Blowing It (25 page)

‘Coffee, sweetie?’ Harry murmured in Clover’s ear.

‘Mm. Please, that’d be great.’ Good. At last, a chance to get out.

‘Kitchen’s through there.’ He pointed through the darkness in the general direction of the hallway.

Through there? Clover sat up abruptly and retrieved her watch from the table beside her. Then she scrambled off the bed and picked up her bag and jacket and quickly slid her feet into her shoes. How lucky, as it turned out, that in his school-boyish eagerness Harry hadn’t got round to removing more than the absolute minimum of her clothing.

‘You want
me
to make it?’ she asked.

‘Only fair, darling. I did all the work.’ Even in the half-dark, she could see the smirk.

‘True,’ she said, heading for the door, ‘all by yourself. But then I expect you’re used to that.’

Slam. The front door made a good loud clunk and Clover raced down the stairs to her car.

‘Home, home,’ she murmured to herself as she leaped into the car, started the engine and hurtled down the road back towards the A3. What a waste of an evening, what a stupid experiment, she thought. And a waste of good knickers too, for they were still in Harry’s bedroom, kicked into the dust beneath his bed. No way would she ever want to see them, or him, again.

FIFTEEN

CONSIDERING HOW MUCH
bad news and anxiety hospitals tend to hold, Lottie thought the decor in the waiting area was insultingly upbeat, as if it was trying to convey a jovial ‘Cheer up, it might never happen’.

Surely, if you were on the premises either pacing about being a worried relative or flat-out in a cubicle, then ‘it’ patently already had. What were all these nerve-racked people, fidgeting on the edges of their seats, supposed to make of the candy-pink walls, the bright orange chairs and the floor that was a chequerboard of red (to hide blood-stains?) and sky blue? The place looked like a playgroup’s venue of choice and was surely far too hectic for keeping the customers calm and reassured. Were they supposed to think, Ooh that’s nice. I feel so relaxed and happy here? Not very likely, was it, if, like Lottie, you were quite possibly about to hear that the person you loved most in the
world
was ready to be wheeled to the mortuary?

‘They don’t tell you anything. Why won’t they tell me? I’d rather know.’ Lottie sat on the tatty orange chair beside Al and put the plastic cup of tea on the floor beside her. She couldn’t hold it – her hands were shaking too much.

‘I suppose they’ll come and tell you when there’s something to tell.’ Al was looking pale and frightened. He kept gazing longingly at the exit doors, clearly desperate for Ilex or Clover to turn up and take over his stake-out duty. Lottie remembered that when they’d travelled with the band, Al had always been terrified of anything medical, was always the last of the crew to get vital vaccinations done, having to be coaxed to the surgery by the drummer and by George who would haul him, still struggling, into the building, one each side of him like club bouncers in reverse. She hoped he wouldn’t faint. He easily might if a patient staggered in, covered in blood. That would make one more to panic about, for
would
it be a faint or another … what? Heart attack? Stroke? What was it Mac had had? Either of those options seemed way too grown-up. Surely Mac was still a young, vital man, really? The many years they’d been together seemed compressed, somehow, as if only a few brief months had passed since that Roundhouse night when they’d first met. Vividly, she recalled asking him where he’d got his exquisite flowery shirt. (Granny Takes a Trip, King’s Road, hand-made.)

She hoped they’d done the right thing. The barman at the Feathers had pushed through the crush and shoved a tiny aspirin under Mac’s tongue, claiming they were kept in the till for exactly this reason; they were probably past their best-before, he’d said, apologetically, but couldn’t do any harm and might save his life in the case of heart failure. Or, Lottie now wondered, it might be just one more complication, the one thing he absolutely shouldn’t have had. If it was a brain haemorrhage he’d had, wouldn’t thinning his blood still further be the worst thing they could have done? The paramedics in the ambulance hadn’t seemed too stressed, but as they saw this kind of collapse (presumably) on a daily basis, maybe that didn’t mean anything. The fact that Mac had collapsed in a pub though, that wasn’t great, Lottie thought. There seemed to be a general bias about that. A presumption that if you were on licensed premises and you fell over, then you must be completely rat-arsed. She hoped the medics (wherever they were) were checking Mac for more than just blood-alcohol levels. Mac hadn’t been completely unconscious, which was apparently a good thing, and didn’t seem to be in unbearable pain, apart from the terrifying shortness of breath; both he and Lottie becoming more fearful by the second that each of these shallow, painful breaths would be his last.

