Page 34 of The Silent Sister

CASSIA

Tom led Cassia into the sitting room. ‘She’s right.

We can’t stop her, but how is she going to get there?

She has no money to speak of. She’s never even travelled to Cardiff on her own.

She’ll have to organise flights, a place to stay and how would she start looking for a man whose name appeared in a newspaper article and who may or may not even be her uncle?

We’ll ride this storm, Cassia, and you mustn’t worry.

All families have rows, don’t they?’ He pulled Cassia in close and kissed her forehead.

After all the upset of the earlier row with Eléni, Cassia and Tom were spending a quiet evening together.

Quiet apart from the thump, thump, thump of rock music blasting out from Bronwen’s record player in the bedroom above.

Tom was following the TV highlights of a football game where his beloved Bluebirds had struggled against their arch-rivals, the Swansea Jacks.

Cassia sat reading, smiling at the expletives coming out of her husband’s mouth that continued long after the match had finished, as well as after the pundits had completed their post-mortems.

‘I take it they lost, then?’

‘Bloody ref. The last goal was clearly offside.’

Normally Cassia would have been so engrossed in her book that she wouldn’t have been interrupted, but tonight she was going through the motions. Her mind was on Eléni. She looked at her watch again. It wasn’t like Eléni to be out late.

‘Why don’t you go up? I’ll wait up for her.’

‘I hope she’s all right.’ Cassia stood and kissed her husband. ‘I’ll tell Bronwen to turn the music down.’

She went upstairs and knocked on her younger daughter’s door. ‘I’m turning in now, Bron. Baba’s waiting up for your sister. Turn the music down a little, will you? Kalinychta .’

Bronwen opened the door and hugged her mother. ‘ Nos da , Mamá. She’ll come round. I know she will.’

Although both her daughters were bilingual and she’d taught Bronwen Greek as she’d done Eléni, Bronwen always answered her in snippets of Welsh she’d learned at school in Cardiff.

Bronwen was proud to be Welsh as well as half-Greek.

Cassia reflected on the change of circumstances the day had brought.

Usually, it would be sensible Eléni reassuring her that her extrovert sister would not come to any harm and that she was having so much fun she’d lost track of the time.

But Cassia shivered as a sense of foreboding washed over her. A feeling that all was not well. She opened her bedroom door as the telephone in the hall rang.

Tom answered. ‘Yes, I’m her father. I’ll come straight away. Is she badly hurt?’

* * *

Cassia’s heart thumped as she and Tom were led to the ward where their daughter lay in bed and looked to be asleep.

She’d been involved in a car accident and because her injuries were serious, she’d been transferred from Porth Gwyn Cottage Hospital to the larger one in Credenford.

Tom had raced along the roads in order to cut down the journey time that normally took at least an hour.

Cassia had gripped the handle above the car door until her knuckles were white, begging him to slow down.

‘Tom, please. At this rate, we’ll be in hospital beds with injuries of our own, or worse...’

Ward Sister Evans, who accompanied them to Eléni’s bedside, explained that although they’d given her something to help her sleep, she was conscious. Now almost midnight, the lights in the ward were dimmed.

‘She’s sustained a bad head injury and has broken her arm. She’s a very lucky young lady,’ she said.

Cassia sat beside the bed and took Eléni’s hand.

‘Oh, what have you done, agápi mou ?’ Her head was bandaged so none of her beautiful black hair framed her face.

Her left arm had been set in a splint and she was propped up on several large pillows.

Cassia was back in the Red Cross hospital in Argostoli where, as a three-year old, her daughter had worn a similar bandage that had been encrusted with blood and her tiny arm had been secured to Sophia’s walking stick acting as a splint.

She looked across at her husband. Tom’s face was the colour of milk.

Eléni’s eyes flickered and in the dim light looked from Cassia to Tom. It was as if she was turning the clock back twenty years. Her huge brown eyes widened and she looked terrified.

‘Oh, no.’ Her father looked horrified. ‘She can’t go back there.’

