Losing You (32 page)

‘I guess the same.’ To Emma he said, ‘I’m going back to London today.’

‘Of course,’ she replied bitterly. ‘You have other priorities, I understand that.’

He flushed. ‘I’m going to get more clothes. Jem forgot to bring them last night.’

‘Oh, dear.’

‘When I come back,’ he went on, carefully removing his son’s little hand from his mouth, ‘we should talk. There are things ...’

‘Exactly when are you coming back?’ she interrupted.

‘Tomorrow, probably. I’ve been up most of the night, so I ought not to do a drive up and back in one day. If there’s any change, will you let me know?’

‘Of course.’ Her eyes went down as she picked up her mug.

‘Are you sure?’

Surprised, she looked up at him. ‘I wouldn’t keep it from you. I understand you’re her father.’

An awkward silence followed as Berry gazed down at her tea and Emma turned to look at his little family outside.

‘I know what you’re thinking,’ he told her.

Her eyebrows rose as she turned back. ‘Really?’

‘You’re thinking that having Dirk and Chloe makes this easier for me.’

‘You have Jemima too, let’s not forget her.’

‘Lauren means every bit as much to me as she does to you.’

‘I don’t think that’s possible, because to me she’s everything.’

‘It’s not a contest,’ Berry came in gently. ‘This isn’t easy for either of you, and the best way you can help each other,
and Lauren, is to try to put your differences aside during this difficult time.’

Knowing Berry was right, and annoyed with herself all over again for becoming angry and bitter with Will, Emma said, ‘I’ll try to remember to look out those books for you.’

Will seemed baffled.

‘The children’s books you wanted to read to Lauren.’

‘Oh yes, thanks. I’d appreciate it.’

After he’d gone, Emma said, ‘I know he loves her, I’d never doubt it for a minute, but I can’t help asking myself, how can he bring himself to leave before the doctor’s finished his rounds?’

‘Maybe he has finished,’ Berry replied.

Emma’s eyes went to hers. ‘And already spoken to Will who said nothing to me?’

Looking dismayed, Berry said, ‘Why don’t we go and find out?’

‘The orthopaedic surgeon will come to talk to you when he’s finished,’ Nigel Farraday was telling them at the nurses’ station ten minutes later, ‘but essentially I’ve agreed that he can operate if there’s no change in Lauren’s condition by the end of the week.’

Emma’s eyes were watching him hungrily, trying to find any tiny morsel of hope he might be offering. ‘Will that be good, if there’s no change?’ she asked.

Farraday’s smile was faint. ‘That very much depends on the nature of the change. If it means she’s woken up, then of course it would be good.’

‘But if she hasn’t?’

His eyes were solemn. ‘Let’s just say we’d prefer it if she did.’

‘Do you think she will?’

He glanced briefly to Berry before he said, ‘Mrs Scott, I don’t believe I’ve misled you about the severity of your daughter’s injuries ...’

‘No, no, I understand that they’re serious, but there
is
a chance she’ll wake up, isn’t there? I mean, when you stop sedating her.’ Her nails were biting into her hands; blood was pulsing through her ears.

Farraday’s eyes went down for a moment. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, ‘I thought someone had told you, she’s no longer being sedated.’

Emma’s heart jarred. ‘So she’s ... she’s in an actual coma?’ she whispered.

‘It would appear so,’ he replied sombrely.

‘Oh God,’ Emma choked, taking a step back as though to avoid the words.

Farraday’s registrar put a steadying arm on her shoulder, while Berry, beaten by the news, stared at the nurses’ station as though she’d lost a sense of where she was.

No more than ten yards away Lauren lay inert on her bed, still attached to her tubes, surrounded by monitors and showing no voluntary signs of life as two doctors and a nurse worked on her leg.

To Farraday, Emma said shakily, ‘Isn’t there anything you can do to bring her round? There must be something, surely.’

‘If there were, believe me we’d ...’ He turned as an alarm sounded.

Emma’s heart leapt to her throat.

Nurses and intensivists started running.

Emma turned to run too, but Farraday’s registrar caught her.

‘It’s OK,’ he said gently.

Emma didn’t understand, how could it be OK when an alarm was sounding? Then she realised he was telling her that it wasn’t Lauren, and she almost collapsed with relief. It wasn’t that she was wishing harm to anyone else but she had no idea if Lauren could survive another crisis.

