The Beauty of the End (18 page)

35

O
n my way back from seeing Bea, I call at the hospital. As I walk into ICU, the friendly nurse catches me.

“I'm so glad I've seen you. I don't want you to be alarmed, but your friend has one or two problems. We're running tests. . . .” Her face the mixture of quiet anxiety and concern that comes from having seen it all before.

“What do you mean? What kind of problems?” I'm unprepared, fearful, because since arriving here, I've only allowed myself to think she'd stay the same, maybe for weeks.

“She has a chest infection. When patients are like this for longer than a few days, I'm afraid they're more susceptible.”

“So what happens now?”

“She's on antibiotics. We just have to wait and see.” Her voice is gentle; reminds me that one way or another, this situation is transient.

As I walk toward April's room, the reality once again hits home, that she may or may not come through this, may or may not die. Remembering why I've come here, my resolve strengthens. I've failed her in the past. This time I can't let her down.

* * *

Later, as I leave the hospital, I text Will.

I know he's been in contact with April because of recently referred patients. Having a hunch I know what he'll do, I press SEND, then wait for him to respond, knowing how long he takes is a measure of how much this matters to him.

My hunch is right. Ten minutes is how much.

* * *

When I get to the pub Will's suggested, he's already there, has been there a while, judging from his half-full glass.

“Ryder doesn't miss much,” Will remarks casually.

“Ryder's a bully,” I tell him. “Old school. I know the type. Ought to be put out to grass.”

Will doesn't comment.

“So. Do you know why April called me?”

Will shrugs. “No idea. I haven't even seen her, Noah. Not for months. But you can't be that elusive. After all, I managed to find you.”

“Yes. And tell me, just how?”

When I've made no attempt to stay connected with the world, how did the person I least wanted to be found by get my number? Then the wheels and cogs in my brain whir into action and I nod wryly. My medical records. “I should have guessed. But are doctors supposed to go delving into the records of patients who aren't their own?”

“I know it sounds questionable,” Will hedges. “I felt the end justified the means. And it's as well I did—don't you agree?”

“Yes.” Then I frown, because if I'm going to get anything out of him, I'm going to have to abandon my preconceptions, my mistrust, and level with him. “Ryder seems to think I have something to do with Norton's murder.”

“You?” Will looks incredulous. “That's insane. Perhaps I should have a word with him.”

“I'm not sure that would help.” This is the police we're talking about. Is he really that arrogant? Then, seeing his face, I understand. “I see. You mean the infallibility of the medical profession?”

“Has its uses,” Will says curtly. “When I'm not busy saving lives.”

But I catch the smallest hint of self-deprecation underneath. “I've heard about that. I was talking to John at the North Star—he told me how you saved his grandson.”

“Not single-handedly. There is a team,” Will says. “We've been working on a new surgical approach to treating heart defects. It's early days, but so far, the results are impressive.”

“Must be quite something—to save a life.”

He nods briefly. “But don't forget, it's a job I've trained to do. Like you and law. If you thought too hard about the implications of failing, you'd probably crack. To be honest, it's all part of a day's work.”

“Even so.” Then I pause, because I wasn't going to tell him. “I saw Beatrice.”

I watch interest flicker in his eyes. “How is she?”

“In the process of leaving her husband—but okay. What she had to say was interesting.”

For a single, give-away shadow of a second, Will freezes. “Oh?”

I think of Bea's words, about how April had never trusted Will. How she'd called off their wedding, but I hadn't known.

“It was curious.” I watch him closely. “She told me there was always so much I didn't know.”

“What did she mean by that?” From the sharpness of his response, I know I have his full attention.

“That's just it. She wouldn't elaborate. She said it wouldn't help anything. I had the feeling she didn't want to get involved. She's got enough to worry about, with her divorce.”

Will's silent. Then, when he speaks, his voice is disarmingly smooth. “Good old Beatrice. You know, I've completely forgotten where she lives.”

“She didn't say.” Lying. “We met at a motorway service station. She said her husband would love to catch her with another man and it wasn't worth risking it.”

“Pity,” Will says lightly. “So she knows about April?”

I nod. “Actually, I saw April as well. She has an infection.”

“Unfortunately, when someone's in a coma, on a ventilator, it's not uncommon. They'll put her on antibiotics. It should clear up. It's a good hospital.” The speech is rehearsed, pat, spoken a million times before like the doctor he is.

“That's reassuring to know, coming from you.”

“She still has a way to go, Noah. There were bottles of diazepam and paracetamol in her house; the police picked them up. The side effects aren't good—we're talking organ damage. Liver, kidneys, brain—it depends on what she took and how much of it.” He leans back, his eyes not leaving my face, as he continues.

