Three Amazing Things About You (34 page)

Belatedly realising this, Bea exclaimed, ‘Oh, that’s your favourite. You could come too!’

But Hallie was already shaking her head. ‘No, I couldn’t cope with it all . . . and I’d only cough during the show. No one likes a cougher in the audience, do they?’ This was true; much as she’d love to see it, she wouldn’t want to ruin the show for everyone else. ‘But you must go with Ross’s mum, then you can come back and tell me what it’s like.’

When they left an hour later, Ross gave Hallie a long, sincere look. ‘It’s been great seeing you again. Really. You look after yourself now.’

As if she were a ninety-year-old great-grandmother. The playful tone and flirtatious eye contact between them had evidently been banished for good. Which was only appropriate, of course, now that he was seeing Bea, but it still made her feel barely human.

‘I will, and you look after Bea. If you mess her around, you’ll have me to answer to.’

‘Wouldn’t dream of it.’ He grinned in that way some men did when they were perfectly well aware that they
would
be messing their girlfriend around because it happened every time without fail.

Then he went on ahead, leaving Bea to say her goodbyes.

‘Well, what d’you reckon? He seems keen, doesn’t he? Do we look like a proper couple? He’s
so
much nicer than Phil . . .’

Which, seeing as Phil had cheated on her with at least four other girls during their six months together, wasn’t the most encouraging endorsement in the world.

But Bea’s eyes were shining, her optimism boundless.

‘He is nice, and you look great together.’ Hallie hugged her on the doorstep, taking note of her own Dear Rose advice. ‘Have fun. I’ll see you soon.’

Zander’s heart sank when he saw his sister’s name flash up on the phone on Sunday night. Would it ever
stop
sinking? That was the million-dollar question. Personally he doubted it.

‘Go on, answer it.’ Flo, sensing his reluctance, was reassuring. ‘She might have just locked herself out again.’

As ever, Flo was right. Spending the next couple of hours wondering what the problem might be was worse than getting on and dealing with it.

He lay back against the pillows, pressed Answer and said wearily, ‘It’s midnight, Lena. What do you want?’

‘Zander, I need you to come and pick me up.’ The words tumbled out in a rush. ‘Can you come straight away?’

‘What? No, I can’t. Where are you, anyway? What’s going on?’ He could hear voices in the background, raised in anger.

‘OK, it totally isn’t my fault, right? Giles’s wife was meant to be away for a few days, taking the kids to see her mother in Plymouth, so Giles invited me over to stay at the house while it was empty, except they came home early and she had a complete
head fit
when she found out I was there . . . and then she called Giles’s mother over and they both started on at me . . . I’m telling you, you wouldn’t believe the things they’ve been saying, it’s a complete nightmare and I haven’t even done anything
wrong
. . .’

Zander briefly closed his eyes. Nothing ever really changed. One of his earliest memories was of their mother attempting to apologise to an inconsolable school friend of Lena’s because Lena had ripped the arms off her favourite doll.

‘Listen to me, where are you exactly? Give me the full address.’

Lena told him and added, ‘Hurry up please, before I slap them both.’

‘Just wait there and don’t slap anyone. I’m calling a cab to come and pick you up.’

‘No, no cab, I don’t want a cab!’

‘And I don’t want to get out of bed to come and fetch you.’

‘Zander, please!’

‘Why can’t Giles drive you home?’

‘Because he’s had a couple of bottles of wine and his bloody mother won’t let him.’

Zander briefly considered saying he’d been drinking too, but Lena always knew when he was lying. He tried again: ‘A cab can be there faster than I can; just let me call them and—’

‘Oh for God’s sake, why are you being so
difficult
?’ wailed Lena. ‘OK, OK, I’ll tell you what happened. I accidentally broke a clock and if you don’t come over here and give Giles’s mother two hundred pounds, the old witch is going to call the police!’

There it was, the reason he was going to have to get out of bed after all. Taking a stand and letting Lena bear the consequences of her actions, he knew from experience, would only end up making life
more
difficult for all concerned.

Zander felt a hand rest on his arm and turned to look at Flo, who had heard everything. She nodded, gave him a sympathetic smile and mouthed:
You’d better go
.

He experienced a surge of relief; girlfriends in the past hadn’t been nearly so understanding. Which was, essentially, the reason why they were in the past.

And why Flo would be with him in the future.

