The Buried Circle - Jenni Mills [182]
Upstairs, the mirrored door of the bathroom cabinet swings open to reveal a bottle of TCP, some out-of-date aspirins, an unopened box of codeine tablets the dentist gave Frannie when she had a root canal filled, and my contraceptive pills.
The policeman peers over my shoulder. Anything missing?’ I shake my head.
My iPod and stereo are still in my room, as well as my laptop, on the 1940s dressing-table that doubles as a desk. Through the window, I can see the woman police officer getting out of the car, stretching, hitching a bra strap back into place, and starting up the path towards the front door. Another car, a dusty blue Astra, slides round the corner into the cul-de-sac and parks behind the patrol car.
Downstairs John is on the phone. My stomach’s full of snakes.
‘The hospital?’ I mouth.
The paramedic said it would be better not to go in the ambulance, that we should wait for the police and come on later, but now that seems crazy and I wish I’d been more assertive. Fran’s scared eyes sought mine when the ambulance men carried her out of the house on a stretcher.
‘Where are they taking me?’ she said plaintively. ‘I’m all right, Ind, I don’t want to go to hospital. People die in hospital’
‘You won’t die,’ I said. ‘They’re only going to check you over. I’ll be along in a bit–look, if I was worried I’d be holding your hand in the back of the ambulance, wouldn’t I?’
‘Don’t need anyone to hold my hand.’ She struggled with the blanket wrapped round her and a feeble paw appeared. ‘See? I’m waving you bye-bye. Be sure you make them bring me back. I’d ruther be in me own bed.’ There was a smile on her lips but her eyes were pleading.
‘We’ll look after her,’ said the first paramedic, handing me a slip of paper with a phone number on it. ‘Soon as the police have been, you give the hospital a ring. They’ll tell you which ward she’s on.’ He mounted his bike, and the other paramedics lifted the stretcher into the back of the ambulance. One jumped down, and started to pull the doors closed.
‘Hang on,’ came Fran’s voice from inside. ‘Where’s the baby? He’s all right, isn’t he? Is he already at the hospital?’
‘She’s still in A and E,’ says John, putting the phone down.
‘Still?’
He shrugs his shoulders helplessly. ‘It’s Solstice. Not the best day to be carted off to Casualty. Place jammed with kids who celebrated too enthusiastically’
There’s a knock on the front door. Without waiting for a reply, a man in a dull red anorak steps inside, the policewoman a deferential two paces behind him. Under the anorak he’s wearing a navy blue suit, the lapels shiny with aeons of dry-cleaning. His face matches the anorak, and his eyebrows are two thick furry tassels set at an angle of perpetual surprise.
‘DI Andy Jennings,’ he says. ‘Hello.’
CHAPTER 49
29 August 1942
I was outside the house on Drove Road and there was glass in my hair and something in my arms, wrapped in a bloody towel. More flashes–lightning or bombs, couldn’t tell which, I’d gone deaf when all the windows blew out. The first fat drops of rain were beginning to fall and it was still dark as the Day of Judgment. How did them German pilots see to aim their bombs?
The house next door was a ruined tooth, half shorn away. But where the house beyond it had been–the house where the little girls lived: the hopscotch chalk marks were still on the pavement, blurring in the rain–there was nothing but a hole. Bricks were scattered in the road, dust hung in the air, and a man in a filthy ARP uniform was standing by it shouting. At least, I guessed he was shouting: his mouth was open and he was waving his arms at me, but it was like I was under water, couldn’t hear a thing, my arms and legs moving with a current that was pushing me along past him, away from the far end of Drove Road that was all on fire. Up there was the aircraft factory, the Germans would have been aiming for that, but most of the bombs had fallen short and hit houses instead. I kept looking back, wondering if the factory girls had got to the shelters in time, wondering