The accident and emergency department was a busy one, considering it was only a Wednesday
night
. A girl in a nearby cubical was sobbing constantly, in spite of a kindly nurse’s attempts to reassure her. Lottie tried not to speculate that perhaps she’d lost a baby, or been told a lump really was something to worry about. A pair of Goth teenagers clung to each other on chairs beside the reception desk, the expressions of all-out terror on their pale faces contrasting bizarrely with their black, spiked hair, purple lipstick and kohl-eyed make-up. A man with his arm in a sling was wincing every time someone walked past, possibly terrified of drunks carelessly meandering, falling on his shattered limb.

‘I couldn’t work here,’ Al murmured, his knee drumming up and down in agitation. ‘How do people stand it, dealing with all this pain every day?’

‘I don’t have a clue,’ Lottie told him. ‘But thank God they do.’

At last. Clover. Where the hell had she been? When Lottie and Mac had left Holbrook House that evening it had been full of people. When she’d phoned home from the hospital, there seemed to be only Sorrel and Gaz on the premises, babysitting the two sleeping children and with no idea where either Ilex or Clover had vanished to. She’d always insisted to them, back in the days when they’d lived at home, how important it was to tell someone where they’d be. Just in case. It wasn’t enough to have mobile phones – what use was one of those if
the
battery was down or it had switched itself off in a bag, as Clover’s seemed to have done?

Lottie watched her daughter hurtle nervously through the automatic doors as if expecting them to snap shut and cut her in half.

‘Mum! What’s happened? On my way home I phoned Sorrel to check on the girls and she said Dad was in here, all collapsed! Is he OK?’ Clover’s face was twisted with anguish, but even so, Lottie couldn’t help noticing she was wearing the kind of make-up that was for serious going out. And the shoes … weren’t they her precious last-birthday Jimmy Choos? Lottie pulled Clover down to the chair beside her and hugged her close. She felt shivery and could feel tears on their way.

‘I don’t know, Clover. He was in the pub, singing …’

‘
Singing?
’ Clover pulled back and stared at her mother. ‘But he never sings any more! Oh – I get it. He was pissed?’

‘No! Look, don’t you start. I’ve had that from everyone else. He wasn’t, OK? Well … hardly at all, nothing serious.’ Lottie sniffed. ‘And he just, keeled over.’

‘I think maybe, if you don’t mind, I’ll just go and er …’ Al stood up and shuffled his feet around, looking desperate to escape.

‘Al, thanks so much for staying,’ Lottie said, squeezing his hand. ‘I’ll be fine now Clover’s here. And I promise I’ll call if there’s anything …’ The
tears
started to spill over. She could feel them, fat and bead-like, trickling one by one like the first thumping raindrops of a thunderstorm.

‘Mum, please don’t cry.’ Clover squeezed Lottie tight. ‘It’s scary! It’s like you think he’s going to—’

‘Don’t say it!’ Lottie snapped. ‘Don’t even think it!’

Lottie
was
thinking it though. Of course she was. She was thinking, what kind of massive, unfillable trench would the death of Mac leave in her life? Just when they’d decided to take some us-time, to offload all the peripheral ephemera that thirty-something years had accumulated so they could get back to the you-and-me basics. The essentials. Of which, for her, Mac was
the
essential.

Ilex crept round past the garages at the back of the apartments carrying his outrageously pricy hand-tied bunch of deep red roses and loitered by the dustbins, almost colliding with a fat, dirty fox that shot out from behind them and raced past carrying a chicken carcase. He knew, of course, that he could just go into the apartments through the main door, up the stairs and let himself in – he still had his keys. And, he reminded himself, if push came to shove, it was technically his own property. On paper, anyway. Right now, it looked as if Manda had gone for squatters’ rights. Which was fine. He didn’t want her out, just himself back in, in her life, in her bed and in her good books. Why was it so hard
when
he’d done nothing wrong? Well, not very wrong anyway.

