We've Come to Take You Home (16 page)

FORTY-ONE

‘I
T WAS THIS HOUSE
. I'm sure of it.'

Sam wedged her foot up against the closing door. There was no point asking for permission. It would only be refused.

‘I'm Amy Roberts, I live here, I don't know who you but you can't–'

Sam pushed past the girl, down the hallway, and into the front room. One sofa and two armchairs and, at the far end, in front of a window, impossible to see because the curtains had been drawn, a table with three chairs lined up on either side. A television with armoured vehicles driving along a dusty road on the screen, so probably the news but with the sound turned right down.

A mug, half full of what looked like tea with “No Sugar, I'm Sweet Enough” written on the side. Cards, including one very large, glittery one with “To My Lovely Wife” engraved in gold on the front. A wedding photograph; the woman in a white dress, a veil on her head, carrying a bouquet of white flowers, the man wearing old-fashioned top hat and tails. And next to it a photograph of the same couple, standing side by side; the woman cradling a young baby, presumably the girl who had opened the front door. Behind there was another, smaller photograph, of the same baby beaming up at the camera.

‘You can't do this…'

Out of the front room, right down the hallway and into the kitchen. A fridge, one oven, not on, no smell of cooking;
a washing machine in full spin; two apples in a bowl; three plates and one saucepan drying beside the sink; a postcard, blue sea and white beach, pinned to a board, along with lists and leaflets, and more cards. The door out into the garden was locked and there was no sign of a key.

Up the stairs and along the landing. The first bedroom: pink, pink and more pink, with a double bed, presumably the parents', was empty. The second, more of a cupboard than a room, was crammed, every inch of it, with junk: piles of yellowing magazines and newspapers; cardboard boxes overflowing with threadbare towels; a rail crammed with musty smelling clothes; battered holdalls and suitcases, zips broken, handles split, piled up on top of each other in the corner; even a cot, years old, its mattress sagging and stained.

Two more doors: a bathroom and a toilet. Three toothbrushes in three separate mugs, green, yellow and red, towels neatly folded, again nothing. There was just one last door, at the end of the landing. An unmade bed, acid green duvet cover decorated with giant sunflowers, music posters on the walls, clothes, T-shirts and leggings, jumpers and jeans, faded and torn at the knees, scattered all over the floor. A black leather jacket, with a red, blue and silver flash on its sleeve, thrown over the back of a chair.

‘Are you on something or what…?'

Charging her way into this house, running from room to room searching for nothing and nobody, poking around where she shouldn't be poking around, this wasn't the same Sam who had gone to the fair with her friends, on the Saturday afternoon, just a couple of days ago.

‘I'm sorry. I didn't mean to…'

The front door slammed in her face.

Sam walked back up the path and through the gate. She turned right. Ahead was the main road. Her mother should have received a call from the hospital by now to say that her
father was back on the ward and everything was OK. But they would also have told her that Sam was no longer at the hospital; that the old man she'd been sitting with had had a heart attack and she'd run away. Which would mean that her mother would be even more worried now than when Sam first ran out of the house, two or more hours ago.

She turned on her mobile. She would phone and say that she was sorry, that she was fine and that if she caught a bus she would be home in forty-five minutes. There was no need for her mother to drive over to collect her. She punched in the number. The phone rang once, twice, three times. Why wasn't her mother picking up?

The door from the kitchen out into the garden had been locked. It had also been bolted, top and bottom. The girl who'd led her to the house, the only way she could have left, without Sam seeing her, was through that door. Who the girl was, why she was following Sam, why she had led her to the house, were all questions that needed answering. And the person who could provide those answers was Amy. She was the only other person in the house: the only person who could have re-locked and re-bolted that back door.

Sam clicked off the phone, turned and ran back down the road, through the gate, and up the path to the house. The curtains were still open. The lights in the front room still on. She rang the doorbell. No answer. She rang it again. And still no answer.

She flipped open the letterbox. Lying on the floor, in the centre of the hallway, in a pool of blood, was the girl. And the pool of blood was growing larger by the second.

FORTY-TWO

H
ER LEGS DISSOLVED
. S
HE
slid down onto the ground and dropped her head between her knees. Blood, blood and more blood but fainting wasn't an option; the girl on the other side of the door would die. She pulled her mobile out of her jacket pocket.

‘I'm here outside the front door. The girl, Amy, she's inside. No, I don't have a key…'

It was the second time she'd dialled 999 in two days.

