The Lying Game (3 page)

‘I’m sorry. I thought someone had explained. Your daughter slipped when she was out running and fell onto some broken glass – a beer bottle, I think – which cut deep into
her inner thigh, slicing through her femoral artery. One of those freak, million-to-one accidents. Fortunately, her teacher was able to administer a very effective tourniquet that most certainly
saved her life.’

Her mouth was suddenly so dry she could barely swallow.
Saved her life.
Florence had nearly died today. Her daughter had nearly
died.

‘I don’t understand,’ she said blankly.

He took her confusion literally. ‘The body has two femoral arteries that branch off from about mid-abdomen into each thigh.’ He sketched a quick diagram on the back of his folder.
‘They’re among the body’s biggest vessels, about the diameter of my pinkie finger in the groin and upper thigh. Stopping blood loss in that region is extremely challenging if the
wound is close to the groin, as it’s hard to put a tourniquet around it. Without one, there’s quick, massive blood loss: you can lose all the blood in your whole body in around five
minutes.’

Harriet put her head on her knees, fighting the urge to be sick again.

‘Mrs Lockwood, your daughter was very lucky,’ the doctor said firmly. ‘The cut was low enough that her coach was able to administer a tourniquet before her blood pressure fell
too low. She sustained significant blood loss, but neither her brain nor her body organs have been in any way compromised.’

Relief flooded her body like a warm bath. ‘She’s going to be OK?’

‘She should make a full recovery. Obviously she’s going to be tired and weak for a while. We had to give her a significant amount of blood, and then there’s the shock, of
course. I see from her file she’s diabetic – we’ll have to keep a close eye on her sugar levels. But she’s young and strong, and of course we’ve given her a tetanus
booster. She’ll be up and about in no time.’

‘Can I see her now?’

‘Of course. She may seem a bit confused or sleepy, but that’s just the pain meds. They’ll wear off within the next four to six hours. I’ll take you to her now.’

Florence was sleeping when the doctor showed Harriet into a small private room. A nurse looked up from her position at the end of Florence’s bed, where she was writing
something in her chart.

‘It looks worse than it is.’ She smiled.

Harriet carefully took her daughter’s hand, mindful of the wires and drips connecting her to various monitors and IVs. The sheets were tented over her left leg, which was propped up on
several pillows, making her look strangely small in the hospital bed. She was suddenly reminded of the first time she sat vigil by her daughter’s bed, a few weeks after Florence’s sixth
birthday. The morning of that day, she’d seemed a little tired and peaky, and Harriet had taken her to the doctor, expecting to be sent home with antibiotics and instructions to make sure
Florence drank plenty of fluids. The next thing she knew, her daughter had been rushed to the paediatric intensive care unit in the midst of what turned out to be a full-blown diabetic crisis.

Even though the doctors had repeatedly told them there was no way of knowing why some children developed juvenile diabetes, that science still couldn’t say whether it was triggered by
hereditary or environmental factors or a mixture of both, Harriet hadn’t been able to help but feel responsible. Florence had
her
genes, after all. She knew deep down that somehow it
must be her fault.

Instead of bringing them closer, Florence’s diabetes had driven yet another wedge between them. She knew her daughter hated it when she made a fuss, but how could she
not
worry?
She fretted over every carb Florence ate, not because she gave a damn about her weight – Florence was perfect as she was, beautiful, a Fifties pin-up in the making – but because she was
terrified the diabetes would spin out of control, become unmanageable and brittle. The doctors had warned her what could happen if they didn’t keep her sugar levels in check: blindness,
kidney failure, nerve damage, even death. But she couldn’t tell Florence that, of course. Part of her job as a mother was protecting her daughter from the truth. She just wished she
didn’t have to pay such a high price for her silence.

‘Here,’ the nurse said, moving a plastic chair towards her. ‘You look like you need to sit down.’

Harriet gazed at her child, suffused not just with love and tenderness, but by a familiar feeling, a feeling unique to her relationship with Florence: guilt.

She hadn’t wished this on her daughter. Of course not. Never in a million years would she have wanted something like this to happen.

But.

But.
In her heart, she’d put Charlie first. Hadn’t she?

Florence stirred suddenly and opened her eyes. ‘Sorry,’ she said, through thick, dry lips. She licked them and tried again, louder this time. ‘Sorry, Mom.’

‘You’ve got nothing to be sorry for,’ Harriet said fiercely.

‘I wish you’d been here,’ Florence murmured sleepily.

Guilt again, thick and treacherous. ‘I wish I had been, too.’

‘Did you call Daddy?’

‘Of course. He’s on his way back from Hartford now. He should be here any minute. He sends his love.’ She squeezed Florence’s hand, but her daughter didn’t respond,
and, after a moment, she released her. ‘There’s no need to worry, darling. Everything’s going to be fine.’

She heard the fake cheerleader note in her voice and knew Florence could too.

‘How are you feeling?’ she asked helplessly.

‘Bit tired.’

‘Of course.’

The silence between them filled the room. If it were little Charlie in the bed, or George or Sam, she’d have known what to do, what to say. She’d have scooped them up in her arms,
regardless of all those wires, and held close what she’d almost lost.

But with Florence, she was at a loss. They were two strangers thrown together by genes and happenstance.

