“Fuck, bollocks, shit!” she cursed, hunting out her remaining clothes. She was like a scalded cat. “Look, I’ve got thinking to do. OK?” And with that, she opened the bedroom door.
“Penny, you can’t walk out in the middle of the night.”
“I can’t?’ She paused and seemed to weigh this up. To her mind it instantly became one of the disadvantages of accepting his love. She stared at him, half in and half out of his bed. But I don’t love you, she thought. And I won’t. He was expecting her to say the same back. He wanted them playing snap with similar sentiments all night long. Penny couldn’t take someone’s love and be unsure what to do with it. She didn’t want to crush someone like that.
“Are you going home to Andy?” he asked, and some bitterness crept into his tone.
“What?” She blinked. “I suppose I am.”
“Right,” he said. And then he couldn’t think what else to say.
When she closed the door he listened to her creeping down the stairs, through all the rooms, then out. Every noise was charged with her presence and her magic. Craig stared bleakly at his ceiling. But I’ll get her back, he assured himself. Now I’ve got powers too. I can win her back with the magic I must surely have taken.
Andy had been to the hospital.
As he arrived, Fran was just leaving Liz’s bedside. It was like the changing of the guard, she said with a smile as they crossed over in the corridor.
“It’s funny, I’ve sat there for hours,” she said. “And it’s, like, hypnotic.”
“I know what you mean,” Andy whispered, staring through the glass panel of the door. “She’s so beautiful.”
“I suppose she is.” But that wasn’t what Fran had meant. “I reckon it’s because I’ve been run off my feet all day, at home with the kids and Frank...and then I come here and it’s so peaceful and relaxed.” To Fran, sitting by Liz’s bedside and hearing the regular beep of her life signs was the most restful bit of the week. She found she was almost looking forward to her visits. She came alone now, making polite excuses to Elsie, and found she could talk to Liz without embarrassment. She told her neighbour all sorts of things about her life and what she wanted. Was she imagining it or did Liz look concerned? It could be the way the light worked. Fran felt they were closer friends now than in the few weeks when they had lived beside each other. Fran had told Liz how often she thought about leaving Frank and leaving her own kids. Thrilled, she voiced her most serious plans about maybe starting a new life somewhere else. Liz didn’t look at all shocked, that was the best thing.
“Good night, pet,” Fran told Andy with another quick smile as she set off down the corridor. She left the building wondering what Andy would tell Liz about. Fran laughed to herself. When Liz woke, what a lot of stuff she would know!
Andy chucked out some of the older flowers, replacing them with a handful of anemones. Their stalks were tough and haired and their heads looked sullen, peering over the lip of the glass. But were you allowed to place flowers on the life-signs machine? What if water got into the machine? So he moved the vase onto a side table.
Chitchat first. Bring her up to date with the everyday news. Maybe Liz didn’t even know who half these people were. Andy was going on about Judith at the shop and how she’d had a fight with her boss’s son, who’d been left in charge for a week. She was over twice his age and had had it up to here taking orders from a snotty kid. In the end her daughter had gone round there, waited outside in the dark for the boss’s officious nineteen-year-old son, and given him a good slapping in the alleyway. For a day or two that had been the talk of the street. What else to tell her? About the spastics shop getting done over? About the social services going round to see Nesta and it turning out that Nesta was seven months pregnant and she never even noticed? Andy could see Penny’s face now as she passed on this gossip. Penny looked sour and her tone was censorious. “How could she not know she’s in the family way?” she had sneered and to Andy it didn’t sound like her. It was only afterwards Andy realised that Penny sounded just like Elsie. He didn’t tell Liz that bit. He didn’t think she’d want another Elsie for a daughter.
Then, when he’d exhausted recent gossip from round the doors, Andy broached the subject of himself. His voice was unsteady, but he was warmed up now, used to the way his voice sounded in the cosy gloom. It might just have been inside his head. He looked at Liz and thought she looked as she had in his dream.
He found that he was telling her how worried he was. It came flooding out. In a matter of minutes his throat caught and he was crying. He let the worst of it out in great gasping sobs and wiped his eyes on one corner of Liz’s sheet, since he didn’t have a hanky.
“I’m so selfish,” he said. “Because all I’m worried about is myself. But I’ve bottled this up inside and who can I say anything to? Somehow it’s like I can’t be upset if it’s just for my sake. It’s just...I think these spots mean something terrible.”
Spots? Liz’s death mask seems to wear a quizzical frown.
“Spots.” He nods. “The size of coins. Like leopard spots, and they’re under the surface of my skin, all over my body, they look permanent and blurred...”
He pauses, then untucks his denim. shirt and unbuttons it. He removes it to show
