Something Good (18 page)

H
annah inhaled deeply, feeling cool air filling her lungs. She'd never imagined that she'd grow to like it here, to relish the sense of calm that had crept over her without noticing. Down at the bay, something shifted on a rock. A seal, perhaps, watching her.

The rain seemed to come from nowhere, a rumble of thunder spurring her return to Hope House. She walked briskly, noticing that a light had been switched on in Archie's studio. She froze. There were two people in there; people who obviously weren't there to work.

They were wrapped up in a tight embrace, clearly not caring who might be wandering around in the dark and see them. Hannah felt repulsed, spying on them like this, yet couldn't tear away her gaze. That kissing—it was virtually sex. She'd never seen anything like it—at least not for real. In movies, maybe. The schmaltzy films that Amy and Rachel were so fond of. No one, not even Ollie, had kissed her like that.

These people were
old,
too; they had to be. The only young people around Hope House were herself and Zoë. The couple parted, and Hannah tried to make out their faces. It was Conor, that man who'd been so friendly and attentive to her mother, and—

The woman laughed and took his hand as they made their way to the door. Hannah turned and ran. Of all the people to make a complete spectacle of herself—the woman who'd lectured her about getting drunk, and not completing her geography homework and, more recently, the shoplifting, which Hannah knew she'd never let her forget.
It's the last time,
Hannah thought, pelting through the sudden downpour toward the house,
you have a say on how I should live my life.

She was drenched by the time she got back to the room. The rain hadn't built gradually but flooded down on her as thunder crashed across the island. Zoë stirred in bed as Hannah let herself into the room, but didn't wake up. She pulled off her wet clothes and, not bothering with pajamas, flung herself into bed and bunched the blankets around her.

Her own mother, behaving as if she were fifteen years old. Was she drunk or had she gone completely bloody crazy? Didn't she care that anyone could see with the lights blazing like that?

She fixed her gaze on Zoë's sleeping face. Wake up, she thought, desperate to talk to another human being. Zoë looked so peaceful, her face far prettier without its customary makeup. The sky flashed silvery white. In a few hours, Hannah thought, we'll be leaving, and her mother will have made a complete fool of herself for nothing. They were probably doing it right now. She was a
mum,
for crying out loud, and what were mums meant to do? Bake cakes, like her friend Sally—why couldn't she be more like Sally?—and make sure there was plenty of food in the fridge. Jane did none of those things. She had a crappy job, spent the best part of her free time messing about in a clapped-out shed, and snuck out in the middle of the night and had sex with a man she barely knew in a hut with all the lights on.

Hannah tossed and turned in bed, feeling as if she could almost vomit. She glared up at the bubbly pattern formed by dampness on the ceiling. Her chest felt tight, and her breathing was shallow and fast. Calm down, she told herself, steady now. She scrabbled on the bedside table for her bag and rummaged for her inhaler. No inhaler. She lay on her back, trying to rein in her breathing—bring it down to a steady pattern. It was coming, she could feel it, like that time in biology when she'd felt the tightening and fear.
Calm, calm, calm.
Her pillow was damp from her wet hair. She flipped it over but it still felt clammy.

She swiveled out of bed and opened her suitcase, which still contained the clothes she hadn't got around to unpacking. Naked and shivering, she grabbed them by the handful and flung them onto the floor. “Han,” Zoë murmured, “what's up?”

“It's okay. Just need my inhaler.”

Zoë sprung up instantly. “Are you all right? You sound weird. You're really wheezing, Han. Has something happened?”

Hannah shook her head.
Don't speak,
she told herself.
Save your breath. Worst thing you can do is panic.
She remembered after the last attack, the doctor reminding her to avoid stressful situations or anything that might make her anxious. Zoë clicked on the main light and peered at Hannah's face. “I thought it was the storm,” she muttered. “I thought the storm had woken me. Did you hear the thunder? You weren't outside in that, were you?”

“Yes,” came Hannah's small voice.

“Han, this is scary—shall we get someone?”

“Think so.”

“You'd better get dressed. Let me help.” Zoë grabbed the sweater and jeans that were lying on the floor close to Hannah's bed. “These are soaking. I'll find you something else.” She flung open a drawer in the wooden chest and pulled out clothes haphazardly. Hannah allowed Zoë to feed her limbs into trousers and sleeves. She felt like a small, helpless kid.

“Is it getting any better?” Zoë asked.

Hannah shook her head.

“Come on, let's get your mum.” Holding her hand now, Zoë led Hannah along the corridor and hammered on Jane and Nancy's door. She pushed it open, and Nancy sat up abruptly. “What are you two—”

“Where's Jane?” Zoë blurted, staring at the empty bed.

