We've Come to Take You Home (14 page)

THIRTY-FIVE

S
HE TWISTED THE KEY
in the lock. The door opened and got stuck. She kicked it.

If being “different” meant spending the afternoon with two spooky old ladies, in some weird church in the middle of nowhere, then whoever or whatever it was who was trying to suck her up into their life could stick it. If it dared to come back, she wouldn't allow it in. She would order it to go away.

‘I'm home.'

She threw her rucksack down, took off her jacket and hung it, in its usual place, next to her father's coat. She buried her nose in the sleeve. He was there. It was him; the father who used to pick her up when she was very little, swing her up and over his shoulders, so she could sit there, the queen in her very own castle, looking out at her kingdom, the rivers, the fields and the hills, rolling away as far as she could see.

‘I'm in the kitchen.'

Her mother peered at Sam over her glasses.

‘I didn't expect you until after the fireworks.'

Sam slumped down at the table.

‘Heard anything?'

‘I called an hour ago. No change. How was school?'

‘OK.'

She shouldn't have run away. She should have stayed with Katie, Lou and Shelly and she should have gone to the fireworks. This time last year, the four of them, just girls, there had been no boys, had sat on the beach, stuffing themselves
with fish and chips, oohing and ahhing at the rockets exploding up into the sky. It wasn't their fault they didn't understand. How could they? If it had been Katie's father in hospital then she, Sam, would have behaved in exactly the same way.

Her mother's mobile rang.

‘Hello, Rachel Foster speaking.'

It was a man.

‘Right, yes. How long do you think it will take? Yes, I understand.'

Her mother was doing the listening rather than the talking.

‘Thank you. Yes, we're fine. Thank you for letting us know. Yes, I'll be here all evening.'

She put the phone down.

‘That was Mac.'

It wasn't good news. She knew that already, without her mother having to tell her.

‘There's too much pressure on the brain so they're going to have to drill a hole and suck off some blood. It's a routine procedure. They'll call when it's over. Shouldn't take more than one, maybe two, hours…'

Her mother closed her laptop.

‘Do you want something to eat? There's the chicken casserole, the one we were supposed to have yesterday…'

Her mother upstairs in the bedroom crying, Sam downstairs in the kitchen getting drunk, just thinking about it made her to want to creep upstairs and crawl under her duvet.

‘Thank you for taking it out of the oven…'

Had she?

‘Casseroles are always better the next day…'

If she had, and she must have done, if that's what her mother said, she had no memory of doing so.

‘No, thanks, I'm not hungry. Maybe later…'

Her mother picked up her mobile.

‘I'll let you know if I hear anything…'

She unlocked the door that led out onto the small balcony. A jumble of rooftops, a straggle of grass, a strip of shingle and there was the sea. Tonight it was calm. But when the wind and rain howled in off the Channel, standing out there, on the balcony, was like being the captain on the bridge of a ship.

And that would be where her father could always find her when the weather was rough. He would come up to her room and they would go outside onto the balcony. Together, side by side, they would battle the towering waves that threatened to suck the two of them down into the depths of the deep, dark ocean. But her father wasn't standing beside her – she would be doing the battling alone.

There was a long, drawn-out sigh, followed by the tearing of the air. The surrounding darkness was split by a flash of white light as a rocket shot into the sky. She expected to see the lights on the promenade twinkling off into the distance, the wings of the angel statue silhouetted against the moonlit sky, the cliffs standing sentinel at either end of the town. But what she expected no longer existed.

Stretching out ahead was a vast wasteland; a filthy, oozing sea of mud studded with the blackened stumps of lifeless trees. Craters, filled with slimy water, touched and overlapped all the way to the horizon. Beaten down into this mess were bits of equipment, helmets, rifles, coils of barbed wire, even a military tank.

A gold ring, embedded in a piece of rock, lay beside her feet. She looked more closely. The piece of rock wasn't rock but a human finger. As she looked even more closely, the finger connected itself to a hand, a hand attached itself to an arm, a head stuck itself onto a neck, the neck onto a back with two shoulders. The bones jerked and a rat, as big as a cat, tore itself out of the ribcage of a man who used to be somebody's husband.

The sea of mud wasn't that at all. It was a sea of blood
and bones. There were arms, legs, heads and hands, some still wearing clothes, some still with eyes and hair, layer upon layer of them. And the blood and the bones weren't all dead. Some were still alive and still suffering. Their cries rose up all around her.