“I knew she was on antidepressants at one point, but that was years ago. Maybe she had some kind of breakdown.”

Presented with facts that don't match the April I knew, my brain fumbles, trying to take it all in.

“You know, I'd always thought you and April had married. I never knew you hadn't until Bea told me.”

I'm trying to remember Will's charm, the easy way he used to draw girls, which must have been what April had seen, charm the years had worn to a veneer of arrogance.

Will shrugs. “Just one of those things. It didn't work out.” Looking uncomfortable, he changes the subject.

“So. What about you? Are you in Devon for good?”

“Hard to say. I thought I was.... But it's quiet.” As I speak, realizing how quiet. Maybe too quiet.

“What do you write?”

“It started with a research project that ran away and turned into a series of novels.”

Will's eyebrows rise. “You're published?”

“Yes.” I pause. “Well, the first two are. I'm working on the third. Or rather, I was, until I came here.... I'm not exactly a household name—unlike you. . . .” I'm not entirely serious as a ghost of a smile flickers across his face.

“You watch too much TV. The medical profession isn't glamorous, Noah.” Will leans back. “If you want to know, it's nonstop—we try to go away when we can. If Rebecca's on tour, I usually try to catch up with her, even for a weekend.”

For the first time, I look straight at him. “You did it, you know.”

My sentiment is honest. Uncharacteristically, he looks taken aback. “Did what?”

“Everything you planned. Look at you, Will. You have the perfect life.”

I wait for him to laugh, to make some joke about how I could have had it all, too, but then I was never cut out to be a lawyer; instead, a dark look crosses his face.

“Easy to say,” he says quietly. “But as you know, there are always sacrifices.”

I'm about to push him on what he means by that, ask him what he's surrendered to get where he is, but he closes up. Then the look clears. He picks up our glasses. “Another pint? My shout.”

“Yes. Why not? You do owe me a few.” It's intended as a joke, a reference to days before our friendship went sour, when my lawyer's wages paid for our meals out. A glimmer of a smile plays on his lips.

“I suppose I do, don't I?”

He turns abruptly and I watch him walk over to the bar, curious about the sacrifices he wouldn't elaborate on; not at all sure that even without April coming between us, we could have stayed friends.

* * *

I have missed something. I'm walking along the street when I work out what it is, thinking of April's London attic flat—and the antique box inlaid with mother of pearl. I used to joke that it wasn't a box at all, that it was actually her heart, where she kept her innermost secrets; if she'd dared to open it and show me, I'd at last have been able to understand her.

Funny how I'd forgotten it. Forgotten, too, how its contents had remained hidden from me and how I'd never once been tempted to look inside. I'm wondering if she still has it; if the box that hides April's secrets is hidden away inside the cottage that's hidden from the world.

As I let myself into my B&B, I can feel the past, almost tangible, as though it's gathering force and closing in, with its secrets and unresolved ambiguities, along with an echo of Bea's words, Will's reticence. I pour myself a drink; then, after closing the curtains and pulling on a hoody, I shiver.

36

T
he call that wakes me the next morning jolts me into awareness.

“It's John—from the North Star.”

“Hi. John.” Sitting up, I roll my feet out of bed, rub my eyes. “How are you?”

“Thought you'd like to know I had a visit. From that copper.”

“Ryder.” My head clears, thoughts sharpen as I say his name.

“That's him. Don't much like the bloke.” John's dislike is evident in his voice.

“What did he want?”

“He was asking questions—about that lass he thinks killed Norton. And about Mr. Farrington. He'd been going through the security camera footage. I don't know, the picture wasn't all that great. It was from that meddling git who lives across the road here. Always causing trouble, he is. Had his camera rigged up that night. Caught them going into the pub together, then, an hour later, coming out.”

I'm frowning. “Was he sure?”

“Well, he seems to think it was them. I wasn't there.”

“Sorry, which night was this?” It makes no sense that Will was in the North Star with April when Will himself just told me, yesterday, he hasn't seen her.

“Couple of weeks back. It was my night off. That April, he said her name was—she came in with Mr. Farrington. Ryder showed me a photo. It was her all right. Same lass who came in with Norton . . .”

Suddenly my mind is racing, because why didn't Will mention this?

“Thing is, after he'd gone, I remembered. Wasn't until he told me what her name was, I knew who she was. But I looked it up to check.” He pauses. “You see, the next morning—after the footage was taken—when I was opening up, I took a phone call. Young lady had lost her phone and thought she'd left it here, in the pub. Left me her name, too. April Rousseau.” He says it triumphantly.

