Barefoot in the Dark (22 page)

Suze, who had by now become floppy and inert, allowed herself to be supported by Hope’s mum’s arm as well, and between them they half dragged, half carried her back into the house.

‘I dropped off the children,’ Hope’s mum told her, almost conversationally, as they walked. ‘And I got hold of Paul. He’s only in Bristol, so he won’t be long. Paul’s on his way, chicken,’ she added, to Suze.

‘Oh dear,’ Suze cried suddenly. ‘Oh dear. Oh dear.’

‘Shhh, sweetheart. Shhh. And I’ve called an ambulance.’ By now they were shovelling Suze through the back door. Her sobs were growing more voluble with every step.

‘Oh dear,’ she cried again.

‘Now don’t fuss,’ said Hope’s mother, sternly, as if talking to a whining child. ‘Come on and let’s get you sorted.’

Between them, they manoeuvred Suze through the kitchen and into the living room and Hope helped her mother lay her down on the sofa.

‘Oh dear,’ she kept saying. ‘Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear.’

Hope’s mother pulled Suze’s nightie up and inspected the cut on her leg. She tutted.

‘We’ll have to get some Savlon spray on this. Dear me. And on all these grazes. Oh, and that’s a thought. Hope, go upstairs and grab her a few things, will you, lovely? Clean nightie. A wash bag. Some undies and that.’

‘But what about the children, mum? Where are they?’

Hope’s mother nodded. ‘Oh dear. Of course. I should have told you. Dear me, I’m getting old. I should have remembered. They’re at their other Gran’s, of course. They’ve gone to stay for a few days.’

Suze’s mother lived in England, on the coast somewhere in the south east. And Suze’s children, of course, were at private school. So they’d already broken up for Easter.

Hope ran upstairs and gathered all the things she thought were needed, her mind in overdrive and teeming with questions. About her mother, for one thing. Unlike Hope, who was still reeling, she seemed to be busily taking charge of a situation that was no surprise to her at all.

Suze was flat out on the sofa under a blanket when Hope came back downstairs, and her mother was bustling about tidying the place up.

‘Mum, do you know something?’ Hope asked her pointedly. ‘About this?’

Her mother paused, half-plumped chenille cushion in hand.

‘Yes,’ she answered, sighing. ‘Yes, dear. I’m afraid I do.’

Simple psychosis. That was what the doctor said. Hope didn’t know what a complicated psychosis was, so was none the wiser until Paul, who had by this time travelled back and joined them at the hospital, explained.

‘It’s the sleeping pills that caused the psychotic episode,’ he said. ‘She takes the pills and then they react with the alcohol. And then – well, you saw. I’m sorry, sis. Must have been a bit of a morning for you.’ He was drinking coffee from the vending machine. Hope felt more like a proper drink. Could it really still be only eleven-thirty? ‘God, I shouldn’t have gone. I should have seen it coming. It’s been building up for a while.’ He glanced at his mother and she patted his wrist. ‘I certainly shouldn’t have left her on her own. But it was only the one night. I thought it would be OK.’

‘Well, it doesn’t matter now, dear,’ Hope’s mother reassured him. ‘She’ll sleep it off and that’ll be that. I doubt she’ll remember a thing about it.’

Paul looked tired. And tangibly different. Or perhaps it was just that Hope was seeing him differently. He drained his cup.

‘We’ll have to do something about those wretched bloody moles, though. Perhaps I’d better see if the guy can come over later. Don’t want to start her off again.’

Hope’s mother nodded. ‘Good idea.’

Hope felt she was watching a movie, and that she’d come in too late and didn’t know the plot. She drained her own cup and crumpled it in her hand.

‘This has happened before, then?’ she asked them both.

Her mother and brother exchanged glances. Paul nodded. ‘Not this exactly. But yes, this. That’s the trouble with all these bloody drugs she’s on.’

Hope threw her cup at the bin. ‘I had no idea, Paul.’

He looked uncomfortable. ‘No. Well, you wouldn’t. It’s not… well, you know. It’s not something we tend to talk about.’

‘But what drugs?’ She spread her hands. ‘
Why
?’