‘It’s all right, agápi mou ,’ Cassia spoke softly in Greek to her. ‘You’ve been in an accident. Mamá and Baba are here, now.’

Eléni gripped her hand.

Tom stood and paced the area at the end of the bed. Cassia knew what he was thinking. What if Eléni reverted to her silent world?

The ward sister returned and asked Cassia and Tom to leave.

‘Can’t I stay with her? Please. She’s terrified to be left here alone. You can see that,’ Cassia pleaded with her. Eléni gripped her hand so tightly Cassia had to stop herself crying out in pain.

The nurse shook her head. ‘Hospital rules, I’m afraid. It’s all the time we can allow you. Your daughter hasn’t spoken since she arrived.’

Cassia pulled herself away from Eléni. ‘ Kalinychta, agápi mou. We’ll be back tomorrow. You’re safe now, in the best place.’

Eléni’s eyes brimmed with tears and she tossed her head from one side to the other. Tom went to his daughter and kissed her forehead. ‘ Nos da . Now get some sleep, cariad .’

He squeezed Cassia’s hand as they walked away with the nurse.

‘Can you come with me so I can take some details? Your daughter, Eléni, I think that’s right, arrived in an ambulance from Porth Gwyn, over the border in Wales. I presume that’s where you’re from?’

‘Yes,’ said Tom. ‘We came as soon as we could, once we got the phone call from the police.’

As they walked the length of the ward, Sister Evans continued talking in an officious manner.

‘The ambulance driver told us the police had called 999 from the village near the site of the accident. The other five teenagers got out of the crash almost unharmed, but your daughter took the full force of the collision. She was a passenger in the front and wasn’t wearing a seat belt. ’

Five others! What was she thinking? It was so out of character for Eléni. Apart from Gabriella, she’d never mentioned any other friends. Cassia knew it wasn’t compulsory to wear a seat belt, but Tom had always taught them all to do so.

‘They wouldn’t be fitted on the cars if there wasn’t a good reason to wear them,’ he’d nagged them every time they went on a journey.

The sister took them to a small office near the entrance and took down details about Eléni.

‘Normally we would have got this from the patient herself as she was conscious when she came in, but I’m afraid she refuses to speak. All we have is what the ambulance personnel were told by the police at the site of the crash. They got the information from the other passengers.’

Tom looked at Cassia. ‘Eléni didn’t speak for several years. She was traumatised when she was trapped in the rubble of a house when we lived in Kefalonia.’

‘I see. Was it the earthquake? I remember reading about it. How terrible for you.’ The sister became serious.

‘And you think this is maybe what’s happened again now.

I’m sorry to say we thought she was just being awkward, not wanting to cooperate because she thought she was already in a lot of trouble.

The ambulance driver reported the police were shocked at how many young people were crammed into the vehicle.

It was a Mini, of all things. And they could smell alcohol. ’

Cassia looked surprised. ‘Eléni doesn’t drink.’

‘But we never even knew she had that many friends.’ Tom turned to Sister Evans.

‘Our daughter has always been a bit of a loner, see. Just one best friend since we moved to Porth Gwyn from Cardiff, we know of. This is all so out of character. But thank you, Sister. We’ll be back to see her at visiting times tomorrow. Two o’clock, is it?’

Yes, out of character and we both know why. It’s all my fault. That blasted journal.

Cassia thanked the sister as they left the hospital, then they made their way in silence to the space where they’d parked the car. Tom was the first to speak.

‘I hope and pray she won’t revert to not speaking permanently, Cass. I couldn’t bear it if we go back to square one.’

Cassia linked arms with her husband. ‘Don’t go there. Let’s hope now we’ve been in to see her she gets some sleep and feels more like talking tomorrow. By the time we get here in the afternoon, they will have checked the seriousness of the head injury. It’s more worrying than the broken arm.’

She sounded more positive than she was feeling. Deep down, she knew the terrified look in Eléni’s huge eyes could mean just one thing — her words had been locked away again.

Tom smiled. ‘I’m sure you’re right. Let’s get on the road.’