Chapter Forty Six

Sorcha didn’t know how she got to her front door. She didn’t know how she got out of the lift at the right floor, and didn’t know how she got the key in the lock. She just knew that once she was there, and the door was shut behind her, she was safe and nobody could get her. What happened next was an impossible question, but she didn’t need to answer that one yet. She just needed to get home.

When she went to open the door, the deadlock was already open. Dread welled up from deep within her, and she started to cry again, softly, before reminding herself that she could easily have forgotten to lock the door the previous evening. Locking doors hadn’t exactly been the first thing on her mind. And there had to be a limit to how much worse it could get.

But when she opened the door she could hear the television was on. She froze in the doorway, waiting for fate to come and get her, only to be utterly confused when Jane appeared. In everything that had happened since, and everything that she had learned, Sorcha had forgotten that she had sent Jane a text saying just “Pip shot Jake. Get on a plane”. She had done it while the police were taking Pip away, before she got taken away as well. Her hands had been shaking so much that someone else had to take the phone out of the bag for her, and the phone keys had seemed so impossibly small. Sorcha stood, staring at Jane, not knowing what to say, letting tears stream down her face. She muttered some kind of apology, shaking her head, while Jane shut the door behind her.

Sorcha wanted to be left to curl up in a small ball for as long as it took, but Jane stood in front of her, her hands on her shoulders, forcing her to stand up. Sorcha had given up trying to work out what other people were thinking. It clearly wasn’t something that she was very good at. Jane could see that if she just hugged her she was likely to disintegrate. She had no idea how easy it would be to put the pieces back together, so she wasn’t about to try it.

“You have to keep it together a little longer.”

Sorcha shook her head, and tried to let her knees buckle under her. This was her limit, and she had no way of going beyond it.

“It wasn’t a question.” Jane was sharp, wondering if she was going to have to use force, “Your mother called.”

Sorcha felt a tiny flame of anger, despite her sense of exhaustion, which was precisely what Jane had intended. Sorcha was mumbling more than shouting, but at least she got a response.

“Can’t she just leave me fucking alone for one fucking minute! What was it this time? She’s got some stupid new illness that she just couldn’t wait to tell me about, and beg me to come round and see her, and she had to pick today to do it? Or has she decided that she’s dying again, and she has to do that today too? I’ve had it with her. I’ve had it with everyone.”

Sorcha was snide, despite her exhaustion, which made Jane angry. She shook her hard, and had to fight an instinct to slap her.

“Will you just listen? She called because she wanted to know if you were OK, and was worried about you being on your own. She was even going to get Fi to bring her up here, so you didn’t have to come back and face an empty flat, but she didn’t because I was here.” Sorcha briefly looked confused, but then just looked blank, “We’re not all bad, you know.”

Sorcha stayed blank, as if her batteries had run out. Her lips moved without any trace of expression in the rest of her face.

“Was that it?”

Jane shook her head, wondering what to say to her.

“No. You’ve got a visitor.”

“What do they want?”

Sorcha was still blank, and seemed to be trying to slump back down. Her voice was quieter this time. Jane wished that there was another way, but short of frogmarching Sorcha back out of her own home it was hard to figure out what it was.

“It’s Jake.” Sorcha’s eyes got bigger and she seemed to try to shrink further backwards into the door. It wasn’t quite what Jane had hoped for, “I don’t think he’s meant to be here. The TV is still giving out that he’s under observation in the Chelsea & Westminster.” There was no reaction from Sorcha, not even one which indicated that she had heard what had been said, “He’s in your bedroom.”

When Sorcha still didn’t react, Jane pulled her into the bathroom and threatened her with a cold shower. Sorcha shrieked at nearly having her arm pulled out of its socket, but did at least move. She refused the shower and washed her face instead, repeatedly, washing away every last trace of the night before. When she looked in the mirror, she kept hoping to see someone different.

