The Bones of You (16 page)

24

I
slip into the little room that Jo has to herself, then crouch beside the bed, trying to stay out of sight.

“Jo? Jo? Can you hear me?”

I look at her, a small gray doll on the starched sheets, threaded with plastic tubes that link her to drips and screens. The air rings with electronic noise that no one should be able to sleep through, but she doesn’t stir.

Glancing through the door, checking that no one’s in earshot, I whisper her name again.

“Jo?”

Then I watch as she stirs, the slight movement of her head turning, then her lashes, a flutter, as if she’s dreaming.

“Jo? It’s okay. You’re not well. You’re in hospital.”

Briefly her eyelids flicker open, then close again as I hear footsteps behind me.

Then my heart sinks, because it’s the same ward sister, just as uncompromising as before. “Kindly leave. I made it very clear you weren’t to come in here.”

“And as I said to you earlier, I’m her closest friend. And quite possibly the only visitor she’ll get. She opened her eyes just now. While I was talking to her.”

Reaching for the buzzer, she’s still glaring. Then the room fills with nurses, and a female doctor jostling round Jo, trying to elicit another response from her. But failing.

I stand out of the way, praying for Jo to open her eyes again as I listen to medical terminology I don’t understand, only at the end catching up to the doctor as she leaves.

“Excuse me, but can you tell me what’s happening?”

The doctor hesitates. “You are?”

“Kate McKay. Her closest friend. I’ve been with her through the most awful time. Yesterday . . . she seemed all right. Otherwise I wouldn’t have left her.”

I can’t believe it was just yesterday that I left for Bristol.

“Your friend took an overdose. She should be all right, but we’re concerned about what else is going on. After everything that’s happened, it’s possible she’s suffering from some form of post-traumatic stress disorder. As you know, she’s lost her daughter. We won’t know how she’s dealing with that until we can talk to her.”

“She has been quite surprising,” I say. “She’s been up and down—obviously—but has somehow found a way to carry on. She took a course not so long ago. And she was working for her husband before—” I stop, wondering how much this doctor knows.

She nods. “Her sister-in-law gave me some of the background. But where in all this has she taken any time to grieve? It’s a massive loss she’s suffered. And now, whatever the circumstances are, her husband is another huge loss she has to face. . . .”

Hearing it put like that, I realize how accustomed I’ve become to Jo’s incredibly difficult life. And how foolish I’ve been, too, even imagining she could get through this without some kind of meltdown. Something of the magnitude of losing a child can hardly be assimilated, accepted, moved on from in just a few months—if at all.

I’ve done it again. Been too close, seeing only her lion’s courage and brave face, not what’s underneath. Jo hasn’t been coping; she’s been burying her head in grief’s insidious quicksand. And it occurs to me that in her shoes, it would be so much easier to let it suck you down and slowly close over your head, rather than face what lies ahead. Alone.

 

I call Laura when I get home, just to fill her in.

“I went round to see Joanna. Yesterday. I was going to talk to her about the notes.” Laura sounds shocked. “It was just to ask if she had any idea where they might have come from. I asked Delphine, too.”

“What did they say?”

“Joanna looked quite shaken when I told her. Do you think there’s any possibility that she sent them? She’s under such strain. A kind of cry for help, perhaps?” It’s not something I’d considered, but maybe she’s right. “I don’t know. Possibly. She hates admitting she needs help. . . .”

“Delphine just looked blank,” Laura says. “That child worries me. She gives nothing away.”

“So what now?”

Laura sighs. “See if you get another. A similar thing happened during another case I was following. It turned out that some batty old dear thought the victim had deserved what she got. Kind of posthumous hate mail, you could call it.”

I’m astonished. “People do that?”

Laura laughs. “Kate! People aren’t all nice! They can be devious and evil, you know. Look at Neal.”

“That’s the thing,” I tell her. “If Jo hadn’t found the laptop, he’s the last person in the world I would have suspected.”

Laura sigh is audible. “Welcome to my highly confusing world.”

25

A
s there’s little I can do for Jo, and Delphine is with a good friend, I go as planned to visit Angus. During the long drive up, with what feels like the wings of a dozen butterflies fluttering inside me, I’m not sure how this will go. But rather than taking me into the apartment he shares with Nick and Ally, after meeting me at the door, Angus surprises me with a luxury hotel suite.

