Authors: Catherine Hunt
Clear the airway, crucial, do it now, the answer shot into his mind. He knelt beside her, put one hand on her forehead and the other behind her neck, tilted her head back and lifted her chin. Heard another gurgling, struggling, breath. Her eyes opened and she coughed up a mass of blood, then fell back exhausted. He had to roll her, had to turn her on to her side so the blood could drain out of her mouth instead of clogging her windpipe and choking her. Harry hesitated.
It was dangerous to move her. Dangerous, because he didn’t know where the blade had lodged and moving her might kill her. Maybe he should wait, find a phone, call for help. But she isn’t dead yet, he thought, so it must have missed her heart, and if you don’t do it, she’s going to stop breathing and die. And that’s not going to happen sometime in the future, it’s going to happen now because the blood is blocking her throat and her skin is going blue. Roll her then, onto her left side, so there’s no pressure on the good right lung. For God’s sake be careful. Don’t disturb the knife. Do it gently.
He turned her slowly, very slowly, watching more blood spill down from her slashed right side, but there was nothing he could do about that. The shredded pink camisole was soaked again in red.
Eyes open. Pain in them. He didn’t want to see it, but then they closed and he wanted that even less. Slipping away.
‘Wake up!’
He saw it then on the floor, half hidden by the edge of the rug. A mobile. He ran for it, shaky hands pressing the screen into life. The picture of his wife and Joe Greene in bed together stared up at him. Harry howled, then punched in the numbers, wiping it from his sight.
‘Ambulance. Emergency. Get here quick or she’ll die.’
He squatted beside Laura, shouting at her to stay awake, shouting answers to the questions from the woman dispatching the ambulance. His mouth was dry as a husk, but despite all his shouting, Laura would not stay conscious. Blood leaked from her mouth, flowed steadily from the knife in her chest and he was filled with dread that he had done the wrong thing by moving her, the wrong thing entirely.
‘Don’t touch the knife,’ said the emergency call handler. ‘It’s very important you leave it where it is.’
He told her what he’d done. ‘You’re sure she’s still breathing?’ she asked.
He listened for the gurgle. He liked the sound now because it was the sound of life. But he couldn’t hear it. Nothing.
‘I don’t know!’
Panic. He threw down the mobile, bent closer to her, heard her breathe. Thank Christ. The pulse in her neck was weak and rapid. He touched skin like ice and he was suddenly aware how cold the room was, how a bitter wind was blowing through it from the large sash window he’d smashed to get into the house. He covered her with his jacket, wiped his face on its sleeve. The room might be freezing, but he was sweating.
‘Jesus, Laura, wake up!’
‘Are you there? If you’re still there please pick up the phone.’
The mobile squawked at him and he grabbed it.
‘I’m here. She’s breathing, but her lips are blue’
‘Please stay on the line, sir, so that I can tell you what to do until the ambulance arrives.’
‘Yes, sorry.’
He followed her instructions. Took off his shirt, wrapped it around the chest wound, carefully avoiding the knife. She told him to press gently on the shirt to try to stop the bleeding and to seal the wound so that no more air was sucked in to the chest, warned him to watch closely in case too much air became trapped between the chest wall and the lung – if that happened he would need to loosen the seal at once to let the air escape.
He bawled at Laura again, and for a moment she opened her eyes. Just for a moment before the lids came back down. Goose bumps on his arms and not from the cold. Sirens were outside now, and then the ambulance crew was beside him, praising him, putting a blanket round him, reassuring him that, without him, Laura Maxwell would surely be dead already.
‘I’m coming with her,’ he told them. He squeezed her cold hand.
The arrival of the police put an end to that idea. They gave him something else to think about. There were four of them and they approached him with mouths set in thin, unfriendly lines.
‘Harry Pelham?’ said the sergeant in charge.
‘Yes.’
‘We’ve been looking for you.’
‘I know,’ Harry raised his palms in the air, placating. ‘I can answer all your questions now.’
‘You’re under arrest.’ Two of the officers grabbed his arms, pinned them behind him, handcuffed his wrists.
‘What the hell are you doing. There’s no need for that.’
The sergeant stepped up close to Harry’s face. He was young and excited and his eyes were hostile.
