Читать книгу Lies Between Us: a tense psychological thriller with a twist you won’t see coming - Ronnie Turner - Страница 14

She supposes he is a handsome man. With his attractive face and messy hair, she imagines him to be someone who draws eyes easily. But despite what the nurses say behind closed doors, how they gossip and prate about the poor man, she doesn’t see him the way they do. She thinks he looks kind, sweet, honest. And when he smiles, she thinks he might be a funny man. With his teeth slightly crooked and the crow’s feet beside his eyes nestling deeper into his skin when he frowns, she wants to know more about him. More about his life. More about the man beyond the chemical smell of the ward and the bleeping of the equipment. She looks at Heidi, sitting opposite her, and wonders whether she should ask. They washed his hair with warm water and shampoo moments before, carefully avoiding his stitches.

Heidi looks at her husband, silently. Thoughtfully. Maisie notices that if he smiles, she smiles too – like a reaction to a joke he’s just told. Something only they are privy to. Holding his hand to her lips, she kisses it softly. ‘It still feels like he’s in there. You probably don’t know what I mean, do you?’

Maisie shakes her head, leaning forward.

‘We’ve been together for fifteen years. We know each other’s sounds and signals, every inch of each other. Every single like and dislike even if we aren’t familiar with it ourselves. I know that when he grits his teeth, he isn’t angry, he’s upset. I know that if our daughter jumps on his lap and falls asleep, he’ll fall asleep too. When I’m stressed about something, he twirls me around the kitchen. If he fiddles with his keys, he’s nervous. If he grins just before he has dessert, he’s thinking about his mother’s apple pie. Even if we’re just watching a movie, he holds my hand until the end. Before we eat out, he checks the restaurant serves meals we like so my daughter and I won’t be disappointed. He can’t whistle and he hates broccoli. He loves books and hates comics. Loves the Rolling Stones, hates the Beatles. Loves life but isn’t afraid of dying.’

Heidi glances at Maisie and her calm expression falters. But it isn’t just sadness Maisie sees. It is something else. Something akin to dread. It blankets her face and shrouds the room in a thick haze. Maisie is reminded of the first time they met, when Heidi stood beside Tim, her hand flying from her chest to her bump, some unnameable emotion streaking through her eyes. It bothered Maisie then but it bothers her now even more. It is a quick flutter of concern in her chest, a creeping unease that settles across her skin. Mostly Heidi keeps calm, smiling and talking about their lives together. But then comes the shift in her behaviour and it taps out a restless rhythm in Maisie’s mind.

Maisie wonders if Heidi is thinking about the attack. Is she afraid it will happen again? Does she think she is in danger? Maisie catches herself before she asks. Tim’s presence has prompted a surge of twittering and clucking from the nurses. Gossip is currency. And in their breaks it flows freely, theories and suggestions shared hastily over homemade sandwiches and limp salad. The investigator they see plodding up the corridor and the article crushed into the corner of page six of the local newspaper tell them he was attacked and left for dead in the street. Maisie can’t even begin to imagine what it must be like hearing your husband was attacked.

Heidi brushes a strand of hair from Tim’s eyes, the dread in her own dissipating. ‘I know how he feels. Even before I hear him, I feel him walk into the room. I’ve loved him for fifteen years. And—’ she pauses and looks at Maisie ‘—he’s still in there.’

‘I think I know what you mean,’ she whispers, taken aback.

‘He’s going to get better. I know he is.’

*

Maisie’s thoughts inevitably find their way back to Heidi. They had spoken of their childhoods, their work and their parents to stave off grim topics. Maisie had told her she grew up in Cornwall with her mother. That she was given all the encouragement, help, support and freedom she’d ever needed, even with the tedious tests and studies she went through to become a nurse. Her mother was there every step of the way.

If Maisie closes her eyes she can see Janet’s rust bucket of a car sitting dutifully outside her old home, sporting stickers all over the boot. One in particular always gave them a laugh, especially when people looked from the sticker to her mother’s untameable hair, slapdash make-up and outrageously colourful clothes. The sticker announced to all who cared to stare, ‘God Made Me Bespoke.’ Her mother had come across it in a second-hand shop, her expression scrunching up the way it did when she found something funny. ‘Well, indeed. Mae, my lovely, I think we might have found one for the collection,’ she’d said in her strong Cornish accent, chuckling away under her breath.

Maisie smiles, kicking off her shoes and dashing to the bathroom to change out of her uniform. She flicks on the television, planting herself between the cushions on the sofa, nestling her feet into the Laura Ashley rug she and Ben had saved for. She glances at her watch. Ben will be back any minute. Even though they are both taking all the hours they can get – her at the ICU and Ben at the café – they refuse to budge on their Saturday evenings together. She prods the buttons on the remote, navigating her way through the soap operas neither of them has a taste for to the movies. She pauses the screen and drops the remote by her side. Lord of the Rings. Their favourite movie. Or rather movies – it is a trilogy, after all.

Their small flat isn’t a fancy affair. Open-plan living area with three doors leading off to the two bedrooms and bathroom. Four walls with a few windows. A box, fish tank, crate, as her mother says. But it was all they could afford at the time. Since moving in together, they’ve decorated the flat with anything they can find to give it character, trying to gather together the essence of themselves and inject it into the atmosphere. And it’s worked. Pictures and artwork bought from charity shops and car-boot sales adorn the walls, along with a bounty of other knick-knacks splashed across the units. The wooden furniture has been sprayed with woodworm killer. Maisie had said at the time that she hated the thought of all those tiny dead bodies inside her furniture, but if they wanted somewhere for their things to go, it was that or nothing. They’ve become experts at saving money. Better than that chap on telly, Martin Something, Ben once joked. They’d both laughed; that chap’s advice had enabled them to save (what was to them) a small fortune.

Maisie looks at the frames lining the wall. Most were taken by professional photographers, but the rest are ones she and Ben snapped in Cornwall two years ago. It was a holiday for him but for her it was simply going home. A welcome break from the rush of traffic and noise and overbearing life in Oxford. Her eyes travel across the pictures and, like a child trying and failing to avoid the dark space beneath the bed, inevitably find the door to the spare bedroom. Most of the time she can block it from her thoughts, stop the tears and hide from the memories that reside in the corners of the walls and the cracks in the floors. When she is alone in the flat, like now, she finds it harder. Because her eyes are drawn to it and her thoughts back in time to a portion of her past she forced herself to abandon. A hope that was alive and bright and pulsing with fervour, only to be quashed and forgotten. But regardless of her best efforts, she can’t stop it.

Shaking her head, Maisie pulls her knees to her chest and cups her hands over her face. When Ben opens the door, she is still sitting in that position, the tears dried onto her skin.