“John, you're sure about this?” I'm elated, my head reeling with this newest piece of information, trying to make it fit. This is the proof I've been looking for, that April didn't leave her phone in Norton's car. She couldn't have. Someone else had it all along.

“Got it right here in black and white,” he says. “Happens all the time. We keep this lost and found book.”

“This is really important, John. Can you keep the book somewhere safe? Does Ryder know?”

“Not yet. I was about to call him.”

But there's a new question, because how did her phone end up in Norton's car? It's looking increasingly likely that she
was
framed. But then my elation subsides, because there's another possibility, too—that she could have found it again.

“Anyway, thought I'd better tell you,” he says cheerfully.

“Thanks, John.” Then I almost forget to ask. “Before you go, did the phone turn up?”

“No sign of it.”

* * *

When I call the hospital, they tell me that April's condition hasn't changed, that it will take at least twenty-four hours for the antibiotics to start to work. Then I try calling Bea. When it goes to voicemail, I leave a message.

Then fired up by John's call, I pull out the folders and notes on April's clients and start painstakingly working through them, looking for something else I might have missed.

Only this time, because I've met Daisy and Lara and heard firsthand about the agony they've been through, the stories resonate far more deeply. I sense the scale of suffering, the impact on real lives, of losses so devastating that the fallout never leaves, but remains hidden where no one can see.

Then as I leaf through the pages of the old law book I found in April's house, more pieces of paper flutter out, ones I haven't seen before. As I start reading, slowly the mist clears.

Several stories leap off the pages at me. They're all about mothers carrying babies diagnosed with the same heart defect, yet only some of whom have been offered treatment. Because it's a subject I know nothing about, I google the condition. Check several sources, finding they all say the same. Previously considered untreatable, now, if caught early enough, new surgical procedures offer a cure.

Puzzled, I look up more websites, none of which explain why some babies would be treated and others wouldn't. It leaves me with a question.
Why?

Other factors aren't clear. For example, whether there were other medical problems. From April's notes, I can't tell. But it looks as though she'd thought the same. There are simplified statistics about mortality rates from several hospitals around the country. I'm no mathematician, but as I scan the tables she's crudely put together, two hospitals stand out for all the wrong reasons.

In both of them, the mortality rate of newborns with heart defects is four times that of any of the others. That much is clear enough. One hospital is in North London, the other the Princess Royal, where April is, here in Tonbridge.

I check again through the client notes, my heart quickening as I find that with the exception of one, all of April's clients with heart-defect babies had been treated here, in the Princess Royal.

* * *

That afternoon, I go to the hospital. But this time, instead of the familiar corridors and stairs to ICU, I follow signs to the north wing of the hospital, at the far end of which is the neonatal unit.

It's a contemporary wing, unlike ICU, full of light, a resource clearly considered better spent on those arriving in this world than those leaving it. I pass a window through which I glimpse a row of incubators, hear a fragile, high-pitched cry from behind a closed door, imagine again the anguish of April's clients, as I reach a large desk behind which a nurse sits.

“You look lost, sir,” she says. “Can I help you?”

“Maybe.” Hesitating, clutching at the ghost of an idea that comes to me just in time. “A friend of mine had her baby here. Lara Collins.”

I'm bluffing. I don't know where Lara's baby was born and died, but then I doubt the nurses remember everyone by name. “The baby didn't make it. I was away at the time. I hope you don't mind—I just wanted to see what it was like here.”

“I'm sorry. It must be difficult.” Her sympathy is genuine. Then she reaches into a drawer under her desk. “Why don't you take these?”

I take the leaflets she hands me. “Thank you.”

Then suddenly awkward in this place of sick babies and grieving parents in which I don't belong, I turn to leave, and as I walk, glancing at the leaflets, I'm shocked at the irony of seeing listed on the first one April's name.

* * *

As I reach ICU, a trolley is wheeled toward me, the figure in the bed inert, long dark hair the most recognizable feature, and I miss a heartbeat, only realizing as it passes that it's not April and that she's still there, in the same room, a policeman with her. The only difference is more flowers, pale pink roses this time.

“Who was her visitor?” I ask the nurse about to enter April's room.

“You saw the flowers! Family, probably—she was here for quite a while.”

I don't correct her, tell her that for all intents and purposes there is no family, only the most distant blood relatives who don't care and wouldn't have thought to bring flowers. Then I frown.

“I didn't think flowers were allowed these days.”

“To be honest with you, they're not—as a rule. But one or two of the more senior staff have what you might call a healthy disregard for the rules.”

She doesn't say who and I wonder if Will is one of them.

“A fair-haired lady called earlier. She was here for quite a while. I don't think anyone else has been.” It must have been Bea. If she was here for a while, was she waiting for someone? Then it's as if the nurse reads my mind.

