Maria, the receptionist, closed the visitor’s book and watched as they walked silently towards the exit.
‘Nadine is fully conscious,’ he said when the automatic doors closed behind them and they stood facing each other.
‘I’m glad,’ she said. ‘She must have been in hell.’
‘Yes,’ he nodded. ‘In a hell of your making. If you ever attempt to contact her again I’ll kill you with my bare hands.’
‘Kill me, Jake? You desired me once and now you want me dead.’ A nerve jerked beneath her eye but, otherwise she remained impassive. Perhaps that was her madness. Not to care or be afraid of the consequences of her actions. What barrier had she stepped across to arrive in that space?
‘It’s not an idle threat, Karin. I love my wife. I’ll do what’s necessary to protect her.’
‘You think she loves you? Fool! The only man she ever loved was my father – ’
‘This has nothing to do with your father.’
‘It has everything to do with him.’
‘I don’t want to know – ’
‘You needn’t worry, Jake. I’m not going to divulge some pathetic incest confession. My father was a charmer, not an abuser. Those other women meant nothing to him. I could cope with them but it was intolerable when she was my best friend. You read her letters. I had to make you understand what it was like for me, knowing what she did with him… I saw them. Do you understand… I saw them together.’ Her voice quivered suddenly. ‘Have you any idea how that affected me?’
‘You caused that accident–’
‘It was no accident. She drove my father to his death. All those years I’ve been tormented… I can’t forgot… can’t forgive. I saw them together… so many times. She thought I didn’t notice but how could I not see what was going on… she was trying to steal him away from me. Why couldn’t she have been satisfied with you? She’s to blame for everything…’
A sob refused to break. She touched her throat, as if to free the sound then swung away from him and walked towards the car park. He let her go, afraid of what he would do if he touched her. She had driven away by the time he reached Eleanor’s car. He pressed his hand against the door and bent over until he was able to breathe normally.
Berlin rocks. An analysis of the cell site would show that the text came from the vicinity of Mallard Cove on the night of the accident. But what could it prove? Shortly after Cora’s funeral, he had hammered a small wooden cross into the spot where she died. Every week he laid fresh flowers there. The guards had inspected the trajectory of the skid. The scum of seaweed that turned part of the road into a greasy slick. Only one set of tyres had been visible. Even they had been washed away when another high tide sent the swans swimming with lofty indifference over the accident scene.
A text bleeped on his mobile. He sat in the car and read it.
‘I’m in the beat of your heart, Jake,’ Karin had written. ‘Always remember that. I’ll be there until the moment it stops.’
Chapter 73
Nadine
A month has passed since my awakening. I struggle with memory. My speech is slurred and slow. I take one step, then two before my knees buckle. The following day I’m back at the bars again, one foot following the other. As a case study I’m presented as a triumph over hopelessness. This is what my medical team believe. My neurologist diagnoses selective retrograde amnesia, a rare condition, he says. I detect a tremor of doubt behind his certainty. I’m a medical mystery, a fragmented woman, whom he’s trying to put back together. The odds are against my full recovery. I’m given this information gently but firmly. My coma was profound and prolonged. I’m terrified the dark waves will carry me away again. The events that occurred before my accident are lost but I remember the younger years and, also, the memories I formed when I struggled from the blackness.
Jake collects me from Mount Veronica for my forty-second birthday and wheels me over the threshold of Sea Aster. They are all there to greet me, Donal with his patient smile, Eleanor on a walking stick, Brian with clay under his nails and a new pottery collection called Luminosity. Ali has Sara attached to her hip, and the twins, on Skype, are here in spirit if not in person.
Some memories are as bright as diamonds and as enduring. My heart folds over with love when I rock Sara in my arms and think about the random nature of existence. Ali is here in all her dark, moody beauty because of a faulty condom. Brian with his gift for moulding beautiful shapes exists because I forgot to insert my diaphragm one night when Jake and I argued over something long forgotten and made up with a few moments of frenzied sex. Sam and Samantha owe their athletic prowess to a bout of food poisoning that had expelled the last residue of the Pill from my system when I recovered and slid back into Jake’s arms. And I’m here again with all of them because he heard and understood the music I played for him. How content they seem, this family we created. Was it always like this? How could it be so if Jake and I had decided to divorce? My brain is a sponge mottled with gaps that memory once filled. My family’s patience is infinite as they explain my past. I can retain this new knowledge but I want my own memories, not those chosen by others.
Ali will leave us soon. Her agent contacted her about a new television series to be shot in London Studios. It’s a small part but has, I’m told, the potential to be developed. Opportunities have to be snatched when they orbit past and change direction. Like me, Ali has to begin again.
Mark Brewer has tried to contact her but she refuses to take his calls. She’s heard on the Barnstormer grapevine that things are not working out as he expected in New York. Every month he lodges money in an account for his daughter. He sends presents. They arrive by courier, a buggy and high chair, dresses in rainbow colours, sparkly shoes and cute hats.
She and Christine plan to move into Wharf Alley and look after Sara between them. Christine is still a sylph. The Arboretum Affair continued to attract full houses while I was steeped in darkness. Ali could return to the cast and work under their new director but she wants a fresh start. No negative echoes, she says, yet I see her grief when she believes she’s unobserved. I want her to face her loss. Not hide from it as I once did, seeking oblivion in pain.
My mobile phone rings during the meal. The number of my ID screen is unknown. No one speaks when I answer. The silence vibrates with hatred. She’s one memory I retain. Is she listening to my family’s voices around the table, the clink of dishes being passed from one to the other, the slosh of wine in glasses? The silence stretches. One of us must break it. I’ve learned patience during those months in Mount Veronica and she is always the first to hang up.
‘Wrong number,’ I tell them when her phone goes dead. Only Jake pays attention, his expression alert and tense.
‘Was I very unhappy?’ I ask him when he drives me back to my ward.
‘You needed the freedom to make your own choices,’ he says.
‘And did I?’
‘Yes.’ Something in his voice prevents me asking further questions.
He will leave me for a few days soon. Shard are building a German fan base. He worries about leaving me but I’m fine. Madge Brennan has taken me on as her pet project and has organised a visitor’s rota that includes some of my old neighbours from Oakdale. I’ll be well entertained until he returns. The day has taken its toll. My arms are limp, my mind blank. And once again I’m filled with dread in case I fall headlong back into the void.
Jenny rings to wish me a happy birthday. She tells me about a holiday we spent together, trips we took to Whistler, Grouse Mountain, Vancouver Island. Her words form pictures, ski slopes, snow sculptures, a clock that puffs steam like an old-fashioned train. Lakes glinting like shattered crystal. Someone is standing beside me, not Jenny or her friendly Larry, but someone whose name escapes me until Jenny gently nudges me into the past. Daveth… Daveth…