When he looked at the journalist’s name it was Daniel Rhoden, a family friend. The only quoted expert was his cousin Billy, a Varndean alumnus who came back to coach hockey each Easter term. Billy whose desire to make a pleasing impression was such that he shaved twice a day until he died at thirty-nine, knocked off his bicycle in some little-visited part of Kent. The experience of seeing this article, of pitting remembered reality against its frozen proof, was a slow electric shock for Moose. The jitters kept going for months.
There are times when your own childhood has the gimcrack feel of a tale told to friends over ale. When it feels like a bar in an old hotel, no television playing, no radio playing, a space that exists outside of events. Crouching before that dusty cupboard, looking at that scrapbook, he wanted desperately to know which page of the Argus the article had been printed on, and what the other pieces in the newspaper that day might have had to say, but the information he needed had been trimmed away. Context had gone in the kitchen bin.
II
INSIDE THE ROYAL Sussex the floor was fiercely mopped. A smell of disinfectant rose up around her. She was back in Ward 3 but couldn’t see him. Possibly he’d been moved into a private room? The nurse over there would know, but she was busy being screamed at by a guy in a pinstriped jacket. As the man’s face became a plum that ripened and promised to rot the nurse stood there nodding, smiling, head inclined to the side, as if researching an essay on rage.
When the man was out of energy Freya approached the nurse. She was taken to a room that was white and lacking in clutter, a massive improvement on the ward. Everything had a clean, tense neatness — the symmetry of the stacked-up magazines, the flowers sprouting stiffly from their vase, the untouched tissues in their perfect yellow box. By far the worst-looking thing was her father. His skin was as bloodless as his last cigarette and one apparent side effect of the heart attack, unmentioned in the Coldean Library’s medical books, was how it worsened a person’s snoring. She listened in appalled amazement as a ten-second impression of a hay-fever-suffering pug segued into the slow sound of two wounded warthogs making love. She popped a fresh piece of Hubba in her mouth, wished she’d brought her Walkman and her Whitney Houston tapes, and at that moment, a bit shaky, needing sugar, feeling warm, thinking there must at least be a Coke machine somewhere — the NHS should surely invest in machines — she swivelled on her heel and saw, too late, a guy skidding around a corner wall with white coat-tails flapping in his wake. His brown eyes came to a halt an inch or two from her face. She thought of maple syrup.
‘Right,’ he said. ‘I was just checking on the patient. Thought I might have heard a cry for help.’
‘That’s just his snoring, I think.’
‘Really?’
‘Yeah.’
The doctor — was he old enough to be a proper doctor? — tilted his head to listen. ‘And you would be …’
‘Daughter.’
He took a step back. His face was stubbly and sun-kissed, shaped by flattering shadows. ‘Pleased to meet you then,’ he said. ‘I’m Dr Haswell.’
‘Seriously?’
‘Seriously.’
Haswell. She was impressed. It rang so rhythmically on the ear, was agreeable and grateful in equal measure, sounded wholesome and hopeful. Finch, by contrast, suffered from its extreme brevity and associations with seed-eating. For a long while she’d had a feeling that, in some distant language, her surname meant vomit or saucepan.
The nurse who’d suffered the shouting bout was coming back down the corridor. As she passed Dr Haswell she said, ‘Too young.’
‘What?’
‘Coffee, right?’
‘Hot water and lemon,’ he said.
‘Black coffee,’ she sang.
‘Hot water and lemon.’
‘With milk, then.’
‘Can you stand it,’ Dr Haswell said, ‘if I just have water and lemon?’
‘Tea,’ the nurse said with a skimpy smile and promptly disappeared.
‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘It’s just — Monica, the ward nurse. She’s nuts, that’s all.’
‘Pretty.’
‘Do you think?’
‘Yeah,’ she said, and coughed to let him know that the subject was now closed. ‘So, is he OK?’
‘Oh, she’s fine. When I said nuts —’
‘He. My dad.’
‘Ah, yes.’ Standing tall Dr Haswell offered a friendly frown and proceeded to pinch the bridge of his nose. ‘Mr Marshall got that artery unblocked, as you know. I’m not expecting any major problems.’
‘How come he’s a mister rather than a doctor?’
‘Marshall?’ Dr Haswell checked over his shoulder, then fell into a whisper. ‘Power. No longer needs it. But your dad’s comfortable, currently.’
‘Why did he get moved off the ward?’
‘He’s lucky. It’s not a reflection of medical needs, as such. Hotelier, right?’
She nodded. The nod used up the last of her energy. The lighting in this corridor was weirdly unrelenting.
She’d been in the ward late last night. Her father had been sitting up after the operation, the operation that everyone here seemed to prefer calling a ‘procedure’, but conversation had come only in woozy bursts. Waking this morning she’d felt a shadow of that post-exams feeling — empty, achey, somehow caught in an anticlimax — and also a small sense of wonder. It seemed amazing to her that a whole week behind the reception desk at the Grand could contain so few achievements when, here in the hospital, in two hours flat, a clogged heart could be unclogged.
‘Complications,’ Dr Haswell was saying now. ‘That’s the main thing to watch out for. That and instilling a healthier lifestyle. The heart’s a tricky muscle.’ He paused for a moment and his brows became depressed. ‘We need to keep an eye on things, but a couple of days will be fine, I should think, and your father really is in the best possible hands.’
Freya watched as Dr Haswell, clipboard tucked under one arm, glanced down at his own palms. She allowed herself a moment of quiet outrage at his arrogance. Someone needed to tell him, without unnecessary offence, that Brighton was unlikely to play home to the medical profession’s best possible hands. That it was, in fact, unlikely to play home to the best possible anything. That his hands, moreover, were not scuffed enough, not torn at by sufficient experience, to be classifiable as Best Possible or even Best-in-Breed. How old was he? Mid-twenties? Straight out of medical school, even. But it was true, too, that despite his youthful looks Dr Haswell gave off an aura of expertise. There was something about the set of his forehead, about the sophisticated mahogany furniture of his face, that suggested cloistered learning. Medical knowledge, definitely, but also other areas Freya had little experience of. Skiing. Multiple gym memberships. Birthrights, etc.
‘Your dad said you’ve recently been celebrating some great exam results? Sounds like congratulations are in order.’ He glanced down at her bare legs, as if these were owed the better part of the commendation. ‘With A levels like that you could pursue medicine, I suppose.’
‘Not really,’ Freya said.