False Hope Read online

  ‘God, Matt. Shut up. You’re scaring me.’

  ‘Welcome to my world. I’ve been terrified of your entire family since the day I first met them. No disrespect, but especially your bloody sister.’

  I lost another hour to brooding on it before I finally fell asleep that night. Had my little sister knowingly brought all these awful consequences upon us? My sister, who I’d thought I’d known? I’d had many years of exposure to her mercurial nature, after all. But the loss of someone tends to shave the rough edges off their memory, because just as it’s human nature to try not to speak ill of the dead, it’s human nature not to think ill of them either.

  Because, in reality, how well had I known her? How much detail could I have seen from such a distance? Six years is a big age gap when you’re growing up and, in our own ways, we’d both had lonely childhoods. By the time I left primary school, Hope was still in the infants. By the time she arrived at high school, so tiny in my cast-offs and bits of bought-to-grow-into uniform, I was already in the upper-sixth form. Same school, but I might as well have been light years away. By the time she met Aidan, six weeks into her short spell in catering college, I was already in the final year of med school.

  So, though the young adult me hoped that one day we perhaps would be, at that time we weren’t really close; Hope was just a fact of my life, rather than a part of it. Yet every bit of evidence, scant though it was, seemed to suggest that, as death began to claim her, she had known me – and Matt – only too well. That her mind, though inexorably being swallowed by her tumour, was, in that respect, as sharp as it had ever been. Though Matt was right – there was no point going over everything and apportioning blame. It wasn’t the past we had to worry about, it was the here and now, and Jessica Kennedy leaving Aidan had already had painful repercussions. How much more loss was Norma going to take before she snapped again?

  Chapter 13

  The brilliant sunset the previous evening had lied about its intentions, because Friday morning dawned cold, dark and sleety. It felt as if we’d been plunged back into midwinter, spring nowhere near coming, and the clouds rumbling over the sea as I drove into work felt like a physical manifestation of the ones gathering in my head.

  I knew Aidan Kennedy had left hospital – he’d been discharged the morning after I’d seen him – but I still had no idea what had happened to Norma. It would only be my business if I proactively made it my business, a course of action (despite Matt urging that we should pressure the police to throw the bloody book at her) about which I now felt increasingly uncertain. I didn’t want it to be my business. Didn’t want any part in making everything even worse, and it might. And there were also Aidan’s children to consider.

  Perhaps Norma’s arrest would have been enough to warn her off in any case. And perhaps I should try and see it for what it might have been – a woman on the edge again, temporarily lost to reason. Perhaps now, even if all they had done was give her a warning, she’d see the sense of leaving me alone.

  I would call the police, I decided, if I’d heard nothing by lunchtime. Just to be reassured – as I hoped would be the case after I’d spoken to them – that a stern word from PCSO Wallace had been enough. In the meantime, it seemed the perfect day to be holed up in theatre, and away from yet more of the curious stares of colleagues and patients, and endless questions about how I’d got my black eye. Which, happily, was what at least my Friday morning had in store.

  Or so I thought.

  When I’m in theatre, my phone sits on the top of the trolley with the computer on. Mostly I ignore it when it buzzes, for obvious reasons, but if it becomes insistent, skittering around so much it’s in danger of falling off, I usually ask either Siddhant, depending whether he’s assisting or just observing, or one of the ODPs if they can check if it’s important.

  Back in the day, things were different; when in theatre, we were effectively incommunicado. The only exception would be in the case of an emergency, which would require whoever needed to get in touch to call the hospital landline and, via the switchboard and whichever secretary, send a message.

  The last time that happened to me was in February 2011. I was still a junior doctor then, and was assisting with a rotator cuff repair when an ODP pulled me aside to take a call from my mother, who told me my little sister had passed away.

  So, not an emergency, not in the sense that I could down tools and rush away to help. Just a terrible, heart-wrenching fact. And, despite knowing it was coming, a massive shock. I’d seen her only a week previously, spoken to her only a day previously, and, illogically, because I of all people should have known better, I just couldn’t get my head around it all being so sudden. As if ‘probably months yet’ or ‘probably weeks yet’ or ‘probably days yet’ or ‘probably hours yet’ were set in stone. A kind of death’s Greenwich Mean Time, to which everyone adhered.

