Hens Reunited (11 page)

Nan was still asleep when Georgia returned to the bedside. Her mum was talking softly to her, holding her hand, but the lined old face on the pillow hadn’t moved.

Georgia set a chair down for her dad, then sat on the other. What now? she wondered. Did they sit there until her nan woke up? Or was the whole exercise one of reassurance that her nan wasn’t going to die while they weren’t looking?

Her gaze fell on her handbag and, by reflex, she couldn’t help wondering how many emails she had banked up for her by now. There was no harm in looking, was there, while her nan dozed? Might as well keep busy.

She reached her hand in and pulled out her phone. Forty-seven new emails already – well, the news didn’t stop just because it was the weekend. In fact, with all the parties and premieres taking place, the gossip quota always shot up on a Saturday. One email with a red exclamation mark by it caught her eye. It was from Isabella, her boss. KEIRA’S NEW MAN! the subject read.

Ooh, photos too – excellent. Georgia couldn’t resist having a quick squiz to check out the new love-interest . . . Phwoooarr, not bad actually. Out of ten, she’d give him one any day.

‘Hi, I’m just coming to do Mrs Hatherley’s obs here . . . Oh. Excuse me. I said, excuse me!’

A doctor or a nurse – someone in a white coat – had come over to Nan. Was he talking to her?

‘Just a sec,’ Georgia muttered, scrolling down to get a good look at all the totty pictures.

‘No –
now
, please. You have to turn that off. Can’t you read? There are signs everywhere!’

She looked up, irritated by the man’s hectoring tone. Oh God, it was that grumpy bloke she’d bumped into a few minutes ago. Might have guessed. ‘All right, all right,’ she muttered, rolling her eyes. ‘It’s just something for work—’

‘I don’t care,’ he snapped. ‘The signal interferes with the hospital equipment. You need to turn it off now.’

Bloody hell! What was his problem? She narrowed her eyes at him in her best withering glare as she switched her phone off. Not exactly what you would call a bedside manner. Still, that was the NHS for you. She began mentally planning a journalistic exposé of NHS failings as he went over to her nan and held her wrist, checking her pulse against his watch. Oh, she could ruin this place if she wanted to, Georgia thought, gazing around for signs of dirt or dust. Any cobwebs in the corners of the ceiling? Any spillages on the floor? Super-hack Georgia would spot them. She’d lay the place bare with some scornful, insightful prose.

Damn. The area around her nan’s bed seemed to be spotless. The curtains that stretched on rails around the bed were rather aged, but well-washed at least. And the floor looked clean enough to eat your breakfast off. Still, she could try and get some swabs, couldn’t she, and get them tested for MRSA and other nasties. This could be a new direction for her journalism – campaigning and political. She might even get taken seriously at the Press Awards for a change.

The man – a nurse, she guessed – set Nan’s hand gently down on the bed and made a note in a file he was carrying.

‘Her pulse is fine, so that’s good,’ he said. ‘I’ll just take her temperature, then I’ll leave you in peace.’ And he smiled at Georgia’s parents – a proper, sincere smile like he meant it, like he actually cared.

Georgia’s anti-NHS rantings melted away suddenly and she felt a rare prickle of shame. He was only doing his job, she supposed, old Grumpy Guts. And he was being nice enough to the rest of the family.
Just me he has to have a pop at
, she thought petulantly.

‘I’ll go and get us some coffee,’ she announced. ‘Back in a minute.’

She stuck her nose in the air and walked out of the ward. How long was Nan going to sleep for? she wondered. She felt she had to stay long enough to speak to her, and for Nan to see that she’d come, that she’d made the effort to visit. That was the main thing, wasn’t it? As long as Nan knew she cared, then . . .

Georgia froze. Her heart thudded painfully and she felt her face flood with sudden heat and colour. Oh my God.

No. No way.

It was
her.
The stuff of Georgia’s nightmares.

Michelle Jones, high-school bitch, coming down the corridor towards her in a nurse’s uniform.

Michelle Jones, who’d ruined Georgia’s teenage years, who’d crushed her spirit to a pulp, who’d made life unbearable. Of course, she was Michelle Finchley now – if the marriage had lasted, that was.

She had to get away. She had to run, fast. This was exactly what she’d been dreading, the person who’d haunted her childhood memories for all these years. But it was hard to breathe, suddenly. She leaned against the wall, shielding her face so that the woman wouldn’t see her. Oh God, she could hardly breathe. Her heart was racing, the corridor seemed to be spinning.

