The Lie Read online

  ‘He looked at me earlier and tried to speak, but I couldn’t understand what he said.’

  Romy checked around the ward, light pouring in through the extensive windows. ‘Who can I talk to?’ There were medical staff everywhere, and a sense of professional calm, with enough room between each bed-station – she reckoned around twelve in all – to give a sense of privacy.

  Leo pointed to a woman in blue scrubs with short mousy hair and a large bosom, a stethoscope slung round her neck, talking earnestly to a bespectacled man in a dark suit behind the nurses’ desk. ‘That’s her, Dad’s doctor.’

  Michael’s scan, so Linda Stott later informed Romy and Leo in the patients’ waiting room, had shown a clot in the right carotid artery in his neck, which had reduced the blood flow to his brain.

  ‘So what happens next?’

  Linda pursed her lips. ‘Well, there are a number of things, but the problem is that because it was quite a while after the stroke before your husband was brought in – judging by his deteriorated condition – we decided clot-busting drugs wouldn’t be so effective and could make things worse.’

  The doctor stopped and, for a ridiculous moment, Romy – her mind flashing back to the unanswered texts and the scene on the sofa – thought she was reproaching her. She might as well have done; Romy felt a crippling guilt that she hadn’t responded to Michael’s cry for help. She knew it could be the difference – those lost hours – between a good recovery and a not-so-good one. Between life and death, even.

  ‘But there’s a plan?’ Romy asked urgently, when Linda didn’t go on.

  ‘Surgery to remove the clot is an option but, again, it carries risk. We feel the best thing to do is to monitor him and give him medication to prevent another potential stroke while we wait for the clot to disperse.’

  Romy frowned. ‘Do nothing?’

  The doctor gave her a sympathetic smile. ‘Not nothing, Mrs Claire. We’re giving your husband the very best supportive care. But it’s vital he has time to stabilize. We don’t want to aggravate the situation.’

  ‘He’s going to be OK, isn’t he?’ This from Leo.

  Dr Stott looked him straight in the eye. ‘I won’t lie to you. Your father’s in a critical condition – there’s a real danger that he might have another brain attack. The next forty-eight hours are crucial.’

  Stunned, Romy stood by the bed, searching her husband’s face for signs of life. It was unbearable, seeing him like that, and also witnessing the shock imprinted on her son’s face. But there was nothing they could do, except this – the passive staring, the watching for any tiny twitch in the face on the pillow. After a while she dragged Leo out of the ward and down to the Costa café on the ground floor, where she got them both a strong coffee.

  Finch had driven her expertly – at breakneck speed – to Fulham, then told her he would hang around for a while in London, in case she needed him. She glanced around to see if he was in the hospital reception area, but there was no sign of him. And while she longed for his comforting and capable presence, she did not relish explaining him to her son right now.

  ‘Does Anezka know?’ she asked, when they were sitting at a table covered with crumbs and coffee stains, which Leo impatiently wiped away with a wad of napkins.

  ‘I left an urgent message, but she hasn’t got back to me,’ he said tiredly.

  ‘Try her again. She should be here.’

  Dr Stott referring to Michael as ‘your husband’ had been unsettling. Yes, he was technically that, but Anezka – whom Romy had yet to meet – was really the person they should be talking to about his treatment. Or Leo … Rex if he were in the country. Because by leaving Michael, she had pretty much abdicated all responsibility for him.

  Leo pulled his phone from his pocket, punched in a contact. After a moment with the mobile pressed to his ear, he shook his head. ‘It’s Leo again, Anezka. Please ring me. It’s really urgent.’

  He clicked off, but his phone rang immediately.

  ‘Hi …’ He frowned, clearly taken aback by what he was hearing. ‘OK, no, I understand … No … Anezka, listen, for God’s sake. Dad’s had a stroke. He’s in hospital. They say he’s critical.’

  After a further short exchange, Leo clicked off and widened his eyes at his mother. ‘Bloody hell.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘She and Dad had a terrible row yesterday evening, apparently. She says she dumped him. When she saw I’d called, she assumed Dad had asked me to mediate.’

