Cruel Legacy (59 page)

Now Joel was the one they turned to, not her; Joel was the one...

She froze as she caught sight of the note propped up on the kitchen table, panic exploding inside her as she frantically ran across the kitchen and picked it up.

'Cathy in hospital,' Joel had written baldly, his handwriting hurried and unsteady.

Sicldy Sally put down the note. Cathy—in hospital. Why.. .when...how...?

Picking up her car keys, she ran towards the door. It didn't matter that it would be easier and quicker to ring up and find out what had happened... she had to be with her daughter.

As she drove towards the hospital she realised for the first time what it felt like to be on the other side of things, what it felt like to be a mother whose child lay ill or injured in alien surroundings.

It wasn't Sally the professional, the nurse who parked her car haphazardly and then ran all the way to the hospital entrance, but Sally the mother.

She saw Joel first.

He was standing with his back towards her outside the doors that led to the children's ward.

'Joel, where
's
Cathy?' she demanded as he turned round and saw her. 'What happened... what's wrong...?'

'They don't know,' Joel told her tersely, "Hiey think it could be appendicitis.'

Appendicitis... Sally felt the floor start to give way beneath her as her legs threatened to buckle.

They had had a teenager in only last month but his condition had been caught too late, after the appendix had burst, and he had died soon after admission.

Appendicitis—the word trickled into her consciousness like ice-cold water filtering through her brain, ice-cold water tinged with an acid which left an afterburn that made her want to scream in pain and denial.

Why on earth hadn't she
listened
this morning when Cathy had complained that she didn't feel well? But she had been more concerned with seeing Kenneth than her daughter's health, she told herself bitterly...

'Where is she...? I must see her.'

'You can't... the specialist is with her. Where the
hell
have you been?' Joel added, demanding, 'I've been ringing your bloody sister's for the last two hours.'

'I—we got delayed,' Sally told him.

Oh, why wasn't I here; why didn't I know? Anguish and guilt filled her.

'Where's Paul?' she demanded anxiously. 'He...'

'He's just gone to get us both a cup of coffee. I thought :t would give him something to do I rang fee school and asked them to send him straight here. I didn't want him going home and being on his own, worrying...'

Sally flinched as she caught the accusatory note in his voice. 'It wasn't
my
fault I wasn't there,' she protested defensively.

'No, but you were the one who insisted on Cathy going to school this morning, weren't you, just so that you could go out with your bloody sister?'

Joel knew he was over-reacting, punishing Sally for something that was not her fault, but he had never felt so afraid or so alone in all his life as he had done when Cathy had turned up at the leisure centre looking so very ill.

'The teacher at school said I should come home, but no one was there so I came here,' she had told him. 'You don't mind, do you, Dad?'

'No, of course not!' Joel had been able to see that she was in great pain. They had gone home, but as the pain had got worse Joel had decided he needed to get her straight to hospital. Frantic with worry, but trying not to show it, he had attempted to reach Sally on the phone, having to ieave her a hasty note when his calls went unanswered. Cathy had been terrified when he had insisted on bringing her to hospital, but too weak to do anything about it when he had handed her gently into the car.

He had never needed or wanted Sally more in all his life, but the minutes and then the hours had ticked away and still Sally hadn't come, nor had anyone answered at Daphne's even then.

Now his fear had turned to anger, and, although he wanted to call back his words when he saw Sally's white face, somehow he just couldn't do so.

Not man enough, an inner voice taunted him, but before he could answer it the ward doors swung open and a nurse came hurrying towards them.

'Ah, Sally, you finally made it,' she greeted Sally, and then, turning her back on her, she addressed herself to Joel, telling him, 'It's all right, Mr Bruton. The specialist is sure that it isn't appendicitis. He thinks it's more likely to be a particularly virulent strain of stomach bug that's been doing the rounds recently, but we'll keep her in overnight just to be on the safe side.'

Sister Fuller had never liked her, Sally acknowledged. She was one of the old school, devoted to her young patients, but thoroughly disapproving of mothers who worked, even if it was in the field of nursing.

'You can sec your daughter now if you like,' she continued, still beeping her back to Sally and addressing herself to Joel.

A movement at the far end of the corridor caught Sally's eye and as she turned her head she saw Paul coming towards them. When he saw the nurse talking to Joel he tensed and started to run.

'It's all right,' Joel reassured him, reaching out to him before Sally could say or do anything, putting his arm around his shoulders and drawing him protectively towards him as he told him, 'Cathy's going to be OK.'

Watching the two of them together, the way Joel's arm curved protectively around his son's body, the warmth and reassurance in his voice, the closeness and intimacy between them, Sally suddenly felt like an outsider, unwanted and unnecessary, an intruder into their private circle—a world she no longer had the right to enter. Hot tears stung her eyes and burned her throat.

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Over Paul's shoulder Joel suddenly noticed Sally's downbent head and the betraying shine of tears in her eyes. Remorsefully he gently started to push Paul to one side and reach for Sally.

He had been unfairly hard on her. It wasn't her fault she had been too preoccupied this morning to see how ill Cathy had been. It was only fear and panic that had made him speak so savagely to her, the knowledge of how completely helpless and alone he had felt... how much he had needed her.

He called her name softly, but she was already turning away from him and heading towards the ward, walking so quickly that she was almost at the ward doors before he could catch up with her, stiffly holding herself aloof from him as he fell into step beside her.

