“Last night I had this dream,” Polly said, “about Liv, that she was at Oxford instead of Cambridge. That she met different people, made different friends. That it was almost the same as here, but not quite, and so none of the horrible stuff happened.”
“Polly…”
“Do you think she had it just in her, the bad stuff, and that something awful would have come out of her no matter where she went? Or do you think it was just this one set of circumstances that worked together to push her in that direction? What do you think?”
“I think… I don’t know. I don’t know.”
“Is it true that she hurt the policeman too? Were you there? People are saying that she stabbed him.”
“No, she cut him. She didn’t stab him.” Nick mimed the difference. “He’s in intensive care.”
“No, he isn’t. At least, not anymore. He’s here. On this ward.” Polly waved her hand toward the door. “In the first room…”
Nick grunted, started to slide his legs off the side of the bed.
“What are you doing?”
“I’ve got to talk to him.” Nick grabbed the crutches propped near his bed.
“Wait-why?”
“I need to thank him. For Alexandra. If he hadn’t been there…”
“Is she all right?”
“She is. Because of him. She… she’s upset, and angry, but she’s all right.”
“Angry?” Polly’s tone had changed. She wasn’t curious; she was indignant. “Why is she angry?”
Nick balanced on his crutches, stared at Polly. She squeezed her eyes shut. She accused him:
“She’s like you with Cambridge architecture. You breeze past King’s College Chapel. You trudge over Garret Hostel Bridge. Alexandra doesn’t notice the safety of her life. She takes it for granted. I gawk and point at it. I’d put it on a mug. I’d wear it on a T-shirt if I could!”
“Polly, what are you talking about?”
“Alexandra doesn’t know how lucky she is!” Polly hissed. “The difference between someone you care about being gone and coming back, and someone you care about being dead, is a whole world.”
Nick needed both of his hands to hold tight for him to stay upright. But he nudged her arm gently with his elbow. Her breathing calmed.
“Do you know what I love about being here, in this country?” she said quietly. “I love the sinks and their faucets for hot and cold. Not one tap, like I’m used to at home, where hot and cold mix together to make something nice to wash your hands in. Here, most of the sinks have this one tap for cold and this one for hot. You can mix them in the sink if you want, but hot comes out hot and cold comes out cold. Side by side. There’s something really true about that. Because I know I feel like that. I hate what Dad did to Jeremy, and I’m happy that those men at the factory didn’t get hurt. I feel both of those things, not mixed into merely warm, but just as they are: something really terrible and something really good. It’s like what I felt with you, in the Sedgwick, terrified and happy. I was terrified and I was happy. They didn’t add up to indifferent. They were both just themselves.”
His shoulders were hunched up because of the crutches. She leaned her head against one of them. He tilted his cheek against her hair.
Morris’s abdominal injury was healing well, but his right hand was a wreck. He couldn’t hold anything. He couldn’t even hold a book.
“Are you bored? Is there anything I can do?” Nick asked.
Morris said no.
Nick hovered there. His left leg, still fragile, was bent at the knee and swinging just over the floor.
“I’m so grateful,” Nick finally said. “We all are. I know what you did for Alexandra.”
Morris’s voice was flat. “Really? What did I do?”
Nick beamed. “Alexandra had the fireplace urn. You pulled Liv around, away from her. That’s how you got hurt. I’m so sorry you got hurt. But we’re so grateful. Alexandra doesn’t understand. She thought you did it to protect Liv. She’s angry to have been stopped. She’s just a kid. I had to explain it to her.”
“Why don’t you explain it to me,” he said, all in one tone.
“You protected Alexandra, not just Liv. Killing someone, even in self-defense or defending someone else… that’s something a person has to carry around. It would have changed her. It would have… it would have been a burden for all of her life. You protected her. Thank you. Thank you for that.”
Morris breathed deep through his nose. He didn’t blink.
“Hi, Daddy!” A teenager bounded in, fresh from class. She was around the same age as Alexandra, but in the clothing of a different school. She dumped her backpack and kissed Morris’s cheek, then promised to come right back. She headed for the toilets.
“You know what’s the worst thing about being a dad?” Morris leaned forward. He wrapped his good hand around Nick’s crutch, and pulled himself up close to Nick’s face. “The kid is this thing you have to protect. She’s so much more important than anything else. Even if you have to die, to keep her safe, you do it. You just do it, because if it comes down to you or her, it’s her. That’s it. It’s just her. But here’s the thing: Between me and the rest of the world, it’s me. It’s me, for her sake, because I’m her father. She needs me. She needs to not lose her dad to some nutter with a knife. What was I thinking? What the hell had I been thinking?”
He let go of the crutch. Nick rocked back.
Peter was sitting on Nick’s hospital bed, arms crossed. “I thought you couldn’t walk,” he accused. “I was told you’d never walk again and it would make you even more pathetic and everyone would point and laugh at you for as long as you lived.”
“I hobble,” Nick said. He forced a smile. Peter didn’t. “It’s good to see you,” Nick said, trying to haul the conversation back to a proper start.
Peter resisted. “Do the nurses usually let you wander? Is that wise?”
“I can balance all right,” Nick answered, as if the question had to do with his leg and not with his recent running away to Dovecote. “I was visiting the Inspector. I had to talk to him. Did you know that he’s Richard’s brother? I could hardly believe it when my mother told me that. He’s the one who caught Liv. He-”
“We all got to know him, Nick. We were all questioned by him. About you.”
“Yes, of course.” Nick still waited in the doorway, on one foot.
Peter stood up and to the side, to give him back his bed. Nick sat on it, legs over the side and back straight, rather than lying back down.
“Did you know that they dredged the Cam for you?” Peter demanded.
Nick nodded.
“That Richard considered postponing the wedding? Did you know that Polly’s mother was arrested?”
“What?”
“Because of you.”
“I didn’t know that.”
“A lot happened while you were off.”
“Is she all right?”
“She was only in a few days.”
“Days? My God. Polly didn’t say.”
Peter lifted his head. “She was here?”
“Half an hour ago.”
Peter sucked in a breath, then whooshed it out. “I’ve got to ask you this. But… you’ve got to tell me the truth.”
“About what?” There was so much he had to tell everyone, over and over again. Why he left, where he went, what he’d hoped to find and what he did find…
Peter leaned in close and spoke barely above a whisper. “Liv said you raped her.”
“What?” Nick gaped. “What?”
“After they dredged the Cam she was upset. We all were. All day we’d prepared for the worst news. It didn’t come, thank God it didn’t, but all that coiled energy had nowhere to spring. Then she told me, and I was angry, and I didn’t believe her. But it stuck in my head. It stuck there.”
“You didn’t believe her,” Nick repeated, insistent.