‘In my opinion, sir, there’s every need.’
Harry felt rage flood him. ‘Look, you moron,’ he jerked his head towards the stretcher being carried from the room. ‘My wife has very nearly killed that woman, probably has killed her. I need to go with her. To the hospital.’
‘You’re not going anywhere except the police station,’ the sergeant wagged a finger in his face. ‘And you’d better pray she doesn’t die because if she does you’re looking at a charge of double murder.’
It was three days before they could be sure she would live and another two before she woke, clear-headed at last, in a hospital bed in a room on her own. There was a drain in her chest and a sharp pain every time she breathed. There were stitches and bandages all over the place and it took her a while to work out where all her injuries were. She remembered the stabbings all too clearly but she had no memory of arriving at hospital and very little of the days following. The doctors told her that her chances of survival had been put at less than thirty per cent. She heard, too, that Harry Pelham had saved her life.
Physically, then, she was a bit of a wreck, but the physical fallout she could deal with, it was the mental fallout that was the problem.
Joe was waiting to see her, had been waiting for days, and she could not put it off any longer. He walked in looking dishevelled and worried; he hadn’t shaved and his usually smart clothes were rumpled, as if he’d slept in them. She had always thought he looked rather cute when he was a mess but now it did nothing for her.
‘Laura, sweetheart, I’ve been going out of my mind.’ He moved towards her as if to kiss her, but either the extent of her injuries or the look on her face made him pull back. He dropped into the chair at her bedside. ‘How are you feeling?’
‘I’m OK,’ she said, not looking at him.
‘That’s great. It’s so good to have you back.’
She felt her mouth tremble and said nothing; she could not trust herself to speak.
He fidgeted in the chair, then said, ‘I love you so much.’
‘Why did you do it?’
‘What? What do you mean?’ he said, as if he hadn’t the least idea what she was talking about.
‘Did you love her?’ Laura ignored his pretended ignorance.
‘You mean Anna Pelham? God no, Laura. Why would you say that? I don’t know what she told you but she was insane, a grade A psycho.’
‘Are you saying you weren’t having an affair with her?’ Laura stared straight at him.
‘I was stupid,’ he looked away, as though he was embarrassed, then back at her. ‘It was just a kiss one time, and yeah, I know it should never have happened … after that she got obsessed, wouldn’t leave me alone.’
‘Oh Joe, please stop, I don’t want to hear your lies. She showed me a photo on her phone, of the two of you in bed together.’
He put his hands over his face then, and Laura saw his broad shoulders shaking. At last, he looked at her again; his eyes full of tears, his handsome features distorted with misery. He wiped his eyes and his face on the sleeve of his Armani shirt, ran his hands through his hair in a gesture of despair. Not a bad performance for a failed actor, she thought bitterly.
‘I am so, so sorry for what I did,’ he began, but she interrupted him.
‘I really don’t want to hear any more.’
He seemed to panic then, and possibly it was genuine, because the drama was gone and he told her in a small, serious voice how much she meant to him, how he couldn’t live without her, how he messed up everything in his life and he would never forgive himself for what he’d done and what she’d gone through.
Afterwards he waited as if he was hoping for some kind of acceptance of his words, and when none came he said, ‘Laura, you’re the only person I’ve ever loved, ever will love. Give me another chance. Please. I’m on my knees. I know how awful this is, but don’t let it break us up. She’s won then.’ He reached out to take Laura’s hand but she snatched it away.
‘Did you want me dead, Joe?’
He looked as though she’d punched him very hard in the face. His bright blue eyes were wide with surprise and hurt. ‘Jesus, Laura, that’s crazy. Of course not. How can you say it?
She wanted very much to believe him, but Anna Pelham’s words were in her head:
Joe loves me and I love Joe. You have always been in the way,
‘She told me so,’ she said, her voice arctic.
‘She was deranged. You know that.’
‘She wasn’t deranged when she told me you were lovers.’
‘You have to believe me, Laura, you just have to. I never knew; never ever had any idea what she was doing.’
She wanted to believe him, wanted to think that all he was guilty of was extreme selfishness; didn’t want to have to live the rest of her life thinking that he had hated her so much he’d wanted her dead.
‘Why should I believe a word you say?’
