The Make

He gave her an exasperated look. ‘Yeah. Should be. But here I am, babysitting you.’

Paul took a hard curve and the wheels spun sideways again.

‘Steady,’ said Gracie.

‘You want to drive? It’s a fucking nightmare.’

‘No I don’t.’

‘Then shut up will you?’ He was silent. ‘This is a stupid fucking idea,’ he said after a few beats.

‘Look, I told you. I think this Drax arsehole might have done Lorcan some damage.’ Gracie drew a calming breath and tried to keep the explanation succinct. ‘Lorcan’s gone out, I don’t know where, and he hasn’t come back. It looks like Drax put my brother George in hospital. And it looks as if he’s already nabbed my other brother Harry. Now Drax has snatched Alfie – we think it’s Alfie – so it’s perfectly feasible that he could have nabbed Lorcan too. Lorcan was all stoked up, ready to do Drax some serious damage. And I think . . . I think he’s gone to do it.’

‘You tried his mobile?’

‘That’s the very first thing I did. It wasn’t turned on.’

‘Get the police involved,’ advised Paul, wrenching the wheel hard round as the car lost its grip yet again.

Gracie let out a huff of breath. ‘Look. Back there at the club, I would have. But I don’t have my mobile.’

‘Well, let’s try mine. If this Drax is as bad as you say, let’s try taking the sensible option.’

He thought she was crazy. Hell, she thought she was too. She had no idea what she could do up against a bastard like Drax. But she knew she had to do something. ‘Give it here then.’

He tossed her his mobile. She flipped it open, fiddled with it in the dim light it cast, trying to familiarize herself with it. She stared hard at the screen, saw the amber warning light.

‘Shit,’ she said.

‘What?’

‘You’re right. The battery’s pretty low.’

‘How about the signal?’

Gracie tilted the phone in various directions. ‘Patchy.’

‘Try it anyway.’

Gracie tapped in 999, but the signal was too bad. She heard no ring tone. She halted the call, if only to preserve what was left of the battery’s life. She sat there, staring at the snow hurtling towards them, then being shoved to one side by the steady, almost hypnotic whumph whumph whumph of the wipers.

‘I read somewhere that the phone company can track a person down to a few feet using the signal from their mobile phone,’ she said, and then they were rounding a hard curve in the road and suddenly, too suddenly, there was something ahead in the road, a fucking tree was lying across it, and the car was going too fast.

Gracie let out a yell and automatically put her hands up in front of her face. Paul stamped on the brake. The wheels lost their grip. The car careered almost gracefully off the road, rotating like a spinning top. Then it shot down a steep bank, the engine roaring, then rolled end over end and came to rest on its roof. The wheels spun on thin, cold air. The engine coughed once, then died. All was silent beneath the falling snow.

Chapter 63

Sandy and Suze were back at the hospital, sitting with George. It was Christmas Day, the day when families should be together, at home, safe and secure. But here was poor George, confined to intensive care, surrounded not by laughter and love but by beeping monitors and briskly efficient nurses.

‘At least it don’t look like he’s screaming any more,’ said Sandy, who was on George’s left side, holding his hand.

‘No,’ said Suze bleakly, who was on George’s right, holding his other hand.

George was lying still now, and it was as if he was asleep, just asleep and likely to wake at any moment and start with the cheery George-type banter. He wasn’t puffy any more, and the frightening movements had stopped. Suze focused on the steady rise and fall of George’s chest.

Sandy’s eyes followed hers. ‘It’s good he’s breathing on his own now,’ she said to Suze.

George was indeed breathing for himself. That was progress. But Suze felt consumed with dread for him. What if he woke up demented, brain-damaged? What on earth would they do then? What if he wasn’t right in the head, her poor clever lovely George?

She knew you were supposed to think positive, be calm, but she couldn’t. She was this boy’s mother, and all she could think was the worst. She always had. An ambulance passing in the night, sirens blaring? It was George or Harry they were going to collect, broken into pieces, from some road accident, some fire, something awful.

It was a woman thing, she supposed. Other families had come in here today, to be near their loved ones on Christmas. A special day, a happy day for most; but for Suze and Sandy, and for all these other poor souls in the intensive care ward, a day of torment.

Suze thought of her childhood Christmases, spent with her mother. Her parents had separated when she was seven and she’d been an only child. Christmas hadn’t been that much fun. Dad had left and didn’t show any signs of ever coming back, or of making the slightest effort to keep in touch with his daughter. They’d been poor, her and her mother, although Mum had tried her best to make the day good for Suze.

Then, marriage to Paddy Doyle. She had created her own happy Christmas tableau then, and added three kids to the mix. But she and Paddy had followed a pattern set by her own parents. Arguments. Clashes. She’d sought refuge in the arms of other men and Paddy had found out. Then Paddy had left and taken Gracie with him up to Manchester, cutting the family into two halves.

Suze thought of Gracie, and her daughter’s fractured marriage. There were patterns there, and she hoped that Gracie would be the one to break the cycle; but she doubted it. Some things went too deep to alter.

Gloomily, Suze sat there and sighed. And now look at the mess they were all in. Someone coming at her door, the door to her home, with a chainsaw. Getting bags of Harry’s hair sent to them. Anything could be happening to him, and what could they do about it? Whichever way you looked at it, they were fucked, the whole damned lot of them. Suze sat there looking at the steady rise and fall of George’s chest, and thought miserably about all the hurts and injustices that an unkindly nature had inflicted on her over the years. It would take a fucking Christmas miracle to make this situation any better.

‘Suze,’ said Sandy.

‘Hm?’ Suze looked across at Sandy, whose eyes were round with wonder.

‘Suze, look.’

Sandy was staring at George’s face.

George’s dark brown eyes were open. Slowly, they blinked. They moved around the room almost vaguely. Then they moved down, and settled on Suze’s face. Then they moved to the left, and alighted on Sandy’s. Some spasm flittered across George’s face. He opened his mouth, but no sound came out, just a gasping wheeze.

Suze was on her feet in an instant, leaning over George. ‘Don’t worry lovey, you’re all right,’ she said quickly, the words tumbling over each other. ‘You can’t speak, they’ve had to put a thing in your throat, but you’re all right, don’t worry, it’s all okay,’ said Suze. She let out a sudden laugh, and now her tears of joy were splashing down on George’s face. He looked up at her.

Oh Jesus please let him be okay now, thought Suze. If this was their Christmas miracle, then a Christmas prayer wouldn’t go amiss, surely?

George’s eyes slipped to the left again, to Sandy. He opened his mouth, but again there was no sound.

Sandy leaned in with a smile. Their eyes met. She kissed his cheek.

‘Nurse!’ called Suze, and George’s nurse came hurrying over to welcome him back to the land of the living.