‘Yes, yes, I understand. Yes, I'll talk to her, try to keep her awake, keep using her name, but you've got to hurry, the bleeding, it's really bad. No, like I said, I can't reach her…'

She knelt up.

‘Amy, can you hear me?'

She breathed long and deep.

‘You're going to be OK. They're sending an ambulance…'

She pushed open the letterbox.

‘There's nothing to worry about…'

She was lying. What had been a pool of blood was now a lake.

‘You're going to be fine.'

Fireworks shot up into the sky, a dog howled, a car slowed and then accelerated off down the street.

‘They're on their way…'

The girls' eyes flickered.

‘It won't be long now…'

And closed.

‘Listen to me, Amy…'

She had to keep talking, say anything, however stupid.

‘That holiday you went on, the postcard with the blue sea and white beach, the one pinned on the board in the kitchen? You want to go back there, don't you?'

The girl's eyes opened.

‘And you can, all of you together, you and your mum and dad…'

No car stopped. No neighbour appeared. Nobody offered to help. Sam crouched there shouting anything she could think of, through the letterbox, to try and stop the girl from closing her eyes.

She was still shouting when the police car pulled up outside the house. The front door was forced open. The girl was loaded into the ambulance.

The accident and emergency waiting room was full, every seat taken, with bonfire night casualties.

‘Your address?'

‘7 Seaview Road.'

‘Your friend's name?'

‘Friend?'

‘The girl you came in with? In the ambulance?'

‘Amy Roberts.'

‘Address?'

‘Tudor Close.'

‘Number?'

A tall figure, dressed in pilot's uniform, gold braid on his sleeves, cap perched at just the right angle on top of his head, was striding towards the entrance doors of the accident and emergency department.

‘I'm sorry…'

The automatic doors slid open.

‘The house number? In Tudor Close?'

‘Twenty-four, I think. I'm not sure…'

The figure disappeared outside.

‘No problem. We can check. If you'd like to take a seat I'll get…'

She couldn't wait. She'd done all she could. There was a police car sitting outside the girl's house. When her parents arrived home they would be driven straight to the hospital.

She pushed her way past a family, a little boy his head buried in his father's shoulder, his right hand tightly bound in a wet towel, the mother sobbing into her phone. Behind were two girls, the same age as herself, supporting a third, the side of her face streaked a livid red. The doors slid open. And there he was. Head held high, arms and legs pumping, on his way to somewhere else.

‘Dad…'

An ambulance, blue lights flashing, sirens blaring, turned off the main road. It accelerated up the ramp directly towards her father.

‘Dad, look out.'

There was no slamming of brakes. No thump of hard metal crunching into soft flesh. The ambulance continued up the ramp. It screeched to a stop outside the accident and emergency department. The driver got out, walked round to the back and threw open first one door, and then the other. An elderly couple looked Sam up and down, shook their heads, muttered something to each other, and continued walking down the ramp towards the main road.

She stood there, trembling, staring at the spot where her father had just been. There had been no slam of brakes, no thump of metal, no screaming or calling out for a doctor, because there had been nothing to scream or call out about. Instead of shattered bone and blood and guts there was empty space. Her father had vanished – if he had ever been there at all.

She ran back into the accident and emergency department,
through the waiting area, and down the corridor to the lift. She punched the button. She stepped inside. The doors closed, the doors opened, people got in, people got out; sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth and, at last, the tenth floor.

‘Stand clear… oxygen away…VF… shock.'

A trolley, laden with equipment, stood at the end of her father's bed. She recognised it.

‘Asystole. Flat line.'

It was the same trolley the doctors had used to shoot electricity through the old man's body. The old man with the grey face thick with stubble, locked away in his coma, who had suddenly sat upright, straight backed in his bed, his arms outstretched, his eyes staring, his mouth opening and closing as if he was trying to say something. That bed was now empty.

‘There's no heartbeat. It's been too long.'

A nurse started to remove an intravenous tube from her father's right arm. A second nurse started to remove an intravenous tube from his left arm. A third nurse unplugged a monitor.

Her father was being tidied up, packed away, like he was nothing more than a head, and a chest, with two arms and two legs which had never felt pain, had never felt anger – had never known love.

She pushed past the trolley, with its plugs and its wires, its paddles and its cables, which had produced the electric shocks that had shot through her father's body, sending him convulsing off the bed. None of which had worked.

‘Dad, it's me, Sam.'

She grabbed hold of his hand.

‘Please come back.'

Someone was trying to pull her away from the bed.

