, beside the water. Tonight the Thames looked like a river of oil, sluggish and smooth, and she could not shake off the feeling that dead and rotting bodies floated just beneath the surface. She had come here to celebrate a new life, but all she could see was death, and pain.
By the time she returned to the hospital, visiting hours were officially over, but she slipped along to the private section without being stopped.
The room was decked with flowers and bowls of fruit, and the baby lay asleep in her cot, but Pam’s bed was empty. This time she didn’t hesitate, she walked into the room and gazed down at the baby girl, moved the blanket gently away from her face.
Soft footsteps behind her announced Pam’s return. Jane looked up, smiling, back in control.
“Hi! Just checking she has all her fingers and toes! She’s OK? Bit of a dent in her head, though…”
Pam climbed cautiously into bed. “Her skull is still soft, it’ll go. If you’d been here earlier you’d have seen Tony and the boys. Mum’s staying until I go home.”
“I feel a bit cheap-no flowers, no fruit. But I’d just got in from work.”
Pam was still in pain. She shifted uncomfortably in the bed.
“Could you just plump up my pillows?” She lowered her voice. “You know we got this on Tony’s firm? It’s a new scheme, a private patients plan. We can all get private medical attention now…”
Jane rearranged her sister’s pillows and straightened the sheets, then kissed her sister’s cheek. “Well, congratulations! What are you going to call her, Fergie? Eugenie? Beatrice? I mean, now it’s all private…”
Pam pulled a face. “Well, Mum’s actually hinted…”
“What? No, you can’t call her Edna!”
They were interrupted by a nurse, who gave Jane a pleasant smile that nonetheless indicated that she shouldn’t be there. “It’s time for her feed, I’m afraid. Beautiful, isn’t she?”
She disappeared with the baby, and Jane prepared herself to leave.
“You can tell this is private: no bells and everybody out!” She kissed Pam’s cheek and smiled. “I gotta go, anyway.”
“Thanks for coming. Give my love to Peter.”
“If I see him I will…” She hesitated at the door. “It’s all off.”
Pam was instantly concerned. “Oh, no! Why?”
Jane shrugged. “You know me.”
“Is there someone else? I mean, are you OK?”
“No, there’s no one else. I’m… It was a mutual decision.”
“Well, you know what you’re doing. Is the case we saw on television over?”
Jane paused before she answered. Her family’s total lack of understanding when it came to her work, to herself, on top of Peter leaving, swamped her, but she managed to keep her smile in place.
“No, I haven’t got him-yet!” She gave her sister a little wave. “G’night, God bless the baby.”
As she closed the door behind her, only the expression in her eyes betrayed Jane’s loneliness. She had made a tremendous effort, forcing herself to come here. Having done her duty, at last she could go home and cry.
10
“What in Christ’s name do you think you’re playing at?” Kernan demanded.
“We had good reason to search Marlow’s flat,” she protested. “Bloke he was in jail with said he had a lock-up…”
“I’m not talking about Marlow! You’ve had Sergeant Amson going over Shefford’s record sheets.”
How the hell had he found out so quickly? She opened her mouth to speak, but Kernan ploughed on, “If you want information regarding one of my ex-officers, then you know bloody well you should have come to me!”