‘From start to finish. I’ve been up all night worried sick, talking to police, trying to convince them I wasn’t being neurotic, covering for you with the kids, imagining you floating down the Mersey or crumpled into a wheelie bin somewhere. The very least I expect is a blow-by-blow account of what’s been going on.’
He got it. Sheila too. And the telling of it helped relieve me of some of the awful tension that had my shoulders up near my ear holes and my guts like macramé. They were suitably appalled at the central image of people being given diseased brain matter as a means of pushing forward the search for a cure for Alzheimer’s. I finished with an account of our planned attack on Goulden.
‘I ran out and found a man walking his dog. He called an ambulance. I still don’t know how Goulden is. They took him to intensive care in Chester.’
Sheila swallowed and Ray was quiet, lost for words. I couldn’t deal with their shock as well as my own.
I pushed back my chair and got up. ‘I must have a bath.’
I pushed Blu-Tack into the overflow and filled the bath, dripped in some geranium and rose oils. I found one of my old Marvin Gaye tapes and put it on. My face was a mess, nose still swollen and mottled, lips cracked, eyes bleary and bruised. The ridiculous lattice of seri-strips contrasted vividly with the bruised plum background.
Marvin sang about injustice and love and loss. The bathroom filled with steam, which condensed on the mirror and the walls and dribbled down the tiles.
Drops leaked down my face too but they were salty and of my own making.
I had barely half an hour before the children would be home. I craved sleep but wanted to see Maddie first, reassure her all was well. I’d already agreed with Ray and Sheila that as far as the kids were concerned we should say I’d been hit by a baddie and the police were going to put him in jail.
‘Are they?’ Sheila had asked. ‘If he’s all right?’
‘Bloody hope so. I don’t know what the charges will be, aggravated assault, conspiracy, abduction, maybe even manslaughter as far as the deaths of some of those patients go. They can take their pick.’
I wrapped my big old coat round me and sat outside in the garden while I waited. There was a watery sun reflecting softly off the drops on the leaves and grass. Everything was damp and a bit grey round the edges but there were a few signs of the summer to come: shiny curled shoots on the clematis round the back door, buds and bright new leaves on the aubretia. I felt melancholy. The violence had made its mark inside as well as on the surface. I felt weepy and burdened down. Recognised once again the huge gap between the world I wanted and the one I was living in. I’d failed Agnes and Lily. There was little consolation in the knowledge that I’d been able to stop Goulden killing us.