‘Sam, come with me now. Your dad can't hear you…'

It was Mac. Standing next to him was Dr. Brownlow.

‘We did everything we could.'

And now Mac was putting his hand on her hand, and he was uncurling it, finger by finger, out of her father's. She kicked out, hitting him hard on the shin. He jumped back. She held on to her father's hand even tighter.

‘We love you…'

Her whole body was screaming.

‘Please come back…'

She had to make him hear.

‘We love you, we love you. Please come back.'

‘Sam, stop now, Dad can't hear you…'

She had a special gift. That's what the old lady in the church had said. She could see and hear things other people couldn't see or hear, go to places other people couldn't reach. So where would her father be now? Where would he go, inside his head, if he was in a coma?

She closed her eyes. Sometimes her father would be away for just a couple of days, sometimes a full week, often even longer, but, wherever he was, even if it was on the other side of the world, they had always been able to talk to each other. She had always been able to reach him.

FORTY-THREE

November 1917

‘Y
OU ARE PREGNANT
,
AREN
'
T
you?'

The needle stabbed into her finger. Blood oozed out onto the sheet.

‘The Major thinks I'm just his silly little wife but I'm neither silly, nor am I stupid. Nor am I blind. So are you or are you not pregnant?'

Jess nodded.

‘And my son's the father.'

She nodded again.

‘And, of course, he loves you.'

Jess raised her eyes.

‘Yes, yes, he does, very much.'

For month after month she'd had to walk around the house, her eyes down, her mouth closed, with her swollen belly tightly corseted.

‘And you love him.'

Tom had told her that his parents were decent people. And he'd been right. Now, at long last, she could tell the truth.

‘Yes, yes, I do.'

Jess put down her sewing.

‘Do you think… Tom… do you think he's still alive?'

The telegram had said missing in action. That was over four weeks ago and they had heard nothing since.

‘My husband is writing letters and going for meetings with everyone he can. We both believe that Tom will come back home to us.'

The Major's wife turned back to her stitching. Every week, after the linen had been delivered back to Eaton Villa, the Major's wife would check through it, item by item, ticking everything off in her laundry book. Any sheets which were worn thin in the middle had to be cut down the centre and the outside edges sewn together so that the thin bits were on the outside. It took at least a couple of thousand stitches, tiny, almost invisible ones, nothing else would do, to repair one sheet.

‘I've always known that one day my son would fall in love and want to get married and have a home of his own. And that's all I have ever wanted, that he should be happy. His father, the Major, however, has always wanted more. Tom, when he comes home, will marry a girl from a good family, with a title and money.'

The Major's wife snipped through her thread.

‘A girl like Emily Cunningham.'

The baby kicked out, angrily, against the tightly laced corset she was wearing. It narrowed her waist but only thinly disguised her rounded belly.

‘There's no Emily Cunningham, and there's no Matthew Cunningham, never has been. The girl out walking with Tom was me.'

The Major's wife snapped shut the lid of her sewing box.

‘And the baby I'm carrying is your son's. Nobody else's. I wrote to Tom four weeks ago telling him I was pregnant, when he received that letter, if he was alive…'

He was. He had to be.

‘He would have written to you, asked you to look after–'

‘We have received no such letter.'

The Major's wife rose from her chair.

‘Please talk to the Major, the child I'm carrying is his grandchild, your grandchild, and always will be, in marriage or out of marriage…'

‘And if I do, if I tell him about all the games you've been playing, leading our son on…'

No games had been played and nobody had led anybody on. When the war ended, if Tom came home, maybe he would marry her, maybe he wouldn't. But what she did know was that in the short space of time they'd spent together, something very real had happened between them. And whatever the Major's wife said or did, and however many weeks and months passed, she, Jess, had to try to remember, and hold onto, that truth.

‘I know exactly what my husband will say. He will insist on your removal from this house, instantly, with no reference, no money, and with only the clothes on your back. And with your mother dead there will be nowhere for you to go. You'll have no roof over your head and no food on your plate. You will end up walking the streets…'

Five month's pregnant and without a reference would make it impossible for her to find a job.

‘If you are with child it cannot and never will be my son's. And you cannot and never will be a member of this family. Now do you still want me to talk to my husband?'

She couldn't take that risk.

‘No, ma'am.'

She picked up her sewing.

‘So, if you're not pregnant your tiredness and sickness must be due to something else entirely, must they not?'

She lowered her eyes back down to her needlework.

‘Yes, ma'am.'