Nancy followed her gaze. “I've no idea. I thought…what time is it?”

I know,
Hannah thought.
I have a very good idea where Mum is and what she's doing right now…
“Nancy,” Zoë blurted, “Han's asthma thing's come on. We can't find her inhaler in our room…”

“Oh, love,” Nancy said, tumbling out of bed and wrapping an arm around Hannah.

“Gran—” The worry dolls fell from her hand to the floor. She hadn't realized she'd been holding them.

“Shh, don't try to speak. You two stay here. I'll go down to reception, see if I can find a number for a doctor.” Bundling herself into a threadbare dressing gown, she hurried out of the room.

The waiting seemed to take forever. Hannah perched on a chair at the window and tried to watch the lightening sky. The storm was over, and the sky had filled with great swathes of pink. Hannah could hear her own tight, strangled wheeze. Zoë touched her arm. “You'll be okay,” she soothed. “Your gran's going to sort everything out.”

Make them hurry,
Hannah thought, not focusing on the sky now, but rigid with fear.
Make them hurry—

“Han,” Zoë cried, “your face, your lips…”

Hannah stared at her. They're blue, she thought, her head swilling with the horrible sound she was making—

My lips are going blue.

C
onor's hand felt warm in Jane's as they walked beyond Seal Bay, turning inland where the ground swelled toward the Fang. She hadn't felt awkward as his lips and hands had traveled over her body, but crazily happy and hungry for him. His body had been so different to Max's; more sturdily built with broad shoulders and long, strong legs. She hadn't cared that it was gone 2:00 a.m. and dawn was creeping into his bedroom.

“Let's go out,” Conor had said, “there's something I'd like you to see before you leave.”

“What is it?” she'd asked.

Instead of answering, he'd kissed her again.

 

The church on the hill looked as if it had dropped from the sky. There were no other buildings around it; just swooping hills bisected by crumbling walls and dotted with sheep.

Built from rust-colored stone, the church looked solid and proud, despite its windows being in a poor state of repair. Some segments were either cracked or missing. Others needed careful cleaning to bring the colors back to life. Conor and Jane circled it, trying the locked door. “So,” he said, “what do you think?”

“It's beautiful,” Jane said.

“It could be, if the windows were restored.”

“Wouldn't Archie do it?”

Conor shook his head. “He doesn't do restoration work. Reckons it's not—” he chuckled “—art.”

“I do,” Jane said. “Just before I came here, I finished a rose window for a church….”

“Would
you
do it?”

“How? I'd have to take the panels out and transport them to London and—”

“You could do it here. It would take you, what, a couple of months?”

She laughed, then realized he was quite serious. “I've got my job, Conor. Hannah has school…we have a life.”

“It needn't be forever. Just until you'd finished.” His eyes seemed to search hers.

“And there's Mum,” she added quickly, “I've got to take Mum back to London, and I've another commission to start as soon as we're home….”

So many reasons. As he placed his hands on her cheeks and kissed her again, Jane felt all her reasons for leaving being blown out to sea.

 

Hope House was waking up by the time Jane returned. She could see movement in some of the upstairs rooms; people preparing to leave. A crow was perched defiantly on the cracked washbasin. Self-consciously, Jane tried to flatten her hair and smoothed down her clothes, trying to make herself look respectable. As if she'd just been for a walk, that was all. A walk until 6:45 a.m. with a man who'd kissed every inch of her body. Her lips were tingling. She hoped they wouldn't give her away.

She didn't feel remotely tired as she strode into the foyer. She was buoyant and giddy inside. Mrs. McFarlane looked up sharply from the desk. “
Here
you are,” she barked. “We've been looking everywhere for you. You can't believe how worried we've been, what's been happening—”

“I only went for—” Jane began.

“Not you. We weren't worried about
you
. You've no idea, have you, what's happened to your daughter?”

Jane's heart shot to her mouth. “What? Where is she?”

“She's had an asthma attack,” Mrs. McFarlane said briskly. “Doctor's still here, brought a nebulizer. She's fine now—at least better than she was. They're in your—” Jane was no longer listening but tearing along the corridor and bursting into her room.

Hannah was sitting up in bed, resting against propped-up pillows. Her face was waxy and pale and partially covered by a clear plastic mask attached by a tube to an oxygen tank. “I'm so sorry,” Jane murmured, hugging her. “So sorry, darling. I had no idea.” Hannah's body stiffened. Jane pulled away slowly, chilled by her daughter's glare.