  In contrast, this was something that clearly needed my attention, because when my phone started demanding that I look at it, I found a missed call, and a voicemail, and then a text from Holly, asking if I could give her a ring as soon as I was able.

  Fortunately, I was operating on the last patient of the morning, so twenty minutes later, having had the ODA text her back and let her know, I was able to call her.

  ‘I’m so sorry to bother you at work,’ Holly said. ‘It’s just that your mum’s gone on a bit of a wander. I’ve put the call out’ (to the local police, I presumed – their usual protocol when this happened) ‘but I thought I’d ring and check that she hasn’t been in touch with you. Though since I called you I’ve been up to her flat to look for clues, and I suspect she might have gone up to the cemetery. I mean the burial ground,’ she corrected. ‘She’s been – ahem, understatement of the century – turning things out. And I don’t know if you remember, but she had that big bag of bulbs delivered, and from the looks of things, she’s had it out and taken most of them with her.’

  It took two goes to work out what Holly meant by bulbs. Then it clicked; Mum had been on at me more than once about us going together to plant new spring bulbs on Hope’s grave – though this had been back in October. And I had put her in a holding pattern – yes, soon, maybe next week, I’m just a bit busy at the moment – because I didn’t want to go there. I hadn’t for a long time. And if she no longer remembered why, I certainly did.

  ‘In this weather?’ was all I could think of to say.

  ‘I don’t think your mum worries much about what the weather’s doing these days. But her raincoat’s gone, and her handbag, so she presumably has her bus pass. Though whether she still has the wherewithal to know how to use it is obviously another matter. I’m not sure she’s been on a bus on her own since November. But, look, let’s not panic. The police have her picture, and you never know, given the sleet, she might come back of her own accord. And in the meantime, I’m going to call them – the burial place, that is – see if they can have a look around, see if they can spot her, and let me know.’

  ‘What can I do, Holly?’

  ‘Not a lot. I just wanted to keep you in the loop. And don’t worry. Sure we’ll have her tracked down in no time. Your mum’s not a wanderer, and she has ID with her. Just, if she gets in touch, says where she is, let me know?’

  I disconnected, feeling the storm, for so long just a suggestion of clouds in the distance, now approaching at speed. Mum had never wandered off like this before, not as far as I knew. But now she had, and the immediate future spooled out before me. Were we entering a new and even more stressful stage? I had a friend in London whose father had been in the SAS. When he took to wandering, he took it seriously. He’d hike twenty or more miles in whatever direction he was facing and was more than once intercepted crossing a motorway.

  I tried to still the waves of anger that couldn’t seem to help rising, and locate a shred of some more appropriate emotion. To remind myself that coming down here had been for precisely this reason, so we could firefight in person, not remotely. But with thinking that cam
e another realisation. Despite Holly’s composed, breezy tone, wasn’t it inappropriate to calmly get on with my day when my mother might be intercepted on a motorway herself, possibly even mown down by a lorry? So though I couldn’t stop feeling resentful – I was still smarting about the things she’d said to Dillon – I couldn’t see any option but to rearrange my afternoon, which, having checked all was well with the lady whose hip I’d just replaced, I duly went and did, feeling terrible.

  It wasn’t as big a deal as it might have been – I was down for an afternoon of telephone triage, which could be covered – but as I walked out to the car park, sleet swirling wetly around me, I wondered quite what it was that I could do. Drive round Brighton trying to spot her spotted Pakamac?

  I was just getting in the car when Holly provided me with an answer. ‘They have her safe,’ she told me. ‘She was at your sister’s grave, bless her, exactly as I suspected, trying to plant bluebells with her bare fingers.’ She sounded justifiably pleased with her detective work. ‘Though it’s a miracle she made it there when you think about it, isn’t it? I checked on Google. I hadn’t realised how far away the place is.’

