She sits for a bit at a bus stop halfway to Northbourne, pulls the hood of her jacket over her head and greys out again. Comes to and finds herself inside a small gaggle of people in work clothes, all keeping a polite and frosty distance from the bench. I’m just another Homeless, she thinks, so much nicer when you’re talking about me on Facebook than I am in real life. One woman has perched at the far end of the bench, and keeps a tight grip on her briefcase. Cher looks at her phone. Quarter to eight. She’s lost another hour. No one meets her eye. Oh, Londoners. You’d step over a corpse in the street rather than cause a scene.
She stands up again as a bus pulls in and her fellow travellers surge silently towards it. Feels the world start to tip and steadies herself against the shelter. When she takes her hand away, she sees that she’s left a smudge of blood on the glass panel. She closes her eyes and breathes. Not so far to Northbourne Junction, now. It’s just across the Common. Then it’s just up to the High Street and home.
The Nurofen doesn’t seem to be working. Her head pounds as if there’s something in there trying to get out. Her pace slows and slows as she limps up Station Road, weaves her way unsteadily past dog walkers and joggers and working mothers wheeling wailing toddlers to the Little Sunshine nursery. She stops by a waste bin and retches. Nothing comes up, not even the Fanta, but her mouth tastes like old tin cans. She can barely see from her right eye, drops her hoodie further down to hide the Halloween mask that is her face. Someone, she thinks. One of you must wonder. Don’t you wonder? No one in Liverpool would walk past someone that looked like me and pretend they haven’t seen.
But it’s not true, though, is it? If Liverpool was so great, if the chirpy-chappie, bravely suffering people of your hometown were so great, you wouldn’t be in London. It’s England, isn’t it? It’s people. They’ll only help you if they think you matter.
The High Street is still half-closed. Only Greggs and the greasy spoon and the Londis and the greengrocer show signs of life. The new shops – the posh shops – don’t open until ten. That’s the thing, if you have money, she thinks bitterly. Ladies who lunch do lunch because they’re never up for breakfast. She feels tearful, weak, despairing. Can feel the blood seeping down her legs and chafing the skin on her thighs. She’s sweating profusely, though she feels so cold she’s shivering. She wipes the sweat from her forehead with her sleeve, stumbles blindly on and blunders into sturdy male body.
‘Sorry,’ she mutters, and tries to dodge sideways. Feels her balance go out from under her again and puts out a hand to catch the wall. ‘Sorry.’
‘Cher?’
She looks up. It’s Thomas Dunbar, Mr Chatty from the top flat: a loaf of bread, a pint of milk and a copy of the Guardian under his arm. He’s gone as white as a sheet, his mouth open, ready to catch flies, his specs glinting in the early morning sunlight.
‘Oh, dear Christ, Cher,’ he says, and catches her by the arm as she begins to wobble. ‘What’s happened? What the hell’s happened to you?’
Chapter Twenty-Six
There’s a tap on the door. In the bed, Cher shifts and mutters, but doesn’t wake. Vesta puts her book down on the duvet and tiptoes across to open up.
It’s Thomas. He starts to speak and Vesta hushes him with a finger to her lips. Puts the door on the latch and steps out on to the landing, pulling it to behind her.
‘How is she?’
‘Asleep. Finally. Didn’t want to wake her.’
‘No,’ he says.
‘Couldn’t let her drop off properly. Not while we had to check her for concussion. Collette’s coming back up in a bit. She was up all night, poor girl. Didn’t get a wink.’
‘Right,’ he says.
‘So…’ she begins.
‘I understand,’ he says. ‘But I brought some stuff.’
‘Stuff?’
Thomas holds out a pink-and-white tube of cream. ‘It’s arnica. For bruises. It’s not new. I’ve used it. Sorry.’
She takes it and tries to read the back, but her specs are in the bedroom by her book, and she’s reduced to hopeless squinting. ‘It’s herbal,’ he says. ‘You just rub it in. It does help. I know you probably think it’s woo-woo, but it helps.’
‘Okay,’ she says, doubtfully, surprised that this clipped little man would be dabbling in the world of woo-woo.
‘And I got some vitamin C. It’s meant to help, too. I don’t know if it does, but it can’t do any harm, can it?’
Vesta gives him an encouraging smile. ‘I should think it’ll do her the world of good. Easier than making her eat a vegetable, anyway, eh?’
He laughs, more explosively than she expected. ‘I should say so. Is she…’ His face changes, goes suddenly rusty, like he’s been left out in the rain. She realises that he’s on the edge of tears. ‘Vesta, is she okay?’
Well, well, she thinks. You never know with people. It must have been a horrible shock for him, finding her like that. She gives his arm a tentative rub, then finds herself overtaken by the urge to give him a hug. His body is stiff against hers, as though the show of affection has come as a shock. It takes him a full five seconds to respond, then he wraps his arms around her like a teenager at a dance and practically crushes the breath from her. Vesta is suddenly filled with a powerful urge to fight him off. It feels so wrong, squashed against his body like this, smelling his nervous sweat. ‘It’s all right, lovey,’ she sputters. ‘It’s okay. You did brilliantly. She owes you, she really does.’
He lets her go, and seems to stagger slightly as he goes to lean against the banister. ‘She was just so… oh, my God, who would do something like that? She’s only a kid. I thought she was going to die. I honestly thought I wasn’t going to get her home and she was going to just… I thought she was going to die right there on the street, in my arms.’
‘I know,’ she says. ‘Poor you – it must’ve been horrible.’
He snatches his specs off and polishes them ferociously with the tail of his shirt. Without the shading lenses, his eyes are huge, pale blue, like the eyes of a bush baby. ‘She’s only a kid,’ he says, again. ‘Can I…?’
‘Not right now, Thomas. She’s sleeping. Best to leave her. I’m sure she’ll want to see you later.’
‘I think – I should have taken her to casualty. I just wasn’t thinking. I should have.’
Again, she rubs his arm. She needs to calm him down. There can be no hospitals for Cher. No GPs, no crime reports. ‘No. You did the right thing. You did. She doesn’t want the hospital. You can’t make her if she doesn’t want it.’
‘But that’s crazy, Vesta. She shouldn’t be… I mean, what if there’s some internal damage? She could be bleeding inside, and…’
‘Well, we’ll have to cross that bridge when we come to it,’ she says, more matter-of-factly than she feels. She’s worried about the big nasty bruise on the girl’s stomach herself. It doesn’t feel hard to the touch, but then, she couldn’t touch it very firmly, with Cher howling and fighting her off. It might have to be the hospital, whether Cher likes it or not.
‘And she was filthy. Covered in dirt. And all those cuts…’
‘I know. I know. We washed her, gave her a bath, and we’ve put antiseptic everywhere we could get to, Thomas. Please, don’t worry. We’ve got it as under control as we can.’
There’s a hesitation. She can tell that he wants to ask about the blood on her leggings, doesn’t know if he can. Despite the fact that this is the person who carried her home, who stroked her hair off her face as though she was a toddler, Vesta feels as though confirming his fears would be some sort of betrayal. She puts him off. ‘She’s sleeping. No better medicine. And she’s got the medicines Hossein got for her – penicillin and enough tramadol to knock out a horse. Thank God for the immigrant community, eh?’