The Accident (34 page)

‘I’m no doctor but, even to me, the prognosis doesn’t look good. Unless I’m very much mistaken your daughter is minutes away from death.’

‘Get out.’ I say it as calmly and steadily as I can and point at the door. ‘Get out or I’ll—’

‘Press this?’ James steps nimbly to the other side of the bed and thumps the taped emergency button with his fist. ‘Oh dear, it appears it’s broken. The NHS do try hard but honestly, their equipment just isn’t—’

‘I’ll scream then.’

‘You could do that,’ he places a hand on Charlotte’ pale neck and drums his fingers slowly and deliberately on her pale skin, ‘but she’ll be dead by the time you pause for breath.’

Lying on the bedside table beside him is Oliver’s pile of
National Geographic
magazines with my best hairdressing scissors on the top. If I threw myself across Charlotte I could reach them but James would still get to them first.

‘There you go,’ he says, misreading my silence. ‘There’s no need for histrionics. No silly screaming, no heroics. Not that you could move quickly enough for heroics.’ He removes his hand from my daughter’s throat and sculpts a beach ball in the air. ‘You always were on the chubby side but you’re veritably matronly these days.’

‘Childbirth, was it?’ He glances at my daughter and I suppress the urge to leap across the bed and tear out his eyes. ‘Did carrying your ugly spawn around for nine months turn you into a fat bitch or did you mainline cream cakes and butter?’

James laughs and I am glad he’s gone straight for a verbal assault. My fear was that he’d wrong-foot me by being charming and apologetic. Still I say nothing. I’m waiting for the sound of footsteps or chattering voices in the corridor so I can scream for help but the wing is unusually quiet, there’s not so much as a squeaky trolley or a slamming door.

‘She’s not as gargantuan as you but it’s only a matter of time.’ His eyes are still on Charlotte. ‘I still shudder when I remember those rolls of flab on your back, your stomach, your thighs … how you found someone else who could bear to make love to you, I don’t know.’

‘Is that what you call rape these days?’

‘Rape?’ His dead eyes flick towards me. ‘Rape implies taking something of virtue from someone innocent but you were never innocent were you, Suzy-Sue? You were a dirty slut who’d been putting it about for years.’

‘No, I wasn’t. I was a normal twenty-something who’d had a handful of boyfriends and a few one-night stands. I wasn’t a party girl or wild or unusual or dirty or used goods or any of the filthy things you called me.’

‘The truth hurts, Suzy-Sue.’

‘But it’s not true.’ The words spill out of me and there’s nothing I can do to stop them. For twenty years these thoughts have blistered and festered inside me, dying to be spoken. I tried to block them out but the more I ignored them the stronger they grew. No wonder they spilled into my dreams. ‘
None of it
was true. You tried to make me feel ashamed, James. You tried to make me regret the life I’d lived because you couldn’t accept that I’d had a life before you. But most twenty-somethings don’t come with a blank slate, James, no matter how much you might wish it, they are who they are
because
of their past.’

He shakes his head. ‘Still proud to be a slag I see. Twenty years and you still haven’t learnt.’

‘Did you love me, James?’

He jolts, as though mentally disarmed by the question, then steadies himself with one slow blink. ‘Of course I did. You were the love of my life.’

‘No, James.’ I slide the top drawer of the bedside table open and spider my fingers, searching for a biro, a letter opener, a syringe, anything sharp I can use as a weapon but all I find is an unopened box of tissues and something smooth, square and leathery. ‘I wasn’t. If you’d really loved me you’d have accepted my past. Instead you made me suffer because I couldn’t live up to the idealized woman you wanted me to be.’

His mouth narrows in disgust. ‘You tricked me, Suzy. You let me think you were different – that you were special, a beautiful angel – but you were the same. You were like every other dirty slag in London. You weren’t special enough for me.’

He inches closer to Charlotte, runs the back of his index finger over her cheekbones then touches the crown of her head and strokes her hair from root to tip, then does it again. His eyes are intense and staring and he’s breathing deeply in and out through his nose.

‘Is that what your mother told you?’ I say when he rests the tip of his index finger on one of her closed eyes. ‘That her special little boy deserved a good girl? That God would send Jamie an angel who’d saved herself especially for him?’

‘I saved myself for
you
.’ His hand leaves Charlotte’s face and he lunges at me across the bed. I dart backwards as his fingers graze my neck but then step forward again. If I can’t get help I need to get him away from my daughter, use myself as bait.

