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Chapter Seventeen

Alex

Alex bought a ticket to Sevenoaks, and then sat at the coach station feeling ridiculously conspicuous, even though his cap was drawn down over his eyes.

He felt guilty for using the money Barney had given him for something other than its intended purpose.

Paul Andrews would probably call Barney and ask where his passenger was, and then Barney would think Alex had scammed him.

Yet Alex was sure that if that kind man knew the truth, he’d approve of what Alex was doing.

Barney, of all people, would understand why he had to visit his father at a time like this.

He spent the journey in an agony of nerves, wondering what he’d do when he got to the hospital. He had no idea where his father’s room was, and the press would be camped outside so he’d have to avoid them, to say nothing of the possibility of Tyler’s men lurking there, too.

He knew Noah had been taken to Queen Catherine Hospital, which was where the paramedics had taken him and Charles after the duck accident.

He hated the place. He remembered sitting on a bed in the A Noah sat down on the bed and put his arm around him.

“It’s okay. Just tell her the truth.”

“I don’t know what happened, exactly… We’d just stopped at a pub for lunch.

We were happy. We were driving along… talking and laughing, and then there was this bang…

I didn’t see anything… I didn’t see it, whatever we hit.

I didn’t see it.” He shook his head miserably.

“Then the duck flew over and over before slamming into a tree. Mum and Charles must have been thrown out when it was tumbling, but I wasn’t. ”

“And you were driving the vehicle at the time of the accident?”

“Yes. Yes, I was driving.”

“I have to ask… did you drink anything at the pub?” the policewoman asked, gazing at him keenly.

“No.” He shook his head. “I had a Coke.”

“Did you take anything else that might have affected your driving?” she pressed.

His stomach lurched. “Yes. I… took some croc. Crocodile Tears. I took some when we stopped at the pub.”

His father drew back.

Alex couldn’t meet Noah’s eye and kept his head down as he answered the rest of the policewoman’s questions.

“We’ll have to take a blood sample,” she said. “It’s mandatory after a fatal duck accident, and croc doesn’t show up in a breath test anyway.”

“Of course,” his father said quietly .

“I’ll go and organise it,” she said, leaving the room.

“How much croc did you take, Alex?” his father demanded when they were alone.

Alex shook his head slowly, still unable to look up and meet Noah’s eye. “I don’t know… a lot.”

“I don’t understand,” Noah said, bewildered. “Why would your mother have let you drive when you were as high as a kite?”

“She didn’t know.” He wrapped his arms around his body for comfort. “I went into the pub toilet and took the croc just before we left. She didn’t know I’d taken it. The tears don’t start until later.”

“Christ!” His father turned away. “I thought you weren’t doing croc anymore. You promised me…”

“I’m sorry, Dad,” Alex said again, pathetically. “I’m so sorry.”

“Sorry won’t bring your mother back,” his father said tightly.

Alex looked up and recoiled from what he saw.

His father was glaring at him as if he were a stranger.

“I don’t think you understand. This isn’t getting expelled from school, or some stupid scrape of the kind you get yourself into every other week.

Your mother is dead, and your brother will never walk again…

Oh, Christ.” He pushed a shaky hand through his hair.

“Christ, what have you done, Alex? What have you done?”

Queen Catherine Hospital – the scene of the worst day of his life – was the last place he wanted to go to, but the one place he absolutely had to be right now.

He pulled his cap down low over his face as he jumped off the coach in Sevenoaks.

Then he walked to the hospital, taking various back roads to keep out of sight.

Queen Catherine was a large, modern facility, built many decades after the Rising, comprising just one huge main building.

Alex entered the grounds easily enough, but felt his gut churn at the familiar sight of several media AVs parked outside the main entrance, just as they had been six years ago.

His family, as always, provided good value for the country’s press.

He put his head down and walked quickly down one of the many small streets that linked the hospital’s various AV parks.

Jogging to the end, he was about to step out onto the road when a black SUAV passed by in front of him.

He took a few paces back, hiding behind a wall, then peered around the corner.

The SUAV cruised slowly away, clearly on the lookout.

He considered running back to Swanage, finding Paul Andrews, and fleeing to France, but then reminded himself that he had come this far, and he desperately wanted to see his father.

Of course Tyler’s men were here looking for him – it was obvious he might make an attempt to visit Noah.

Tyler might not have set this trap himself, but he would take full advantage of his father’s illness in order to catch Alex.

He couldn’t use the hospital’s main entrance because of the press, but there had to be another way in.

Alex looked out of the hospital window at the crowd of well-wishers, paparazzi, and television crews below.

“Why don’t they go away?” he asked, glancing back at his brother.

Charles looked pale and fragile; he was still trying to come to terms with the severity of his injuries. Their father was sitting in a chair beside him, and a nurse was busy entering his latest stats on her nanopad.

“It’s been two weeks – nothing interesting is happening here. They should just piss off,” Alex muttered.

“Your brother is a national hero,” his father snapped. “That’s why they’re here. They’re keeping a vigil because the nation loves him.”

“I don’t think it’s very loving to camp outside his hospital room day and night, hoping to get a picture of him.”

“What you think isn’t important,” his father said in a withering tone.

Alex tried not to care about the coldness in Noah’s voice, or the anger in his eyes. How long would his father look at him like this, his gaze loaded with all that blame ?

“Hey, don’t argue,” Charles beseeched, with a ghost of his old, sweet-natured smile.

“That’s right. We must keep our patient nice and calm,” the nurse said soothingly. She had kind brown eyes and a sympathetic smile.

“Don’t worry about the press, Alex,” Charles murmured, but then he would say that – he’d always loved the attention of the world’s media, while Alex was starting to discover how much he hated it.

“That’s easy for you to say – you don’t have to push your way through them every day,” Alex snapped.

“How dare you!” His father shook his finger angrily at him.

“Your brother worked bloody hard for years to achieve his success. He made his country proud and gave the entire nation something to celebrate after decades of misery – but you, what have you ever done? Nothing except getting yourself expelled from three different schools and taking so many drugs you can’t see straight. ”