She had to hold her breath just to walk into the room. The bedroom was as she had left it; everything closed up and tidied away, with the blinds down and just one of the bedside lamps on. Jake was lying on the bed asleep. He’d sat up against the mountain of cushions rather than moving them, and still had his shoes and a hoodie on, with a sleeve hanging loose. His right arm was in a sling, with his heavily-bandaged hand in what was probably some kind of splint, held up against his shoulder. She tried to focus on his face, because it was still his face, but found it hard to look at. She had never been good at watching people sleep. They always looked too small and fragile, somehow, and she usually felt the need to break the spell. And he looked too peaceful: she had to keep watching for the slight rise and fall of his chest, which barely seemed to be enough to make a difference. It didn’t help that she knew that she had offered refuge to Pippa as well: Pippa had been sectioned in the early hours of the morning, but it didn’t change what had happened and all she had missed. But she still knew that she couldn’t wake him. She wasn’t sure that she would ever sleep that soundly again.

Sorcha shut the door as gently as she could, hearing each stage of the catch click in, and then walked round to the other side of the bed. She took a cushion in each hand, and settled herself down on the floor in front of the wardrobe. She could still see him breathe from there, and so long as she could win the battle not to think about anything else, watching him was vaguely hypnotic. The waiting felt like part of her penance; one of the easier parts.

She saw him open his eyes long before he saw her. He blinked briefly at the ceiling, but didn’t seem at all surprised or confused. He pulled himself up slightly from the cushions, and his left hand felt across and under his right shoulder for something which he either couldn’t find or couldn’t reach. Probably the knot of the sling, although his hood could have been caught up somehow. He seemed to stop for a moment or two, before deciding to sit up. It was only once he had done so, adjusted the back of the sling, and ruffled his hair back up that he saw her. From the angle he was at, Sorcha was almost hidden under the cushions. When he saw her, he felt tears of relief welling up, and he saw no point in fighting them.

“Thank God you’re back. Have you been there long?”

“I don’t know. I’m sorry.”

Her voice was flat , and she stayed on the floor and looked as if she was shaking. She looked tiny and vulnerable, and Jake couldn’t understand why she was keeping her distance.

“Come here.” He held out his hand, but she didn’t move, “Please? I could seriously do with a hug.”

He remembered her holding him in his mother’s attic; kneeling behind him and hugging him tightly into her. He needed to feel her close against him again, and keep her there for a very long time, but she still didn’t come.

“I didn’t expect to see you again.”

Her voice shook as she said it, and she was shaking her head. Jake didn’t want to think about what she meant.

“Come up here, please? It’ll be better than both of us ending up on the floor.”

She was looking at him as if he was afraid of something, but she slowly stood up and perched herself on the edge of the bed.

“You can come closer than that.”

He still waited for her to come to him, but still nothing happened.

“Please come closer. I won’t bite, and I don’t break, much. Please.”

But Sorcha stayed where she was, and put her hands up to her face. It looked as if she was trying to gouge holes with her fingers. She only stopped when he asked her what the matter was, at which point she looked at him very directly, as if he had totally lost his mind. He began to be afraid for her again.

“You shouldn’t be here.”

“I know, but they shouldn’t have left you behind last night. Anything could have happened to you, and I was just going nuts not knowing where you were or how you were. Whatever happened, I should have been with you. I had to get Duncan to help dress me and smuggle me out,” Even the mention of Duncan failed to get a proper reaction, “Duncan at least understood what I needed to do, although I’m sure Jeff’s going ape.”

Still nothing, and she was sitting with her arms and legs crossed as if she didn’t want to be touched. It didn’t help that she was mostly looking at her own feet, although her breathing seemed calmer. Then she did at least say something.

“I’d guess it’s probably not just Jeff going ape.”

Her voice was reasonably steady, but Jake had no idea how to keep her talking and stop her slipping back away from him.

“Probably not. At least there isn’t a tour for everyone to panic about this time, though.”