‘Ah,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘If only we had the answer to that one. It’s just, oh, I don’t know. She’s just anxious. There’s always been… well, she’s always had a tendency to anxiety. Panic attacks. She’s not depressed. It’s not like that. She just has trouble dealing with stuff. She’s OK. I mean it’s not like it’s anything progressive. But she’s been popping pills for years.’ He smiled wanly. ‘One of the merry band, eh? But you know, from time to time something just, I don’t know, tips her over the edge. And then she can’t sleep, and then she’s on the sleeping pills, and then she gets it into her head that she wants a drink… and then… well, you saw.’ He looked miserably back towards the ward.

‘And you’re telling me all this has all come about just because you’ve got moles in the garden?’

‘Oh, it’s not really about that. That was probably just the trigger.’ He smiled a mirthless smile. ‘Mountains out of mole hills, eh?’

Hope nodded ruefully. ‘I already thought that.’

And had done nothing.
Nothing
.

‘You got it,’ said Paul. The smile left his lips and he pushed his hand through his hair. ‘God knows what it’s really about this time. It’s never clear cut. Mid-life crisis. Her dad dying last year. The kids getting older. It could be any number of things. Shit. I shouldn’t have gone on that trip.’ He crumpled his own plastic cup in his hand now, his expression so full of guilt and woe that Hope wanted to take him in her arms and cuddle him. So much she didn’t know. So much she’d never even suspected.

‘So is drink the main problem, then?’

Paul shook his head. ‘God, no. Not at all. She hardly touches the stuff. Because she knows she shouldn’t. Not with the drugs she takes. But every now and then… ’

‘Tell you what,’ said Hope’s mother. ‘I’ll come and stay for a few days. How about that? I doubt they’ll keep her in more than a day or two, and you need to go to work. You’re the one who keeps it all together, you know, darling. Come on. It’s not your fault. Don’t feel bad.’

Paul smiled wanly. ‘Thanks, Mum. I’d really appreciate that.’

‘That’s what mums are for,’ she said, almost jauntily. ‘That’s what we’re best at.’ She turned to Hope. ‘And what about you, sweetheart? You’ve got work to get to haven’t you? Will you able to drop me back for my car on the way?’

She stood up. Yes. She did have work to get to. The BBC, at least, for another Heartbeat interview. It was too late to go into work first, so she’d have to call them from Paul’s. ‘No problem. We’d better get going, I guess.’

Paul stood up too.

‘Thanks, sis,’ he said, putting his arms around her and hugging her. ‘You’re a trooper. What would I do without you?’ He held her out at arms’ length.

‘I just wish I’d known, Paul. I wish… ’ What
did
she wish? That she could unthink all the uncharitable thoughts she’d always had about Suze? What good would that do? What help would it be? But she wished it even so. ‘I mean I know it’s none of my business, but –’

Paul shushed her with his hand.

‘No,’ he said slowly. ‘It’s not like that. Please don’t think that. It’s just not your problem, sis. There’s a difference.’ He looked carefully at her. ‘And I think you’ve had quite enough problems of your own to deal with.’ He smiled. ‘OK? You get me?’ He hugged her again, and she felt her eyes fill with tears for him. Yes, she said, kissing him. She did.

Was that what it was about? The unbearable lightness of being? Hope still wasn’t sure. Only knew that she felt suddenly unanchored. As if the landscape of her life had shifted and deformed. Knew that she’d been cast loose, and was flailing to get purchase again.

The events of the morning felt like a dream by the time she arrived at the BBC. Something other and unreal that had happened in a parallel universe.

‘I’m so sorry I’m late,’ she said breathlessly. Automatically. ‘You got my message OK, did you?’ She tugged her arms from the sleeves of her jacket as the producer lady – who she remembered was called Hilary – held the door to the stairway open for her. She felt as though she’d been dragged through a hedge. But then she
had
been through a hedge. Been the one doing the dragging. She shook out her jacket. She was cold. She was wet. Her nerves were still jangling.

‘Yes, yes,’ Hilary reassured her, taking it from her. ‘No problem at all. We just re-jigged the schedule a bit. Swapped you with the chicken carcass story. You’ve got time for a cup of tea, even. Everything OK at home now?’

