‘No thank you,’ says Michelle. She looks down at her hands, long elegant fingers with a huge diamond on the wedding finger. How had the young PC Nelson ever afforded a ring like that?
Ruth sits opposite, waiting. There’s nothing else she can do.
‘Harry’s in a coma,’ says Michelle at last. ‘Did you hear that?’
‘Yes,’ says Ruth. ‘Judy rang me.’
‘Judy? Oh, the policewoman. What else did she say?’
‘Just that Nelson… Harry… was very ill and no one knew what it was.’
‘Yes. They think it might be a virus but they’re not sure. He’s not responding to anything at the moment. It’s terrible, they’re nursing him in masks because they don’t know if it’s contagious or not.’ She stops and takes a deep breath. ‘He doesn’t recognise anyone, not me or the girls. It’s as if we can’t get through to him.’
‘I’m sorry,’ says Ruth, inadequately.
Michelle looks at her. Ruth thinks it might be the first time that they have been alone together. She is struck again both by the classical purity of Michelle’s face and by the expression in her eyes. Something about Michelle’s expression makes Ruth feel very scared indeed.
‘Do you know why I’ve come?’ asks Michelle.
Ruth shakes her head.
‘I want you to go to him.’
‘What?’
Michelle looks at Ruth and her eyes are huge, wet with tears.
‘I want you to go to see Harry,’ she says. ‘He misses you.’
Ruth’s voice sounds as if it’s coming from a long way away. ‘He doesn’t,’ she says.
Once again Michelle looks at her with that awful shining simplicity, ‘Oh, he’s not in love with you, I know that. But he does care about you. He hates not being able to see you. He’s… he’s used to me. I thought… if he saw you…’
Ruth’s eyes also fill with tears but she says nothing.
‘I thought, if he could just see you, hear your voice…’
Ruth looks at Michelle, who is watching her with those big, strangely innocent, eyes. At this moment she really feels that she loves Michelle, loves her more than she ever loved Nelson. But it doesn’t change her answer.
‘I can’t. I’m sorry.’
‘Why not?’
‘I’m afraid. Nelson’s ill, no one knows what it is. I’m afraid of carrying the infection back to Kate.’
Michelle stands up. She is taller than Ruth but now she seems ten foot high, a vision of implacable justice.
‘I was wrong about you, Ruth. I thought you loved him.’
Ruth says nothing.
‘All the things I’ve thought about you, I never thought that you didn’t love him. It’s funny, it didn’t make me hate you. It made me think that we had something in common. I love him. I love him more than anything.’
That summer, the long cold summer when Nelson finally chose Michelle over her, had been one of the hardest times of Ruth’s life. She was on her own, everyone seemed to be on holiday: Shona and Phil in Tuscany, the Nelsons (she’d heard) in Florida, Cathbad in a monastery on Iona. Ruth had resisted an invitation from her parents to join them at a Christian camp on the Isle of Wight. She had spent her time going for long walks with Kate in her buggy, down the shingle paths of the Saltmarsh, along the seafront at Cromer, through the streets of King’s Lynn. She would have lost weight if she hadn’t spent the evenings eating chocolate biscuits.
But through the grey lonely days and endless nights, Ruth was stalked by fear. She let herself be consumed by this fear, surrender to it, almost seemed to revel in it, spending hours searching the internet, seeking out information that could feed the fear. And the fear was illness, specifically Kate becoming ill. In the early part of the summer, the news had been full of the swine flu scare. Ruth, feverishly searching websites at night, kept coming upon stories of healthy babies, happily playing one minute, critically ill in hospital the next. Some of the babies died. Ruth, slightly unhinged by solitude, did not take in the fact that the children who had died usually had some existing medical condition. All she knew was that Kate might be taken away from her. She felt Kate’s forehead constantly, invested in a thermometer that went in the ear and used it so often that Kate developed an ear infection and howled all night. Ruth, pacing the floors with her sick child, felt herself to be literally on the edge. She wasn’t sure that she could cope any more. She thought about walking into the sea with Kate in her arms, surrendering to Erik’s relentless tide. She would have prayed if she’d known how.
But things got better. Friends returned from holiday, swine flu disappeared from the news, Ruth let whole days go by without taking Kate’s temperature. Term started and she was able to immerse herself in work. A beautiful autumn succeeded the dreary summer. But when she had heard Judy’s words, ‘They think it could be a virus, one of those that’s resistant to antibiotics,’ it had all come flooding back. Nelson is dying of a mystery virus and now Michelle wants her to expose Kate to this danger. If it was only her own safety, Ruth thinks that she would sacrifice it willingly for Nelson. After all, he has risked his life to save her. But she has Kate to think about and she is all Kate has.
‘I’m sorry,’ she says again.
Michelle sweeps to the door. ‘Goodbye Ruth. I hope you won’t feel too guilty.’
A forlorn hope. As the sound of Michelle’s car disappears into the night, Ruth wonders if it is actually possible to die of guilt.
CHAPTER 25
Ruth is relieved when morning comes. She doesn’t think that she slept for more than a few minutes all night. But those few minutes were enough for terrible dreams: Nelson drowning, his hand stretched out to her, Erik’s voice calling from the sea, Cathbad turning into a snake, hissing ‘sleep little three eyes,’ and Kate, always Kate: Kate burning with fever, Kate lying dead in her cot, Kate lost in the dark, searching for her. When Kate’s imperious crying wakes her at six, Ruth is only too glad to get up. She showers with Kate in her arms and goes downstairs to get on with the day. She is so tired that her feet seem to be stuck to the floor and every step feels like uprooting them. Coffee briefly gives her enough energy to collect her rucksack and Kate’s nappy bag and get them both in the car, but by the time she reaches Sandra’s, great waves of weariness are breaking over her.
‘You don’t look too good,’ says Sandra. ‘Got the flu?’
The flu. People like Sandra make illness sound so normal, an irritation, something to be coped with and got over. But to Ruth, the slightest sniffle from Kate is the sound of impending death. Why does she feel like this? Is it because of her parents who, after they found God, also lost all faith in contemporary medicine? ‘God will provide,’ became their mantra. Ruth blames her parents bitterly for not having her vaccinated against measles, resulting in a nightmare few weeks at university. Her parents’ imaginations also became markedly more apocalyptic, their conversation littered with references to death, judgement, heaven and hell. The devil became a regular correspondent. Is this why Ruth sometimes feels that some terrible catastrophe is just around the corner, or is this just normal paranoia?
More coffee gets her through her first lecture and tutorial, but by lunchtime she is flagging. She breaks her own rule and keeps her phone on when she’s with her students. Every second she expects to hear Judy’s voice, ‘I’m sorry…’ Or perhaps she won’t ring at all. Perhaps she’ll just send a text massage.
‘Ruth!’
