Death Wish (The Ceruleans: Book 1) (22 page)

‘My sister always loved the ocean,’ I said. ‘She had this
shell when we were kids that she would hold to her ear so she could hear it.
She’s part of the sea now. She would have wanted that, I think.’

I let go of Luke’s hand and waded into the cold waves. When
the water was lapping at my waist I stopped. I gazed out at the dying sun,
hands trailing across the surface, letting each gentle wave rock me back and
forth.

When I was ready, when my jeans were moulded to my legs and
the salt had burned the ache out of me and I was shivering but whole again, I
turned and went back to Luke and kissed him and took his hand, and I walked
away from the past, away from the pain and away from the blue that forever
would hold my sister in its embrace.

In the days that followed I scoured Twycombe for Jude. Now
that I knew the truth of that night, I had to speak with him – and not just to
put Luke’s fears at rest. The more I thought about it, the more convinced I was
that he had known something of Sienna’s illness. What was it he had said when
he saw me at the hospital –
‘Not you too?’
It was hazy in my memory; I
had a thwack on the head to thank for that. Frustratingly, our next
conversation – in my living room, post-tequila – was also vague. All the more
reason to find him now and have a straightforward, honest conversation.

But he was as elusive as a ghost.

I was the first in the water each morning, and the last to
leave – but he was not among those catching an early wave, and nor did he surf
in the evening. Each day, with Chester at my side, I moved between the cafe,
the pub, Dan’s Dive Shop, the cliff paths and the winding streets of Twycombe,
but the search was fruitless.

In between scouting, I asked around. I started with Luke and
Cara.

The most Luke could offer was, ‘I think he once said he was
an islander, whatever that means.’

Cara was similarly stumped. ‘I only ever see him on the
water,’ she said, ‘or occasionally at one of Si’s things – usually fleetingly,
towards the end. The only other place I ever saw him was St Mary’s.’

I thought back to when I’d first seen Jude. ‘Where, in the
graveyard?’

She looked at me oddly. ‘No, at a service. It was Sienna’s
memorial service. Reverend Helmsley arranged it – for everyone who’d looked.’

I remembered now; she’d mentioned it when we first met.

‘Why weren’t we there – my parents and I?’

Cara thought about it. ‘I don’t think anyone would have
known how to contact you. I mean, I’ve never seen your parents around here. But
you’d have liked it, I’m sure. Reverend Helmsley spoke so kindly of her. Was
she a churchgoer? ’Cause I got the feeling he knew her.’

I shook my head.

‘Oh. Well. He did a good job. I went with Luke. He was
upset. I thought it was just because any death opens up our old wounds. I
didn’t realise…’ Luke had kept the details of that night from Cara too, but at
my insistence he’d told her on Sunday, when we got back from the beach.
‘Anyway, I saw Jude there. He stood at the back. I remember, because he looked
awful. I think he was the only bloke in tears.’

After speaking to Cara, I went to St Mary’s. I looked in the
church. I looked in the graveyard. Nothing.

I tried some surfers next, quizzing them early one morning
as we hung out on the water waiting for a good wave. But no one had seen Jude.
No one had a phone number or an email address for him. In fact, no one seemed
to know much about him at all.

‘He flits in and out,’ Big Ben told me.

‘Yeah,’ said Andy. ‘Appears when he feels like it, leaves
when he wants.’

‘A free spirit,’ added an elfin Chinese girl called Lucy.

‘What does he do for a living?’ I asked.

There was a puzzled silence.

‘Model?’ suggested Lucy dreamily, and the guys jeered.
‘What?’ she demanded. ‘He has that look about him.’

I tried again: ‘Where does he live?’

Shrugs all round.

‘What does he drive?’

‘Drive?’

‘You know – car? If he’s not local, he must drive here to
surf?’

They looked at each other.

‘I’ve never seen him arrive,’ said Lucy.

‘What about other friends – girlfriends?’

‘He’s just one of those guys you know but you don’t really
know
,
you get it?’

I thought about Drake’s Island, when I’d probed for
information on Sienna. The sense I’d got that no one had
known
her here.
A flare of irritation lit up in my stomach.

‘No, I don’t get it,’ I said. ‘He’s been hanging out with
you guys for… for how long?’

Big Ben scratched his head. ‘Dunno. This year I think?’

‘It was spring,’ said Lucy. ‘Right around the time your
sister turned up.’

