House of Windows (24 page)

‘Whatever,’ Nick mumbled, rubbing at the pain in his forehead.

‘If you’re going to be like that, there’s no point my wasting any more time here. I’ll call when I land. Just … take some paracetamol and some Lemsip and go to bed.’

‘You can’t have paracetamol and Lemsip together: Lemsip’s paracetamol-based too. Or do you
want
me to overdose myself?’

The words were out before he’d realised what he was saying.

Chopin’s final nocturne grew frantic, pleading, in the background.

‘That was uncalled for. I’ll talk to you when you’re prepared to be reasonable, not vicious.’

The door slammed.

Stumbling to his feet, wishing the floor would stop feeling like it was rocking, Nick felt his way along the furniture to the kitchen and guzzled a glass of water only to spit half of it out over his jeans as he doubled over coughing, feeling like his lungs were shredding.

Snatches of words whirled through his mind. Who had called from College? What had they said? It was like the walls
were whispering, hissing to him about all the things he didn’t want to think about: the way he couldn’t work, couldn’t understand any of it any more; the way the one thing he’d always been able to count on was suddenly slipping through his fingers. Because he wasn’t going to get a First at all. He was going to fail his exams: fail them absolutely, irredeemably. And if he didn’t have that, then what was there?

He was halfway down the street before he realised he’d left the house. It was only when he reached the station that he understood that he desperately wanted Professor Gosswin. He skirted past the guards and stepped straight on to the train at the platform, letting it whisk him away from Cambridge into a world of vast flat fields, broken by oceans of waving marsh grass and reeds. Water glinted yellow as little footbridges fled from his carriage window.

Leaning his forehead against the blissful, blissful coolness of the glass, he stared out at the passing world. The train was freezing and he drew his legs up, wrapping his arms around himself as his stomach cramped with cold.

The walk to the nursing home had never seemed so long, bent over the awful ache in his chest, trying to fight back the shivers that seemed to come from deep inside.

The staff waved absently at him as they buzzed him in, letting him find his own way to Professor Gosswin’s room.

Her face was turned to the door, as if she’d been waiting for him. There was something like a smile on her face, though perhaps it was just the way the stroke had distorted her features. But he needed it to be a smile: needed her to
be glad to see him. He sank to the floor at her feet, pressed his forehead against her bony shin, and raised his fist to his mouth to hold back a sound of pain as he fought not to cough. Something in his chest made a sharp crackling sound like the slick plastic foil cut flowers come in.

Professor Gosswin’s thin fingers fluttered, shaking, on to the crown on his head, wound themselves into his hair.

He closed his eyes, letting the tears spill down his cheeks.

‘Nick dear, what on earth are you still doing here?’

Startled, Nick looked up to find one of the nurses bending over him.

‘You look like you’ve been fast asleep,’ she said. ‘I’d offer you a lift back to town if I wasn’t just on shift ten minutes ago, but there’s a train coming in about,’ she checked her watch, ‘fifteen minutes. You go on down to the station now. You don’t want to miss that one too.’

The room slid to the left, like it was rising up a steep wave, as he struggled to his feet. The edges of his vision darkened.

The nurse laughed as he staggered into the wall. ‘Better rub some life back into those legs before the pins and needles attack.’

She turned away, shaking her head as she lined up a series of pill pots on Professor Gosswin’s side-table. The Professor reached out a shaking hand.

‘Oh no you don’t,’ said the nurse, moving the pills out
of reach. ‘I’m on to you. No more tiddlywinks with your medication.’

Looking back from the door, Nick saw Professor Gosswin turn in his direction with that maybe-smile on her face. Nick smiled back, then started down the corridor.

Outside, the evening air felt wonderful. The nursing home was always hot and stuffy but today it had been stifling. It was growing dark now, a bleak sort of sunset, the sky turning from threatening orange-grey to dirty blue-brown. For some reason, the walk to the station seemed to take half an hour, but he arrived with ten minutes to spare. It must have been a mistake with the clock because the train seemed to pull up instantly, hissing to a stop then percolating unpleasantly as it idled at the platform. Somewhere metal shrieked along metal, making everyone in the carriage cower.

The journey fled past as if he’d stumbled on to some special fast train. Yet when he walked out of Cambridge station it was already dark: dark and still, as if it were very late.

The air was pleasantly cool against his skin, the night soft and gentle around him. Being free of the shivers was wonderful, though it was odd that the night was so much warmer than the day had been.

The hall and living-room lights were on when he let himself in. Someone was moving about the kitchen. He padded through the living room and peered around the door.

Tim was standing at the counter, glaring down at the
floor tiles, looking exhausted and rumpled from his flight. Inexplicably the kitchen clock was set to 23.55.

‘Hi.’

Tim’s head jerked up. ‘Nick!’ Relief flooded his face in a way that made Nick smile. ‘Are you all right? Where have you been?’

‘I went to see Professor Gosswin.’ He had to stop to breathe. The urge to cough was gone, but somehow the idea of a deep breath felt wrong. He fluttered in a few shallow ones instead. ‘It’s not really,’ breath, swallow, ‘midnight, is it? I thought,’ breath, swallow, ‘it was only about six o’clock. How … How was the wedding?’

Tim wasn’t listening, shaking his head as he pulled his phone out of his pocket and flicked through his contacts list. ‘Bill must have just missed you. I’ll give him a ring so he can stop worrying.’

The kettle came to the boil as he turned away so Nick crossed to take down the mugs. As he lifted his arm, coughing overtook him.

