“Looks like they’ve got you on some pretty good painkillers, have they then, Saskia?” said Lance.
“Don’t be rude,” said Kate. “She’s making perfect sense.”
“I didn’t say she wasn’t,” said Lance.
“Whose phone is that?” said Kate.
I recognized the sound of my mobile phone. Kate lifted up my leather bag. “Should I answer it?”
I looked at the bag. How was it possible that I still had my bag? After all that had happened? For some reason it struck me as amusing that I still had my bag. I laughed out loud.
“I really want some of what you’re having,” said Lance.
“I’ll answer it.” Kate burrowed in my bag and pulled out the phone.
“She didn’t say she wanted it answered,” said Lance.
“Saskia’s phone!” Kate stood up and walked away from the hospital bed with my phone pressed to her ear. I heard her say, “Well, yes, she is here, but, now don’t worry, she’s fine, it’s just that she’s actually in the hospital at the moment.”
“Sorry,” said Lance. “Kate can be a bit…” He shrugged, unable to find the right word to describe his wife. “Sure you don’t want a chocolate?”
“All right,” I said. I took a chocolate and watched Kate chatting animatedly. A few minutes later she came back and put the phone next to my bedside table.
“That was your friend Tammy,” she said. “You were meant to be meeting her for a drink tonight? Anyway, she’s on her way here. I gave her directions.”
“We should get going.” Lance slapped his hands to his knees and half rose from his chair. “We don’t want to tire you out, Saskia.”
“I guess we should.” Kate looked at her watch. “Although we’ve got plenty of time. We could wait until Tammy gets here if you want the company, Saskia?”
I had every intention of saying something like, Oh, you’d better not miss your movie, but the words that came out of my mouth were, “Please stay.”
“Of course,” said Lance and Kate at the same time.
It was early evening and Ellen’s house was unexpectedly full of people.
Patrick’s parents and brother had come over to sign Jack’s cast and give him get-well gifts and, to Ellen’s mild irritation, although she couldn’t explain why, so had her own mother. Anne had given Jack the book of Guinness World Records, which had proved to be a huge hit.
They were all crammed around Ellen’s dining room table eating sausages that Patrick had cooked on the barbecue. Patrick had come back from the police station in a better frame of mind. The police had praised him for his Stalking Incident Log: a ring folder full of meticulously kept records of Saskia’s actions over the last three years, including printouts of e-mails, letters and descriptions of “incidents.” (Ellen had flipped through it, marveling at Patrick’s terse comments: “12:30 a.m., 27 July: S banged on front door, demanding entry, ignoring repeated requests to leave.”) Patrick had been told that an interim Apprehended Violence Order would be issued and that Saskia would be given the option to appear in court to contest it. She would also most likely be charged with trespass. It seemed that this time, whoever had been on the desk at Patrick’s local police station had given Patrick exactly the right level of respectful, authoritative sympathy. He was no longer seething. He had the look of a man who was finally about to be vindicated after a long fight for justice.
Ellen had her mobile phone on the sideboard within hearing distance. She was waiting for a phone call from Mary-Kate, who was going to try to get the newspaper article stopped. Ellen wasn’t holding out much hope. It seemed highly unlikely that Mary-Kate—stodgy, morose Mary-Kate—would be able to take on someone as powerful and shiny-toothed as Ian Roman.
“I’m not making any promises,” Mary-Kate had said, after she’d listened to Ellen’s story, using a small leather notebook to take down cursory, decisive notes. “But as soon as I leave here, I’ll file for an interlocutory injunction. There’s not a chance in hell we’ll get one—the courtshave this thing about freedom ofspeech, so you basically can’t ever get one—butI’m aiming to convince the Daily News’s lawyers thatwe will. It’s clear the story’s motivated bymaliceand sounds like it’d really flush your reputation down the toilet. But anyway, I’ll go in tough.”
“I thought you were a legal secretary,” said Ellen faintly.
“Nope,” said Mary-Kate, most unbarrister-ish.
A memory resurfaced now of Mary-Kate saying she worked in the “legal profession.” Ellen had just assumed she was a legal secretary. Would she have been more patient and respectful with Mary-Kate if she’d known she was dealing with a barrister? Shamefully, the answer was yes.
“Do you know the world record for the most broken bones?” said Jack now. He had the Guinness World Records book open on the table next to him and was turning the pages while he ate. He didn’t wait for anyone to answer.
“Thirty-five! Some dude called Evel Knievel.”
“Really! I didn’t think we had that many bones!” said Maureen. She was acting particularly interested in the book to show that she didn’t mind that Jack had put aside her gift for Anne’s.
“We’ve actually got two hundred and six bones,” said Anne.
“Well, fancy that!” Maureen smiled fiercely.
“Babies have around three hundred bones. They fuse together as they grow,” said Anne.
“It must have been wonderful bringing up a child with your medical expertise,” said Maureen. “I was always bundling them into the car to take them off to the doctor and then feeling like a fool when there was nothing wrong.”
Please don’t be condescending, Mum, thought Ellen.
“Actually, I think it made it worse.” To Ellen’s relief, the smile Anne gave Maureen had only minimal queenliness. “I knew everything that could go wrong. Every temperature meant certain death.”
“Speaking of temperatures,” said Patrick’s father, “well, not temperatures so much, but aches, I’ve had this really strange ache in my—”
“Dad,” said Patrick.
“George refuses to make an appointment to see a doctor,” said Maureen, “but whenever he meets one he starts telling him about his medical problems.”