Part 7 (2/2)

That done to my shock, almost an hour had now pa.s.sed I set about getting prepared for breakfast. I'd decided on a fry-up as we had a long way to go, and with the hospital visit still an unknown quant.i.ty lunch might not end up happening at all.

There was no sign of Kieron by the time I'd started on the bacon, but Mike and Sophia had obviously both been drawn down by the smell of it.

'G.o.d, there's nothing like the smell of bacon frying,' said Mike, coming up behind me to give me a hug. 'Hungry, are you, love?' he finished, turning to Sophia, who had already sat down at the table.

She nodded, but, half-way through an enormous great yawn, couldn't answer.

'Gawd,' said Mike. 'Is that the Mersey Tunnel?'

'Oh, funny ha-ha,' she said, pulling a face at him. But in a nice way. I exhaled mentally. She seemed in an okay mood.

And she certainly had an appet.i.te, as she cleared her plate in no time, and even leapt up with it, offering to wash up. I shook my head. 'No, you go upstairs and get ready, love. Mike'll wash up. We've got to be away in half an hour, now.'

'You can't judge her moods at all, can you?' said Mike once she'd gone back to her room to get dressed. 'She's so chirpy. It's like she's completely shut off from where we're going today.'

'I know,' I said. 'Defence mechanism, maybe? Or perhaps she just refuses to accept the finality of it. Maybe she really does cling on to the hope that her mum's going to wake up. I mean, it does happen, doesn't it? Occasionally. I think, if I were her, that's what I'd be concentrating on thinking.'

'Is it likely, though?' Mike said. 'What are the odds? From what John said, it doesn't sound like anyone else thinks that. Anyway,' he added, as he slid the last of the plates into the drainer, 'I'm off to jump under the shower.' He grimaced. 'Sooner we go, sooner we're home.'

The journey itself was pleasant enough. Sophia's mother was in a specialist hospice in Derbys.h.i.+re, about ninety miles south of us. It was attached to a big hospital, and catered for the terminally ill, but also people in vegetative states and long-term comas. The time flew by, in fact, Mike and I listening to Radio 2, which was our favourite, and doing what we often liked to do on long car journeys playing our own version of 'Name That Tune', trying to be quickest to guess what each new track was. Sophia had plugged herself into her iPod as soon as we'd set off, and stayed that way, half-dozing, for the duration. We did stop for a quick comfort break half-way (mostly so I could have a sneaky cigarette) but were still there in good time for our 10 a.m. appointment.

From the outside, it was a welcoming, cottagey sort of place, tucked snugly beneath the clinical bulk of the hospital behind. It had extensive gardens, too, which, in the summer, I could tell would be full of flowers, and another with a duck pond and picnic tables. Even so, as I'd already antic.i.p.ated, it was still somewhere you could tell most people wouldn't want to spend time. They did such wonderful work but you could never escape the reality that this was somewhere people went to die.

It wasn't a nice place for a 12-year-old to have to keep coming back to, I thought, as we introduced ourselves at the reception desk and waited while the receptionist wrote on our visitors' pa.s.ses. Inside it was as clinical as any hospital.

'Good morning,' the woman said to Sophia, somewhat belatedly, I thought. 'Are you well?' I got the impression she didn't much like her.

'I'm fine, thank you,' Sophia said politely. 'Is mother ready for us?'

I winced slightly. That 'mother' sounded all wrong. Like an affectation. My bet was that they too probably had her tagged as a little madam, just like pretty much everyone else we'd spoken to. Yet the fact that she seemed to rub everyone up the wrong way made me even more determined to see beneath the surface.

'Yes, she is,' the receptionist answered. 'All bathed and smelling sweetly. You could give her hair a bit of a brush though, if you'd like.'

'Thanks,' said Sophia, still sounding clipped and formal. 'Come on, Casey, come on, Mike. Follow me.'

I glanced back at the receptionist as Sophia grabbed my arm and pulled me along. She was shaking her head. In sorrow? I couldn't tell.

Sophia's mother was in a private room, the last in a row of them, and like the rest of the interior it was painted off-white and was functional. Though two abstract paintings decorated one wall, and there was a good view of the gardens, there was little in there bar the bed one of those pneumatic affairs that was air a.s.sisted and was designed to prevent bed sores a chair, a bedside cabinet, with a CD player on it, and under the window a small table and two further plastic chairs. Unlike the other rooms we'd pa.s.sed, there was no evidence of loving visitors. No cards, no flowers, no cuddly toys. The only homely feature was the floral-patterned duvet cover.

But I took these details in only vaguely at first, as all my attention was fixed on Sophia's mother. She lay on the bed, attached to some kind of machine, which I presumed must be the ventilator. She looked quite beautiful, lying there, with long flowing hair and flawless skin. In fact, she looked very much like Sophia, and only slightly older. No wonder people would comment that they looked like sisters they did. And despite her apparent serenity, I could now visualise the two of them together, and the spectre of the rows about those boyfriends ... I wondered how old she had been when she'd had Sophia. Young, very young, was my guess. And how long had she been lying here, suspended in time? It sent a s.h.i.+ver down my spine, and also moved me. Such a tragedy. And this poor damaged child was now her legacy. In truth, I couldn't take my eyes off her at first. She looked so perfect, it was difficult to grasp the gravity of her condition. The only clue that she was actually ill, besides the machine, was that her limbs were strangely twisted. You could see that her legs were at odd angles under the sheet. Her arms, however, rested on top. And the palms of her hands were facing upwards and bent up, as if she was waiting to catch something in them.

