Whatever Love Is (21 page)

‘Mum, don’t worry. Jon’s going to see him tomorrow. He’ll fill us in,’ said Jemma.

‘Jon? He knows where James is?’ Tina gasped.

‘How do you know? You’ve been away,’ Nerys probed.

‘He’s been in touch with me quite a bit – texts and stuff,’ Jemma said, blushing slightly. ‘He didn’t say anything about James not being at home, just that he
was hanging out with him a lot.’

‘But when I phoned him, he said he didn’t have a clue . . .’ Tina began, and then sighed. ‘I suppose he was doing what James wanted.’

‘Did he mention your father’s troubles?’ Nerys asked.

Jemma nodded. ‘Not till I came home from Barbados though,’ Jemma said. ‘He said that he didn’t want to spoil our holiday by telling us how bad things got after we
left.’

‘Not that anything could have spoilt it,’ Mia added, hooking her arm through Nick’s and resting her head on his chest. ‘We were too busy having fun!’

Well
, Frankie thought,
clearly everything is OK between the two of them. Perhaps Ned was right after all – perhaps it had been just a drunken moment of madness.

Hard as she tried, she couldn’t quite convince herself.

Nick and Mia left for Brighton two days later. The Rushworths had booked them into the Hotel du Vin, and given them an eye-watering budget with strict instructions not to come
home until they had found what Verity called ‘the perfect little love nest’. Apparently they had assured Mia that despite Thomas’s ‘shocking’ behaviour, they loved and
adored her and knew that she and Nick were made for one another.

Mia had seemed on edge, talking too fast and too much, telling anyone who would listen how great it was going to be and how she couldn’t wait to get her own place. But twice Frankie caught
her coming out of the bathroom, clearly having been crying.

‘You OK?’ she asked the second time.

‘Why wouldn’t I be?’

‘Pardon me for caring.’ Frankie sighed. At which point Mia burst into tears and ran into her bedroom, slamming the door behind her.

An hour later, when Nick picked her up in his car, she was wearing full make-up and a broad smile. Her eyes, however, weren’t laughing.

‘She’s been like this for the past week,’ Jemma said when Frankie caught up with her in the kitchen, early that evening. She propped open her new
Cook Caribbean
book and
began chopping ginger and tossing it into a mixing bowl. ‘I was saying to Jon, I reckon something’s up.’

‘Are you and Jon . . . you know, an item?’

Frankie couldn’t help noticing that his name cropped up every few minutes in Jemma’s conversation.

‘Well hardly, not yet,’ she said. ‘Thing is, he wants to see more of me and I really like him. Only don’t say anything to Dad. He still thinks Jon meant to give that
photo to the journalist guy.’

She chopped faster. ‘And what with things with Mia and Nick getting a bit sticky . . .’

‘Sticky?’

Jemma glanced at Frankie. ‘You won’t say anything?’

Frankie shook her head.

‘Between you and me, I think Mia wishes she hadn’t got engaged. Not that she’s said so, not in so many words.’ She hurled some coconut flakes into the bowl. ‘Two or
three times I found her crying and when I asked what was wrong, she said “Everything”!’

There was so much Frankie wanted to say but remembering her promise to Ned and to Mia, she kept quiet about that. ‘But she seems all over Nick – lovey dovey and
everything.’

‘That’s just the point,’ Jemma said. ‘That’s not Mia’s style. It’s like she’s trying to convince herself she wants him. Which is why . . .’
She hesitated.

‘Go on.’

‘Nothing,’ Jemma said, breaking eggs into the bowl. ‘By the way, I was going to ask about . . .’

She broke off as her phone shrilled.

‘Hey, can you grab that?’ she said. ‘My hands are all covered in flour.’

Frankie fished it out of the back pocket of Jemma’s jeans, and held it to Jemma’s ear.

‘Jon! Hi, babe, we were just talking about ya! How ya doin’?’ Jemma appeared to have adopted a totally new mode of speech. ‘What? Oh my God, no!’ Her face blanched.
‘Where is he?’ She reached for a pen. ‘Wait, wait – Frankie get some paper, like fast!’

Frankie, who never went anywhere without a notebook, tore out a page and thrust it at Jemma. ‘University College Hospital, London.’ Jemma scribbled. ‘Oh-eight-four-five,
one-five-five, five thousand. OK, I’ll tell Mum and ring you back. Oh God, oh God!’ And with that she burst into tears.

‘Jem, what is it, what’s happened?’

‘It’s James,’ she sobbed. ‘He’s been beaten up. They say . . .’ She stumbled over the words, her hands shaking. ‘They say he’s in a critical
condition.’