There was a light on in their bedroom. Or should that be ‘her’ bedroom now? He imagined her many, many clothes, no longer crushed together now that most of his had been ejected, luxuriating on their padded satin hangers in the space of both sides of the long wardrobe; his sock drawer would have been cleared out to make way for even more froths of her delicious underwear. He shouldn’t think along those lines – it would drive him to the kind of crass, clumsy impatience that would have him storming up the stairs and breaking the door down. He didn’t think that would impress her – Manda didn’t approve of gratuitous breakage. Splintered wood meant finding a carpenter and all the ensuing hassle and expense. Not good.

There was no point phoning Manda’s mobile or the flat yet again; she still wasn’t answering. Only once had he briefly heard her voice in these last days and that was because he’d used Clover’s phone, but after saying hello, and discovering it was him, she’d hung up instantly, not even sparing him a perfunctory ‘Sod off’. He’d considered writing a letter but she’d probably put it through a shredder and send it straight back and he couldn’t face the angst of opening an envelope of viciously sliced shards that represented his heart and soul. Besides, what did you write without sounding after-the-event soppy? E-mail was definitely out, though he’d
considered
it. But you couldn’t do emotional take-me-back stuff by e-mail, especially not to Manda’s work-place. There was too much risk of it getting mixed up in the daily round-the-building joke-swap: one casually miss-pressed key and half Gatwick Airport could know the whole sorry tale in minutes. (If they didn’t already. Wasn’t that what women did? They told one close friend, in total confidence, over a tears-and-lipgloss moment in the loo, and a mysterious three hours later they were getting God-what-a-bastard sympathy from every female in the building?) And anything electronic for communication was too far along the track of those famous people you heard of who’d so callously dumped their lifetime partners by fax. Not that he was dumping her. He’d turned up tonight, with his rather corny roses, in the hope of entirely the opposite.

First thing was to get Manda’s attention. She craved love and romance. Clover said so. Even Sorrel had agreed with that (albeit with a typical teen sneer) so it must be right. Eternal love and a wedding were required apparently, not a cat and a litter tray. Well, fine. If she wanted it, she could have it. Otherwise what would the future be for Ilex? Oh yes, he could see it now and a very gloomy prospect it was. A carpet of empty pizza boxes and beer cans, a Sky Sports habit plus years of pointless and ever more desperate and unsatisfactory skirmishes with scary, predatory women like
Wendy
. If he ever got access to the flat and to Manda again, his copies of
Fuzz
would be straight out here to these bins. The next person in a uniform he hoped to have dealings with was the vicar who’d conduct the wedding. (‘Do you, Ilex
Adonis
MacIntyre …?’ Adonis. Aaaagh. The thought of laughter ripples still made him cringe. He’d have to get over it. On the day there’d be so much more to think about. How to pay for it all should keep his mind occupied.)

Ilex, still toting his bouquet and dodging the squares of light cast from windows in the block, crept across the grass and bent to pick up a selection of small stones from the gravel pathway. Then he started gently lobbing them up at the bedroom window. But he was too tentative in his efforts not to have every flat-owner coming out to their balconies to shout at him and managed to miss his target with almost every one. A couple scratched almost noiselessly against the window and fell uselessly onto the bedroom’s small outside deck area. Lucky that England weren’t depending on him to carry the bowling at the next test, he thought. He had another go, concentrated hard and this time hit the jackpot, centre of the window pane. He hid back in the shadows and waited for a response. If she opened the glass door he’d simply emerge into one of the light-squares and ask her the big question from there, Romeo-style, a full-on balcony-scene. What more could she want? Wouldn’t that be
something
to tell the one ladies’-room confidante at work? By lunchtime there’d be a queue to look at the ring. Ah – that was another thing he hadn’t thought of. He’d have to take her out in the morning to choose something and pray his credit limit wouldn’t melt under the strain.

But right now, there was no sign of her. What was she doing in there? Maybe she was in the shower, or had music or the television on. He looked at his watch. Nine fifteen. Was it
Celebrity Love Island
that was showing at the moment? Or was it the one in the jungle? Manda liked that sort of faux-reality thing, and became completely engrossed in who was doing what with whom. He found it sweet and appealing that she took it all as gospel, never considering that celebrities might be there to play up to the cameras and the audience and that someone, just off-set, might well be ordering them to gee up the arguments and power-drive the lust interest.