‘Right, I’m on my way,’ he told Lena. ‘I’ll be there in twenty minutes.’

‘Quick as you can,’ said Lena. ‘These bloody squawking women are driving me loopy.’

Four minutes later, dressed in jeans and a black polo shirt, he leaned over the bed and kissed Flo on the mouth. ‘I’ll be back by one, hopefully before that.’

‘It’s OK, I’ll still be awake.’

He loved the way her eyes danced when she looked at him. ‘You don’t have to wait up.’

‘Maybe I want to,’ said Flo.

Now it was his turn to smile. They both knew why; there was unfinished business of the bedroom kind still waiting to happen.

‘See you in a bit, then.’ Zander gave her one more kiss for luck.

‘Don’t forget to stop off at the cashpoint. Jaaahls’s mum might not accept credit cards,’ said Flo.

A light warm drizzle was falling as Zander withdrew two hundred pounds from the cashpoint and climbed back into the car. At this time of night, it wouldn’t take him more than fifteen minutes to reach the address Lena had given him.

He headed out of Clifton across the Downs and through north Bristol. Along Cribbs Causeway, over the motorway junction and down the hill towards Easter Compton. The road was clear and the car was running like a dream. Zander switched on the CD player and smiled to himself as Flo’s choice of music burst out of the speakers. It would always remind him of her, he knew that. To look at Flo, who would guess that her all-time favourite track was David Guetta’s ‘Titanium’?

Needless to say, the moment Lena climbed into the passenger seat and heard it, she would recoil in horror and say, ‘What’s that godawful racket? Turn it
off
.’

But for now, it could be as loud as he liked. Zander upped the volume and let the track wash over him. If this business was all dealt with quickly, he could drop Lena off at her flat and be back in bed with Flo by one o’clock. And tomorrow, when the dust had settled, he would tell Lena that he was going to be moving in with Flo. With a bit of luck she’d realise—

The fox raced across the lane just as he rounded the bend, and Zander simultaneously jerked the steering wheel to the left and tried to slam on the brakes. The rain had made the road slippery, and there was an ear-splitting squeal of tyres on the tarmac. In the slowed-down microseconds before impact, three things went through Zander’s mind:

Shit, I was going too fast.

Lena’s going to be so mad when I don’t turn up.

And finally, because he knew it was going to be bad:
Oh Flo, I love you, I’m sorry . . .

Then, like a high-speed tank, the car slammed head first into the dry-stone wall.

Flo was making tea and toast when the phone rang.

‘Right, what’s Zander playing at? Where the bloody hell is he? Because if he thinks it’s funny keeping me here, let me tell you it
isn’t
.’

‘What? He left ages ago.’ Flo put down the butter knife and checked her watch. ‘He should be there by now. Try his phone.’

‘Oh please, what do you
think
I’ve been doing? It’s ringing and ringing but he’s not picking up.’

‘Maybe because he’s driving the car,’ said Flo. ‘And he might have had trouble finding a cashpoint that works. He needed to get money out, remember.’

Two hundred pounds, in fact.

‘Well he needs to get a bloody move on,’ Lena declared, ‘because I’m telling you now, I’m sick of this pair of witches giving me grief.’

This was crazy. Flo’s fingers shook as she dialled Zander’s number yet again and heard it begin to ring. Yet again.
Why
wasn’t he answering? He couldn’t still be driving, surely? Should she call a taxi and see if she could find him, or would that be—

She jumped as the ringing abruptly stopped. At
last
he’d picked up. Awash with relief, Flo said, ‘Zander? Where are you? Oh God, I was really starting to get worried . . .’

But when she heard the male voice at the other end of the line, the fear came rushing back with a vengeance.

Because it didn’t belong to Zander.

The rain was heavier now, falling steadily from a slate-grey sky. Flo, staring out through the waiting-room window, heard two nurses in the corridor outside attempting to calm Lena down.

She closed her eyes for a second as the realisation of what had happened washed over her once more. There had been an accident and Zander was lying unconscious in the intensive care unit. The police had contacted Lena and driven over to Giles’s mother’s home to collect her and bring her to the hospital. Another officer had finally answered Zander’s phone when Flo had rung it for the twentieth time to find out where he was. She’d called a taxi and arrived here an hour after Lena.

Now it was seven o’clock on Monday morning and Lena appeared to be blaming the nurses for the fact that her brother was in a coma.

Luckily they were adept at coping with difficult relatives.