The rest of the day passed in a blur. Tina sat in the kitchen, weeping and rocking backwards and forwards while Jemma rushed down to Keeper’s Cottage to get Nerys, and
Frankie phoned her uncle.

‘I’ll get to the hospital right away,’ Thomas said. ‘I want you to get hold of Ned.’

‘I tried, but there was no reply,’ Frankie said.

‘Keep trying,’ Thomas said. ‘Where is he anyway?’

‘With Alice,’ Frankie told him. ‘In Sussex.’

‘Right,’ he replied. ‘Well, when you reach him tell him to go to the hospital immediately. And Frankie?’

‘Yes?’

‘Get in touch with Mia and then ask Nerys to drive the rest of you to London, I don’t want Tina behind the wheel of a car when she’s in a state, OK?’

‘Of course.’

‘I’ll be in touch as soon as I can. I’m counting on you, Frankie. You’re the only one I can trust to keep calm.’

Frankie was helping Tina load a bag into the back of Nerys’s car when her mobile rang. It was Ned. ‘I’m sorry, Ned, but —’ Frankie began.

‘It’s OK,’ Ned cut in. ‘I was probably a bit hard on you and I didn’t mean all the things I said —’

‘I wasn’t talking about that,’ Frankie interrupted. ‘I mean I’m sorry to spoil your holiday but there’s been some bad news. It’s James.’

They were on the M1 when Thomas rang Frankie’s mobile. The news wasn’t good. James was still on the critical list and in the operating theatre.

‘He tried to break up a fight,’ Thomas said, his voice cracking. ‘We don’t know the whole story but a witness said one of the guys pulled a knife and stabbed him. If it
hadn’t been for Jon turning up . . .’ He left the sentence unfinished.

‘Ned’s on his way,’ Frankie said. ‘He’ll probably get to you before we do. But I can’t reach Mia. I’ve left a message on her answerphone.’

‘Just keep trying. We all need to be here. As soon as possible.’

If her sister was bad in a crisis, Nerys was brilliant. She had packed the car-boot with a picnic hamper stuffed with bottles of water, fruit and cheese, plus blankets and a few pillows.

‘I know we’ve got the flat,’ she had announced, ‘but if any of us stay overnight at the hospital we’ll want to be comfortable.’

On the way to London, both Frankie and Jemma had repeatedly tried to contact Mia but every time it went to answerphone. They tried Nick’s mobile but he didn’t answer either. They
tried the hotel, but were told that Mr Rushworth and Miss Bertram were not in their room.

‘Oh, just let them enjoy themselves while they’ve got the chance,’ Nerys said as she dropped them off at the hospital door before hunting for a parking space. ‘It’s
too late for them to do anything tonight anyway.’

They followed the signs to ICU where a nurse greeted them at the door.

‘He’s out of theatre and the operation went well,’ she said. ‘I can’t allow all of you at the bedside at once. His mum.’ She smiled at Tina. ‘And maybe
one more.’

‘You go,’ Jemma said, nodding to Frankie. ‘I feel queasy just being here.’

Frankie followed Tina down the corridor and into a side ward. James was lying motionless on his back on the bed, wired up to a bleeping machine and with a drip in each arm. His head was swathed
in bandages, his right eye closed and swollen and his lips bloodless. Ned was in a chair on one side, Thomas on the other.

‘Oh my baby.’ Tina sank down on her knees beside the bed and took James’s hand.

‘There’s good news,’ Thomas said at once. ‘The internal wounds are much less than they first thought and it seems the fracture to his skull hasn’t damaged his
brain. God has been very good.’

His eyes filled with tears and he swallowed hard. ‘I blame myself for all this,’ he said. ‘I have been such a stupid, short-sighted fool.’

Just then, James stirred and opened his good eye. ‘Dad?’

‘James,’ Thomas gasped, seizing his hand. ‘It’s OK, we’re here. We’re all here.’

‘Sorry, Dad.’ He struggled to get the words out. ‘Sorry about . . .’

‘It’s all right, son,’ Thomas murmured. ‘Everything’s going to be all right.’

After a while, the nurse suggested they should leave and let James rest.

‘One of you can stay with him overnight but no more,’ she said firmly.

‘I’ll stay,’ Thomas said, rubbing a hand wearily over his eyes. ‘The rest of you go and get some sleep.’

As they moved out into the corridor, Frankie spotted Jemma and Nerys at the drinks machine. The guy whose arm was draped protectively round Jemma’s shoulders was Jon Yates.

