Her eyes followed his and then flicked back to his face. She felt her cheeks get hot.
‘Just having a nightcap,’ she said. ‘To help me sleep.’
‘Max just phoned through,’ said Dave, politely ignoring her feeble explanations.
Ruthie thought that it was typical of Max to phone the hired help, not her.
‘I’m sorry, Mrs Carter. He said your sister’s been shot.’
Ruthie froze in shock. ‘What?’
‘I can take you up there, Mrs Carter. Right now.’
Ruthie gulped. Looked at the drink in her hand, then at Dave’s face. She nodded stiffly, feeling a sense of acute unreality.
‘Yes, I’d better…’ she started, then her face crumpled and she put a hand to her mouth. ‘Is she going to be all right?’ she managed to say.
‘They don’t know yet,’ said Dave, his eyes slipping away from hers.
‘Where did it happen?’ she whispered, trying not to cry.
‘In the Palermo, Mr Carter says.’ He swallowed, looked awkward. ‘We ought to get going, Mrs Carter.’
Ruthie nodded, put the glass down, and went to get her coat. And that’s when the annoyance set in. No, it was more than annoyance, it was anger. She shrugged into her coat and then got into the car and felt suddenly furious with Annie, because this was bad news, the very worst, and getting it made her feel she might throw up at any minute.
As the car zipped through the night she sat in the back seat thinking of all the treacherous things her sister had done to her and knew that, despite everything, she still loved Annie very much. And she was boiling with rage because she didn’t want to love Annie at all, she wanted to hate her.
‘Tell me what happened,’ she said when she found Max in the hospital waiting room, blood all over his shirt and his face grey with strain.
‘Tell me’ was something she never, ever said to Max.
‘Kieron Delaney shot her,’ said Max.
‘Is she…? I mean…’ stammered Ruthie, her mind in a spin.
‘I don’t know. She was bleeding a lot. A
‘Do they think she’s going to be all right?’ Ruthie forced herself to ask.
‘They can’t say yet. The bullet clipped an artery in her chest. Missed her heart by an inch. It happened in the Palermo. He was aiming for me. He got Annie.’ Max looked straight at his wife. ‘She jumped in front of me.’
Tears spilled over then and slid down Ruthie’s cheeks.
‘Did they get him?’ she managed to say.
Max shook his head. ‘He ran off. The Delaney twins were there too, I told them they’d better go. We had to have the ambulance. It was life or death, she’s in emergency surgery right now.’
Ruthie started to cry harder. Max did what he hadn’t done for a very long time; he put his arms around his wife, held her close and tried to give her comfort.
* * *
For the rest of the night Max and Ruthie sat in the bare, scruffy waiting room. People came and went down endless corridors as they waited to hear what was happening to Annie.
He didn’t think he would ever forget the horror of the moment when she’d collapsed against him, blood spilling from her mouth and her chest. The aghast expression on Kieron Delaney’s face as he saw what he had done. Orla screaming and rushing forward, Max holding Annie on the floor as her eyes looked up at him, bewildered, weakening…
‘Stay with me,’ he had said to her. ‘Annie,
Redmond icily controlled as always. Picking up the phone, dialling 999, saying ‘ambulance please’, giving crisp directions, then slapping the phone back down.
Annie starting to shiver with shock. Redmond taking off his coat and draping it over her. Blood everywhere. Orla’s screams turning to quiet sobs of distress. Jimmy bursting into the room, his face a mask of dismay as he took in a scene of carnage. Kieron shoving past him, running away down the stairs. The audience roaring and stamping down there, oblivious to the drama being played out above their heads.
‘The bloody little idiot,’ Orla muttered brokenly.
Annie’s eyes glazing, closing…
‘No! Annie, come on. Stay with me,’ Max urged her.
But it was no good.
She was going.
‘Where the
‘Mr Carter?’
Max and Ruthie looked up. The surgeon was there, his dark green gown stained brown at the front.
‘How is she?’ asked Max.
The surgeon took a breath, looked at Ruthie.
‘This is Miss Bailey’s sister – my wife,’ Max told him.
The surgeon nodded, looked at Max again. ‘We’ve patched her up, Mr Carter. But she’s lost a lot of blood. She’s not out of the woods yet.’
‘Thank you.’ Max put his arm around Ruthie’s shoulders as she broke down again and wept. ‘When can we see her?’
‘Maybe tomorrow. Go home now and try to get some rest. Phone tomorrow and we’ll see how she’s doing. The police will want to talk to you about this, I should imagine.’
61
When Annie awoke, Max was sitting beside her bed.
She tried to remember how she’d got here. She’d been in the club, she remembered that. Then she’d been in an ambulance. After that… nothing.
‘Hello,’ he said.
Annie felt him take hold of her hand, squeeze her fingers.
‘Hmm,’ she said. She’d meant to say hello. She swallowed and tried again. ‘Hello.’
Jesus, could that be her voice? It sounded raw and hoarse with disuse. Her whole body ached.
‘You gave us a right fright there,’ said Max.
He looked dishevelled, she thought, not like himself. A dark stubble on his chin. His hair disordered as if he’d been running his fingers through it, his white shirt unbuttoned at the neck.
God, but she was tired. It was annoying how tired she felt.
She closed her eyes and was back in oblivion again, so peaceful, so dark.
She’d come up out of unconsciousness several times before, but this time was different. Before, her body had been a sea of pain. Before, she had felt weighted down, inert. She had no strength to move. There had been bright lights, fuzzy faces… and Max, there by her bed and saying hello. Had she dreamed that? She wasn’t sure.
But this time she opened her eyes and clearly saw the room around her. Wood panelling. She was in Upper Brook Street. No, she wasn’t. The bed was facing the wrong way, the light was fainter.
She saw an open window, thin white curtains moving in a breeze. She could smell not disinfectant but new-
