‘Of course it is! What do you take me for? Tell me straight, what’s going on? Are you on the run from the police?’
She shook her head. ‘I came to help you. To warn you, Gareth.’
‘To warn me of what?’
She let out a deep breath. ‘Of them…I can’t speak about that here,’ she said quietly.
He threw his hands up in frustration. ‘OK, OK. Not here. You’re a strange one, lady.’ Her eyes were heavy, as if she were desperately tired. She was fighting to keep them open.
‘Shall I come back later?’ In part he knew he wanted to get out because he couldn’t handle what he was hearing. Couldn’t handle the fact this woman could be his sister. It threw his entire life up in the air.
She reached out, grabbed his hand. He didn’t know what he should do. Till a few minutes ago this woman was a stranger he had almost killed. Now she was a potential sister he never knew he had. Struck dumb, he just let her hang onto his hand. It felt warm. Reassuring. A contact he never dreamed of ever making. Emotions bubbled up within him, competed with each other for a piece of his troubled mind. The peace he’d found since coming to Deller’s End was in danger of being crushed like tinfoil. When he looked into her eyes he saw only truth, and that scared him. Terrified him. He tried to pull his hand away but she wouldn’t let it go.
‘You have to believe me, Gareth.’
‘I dunno…’ he said. ‘It’s all too weird. I’ve got to go. Maybe I’ll see you this evening, huh? I need time to think about this.’
He wrenched his hand free and she tried to sit upright, but pain forced her back onto her pillow. She grimaced. ‘Be careful, Gareth,’ she said.
‘I’ll see you later,’ he said. ‘I’ll bring you your box.’ And with that he turned and left her, hurrying from the ward and out of the hospital.
The cold, fresh air did little to revive him. His mind was spinning. This wasn’t happening, he thought. It was all too sudden, all too unreal to grasp.
He wandered the snowy streets of St Davids in a half-daze, finally clearing snow from a metal bench overlooking the cathedral and he sat there in the freezing cold. The grounds were deserted and sheathed in an undulating skin of snow broken only by the many dark headstones rising from it. The sky was a pristine white. Fresh snowflakes circled his lonely frame like excited children as he thought deeply on the implications of the visit. But there were no answers to be found, so he bought a bottle of Johnnie Walkers and went back to the hotel to find a few answers inside that. Did he really want his life turning inside out just as he’d got it back on track? He drank deeply of the whiskey and decided maybe he didn’t. Then drank again and decided that maybe he did. What if she was a fraud? But where did she get the other half of the coin if so, how did she know the details of how it was left to him, and what the hell was there in it for her to pretend to be his sister anyhow? None of it made sense. Unless she really was his sister. He took a stiff swig and gasped on the hot liquid. He ought to get something to eat or he’d suffer for it, he thought.
She came to warn him, she said. Warn him of what?
In the end he lay down, the drink taking its toll on him, and his mussed-up head tried to grapple with a plague of contradictory thoughts. As sleep drew its warm veil over his tortured mind he thought it would be rather swell to have a sister. And he smiled, in spite of himself.
When he awoke, the sky beyond the window was black. He rubbed sleep from his eyes, not fully realising how tired he’d been. The combination of tiredness and alcohol had all but floored him. He took a look at the time. 6.15pm. Visiting time at the hospital had started fifteen minutes ago. He splashed cool water on his face, grabbed the cardboard box full of jewellery, slipped his arms into his coat then headed for the hospital.
If anything the afternoon sleep had worked wonders. He woke up fresh and clear-headed, deciding he had to see Erica again. The prospect of a sister — his
He was taken aback to see that her bed was now occupied by an older woman.
‘Where is the young woman who was in this bed?’ he asked, managing to intercept a nurse. ‘Has she been moved?’
She was in a hurry and the flash of her eyes told him so. ‘She discharged herself, I believe. Are you a relative?’
‘No,’ he said. ‘I’m the one who nearly killed her.’ He saw a look of horror spread across her face, her mind racing to the nearest panic button. ‘I mean, I knocked her over in my car. I have something I’d like to return to her.’ They both looked at the carrier bag he had in his hand.
‘Well she obviously thought she was well enough to take herself off.’
‘I suppose you have no idea where she went?’
‘You suppose right,’ she said bluntly. ‘Now if you’ll excuse me…’ And she scurried away to attend to other duties, but couldn’t resist calling back, ‘And try not to hit anyone else; we’re rather busy!’
He stood there. No amount of staring at the bed with the woman in it transformed her into Erica. He came down from his elation as if he’d been on a drugged high and it didn’t feel at all comfortable. He shook his head resignedly and headed for the double doors at the head of the ward. As he lifted his hand to push through the doors a man standing there held up his hand and stopped him dead. He was middle-aged, near to forty maybe, smartly dressed in a charcoal-black woollen coat that finished just above his knees, the shoulders peppered with shimmering beads of melted snow; his trousers were dark, ending in a pair of wet but shiny black shoes; his hair was neatly trimmed, his face a little red from the heat.
‘Excuse me,’ he said, his accent either American or Canadian, Gareth couldn’t determine which. ‘I couldn’t help but overhear. You were asking about a young woman, the one who occupied that bed?’
‘Do you know where she is?’ Gareth asked hopefully.
‘I was hoping you’d be able to tell me, Mr…?’
Gareth ignored the name fishing. ‘How do you know her?’
‘A close friend,’ he said. ‘I’m trying to contact her. I got wind she was here, but like you it appears I arrived just a little too late.’
‘Yes, it appears so,’ he said. There was something about the man he took an instant dislike to. Something that made him feel decidedly uncomfortable. ‘Look, sorry, but I have to leave.’
‘And how is it she knows you? She never mentioned you.’
‘I sort of bumped into her, as you do,’ Gareth said. He tried to sidestep him but he mirrored his move and blocked the exit. ‘I really do have to leave,’ he insisted.
‘And I really do have to find her. It’s important. Perhaps I can buy you a drink?’ he offered, his face trying hard to hold onto a smile that revealed a nice set of teeth which must have set him back a small fortune over the years.
‘Another time maybe,’ Gareth said, nodding politely. ‘I’ve told you all I know.’
The man paid particular interest to the carrier bag. ‘Something of hers?’
‘That’s really none of your business,’ he said, pushing by him and opening the doors.
‘Sure, thanks for the help,’ the grin broadening. ‘Oh, and be careful; it’s deadly out there,’ he warned.
There was nothing for it but to head home, he thought, totally deflated, his mind full of questions. The roads were better now, and he had no reason to hang about the hospital; she wasn’t going to return. That didn’t stop him scanning the streets and the people as he headed out, searching for any sign of her.
It took a while for him to drive home in the dark, especially once he hit open country where the snow remained thick on the ground. He passed the odd-car sitting nose down in a ditch, or abandoned by the roadside under heaps of snow. As usual, signs of humanity thinned the closer he got to Deller’s End. When he approached the spot where he’d hit Erica he unconsciously slowed down, even checked the hedge from where she’d come sliding down, as if somehow she might do the same today, as if he could conjure her up just by thinking about it.
Eventually he pulled the Land Rover to a sliding halt on the snow covered grass verge by the gate to Deller’s