  I felt a not entirely unwelcome ripple of instinctive loyalty. It was no miracle. Mum had made that journey (or, perhaps more accurately, pilgrimage) at least weekly, sometimes more, for nearly a decade now. She might make it no longer – well, this unexpected aberration aside – but its logistics were on the hard drive of her still robust long-term memory, so she could probably do it on autopilot. Besides, this was my mother, who was fearless about travelling; a woman who’d think nothing of taking thirty teenagers on a school trip, often almost completely unsupported. Much was taken from her when my father left – her sense of worth, her status, what little joie de vivre she had – but there were gifts, too. Not least that of bullish independence. She may have wanted to hang on to him, but she most definitely didn’t need him.

  ‘Anyway, here’s the thing,’ Holly went on. ‘I know you’re probably busy, but is there any way you could drive out there and collect her? I can’t leave here – we have chair-a-cise in the lounge at two thirty – and they say she’s upset – understandably – and wet through, to boot. And the girl there’s on her own today, so she can’t. I was thinking a taxi, but—’

  ‘I’ll drive straight up there now,’ I cut in. ‘It’s the least I can do.’ Though as I pulled out on to the road and headed north, under a malevolent-looking sky, it was with a profound sense of gloom. Beautiful as the site was as a resting place, there was no rest for me there; no quiet times of peaceful contemplation.

  I’d taken the boys there only twice since the day of Hope’s funeral. The first visit had been when Dillon was three, and his adoption was finalised. I hadn’t wanted to, but it had been suggested that a visit, to mark the end of the process, might help give us all ‘closure’. He’d been oblivious then, obviously, to both the occasion and the place. Just content to run around after the long, boring drive. Only Daniel – four and a half then – had seemed to grasp any deeper meaning, suddenly tugging at my arm on our walk back to the car. ‘Mummy,’ he’d asked me anxiously, ‘are there dead people under the grass here?’

  He’d had nightmares for days after that.

  I took them down again when Dillon was five. I’d had some leave to use up between jobs and had taken the boys down to Brighton for a couple of days, and Mum, who was still visiting Hope’s grave on at least a weekly basis, was determined he should visit her too. ‘It’s been too long,’ she’d said. ‘It doesn’t matter what we want,’ (i.e. what you want) ‘we have a responsibility to make sure Dillon doesn’t forget her.’ And despite my misgivings (this was something for the future, surely – when he was older, could make more sense of it, make his own mind up about it), guilt and some hardcore emotional blackmail made a wimp of me, and I finally agreed.

  It was a mistake. Faced with the words on the plaque, which he solemnly sounded out, Dillon had made a perfectly reasonable point. ‘But how can she be my mummy?’ he asked. ‘You are.’ He took it in, too, when I explained (following all the advice I had anxiously scrabbled around to find for just such moments) that I was absolutely his mummy, just as he was my little boy. But he was special. He’d had another mummy too, once, I reminded him, who’d loved him dearly.

  ‘But she died,’ he said. And matter-of-factly, because we’d drip-fed the story to him constantly. ‘So you’re my proper mummy.’

  And even as I’d reassured him that was exactly how things were, my mother blurted out that, no, Hope was his proper mummy, scowled at me as if I had spat on Hope’s grave, then, to my utter astonishment – there had been absolutely no hint that this was coming – grabbed his hand, and said, ‘Dillon, your real mummy is down there, under the ground!’

  Out of the three of us – Daniel was by now at the lake edge, squatting down, looking for frogspawn – I don’t know who was most shocked by this outburst. Mum immediately began apologising, spewing sobs, looking mortified, while Dillon, speechless now, just stood and gaped at the flower-speckled grass beneath his feet. It took a long time to make it right and, for me, an even longer time to process. Had the then apparently sleeping dementia beast already been stirring? It was expedient to think so, so that’s what we went with, but, for me, it wasn’t just that. It hinted at something much darker. Some complicated rift between us.

  The sky, too, was growing darker as I swung into the car park. Which, unsurprisingly, I had almost to myself. The only other vehicle in evidence was a muddy white minivan, which was parked over by the small wooden building that acted as both reception and the administration office.