“Mr. Farrington came in, too.”

“Oh?” My ears prick up. “You don't happen to remember if they were here at the same time, do you?”

“Oh yes,” she tells me. “In fact, they left together—about five minutes before you arrived.”

Which in itself is enough to make me uneasy. I already don't trust Will. He's told me too many lies, but where is Bea in this? Are they friends? Can I trust her?

I'm of two minds, torn two ways, but as I leave the hospital, Bea texts me.

* * *

We meet in a café in the middle of Tonbridge.

“Were you at the hospital earlier?” I'm relieved that she's alone, that there's no sign of Will. But I'm wary, too; conscious that too much is not as it seems.

She nods. “I'm sorry, Noah—about how I left the other day. It was too much to take in—on top of everything else.”

“Are you all right?”

Usually a light dances in her eyes, but today it's dimmed. “Oh, I will be. I've found a flat, which is the first step. I just need to move—and then sort out the rest of my life.”

“I know how tough it is.” Grimacing, because even scars have a memory; however Bea's wounds are new, her hurt still raw.

“Yes.” Her clear eyes are troubled. “You do, don't you?”

“There's a question I have to ask you, Bea.”

She already knows. “You mean Will and April.”

I nod. “What happened between them?”

She sighs. “I never understood why they got together in the first place. There was chemistry between them. But it was more like he was obsessed with her. She does that to people. Even me—for a while.” Bea looks slightly embarrassed.

“You and April?” There's incredulity in my voice that I can't help.

But as her cheeks flush, she's already shaking her head. “Nothing happened. For a while, if I'm honest, I wished it had.... But anyway, with Will, it was more than that. I think he saw you as a rival. And he couldn't bear for you to win.”

I'm astonished. “So when I was out of the way and he had her to himself, what was the problem?”

Bea's silent. “He was obsessed with her, but he couldn't forget about her background. Yet he couldn't change it, either—and he couldn't bear for her to be with anyone else. Just after they got engaged, April discovered she was pregnant. After that . . . I'm not really sure what happened. Maybe she saw Will's true colors, but it was April who left him. It was quite brave, I thought. She could have married Will and brought up their child. But instead, she went away. I didn't see her for about two or three years. I tried to stay in touch, but it was as though she'd disappeared. Then I bumped into her at a party, and after that, well, ever since, we don't see each other often but we've kept in touch.”

Thinking of April carrying Will's child, I feel a surge of hatred for Will. “What about the baby?”

“She miscarried. But she wouldn't talk about it.” Bea's eyes are full of tears. “I think that's why she went away. So unfair, after all she'd been through.”

‘Life isn't fair.' It's true. There's no invisible quota of good and bad, success and failure, meted out to all of us in equal measure. My thoughts turn to her clients. “And as a counselor, she helps women who face the same.”

Bea nods. And I can't help thinking April's work must be a constant reminder of her own loss.

A sigh comes from Bea, as she shakes her head, then gazes past me. “Remember how we were in school? Teenagers who thought we could do anything. Look at us now. Single. Lonely . . .”

“Will isn't. And single's not so bad. Anyway, you'll meet someone, Bea. Give it time.”

Her smile is rueful. “What about you, Noah? Are you really happy?”

“I tried happiness. Don't worry, there've been other girls—it just didn't work out. And I've lived alone far too long.” Then I hesitate. “Can I trust you with something, Bea? I need you to swear this will stay between us. Just us—for now, at least.”

Her eyes are wide as she nods.

“I think April had discovered something strange going on at a couple of hospitals. Some of her clients were carrying babies diagnosed with a heart condition. I've read up a bit, and it was something that these days should have been treatable. Only, at two hospitals, the mortality rates were through the roof.”

But she shrugs. “You read about this, though, don't you? Some hospitals happen to be much better or worse than the others. Don't they call it the postcode lottery?”

“Yes. But this is different. We're talking about reputable hospitals. St. George's in north London and the Princess Royal, here in Tonbridge.”

I watch her turn blue eyes toward me, the flicker of interest in them. “The obvious person to talk to is Will.”

“No.” The word is out before I've thought it. “I need to know more before I talk to him.”

“Are you sure of your facts?”

“Almost. Anyway, they're not mine. They're April's. But don't you see? There could be a cover-up going on—and if word gets out, you can bet that all the evidence will disappear. No. What I think I need to do is talk to the families whose babies were involved.”

“What will you tell them?”

I sigh. “That April was putting together her own research. That it might help other families . . . Unless you have a better idea.”

Bea's hand is conspiratorial, reaching across the table, closing round mine. “Keep in touch, Noah. Let me know what you find.”