‘Any news? How’s he doing? I wanted to go in but the nurse said no more visitors. Is that bad news? Or is he sleeping?’ Jon’s face was etched with worry.

‘He’s doing OK, he’s speaking,’ Frankie said.

‘Well, that’s wonderful,’ Nerys said, ‘because in cases like this, you see . . .’

She was about to hold forth from the depths of her imagined medical knowledge, but Jemma burst into tears. ‘Thank God!’ she sobbed. ‘I thought he might die. I was horrid to him
before he went away and I thought I might never be able to say sorry.’

‘Hey, it’s OK.’ Jon wrapped his arms round her, and hugged her to him.

‘Oh – well now. Yes. Well.’ Clearly, for the first time since James’s ‘little misunderstanding’, Nerys Lane was lost for words.

Over breakfast at the flat the following morning Thomas, who had spent most of the night at the hospital, filled them in about the events leading up to the attack on James.

‘It was Jon who told me,’ he began, picking halfheartedly at a slice of toast. ‘To be fair to the lad, he came clean, admitted that he had been out of order showing his
godfather the photos. But much more importantly, he told me what James had been doing.’

‘Which was?’ Tina urged.

‘What he saw in Mexico had a profound effect on him – a far deeper effect than it had on me, I’m ashamed to say,’ Thomas continued. ‘Once his initial anger had
passed, he told Jon he was taking a whole new look at his life and was fed up with being what he called a sponger and a con artist. He bedded down in Jon’s flat and started working at a soup
kitchen.’

‘What?
James
?’ Ned blurted out.

‘Yes.’ Thomas nodded. ‘He told Jon that I had said he had no social conscience and that he was going to prove me wrong. Well, he did that all right.’ Thomas poured
himself another cup of coffee and took a deep breath. ‘The night of the attack he was heading to the soup kitchen when he saw a group of thugs laying into a little lad of no more than twelve.
He didn’t think twice – Jon was coming out of the tube station to meet up with him and do an article about the work of the charity that ran the kitchen and he says James just dashed
across the road, narrowly missed being knocked down, and began shouting at the guys to lay off.’

He took a gulp of coffee.

‘That’s when the biggest one turned on him and pulled the knife. Jon says James fell to the ground like a stone and they all kicked him as if he was a football.’

‘That’s awful,’ Frankie gasped. ‘How can people be like that?’

‘I guess it happens when society turns a blind eye,’ her uncle replied. ‘I’m as guilty as the next person – I should have realised what was going on in that
factory, but the profits were good and that was all I cared about.’

‘Don’t be too hard on yourself, Dad,’ Ned said gently. ‘You’ve stopped using those people now.’

‘Yes, and there will be a lot of other things I’ll be stopping,’ he said. ‘Last night, after you’d all left, I sat a bit longer with James. He told me about this
course you want to do, Ned. Family work or something?’

‘We can talk about that later,’ Ned said anxiously. ‘It’s James that matters right now.’

‘Too right, and it was James who said that if I didn’t listen to you I might lose —’

He broke off as Ned’s phone bleeped.

‘Sorry, Dad, it’s a text – it might be – Oh!’

He scanned the screen, his eyes widening in disbelief.

‘What is it?’ his father asked.

‘Oh, nothing important. Just a mate about meeting up.’

His father nodded, obviously satisfied. ‘You and I need a long talk about your future,’ he said, standing up. ‘But just one thing – I do now realise it’s your
future and not mine.’

To everyone’s surprise he enveloped Ned in a bear hug and then, as if embarrassed by his own show of emotion, he switched into organisational mode. ‘Right, this is what I suggest we
do . . .’

It was agreed that Tina and Thomas would stay at the London flat until James was well enough to leave hospital, and the others would return home.

‘Will you come in my car?’ Ned asked Frankie. ‘There’s something I need to talk to you about.’

‘I’ll come too,’ Jemma said quickly.

‘Oh no, darling, come with me,’ Nerys said. ‘I was going to stop by Peter Jones in Sloane Square. I thought I could buy you a little something to cheer you up.’

‘OK then!’ Jemma agreed at once, and Frankie saw the look of relief on Ned’s face.

At first, he said very little, concentrating on negotiating the London traffic, but Frankie could tell from the way he gripped the steering wheel until his knuckles were white that he was
agitated about something. She desperately wanted to tell him about her A-level results but knew that now wasn’t the time.

‘You were right, I was wrong,’ he blurted out. ‘You can say I told you so.’

‘What do you mean? What’s happened?’

‘That text I had at breakfast,’ he said. ‘It was from Alice.’

‘And?’

‘Read it for yourself,’ he said, tossing his mobile onto her lap.