‘No, you didn’t, James. You lost your virginity to a prostitute.’

‘And how proud do you think I am of that? Something that should have been a beautiful meeting of souls was instead a dirty fumble with a whore.’

‘That wasn’t my fault.’

‘No.’ His eyes fill with tears and he reaches for Charlotte’s hand and presses it to his lips, his head bowed. ‘No, it wasn’t.’ A single tear rolls down his cheek. ‘I’m sorry, Suzy. I’m so sorry for what I put you through. You’re not a slut or a slag. You’re a beautiful, kind, tender-hearted woman. I never felt I deserved you. That’s why I was cruel to you. I was trying to push you away.’

I stare at him in astonishment as another tear follows the first, then another and another. We stare at each other, neither of us saying a word, until the silence is broken by the excited chatter of two female voices in the corridor. I look towards the door. Do I shout? Run? But running would leave Charlotte with James. It would be too dangerous. Shouting it is then. I open my mouth and—

SNAP! There is a sickening crunch like a chicken bone being bitten in half by a dog and I spin round. James is holding Charlotte’s right hand around the wrist. The little finger of her right hand is bent backwards at ninety degrees, the nail brushing the back of her hand.

‘Hello Mummy,’ he says in a little girl’s voice as he waggles my daughter’s hand at me, mimicking a wave, the broken finger flopping limply from side to side. ‘Look at my wibbly, wobbly finger.’

‘Leave her alone!’ I launch myself towards them, clambering onto the bed with one knee as I throw myself at James in an attempt to knock him away from my daughter but he’s too quick and knocks me sideways so I topple on top of my daughter instead. I struggle to right myself but James grabs my right forearm and, as he twists it so it’s lying across Charlotte’s throat, the oxygen mask over her mouth is knocked free. There is a deep rumbling gurgle from within her chest and she gasps for breath.

‘Leave her alone?’ James says as he digs his fingers into my arm, his face millimeters from mine, my cheek pressed against Charlotte’s ribcage. ‘Like you left my Mammy alone? She died, Sue. No, you didn’t know that, did you? You didn’t know because you ran away and left her to rot in a hospital ward. You didn’t just abandon me, Sue. You abandoned her too.’

‘I didn’t know,’ I whisper, ‘I had no ide—’

‘Shut up. I’m sick of the sound of your whinging, whining voice. Make one more noise and I will break the rest of Charlotte’s fingers, one by one, while you watch and then I will wring her neck. Do you understand?’

I nod silently.

‘Now get up.’

I try to stand but James grabs me by the hair. He drags me, bent double, towards Charlotte’s feet then yanks me around the end of the bed so I’m bowing in front of him. A jolt of fear courses through me as he tightens his grip on my hair and presses down on my head so I fall to my knees.

Nothing happens for several seconds. The only sound in the room is the bleep-bleep-bleep of the heart monitor in the corner of the room and the deep rasp of Charlotte’s unassisted breathing. I close my eyes and steel myself for a blow, a kick, or worse but nothing happens. Finally there is the squeak of chair legs on linoleum and James speaks.

‘It broke my heart when I realized where you’d gone,’ he is speaking softly, his voice barely a whisper and I risk a glance up at him, through my hair. He is sitting on the chair next to Charlotte, his head in his hands. ‘I’d been to the florist during my lunch break and bought you flowers and then, on the way home from work, I spotted a children’s clothes shop on the High Street that I’d never noticed before. The window display called out to me and I couldn’t resist going in. Do you know what I bought?’

I don’t move a muscle.

‘Do you know what I bought, Suzy-Sue?’

I shake my head.

‘A dress. A beautiful red dress with tiny white daisies embroidered on the skirt. It was tiny, Suzy. For nought to three months old. I’d never seen anything so exquisite in my life and I couldn’t wait to show you. I knew you’d be as excited as me.’ He clears his throat. ‘I told you I’d always wanted a daughter, didn’t I?’

I nod.

‘I was over the moon when you told me you were pregnant.’

I bite my lip. James wasn’t delighted when I told him I was pregnant. He accused me of cheating on him and spent three hours screaming at me in the kitchen demanding to know whose baby it was while I curled up in a ball on the floor and sobbed into my knees.