A head rose up. A pair of blue eyes blinked. And blinked again.

‘Jess…'

It reached a hand out towards her.

‘Jess…'

THIRTY-SIX

S
HE PUSHED OPEN THE
first set of double doors.

‘I am not Jess. And I don't want to be. Not now. Not ever.'

And then the second.

‘My mother is Rachel Foster.'

She marched up to the nursing station.

‘My father is Michael Foster.'

‘And you're Samantha Foster, you live at 7 Seaview Road and your mother called an hour ago…'

Mac swivelled round in his chair. He wasn't smiling.

‘She said you went up to your room and the next thing you were running out of the house like a bat out of hell. You didn't say where you were going, what you were doing, nothing…'

She'd had to get away, run away as far as she could, as fast as she could.

‘I want to see Dad…'

Mac stood up.

‘He's still in theatre. But he should be back –'

The telephone on the desk buzzed.

‘Hello, County Hospital, Intensive Care Unit. Yes, speaking.'

Mac smiled at her.

‘We were just going to ring you. Yes, Sam's here, just arrived, safe and sound. I'll pass you over…'

She took the phone.

‘Hello, Mum. Yes, I'm fine. I'm sorry…'

Another phone on the desk started buzzing. A nurse, one she hadn't seen before, reached over to answer it.

‘I wanted to be with Dad. No, he's not here. He's still in theatre. Yes, that's what Mac said…'

She handed the phone back.

‘Mum wants to talk to you.'

‘Hello, Mrs Foster. No, there's nothing to worry about. Like I said, it's just a routine procedure, one they do every day. Yes, I'll ring you as soon as your husband arrives back on the ward…'

It had started, these slips into another life, this Jess' life, at the fair on the ghost train, the same evening she'd come home to find her mother telling her father to pack his bags and not come back. Maybe if he got well, if he came home, the slips would end.

‘Yes, she's fine. No problem at all. Yes. We'll see you later.'

He put the phone down.

‘You can stay here, wait for your father to come back and your mother to come and collect you, on one condition…'

She followed Mac down the corridor, between the cubicles, to the end of the ward. Her father's cubicle was empty but lying on the bed, in the opposite cubicle, was an elderly man.

‘This is Terry. Terry may or may not be his name but it's better than nothing. He was found lying unconscious out on the street and was brought in by ambulance yesterday morning. No ID, no papers, no wallet, no nothing, just the clothes he was wearing and ‘Terry' written inside the neck of his shirt. He'd had a heart attack but he's stable now, doing just fine. He's up here because we're waiting for a bed to become free downstairs and then he'll be transferred.'

The old man's eyes were closed and he was snoring.

‘So what's the condition?'

‘We're hoping, if he knows that someone's here, if he can hear someone talking to him, that he'll regain consciousness.
He's got no one, no friends, no family, nobody, so just give it a go, talk to him, just say whatever comes into your head. I'll come back later to see how you're getting on.'

Mac walked off and she was left, standing there alone, in the cubicle. There was just one chair and it was at the far end of the bed. She moved it closer to the old man and sat down.

‘Hello, Terry. My name's Sam.'

She stared down at the grey face thick with stubble.

‘My dad's here, in the same ward as you…'

The old man snored on.

‘…In the cubicle opposite. He's not here now, he's downstairs with the doctors. They're drilling a hole in his head…'

She shouldn't be going on about her father. But what else was there to talk about? She didn't know anything about him. Bleep. Bleep. Bleep. Heartbeat steady. Breathing regular.

Where he lived? Who were his friends? Whether he had any family? Bleep. Bleep. Bleep. And, even if she did think of something to say, did they really believe that he would be able to hear her?

The bleep of the monitor, hooked up beside the bed, caught for a moment and then continued on as before.

And if he could hear her, would talking to him make any difference?

The bleep stopped and then re-started. But it was no longer a bleep – it was a loud, angry scream. And the old man who had been locked away in his coma was sitting upright, straight as a rod, with his arms outstretched, his eyes staring and his mouth opening and closing as if trying to say something.