She clutched at the wall beside her, her palms slick with sweat. She couldn’t hear anything. Her chest felt so tight she thought she might faint. Was this it? Was she dying, right here in a hospital corridor?

‘Are you okay?’

Someone was speaking to her, but she couldn’t register who. Everything blurred and swayed in her field of vision. She wanted to say,
Help me!
, but couldn’t get the words out. Not enough air . . .

‘Okay, I think you’re having a panic attack,’ the voice said, calm and measured, somewhere in her vicinity. ‘I’m going to cup your hands around your mouth to help you breathe, all right?’

Michelle Jones! Michelle Jones had just walked right past her!

Someone was lifting her hands up, positioning them in front of her face. She could smell the alcohol gel she’d cleaned them with. Sharp and acid, it made her nostrils tingle unpleasantly.

‘You’re okay,’ the voice said. ‘Keep breathing into your hands, that’s it. I’m right here next to you.’

The world around her swung back into focus. She felt hot and cold all over, sweaty and damp. ‘Oh,’ she managed to say. It was all she could get out. ‘Oh.’ She blinked. ‘I . . . I don’t know what happened.’ She’d been staring at the wall, and it was an effort to raise her eyes to her rescuer.

It was him, of course. Misery Guts. Who else? They seemed to be on some kind of collision course, the two of them, destined to keep crashing into one another. ‘Come and sit down for a minute,’ he said, his hands still on hers. She felt embarrassment sinking through her as he led her along to a nearby waiting area and guided her to a chair.

‘Thanks,’ she said. Her chest was starting to loosen, her breathing less short and painful now, thank goodness. She took her hands away from her mouth and leaned against the chair back feeling exhausted, as if she’d just run for a cab, heart-rate subsiding, legs weak and jelly-like. ‘I saw – someone I used to know. That was what—’ She stopped short, before she said any more. If Michelle Jones – Finchley, rather – worked here, chances were she and this bloke would know each other. They might even be best mates, lovers. Knowing Michelle, the latter was more than likely. She hadn’t exactly been backwards about coming forwards at school. Especially when other people’s boyfriends were at stake.

‘It’s all right, you don’t need to explain. Do you want me to get you some water, or anything else?’

She shook her head. She wanted to go home now, let the train rattle her back down to the safety of the capital, where she was Georgia Knight, Somebody, not Georgie Knightmare, Victim. ‘No,’ she said. ‘Thank you. Sorry about this, I—’

‘Don’t be sorry,’ he said. ‘There’s nothing to apologize for. Panic attacks can be terrifying to experience.’

‘I couldn’t breathe,’ she said, looking down at her fingers, limp in her lap. ‘I thought . . . I thought I was dying.’ Why had she just confessed to that? She didn’t dare glance up at him for his response, he’d think she was a right hypochondriac. Not that she cared what
he
thought, of course.

He was nodding. ‘People do say that,’ he said. ‘It’s like your body exaggerates its response to danger – or stress – and the adrenalin sends you a bit haywire.’

Georgia managed a smile despite her light-headedness. ‘That’s the medical term, is it?’

He grinned. ‘Not exactly.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘Listen, I’d better go, I’m meant to be doing observations in Cardiology now, but . . . well, I don’t want to leave you here on your own. Can I walk you somewhere? Are you with Mrs Hatherley’s family?’

Georgia hated being fussed over. Hated the thought of being walked anywhere, as if she were a dog, or an imbecile. But she was still feeling so weird, so trippy, she didn’t dare say no. Besides, what if she bumped into Michelle out there in the corridor? She wouldn’t get away with not being spotted twice. She could already imagine the light of triumph in Michelle’s eyes. ‘Well, well, well, look who it is,’ she’d say, rubbing her hands together. And then it would all begin again.

She couldn’t let that happen. She could
not
become a victim again.
Would
not, rather. It had been what she’d vowed all those years ago, when she’d run from Stockport at the first chance she’d got.

‘Yes,’ she said to the man now. ‘Would you mind?’

‘Not at all,’ he said, helping her to her feet. ‘Not at all. I’m Owen McIntosh, by the way. I’m part of the team looking after Mrs Hatherley.’

‘Georgia,’ she said. ‘Nice to meet you.’ She was surprised to realize that she actually meant it.

