The Ward (26 page)

‘Of course we are.’

I don’t know how long I stay leaning against him, breathing in the scent of his skin, listening to the steady thump of his heart.

There’s the sound of a high-pitched siren.
Beeeeeeep. Beeeeeeep. Beeeeeeep.
Feet thud past the waiting-room door. The squeak of a trolley.

Loud voices.

Something’s wrong. Something’s happening.

I lean back and look up into Farrell’s face, his eyes closed. He looks so… natural. Like he belongs here. I should tell him what Katya said, that she was sorry, but he probably
won’t want to hear that right now.

Maybe he’s right. Maybe everything’s going to work out. Five more minutes won’t hurt. I rest my head back on his chest and shut out the world.

Beeeeeeep. Beeeeeeep. Beeeeeeep.

Someone’s fucked with the settings on my iPhone. I’m trying to fix its internet profile, but I give up halfway. Actually, after what we’ve been through, going
online and talking inane shit on MindRead is the last thing I feel like doing. What the fuck would I say, anyway?
hola MRers back from the dead – found a gr8 new recycling
place

I hear a car door thump in the street below our apartment. I peer out of the window. Oh fuck, they’re early. Glenn and June slamming out of the Jaguar. Now Glenn’s saying something
offensive to the car guard and I can just imagine June’s face shutting down in embarrassment. What am I talking about? It’s permanently shut down.

I drop the phone on the couch. ‘They’re here,’ I call.

Fuck.
Fuck
. June said they’d be here at eleven, and it’s barely half past ten. I straighten the cushions on the couch, collect the dirty dishes and pile them into the sink. I
check my face in the mirror in the hall, run to the guest bathroom and pat some serum onto my cheeks. Better.

Bang, bang, bang. Glenn’s unsubtle pounding on the door. That bastard seriously thinks he owns everything and everyone, including me and my fucking apartment.

I instinctively check again to make sure that everything’s in place.

Bang, bang, bang!

‘A bit of respect would be nice, arsehole,’ I mutter to myself, then open the door.

‘Where is she?’ barks Glenn from inside the marquee-like three-piece Italian suit he thinks makes him look sophisticated. The expensive cologne and the sweat, last night’s
cognac and this morning’s mouthwash waft off him in waves as he barges past me. My stomach’s still not a hundred per cent.

June hovers behind him. ‘Hello, Josh,’ she says, giving me a weak smile. ‘My, you’ve lost so much weight. How’re you feeling?’

‘Where is she?’ Glenn says again.

‘She’s sleeping, Glenn. The medication makes her very tired, but the doctor says that’s the best thing for her. I’m sure she’ll wake up soon. Can I get you some
coffee?’

‘Let me see her,’ says Glenn, his voice softer. According to Katya, the quieter his voice becomes, the closer he is to hitting someone. I’m not going to be able to delay him
much longer.

‘Come on, Glenn, five minutes isn’t going to make a difference,’ June says.

I shoot her a grateful smile. For some lucky reason, she’s always believed I’m good for Katya. Probably because Katya’s other boyfriends were bullying oafs, carbon copies of
Glenn. June’s my one ally in that family, and Christ knows I need her on my side now.

One step at a time. It will be fine. One step at a time. We’ll get through this.

‘Coffee would be lovely, Josh,’ June says. ‘Thank you.’

I fill the kettle, keeping an eye on them from behind the kitchen counter. The scar on my right hand stings. It must have worked itself open when I was fucking around with that phone. I think of
Katya smashing that glass against the counter, and how much has happened since then.

Glenn slumps back on the couch, his massive frame sagging under the weight of all those overpriced dinners and the booze he knocks back 24/7. June sits primly perched on the edge of the couch,
knees together in her narrow linen Jackie O dress, on high alert in case Glenn instructs her to scurry for more milk or sugar. He checks his watch, his bracelet jangling. He always wears that
fucking thing, a heavy gold chain with an ID tag reading ‘LOVER’ in a big slab serif. Meanwhile, June stares at the portrait Dennis Rossouw did after Katya came third in the New Face of
the Year, Catwalk Category.

‘It’s a nice one, isn’t it, June?’ I call over. It’s taken with a Sinar P2. Large-format camera, I think of adding for her benefit, even though she won’t have
a clue what the fuck I’m talking about. ‘The quality is amazing, don’t you think?’

Glenn snorts in derision. I know exactly what he’s thinking: Fucking moffie photographer, why doesn’t he get a fucking proper job, a man’s job?