  ‘Like your father would ever do that,’ Romy muttered. Then she realized what her son said. ‘She dumped him?’

  Leo nodded. ‘Sounded really upset … But she’s coming in now, anyway.’

  Romy wasn’t sure what to do. ‘Maybe I should go, if Anezka’s on her way.’ She saw her son’s look of alarm and hurried on, ‘She’s his partner now, Leo … This row they had, it’s probably nothing. Won’t it be a bit weird, both of us sitting by his bedside?’

  ‘You can’t leave us, Mum. Please. Don’t you want to be here for Dad?’

  ‘Yes, of course I do,’ she said wretchedly. Which was true. She couldn’t imagine leaving him when it wasn’t certain he would live. And she would never leave her son to cope alone. But she was apprehensive.

  ‘Anezka won’t mind,’ Leo was saying. ‘She’s cool … Well, she’s very far from cool, actually. She’s feisty and takes no prisoners – leads Dad a proper dance, is my guess. But I’m sure she won’t mind you being here.’

  Romy was not convinced, but she wasn’t going to argue. ‘We should get back,’ she said, finishing her coffee.

  Leo nodded and they rose to their feet.

  ‘You like her?’ she asked, as they made their way to the lift. This was the first time she had properly asked Leo about Michael’s girlfriend. She hadn’t thought it appropriate to question the boys and they hadn’t volunteered much, although Rex – who liked a good gossip – had dropped the odd hint that he found it uncomfortable being around Anezka and his father in those months before he’d gone to Australia, because she was very physical and cuddled and kissed Michael openly.

  ‘Yeah, she’s OK. But she’s closer to my generation than his, Mum. It’s kind of weird.’

  Romy pressed the lift button, avoiding the censure in her son’s eyes. Neither of them could understand why she had left their father after a lifetime together. Soon after they had told the boys about the split, Rex had said, ‘I don’t get what the problem is, Mum. You and Dad never seem to argue.’

  ‘That’s because we never talk,’ she’d replied.

  He’d thought about this. ‘You used to.’

  ‘Not recently,’ she said, holding back further comment.

  He’d frowned. ‘Has something happened, Mum?’

  ‘No, nothing,’ she’d insisted, ashamed of her lie.

  Rex had nodded slowly, seeming to believe her. ‘I remember you and Dad laughing together a lot when I was a kid … but, yeah, maybe not so much recently, I guess.’

  Romy had realized that laughing with Michael seemed a distant memory now. Not since the letter, certainly – which she refused to mention to her sons – but before that too. Nor could she explain the intricacies of a long marriage, the grey area where dissatisfaction and resentment run alongside friendship and passion in the early days, but the steady contentment many of her friends had grown to feel with their spouse as they became older would now never take hold in Romy and Michael’s relationship.

  ‘I’ll see how it goes with Anezka,’ she said now. ‘If I feel I’m in the way …’

  But her son grabbed her hand. ‘Mum, I’m telling you, I can’t do this on my own. I don’t think Anezka will be great in a situation like this. She might require as much support as Dad.’ He stared at her. ‘I need you … Please, please don’t go.’

  As the doors of the lift opened on the intensive-care floor, Romy experienced an unpleasant thud of premonition and a sick feeling in her stomach, as if a large hand were reaching out to clamp her and drag her unceremoniously away from her promising new life.

  13

  Romy woke to find herself in a strange bed: the spare room in the flat, which she had never slept in before last night. After she’d moved out, Michael had apparently gone back to the main bedroom, and Romy found herself reluctant to sleep in what was now his and Anezka’s bed. And, anyway, the room was a mess. The bed had been pushed aside, the duvet balled and dumped in the corner by the window, the sheet half pulled from the mattress. There was a scrunched-up plastic hood of some sort littering the floor and a syringe cover – debris from the paramedics’ equipment. They must have been in a hurry, she thought miserably, as she began to set the room to rights.

  The flat no longer felt like her home, but there were disturbing echoes everywhere of her life with Michael. She had taken very little to the cottage. The photos of the family on the walls, all her kitchen gadgets, the books and even various bottles of self-tan and sachets of hair mask in the bathroom cupboard were exactly as she’d left them. There was very little sign of the Czech girlfriend, except for a scented candle in the bathroom – scented candles always made Romy sneeze – and a few random items of clothing in her side of the wardrobe.