He saw his knuckles turn grey as he clung to the counter.

Whiteness exploded behind his eyes.

When his vision came back, the world was scarlet, as if he were looking through a blood-red window-pane. The floor slid to the side, kept sliding, his stomach swooping as if he were about to be sick.

Suddenly he wasn’t sure which way was down and he had to know: he had to lie down before he fell.

‘Tim …’ Not even a thread of a whisper.

The world went black. He couldn’t see, though he knew his eyes were open. The room was turning around him, tilting up: up so that the floor was becoming the ceiling.

It was almost a relief to be falling. For the world to be simply going away. Just going away, like he’d wished for days that it would, fading away into nothing.

The hospital clock read 03.48.

Bill sighed, rubbing wearily at his eyes. ‘You know, until now I thought it was impossible to have another day as utterly God-awful as when my wife left me. I should have known it was going to be bad when Mike insisted on interrupting my afternoon meeting to tell me about his argument with Nick and topped it off with the news that he was on the way to the airport for a three-week trip to the States.’

Tim looked up blearily.

‘Do you know what he said? “I’m sure it’s just a tantrum but with his exams coming up I’d really appreciate it if you could give him a quick ring later: try to talk some sense into him.” And of course the main thing he was worried about was this thing at the supervision: how it would affect Nick’s exams.’

Tim rolled his shoulders stiffly, reaching back to rub at a sore muscle. ‘When I left for the States, Michael was being all martyred about how much effort he’d gone to, arranging to be home at night; how he wasn’t flying out until I was on the way back …’

Bill scrubbed at his face again. ‘There might have been the start of a rant about that. I, er, hung up at a certain point.’

Tim quirked an eyebrow. ‘That’s going to set the tone beautifully for when you call tomorrow to fill him in on all this.’ He made a vague gesture at the waiting room.

Bill groaned. ‘The one saving grace is that it is – was – Friday and I could afford to pack it all in early. Thank God I don’t have to rearrange anything until Monday. You’re not back at work right away, are you?’

Tim shook his head. ‘That would have been lovely, fresh off a transatlantic red-eye. But, no, it’s officially term-time so no extra hours at the coffee shop. For once, it’s a blessing to be under-employed. I’ve had quite enough excitement to welcome me home.’ That afternoon, he’d trudged from the station to the house, lugging his suitcase, only to find Bill just pulling up at the kerb. The house was dark and empty, no messages on the answerphone. It had been Tim’s suggestion to try the nursing home.

‘I can’t believe I missed Nick at Gosswin’s by less than five minutes. I was so relieved, when you called, to know he’d be home when I got back. Should have known better than to think the day was on the up.’

The last thing he’d expected, as he let himself in through the front door, was a frantic shout. He’d found Tim kneeling on the kitchen floor with Nick lying bonelessly in his arms, lips blue and face bloodless.

He was dialling an ambulance even before he’d knelt to check Nick’s pulse, trying to ignore how hot and dry his skin
felt, the crackling of his breathing, like his lungs were full of tissue paper, the elderly wheeze at the end of each shallow breath.

It was only when the paramedic asked ‘Dad’ to step back that he’d remembered Michael. He’d sent Tim to try Michael’s mobile, knowing already that it would be switched off because where would Mike be while his son was lying unconscious on the kitchen floor but midway across the Atlantic?

‘I’ve never been so glad that Nick’s still under sixteen. I don’t know what I would have done if they hadn’t let me come in the ambulance. You know, you didn’t have to follow on, Tim. If you were any more exhausted, you’d be asleep on your feet. You could have stayed home. Nick wouldn’t have known.’

Tim gave him a half-hearted glare. ‘Like I said, there’s no way I
wasn’t
going to come. Thanks for the taxi money, though.’ He yawned again. ‘Do you think they’ll tell us something soon?’

They stared morosely up at the clock only to flinch when a nurse stopped suddenly in front of them.

‘Still here, I see,’ she said wryly. ‘I can tell that throwing you out is only going to see you sleeping in the lobby, so I’m going to give you ten minutes to look in on him to set your minds at rest. Then I’ll be packing you off home until morning visiting hours. You
only
get those ten minutes,’ she said, as they pushed themselves hurriedly, if stiffly, to their feet, ‘if we’re completely clear on the fact that your boy’s
asleep and I’ll not have you waking him: he needs the rest more than the reassurance you’re here. Are we in agreement?’

‘Yes, ma’am,’ Tim said, giving her his most winning smile.

‘You’re looking rather too much the worse for wear yourself for that to have the effect you’re intending,’ the nurse told him. ‘Now, like the doctor said earlier, with teenage cases of pneumonia we often find a huge improvement in just the first twelve hours of getting them on a good strong dose of IV antibiotics. Your son’s X-rays weren’t too bad so we may only need to keep him twenty-four hours for the IV. I’ll be surprised if it’s more than forty-eight. He’s young and otherwise healthy, if a bit thin. He’ll be fine recovering at home on some oral antibiotics. I know he was a bit blue about the gills when the ambulance brought him in but that was shock as much as anything. His oxygen saturation is already back up, so don’t you worry. Now, one last signature and I’ll give you those ten minutes,’ she said, passing Bill a clipboard.

Having avoided telling anyone that he wasn’t Nick’s father without actively lying – no one seemed to have noticed that their last names were different – Bill made sure his signature was more than usually vague, but the nurse didn’t even look at what he’d written. She just tucked the clipboard under her arm and led them to a little cubicle at the end of the ward.