“You didn’t have to do this,” I tell him, looking around at the lavishly furnished living space and the king-size bed and the en suite. The orchids on the elegant furniture and the champagne in a silver ice bucket. I walk over to the window. The views are spectacular—and I realize this must come at quite a price. “The apartment would have been fine, Angus.”

Feeling his presence behind me, I turn round. He pulls me close and looks into my eyes.

“You’re worth it,” he says softly. “Anyway, I wanted you to myself. I don’t like being away from you.”

His brown eyes are serious, and suddenly his words are all I can think of, because somewhere along the way, over twenty or so years of being married, of being easy in each other’s company and taking each other for granted, we’ve lost sight of how much we mean to each other. How much our marriage means. And it’s taken being apart for me to realize this. As I look at him just for a moment, at the face I know like my own, at the tears in my husband’s eyes, I wonder,
Like I did with Neal, has he, too, come close?

He opens his mouth to speak, looking at once worried, loving, apologetic. “Kate, there’s something I have to tell you.”

“Shh.” I place a finger on his lips. “Enough talk. I’ve a better idea.”

And then I take my husband’s hand and lead him to the bedroom.

 

It’s an episode of our marriage that threatens everything we’ve built together, but for those few days we forget, pushing it into the background, instead filling lazy days wandering the city and long nights where we forget about being husband and wife, parents, with jobs and responsibilities, and instead strip back time and are just lovers.

I’ve always believed in honesty, even if it hurts. But I learn there is strength in silence—wisdom, too. We talk, but the unspoken part stays just that. Unspoken, so that I leave there with my suspicions unvoiced, still not sure what, if anything, he didn’t tell me.

But as I drive, my doubts linger, unresolved. And I’m uneasy, because it’s the first time Angus and I have kept secrets from each other. Are some things really better left unsaid, or have we slipped over one of those invisible lines that crisscross life, waiting to trip us up?

And can we ever go back to how we were?

 

When I get home, I find Jo’s been transferred to a small, exclusive private hospital tucked away in the Surrey countryside, a tranquil location enclosed by beech hedges and ancient cedars, a sweeping gravel drive leading to the entrance. I can’t help but wonder how she can afford this.

The front door opens into a grand hallway, which at first glance could be mistaken for the reception area in a country-house hotel—until you see the blankness in the faces, the suffering not quite hidden behind their eyes.

I wait until one of the nurses takes me to the lounge, where Jo’s sitting by the window with her back to us, facing out across the garden. As I walk over, she turns round.

I hardly recognize her. “Jo?”

I lean down and hug her. Not once in all the time I’ve known her have I seen Jo without make-up, and only here, within the safety of these walls, is the extent of her sorrow bared for the world to see.

“Thanks for coming, Kate.” So humbly grateful to see me.

I pull a chair up close to hers. “So how are you doing?”

She sighs. “I’ve got myself in a bit of a mess, haven’t I?”

“I don’t know about that. It all got too much, didn’t it?”

“I suppose it did.” She sounds perplexed, as though she can’t understand how it’s come to this. “Stupid, though, letting it get this bad . . .”

It’s a bleak attempt at humor. Her lips stretching into a smile and stopping short.

Even now, she’s in denial. Or is she doing what she always does? Playing down her pain for my benefit? It’s impossible to tell.

“How long will you be here, Jo?”

“A few days,” she says. “Something like that. They don’t tell me.” A tear trickles down her cheek.

“Oh,
Jo
. . .” I fish in my pocket for a tissue and gently wipe her face.

“I keep crying,” she says, her voice wobbling. “I can’t stop it. . . .”

I don’t know what to say, just lean toward her and hold her hand.

“It’s okay,” she says slowly, her eyes drifting toward the window again. “They do understand here. They say they can help me. I’ve been hiding, Kate, haven’t I? I can’t do that—hide. Not anymore.”

From the way she speaks, it’s clear she’s on medication, and I can see, too, that without it the pain would destroy her just as surely as a heart attack or an aneurysm would.

“Is Delphine with someone?”

“Carol collected her. She’s Neal’s sister.” The “sister” is slurred. “They live in Devon. Carol’s like you, Kate. She’ll be fine.”

“Can I call her? Just to say if she needs me to, I can help?”

Jo nods weakly.

“Do you have her number?”

A vacant look crosses her face. “I’m so tired . . . ,” she mutters.

Then her eyelids start to close, and her head droops.