Page 76 of Deep Blue Lies

SEVENTY-FIVE

I’m in the shower the next morning when I hear a banging on my door. I grab my towel and wrap it around me, then when I walk out of the bathroom I can see it’s Sophia through the frosted glass. Here to pick me up for the trip to the hospital. I open the door and beckon her in.

“I’ll just be a few minutes,” I say, turning around at once. “Do you want to make coffee, or shall we get some on the way?”

There’s something wrong though. I turn back round. The look on her face is weird. She’s been crying.

“What is it?”

She doesn’t answer. But after a moment she reaches out and rests a hand against the door frame, like she needs it to keep herself up.

“Sophia? What’s happened?”

Her eyes meet mine, then flicker away again, her mouth opens but no words come out. Until they do.

“I’m really sorry, Ava.”

“What for? What’s happened?”

Now she shakes her head. It seems like she forces her eyes to rest on mine.

“It’s Imogen. ”

Something shifts inside me. Like I know what she’s going to say before she says it.

“She died. In the night. The nurse phoned Mum this morning. She passed away.”

Now my mouth opens. Ready to speak, but there are no words. I cover it with my hand, then turn away. I find myself staring at my tiny, shitty kitchen. How is that real? How is any of this real?

“What happened?”

“I don’t know. The nurse said she woke up yesterday and seemed OK, she could talk at least. And then in the night she just died. The nurse said this happens sometimes with patients like this.”

“Like what?”

Sophia frowns a little. “Like with a head injury.” She stops, her lips quiver. “I don’t know.”

She’s still standing there in the doorway. I open the door wider and she comes inside. I don’t expect her to but she comes right up to me and wraps her arms around me. But it’s not for my benefit, it’s for hers.

“ Christé mou! ” Sophia says, when she finally pulls away, pushing the towel back up onto my shoulder where she’d pushed it down. I don’t know what the words mean. But at the same time, I know exactly.

I suppose I must have got dressed. I don’t remember.

At some point Maria turns up, and then later on I get a call from Mum.

I hear in her voice, right away, that she knows – so I don’t have to tell her.

And I must have given her my address too, because sometime after she turns up, and it’s crazy weird to have all of them here – Maria, Sophia and my mother – all in the same tiny, crappy apartment.

No one knows how to talk to one another nor what to say.

I don’t know what Sophia’s said to her mum about what my mum said to me – I literally can’t keep up with it all, but somehow we get some more details.

It seems that Imogen suffered a cardiac arrest in the night, at around one o’clock.

They say that this can happen with traumatic brain injury, you can see a patient initially improve, but there are complications, like brain swelling, blood clots or autonomic dysfunction, that can cause rapid deterioration.

I feel like I’m back in one of my lectures, not in the wreck of my own life.

The police turn up later on, I don’t really know why.

They speak mostly in Greek and mostly to Maria, but at one point Sophia asks them in English if Imogen said anything about who attacked her when she woke up yesterday afternoon.

The officer – the same one who interrogated me, if that’s the right word – he starts to answer in Greek, but she interrupts him.

“In English, please.” She shifts her gaze onto me.

“Yes. Of course.” The man shifts his weight. “Unfortunately we were unable to get a chance to ask her directly, but she didn’t say anything at all to any of the nurses or doctors. So we assume she didn’t.”

No one speaks – especially me, I’m too far gone with all of this. And he goes on.

“Even if she had, the members of these gangs, they are hard to tell apart.”

I can’t listen to any more.

The police go, and eventually most of the day is gone too. My mother is in the kitchen talking on her phone. Maria is telling Sophia she has to get back to the store.

“Will you be OK on your own?” Sophia asks me, and I try to nod but it comes out as a shrug.

“That was my hotel,” my mother cuts in. “I’ve reserved a room for you there. You’re not staying here tonight, it’s out of the question.”

And it’s like I’m twelve years old again. I just nod at my mother and do as she says.