Laura was beginning to feel impatient.Okay, so Cherry is probably grieving, but it’s taken her all this time to get upset about it?
“What is it?”
“If Daniel hadn’t died, would you have been happy for us to be together?”
Laura stalled, tried an affectionate, exasperated smile. “What kind of a question—”
“Oh, good. Because I always thought you’d do something to stop us. It’s nice to know I was kind of a part of the family. Even if you didn’t invite me to the funeral.” Cherry stood. “Thank you, Laura. This has helped a great deal. I just needed some sort of closure. It all happened so suddenly and there was nothing concrete for me to see or visit. It just didn’t seem real, you know?”
Feeling slightly sick, Laura nodded.
“I can see you’re busy, so I’ll be off.” Cherry stuck out her hand, and after a moment’s hesitation, Laura shook it. Then Cherryturned and left the room. Feeling shaky, Laura clasped the side of the table, loosened her scarf. She waited a minute or two to give Cherry time to leave the building; then she went back to Willow’s desk. There was no sign of her writer yet.
“If my ten o’clock arrives, please take her to the meeting room. I’ll be two minutes.”
Willow nodded, startled by her boss’s face, and decided it wasn’t the time to tell her that the previous guest had gone into her office first, before being told that wasn’t the meeting room. Willow had caught her rifling through some papers on Laura’s desk. “Oh, silly me,” Cherry had said, and then followed Willow to the large room next door.
* * *
Laura hurried back down the stairs. She’d pulled it off, but was still feeling shaken. She needed a coffee fix, a strong one, and there was an Italian cafe right across the road whose double espressos she’d turned to in the dark days of Daniel’s illness to get her through the exhaustion. She pressed the door release to get back out on the street and stepped onto the pavement. Then she yelped with fright. Cherry was standing outside, leaning against the wall.
She smiled. “Well, you’ve saved me some time. I thought I was going to have to wait until you finished your day and I was just wondering what to do with myself.”
Laura stared at her, uncomprehending, her mind was already confused by Cherry’s sudden appearance, by her coming to the office.
Cherry leaned forward. “I know he’s alive,” she whispered.
Laura stammered, “What are you talking about?”
“What kind of mother are you, who would lie about her own child’s death?”
She felt the blood drain from her face. The self-loathing was creeping back in.
Cherry’s voice turned hard. “You tried to take everything away from me. I am going to do the same to you.”
Laura gaped. Cherry held her gaze for a moment; her eyescold, unforgiving. Then, when she was sure the message had been understood, she turned and walked away.
Trembling, Laura watched her go. She tried to pass it off as a juvenile, silly threat. But there was something in Cherry’s tone that had frightened her deeply. She instinctively knew that no matter how hard she might try, she wouldn’t be able to dismiss it. Laura would be waiting. Waiting and wondering what was going to happen.
36
CHERRY KNEW THAT IF LAURA HAD BEEN JUST THAT LITTLE BITmore generous with her information, had told her all those months ago about Daniel’s ashes going to France, phoned again to check she was okay and allow her to ask which day he’d died, she’d never have called the hospital. Not the new hospital, of course; she hadn’t even known about that one. No, the Chelsea and Westminster, where he was supposed to have had the fatal heart attack. Wary of calling Laura for the missing links, the information she needed to move on with her life, she’d called the ward. However, as she suspected, they refused to tell her anything as she “wasn’t next of kin.” Next came the wracking tears, then the claim that she didn’t know when he’d died, because she’d been so traumatized by all the visits, by seeing him in a coma for so long, that she’d become ill herself and so had only found out through gossip that it might be the case.
“Is he really dead?” she wailed dramatically, and then had asked for access to the hospital bereavement services, which she knew they weren’t allowed to refuse. She also knew that once she was put through, she would get the information she needed. How could they counsel the bereaved without knowing the where and when? Instead she’d been astounded to hear that Daniel hadn’t died (so the bereavement services were not available to her), but they wouldn’t tell her anything else. At first, she’d been so utterly gobsmacked, it hadn’t sunk in. She was convinced they’d made amistake, some silly yet appalling hospital error. For a brief moment, she wondered if she could sue them and what the sums might be for psychological damage. Then she started to think about the possibility it was true. It was too big to ignore, so she’d gone to the hospital and waited outside the ward for one of the cleaners to come out, one she recognized from her vigil during all those early weeks and whom she’d regularly struck up conversation with on her lonely afternoons. The woman had initially refused to be drawn out, but Cherry’s five crisp ten-pound notes had helped. She told her that Daniel had been transferred to a private hospital, the Wellington, in northwest London sometime in late February. She wouldn’t say anything else, but Cherry had enough. On calling the Wellington, she’d been told they couldn’t give out any information, but he’d been discharged on May 26. If you were dead, you weren’t discharged.
A cold realization had started to form. She remembered the sudden funeral, the fact it was family only. It was all very convenient to tidy him away before she got back. At first, the idea popping into her head was so incredibly callous, sounbelievable,that she thought she must have made a mistake. No one hated her that much, she thought tentatively, but couldn’t quite bury the wounded feeling that maybe, just maybe, they did. Amidst the hurt, she forced herself to face up to the possible fictitious scenario that had duped her. The only way to find out for certain was to confront Laura, so she’d gone to her office. The final confirmation came from watching Laura’s face that morning.
Just think, if she’d been a little kinder, a little more human, she’d have gotten away with it.
She’d taken away everything that Cherry had worked hard for, cherished, aspired to, her wholeraison d’être.In one cruel, megalomaniacal swipe. Had Laura been laughing at her all this time? Talking about the poor little Croydon girl who’d got ideas above her station? To think she’d tried so hard to be friends!How dare she,Cherry thought.How dare she think that because she has money, she’s better, that she could control the lives of other people.
Cherry would not be humiliated again. It had taken all herstrength when she’d seen Laura that morning not to fly at her, but that would’ve been a waste. Cherry wanted her to feel exactly as she felt, that sense of injustice and helplessness when someone just comes up and snatches away what you care about and grinds you into the dust with their heel while they’re at it. No, Laura needed to be taught a lesson.
Cherry also wanted Daniel back. She’d been given another chance, and this time she wasn’t going to mess it up. No stupid white-water-rafting trips. She had to tread carefully; after all, he’d probably been told she’d given up on him, dumped him when he was in a coma. Her heart suddenly stopped. What if he’d met someone else?Oh, please, don’t let that be true,she thought, and knew she had to get a move on. So between her two goals and the pressing urgency, she had a lot of thinking to do, a lot of planning to sort out. Her mind switched on and it was a joyous feeling. Energy flooded through her for the first time in months. Her mum, home midafternoon after an early shift, was the first to notice the change.
“Have you got a job, love?”
“Yes, Mum, I have. A very important one.”
