‘Keep at it,’ said the nurse.
Ruby did.
Daisy phoned Joan and told her to pass a memo round to all the heads of department that Ruby wouldn’t be available for a while, probably the next fortnight, who knew? But they were to carry on as normal, and if there were any problems they couldn’t manage, they were to inform Joan, and Joan would phone the Marlow house. Then Daisy would see what she could do to resolve them.
‘You?’ asked Joan, looking up from her notepad in surprise when Daisy said this.
‘Yes, or I’ll pass it on to Ruby if she’s OK to take it. If not, it’ll be down to me. Is that all right?’
‘I’m sure it will be,’ said Joan.
81
Bianca didn’t know what to do with herself. She had gone back to work, back to Dante’s, but her mind was all over the place.
I’ve killed him, she thought, over and over.
The man she loved, the one she had thought loved her, she had finished him, taken his life. If the police came and got her, hauled her away to a cell, she knew she deserved it, she would almost relish it. Instead, life went on. Life dragged on. And the everyday mechanics of living exhausted her.
She waited for the police to come, for that knock on the door in the middle of the night.
You did it. You’re guilty. You ought to suffer.
And she was suffering. Every ghastly, endless day was a waking nightmare, during which she went through the motions of doing what she had done before she met him, the same endless drag of days, none of it having any meaning now that everything had changed. Nothing would ever be the same again.
‘You OK?’ Cora kept asking her.
‘I’m fine.’
And then, even worse: ‘Did you ever catch up with that Tony Mobley character?’
‘No. No, I didn’t.’
At night she lay sleepless in her bed, remembering the feel of his body against hers, the sweet sharp scent of him. She looked at the pills in the bathroom cabinet, thought about ending it. But then she thought of her mother. Bella’d had enough grief to last a lifetime, she couldn’t inflict still more on her.
Vittore phoned, just once. ‘You OK there?’ he asked his sister.
‘I’m fine,’ she told him, same as she told everybody. She knew she should stop there, but the question nagged at her, the one she ought to ask, the one she had to ask, even though it would make him angry. ‘Have you heard anything? Is he…?’
Dead.
She braced herself for his answer.
Vittore was silent for long moments. ‘He’s in hospital, he’s holding on, they say.’
Bianca slumped down onto her chair, pressing a hand to her mouth to stifle a sob. Her ears hummed, the world went momentarily black: he was alive.
‘If he should pull through, this could get bad,’ said Vittore.
‘What?’ He was alive. That was all she could think about. Tears flooded down her face like a waterfall. She was half-crying, half-laughing, thinking, Oh, thank God it’s true he’s alive, he’s alive!
‘They say he’s out of it for now. But if he comes round, he’ll name you, won’t he?’
She wiped at her eyes, shuddering. He ought to name her. What she had done had been done in a moment of supreme madness, and if he were to recover, then she didn’t care what happened to her any more, let her be punished, she didn’t care about that.
‘You got your passport up to date?’ asked Vittore.
‘What? Well… yes.’
‘You may have to go.’
Bianca was shaking her head. She’d done an awful thing, a crazy thing, but the madness was past now, she could see things more clearly.
‘I’m not going anywhere, Vittore,’ she said.
‘You’ll do what you’re fucking well told, capisce?’ he snapped.
‘No! Look. I… I made a mistake. I shouldn’t have done it. I want to be with him. With Kit Miller. I can’t help it.’
There was a moment’s frozen silence.
Then Vittore hissed: ‘Madonna! You think that’s going to happen? You seriously think I’d let you? I’ll kill you first!’
‘Vittore…’ Bianca felt her mouth go dry, her stomach lurch with fear. He meant it.
‘No. No more! I’ll keep my ear to the ground here. Stay in touch – don’t make a move unless I tell you.’
Vittore was already making plans. He had someone singled out to take care of a simple clean-up job like this. Best take no chances. As for the crazy thing she’d just said, he was going to ignore it. She thought she could ‘be’ with Miller? No chance.
Bianca gulped. ‘Look… Vittore-’
‘Not another word,’ he said, and slammed the phone down.
Slowly, shaking, Bianca placed the phone back in its cradle.
He was still alive.
Now she knew what she had to do. And fuck Vittore.
82
The murmuring voices were like someone having a whispered conversation in another room. Kit heard them all the time, drifting to him on a cold black wind. He couldn’t make out what they were saying, but somehow it was a comfort, knowing that he wasn’t completely alone here in the void.
‘And then I had you, and Daisy,’ said Ruby, sitting at Kit’s bedside and holding on tight to his hand. ‘I was an unmarried mother, and those were different times. I knew I couldn’t give either of you what you would need to get on in life. Charlie was going on and on about how I’d shamed the family and I was a disgrace and I needn’t expect any handouts from the family to help keep illegitimate kids. So Daisy went with Cornelius and his wife Vanessa, and you… Charlie told me you were going to a good home, with a nice married couple. It broke my heart, broke it clean in two, but I had to put you first, to forget about how I felt.’
A monitor was beeping; the dark-haired nurse with the bushy eyebrows hurried over.
Ruby stopped talking as the nurse examined a reading. Some figures were dropping. It meant nothing to her.
‘Is everything all right?’ she asked.
‘Fine. His blood pressure’s falling a little.’ The nurse was pressing a buzzer beside the bed. ‘Can you wait outside, just for a moment?’
The black wind had increased to such a force that his feet were no longer on the ground. It was carrying him now so that he floated, weightless, lifeless, and now he could see there was a tunnel, whirling and spinning, sucking him in. At the end of the tunnel he could see a tiny pinprick of light. The cold wind swept him onward, into the tunnel, whirling him into the distance, where the light awaited.
The consultant’s eyes were brown and very kind, as he explained to Ruby four nightmarish hours later what had happened.
‘Kit’s pressure dropped and that told us there was sudden and significant bleeding. But, Mrs Miller…’ Ruby had long since given up correcting them; at a time like this, what did it matter that she was Miss Darke? ‘… we’ve stopped that now, and he’s resting comfortably.’
Ruby felt sick. This nice man was telling her that Kit had nearly died for a second time. She had never felt so helpless, so useless, as she did right now.
‘Can I go back in? See him again?’ she asked, dry-mouthed.
‘Tomorrow. For today, let’s just keep monitoring his signs, make sure he’s back on an even keel.’
Ruby went home. Next day she returned to find Kit was lying there, looking exactly the same. The blonde nurse was on duty, beaming a smile as Ruby came in and took up her position by the bed.
‘How’s he doing?’ she asked the nurse, Corinne.
‘He’s comfortable,’ said Corinne. ‘He’s a real fighter.’
He’s had to be, thought Ruby. No wonder he hated her. She should have been there, when he was growing up, looking out for him, but she had failed in the most basic of all mothering duties.