Hope nodded and they made their way up to the first floor. She’d dropped her mother back at Paul and Suze’s – he was staying on at the hospital for a while – and telephoned work to say she wouldn’t be coming in, and then the BBC to let them know she’d be late. They’d told her the schedule was reasonably fluid and just to get there whenever she could. ‘Everything’s fine,’ she said, managing a nonchalant smile. ‘Just a minor domestic panic. All sorted.’

She was still breathless when Hilary ushered her into the little cubicle. It had been a very long run up from the car park. There’d been no sign of Jack anywhere, but she’d half expected this. His own show had finished now, so he’d either be in an office somewhere preparing the next one, or off home to write one of his columns, perhaps. Or whatever else he did in the afternoons. What did he do in the afternoons? She swallowed her disappointment. Now she was here, even though she hadn’t really admitted it to herself, she realised how much she wanted to see him. To talk to him. She realised how much she longed to put things right. Especially today. Paul’s words had stayed with her. She did have enough problems of her own. Most of them, just lately, she knew, of her own making. Like making an ass of herself over someone. Like making judgements. Like leaping to conclusions. Like not giving people – giving Jack – a chance. But he’d be probably long gone by now, even though Patti was still in evidence. She’d passed them on the stairwell and called a breezy hello.

* * *

The interview itself, which was really just an update on the fun run for one of the afternoon programmes, took mere minutes, and it occurred to Hope that it would have been altogether easier if they’d just done it over the phone. Except that that thought would never have occurred to her, not when there was a chance she’d get to see Jack. God, she’d got it bad.

‘Right,’ said Hilary brightly as she ushered Hope back into the cubicle afterwards. ‘Better let you out of the madhouse, then.’

Hope managed a smile at this. If only she knew. She slipped her arms into the sleeves of her jacket. Someone had evidently put it on a radiator, for it was now dry and warm.

‘Right,’ she said back. ‘Thanks for that.’

‘No problem at all,’ said Hilary. ‘Always happy to oblige for a good cause. I think we’ve even got a bit of a team coming ourselves, as it happens. Did Jack tell you?’

The mention of his name caused Hope’s stomach to turn over. The reflex was automatic now. She was powerless to control it. She shook her head.

‘Actually,’ she said, because there was always
some
chance he’d still be there. ‘He’s not about, is he? I’ve got a couple of things I wanted to check with him.’

Hilary glanced at the clock on the cubicle wall.

‘He might be. D’you want me to see?’

Hope said she did, and Hilary rang through to an office somewhere, and then the canteen, but without success.

They set off down the corridor, Hilary still chatting. He quite often stayed and had lunch there, apparently. But evidently not today.

‘Oh, but there’s a thought –’ she said suddenly.

She stopped in the corridor and pushed an adjacent door open, putting her head around it as she did so. Hope couldn’t see anyone, but there was obviously someone in there, behind the door.

‘Ah, Danny,’ said Hilary. ‘Just the person. You don’t know if Jack’s still around anywhere, do you?’

Hope could hear a male voice answer. The name Danny rang a bell.

‘Jack? No. He’s long gone,’ it said.

‘Is he?’ said Hilary. ‘Where to?’

‘Hey, of course,’ said the voice now. ‘You don’t know, do you?’

‘Know what?’ said Hilary, leaning further round the doorway. Hope rather got the impression he must be beckoning her. His voice dropped a little.

‘Allegra,’ he said quietly. ‘Came to pick him up. Word has it she was taking him out for lunch.’

Hilary’s eyebrows shot up. ‘Was she, now, indeed?’ She stuck a thumb in the air. ‘That’s excellent news!’

Hope remained in the corridor, smiling politely at the carpet.

‘Anyway,’ said Hilary, who was beaming now. ‘No matter. But if you do see him later, could you let him know Hope Shepherd from Heartbeat wanted to have a word?’

‘Hope Shepherd?’ said the man’s voice, suddenly changed in its timbre. Hope’s ears pricked up. There was a silence. Then a laugh. ‘Oh, did she?’ he said then. ‘Well, well!’ She could see Hilary’s expression doing sudden gymnastics, but they were obviously lost on him. Or, if not, way too late. ‘Well,’ he was busy saying, and she could tell he was smirking. ‘You’d better go and tell
Ms
Hope Shepherd from Heartbeat that she’ll just have to join the queue.’