She coloured up and they all looked down at their boards.

‘It’s okay,’ I said. ‘You can talk about her. I’m okay with
it.’

‘He taught her,’ said Lucy. ‘At first, I thought they were
together – you know,
together
together. But there was this other guy she
hung out with as well. What was his name, Andy? You remember, the intense guy
with the scar.’

Andy shook his head. ‘Dunno.’

‘I know who you mean, though,’ said Big Ben. ‘Remember Si’s
flaming sambuca party for Valentine’s? Man, that guy could put ’em away. I
liked him. Don’t think I’ve seen him since, though.’

Daniel. It had to be. If the last time they saw him was
February, by the sound of it he and Sienna had broken up well before she died.
At least that was one less person hurting over her death then.

‘Okay,’ I said. ‘Back to Jude. You’ve known him for all
these months, but you know nothing about him?’

‘That’s just how it is sometimes,’ said Big Ben. ‘You get
these types in surfing. It’s all about the sea and the parties. Jude, he’s a
decent bloke, but kinda quiet, like – so you respect that. You don’t push it.’

‘Unless you’re Si,’ added Andy.

‘Yeah. The disappearing act’s not quite so cool when
everyone thinks you’re dead. Si was raging when Jude strolled back onto the
beach the morning after…’ Big Ben scratched his chin awkwardly. ‘Well… But he
chilled out once he realised Jude hadn’t a damn clue what had happened.’

Could that be true? Could Jude have stormed off after the
row with Sienna and been oblivious to what happened next until the following
day? Had he not realised she intended to kill herself that very night? Or had
he not known she was going to do it at all?

So many questions. I really needed to find the guy from the
graveyard.

*

It was Bert, in the end, who provided the first useful piece
of information. He was worse, so much worse – his skin like paper, his bones
jutting, his breathing coming in painful gasps. A nurse visited twice a day
now, to administer medications and check his oxygen supply. Still, this
Wednesday afternoon dying was not deterring Bert from working his way through a
box of fondant fancies. He’d put on some eighties series I’d never seen before
called
Father Dowling Investigates
, but it was stilton-level cheesy.
Even Bert’s attention wandered after a while, and he got stuck into ranting
about some battleaxe nurse he’d locked horns with that week on his outpatient
appointment at the hospital.

‘… and then she wanted to admit me, right there, right then!
Telling me it was for the best. Talked to me like I was a stroppy toddler.
Would quite happily have strapped me down, I think, given half a chance. She
was hell-bent on keeping me in. “But what about Chester?” I said to her.’

‘You know I’d have him, Bert,’ I interjected, ‘if…’

‘I know, Scarlett. And thank you. But that’s not the point.
Evil hag had no respect, and no concept of free will. If it weren’t for that nice
young man stepping in, I think I’d have clubbed her to death with her reflex
hammer.’

‘Some guy helped you?’

‘Yes, that tall chap who works there. He heard me shouting –
whole damn hospital probably heard it, mood I was in – and he came over and put
a hand on her arm, and you know what he said to her?’

I shook my head.

‘He said: “A man has the right to choose how, and where, and
when, and for what he dies.” Just like that. Quiet as anything. And d’you know,
she backed right off!’

To out and out say that Bert was dying in front of him like
that – it shocked me. ‘You know this bloke?’ I said.

‘No. I’ve never spoken to him. But I’ve see him around the
hospital. Kind of hard to forget him, with that Latin tattoo. Who gets a Latin
tattoo these days? One of the most painful places to get one too, you know,
your inner arm…’

Bingo. Jude.

*

I can’t say I found it easy going to the hospital the next
day. I’d have much preferred a coffee with Cara or a walk on the beach with
Chester or getting ready for my date that night with Luke. Hell, even ringing
Mother, whose calls I’d been ducking since the cenotaph debacle, would be
preferable to spending a single minute in the company of the sick and the
dying. But somehow talking to Jude had assumed vital importance. It was like
the final step on the journey I’d been on this summer – getting his version of
events, thanking him for caring about Sienna; it was the closure I needed.

But as I stood at the main entrance to the hospital, amid
the bustle of medical staff and patients going about their business, I realised
I hadn’t a clue where to start. I remembered the night I’d been in A&E Jude
had told me he was there visiting someone; and Bert had said he’d seen him
around the cardiac outpatients’ department. Was he a medical student? A nurse?
Or perhaps some kind of volunteer visitor – I’d seen candy stripers on US
sitcoms; did we have those in the UK?

