Lost - Michael Robotham [19]
As a kid I bred frogs. I used to collect the spawn from a pond on our farm and keep them in a forty-four-gallon drum cut down the middle. Baby frogs are cute but put a hundred of them in a bucket and you have a squirming, slippery mass. They finished up invading the house. My stepfather told me I was “fantastic” at raising tadpoles. I’m assuming he didn’t mean “fantastic” in a good way.
Ali is standing next to me. She pushes hair behind her ears. “You thought she might already be dead on that first day.”
“I know.”
“We hadn’t done background checks and SOCO hadn’t arrived. There were no bloodstains or suspects, but you still had a bad feeling.”
“Yes.”
“And right from the outset you noticed Howard. What was it about him?”
“He was taking photographs. Everyone else in the building was searching for Mickey but he went back to get his camera. He said he wanted to have a record.”
“A record?”
“Of all the excitement.”
“Why?”
“So he could remember it.”
5
By the time I get back to the hospital it’s almost dark. The whole place has a sour smell like the dead air in closed-up rooms. I have missed a physiotherapy session and Maggie is waiting to change my bandages.
“Somebody took some pills from the pharmacy cart yesterday,” she says, cutting the last of the bandages. “It was a bottle of morphine capsules. My friend is in trouble. They think it’s her fault.”
Maggie isn’t accusing me but I know there’s a subtext. “We’re hoping the capsules might turn up. Maybe they were misplaced.”
She withdraws, walking backward, the tray with bandages and scissors held before her.
“I hope your friend doesn’t get into too much trouble,” I say.
Maggie nods, turns and is gone without a sound.
Lying back, I listen to the carts and gurneys rattling to distant rooms and someone waking from a nightmare with a scream. Four times during the evening I try to phone Rachel Carlyle. She’s still not home. Ali has promised to run her name and vehicle through the Police National Computer.
There’s nobody in the corridor outside my room. Maybe the weasels from the ACG have grown tired of watching me.
At 9:00 p.m. I call my mother at Villawood Lodge. She takes a long while to answer the phone.
“Were you sleeping?” I ask.
“I was watching TV.” I can hear it buzzing in the background. “Why haven’t you come to see me?”
“I’m in the hospital.”
“What’s wrong with you?”
“I hurt my leg, but I’m going to be fine.”
“Well if it’s not serious you should come to see me.”
“The doctors say I have to be here for another week or so.”
“Do the twins know?”
“I didn’t want to bother them.”
“Claire sent me a postcard from New York. She went to Martha’s Vineyard last weekend. And she said Michael might be doing a yacht transfer to Newport, Rhode Island. They can catch up with each other.”
“That’s nice.”
“You should call them.”
“Yes.”
I ask her a few more questions, trying to make conversation, but she isn’t concentrating on anything except the TV. Suddenly, she starts sniffling. It feels like her nose is right in my ear.
“Good night, Daj.” That’s what I call her.
“Wait!” She presses her mouth to the phone. “Yanko, come and see me.”
“I will. Soon.”
I wait until she hangs up. Then I hold the receiver and contemplate calling the twins—just to make sure they’re OK. It’s the same call I always imagine making but never do.
I imagine Claire saying, “Hi, Dad, how are you doing? Did you get that book I sent you? No, it’s not a diet book; it’s about lifestyle … cleansing your liver, purging toxins …” Then she invites me around for a vegetarian dinner that will purge more toxins and clear entire rooms.
I also imagine calling Michael. We’ll get together for a beer, swapping jokes and talking football like a normal father and son. Only there is nothing normal about any of this. I’m imagining someone else’s life. Neither of my children would waste a phone conversation, let alone an evening, on their father.
I love my children fit to bust—I just don’t understand them. As babies they were fine, but