When Will There Be Good News? (17 page)

She ran her finger round the rim
of the
crystal. Samantha's crystal.

'Louise?'

'Mm?'

'I was just saying to Patrick,' Bridget said, 'that you must come and visit us in the summer.'

'That would be great, I've never been to Eastbourne. Are you near the beach?'

'Wimborne actually. It's not on the coast,' Bridget said. Inside Bridget's smug and well-upholstered middle-class body there might be a perfectly decent human being. Or not.

Louise knocked back the rest
of the
wine in her glass and searched for her own inner adult. Found her. Lost her again.

*

'There's ice-cream in the freezer,' Patrick said. 'Cherry Garcia,' he said to Bridget. 'Is that OK with you?' 'What does that mean?' she said querulously. 'I've never understood.'

'The Grateful Dead,' Patrick said. 'Never your kind of music, Bridie. As I seem to remember, you were more ofa Partridge Family fan.'

'And you weren't?' Louise said to him. 'You don't seem like you were ever a Deadhead to me.'

'Sometimes I wonder who you think you married,' he said. What did that mean? He stood up and began to clear the plates. The food, cold and congealed, looked disgusting now.

'I'll get the ice-cream,' Louise said,jumping up so quickly that she nearly knocked Tim's glass over. She managed to catch it just in time.

'Good save,' he murmured. He was so English. A different class of person from Louise. Louise had a knee-jerk reaction to the accent ofa dominant culture. It was funny how sometimes you could realize you were all alone in a roomful of people. Well, four people, one of whom was you. Stranger in a strange land, a Ruth amongst an alien middle-class corn.

Instead ofgoing straight to the kitchen, she ran up the stairs to her bedroom (their bedroom) and took her rings out of the safe. The safe had been a proviso
of the
insurance company because
of the
value of the diamond. When she changed her insurance, the new insurance company insisted that Louise install a monitored security system and a safe, 'For the ring, Mrs Brennan,' the girl on the other end of the phone said. Louise had never been called 'Mrs' in her life and couldn't believe the amount of bile that shot into her system at the word, and not just at that word, but to add insult to injury the girl had called her by Patrick's surname as if she was a chattel. She was baffied by women who changed their names when they got married, your name was the closest thing to your self. Sometimes your name was all you had. Joanna Hunter changed her name when she married, but then you would, wouldn't you? But at least she could cling to the epithet of'Doctor' to give her an identity. If Louise was in Joanna Hunter's shoes she would have changed her name long before marriage. She wouldn't have wanted to be known for ever as that little girl lost in the bloody field ofwheat. Louise might not have had an idyllic childhood but it had been a whole lot better than Joanna Hunter's.

'That would be Detective ChiefInspector Monroe,' she said coldly to the girl from the insurance company. 'Not Mrs Brennan.'

Louise only found out afterwards that Patrick had bought the diamond ring with some
of the
money invested from Samantha's life insurance. Truly a blood diamond, after all.

She didn't often wear the big diamond, just occasionally if they were going out somewhere. He made her go out places, theatre, restaurants, opera, concerts, dinner parties -even, God help her, to charity fund-raisers where the rich and richer hobnobbed at two thousand a table. Kilts and ceilidhs, Louise's idea ofhell. Still, it made her realize how narrow she had let her life become, it had just been Archie, work, her cat, although not necessarily in that order. And now her cat was dead and Archie had spread his wings. 'Live your life, Louise,' Patrick said, 'don't endure it.'

She didn't wear her wedding ring either. Patrick wore his. He never mentioned her unworn wedding ring or the diamond in the safe. Lying in bed at night Louise could see the rings glinting in the dark, even when the safe was shut. Band of gold. Band around the heart. Heart of darkness. Darkness evermore.