As I stood, frozen, a familiar voice startled me.

‘Scarlett?’

It was Dr Morris.

I smiled. ‘Hello there.’

‘Scarlett, what are you doing here? Are you okay? Are you
ill?’

I shook my head. ‘No, um…’ What to say? I could hardly admit
I was looking for some random guy who may or may not work here. ‘I’m just
visiting someone,’ I said. ‘In the, er, cardiac department.’

‘Ah,’ he said. ‘You want the east wing. To the right,
straight on, second left, first lifts up to Floor B, past the chapel, follow
the signs – you can’t miss it.’

I thanked him and turned to leave, but his hand was on my
arm.

‘No issues since the accident?’ he said. ‘Headaches, for
example? You refused a CT scan then, but I’d be happy to book you in for one as
an outpatient, given the family history.’

I smiled brightly. ‘Not at all,’ I lied.

‘That’s good.’ He smiled.

It was only when I was walking away that his words sank in:
family
history
. He’d never told me what diagnosis he’d given Sienna, and of course
I couldn’t ask – he thought I already knew. Since that day when I’d learned
Sienna had a fatal condition, for some reason I’d assumed cancer – after all,
wasn’t it one in four people who died of that? But I’d never thought further
than the C word. It was like a shutter had gone down in my mind, and I didn’t
want to know the details – it was enough to know Sienna had been ill, and she’d
known it. But now, the doctor had implied a family history that was related to
headaches. My medical knowledge did not extend much beyond episodes of
ER
,
but my mind did a simple sum:

Cancer + Headache = Brain Tumour

All at once, I couldn’t breathe. I stopped in the middle of
a deserted corridor – where was I? – and braced my hand against a noticeboard.
But it wasn’t enough; my legs wouldn’t hold me, and I slipped down to lean
against the wall.

Stop it,
I told myself.
Stop it! It doesn’t
matter. It doesn’t matter what took her – the end is the same.
But all I
could see was a black cloud creeping through her mind, consuming her, and it
was horrific.

‘Oy, are you okay?’

Someone was leaning over me. I looked up.

It was a boy. He couldn’t have been more than seven or
eight. He was bald and wearing a dressing gown with blue rockets on it and
Batman slippers and he was holding on to a drip stand from which hung a
half-full bag of liquid.

‘You ill?’ he asked.

I shook my head.

‘Crazy?’

I smiled. ‘A little, perhaps.’

‘Scary crazy or fun crazy?’

I thought about it. ‘Fun crazy.’

‘Spinning-on-a-swivel-chair-till-you-fall-off fun, or
doing-a-jigsaw-of-a-country-cottage fun?’

‘Chair. Definitely.’

He gave a gap-toothed smile. ‘I’m Max,’ he said. ‘I have
cancer.’

‘I’m Scarlett,’ I said. ‘I don’t have cancer. But… my sister
did.’

Max nodded. ‘You’ll have to prove it.’

‘Huh?’

‘That you’re fun-swivel-chair crazy. There’s one on the
children’s ward.’

Children’s ward. Sick children. I stared up at him. Oh God,
this poor boy. That’s why I hated hospitals – all these people suffering,
dying. I couldn’t bear it.

‘Floor’s manky,’ Max pointed out. He held out a thin, white
hand. ‘C’mon. Before the superbugs get ya.’

Forcing a smile, I took Max’s hand. I stood up carefully,
making sure not to use Max’s hand as leverage yet holding it tightly so he
wouldn’t be offended. His hand was so cold in mine, unnaturally cold. Like
death was already inside him. He was just a kid; it wasn’t right. I ached for
him. I wished so much I could do something, could make him warm and well and
alive
.

‘
Holy shamoly!
Do you see that! What
is
that?
What are you doing?’

Max’s eyes were wide. He was staring at my hand in his.

I looked down.

And the sky collapsed upon me.

I cancelled my date with Luke that night.

I turned off my phone.

I locked every entrance to the cottage.

I shut the doors to the living room.

I drew the curtains.

I turned out the lights.

I sat on the floor.

I sat on the floor in the dark.

I sat on the floor in the dark looking at my hands.

I sat on the floor in the dark looking at my hands and
teetering on the edge of scary crazy.