Thieving Fear

Ellen barely waited to emerge into the corridor. 'She must have heard you going on at me, that's all.'

'Why would she lie about your health even if she did hear? She's a nurse.' When Ellen looked determined to remain unpersuaded Charlotte said 'Shall we ask a nutritionist? There ought to be one in the hospital.'

'Don't go to any more trouble on my behalf.' Ellen gave in to a secret smile, or at least her mouth winced. 'If I'm supposed to be deluded, what about you? What was all that fuss in the tunnel about? Are you blaming Glen for that as well?'

'Maybe what he said.'

Hugh was murmuring to Rory and clasping his hand as though it were a lifeline for at least one of them. Charlotte pushed the door open, and as she followed Ellen she abandoned caution. 'I'll say I was having a nightmare if you will,' she said.

'And us,' said Hugh. 'Now we're agreed, let's really talk.'

'All right, we're having nightmares. Let's deal with them like adults.'

'We have been, haven't we? We've been helping each other with what's wrong with us. If we hadn't we'd never have got here for my brother.'

'We did,' Charlotte agreed, taking her seat at the foot of the bed, 'and do you know what else is important?'

'What?' Hugh said, not entirely eagerly.

'We started before we heard from Glen. We don't need anything he said to explain what's happening to us.'

'You mean you're going to,' said Ellen.

'I think I know what it is in my case. I'm feeling closed in by all the changes I'm surrounded by at work.'

'Sounds simple,' Hugh admitted.

'And you're confused by all the ones at yours. And Ellen, don't you feel we're trying to change your image and maybe secretly you think it's for the worse? As for Rory, he was in an accident. I don't see why we have to look further than that.'

'You said the doctor had to,' Hugh objected.

'I suppose I was really saying they haven't sorted out the coma yet. That doesn't mean they haven't got the treatment right. Perhaps they have.'

This sounded feeble if not desperate, even to Charlotte. She felt as though she were trying to explain away not just his condition but with it Rory himself. She mightn't have been totally surprised if he'd risen up or at least made some sign of protest, but it was Ellen who responded. 'I'm sorry, Charlotte, but you're wrong.'

'You didn't speak to the doctor.'

'I wasn't thinking of him.'

Had a cloud settled over the sun? It couldn't have drawn the walls inwards. Ellen extended her hands and snatched them out of sight while Hugh's gaze ranged back and forth as if he'd lost control of it. He seemed about to utter the unspoken question when he stumbled to his feet and whirled around to glare out of the window. 'Who's down there?'

Apparently nobody was, or nobody that he could see. In a few moments he turned around as though groping for a direction and, having located the chair, dropped into it. 'He doesn't like us talking about him,' he muttered, and Charlotte saw the bed shudder.

Hugh had bumped it, she told herself. Certainly his brother gave no unequivocal sign of having heard the remark, let alone understood it. 'What makes you say that?' Ellen said just as low.

'We'd just started talking about that night at Thurstaston when Rory had his crash,' Hugh said as if he could hardly bear to realise. 'And I don't know about anyone else, but I've been getting worse since we talked about coming here, never mind while we've been doing it. It's like he doesn't want us all together in case we figure out too much about him.'

Before Charlotte could speak Ellen said close to inaudibly 'Have you seen him?'

'I don't know.'

'Have you, Charlotte?'

'What do you think? How is any of this going to help? Don't kick the bed or whatever you're doing, Hugh. That won't either.'

'I'm not.'

Perhaps she hadn't glimpsed a momentary tremor, and she was about to apologise when Ellen said 'I have.'

'Oh, Ellen, how can you –'

'More than seen. I think I've touched him. I didn't tell you I went back to Thurstaston.'

She was speaking so quietly it might have been out of misplaced respect – not, Charlotte thought, for anyone's intelligence. 'What happened?' Hugh whispered.

'He's in the cliff. He made me put my hand in. He nearly got hold of me. Don't make me remember any more.'

'He's already got hold of us, though.'

Charlotte felt as if her head were a lightless cell with no room for her spirit to stand up, part of a prison that her cousins had erected with their muttering. They'd shut her in with their gullibility, and she was all the more resentful when Hugh said 'Can't you feel it now?'

'What do you want me to feel?'

'He's talking to everyone, Charlotte. It isn't just about you.'

Ellen's stare suggested that her face – indeed, her whole body – was somewhere she was desperate not to be. Hugh's eyes jittered in their sockets as though nothing they showed him were capable of reassuring him. He and Ellen were aggravating their own problems, Charlotte thought, and so would she unless she told them so. She was taking a breath when Rory spoke.

At least, the sound had ambitions to be a word. It was certainly the best he could achieve along the lines of a refusal or a denial. It was feebler than his previous cry, not loud enough to bring any of the hospital staff. Hugh and Ellen might have imagined that he was sinking deeper into a nightmare, so deep that it swallowed most of his plea, but wasn't it equally likely that he was protesting about the arguments around him? 'It's getting worse for him as well,' Hugh said. 'We've got to do something while there's time.'

Ellen seemed reluctant, though by no means as much as Charlotte, to ask 'What?'

'We can talk about that on the way. We have to go back.'

His gaze strayed towards footsteps approaching down the ward. Charlotte hoped they belonged to a nurse or someone more authoritative who might intervene somehow, but it was Annie. 'Going somewhere nice?' she said.

TWENTY-SIX

Ellen felt less alone for having admitted the truth about Thurstaston until Hugh whispered 'Everyone else should stay here. I'll go.'

'Rory doesn't have much choice, Hugh,' Charlotte said.

'I know that,' Hugh muttered as if reproving her for a tasteless joke. 'That's why I'm going. I mean you two.'

'So you can't be as bad as you think you are.'

'I don't follow.'

'That's all you seem to have been doing lately.'

'Why are you being like this, Charlotte?' Ellen gripped her toadstool knees through the inadequate concealment of her trousers to keep her detestable hands from invading her vision. 'How do you think it can help?'

'I'm simply saying if Hugh's able to go all that way by himself he can't very well be as disoriented as I've been imagining he is.'

'You sound as if you want him to be.'

Charlotte hunched her shoulders as if clenching her body around her thoughts. Perhaps she was miming her awareness of Annie at her back, since she said almost inaudibly 'If we're going to argue, let's do it outside.'

'Why do we have to at all?' Hugh said as low. 'That's what he wants.'

Charlotte stared at him and opened her mouth, then twisted around on her chair. 'Annie, could you call us if there's any change? We just want to step into the corridor for a few minutes.'

'You go and have your conference. That's what families are for.' Annie patted her husband's unresponsive hand, perhaps in memory of a discussion or many of them. 'Your Rory's safe with me,' she said.

Hugh glanced nervously out of the window as he stood up once his cousins had. Ellen saw Annie watching her with a mixture of concern and encouragement that she might have directed at a patient who had risen from one of the beds. She trudged after Charlotte with Hugh at her heels, but Charlotte stopped short of the exit and swung around. 'You know what we should do while we have the chance.'