THIRTY-SEVEN

T
HE CRASH TEAM RUNNING
down the ward pushing a red trolley laden with equipment, the doctor shouting instructions, the nurses filling syringes and inserting tubes, the old man's body convulsing as the electricity shot through it; the hospital was the last place she wanted to be.

She banged the button to the side of the lift. Nothing. She banged the button again. And still nothing. At the far end of the corridor there was an emergency exit sign and below it a door. She ran, twisting and turning, down the stairs, past department after department, Obstetrics, Paediatric, Orthopaedic, Vascular, Cardiology…

Some more stairs, a set of doors, turn right, down a corridor and she was in the hospital's main reception.

‘Excuse me…'

A policewoman was walking towards her.

‘What are you doing here?'

A policeman joined her.

‘I'm sorry…'

Why were they questioning her?

‘It's late, shouldn't you be at home?'

She'd done nothing wrong.

‘I'm visiting my father. He's a patient here.'

‘What's your name?'

The policewoman was doing the talking, the policeman the looking up and down.

‘Sam. Sam Foster.'

The policeman was turning away. He was talking on his radio.

‘Which ward is your father on, Sam?'

The policeman was checking up on her.

‘Intensive care.'

The policewoman's face softened.

‘What happened?'

‘It was a car accident. A girl ran out in front of him. He braked but his seatbelt jammed and he hit his head…'

‘When was he admitted?'

‘Yesterday morning, early, he was on his way to work…'

The policewoman glanced over to her colleague. He shook his head.

‘Where are you off to now?'

‘Home.'

She couldn't think of anything else to say.

‘OK, Sam. I'm sorry to have bothered you.'

The policewoman smiled.

‘I hope your dad pulls through.'

A bus was drawing up at the stop outside. She couldn't see what number it was but it would be warm and dry and none of her fellow passengers would know or care who she was, what she was doing or where she was going.

The bus drove on down the main road. Valley Cross, North Way, Sutton Avenue, she didn't recognise any of the names. Past a clock tower encrusted with pigeons, a row of shops selling nothing that anyone would need or want or even like – zebra-skin rugs, presumably fake, and posters of crushed Coco Cola cans – and a concrete lump of building which looked like a prison but which turned out, seconds later, when they drove past a noticeboard, to be a town hall.

A girl was waiting at a pedestrian crossing. The traffic lights went from amber to red. The bus slowed and stopped. But the girl didn't move. She just stood there, at the side of the road,
staring up at Sam sitting in the bus. The lights changed to green and the bus moved forward. But still the girl stood there.

You'll recognise her when you see her.

Sam jumped out of her seat.

‘Stop, please, stop.'

The driver ignored her.

‘Please stop the bus. I need to get off…'

It was the girl she'd seen that morning, standing on the opposite side of the road to the house.

‘Next stop's Beacon Road.'

‘Please, it's an emergency…'

‘That's what they all say.'

The bus-driver slammed his foot down hard on the accelerator. Sam slammed her hand down even harder on the buzzer by the doors. Maybe the two old ladies in the church weren't mad.

‘Are you deaf or dumb or something?'

She put her hand back on the buzzer. She pushed it once. She pushed it twice. Maybe the girl standing at the crossing was, in some way Sam couldn't yet understand, waiting for her. She pushed it again and again. The bus screeched to a halt. The doors slammed open.

Sam ran back up the street and then left onto the main road. The pedestrian crossing was immediately ahead but there was no sign of the girl. But she hadn't had time to go far. Sam ran down to the next corner. She looked left, Firfield Way, nothing. She ran, straight ahead, along the main road. She looked down a second street, Hazel Avenue, and then a third, Tudor Close.

And there she was. Sam could just see her, walking up a garden path, halfway down the road. Sam ran down the terrace. She stopped outside the house. Standing there, looking out of the ground floor bay window was the girl. And she was smiling.

Sam didn't think twice, she pushed open the gate, walked up the path and rang the bell. There was no answer. She rang it again. The door opened.

‘Hello?'

It was a girl.

‘Long coat, lace-up boots, brown hair…'

But this one had short reddish-blonde hair and was wearing leggings.

‘You've got the wrong–'

‘But I saw her, just now, looking out of the window. She walked into this house just seconds ago…'

‘No, I'm sorry, you've made a mistake.'

The girl had stood there, looking out of the window, smiling, inviting Sam in. So why was this girl, the one standing here at the front door, lying?