There had been another man once. The kind of man she could have imagined standing shoulder to shoulder with, a comrade-inarms, but they had been as chaste as protagonists in an Austen novel. All sense and no sensibility, no persuasion at all. She had kept vaguely in touch with Jackson but it had been going nowhere because it had nowhere to go. He'd had a pregnant girlfriend and neither of them had talked about the consequences of that in their occasional drunken, late-night texts. Then the pregnant girlfriend dumped him and told him it wasn't his baby and they hadn't talked about the consequences of that either. Perhaps it had only been Louise who had been drunk. She wasn't a drinker, not really (,Only days with a "y" in them'), she would never go down the same path as her mother, but sometimes, before she met Patrick, she had found herself looking forward to pouring the first drink of the evening in a way that went beyond pleasant anticipation. Now her drinking followed Patrick's civilized regime, a glass or two of a good red with a meal. Just as well, she made a maudlin drunk.

Patrick believed in the health-giving properties of red wine. He had embraced the Red Wine Diet, buying cases of some French wine that was going to make him live for ever. He went for a swim five mornings a week, played golf twice a week, had a positive attitude every day of the week. It was like living with an alien pretending to be human.

He was solicitous about her health too (,Ever thought of doing yoga? Tai-chi? Something meditative?'). He didn't want to be widowed a second time. A surgeon seeing off two wives in a row, it wouldn't look good.

She slipped the ring on her finger. Let Bridget see that her price nlight not be above rubies but she was worth a three-and-a-halfcarat piece of ice. She added her wedding ring and her finger felt suddenly weighed down. The rings were tight. For a second she thought they had shrunk, until she realized that it was more likely that her finger had grown bigger.

Catching sight of herself in the nlirror she felt shocked -her skin was alabaster and her eyes were huge and black, as if she'd been taking belladonna. At her temple a large vein throbbed like a worm buried beneath her skin. She looked like someone who had been in a terrible accident.

She had heard the phone ringing insistently downstairs and by the time she came reluctantly down Patrick was in the hallway, pulling on his Berghaus and making eagerly for the door. 'There's been a train crash,' he said to her. 'A bad one. All hands on deck tonight,' he added cheerfully. 'Conung?'

Funny Old Worl
d
REGGIE CHASE, AS SMALL AS A MOUSE, AS QUIET AS A HOUSE WITH NO
o
ne home. She was absent-mindedly scratching the top of Banjo'
s
head. Homer was open on her lap but she was watching Coronatio
n
Street. She had almost finished an old box of violet creams that she'
d
rummaged out of the back of one of Ms MacDonald's kitchen cupb
oards (any port in a storm). She checked the clock, Ms MacDonal
d
would be home soon.

She could hear a train approaching, the noise muted at first by the wind and then growing louder and louder. Not the usual train noise, but a great rumbling wave ofsound that seemed to be rolling towards the house. Reggie leaped instinctively to her feet, she had the feeling that the train was actually going to come through the house. Then another higher-pitched sound as if a giant hand was clawing a giant blackboard with giant fingernails and finally a tremendous bang like an explosive clap of thunder. The apocalypse had come to town.

And then ... nothing. The gas fire hissed, Banjo snored and grunted, the rain continued to throw itself against the living-room window. The Coronation Street theme music started up for the credits. Reggie, book in hand, a half-eaten violet cream in her mouth was still standing in the middle of the floor, poised for flight. ~or a moment it was as if nothing had happened.

Then she heard voices and doors banging as people from the neighbouring houses ran into the street. R
. E
ggie open
. E
d ,the fr~n,t door and stuck her head out into the wmd and ram. A tram s crashed' a man said to her. 'Right out back.' Reggie picked up the phone {n the hall and dialled 999. Dr Hunter had told her that in an emergency everyone presumed that someone else would call. Reggi
e
wasn't going to be that person who presumed. .

'Back soon,' she said to Banjo, pulling on her jacket. She pIcked up the big torch that Ms MacDonald kept by the fuse box at the fr~nt door, put the house keys in her pocket, pulled the door shut behm~ her and ran out into the rain. The world wasn't going to end thIS
n
ight. Not if Reggie had anything to do with it.