'I'm sure there's really nothing to worry about,' the specialist was telling them gently a few minutes later as he met than outside the ward. 'Although your husband was quite right to bring her in.'

'I panicked,' Joel admitted gruffly. 'I didn't know what to do when she was in such pain.' He shook his head, unable to find the words to express what he had felt.

Sally watched him. Reaction had started to set in, her body cold with the realisation not of the fact that Cathy was safe and only suffering from some bug, but what she would now be feeling had her appendix really burst.

As a nurse she knew better than most how important time was in diagnosing an inflamed appendix, so important that minutes and sometimes even seconds could make the difference between life and death. But she had been away, unavailable, oblivious, uncaring, unknowing, unreachable for hours. Hours when the fight for Cathy's life could have been waged and lost.

A cold, numbing sensation spread through her, her head threatening to burst under the pressure of her thoughts as she tried to imagine how she would have felt walking into the hospital which was so familiar to her to learn that her child had died while she...

What kind of mother was she...? What kind of person...?

'Sister said that you wanted to keep Cathy in overnight,' Joel was saying.

'Yes, but that's only as a precaution,' the specialist was reassuring him.

'I want to stay here with her.. .tonight...' Sally announced croakily. 'I '

'I'll stay,' Joel interrupted her, reminding her, 'You've got an early shift in the morning...'

'I really wouldn't advise either of you to stay. I promise you it isn't necessary and, besides, I'm afraid we just don't have the room,' the specialist informed them. 'You can see her now, of course.'

Although the nurses had done their best to cheer up the children's ward, it had a spartan, almost bleak appearance, far too reminiscent of Kenneth's unnaturally perfect rooms for Sally's comfort. The knowledge of where she had been and with whom while her child lay ill spread across her conscience like a heavy weight she couldn't remove.

She needed someone else to help her lift it, she acknowledged, but who was there who could do that.. .who
wanted
to do that for her...?

Not Cathy, who lay still and unnaturally quiet in the pristine white bed, averting her face when Sally approached her; and certainly not Joel, who had done everything bar wave a banner to proclaim her an unfit mother.

'It's OK, you're going to be fine,' she heard Joel saying. 'But they're going to keep you in overnight...'

'Oh, Dad. I was so frightened...'

Sally could hear the emotion in her voice, but when she instinctively reached to take hold of her hand Cathy pulled away from her, ignoring her, her attention fixed on Joel.

'I know. You and me both,' Joel responded feelingly. 'But it's OK now, and your mum's here...'

Sally flinched beneath the look Cathy gave her.

'When they let me leave tomorrow you'll come for me, won't you, Dad...?'

Across the bed Joel looked at Sally's downbent head. He could see how upset she was but now was not the time to tell Cathy off for the way she was behaving.

He might be flavour of the month now, Joel recognised wryly, but it had been her mother Cathy had cried for this afternoon when she'd come to the leisure centre. Perhaps it was only to be expected that she should want to punish Sally a little now for not being there.. .even if it was unfair.

'Of course I will,' he assured her.

'Time to leave now,' the nurse told them briskly, coming up to bundle them out.

'Dad, I'm hungry—can we go to McDonald's?' Paul demanded plaintively at Joel's side.

Once
she
would have been the one he had asked. Not Joel...

Kenneth was right; they didn't need her any more... not any of them. There was no place in their lives for her now...

No place, no need.,.no desire...no love...no anything.

'Ah, Deborah
, there you are.. .let me introduce you to Kay..Ryan announced with smooth malice. 'She'll be joining our accountancy team from next week. The partners have decided that the workload on this side of the business has increased so much that we need to take on new staff...'

So, Ryan had already picked the girl who would take her place, Deborah reflected cynically as she smiled at the younger woman and shook her hand and then watched as Ryan steered her protectively towards the general office. She was small and blonde and, Deborah suspected, spectacularly curvy beneath her Aimani suit. And, to judge from the look Deborah had seen in her eyes, she was by no means as kittenish and naive as she looked.

She and Ryan would suit one another very well. Kay would have no qualms about 'networking' to promote her career.

Bitch, Deborah cautioned herself mentally, but what was the point in denying the truth? Her days here now were numbered; they had to be. She could stay and accept that she would never get her promotion, live with the humiliation of being 'sidelined', relegated back to the general office and all the speculation and amusement that would go with such a demotion, or she could press sexual harassment charges against Ryan—or she could do what she suspected Ryan now wanted her to do and find a job elsewhere.

Had he ever really expected her to sleep with him, or had that unexpected move on her on his part simply been his way of removing her to make way for this other girl? she wondered wryly. Despite what he bad said to her, a part of her still refused to accept that he had not known right from the start that she would
not
sleep with him, and he was, as she had good cause to know—as Mark had often warned her—a master tactician.

Officially she was still working on the liquidation, still waiting for official recognition of her promotion, but she was under no illusions. Like Kilcoyne's employees, she too was now effectively redundant.

She had spent the last few evenings ringing round her old friends and contacts trying to find another job. So far, things didn't look very hopeful. There was a possibility that there might be a job going at her old firm in London, although of course it would mean a drop in salary, and status.

Perhaps in the end, like Mark, she might have to do temporary filling-in work until she found something suitable. The thought depressed her. She was in her late twenties now; what if she hadn't made the next rung up the ladder by the time she was thirty...? She decided to go home for the day.

When she got to the flat, tiredly Deborah turned her key in the lock and walked inside, shrugging off her jacket and then opening the sitting-room door.