“No, there isn’t.” She looked at the bed, close to where he was sitting, rather than at him, “But that’s not what this is about, though, is it? It’s not about that; it’s not about the hole in your hand or how much blood you’ve lost; or the fact that it was three o’clock in the morning before anyone actually thought to tell me that you were still alive; or the fact that there is some policeman out there who’s already been given the last rites. It’s not about any of that, is it?”

It sounded as if she was rehearsing what she said, and something about how she said it worried him.

“Christ knows what this is all about. I want you to come here and hold me. Please.”

Still she sat wrapped up in herself on the edge of the bed, shaking her head. Jake stood up and walked round the bed to sit next to her: he felt light-headed, his hand throbbed as he moved, but he was afraid that the damage of the previous night ran deeper than that. He sat down next to her and put his good hand on her knee, waiting to see whether there was more to come. She tried to pull back from his touch, but the bedside cabinet was in the way.

“I nearly got you killed, and it might yet turn out that I got that policeman killed. I’d told her she could come here, did you know that?,” Jake shook his head gently, but kept hold of her, “You could have ended up coming here to get away from her, only to find that she had a bloody key. Her boyfriend, who it turns out is also some kind of psychiatric nurse who was paid by her father to keep her out of trouble, tried to get hold of me on Friday to warn me. Except I was too busy playing with dresses and having my hair done, thinking I was sodding Cinderella.”

She was wearing a sweatshirt and jeans which were too big for her, presumably because they belonged to somebody else, and as she said it she plucked at the front of the sweatshirt. Jake was about to say something, but she shook her head again and carried on.

“And it wasn’t just one thing. I missed it over and over again. Turns out that she’s always been like this. I thought that she dropped out of Oxford because she’d fallen out with the college about drinking and missing collections; but actually she had started cracking up again and thought that she was being chased around Broad Street by a load of Greek Gods. Turns out I missed that bit because I shacked up with someone from another college for a couple of terms. Daddy picked her up and had it all hushed up.”

She looked up at him from what felt like a very long way away, and spoke with more bitterness than he could bear.

“It was Pip’s fucking Daddy who told me that you were OK, you know. He came over all jolly, and announced that there was “no harm done”, and you’d just bled a bit. He’d known all along that she was a sodding time bomb, but wanted it hushed up for the sake of his sodding career. The fucking moron even taught her to shoot, because he thinks it’s a nice way of spending Saturday mornings.” For a moment, she seemed to be carried away by a memory of her own anger, before slipping back to a tone of despair, “Doesn’t change the fact that I’d missed it, though. I missed it over and over again. Made a joke of things which weren’t funny, because it was a way of not seeing it. I didn’t want to see it.”

She paused, but Jake wasn’t sure that she had finished. If she had finished, he had no idea what to say to make it right again, although he knew he needed to say something soon. But Sorcha still carried on.

“Did you know that Jane had told me that there was something wrong and to get round to see her, but I just couldn’t be bothered? I’d said I would do it once last night was out of the way, and didn’t even notice when she was making weird associations between things on the phone a couple of days back. If I’d even asked to see that letter which she left you, I reckon I’d have known, or at least known enough that someone could have done something.”

Jake asked her what she meant by it, which made her angry. It was hard to explain it quickly; especially as she didn’t want to explain it at all: it all just sounded so stupid.

“She’d written this long, turgid memoire-type thing a few years back. She had the guy who ferried the souls into the underworld in Greek myths morphing into St Christopher but he couldn’t get rid of his beard. I’m one of only about three people on the entire planet who’d even read the bloody thing. And she’s always quoted Dante, badly, when she gets drunk. She’d must have seen the picture of you carrying me, and had put two and two together and made about fifteen million: she got it into her head that you were carrying me off into hell.” Jake didn’t seem particularly surprised, but she didn’t really notice, “Literally into hell. Even now it’s so fucking stupid it sounds funny, and then I remember that it probably killed some poor sod who was just doing his stupid old job. Because it was you who told me about it, I thought you were talking about tadpoles and was too busy thinking about Stephen Warren. Who, incidentally, I’d asked Pip to look for. I’d kept making sure that she was thinking about you, asking her stuff just because it was stuff that I wanted to know, not knowing what she was doing. To you.”