Sophia must have caught me staring. 'She's gorgeous, isn't she? And don't be scared by her hands. They went like that ages ago. It's supposed to be quite a common thing.'

'Oh, I see,' I said, making a beeline for the chairs under the window. I felt uncomfortable suddenly, as if we were really intruding. This was obviously a very personal thing between them, and I felt we needed to make ourselves scarce. I grabbed Mike's hand and yanked him in the direction of the chairs. He'd said nothing yet. He was obviously as shocked as me.

'You just get on with whatever it is you usually do, love,' I said to Sophia as we sat down. 'I've got magazines for me and Mike. Just ignore us. Forget we're here.'

I bustled about in my bag and pulled out my gossip mags, handing one to Mike. 'Dear Deirdre and all those pop stars? Great,' he said.

I slapped his leg and gave him a 'don't start' look, before opening my magazine up and pretending to read. But I couldn't seem to concentrate. It was all just too weird. Sophia had by now put a CD on the CD player, at least giving us some welcome background noise, for which I was grateful. She was humming along to this as she leaned across the bed and brushed her mum's hair. Perhaps this was how they went, I thought, these visits. She stood and brushed her mum's hair, she hummed to the music. But I was soon to be proved very wrong.

It was the sound that caught my attention. I'd been reading, then I suddenly heard a slapping sound. I looked up and was shocked to see I hadn't misheard the first time. She'd just slapped her mum around the face. It was already reddening. Then she did it again. 'Wake up, you nasty b.i.t.c.h!' she hissed. 'Don't you think I've paid for long enough?'

'Sophia!' I said, startled. 'What on earth are you doing? Stop that now!'

She didn't seem to hear me. She just walked round to the other side of the bed and said, in a completely different voice now, one that sounded genuinely gentle, 'Oh, poor Mummy. You look so sad. Please wake up for me, Mummy. I love you.'

Mike looked at me, clearly uncomfortable. But I patted his knee. She'd gone quiet again. Maybe best not to inflame things.

'Let's just leave it for a moment,' I whispered. 'She looks okay now.'

Well, if not okay, at least more like you'd expect her to be. She'd started to cry now, in fact, very softly, but still audibly, and was stroking her mum's arms. 'Look at you,' she said. 'All twisted and broken. Oh, why did you let it come to this, Mummy?'

I was braced for another outburst and watching her intently, when out of the corner of my eye I saw movement. I turned to see the faces of an elderly couple, who were in the corridor and staring in through the gla.s.s panel in the door. I nudged Mike again, and seeing that, Sophia followed our gazes. She stared for a moment, then looked away. The couple didn't, though. They stayed, peering in for at least a minute longer.

'Who were those people, Sophia?' Mike asked once they'd gone. 'Do you know them?'

'No,' she said, shrugging. 'No idea.' She was ma.s.saging her mother's arms now, but seemed back in the room with us no longer in that strange, trance-like state. So we got back to our reading, with just half an eye trained on what was happening, which, thankfully, seemed much more the sort of thing you'd expect. She wiped her mother's face with a damp sponge, then her arms and her hands, then pulled out nail polish, a nail file and clippers from her bag, and began giving her mother an impromptu manicure. She was just finis.h.i.+ng this when a nurse put her head around the door.

'Sorry to interrupt,' she said, 'but it's time for Sophia's private time now.'

'Oh,' I said. 'Right ...'

'It's what we've always done for her. She likes to have the last ten minutes on her own, just the two of them ...'

'Of course,' I said, rising, along with Mike. I could tell he couldn't wait to get out of there.

'Perhaps you'd like to stroll around the gardens while you wait,' the nurse said brightly. 'It's still dry ... not too cold ...'

'Yes, of course,' I replied. Strange, I thought, as I stashed my magazines in my bag again. She could have had private time the whole time if she'd wanted to, surely? But, thinking about it, perhaps not. She was still only 12, after all. Perhaps that ten minutes, like the private time she spent with her consultant, was a concession she'd obtained only by asking. And why wouldn't she want that? It must feel, after all, that she had no control over her life now, whatsoever.

'Right, car park,' I said to Mike as we left. 'I need a cigarette.'

We went back out of the front door and, ignoring the gardens, headed to the car, where I'd left my supplies.

'Well, that was weird, wasn't it?' said Mike as I lit one.

'Tell me about it,' I answered. 'I'm finding the whole thing difficult to get my head round, to be honest. Aren't you? Oh, look ' I pointed across the car park. 'Getting into that blue car. Isn't that the couple who were looking through the door?'

'I think you're right,' Mike said. We stood and watched them pull out of their parking s.p.a.ce. 'And it looks like they're headed over here.'

He was right. Moments later they'd pulled up alongside us, and the elderly man, who was driving, wound his window down. 'Are you two Sophia's new foster carers?' he asked Mike curtly. So they did know her.

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