  I climbed out of the car, and as soon as I was back out in the elements I felt the ice-laden air swipe my face. And now I was here, a part of me felt a grudging respect for my mother. This was a remote spot, outside Hassocks, some distance in itself, and a long walk from the closest bus stop, too. Yet at no point, apparently, had she faltered. She’d made a plan, prompted by a compulsion born out of whatever had triggered it (seeing that bag of as yet unplanted bulbs, perhaps), and had made it here, on her own, in filthy weather. There was actually something faintly heroic about what she’d done, which made me feel slightly less resentful.

  Which magical thinking was obliterated in an instant, just as soon as I entered the reception building and saw the tiny figure hunched by a blow heater in the corner, a forest-green blanket thrown over her shoulders, and her bony fingers – even from a distance I could see her nails were caked in mud – clasped around one of their white branded mugs. Here was no intrepid adventurer – at least, not any more. Just an elderly lady, with dementia, and not a clue where she was.

  Mum barely registered my arrival. When the inrush of cold air made her aware of my presence, she didn’t so much turn and look at me as through me. The girl behind the desk, however, stood up, pulled out her earbuds – she’d been working on a laptop – and hurried across.

  I gestured towards Mum, introduced myself, and she nodded sympathetically. ‘She’s not making a lot of sense,’ the girl said. ‘She has dementia, right?’ I nodded. ‘And she’s wet through. Completely sodden. I have no idea how long she’d been out there before I found her. I must have missed her when she arrived, or I’d have spoken to her, obviously. Not really the day for it, is it? Anyway, she’s had some tea and she’ll have hopefully thawed out a bit by now. I hope she’s going to be okay,’ she finished. ‘Poor thing.’

  ‘I’m sure she’ll be fine,’ I reassured her. But, privately, I wasn’t so sure. Because although Mum seemed to recognise me when I squatted down in front of her, as soon as I touched her – a hand on her arm, as I told her I’d come to fetch her – she flinched and started babbling apologies, evidently much distressed about something, and continued to do so all the way to my car – something that, given her reluctance to be shepherded anywhere, by anyone, was in itself no mean feat.

  The girl in the office had been right; she wasn’t making a lot of sense. Talking non
sense, for the most part, as I herded her into the passenger seat, no less agitated than when I’d first arrived. Yes, she talked a lot of nonsense anyway, but it was generally a specific kind of nonsense, in the sense that you could work your way back to its root, and, for the most part, it was delivered in sentences. This was not that. Incoherent as she was, she was definitely trying to communicate something important to me.

  ‘It just all got out of hand,’ she said, more than once, as I clicked her seat belt into place. ‘I told her. Grace, I told her.’

  ‘I know, Mum,’ I soothed. ‘It’s okay. You’re okay now.’

  She grabbed my wrist then. A sudden icy clasp. ‘But you don’t!’

  But whatever she was on about, this was clearly not the moment to dwell on it. Because given that her hands were the colour of raw beetroot, and every single stitch of clothing on her was soaked, there was a genuine risk that she might be developing hypothermia. So I dared not take her home, because her life might be in danger. I needed to take her straight to A and E.

  Chapter 14

  Because I’d called ahead, a team were ready and waiting, and with minimal delay Mum was allocated a bay, where, between us, we stripped off her scraps of sodden, freezing clothing. I knew there was little I could do about her dignity – she would be absolutely mortified to be so intimately manhandled – but in being there, assisting, just being a presence at the bedside, I could at least cling to the illusion that I was contributing.

  In reality, I knew I was only still here because no one wanted to be the one to tell me not to be. Perhaps partly because I was entirely superfluous. Scissors do the best job of these kinds of disrobings, so it was a straightforward business for the charge nurse to slice her clothes off, from foot to head, including the top she was currently wearing more than any other, and would put on every day if she could. A top she’d miss. Which made me think about Daniel, who lost his favourite blanky toy when he was two, and I’d already had the foresight, once it became ‘the’ toy, to go back and grab a second. I could so easily have done that for Mum, but I didn’t. Why didn’t I? Why wasn’t I better at all this?