  Leo was right: Anezka was quite something. Romy and Leo were sitting on either side of Michael’s bed when she’d arrived at the ICU the previous afternoon in a whirlwind of drama.

  Tall, slim and very beautiful, she had a dramatic curtain of thick, brown hair, which she raked with her fingers, swishing it from side to side every two minutes as if she couldn’t decide where it was most comfortable, huge blue eyes in a classically proportioned face and full, perfect lips that made Angelina Jolie’s look amateur. Romy was taken aback. As Leo had observed, she seemed so young and so glamorous – for some reason she’d pictured a woman more like the tough, clever types Michael admired in his professional life.

  She was dressed in jeans, a round-necked white T-shirt – which showed off her perfect breasts – and trainers with no socks. But she’d thrown over the simple ensemble an oversized grey and white checked duster coat that instantly lifted the outfit to supermodel status. Leo was clearly in awe, his youthful skin blushing under her enthusiastic hug.

  ‘Oh, my God, darling. What has he done? I can’t believe this is happening,’ she exclaimed loudly, drawing the attention of most of the nursing staff and those patients who weren’t actually in a coma.

  Leo, recovering himself with effort, had introduced Romy and she’d seen the younger woman’s gaze flick up and down in an uncomfortably appraising manner. Then Anezka came towards her and wrapped her in her arms. ‘I am so happy to meet you at last,’ she said, with such genuine warmth that Romy almost burst into tears, the strains of the morning finally overwhelming her in the face of this unexpected kindness.

  Anezka drew back, her huge eyes also glistening. Then she turned to the bed and took a deep breath as she stared down at the man she loved, tentatively laying a hand on his forehead, her own creased in concern. It was obvious to Romy that she’d had little experience of illness and that it frightened her.

  ‘Michael.’ She bent close to him. ‘Milácˇku … can you hear me?’

  Michael opened his eyes at the sound of her voice. He had been in and out of consciousness but so far had not said anything coherent to Romy or Leo. Now, however, he spoke, his words slow and very slurred.

  ‘Annie … what is … what …’ His eyes closed, but Romy saw him clinging to Anezka with his right hand. His left flopped uselessly on the sheet, grey and lifeless, like a dead fish. His eyes opened again and he almost smiled, although the left side of his face drooped severely, giving his expression an almost piratical air. ‘So tired,’ he added, then closed his eyes again, his grip loosening.

  Anezka looked triumphantly at Leo, then Romy. ‘He’s talking! A good sign, no?’ She sank onto the chair Leo had vacated and put her hands over her face. ‘I thought he was dead and you weren’t telling me,’ she said, and began to cry softly behind her long fingers.

  Romy had suffered a painful stab of jealousy when she first saw Anezka, but she found her heart going out to the woman. Was the row serious? she wondered. Has she really dumped Michael? If he recovered – and there was no guarantee he would – it would be a long road until he was fit again.

  She remembered the last time Michael had been in hospital during their marriage, and that was only A&E, nearly fifteen years ago now. He had stood on a rusty nail in the Sussex garden and the wound became infected, his whole foot swelling to twice its normal size so he couldn’t walk. He’d behaved like a bear with at least two sore heads until the swelling went down. He would not be an easy patient.

  Now she got out of bed and went through to the kitchen, switched on the familiar kettle, got out one of her favourite mugs with a blue and white flower pattern and made herself a cup of tea. She half expected her husband to pop his head round the door on his way to work, but the flat was eerily silent.

  What should I do? Obviously she would go back to the hospital this morning. Leo had finally spoken to Rex and he was on his way home from Australia. He wouldn’t get in till tomorrow afternoon and she was dying to see her younger son, even in such grim circumstances.

  She worried, though, that if she stuck around the medical staff would see her as Michael’s closest relative. Yesterday, each time there was a development in his condition, it was to Romy that the nurses referred, not Leo or Anezka. And neither appeared to mind. It seemed churlish, though, when he was so ill, to quibble about who was his next of kin, so she didn’t make a fuss. But she was being drawn inexorably into decisions about his care because technically she was still married to him.