Hilary, embarrassed, bundled her off down the corridor then, and though Hope’s mind was teeming with questions she would have killed for answers to, she meekly accepted Hilary’s goodbyes and good lucks, and her promise that she’d leave Jack a note to call Heartbeat. Almost before she knew it, she was back in the car park. And now, all things considered (and she couldn’t help but consider them), pretty comprehensively sad.

Chapter 23

The estate agent Jack had arranged to meet had a slim, boyish figure and a twinkle in her eye. Jack wasn’t altogether sure what he was doing here, but here he was anyway, just like he’d said.

In truth, he felt no pressing need to be looking at property right now. There was his big new TV career, of course – a penthouse in the bay would sit very well with that, even if it felt so not
him
– but the impulse was more because he knew he had to make some sort of effort for his father. And
now
. His father had been so agitated about it when they’d last spoken, and he wanted to have something to show him.

Jack wasn’t about to inherit any great fortune, but his dad had insisted he put his own house on the market, and was anxious to know Jack was moving things forward.

‘Charlie Jones,’ said the woman, extending a hand and pumping Jack’s enthusiastically as they drew level outside the building. ‘Building site’ might have been a better description, for there were girders everywhere, cranes clawing at the skyline and the whole area, once just a back basin of the docks, was speckled with a mid-makeover patina of dust.

‘Did you manage to get a parking space all right?’ she asked as they walked. ‘Dreadful day for it, isn’t it? Though I have to say, I always think it’s better to see a place when the rain’s hammering down and it’s blowing a gale, don’t you? So easy to be seduced by the sunshine.’ She smiled at him, revealing a row of perfect white teeth. Her hair was as ebullient as her manner, milk-chocolate brown, wild and very curly. In a different universe, one in which he wasn’t pining for someone else so wholeheartedly, he would have fancied her, for sure. Yet she wasn’t young, she wasn’t blonde and her legs weren’t even long. Hell, truth be known, did he really even go for young, long-legged blondes anyway? No, thought Jack. He went for petite elfin types with long liquorice hair. It was a very reassuring revelation. As if a weight had been lifted from his loins.

‘I parked in the multi-storey and walked over,’ he told her, increasing his pace as they approached the entrance so he could open the door for her.

‘You’ll have your own garage underneath, of course. And they’ve already started the second phase of the development,’ she told him. ‘There’s covered visitor parking there, too. Have you looked at much already?’

She was right. There was no sunshine to be seduced by. Just a choppy, leaden sea under an irritable sky. But it did have a kind of moody beauty about it. Perhaps that was why it worked. Perhaps that was why he could sort of see himself here. The door drew open with an expensive sigh and his feet hit yielding blue carpet.

‘There’s twenty-four-hour security, of course, and a gym – planning permission for a swimming pool, too. But I’m not officially allowed to say so yet. That won’t be finalised till phase three.’ Her smile was warm, uncomplicated. A smile of contentment. She wanted a sale, but everything in her manner told him she liked her life very much anyhow, thank you, so if he didn’t go for it, well,
c’est la vie
.

By the time Jack got back into his car he was feeling quite positive. He liked the notion of ‘phases’. The idea that the way he felt now was just one of them. That a new, better one, was in the offing, rising phoenix-like from the ashes of the past. He watched Charlie Jones stride across the car park and get into her car, then headed off to get into his. It was getting late, and he still had today’s script to finalise, not to mention an article for the
Express
to get finished, and all his football kit to get washed, too.

He’d just reached the car when his mobile started up. It was Allegra. Oh ho. At last.

‘Lunch’, she commanded, in her oh-so-forward style. Not a sniff of a mention of their date. Just ‘lunch’, then ‘today’ then ‘well? How you fixed?’, then, ‘Come on. Just an hour. I’ll pick you up.’

Was it Jack’s imagination or was she sounding a little sharp? Her manner when they’d parted had suggested this was not the way she’d be. Quite the opposite, in fact. Or was this yet another woman with a date-to-phone-call egg timer? Had he got on the wrong foot even with her?

‘Hi there!’ he said cheerily, refusing to join in. This was a business relationship as well, after all. ‘Look, hey, I’m sorry I haven’t been in touch –’

‘Jack. Look. I’m sorry too.’ She sighed. ‘Look, I may as well tell you now. It isn’t going to happen for us, OK?’