Ushering her and Berry out of the unit, Farraday and his team came into the waiting room with them.

After exchanging a few words with the registrar, who was looking at his watch, Farraday turned to Emma, taking a moment to bring himself back to Lauren’s case. ‘Unless there are any unexpected occurrences,’ he said, ‘we should start weaning her off the ventilator tomorrow or Thursday.’

Emma could only stare at him, confused, trying to piece
it together. Repairing the leg, taking her off the ventilator ... ‘What ... what does that mean exactly?’ she finally managed.

‘It means we’ll find out if she’s capable of breathing on her own.’

‘And if ... if she isn’t?’

He smiled reassuringly. ‘If she isn’t we’ll perform a tracheotomy, but let’s try to remain positive. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m already late for theatre.’

After the door closed behind him Emma turned her bewildered eyes to Berry. As she started to speak her mobile rang, and seeing it was Will she clicked on.

‘Is Farraday still with her?’ he asked.

‘No, he’s just left.’

‘So what did he say?’

‘Did someone tell you she’s in an actual coma and you didn’t pass it on?’ Emma asked accusingly.

‘What? I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

‘Farraday just told me that they’ve stopped sedating her, but she still hasn’t come round.’

‘Oh Jesus,’ he murmured. ‘So what does that mean?’

‘It means she’s in a coma,’ she tried not to shout.

There was only silence at the other end.

‘They’re talking about taking her off the ventilator to see if she can breathe on her own.’

‘When?’

‘Tomorrow or Thursday.’

‘And if she can’t breathe on her own they’ll put her back on it, right?’

‘I don’t know, he said something about a trach ...’ She looked at Berry.

‘Tracheotomy,’ Berry supplied.

‘What the hell’s that?’ he demanded.

‘I don’t know, I didn’t get a chance to ask.’

‘OK, we need some proper answers. See if you can find the consultant, Yuri Nelson, and call me back.’

Unable to stop herself, she said, ‘It would help, you know, if you were still here.’

‘I was waiting for that.’

‘Well, don’t you think you should be?’

‘Yes, but I happen to have a business to run, and I also need fresh clothes.’

‘For God’s sake, Jemima can handle the business, and you could have
bought
clothes. There are shops down the road and she needs you here.’

‘That’s funny, because you keep giving me the impression you’d rather I was a thousand miles away.’

‘What I’d rather is that none of this was happening, but it is, and I really don’t appreciate being ordered about ...’

‘OK, OK, talk to who you want. I’ll find out my own answers when I get back,’ and the line went dead.

After clicking off Emma bit down on her temper as she said to Berry, ‘He’s right, we have to find Yuri Nelson, but I’m scared to, in case his answers aren’t what I want to hear.’

‘That’s perfectly understandable,’ Berry assured her. ‘We’re all afraid ...’

‘But I’m her mother. I need to deal with the facts ...’ Breaking off, she put her head back and blinked away the tears. ‘He seemed quite positive about her breathing on her own, didn’t he?’ she said. ‘And if she can, it has to be a start, doesn’t it?’

Reaching for her hand, Berry said, ‘Yes, of course.’

Wishing Berry had sounded as convinced as she’d needed to hear, Emma turned away, feeling increasingly alone in her belief that Lauren was going to make it. She wanted to go to Lauren right now and push everyone aside as she connected with her daughter in a way that only she could. She needed Lauren to listen and understand that she could do this; she could pull back from whatever brink she was balancing on, and return to the world as the beautiful, happy-go-lucky girl she’d always been. There was no reason for her not to; everyone loved her and she had so much to live for. She wasn’t going to be in a coma for years, or left brain-damaged, she simply wasn’t.

You need to read your messages
, she told Lauren in her mind.
You’ll know then how much you mean to us all, and how desperately we want you back
.

It was only as she let the intensity go that she found herself wondering about the lies Lauren had told last Saturday. What had been making her so happy, and yet had to be hidden from her mother? Whatever it was, it couldn’t be as important as her survival, because nothing, but nothing, could ever be as important as that.

Chapter Seventeen

INSPECTOR JACKIE DENNIS
wasn’t easily impressed, but the rambling old fancy manse in Kew that the Osmonds called home could have knocked her inspector’s cap off, if she’d been wearing one. Not that she ever allowed wealth or status to sidetrack or even intimidate her, far from it, because in her long experience she’d often found that the richer, or more aristocratic people were, the nastier they could be. And currently Mrs Osmond wasn’t exactly coming across as nice. Her husband, on the other hand, appeared a little less hostile, though he was letting his cold fish of a fifty-something wife do most of the talking.