‘It was the most wonderful thing in the world – the fact that you were carrying my beautiful, innocent child – I thought I might burst with pride. Finally I’d be able to love someone without restraint, hurt or fear. I’d love and be loved in return. Forever.’

Charlotte’s breaths are coming unevenly now, the rasping replaced by a high-pitched wheeze. I need to get the mask back on her as soon as possible. Without enough oxygen to her brain … I close my eyes and say a quick prayer for the second time since her accident. I’m not sure anyone was listening the first time.

‘So I returned to the house, full of love, full of happiness, full of hope with an armful of flowers and a beautiful dress and you were nowhere to be found.’ An edge creeps into James’s voice and I tense. ‘I couldn’t work out where you could have gone, especially as I’d made sure to lock the door when I left. I felt lost Suzy, so terribly lost without you there to welcome me home. And then angry – how dare you spoil my surprise by being selfish and creeping out the way you did?’

There’s a space under Charlotte’s bed that I should be able to fit under. If I fall to my stomach maybe I can scrabble under it towards the door. James will leave Charlotte’s side and try to go after me but if I scream, maybe someone will get here before he has chance to do anything.

‘You thought you were so clever didn’t you, sneaking out and leaving me all alone without so much as a kiss on the cheek after everything we’d been through, but I was cleverer Suzy.’

I place a hand on the linoleum and lean towards my right. I have to be quick or James will grab hold of my ankle and yank me backwards.

‘I went into your sewing room and I found a piece of paper on the floor. A piece of paper torn from the Yellow Pages.’ He shakes his head. ‘I knew you were a lot of things, Susan but I never suspected, I never …’ his voice quivers, ‘… imagined you would murder a child.’

I scream as James pounces, his hand over my mouth, an arm locked around my throat.

‘Get up, you baby-killing bitch.’

He hoists me to my feet and shoves me towards Charlotte’s bed. My hip hits the metal bedstead and, as I put out my right hand to steady myself James grabs it and holds it over Charlotte’s mouth and nose.

‘Love her, do you?’ he hisses in my ear. ‘Think she’s beautiful and pure and innocent do you?’

‘Please,’ I mumble against his hand, ‘don’t do this. She hasn’t done anything wrong.’

‘Because she’s not innocent, Suzy-Sue, you know that don’t you? I heard her moaning like a stuck pig when she fucked her boyfriend in my spare room. I saw her fucking him doggy-style like a dirty pro and, when she’s dead, I’m going to make you watch it too.’

‘No.’ I try and twist away from him, to pull my hand from my daughter’s face but James holds me firm. There’s suction on my palm as she tries, and fails, to inhale and a strange snuffling noise fills the air.

‘You took something beautiful and precious from me. You killed my child and now you’re going to kill yours.’

He leans his weight so heavily onto my hand that Charlotte’s nose makes a terrible clicking sound and I know instantly that it’s broken. The heart monitor in the corner of the room bleeps urgently and the red line that used to undulate up and down like a gentle wave oscillates erratically as the colour drains from my daughter’s face and her eyeballs roll wildly under her closed eyelids.

‘Not long now,’ James hisses in my ear as Charlotte’s body jerks and her hands twitch at her sides. He glances at the heart rate monitor and reaches for the off switch. ‘We don’t want to alert the cavalry when she flatlines, do we?’

‘No!’ I wriggle desperately as he drags me away, towards the other side of the room, my left hand flailing desperately as I knock at his head, his hand, his hip. My blows bounce off him but then, as my hand hits the bedside table, two things happen simultaneously – the bed is showered with a stack of
National Geographic
clippings and my fingers make contact with the hairdressing scissors. I reach high into the air then, using all the strength I can muster I twist to the left and dig them deep into James’s thigh. He howls and falls to the ground, clutching his leg.

‘Help!’ I shout as lean over Charlotte’s body. Her lips are blue and she’s barely breathing. ‘Somebody help me! Please!’

I try to push the bed, to wheel her out of the room but the brakes are on and no amount of kicking will get them unlocked.

‘Somebody please—’ the words are knocked out of me and I’m pinned on top of Charlotte, my head twisted to the right, hands in my hair. I can see James above me, the bloody scissors in his right hand, his eyes black with rage. I close my eyes as he raises the scissors into the air and pray that, even if it’s too late for me, someone will have heard the disturbance and save Charlotte before he can kill her too and then—