‘Flo-Mo! Baby, how’re you doing?’ Oliver crossed the room in two strides and enveloped his daughter in a tight hug. ‘You had me worried witless, you know that?’

‘Daddy!’

He parked himself on the bed. ‘Jesus, will you take a look at all this,’ he said, taking in the bank of monitors. ‘It’s like the bloody Starship Enterprise.’

Already the colour was coming back into Florence’s cheeks. Oliver had this effect on every woman he met, from his daughter to the checkout girls at the supermarket. He simply lit up a
room. It wasn’t that he was particularly good-looking; a rumpled, crumpled bear of a man with two-day-old greying stubble and overlong dark blond hair, he was more Gerard Depardieu than
Robert Redford, though he’d always melted Harriet’s knees, from the first moment she’d walked into the cupboard that had passed for his office and explained how she was going to
transform his nascent business into an international empire. It was the twinkle in his creased blue eyes, the boyish charm in his wide, uneven smile. He made you feel like the most important person
in the world when he was talking to you because, for that moment, to him you were.

‘So, Flo-Mo. What’s up?’ Oliver asked.

‘I nearly
died,’
Florence said.

‘So I hear.’ He rumpled her hair and she grimaced, but didn’t pull away. ‘Cross-country running as a dangerous sport? Flo-Mo, what are you like?’

Florence tossed her head to clear her fringe from her eyes. It was a gesture she’d inherited from her father; moments later, Oliver did exactly the same thing.

‘They had to give me three pints of blood,’ she told him, a faint note of pride entering her voice. ‘The doctor said I was, like, bleeding out or something. They had to do a
blood test to see which type I am, which is A-plus, and—’

‘A-positive,’
Harriet corrected automatically, then kicked herself.

Florence ignored her. ‘And I got to go in an ambulance and they put the sirens on, and we totally went down Main Street the wrong way. The boys will be so jealous.’

Oliver laughed. ‘You’re not kidding.
I’m
jealous.’

Watching them together, father and daughter, heads touching, reflecting an identical smile back at one another, Harriet felt a familiar sense of exclusion. She was the one who’d carried
Florence inside her for nine months, who’d literally made her from scratch; and yet it was Oliver to whom Florence turned, Oliver who shared a bond that went beyond flesh and blood. It
wasn’t that she resented the closeness between her husband and her daughter; far from it. It warmed her heart. She just wished that, for once, she could share it.

‘The doctor said if we’re lucky, it won’t scar too badly,’ Harriet murmured, drawing Oliver to one side. ‘The cut wasn’t terribly long, but it was deep.
He’s giving her some kind of cosmetic tape to put over the stitches once they come out, the kind the plastic surgeons use to try to prevent scars becoming keloid.’

‘Special tape, huh?’ Oliver said, turning to tweak Florence’s good toes.

‘The doctor said I’d be in a bikini by Spring Break,’ Florence said lightly. Only the slight tremor in her voice gave her away. ‘He reckons you’ll hardly be able to
see it in a year.’

‘That’s my girl.’ He dropped a kiss on her forehead. ‘I know you’re upset to be off the cross-country team, but you’ll be back up and about before you know
it. No real harm done in the end, eh?’

Florence shook her head. Harriet saw how close she was to tears. No wonder, after all she’d been through today.

She pulled her into a hug, and for once Florence didn’t seem to mind. ‘It’s going to be fine,’ she soothed, stroking her daughter’s fair hair. ‘Shhh.
It’s all going to be fine.’

She’d move heaven and earth to make sure it was.

There was a
reason
no one wrote about London in the spring, Zoey thought as she dashed through the rain from one dripping shop awning to another. There was absolutely
nothing romantic about damp shoes and wet hair, especially when you already had the beginnings of a cold. Perhaps if she’d been gazing at a blurry view of the Eiffel Tower through the steamy
window of a warm café, her chapped hands wrapped round a
chocolat chaud,
she might feel differently. Islington had an undoubted charm in the summer, when the sun was out and Camden
Passage was crammed with market stalls selling everything from Bakelite telephones to amber bangles, and the pavements outside every bistro and café were crowded with chairs and tables. But
in the grey of winter, or on a damp, dull spring day like this, north London had
nothing
to recommend it. Oh, what she wouldn’t give to be in Paris right now, the hot buttery flakes
of a fresh croissant melting like snowflakes on her tongue; or maybe a
croque monsieur
(which always sounded so much more tempting than ‘hot ham-and-cheese sandwich’), with
butter and melted Emmental oozing down its sides – oh yes, she could almost
taste
it. Clearly she should never have gone without breakfast, not when she always seemed to forget
lunch; she was
ravenous
now. But it was hard to feel hungry at seven o’clock in the morning when all you’d done was get out of bed and stumble downstairs. It wasn’t as if
she had to
walk
to work . . .

‘Mum!’

Zoey started. ‘Nell! Darling! Where did you spring from?’

‘I came looking for
you,’
Nell said crossly, shaking out her purple umbrella. ‘I knew you’d get lost.’

‘I’m not lost,’ Zoey protested. ‘Look, there’s the library. I know where I am. Why would you think I was lost?’

‘You’re going the wrong way, for a start.’ She tucked her arm into her mother’s. ‘Come on, we don’t want to be the last ones there or we’ll get stuck at
the back where you can’t see Angel, and then you won’t be able to follow his moves.’