Chapter Six

Another Crack In My Heart

Monday, 16 June 2008

‘So I thought we could make some house pictures, all right?’ said the earnest-looking mum, coming over to the sticking table with a sheaf of papers and spreading them out. ‘I’ve cut out shapes for windows here, and these rectangles could be doors . . . There are some flower pictures I’ve snipped out of magazines, and we can use these green paper shreddy bits for bushes and shrubs . . .’

It was Monday morning, and Alice was at the local Mothers and Toddlers group in the parish hall, with Iris. She’d seen the sign pinned up in the village shop the day after she’d moved in, and had been the first one there when the doors had opened at eleven o’clock. She’d been desperate for conversation and contact with other human beings whose vocabulary wasn’t limited to ‘gah!’ and screaming.

Already she was finding it strange, not being with her parents after living with them again for so long. The first night, Saturday, she’d hated having to lock the cottage up all alone, and had then lain in bed, unable to sleep, wondering who else in the village might have keys to her front door. She didn’t even dare leave a window open, despite it being a sultry night. It would have been easy for anyone to scramble up the honeysuckle trellis on the back wall and slither through the window. No thanks, thought Alice with a shudder.

It was just so quiet living in the village! She was used to the late-night noises of her parents’ house – the neighbours’ dog, the burble of the TV as her dad stayed up to watch
Newsnight
, the occasional car zooming by. Here, Alice felt smothered by the deep silence that swallowed up the cottage, punctuated only by the occasional symphony of peculiar creaks and squeaks from the floorboards. It made her feel alone, so alone, to be lying there in the gloomy bedroom, with acres of farmland and woods behind her. No lights were visible from other houses, no cars passing, no signs of life whatsoever. It gave her the creeps. If someone broke in and murdered her and Iris in their beds, how long would it be before anyone found them?

After a sleepless night, she’d caved in pathetically the very next day and gone back to her mum’s for Sunday dinner. She couldn’t bear the silence of the cottage for a moment longer, felt as if the walls were closing in on her.

Still, she wasn’t on her own now, was she? She was out and about, surrounded by other people and their conversations. Babies grizzled, toddlers rampaged around on bright plastic cars, or rammed miniature buggies with balding dolly passengers at each other, mums sipped coffees and swapped stories. She had all the life and chat a single person could ever wish for. So why did she still feel so alone?

From her position on an uncomfortably dinky little chair at the sticking table, Alice listened obediently to the earnest woman who was now showing them all how to assemble a house picture, even though Iris was fast asleep and not actually au fait with glue pots and collages yet. Come to think of it, she wasn’t strictly a toddler, as she showed absolutely no signs of walking yet, just crawling. Was that allowed? Alice wondered with a sudden lurch of nerves. Would they be asked to leave?

Alice hadn’t really done much on the mum scene yet. She didn’t know what to expect. Previously, she and Iris had done little other than accompany Alice’s parents as they tramped around endless National Trust properties (Iris had witnessed more examples of Palladian stonework in her eight months than most of the population ever did, Alice reckoned) and potter about the house and garden, not really engaging with the real world.

Alice looked around, worried now that it had crossed her mind she might have broken a rule, coming to a Mother and Toddler group without an actual toddler. Would she be turfed out and told to come back in a year’s time?

Nobody was coming to tap her on the shoulder, though. Anyway, the mum running the show at the door, who’d taken her pound coin and told her to help herself to a coffee, hadn’t asked to see Iris’s birth certificate or made any comments about her being small for a toddler, had she?

For crying out loud, relax!
she told herself. Crazy, wasn’t she, to feel nervous about walking into the Mothers and Toddlers group. Laughable! She could imagine her old friends teasing her about it –
Ooh, into the lions’ den, eh? They’re a terrifying lot, those Mothers and Toddlers!
Georgia would have scoffed.

But Alice wasn’t like Georgia. She couldn’t just waltz into a room, brimming with confidence, and introduce herself to whoever she liked the look of. No. Alice stayed at the edges, casting nervous glances, hoping someone would come over to
her.

So far, nobody had.

They all seemed to know each other, these mums, that was the problem. They were engrossed in huddles of chat, private islands that Alice didn’t seem permitted to access. They were discussing each other’s love lives, each other’s children, and local gossip about their fellow villagers – none of which Alice felt qualified to comment on.