An elderly man with a fuzz of soft white hair was sitting on the chair beside the bed. “You're the mother?” he asked levelly.

“Yes, yes, I am.” She didn't know whether to stand or sit, what to do with herself. Hannah was making it clear that she didn't want to be held. Nancy and Zoë, who were perched on the other bed, were pointedly avoiding Jane's gaze.

“Hannah's breathing has settled,” the doctor said, “but I'll stay for a little longer. You'll need this.” He opened the bag at his feet, pulled out a pad of prescriptions and scribbled on the top sheet. He ripped it off and handed it to Jane; he was prescribing the same steroids—the ones that made her nauseous—that she'd had after the attack at school.

“We're supposed to be leaving this morning,” she said. “Will Hannah be okay to travel?”

“Absolutely not. She needs another day's rest.” He frowned at her, but his eyes had softened. “She'll be fine, Mrs. Deakin. The worst is over now.”

The worst happened,
she thought,
when I wasn't here.
Jane studied his kind, soft face for a hint of blame or recrimination.

“Out in the rain, getting herself soaked,” Nancy muttered. “Did something upset you, Hannah, to trigger this off?”

“Unlikely,” the doctor interjected, lifting Hannah's mask from her face. “Unlikely that it was caused by stress. This sort of thing is usually overexertion, perhaps hiking too much.”

Jane felt her daughter's dark eyes boring into her. She didn't need to say a word, as her gaze said it all:
I needed you, and you weren't here.

“C
hicken or fish?” the air stewardess trilled as she shunted the trolley along the aisle.
Chicken or fish? Chicken or fish?
It was doing Max's head in. From his aisle seat—easier to get in and out of with his leg in a splint—he smiled wearily. “I'll have the chicken, please.”

Veronica slid her eyes in the direction of the stewardess. “Just water, please.” The stewardess passed her a bottle and cup. “Thanks,” Veronica murmured, then returned to the pressing business of staring pointedly out of the window.

Max glanced at her. There'd been no row, no outburst of any kind, so he couldn't understand why she was being so frosty. It wasn't his fault he'd been concussed and ruptured a ligament. He hadn't damaged himself on purpose solely to wreck Veronica's holiday. He leaned forward, wincing as a twinge shot up his leg, and extracted the in-flight magazine from the seat pocket.

“We're an
ideas
factory,” Jasper was booming to his neighbor in the seat behind. “That's the best way of putting it. Concept, branding, thinking outside the box. That's what we're all about.”

He was talking in management-speak like those jerks Veronica had invited to Max's party. Max didn't even
know
any management-speak. It wasn't required in a cycle shop. He wanted to communicate with someone who spoke normally, but it looked unlikely that Veronica would be forthcoming. Her jaw was set firm, causing a tendon in her neck to protrude like a tree trunk poking out of the ground, relaxing only when she sipped her water.

He lifted the foil from his in-flight meal and hacked into the chicken. How did Veronica survive on so little food? he wondered. The snacks she carried around in little sachets in her bag looked like they should be sown in the garden, not consumed by ravenous human beings. He had a craving for curry—the mouth-searing, blow-out array of dishes he used to wolf down with Jane.
There
was a woman who knew how to eat. He couldn't imagine her acquainting herself with millet or goat's arse yoghurt. Max stole a glance at Veronica's notebook, which lay open on her flip-down table.
FoxLove on the go,
she'd written, accompanied by a scattering of sausage-shaped objects that looked like dismembered penises.

“I'm going to the loo,” Max muttered.

Veronica flashed her eyes at him. “Fine.”

Max sighed. “Veronica, what on earth's the matter? Why are you being so cold with me?”

“I'm not,” she muttered.

“I didn't do it on purpose, you know.” He pulled himself up from the seat and stepped gingerly into the aisle.

“That's him,” Jasper bellowed. “That's the fellow I was telling you about. Ruptured himself, back of the leg, going to need some kind of reconstructive surgery. Rather him than me, I say! Feeling any better now, Maxy? Hope it's not affected your
groin
, heh heh…”

Max fixed him with an icy stare. Jasper was wedged between Hettie, who was immersed in a book, and the poor sod he'd been boring stupid about his ideas factory. “Actually,” Max said, “it's agony.”

Jasper's smile froze. “Ah.”

“Did they give you painkillers to bring home?” Hettie asked, glancing up from her book.

“Yes, I'm just going to the loo to chug the whole bottle. About thirty should do the trick.”

“Max!” Hettie looked aghast, then caught his eye and giggled.

Max realized that he, too, was smiling. Funny, he mused as he made his way along the aisle, he couldn't remember the last time he'd done that.