‘As I told you on the phone,’ Rachel Osmond was running on in a bored sort of way, ‘we have never heard of this girl, much less sent her our address by text. So I really don’t know why you’ve bothered coming all this way to ask the question again.’

Jackie Dennis only looked at her.

‘Well?’ Rachel Osmond prompted.

‘Something I’m curious about,’ Jackie Dennis said, ‘is, when I take into consideration the size and splendour of this house ... Well, what I don’t quite get is the minuscule one up, two down in Somerset.’ It might not be relevant, but there again, it might.

Rachel Osmond’s eyes, and tone, were withering. ‘Forgive me for asking, Inspector, but is there a law against owning a small residence in Somerset?’

Dennis gave an amiable shake of her head. ‘Not as far as I know,’ she conceded, ‘I was just wondering, that’s all.’

‘Actually,’ Ian Osmond came in with a reproving glance at his wife, ‘it was bought by my father-in-law for his
children’s old nanny in her retirement, which she then left to her former charges in her will.’

Dennis jotted down the information, and said, ‘So, if neither of you texted the address to Lauren Scott, can you perhaps shed some light on who might have?’

Ian Osmond glanced at his wife again as he said, ‘We’ve asked one another that several times since your calls, and I’m afraid we have no idea.’

‘Perhaps another member of the family?’ Dennis suggested.

With mounting impatience, Mrs Osmond said, ‘Our daughter is married to a US senator and living in the States, and our son is with the Foreign Office, currently stationed in Cairo, so I rather doubt either of them has ever heard of your girl either.’

Dennis was bristling. ‘Can I remind you that Lauren Scott’s life is hanging by a thread? Would it be too much to show a little respect, even if you don’t know her?’

Rachel Osmond flushed deeply.

‘I apologise,’ Ian said gruffly. ‘Of course it’s a terrible thing to have happened to someone of her age – of any age, in fact.’

It wasn’t much, but better than nothing, Dennis decided, and moved on. ‘Is there a neighbour down that way who might have a key?’ she asked.

‘There’s the cleaner, of course,’ Rachel Osmond replied, ‘maybe you should talk to her.’

‘Yes, thank you, she saw our officers at the house yesterday morning and was very helpful. I was thinking more of a friend from around those parts, or from around here, or anywhere in fact, who you might let use the place once in a while?’

‘There isn’t anyone,’ Rachel Osmond said sharply.

‘I see,’ Dennis responded. At this point she might have put down, or even picked up her cup of tea, had she been offered one, but she hadn’t. So instead she made do with a bit of a scribble in her notebook, and when she abruptly looked up again she caught an interesting exchange of glances between her hosts.

‘I should get that,’ Mrs Osmond stated as the phone
started to ring, and without excusing herself she left the room.

‘So,’ Jackie Dennis said, turning her attention back to the man of the house, ‘how often do you actually visit this cottage?’

‘Actually, hardly at all,’ he replied, fiddling with his tie. ‘My wife and her brother have been talking for years about selling it, but they’ve never quite got round to it. Busy lives, you know.’

Dennis nodded her understanding. ‘What exactly is it that you do?’ she enquired.

His face seemed to twitch. ‘I work in the City,’ he said shortly.

‘As?’

‘A banker.’

‘Oh dear,’ she sympathised, mentally giving him a point for balls, since it took some these days to admit to being one of the bandits who’d brought the country to its knees. Even harder to admit to if, like him, you were still sitting in a multimillion-quid mansion, and raking in the bonuses, while the innocent lesser folk lost their jobs and homes. Let them eat cake, just not from my table. ‘And your wife, what does she do?’

‘She designs and manufactures interior dressings such as wallpaper and fabrics.’

‘You mean a bit like the Chancellor’s family?’

Stiffening, he said, ‘Something like that, yes.’

She smiled and nodded. ‘Can you remind me again where you were on Saturday night?’ she threw at him.

It seemed to hit him on the nose – a blink and a twitch – but by the time he answered he was managing to sound more weary than startled. ‘As I said on the phone, we were visiting my parents-in-law in Suffolk.’