She was looking at him with an awful hopelessness. He touched her face, but she was a long way out of reach.

“It’s like my Dad. Just because someone you love,” she flinched, and he corrected himself “someone close to you does something bad, it doesn’t make you bad too.”

Sorcha tossed back her head, getting rid of his hand as she did so, and seemed to will herself back together again.

“That’s fine for you. You’re a pop star, and I’m sure pop stars are allowed to make that kind of mistake. I don’t know what the fuck I’ve been thinking I am for the past few weeks, but I used to be a lawyer. That means that people pay me for my judgement. Or at least they used to. Now they’ll all know that one of my best friends has been having dangerous manic interludes for years which I somehow managed not to notice, and that she then tried to kill a pop singer I happened to have a crush on. Having crushes on pop singers isn’t what lawyers are meant to do either. It’s all part of the same problem.”

She could see that Jake had shifted and was supporting his right elbow with his left hand, and felt something close to nostalgia washing through her. She put her hand on his shoulder, careful not to jolt him, and tried to establish eye contact for the first time. He wasn’t sure that he wanted it any more.

“I’m just so, so sorry, Pet. I shouldn’t have done any of this. I was just forgetting who and what I was, and I’ve made a mess a whole lot worse. I know you were kind of trying to undo what Stephen Warren did, by spending time with me, but it doesn’t work like that. It wasn’t your fault in the first place, and you would have done much better to leave well alone.”

He was looking drained, and didn’t seem to want a fight. It looked as if there was a trace of blood beginning to soak through the side of the dressings, which was a fairly clear indication that he needed to be somewhere else, but he was deliberately not acknowledging it.

“It wasn’t like that. You know it wasn’t like that. And this isn’t your fault any more than that was mine.”

“I wish that was true. I wish….” She was staring at him, hard, but chose not to go on, “But there’s no point wishing, is there? I’m glad that I got to spend time with you, more glad than you can know. I hope you get well soon, and it all turns out for the best. That they find your Dad, and that it all goes well with the band. You deserve some good times, soon, Pet.”

She had stood up, and Jake stood up too, knowing that he was being dismissed, and still struggling to find the words to make it right again.

“I don’t have to go, you know. I came here to see you.”

Sorcha just kept on shaking her head.

“It just doesn’t work like that. I wish it did.”

She thought for a moment that she was going to have to call an ambulance. It was something that she had never had to do before, and would have been a new low when it came to ending something that might have been a relationship, but it turned out that Duncan was sitting in a car in the garage and had said that he would stay there all night if he had to. She let Jake hug her to his good side as they said goodbye, and tried not to think about the fact that she would never feel him next to her again.

Jane waited for a few minutes after he had gone before venturing into the hallway. Sorcha was calmer than when she first came back, but seemed to be searching the ceiling for inspiration.

“Well?”

No reply.

“What did he say?”

Sorcha wasn’t sure that she wanted to answer, but she had to say something.

“He’s gone. He isn’t coming back.”

It wasn’t what Jane was expecting, and she waited in vain for Sorcha to add something more.

“Shit.” Sorcha looked surprised at the exclamation, which didn’t help, “ What about you, what are you going to do?”

Sorcha looked straight at her. It felt as if she was looking through her, and she started speaking too quickly.

“I’m getting the hell out of here. Just as soon as I can. I don’t want to have anything to do with any of it any more.”

Jane barely let her finish the sentence before finally slapping her around the face as hard as she could. Sorcha hadn’t seen it coming, and almost fell over into the bathroom door. She stood there, clutching her face, knowing that she definitely wasn’t the one who was hysterical. She wondered whether it would help anyone at all, anywhere in the cosmos, if she slapped Jane back.