June finally glances over at me. ‘What, Josh? Oh, the picture. Yes,’ she says vaguely. I wonder just how medicated she is on any given day. ‘I can hardly recognise
her.’

‘What you talking about, Juney? Can tell a mile away it’s her,’ Glenn huffs. It always annoys him when June acts concerned about Katya, when she suggests she might be working
too hard or eating too little. All Glenn wants for his daughter is success, no matter the personal cost. But of course he’s never there to clean up when Kay goes off the rails. That’s
left to June and me.

Hard as it is to admit it, though, he does love Katya, in some twisted way.

We spent the whole of Saturday night and Sunday just recovering, trying to feel normal: bathing for hours, eating decent food – God, I realised just how much I missed fresh fruit –
and watching crap on TV. I could only bring myself to phone June this morning, and, despite the fact that it’s a Monday, Glenn blew off an early meeting to come straight here.

I pour boiling water into the plunger. I’m making organic, free-trade Ethiopian. Glenn’s one of those blustering nouveau riche bastards: ‘Only Colombian is good enough for me,
and I have to taste the kids’ tears in it.’ God, if he knew his coffee was African, he’d probably spit it out.

‘What hospital did you say you were at?’ Glenn asks.

We’ve been through all this on the phone already. Another thing I did yesterday was get our story straight. ‘I wound up at New Hope. Some mix-up. But then I was transferred to
Morningside, where I found Katya.’

‘And explain again why I couldn’t find you or Kat there? My people called all the clinics, every day.’

As if asking me repeatedly is going to make a difference. I will my heart to stop thumping and pray that my face isn’t beginning to sweat. Christ, as obvious as his tactics are, I can see
why he uses them – they work.

Not for the first time, I consider dumping rat poison into his coffee and getting him out of my life once and for all. I wouldn’t blink, I swear. But if it went wrong, if he lived,
I’d be finished. I still don’t know what I’m going to do after this. I keep on saying it’s going to be all right, that it will work out, but I still don’t have a
fucking plan.

I force myself to smile benignly at him. ‘They had my name wrong. They had me down as Joshua Alphonse. They thought Alphonse was my surname.’ I laugh, looking at June, and she smiles
back in timid support.

She trusts me, I think. ‘And Katya, well, you know…’

Katya always books in under an assumed name: when she went to rehab for a week; when her nose wouldn’t stop bleeding. Standard practice. They know this as well as I do. I don’t have
to say any more, and Glenn won’t want to pursue this line of questioning. He checks his watch again and huffs, and June pats his hand, gets up and wanders over to the Moroccan mosaic on the
mantle. She stands there, her back to us, staring into the inlaid shards of mirror, stretching her cheeks with her fingers. The way her shoulders slope from her neck, that intense, unforgiving
scrutiny of herself in that neurotic mirror, that’s hereditary; Katya got those genes in spades.

I froth the microwaved milk and bring a tray through to the coffee table.

June returns to the couch and pours two cups. ‘How has she been, Josh? You said there was nothing broken?’

‘No, thank God. She was lucky. They did a scan and after a few days the swelling on her brain – the haematoma – disappeared. Apart from a few contusions on her face,
she’s—’

‘You didn’t say anything about her face!’ Glenn roars.

‘It’s not serious, it’s just… Look, she’s quite sensitive about it, though, so when you see her—’

‘Have they found the kaffir who drove into her?’ Glenn interrupts. ‘It was a taxi, right?’

That’s what I told him. Unroadworthy minibus taxis smash into lots of people and then just drive away, don’t they? And they’re not registered and you never find the
culprit.

‘No. The police are still looking.’

‘My fucking arse, they are. I’m going to get some of my people onto it and we’ll find the motherfucker. Where’s her car?’

Shit, I didn’t think about that. It’s parked downstairs in the tenants’ parking lot, completely unscathed. ‘Uh, I think it was scrapped. I don’t know. I can find
out.’

‘Hmpf,’ Glenn scoffs, slopping his coffee on the carpet as he reaches for more sugar. ‘We’ll get onto the licensing department.’

‘Lovely coffee, Josh,’ June says. She hasn’t even tasted hers.

‘And what about this fight you two had?’ Glenn says.

‘What fight?’ I say innocently.

‘Don’t fucking play coy with me, arsehole. When you phoned from the hospital, you told June you and Katya’d had a fight. What was it about?’

‘It was nothing. Just something stupid.’