Jack felt a surge of relief. So he’d been let off the hook.

‘Allegra, I’m so glad you feel like that, because, well, you’re right. I’ve got a –’

‘
Jesus, Jack!
’ Her explosion of exasperation was so loud he had to hold the phone away from his ear. ‘I’m not talking about us, you dope! I’m talking about the bloody show!’

C’est la vie
. It hadn’t taken too long, the complete dismantling of everything he had been building his future career happiness on. Just the hour, which he’d spared her – she’d indeed come to work and collected him – and a brief resumé of why it had been axed. Nothing to do with him, as it turned out. Just that someone else, another thrusting producer, had come up with a different format and a bigger big name, and the powers that be, being powerful powers, had decided in the end to go with that. This was the way it worked in television. Nothing was set in stone until it happened. As with the highs, the hard knocks were very hard.

Strangely, he felt kind of OK. Not OK in a leaping-joyfully-up-and-down sense, but OK in the sense that now that the almost worst had happened he’d only the actual worst left to deal with. He had his job on the radio, he would continue to have his job on the radio. It was seem – all the excitement had been in the anticipation.
OK
. Actually, a stress off his plate. It was something he didn’t have to think about any more. As with Allegra, it seemed – and it did

It was Allegra he felt sorriest for. Though she was at great pains to sympathise with
him
– she had other irons in the fire, of course, other projects to get green-lighted – it soon became clear to Jack that all was not as cut and dried as he’d thought. She’d squeezed his arm as she dropped him back at the BBC car park. Asked him to phone her. Pouted even. Looked shy. Asked why he hadn’t phoned her. Strange how his one ignoble brush with a sexual appliance should have injected this marked shift in the dynamics of their non-relationship. It could have been pity, he thought, compassion, even, but everything in her demeanour told him otherwise. Something had changed. Her hold over him, maybe? His reason to cultivate her affection, for example, which, though it had left a slightly unpleasant taste in his mouth in the long nights following their unfortunate encounter, seemed to have been some sort of unspoken contract between them. And now he was no longer being cultivated by her, he held the cards, suddenly. The ball was in his court.

Which made it doubly important he made his position clear.

‘Look, Allegra,’ he said as he climbed out of her car, ‘What I said before about us –’

But she was having none of it. She obviously valued her dignity too much. ‘Us? You big pussy! We’re pals, you and me, right? Let’s keep it that way, OK?’

He’d gone back to his own car, then, and sat in it for a moment or two. The rain had stopped and the sun had emerged from behind the remaining wisps of high cloud. He was happy enough to sit a minute and let it warm his face. He hadn’t even realised he’d fallen asleep until a ringing sound jolted him back into consciousness.

It was the matron at the nursing home.

‘We’ve got your father a place at the hospice, Jack.’

C’est la vie
. It was now. The actual worst was on its way.

The doctor was in residence when Jack arrived at the nursing home. She was a tall, commanding woman, with aggressively sharp tailoring but the sort of face that made you want to ask her to hug you. She emanated care and empathy and goodness and warmth and she wasted no time telling Jack anything positive, just that it was important that they get his father installed in the hospice as soon as possible and that they do their level best to get to grips with his pain.

Again, a sense of events moving up a gear washed over him. The fact of his father’s imminent death was no longer something he’d have to dwell on, alone, in the car. It was out of the closet. Official. Jack’s father was going to a hospice, therefore he was going to die sooner rather than later. And with that came an almost welcome realisation that no one would tell him to try not to worry any more.

There was lots of other talk as they moved him from bed to wheelchair to corridor to ambulance. What a wag Jack’s father was. How he’d always charmed all the nurses. The way he liked to go to sleep with his earphones jammed in. Book at Bedtime, or Radio Three, or even Red Dragon, sometimes. How they’d all miss him so much. It was strange, thought Jack, how these people had taken ownership of his father. How they’d become his new family. His final family. How he, himself, had been relegated to visitor status. He still felt a degree of guilt about this. When his father’s health had begun failing, Jack and Lydia were at the start of the slope they were about to tumble down maritally, but they both, nevertheless, had entreated Jack’s father to come live with them. They would manage, they assured him. They would look after him. They wanted to look after him. But Jack’s father, the painfully diminished form semi-conscious in the chair beneath his hands now, had been bigger then. Stronger. And would not be swayed.