 

The taxi crawled through East London streets. It smelled faintly of cigarette smoke and Veronica's hostile vibes. Her skis lay diagonally in their zip-up case across the floor of the cab, forcing Max to fold up his legs at an uncomfortable angle. He was determined not to complain or ask her to move them. He would suffer in silence.

“What really gets me,” Veronica muttered, “is this has never happened with cycling. All the time you spend training and racing and there's never been a single injury.”

Max frowned at her. Of course he'd had his share of tumbles and collisions. He'd skinned arms and thighs, had to pick gravel out of his knees. Perhaps that didn't count as serious enough. If he'd broken a leg or dislocated a shoulder, would that have made her happier? Maybe he should arrange it. “I don't know what you're talking about,” he snapped.

“I mean,” she said, “that you made it plain from the start that you didn't want to come. That you were humoring me.” Her voice wobbled.

“Of course I—” He stopped short. She was right; he'd only agreed due to his overwhelming lust for the most gorgeous body he'd ever laid eyes on. What a shallow specimen he was.

“I thought it was going to be really special,” she continued. “Our first holiday together. And you, being so fit and active, I thought you'd love—” She clamped her mouth shut.

“Veronica, please. Let's forget it.” He patted her knee, a gesture that felt inadequate and vaguely patronizing.

She waggled the knee, shaking him off. “What do you think of me Max, really?” Her eyes were fixed on him. The cab driver was humming along to a song on the radio. Max blinked at the curly graying hairs that sprouted from the back of his pink neck.

“I—I think—”

“D'you think I'm stupid? That I don't have
direction?
”

“Of course not!” Max spluttered. “Look at your business, what you've managed to do all by yourself. You've got your investor, you're full of ideas, you're nearly ready to go into production….”

“
You
wouldn't invest,” she muttered.

“How could I? I don't have that kind of money flying about. And there's the shop…”

“Oh, yes,” she said witheringly, “the shop.”

Max glared at her. Was she implying he was a workaholic, or what? Just taken a whole week off, hadn't he? “Which number, mate?” the driver called back.

“Sixty-seven,” Veronica said curtly.

Not her house, but his. Max studied her face. “Are you coming in?” he asked hesitantly.

She blinked at him. “I'll help you in with your stuff. I'm not that selfish, Max.”

 

Max hadn't lived in his house for long enough to experience the faintest smidge of pleasure in returning. In fact, as he stepped into the narrow hall, he had an unsettling notion that he was trespassing.

A scattering of letters and leaf lets—mostly junk mail and brown envelopes—lay on the floor. Max kicked them aside with his good foot. Veronica groaned behind him as she carried in his bag, even though it contained little more than a few clothes—no base layers, no salopettes, no buff. She dumped it on to the floor without comment.

Max ambled into the living room to check his answering machine messages—more to distance himself from Veronica's hostility than any thought that someone interesting might have called. He pressed the button. “Max? It's me. Listen, there's nothing to worry about. Everything's fine now. Hannah had a bit of an asthma attack but the doctor came and put her on a nebulizer and steroids and she's fine. We're having to stay on the island an extra day, just to make sure she's okay to travel, but we'll be leaving first thing tomorrow as long as the ferry's running. Weather's been pretty awful. Anyway, love, please don't worry about Han, she's fine—everyone's fine. It's been…good here. Hope you had a great holiday. See you soon.”

Her voice: so familiar yet faraway sounding, even though she was only in Scotland. It could have been another continent. Max was gripped by an urge to replay the message, to reassure himself that everything really was okay, but was aware of Veronica observing him from the doorway. He turned and gave her a weak smile. “Han had an asthma attack,” he murmured.

“Yes, I heard. I expect you'll be glad to have her back home.”

He nodded, feeling awkward in this house that still felt unfamiliar and not quite his. Despite the skiing tan that stopped at the neck, Veronica looked drawn and tired. Her left eye had acquired some kind of tic during the cab ride. He was overcome by a sudden desire to put his arms around her, to comfort her, to say sorry—although he wasn't sure what for.

The tic had become more pronounced. She brought her hands to her face, sweeping them over her eyes and cheeks. To his horror, tears began to spill and form wiggly lines down her cheeks. She made no attempt to bat them away. “Veronica, what—” Max began. He wanted to hold her but she'd shrunk back, away from him.

“You might as well say it,” she whispered.

“What?”

“That you don't love me. It's Jane, Max. You still love Jane.” She was crying properly now: not silent tears but the great, gulping sobs of a hurt little girl.

Max opened his mouth to protest, but words failed him.