What larks, Reggie!

The Celestial Cit
y
THE TUNNEL WAS WHITE, NOT BLACK. NOT SO MUCH A TUNNEL AS A corridor. It was very brightly lit. And there were seats, white moulded plastic benches that seemed to be part of the wall. He was sitting on one as if he was waiting for something. It reminded him of a scene from a science-fiction film. Jackson expected that any minute his sister or his brother would appear and invite him to follow them into the light. He knew it was altered temporal lobe function or oxygen deprivation to his brain as his body shut down. Or even an excess of ketamine -he'd read somewhere about that, National Geographic probably. Still, it was a surprise when it happened to you
. Y
ou would think it would feel like a cliche or a dream but it didn't. He was at ease, in a way that he didn't ever remember feeling when he was alive. It no longer mattered that he wasn't in control. He wondered what was going to happen next.

On cue, his sister suddenly appeared sitting next to him on the bench. She touched the back of his hand and smiled at him. Neither of them spoke, there was nothing to say and everything to say at the same time. Words would never have been able to convey what he was feeling, even if he had been able to speak, which he wasn't.

He was experiencing euphoria. It had never happened to him before, even at the happiest times in his life -when he was in love, when Marlee was born -any possibility of clear, uncut joy had been fogged by the anxiety. He had never floated free of the world's cares before. He hoped it was going to go on for ever.

His sister moved her face close to his and he thought she was going to kiss him on the lips but instead she breathed into his mouth. His sister's signature scent was violets -she wore April Violet cologne and her favourite chocolates were violet creams, even the sight of which made Jackson feel sick when he was a boy -so he wasn't surprised that her breath tasted ofviolets. He felt as ifhe had inhaled the Holy Ghost. But then he felt himself being pulled out of the tunnel, away from Niamh, and he had to fight to resist. She stood up and started to walk away. He exhaled the Holy Ghost and shut his mouth so it couldn't get back in. He stood up and followed his sister.

Some slippage, some interruption m the space-time continuum. Something had punched him in the chest, incredibly hard. He wasn't in the white corridor. He was in the Land of Pain. And then, just as suddenly, he was back in the white corridor, his sister walking ahead, looking over her shoulder, beckoning to him. He wanted to tell her that it was OK, he was coming, but he still couldn't speak. More than anything in the world he wanted to follow his sister. Wherever it was, it was going to be the best thing that had ever happened to him.

Something jack-hammered him in the chest again. He felt suddenly furious. Who was doing this, who was trying to stop him from going with his sister?

He was back in the white corridor again, but he couldn't see Niamh anywhere. Had she got tired ofwaiting for him? Then that was it, the white corridor disappeared for good, replaced by something strange and fuzzy, like bad reception on a black-and-white television set. And more blinding pain, like lightning bolts being thrown around in his skull.

There was a word for how he felt but it took him a long time to find it in his fried-up brain. 'Heartbroken', that was the word. He had been on a journey to somewhere wonderful and some bugge
r
~ad come along and stopped him. Then he started to fade, slipping mto the darkness again, into oblivion. No white corridor this time just endless night. '

Chapter
III

Tomorrow
.

The Dogs They Lift Behind
.

WHAT DID HE MEAN SHE'D GONE AWAY? GONE AWAY? GONE AWAY where? And why? To see an elderly aunt who's been taken ill, he said. She'd never mentioned having an aunt, let alone one who might get ill.

'She's only just been taken ill,' Mr Hunter said impatiently, as if Reggie was a nuisance, as if it was her that had phoned him at half past six in the morning, waking in a fumbling daze of sleep, unable to understand why Mr Hunter was on the other end of the phone saying, 'You don't need to come in today.' For a moment Reggie thought it must be something to do with the train crash, and then worse -that something had happened to Dr Hunter or the baby -or worst of all, that Dr Hunter and the baby had been involved in the train crash in some way. But no, he had phoned at an unearthly hour to tell her about a sick aunt.