Sheer Abandon (20 page)

“Well, I’m not sure,” said Jilly. She looked at Kate and smiled gently. “I can see this is terribly tempting, darling. I can see how much you want to find your mother.”

“I don’t even exactly want to,” said Kate. “I know I’ll hate her.”

“Why are you so sure about that?”

“Granny! She has to be horrible. Doing what she did. But I just feel I’ve got to. Until I do I can’t settle. I feel I don’t know…well—”

“Who you are?”

“No. Who I might become. I mean Sarah, my friend—you can see she’s turning into her mum. And Juliet’s turning into
our
mum, she’s, like, so nice and hardworking and—and annoying. Sorry, I know Mum’s your daughter, but she
is
annoying. Well, isn’t she?”

“Just occasionally,” said Jilly carefully.

“So what am I going to turn into? Someone awful and…and irresponsible? Like my birth mother, who didn’t care, just left me in a cupboard?”

“Kate, she must have been absolutely desperate. It’s hard to imagine what she went through. What she’s still going through. I’m sure she thinks about you every day.”

“Yeah? So why doesn’t she come and find me? That wouldn’t be very difficult.”

Jilly was silent, then she said, “Well, I tell you what, Kate. I might go and see this man. On my own. I don’t mind how angry your parents are with me, but I don’t want them feeling I’m driving a wedge between you and them. All right? Now, what film are we going to see?”

“So—you think I should do it?” Martha said.

“Yeah, I do. Want some of this one? Very spicy, be careful.”

They were sitting at her small dining table, looking over the lights of London, eating a Thai meal that she’d had delivered.

“Ed! Is that it?”

“I’d say so, yes.”

“But we’ve hardly discussed it.”

“God,” he said, pushing his plate aside, folding his hands neatly in an exaggerated pantomime, fixing his eyes on hers, “so sorry. Right. From the top. Let’s go through it again. There’s nothing to discuss, Martha. I think it’s a good idea. OK?”

She felt rather confused. She had wanted a full-blown, careful dissection of the whole thing, the risks, the advantages, her ability to cope with it. “Well, if that’s really what you think—”

“Of course it’s what I think! I’m finding it a tiny bit tedious, to tell you the truth.”

“I’m sorry,” she said, slightly indignant. “What would you like to talk about instead? You?”

“Well, it might make a change,” he said.

She stared at him. “That’s not fair!”

“It’s perfectly fair. I hadn’t seen you for almost a fortnight, and how long before we got onto you? Roughly sixty seconds. Telling me about the fucking party, about how wonderful it had been, about how you had to leave early to go back to a meeting and then suddenly remembering me and asking me politely what I’d been doing. And then back to you again, and what did I think about this thing with Chad or whatever his name is, should you do it, on and on. Somehow, you know, I don’t think you ever will. You’d have to make time for it. Spare it some of your precious energy, interrupt your sacred routine. You should try thinking about something other than yourself for a bit, Martha. It might even be interesting for you.”

She felt as if he had hit her.

“I mean, look at us, eating this—this fucking neat and tidy meal, with the telly turned off because you don’t like eating when it’s on, even though I do, and you picking at it like some kind of dainty vulture. It’s all so fucking
ordered
. I tell you, Martha, if you’d started stuffing your face and talking with your mouth full, I just might still be sitting and debating your future. I do have a life, you know,” he said. “I do have my own problems.”

“Like what?” she said. She felt quite shocked; she had never seen him like this.

“Oh, doesn’t matter.”

“No, tell me.”

“Look, Martha,” he said, “I might have wanted to talk about it earlier. I don’t now. I’m not in the mood. OK? Now for God’s sake eat something. And actually, I think I’d better go. I’ve got work to do tomorrow. You’re not the only one with extra hours to put in.”

He stood, picked up his jacket from the sofa, bent and kissed her briefly. “Cheers. See you in a bit.”

The door slammed. He was gone. And Martha was left staring out the window, not sure how she felt, just slowly and very carefully, rather as if she had still been eating her Thai meal, picking over what he had said, painstakingly putting it into neat rows and piles and trying to digest it.

“Right. Here we are…” Jilly pulled up in front of her house; it was raining. “Now you bring the food, darling, and I’ll go ahead and open the door. Only be careful, because the path gets very slippery.”

Kate watched her walking up the path in her high heels. She had heard that accidents seemed to put things in slow motion and had never believed it; but she watched her grandmother turn to check she was following safely, then very, very slowly and gracefully, turn almost in a pirouette and skid sideways, her skirt floating up and then down again, settling round her in a sort of blanket as she fell, equally slowly, onto the ground. And lie there, absolutely still.

Jocasta switched her mobile off and smiled at Josh.