‘I don’t know. You’ve got every reason not to. All I can say is it’s true. I would never hurt you. I love you, Laura. I always will, and if you let me, I’ll spend the rest of my life proving it to you.’
Suddenly she felt exhausted. ‘I’m tired, Joe. I’d like you to go now.’
‘OK, sure’ he said, uncertainly. ‘Of course, you’ve got to rest. I’ll come back this afternoon and we can talk some more, find a way through this.’
She lay back on the pillows, closed her eyes and waited for him to leave. It took a while.
‘See you later then,’ he said at last. ‘I love you.’
She heard his chair scrape on the floor as he stood up. When, finally, he was gone she knew she never wanted to see him again. Tears flooded through her closed eyelids and poured down her cheeks.
It was surely too cold for snow, but even as she thought it, a few flakes fell from the grey sky. Laura stood looking up at the Downs, breathing in deeply, holding the crisp sea air in her lungs. Despite all that had happened, despite the Exocet that had hit her life, her heart lifted. It felt so good to be here, out of hospital and out of danger. She held the breath for at least ten seconds as the doctors advised, to get her lungs working normally again. Breathe out. Do it again. In through the nose, out through the mouth. Deep breaths, four or five at a time, avoid hyperventilation.
The third one set her off coughing and that brought the pain. She never could tell just where the pain was coming from: lung, ribs, stitched flesh wounds, it seemed as though all of her was one big aching mess. Coughing was good, the doctors said, because it cleared mucus from the lungs and cut down the risk of chest infection. She hoped they were right because it sure was agony. She stopped to recover, then walked on across the field; a longer walk than she’d tried so far, heading for a bench where she sat down carefully, and gratefully, and watched the snow settle on the grass at her feet.
It was more than four weeks now since Anna Pelham had very nearly succeeded in killing her. She tried not to think about it, but she couldn’t stop the pictures replaying in her mind in the middle of the night when her guard was down.
She had been allowed home from hospital three days ago. Joe had moved out before she returned; she’d asked him to go and he’d finally agreed to, after much pleading and arguing and stating it was only temporary to give them time to sort things out. She was hugely relieved to see the back of him.
Emma had stayed with her for the first two days and they’d talked it all through. The police believed Joe had not shared Anna’s murderous intentions; all the evidence was against it. Anna had been obsessed with him since her schooldays and Laura had just been terribly unlucky to get in her way. Maybe Joe, too, had been unlucky – by crossing her path in the first place – but that bad luck had been compounded by his own weakness.
‘It’s so weird,’ Laura said, ‘because that woman said she’d hated me for years, since we were at school, but I don’t even remember her, and God knows, I’ve been trying. What about you, Em? Do you remember anyone called Annabel Roberts?’
Emma shook her head. ‘There was Annabel Georgiou, you know, in our class and Bella Cameron – her name was Annabel – and I think there were a couple of other Annabels in our year, but I’m pretty sure they weren’t called Roberts.’
‘She wasn’t in our year. That’s what the police say anyway. She was younger than us, in the year below.’
Laura shivered, remembering how she’d been taken in by Anna Pelham.
‘I can’t believe how she fooled me.’
‘The main thing is you’ve survived and you’re safe now. Hold on to that.’
Laura smiled, ‘I’ll try to, Mrs Brightside.’
Harry Pelham had visited her several times in hospital. On the last occasion he had been very happy – he’d been allowed to have Martha back home living with him again. He had been able to prove to the police that he couldn’t have been the one who downloaded the child pornography to his home computer on one of the dates listed. Visa had supplied the times for his credit card transactions. On the Friday, when two of the pornography payments had been made – at 2.18 p.m. and 2.27 p.m. – there was a third payment – at 2.24 p.m. – to a restaurant in Horsham. His company had a housing development there and he’d been taking a business partner to lunch. Someone else had been in his home using his computer and his wife was the only suspect.
Morrison had visited too, and to Laura’s surprise, offered her a partnership. He made his usual song and dance about it, telling her how he’d pushed the other partners to agree, what a great honour it was, how pleased and awed she should be, the level of commitment expected in return. She told him she’d think about it and hugely enjoyed the look of astonishment on his face that anyone would need to think twice.