‘That right?’ Glenn says. ‘Then tell me this, when we came here the next day, how come there was broken glass and drops of blood on the floor?’

I’m still seething about the fact that they came in here. But now’s not the time to make an issue of it. ‘You know how Katya gets, Glenn. She was upset, she smashed a glass and
we both cut our fingers clearing it up. But it blew over. It was nothing.’

Glenn glares at me, but then his phone beeps and he pulls it out of his pocket, momentarily distracted.

‘I hope you don’t mind us coming into your apartment uninvited, Josh,’ June flutters. ‘We were so worried when we couldn’t get hold of Katya, and Glenn explained
the situation to the building supervisor and he let us in.’ Explained the situation in Glenn’s inimitable style. I’ll bet he fucking did.

Glenn pockets his phone. ‘Bit of a coincidence, isn’t it?’

‘What?’

‘Both you and Kat ending up in hospital at the same time? You with the…’ He waves his arm vaguely.

‘Measles,’ I say, swallowing a surge of panic. Fuck, where’s he going with this?

‘And Katya being hit by a fucking taxi.’

‘I don’t know what you’re trying to—’

‘You know exactly what I’m saying,’ Glenn says, his toad eyes fixed on mine, his voice dangerously soft. ‘If I find out you’ve hurt my girl, I will fucking kill
you.’

‘Glenn,’ June tuts. ‘She had an accident. Josh explained what happened.’

Glenn points a pudgy finger at me, and the LOVER bracelet rattles. ‘If I find out different then you know what I’ll do to you. Count yourself lucky that she’s okay this time.
But I tell you one thing, she should be around her family at a time like this, not stuck in this shithole.’ He sneers at me as if I’m a bit of crap on his shoe. ‘In fact’
– he stands up and walks towards the bedroom – ‘enough already with the fucking tea party. I’m going to see my daughter, and I’m taking her home.’

‘Glenn!’ June raises her voice, and I brace for an explosion of rage, but instead he just stops and turns to face us. June cowers, wringing her fingers in her lap. ‘Katya
doesn’t need any upset right now. I’m sure Josh is taking very good care of her. He loves her, which is…’

‘What?’ he says.

‘He loves her,’ she almost whispers. ‘That’s all.’

Glenn tenses and June’s hand flies to her mouth as if she wishes she could take the words back. But he thinks better of transporting their usual domestic drama to my flat.

‘Joshua,’ he says, using my name for sarcastic effect. ‘When will my daughter be able to see me?’

‘I’m sure she’ll be awake soon. Let me just go and check on her, okay?’

‘Hurry up.’

I go into the room, pushing the door closed behind me. ‘You ready?’ I whisper.

She nods and smiles but she’s nervous. I should have given her a couple of painkillers, just to take the edge off. It would have been better if she was woozy. Too late now.

‘It’ll be okay,’ I say again, and she settles herself back under the duvet.

I head back to the lounge. ‘She’s just waking now,’ I whisper. ‘But be prepared, she’s really out of it.’ I follow close behind them. ‘Katya,’ I
call softy. ‘Your parents are here.’

Glenn’s first to the bedside, June close behind. Thank God there’s nothing personal on display. The reality of Glenn being in my bedroom never struck me before. June looks up at me
and gestures to ask whether she can sit on the edge of the bed. I can’t help wondering whether Glenn snooped around here last time he was here, and what he found.

‘Kat?’ Glenn says, peering down at her. ‘It’s Daddy. Everything’s going to be fine now.’

She’s lying in the bed, as if asleep, face pressed between the pillows, her back to us.

‘It’s Daddy, Pumpkin.’

Glenn steps back and impatiently waves June forward. ‘You try.’

June reaches out a hand and gently smoothes the dark hair spread over the pillow. She rouses and turns slowly to face June. My heart stops. Oh, Jesus Christ, I can’t watch.

‘Oh.’ June turns her face away. Without this, there’s no next step. Without this, it will never work. ‘This is… this is not…’

‘What is it?’ Glenn leans over June’s shoulder. ‘Jesus.’ He turns away, looking for someone to blame. Finds only me.

‘Mom?’ she whispers. ‘Daddy?’

‘I’m here, Kitty-Kat,’ Glenn says. But he keeps his distance. Who knew he was squeamish? Not that there’s much to see. Not with the dressing covering most of her
face.

‘Oh, Katya. My God.’ Then June is down and hugging her, crying snot into the duvet cover. Overreacting as usual. ‘I’m so sorry,’ June says.