“It depends what you want to get out of it.”
I thought for a moment. “The truth?” I said. It should have been a decisive statement but it came out a lot more uncertain than that.
“About what, exactly?” The lights went green for the bikers and they flowed across the front of us like running deer. I watched them go, feeling the tug of not being on my Suzuki.
“About what Clare was really doing on the back of Slick’s bike,” I said, turning back to him. “About what really brought them off and why she won’t tell me what it was. And about what she was doing with ten grand in cash.”
“Come on, Charlie,” Sean said, mildly reproving as we moved forwards again. “You don’t know if she can remember the accident or not – anaesthetics can take you that way. And as for the ten thousand, we don’t know what’s happened to that. Not yet, anyway. The real question,” he went on, “is what are you prepared to sacrifice to find these things out?”
“Sacrifice?”
He smiled, although his voice remained cool and neutral. “Every victory is a compromise of gains and loses. You need to think about what you might lose in order to win the battle. What you can afford to lose.”
Why do I get the feeling you’re talking about me and you as much as about Clare, Sean? And what will I lose?
When I didn’t speak right away he added, “If you come right out with an accusation you might irrevocably harm or even lose your friendship with Clare. Is that a sacrifice you’re prepared to make?”
My mind gave a stark and immediate, “No!” But my mouth was contrary. “She lied to me,” I muttered, aware of the pain that fact caused me. “After everything . . .”
I fell silent as we rolled up through the centre of Lancaster, past Dalton Square with its immense green-tinged statue of Queen Victoria.
What could I say? Clare and I had been through a lot together, had come close to dying because of each other. Enough that I had thought she would trust me completely with any dark secret. I wasn’t just upset that she evidently did not but, I also recognised with a touch of shame, that my pride was wounded. It was an admission that made me feel rather small.
A few minutes later Sean braked to a halt in the hospital car park again. He unclipped his seatbelt and twisted to face me.
“Well?” he said.
“No.” I shook my head, took a breath. “I’m not prepared to lose Clare as a friend. If that means finding out what’s going on another way, well—” I broke off with a shrug.
“OK,” he said evenly. “Then that’s how you handle it.”
Seven
Even if I hadn’t come to my decision about Clare on the drive in, one look at her face when we reached the hospital would have convinced me not to push her.
Not that we got to see her right away. When we arrived on the ward the curtains surrounding her bed were closed and we could hear the murmur of voices beyond.
Sean and I waited by the doorway. Much as I wanted to know what was going on, I didn’t want to be caught eavesdropping when those curtains went back. Particularly not by Clare. Or my father, come to that.
In the event, when the fiercely protective nurse I’d crossed swords with earlier swished the curtains aside, the man closeted with Clare was nobody I recognised. He was Asian, of medium height and rather portly, with a magnificent moustache that was waxed into needle points at either side.
He was just rising from the chair next to Clare’s bed, bending to speak to her in low tones and patting her hand. He was wearing a beautiful dark pinstripe suit. A box of tissues was sitting on the blanket next to my friend, half its contents having been used and scattered around her. She was still very red around her nose and eyes.
I hurried forwards just as the man was moving away from the bed. Both Sean and I fixed him with a hard stare as he came past us, but he swept on oblivious to us lesser mortals. He could only have been a consultant.
“Clare!” I said. “Are you OK?”
She made the effort of a big brave smile that just managed to break the surface then sank like a rock. “Oh, hello Charlie,” she said, her voice a little wavery. “Yes, I think so.”
“Who was that?” I demanded, jerking my head in the direction of the departing Asian doctor. “What’s he said to upset you?”
For a moment she looked confused. “Oh, no, Mr Chandry’s been lovely,” she said vaguely, picking up the tissues and dropping them into a carrier bag that was hooked onto the door of her cabinet. “I s’pose I’m just not having a good day, that’s all.”
“Do you want us to go?” I asked, uncertain.
“No, no, please, sit down. I’m glad you’re here. I wanted to talk to you anyway.”
I sank onto the chair the consultant had occupied. Sean was still standing by the foot of the bed. He glanced from one of us to the other.
“I think I’ll raid the coffee machine,” he said.
“No, Sean, don’t go.” Clare gave him a watery smile. “I know you’re just being tactful, but I wanted to talk to you, too.”
She waited until he’d pulled up his own chair on the opposite side of the bed. She was looking down at a tissue in her bruised hands, concentrating on teasing the edges apart so it split into gossamer-thin layers. There was a drip plugged into the back of her left hand and a bag of clear fluid suspended from the bed frame.
“I don’t really know where to start,” she said.
I glanced across at Sean briefly. Maybe now we were going to get the whole story.
Then Clare looked up suddenly, straight into my face, and said, “How do you cope with causing someone’s death?”
I opened my mouth and shut it again.
Sean came to my rescue. “In what way ‘causing’, Clare?” he asked gently.
She shrugged awkwardly, pushing both fists into the mattress to ease her body into a more comfortable position. The pins moved too, like porcupine quills. The whole of the frame creaked slightly as it tracked with her and readjusted.
“Yesterday Slick was alive and now he’s dead,” she said, her voice miserable. “I keep thinking suppose there was something I should have done differently, you know? Suppose by one action, somewhere back down the line – a day ago, a week ago – I could have averted this. And I didn’t do it. How do you cope with that?”
“Time,” Sean said. He was leaning forwards with his elbows resting on his knees and his eyes fixed intently on Clare. “There’s an old saying – this too will pass. Sounds corny, but it’s true. The memory fades and things will get better. You just have to let it go.”
Clare looked wholly unconvinced. I desperately wanted to ask why she thought it might have been down to her, but I knew I couldn’t do it. To introduce an element of doubt now would be devastating. Besides, her eyes had already started to fill again.
“I just feel so guilty,” she gulped, pulling another tissue from the box. It snagged and tore and she let her hand drop, defeated. “I’ve made such a mess of things.”