‘Right.’ Lena threw open the waiting-room door. ‘I’m tired, I’m going home to get some sleep. What are you doing?’

‘I’ll stay here a bit longer.’

‘Well obviously I would stay a bit longer but I’m
exhausted
.’

‘I know, it’s fine. I’ll speak to you later.’

Lena picked up her cream jacket. ‘Text me as soon as he wakes up, please. I asked the nurses when it was going to happen and they refused to tell me.’

‘That’s because they don’t know when he’s going to wake up,’ said Flo.

Lena rolled her eyes at the nursing staff’s incompetence. ‘Well they
should
.’

After Lena had left, Flo sat beside Zander’s bed and watched him sleeping. OK, he wasn’t really sleeping, but he looked as if he was. The head injury was a closed one, so there was no visible damage. His ultra-straight glossy dark hair still fell over his forehead, his high cheekbones were as beautiful as ever. His eyes were closed; he was breathing with the aid of a ventilator. To look at him, it seemed entirely feasible that he could wake up at any minute. Yet the doctor had just been in to tell her that he would shortly be taken down to the neurosurgical operating theatre to have a burr hole drilled into his skull and a device installed to monitor his intracranial pressure.

Because at the moment, his condition wasn’t looking good.

At eleven a.m. the theatre was ready for him and Flo prepared to leave the hospital. She needed to shower, change, feed Jeremy and arrange for someone to come in and keep a regular eye on him. Maybe doze for an hour or two if she could.

‘I’ll call you straight away if there’s any news,’ said the lovely nurse. Lowering her voice, she added, ‘I know his sister is officially the next of kin, but she’s upset at the moment . . . and excitable. Well, you know what I mean.’

Flo nodded. ‘Oh yes, believe me, I know.’

‘Bit of a handful, is she?’

‘More than a bit.’ Was it unfair talking like this behind Lena’s back? Maybe, but she needed them to understand what Lena was like. ‘It’s just the way she is. She can’t help it.’ She knew it was illogical, but she didn’t want the fact that Zander had an annoying sister to be a reason for them to take less good care of him.

As if reading her mind, the nurse gave her shoulder a consoling squeeze. ‘Of course she can’t. Don’t worry, we know.’

Flo made it all the way back to Clifton and into the security of her flat before bursting into noisy tears. Jeremy, eyeing her with supreme disdain, stood there for several seconds before turning and stalking away. When he reached the kitchen, he sat down beside his empty food bowl and gave her one of his I’m-so-disappointed-in-you looks.

‘I know, I’m sorry. I’m just so worried about Zander.’ And now she was apologising to a cat. Rubbing her wet face with her sleeve, she set about washing and refilling the blue ceramic bowl. Once it was done and the fresh food was ready for him, she straightened up. ‘There you go.’

Whereupon Jeremy turned once more and left the kitchen, the slow swish of his tail registering his disgust.

Four hours later, Flo was standing on the doorstep of Zander and Lena’s flat, alternately hammering on the door and ringing the bell.

At last Lena answered, wearing a lilac dressing gown. ‘What is it? You woke me up.’

‘It’s the hospital. We have to go back.’

Lena’s pale forehead creased. ‘But why? I was asleep.’

‘Something’s happened. They wouldn’t tell me what. We just need to get over there.’ Flo heard her own voice vibrate with fear.

‘Why didn’t they call me? I’m the next of kin.’

‘They’ve been trying to ring you. You didn’t answer.’

‘Do you think he’s woken up?’ said Lena.

‘I don’t know.’ But from the tone of the phone call, she didn’t think that for one minute. ‘Come on, put some clothes on and we’ll go. I’ve ordered a taxi.’

‘Shut up, what are you even
talking
about?’ Lena’s voice rose as she stared in disbelief at the doctor sitting on the other side of the desk. ‘You’re supposed to be making him better, not worse! You can’t sit there and tell me my brother’s going to
die
.’

Flo stared at the cheap, hard-wearing grey carpet and concentrated on the words the man had just uttered; it was important to take them all in, even when he was saying the unsayable.

‘I’m so sorry, Lena, but sometimes we just aren’t able to make people better.’ The doctor’s tone was compassionate but firm. ‘The initial injury caused the haemorrhage, and the damage from that is too severe to be compatible with recovery. In such cases, there simply isn’t anything more that can be done. All I can assure you is that your brother didn’t suffer. He’s been in no pain.’