Jack had tried again, afterwards. More than once. But his father, if anything, was even firmer in his refusals. He did not, he’d said sternly, want to go to his grave knowing his only son wasted his formative years mopping up after a doddery old man.

His father’s head nodded up as they entered the lift.

‘Teeth,’ he said.

‘Yes, Dad?’

‘Teeth,’ he said again.

Jack squeezed around the side of the chair to face him. The lift, though capacious, held Jack, his father, Shelley, another nurse, and a porter. If there was little room to swing a cat there was so much less for dignity.

‘Teeth?’ he asked him again. His father looked fairly lucid.

‘They’re in his toilet bag,’ said Shelley.

‘It’s all right, Dad. They’re in your toilet bag,’ Jack said.

His father blinked at him and nodded.

‘You told Liddie?’ Jack’s father had always called her Liddie. ‘She came last week.’

‘I know.’

‘She worries about you.’

‘I know.’

‘
I
worry about you.’

‘You don’t have to.’

‘How’s that girl of yours?’

‘What girl?’

His father rolled his eyes. ‘What girl! Listen to him! The girl you were telling me about!’

Out of the corner of his eye, Jack saw the two nurses exchange covert grins.

When they came out of the lift, Jack was gripped by a powerful vision of an elderly man, in a chair much like this one. Only the elderly man was himself, and the son pushing the chair was Ollie. In that instant Jack decided that it mattered very much that he live to be very, very old, and that he die very quietly in his sleep.

The entourage finally made it out to the forecourt. The ambulance, its jaws open, stood ready to receive his father, while the nurses made minor adjustments to his drips. The doctor patted Jack’s shoulder and said she’d see him at the hospice. Jack wanted to ask her how long his father had, but he couldn’t. It felt a little bit too much like he wanted to organise his diary.

He was just about to get into his car when another nurse, a young girl he didn’t recognise, emerged from the front porch and started calling out to him.

He left the car and walked across the drive towards her.

‘Mr Valentine? Oh, I’m glad I caught you. I’m ever so sorry,’ she said, drawing level with him. She must be new. He didn’t know her. ‘But I forgot all about these.’ She had a large cardboard box in her arms, which she now raised towards him. It said ‘Venflon’ on the side. ‘They’ve been sitting in the office since we cleared your Dad’s things out. Matron had thought you might be happy for us to send them on down to the local primary school. They’ve got their Spring Fayre coming up and she thought they could maybe sell them. Seeing as how they’ve not been opened or anything. But they can’t. You know, health and safety. Sell by dates and all that. Anyway… ’ She proffered the box.

Jack took it from her, confused.

‘These?’ he asked.

‘The wine gums.’ She nodded at the box. ‘There’s packets and packets of them. You know what elderly people are like for hoarding things.’ She paused, whether from uncertainty about the possible impropriety of what she’d just said or simply because she had nothing else to say, Jack didn’t know. He flipped the box top open. Inside there were, indeed, packets and packets of wine gums.

‘Bless him,’ said the nurse. It was getting increasingly blowy and the little tails on her nurse’s cap were dancing in the breeze. ‘Anyway,’ she said briskly. Nursily, in fact. ‘I’m sure you’ll find a use for them. Get through them in no time if you’re anything like me!’

Jack looked up from the box at her young, untroubled face. Wine gums. Splendid, son. Just the jobby.

He cleared his throat, which felt tight. ‘Would
you
like them?’

‘Me?’

‘I mean, would the staff like them?’

She grinned at him.

‘Is the Pope catholic?’ she said.

Jack watched her go back inside, returning her wave as she entered the building, his other hand gripping the open car door, the strengthening wind lifting his jacket lapels. He felt so small all of a sudden, so young and vulnerable, so unprepared, so not ready to relinquish his father. So not ready to face the rest of his life without him. So ill-equipped to become him now. But it was about to happen. The ambulance was already moving off down the hill. He got back in the car and poked the key into the ignition, swallowing hard at the pain in his throat. He had never felt so much like curling up into a ball and crying.