  She reached for her mobile. Leo had said he would stay over at a friend’s place nearby in Battersea, his own being in Tottenham, near the old Spurs ground, and a long trek. Her son’s phone went to voicemail and Romy didn’t leave a message. He’s probably still asleep, she thought.

  She rang Finch. She had texted him the previous day to tell him to go home, not to wait for her. She had no idea when she would be able to get away.

  ‘Hey.’ He picked up immediately. ‘How is he?’

  ‘They aren’t saying much. Or doing much, it seems. Just waiting. It’s twenty-four hours now and he hasn’t improved, but then he hasn’t deteriorated either. They seem to think that’s something.’

  ‘And how are you, Romy?’

  His voice was so tender that she found her eyes filling with tears. She swallowed hard. ‘Don’t be nice to me, Finch. I can’t handle it.’

  He laughed softly. ‘Do my best.’

  She smiled through her tears. ‘The girlfriend, Anezka, pitched up yesterday. She’s stunning … not that that’s got anything to do with anything. But it’s a ticklish situation, because apparently she dumped Michael just before he had his stroke. So there’s me and her and Leo round the bed … Honestly, I don’t know how to play it.’

  ‘It must be very upsetting, seeing Michael like that.’

  Romy felt her mouth wobble and no longer tried to hold back the tears. ‘It is. It’s horrible, really horrible. I know our marriage is over and all that, but I loved him once, Finch. I loved him for a long time. And he’s just lying there … I’m not even sure he’ll make it and Leo’s in bits … What shall I do?’ The question came out almost as a wail.

  ‘I suppose the only thing you can do is wait, see how it goes.’

  It was so good to talk to Finch. He didn’t give her false hope. She didn’t have to be strong, like she did with her son. ‘You don’t think I should walk away? Let Anezka take over?’

  Finch didn’t reply at once. ‘You could. But would you feel comfortable leaving your son … leaving Michael, when you don’t know if he’ll come through?’

  She sighed. ‘No … No, you’re right. I can’t leave Leo. And Rex is coming in later today. I haven’t seen him since Christmas.’

  Finch did not reply immediately. She wanted to tell him that she was missing him already, but she couldn’t quite say the words out loud.

  When Romy arrived at the hospital, neither Leo nor Anezka was there. Michael looked no better. She thought he was asleep, but when she touched his hand, he opened his eyes. At first he seemed not to recognize her, his eyes still glazed and blank from the trauma.

  ‘Romy …?’ The word was a long time coming, distorted, dragged up from the damaged recesses of his brain.

  ‘How are you?’ she asked. Jasmine, Michael’s nurse, had said he was still disoriented and not aware of what had happened.

  ‘Am I …’ his face clouded with confusion, ‘… am I …’

  She wasn’t sure what he was asking, but she told him anyway. ‘You’re in the Chelsea and Westminster, Michael. You’ve had a stroke.’

  He frowned. ‘I …’ But the effort to think was obviously too much and he closed his eyes. ‘Just … want to sleep.’

  Romy went outside to call Leo.

  ‘I’m on my way, Mum. I had to make some work calls.’ Leo sounded flustered, and Romy knew the asset management company that was training her son put him under a lot of pressure. She felt so sorry for him, just at this stage in his life, having to stop everything to deal with this.

  ‘I’m not hassling you. Take as long as you need. There’s no real change in Dad, anyway.’

  ‘I should be about half an hour. Is Anezka there?’

  ‘No. Just me. He’s sleeping most of the time. I’ll talk to his nurse and ring you back.’

  Romy watched Jasmine – so young, so eager – put on her reassuring face as she approached.

  ‘OK … So he’s not had a bad night,’ she said. ‘His swallow reflex is improving and he’s been drinking little bits this morning. They’re doing an ultrasound scan on his carotid artery later, to see if the blood clot has dispersed. The signs are encouraging, but he’s not out of danger yet, Mrs Claire. We’re still monitoring him very closely. We’ll be able to tell you more after the tests.’