The Buried Circle - Jenni Mills [191]
My heart’s started to thud with the same stuttering rhythm as Fran’s: b’dm’dum, b’dm’dum. Reflected in the shiny bulbs of the big lights, the doctor’s scrunchie is bobbing in time as she goes on speaking: ‘I’ve notified the police surgeon, and he’ll want to do an internal examination as soon as he can get here.’
CHAPTER 53
The other possibility. What kind of sick bastard could hurt an old lady that way?
John and I manage a swift conversation when the tea trolley arrives, while Frannie’s arguing with the nurse that surely she could have just a little sip of tea, her mouth’s like the bottom of a buggerin’ birdcage.
‘You go home,’ he says. ‘You’re so tired you’re white. Hospital visiting takes it out of you–have to pace yourself. I’ll wait around and find out what’s happening with the scan, and the police surgeon. Any news, I’ll phone.’ He ignores my dubious face. ‘Go on, you can see how much brighter she seems. I doubt they’d operate tonight, anyway, even if they found something.’
‘But what if it’s…’
…the other possibility.
‘Let’s think about that if and when,’ says John.
‘She’d have said something, wouldn’t she? I know she claims not to remember but…’
‘If and when, Indy. Have you eaten today at all? Go back and heat up something from my freezer.’
The idea of warm food and bed seems unbearably attractive. ‘I still don’t think I should stay at your place. What if this doesn’t change DI Jennings’s mind? It’ll probably fuel his sick fantasies that you and I are involved in some conspiracy. I’ll go to Trusloe, there’s food there.’
‘No,’ says John. ‘Especially not now. If you won’t stay at mine, go to Martin’s. At least there’ll be someone with you there.’ As I turn back into the side ward to say goodbye to Fran, he catches hold of my arm. ‘Be careful, though, won’t you?’
‘I’ll light a candle to the Goddess,’ I tell him.
‘Don’t be flip.’
As the car takes the bend into the gap between Avebury’s massive stone teeth, I remember my return last September, full of hope under a dusty golden harvest moon. Now there’s nothing friendly about the stones’ smile. Instead, it reminds me of the dead, broken grin of a fleshless jawbone.
Martin will have left the key to his cottage under a stone by the front door. Naturally I didn’t tell John that Martin won’t be there tonight or he’d have had me behind locks and bars and sitting in a pentagram for good measure at Fortress Bolger. Nor did I mention I’d be going back to Trusloe first to pick up clean clothes.
Bella Vista seems a different place without Frannie. The plywood tacked over the broken glass, the grey dust left by the fingerprint men, a smell of damp, all give it an air of dilapidation. The people who lived here left years ago.
She will come back.
I keep seeing things I hadn’t noticed yesterday: a saucepan in the sink, encrusted with soup, a bowl and spoon on the table. In the sitting room, there’s a cup containing a half-inch of cold tea. I move around the house collecting things Frannie might need in hospital: dressing-gown, slippers, clean underwear, book of crossword puzzles…Her reading glasses have slipped down the side of the armchair where I found the anonymous letter months ago. Who it was from, whatever happened to it seem irrelevant now I’m facing the possibility I could lose Fran. From the bathroom, towel, flannel, soap. A flash of white catches my eye–
Glass exploding everywhere, in my hair, trying to push myself down into the upholstery of the passenger seat of Mick’s van–
You stupid little cow. Don’t you understand what you’ve done?
Only my reflection in the glass door of the shower. The pink, medical smell of old ointment leaks out of the bathroom cabinet, calming like rescue remedy. I come back