“Sorry about that.”

She wasn’t quite sure what she felt. Guilty? A bit. Worried? She supposed so. And—what else? Well, you know what else, Jocasta? You’re excited. Very, very excited.

She was having supper with Josh: a rather subdued Josh, because it was his birthday and she had felt she couldn’t leave him all alone. Nick had refused to come; he was still angry about her disappearance the night before.

“It’d have been nice if you’d tried a bit harder to contact me. I was actually worried about you, Jocasta.”

She’d told him she couldn’t count the number of times he hadn’t contacted her under similar circumstances, and he’d said OK, fair enough and let’s not go down that road, but he really couldn’t face supper with Josh.

“But he’s so lonely, Nick.”

“I expect he is. Stupid bugger. Would that be his third birthday? Or maybe even his fourth?”

“Well—I know. But I can’t help feeling sorry for him. Living all alone in that beastly flat—”

“What, that little hovel in Chelsea, you mean?”

“Oh Nick, shut up. Don’t you have any human feelings?”

“Yes, for Beatrice. Anyway, I’ve just got an exclusive interview with Iain Duncan Smith, comments on the new party and the future of his own as he sees it. The Sunday paper wants it first thing in the morning.”

“Fine. Absolutely fine. Don’t you worry about me.”

“I’ll call you in the morning.”

“And what were you thinking we might do tomorrow? Read your piece? Read everyone else’s? And then read yours again, and say how much better it is than theirs?”

“Jocasta, don’t be childish. I’ll call you in the morning. I’m having lunch with David Owen, but apart from that I’m free.”

“Wow,” she said, “that does sound marvellous—Sunday evening,
maybe
, after you’ve finished that piece. Don’t bother, Nick!” She rang off, knowing she had to an extent picked a quarrel with him, and knowing very well why. Picking quarrels was one of her talents. So Nick said.

That was when she started wondering how she felt.

And now she was really wondering. It had been Gideon Keeble on her mobile. Would she and Nick like to come to lunch with him the next day?

“Nick isn’t free,” she said, her head already fizzing with excitement. “So—”

“So,” he said, and there was a long silence. “So what about you? If you’d like to risk a boring Sunday with an old man, you’re very welcome. It’s up to you.”

“I’d love it,” she said. “Thank you.”

“Excellent. How do you feel about the Waterside Inn?”

“I feel very warmly about it,” she said. It was good that: far less compromising. Not that she cared about being compromised. Not in the least.

“Good. I’ll pick you up at—what? Eleven thirty?”

“Great. I’ll be ready. Bye, Gideon.”

Actually, she felt guilty, she realised, as she pushed calamari round her plate, very guilty indeed…

“I must ask you to switch your phone off at once.”

The voice rapped across the waiting room: a bored, harsh voice.

“But I want to call my mum. That’s my gran in there.” She indicated the cubicle where Jilly lay. “My mum needs to know.”

“Well, you must use the public call box. Mobiles interfere with hospital equipment. You can see the notice there.”

“So where do I find a public call box?”

“There’s one in the main hospital entrance.”

“Yeah, and it’s not working. I’ve tried it. Any other suggestions?”

Everyone was looking at her now: a packed Casualty Department. White-faced young families with babies; small children crying; one vomiting constantly into a plastic sandwich box; a drunk with a bleeding head, several more drunks lolling against the wall; a pitifully young Asian girl, visibly pregnant, holding her husband’s hand; at least three elderly couples; a couple of middle-aged men, one with his foot roughly bandaged: a sad wave of misery and pain and anxiety washed up on a hostile shore, waiting with painful patience, occasionally going up to the desk to ask how much longer it would be, only to be sent back again to sit down and wait some more. They all welcomed the diversion of the small drama.

“There’s no need to be rude,” said the woman behind the desk.

“I wasn’t being rude. I was asking for another suggestion. Since that one was totally unhelpful.”

Misery and anxiety were making Kate feel worse by the minute; she had expected comfort, attention, a swift resolution of her grandmother’s troubles, had thought to see her safely tucked up in a warm hospital bed, her pain dealt with efficiently and fast. Instead she had been lying on a trolley in a cubicle for almost two hours, ever since the ambulance which had come after forty long minutes had delivered them here, waiting to be taken to X-ray, with no discernible improvement in her condition whatsoever. A doctor had examined her, said it might be a broken hip or a fractured pelvis; he could do nothing until she had been x-rayed.

She was still in her rain-soaked clothes, shivering violently, despite a nurse having promised three times to get her something warmer. Kate had offered to take her to X-ray herself, since no porter was forthcoming; they had looked at her as if she had suggested she should do a strip in the middle of Casualty.