She heaved her legs again, the ropes slicing into her ankles, and she grunted in pain. The bed moved, then moved again with the next effort. The bed had been up against the wall when she woke up, but the earthquake had shifted it a little. She tried to guess where it had been. Then she thought about the scraping. She looked but couldn’t see any marks on the concrete.
She heaved one more time, the bed snapping to the right, further away from the table. It still hadn’t quite straightened up. She was about to thrust herself upwards again when the door swung open and Donna came in carrying another holdall and a small backpack.
43
She tried to calm her breathing. Her wrists raged in pain, her ankles too, all her muscles screamed at her, but she tried to just lie there as if she’d been doing nothing. Her armpits were damp from the effort, sweat at the base of her back and between her thighs, but she hoped her face wasn’t too flushed.
Donna smiled at her and put the bags down.
She looked around the room then back at Surtsey. Her eyes went to the foot of the bed, at a slight angle to the wall. She frowned. Looked at the floor. Surtsey kept her eyes on her, watching, didn’t try to crane her neck or look at what Donna was seeing. Marks on the floor, something amiss in the room, the knife gone from the table.
Donna came over and stood at the foot of the bed.
She leaned down and lifted the frame, carried it to her left until it was flush with the wall.
‘Stupid tremor,’ she said. ‘Can’t have your bed bumping all the way outside now, can we?’
Her hand brushed at Surtsey’s ankle. She stopped to look at the angry rope marks on the skin.
‘Have you been struggling?’
Surtsey shook her head. ‘Only at the start. I realise now there’s no point.’
Donna walked round the bed, stopped at Surtsey’s left hand. She stroked her palm with her fingertips and Surtsey let her. She checked the rope was tight, peered at the marks underneath.
‘You’re going to hurt yourself doing that.’
Surtsey tried not to think of the butter knife under the mattress, six inches away from Donna’s hand.
Donna went to the top of the bed and lifted it, slid it against the wall.
‘That’s better now.’
She went to the bags and began unpacking. More clothes, fruit and veg, crisps and nuts, two large bottles of Coke.
‘That’s my one vice, I have to drink full-fat Coke, can’t stand the diet stuff.’
Surtsey waited until Donna was leaning away placing the bottles on the floor then slid her fingertips under the mattress. The knife wasn’t there. She moved her hand down along the edge of the frame but came up against nothing. The she moved it the other way, felt the metal handle of it and almost cried out. She flicked her fingers out and rested her hand on the mattress as Donna straightened up.
Surtsey breathed deeply a few times. ‘How did this all start?’
Donna paused with a bag of apples in her hand. ‘How do you mean?’
‘I was wondering while you were away. How long has this been going on? How long have you been…’ she tried to think of the right thing to say ‘…looking out for me?’
Donna looked at her, then out the window. She put the apples down on the table and stared at them. She looked around the table and Surtsey thought she’d spotted the missing knife. She sat on the bench and picked at the edge of the table with her fingernails.
‘You really never noticed me at school, did you?’
‘Of course I did.’
Donna gave her a sideways look, just a glance then away. ‘That’s OK, I didn’t expect you to back then. You were the year above and you always hung out with the cooler girls.’
‘I do remember you.’
‘You’re very kind, but you’ve already made it perfectly clear you don’t remember any of the times you helped me. That’s OK, I was shy and forgettable.’ She smiled. ‘You were very noticeable.’
‘I didn’t feel that way.’
‘You were. Even your name, so exotic. And the way you carried yourself around the place, down the corridors, in the lunch hall, the playground. So confident. I was jealous of your confidence.’
‘It was all show. No teenage girl really feels confident.’
‘I’m sure that’s not true.’
‘Trust me, I had all the same shit going on in my head as everyone else in that place. Confidence is an illusion.’
Donna shook her head.
Surtsey kept her eyes on Donna. ‘I don’t know who you think I am, but I’m not that person. You don’t know me.’
Donna rubbed her hands together. ‘But I do, I know you better than you know yourself.’
It was Surtsey’s turn to shake her head. ‘This isn’t about school. School was years ago. I never saw you for years until Mum went into St Columba’s.’
Donna nodded. ‘Do you believe in fate? Serendipity?’
‘You make your own fate.’
Donna pressed her lips together. ‘You’re wrong. The universe throws people together, shows you the way forward. That’s what happened the day Louise came to the hospice. My dad had just died three days before. I recognised you straight away and it all came back, how much I admired you at school. Maybe even worshipped you. I always assumed you’d moved away somewhere exotic, but here you were back in Joppa with the rest of us.’
‘So this started with Mum?’
‘I realised how much we had in common,’ Donna said. ‘I had just lost my mum and dad and you were losing your mum too. We were taking care of Louise together. You were so kind to her, so generous with your time. Not like your sister.’
‘Everyone deals with stuff differently,’ Surtsey said.
‘She’s a selfish cow and
