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Twenty-Nine

Wednesday 4pm

Getting out of the building was the easy part once Charlie realised that there were four sets of stairs, all leading to a different outside door. The rain had eased, and Charlie found a cab dropping a mother, three small children and a mountain of suitcases off by the street entrance. He helped unload the cases and asked the driver to take him to the hospital.

* * *

The man talking to Orianna in the waiting room outside Intensive Care looked so like Tom that Charlie drew in a breath and almost spoke. But Tom would never wear those clothes, and the man’s hair and beard were grey where Tom’s were dark and full. Like Tom, the man looked kind, but Charlie detected a weakness and a slowness about him that said he would wait for someone else to make the decisions. Should he wait for Orianna to introduce them? It was too late. The man had seen him. Charlie stepped forward.

“Mr Pennant? My name is Charlie Rees. Tom’s partner.” He held out his hand.

Gordon Pennant moved in Charlie’s direction, automatically polite, and opened his mouth to speak. Then a woman came through the archway to the waiting room.

“I don’t think so, Gordon,” she said. “Please leave, whoever you are.”

Charlie felt her words like a blow. He dropped his hand.

“I have come to see Tom,” he said with the remains of his composure. “I am sure Orianna has explained that Tom and I live together.”

The woman’s face showed contempt: chin down, lips curling.

“Orianna,” she said in the tone of voice that meant despicable.

“Verity, please. Orianna is the mother of our granddaughters.” The man sounded as if it was something he had said many times before.

“ Ann is the mother of Amelia and Zenobia,” Verity spat out. Orianna visibly flinched, muttered their names are Amelie and Ziggy , and Charlie saw her hands curl into fists. She took a deep breath and let it out slowly.

“Mrs Pennant,” Charlie said, “I have come to see Tom.”

She turned away from her husband. “You have no right to see my son. You can leave now, or I can call the hospital security. Or perhaps the police. Because I think the police wish to talk to you, but frankly I have better things to do. Gordon, the consultant is on his way.”

“Wait. Please.” Charlie felt himself losing his composure, in the full knowledge that he must keep his anger under control. “Tom would want me here.”

“ Tomos,” she said with emphasis, “is seriously ill. He may not recover. He needs his family , not someone who ran away when he was shot. Leave.”

A hand gripped Charlie’s arm. “Charlie,” Orianna said into his ear, “There’s no point.” She held on to him as Tom’s parents walked away. “There’s no point,” she repeated. “No one has ever won an argument with Verity Pennant, and the longer Tom is in the coma, the worse she gets. She’ll call the cops if you stay, just out of spite, because that’s what she’s like.”

Charlie hadn’t eaten or slept properly since the shooting. He was keeping going not on fumes, but on the memory of fumes. He felt every molecule of his body being drawn thinner and thinner with the pretense that he could function.

Compared to the thought of losing Tom, the possibility of arrest bothered Charlie not at all. The only reason to avoid it was the need to see Tom before … he was not going to think that.

“I didn’t run away,” he said.

“You saved Tom’s life,” Orianna answered. “I didn’t know what to do, and you did. But you’ll never persuade Verity, and she wouldn’t care anyway.”

Maybe Charlie had run away. If he hadn’t wanted to stop the gunman, maybe Tom wouldn’t have been shot. Maybe this was his fault for wanting to be a hero. Tom had saved Orianna, and instead of saving Tom, Charlie had forgotten about everything but his stupid job. It must have shown on his face.

“Stop it, Charlie. Stop thinking about it. Come and have a coffee, and something to eat. I need to talk to you.” She pulled at his sleeve.

“I don’t want coffee. I want to see Tom.”

“That’s not going to happen while his mother is in this mood. I’ll talk to Gordon before I go.”

“Go where?”

“That’s what I want to talk to you about.”

* * *

The hospital had every fast-food outlet Charlie had ever heard of, and some he hadn’t. The food court was vast and crowded. Orianna must have recognised the impossibility of Charlie making any kind of choice. She led him to a railed seating area by a bakery, and half pushed him into a nearby sofa. By the time she got back, he was struggling to keep his eyes open. The tray of food included a boxed salad, sandwiches and doughnuts along with large cups of coffee. Charlie couldn’t summon up enthusiasm for any of it.

“You are making yourself ill,” Orianna said. “That won’t help Tom. I want you to eat, and then book yourself into a hotel so you can sleep. It isn’t up for discussion.”

She was right, he knew she was right. He couldn’t think straight, and his limbs drooped with weariness. He reached for a sandwich.

Between them they emptied the tray. Charlie felt overfull and bloated afterwards, but he supposed he would feel better after a sleep.

“The thing is, Charlie, I want to go home. I’m going to change my flights and go as soon as I can. It’s not that I want to leave you and Tom. You need to know that.”

“Why then?” Charlie couldn’t process what he was hearing. All he could think about was that without Orianna, he had no chance of seeing Tom, or even finding out how he was.

“I’m frightened,” Orianna said simply. “You think the shooter was after Kaylan but what if you’re wrong? Even you said one of those threats against me was credible. Dana has been threatened too, and last night someone tried to set fire to the bookstore. If I could do something for Tom, I’d stay, but I can’t … The girls are already facing the loss of their father. I can’t risk them losing me too if there’s a nutcase after me. I’m so sorry, Charlie, but I need to be at home.” She put her head in her hands and began to cry softly.

There was no point in arguing about it. Her mind was made up.

“I’m not leaving,” Charlie said. “I am going to see Tom and then I’m going to prove that Kaylan was the target. End of story.”

Charlie watched Orianna walk away. They’d embraced, and Charlie had pretended to understand why she wanted to leave and tried not to think about her saying the girls already risk losing their father. Because the girls’ father was his Tom, and the thought of losing Tom was … not something he could admit as a possibility. He put his elbows on the table and rested his head in his hands, eyes closed. The noise of the food court seemed to get louder: American voices, the hiss of a coffee machine, the clatter of dropped cutlery somewhere behind a counter. The smells were of coffee and sugar and he could taste them both on his tongue. His eyes were irritated and raw from lack of sleep; he rubbed at them as if that would improve things, feeling dried-hard salt from his tears in his eyelashes. God, but he was a mess. Bits of the song Englishman in New York ran through his head again. Yes, he was an alien. Didn’t understand how things worked here, didn’t know who he could trust, and following his instincts had led to disaster. If he hadn’t run after the gunman … He wanted the familiar sight of trees on the hills and mountains in the distance, not these endless canyons of streets with their wide pavements, strange shops and people shouting and shuffling. He longed for the familiar sounds of people speaking Welsh and the voices of his friends and colleagues. No wonder Orianna wanted to go home.