now. He'd have to take it slowly.
Much as he wanted this, he couldn't hurt her.
'Alison, I'm going to show you a picture.' He held up the photo. For a moment he said nothing. There was just the relentless hum. 'You've seen this man before, haven't you?'
His eyes didn't shift from hers for an instant. She blinked.
His phone rang.
Anne didn't want the coffee to go cold and had tried to keep the conversation with the administrator as brief as possible. He'd collared her at the till and even the few fragments of his monologue that had got through to her had bored her rigid instantly. He was a pathologically dull individual who, were he ever to become a hospital visitor, could set back the treatment of coma patients by decades. She'd smiled and nodded. God knows what she'd actually agreed to.
Now, as she walked towards Alison's room, she wondered if Thorne felt as she did – as though this was some sort of bizarre date, sharing a cup of coffee with Alison as a chaperone.
It was kind of him to have looked into Alison's condition on the Internet. She'd have to check it out for herself. She was well briefed, of course, on all the technological advancements that were making the lives of those with permanent disabilities easier – at least, those with a substantial private income. Things were moving quickly, though, and she was likely to be better informed by the Net than she would be by current medical literature.
She had no idea whether Or not Thorne was good at what he did. It as obvious that he cared, that he got involved. As far as his job was concerned, caring might not necessarily be a good thing. She knew what Jeremy would say about it.
Holding a cup in each hand she pushed open the door to Alison's room with her backside and nudged it shut with her hip. She turned to see Thorne standing by the window, staring into space. She looked at the empty chair by Alison's bed and knew instantly that something was wrong.
'Tom?'
She could see the tension in his jaw. His face was the colour of a corpse.
'Someone has contacted my office.., my former office, anonymously.'
He turned his head slowly towards Alison, but Anne could see that he was looking at a space on the back wall, above her head; His eyes dropped to the girl's face and stayed there for a second or two before he turned and walked slowly out of the room.
Anne put the coffee on the table next to Alison's bed and followed him. He was waiting outside the door. The moment the door was closed, he took a small step towards her and spoke calmly, the fury just held in check.
'I have been accused of molesting Alison.'
The screaming, hypnotic pulse of the music had focused Thorne's mind and steered his thoughts into the dark places in his head that were usually best avoided. He was sitting on the floor, his back resting against the sofa, the beer can cool against his cheek.
Keable had tried to set his mind at rest. 'Don't worry, Tom, it's obviously nothing. Just some nutter who claimed to have heard it from somebody in the hospital. Nobody's taking it seriously – it's not like he could have heard it from Alison Willetts, is it?'
Insensitive to the last, but Thorne was relieved that he couldn't argue with the reasoning. He let his head fall back on to the sofa cushion and stared at the ceiling.
He thought about touching Alison.
He thought about hearing Jeremy Bishop beg. The doorbell rang. He got slowly to his feet. He opened the door and went straight back to his spot on the floor by the sofa. Formalities seemed pointless. Anne walked in and stood by the fireplace. She dropped her bag, took off the thin raincoat and spent five seconds taking in the room. The first thing she noticed was the beer. 'Can I?'
She walked over, smoothing down her long black skirt. Thorne handed her a can of lager from the broken four pack by his side. 'Not a brand I'm familiar with.'
'I know. Expensive wine and cheap, piss-weak lager. Don't ask me why.'
'So you can enjoy the drinking without the sensation of being drunk.'
'That's definitely not the reason.'
She sat down on the sofa behind and to his right. 'Tom, that phone call. It's just a crank.'
He half crushed his empty can then stopped and put it down gently next to the others. 'I know exactly who it is.'
'Well, it's stupid to let it upset you.'
He turned and looked at her over his shoulder. 'No. Not upset.'
Anne could see in his eyes that the nice side of him, the side that bought Alison flowers, was far from being the whole story. Though it was difficult to contemplate such a thing, she would not want this man as an enemy.
She took a long swig of beer and gestured towards the stereo. 'Who's this?'
'Leftfield. The track's called 'Open Up'.'
She listened for a minute. Hated it.
'That's John Lydon doing the vocal,' Thorne said, as if it made a difference.
'Right…'
'Johnny Rotten… the Sex Pistols?'
'Sadly, I was a little too. old even for them. What are you, then? Forty?'
'Forty a few months ago. I was seventeen when 'God Save The Queen' came out.'
'God. I was already a third-year reed student.'
'I know. Pushing beds into rivers.'
She gave him what his dad would certainly have described as an old-fashioned look. 'So what were you doing?'
Not going to university, thought Thorne. For so many reasons, he wished he had. 'I was about to join the force, I suppose, and managing my ache.' Wanting to be a policeman more than anything. Trying to make his mum and dad proud. Wanting to do good, and all the other stupid ideas of which he'd been so brutally disabused. Anne drained her can and Thorne passed her another. They sat in silence for a minute, remembering, or pretending to remember.
'Thanks for coming over by the way. Did you drive?'
'Yes. Bugger to park, though.' Thorne nodded. 'It's good to get out actually. Rachel and I are getting on each other's nerves a bit at the moment.'
'Yeah?'
She's got a couple of resits to do and she thought the whole exam thing was behind her. So she's being a bit… spiky.'
Thorne remembered his first encounter with Anne Coburn in a lecture theatre at the Royal Free. Spiky obviously ran in the family.
Anne took another long slug of beer. Enjoying it. 'Just run-of-the-mill teenage angst, I suppose. She hasn't pierced her belly-button or painted her room black yet, but it's probably just a matter of time.'
'It'll sort itself out.'
'And so will this business with Alison.'
'It's all right, there won't be an investigation or anything. Nobody's taking it seriously.'
'Except you.'
'If that's what he wants.' The he spat out like something sour.
'Why don't you talk about it, then?'
'Anne, I don't need a doctor. Or a mother.'
She shuffled forward to the very edge of the sofa and leaned forward, her head down.
'Fine. Do you want to go to bed, then?'
Thorne had always thought that spluttering your drink out when somebody surprised you only ever happened in Terry and June, but he succeeded brilliantly in snorting a decent amount of cheap lager into his lap. The sitcom moment made him laugh uncontrollably.
Anne laughed, too, but she was also blushing to her toenails.
