Exposure Page 5

  There is little more for Susan to glean for now.

  And from the bed there is the sign of Dave moving and beginning to waken. She does not want to see him and, more particularly, does not want Dave to see her. She might have been worried enough to break cover this morning but it is working to her advantage to let Brenda lean on her without Dave’s knowledge.

  She takes her leave, asking Brenda if she can ring to see how things are. Brenda is glad of the offer – grateful in a rather sad, subservient way. Susan moves out to the nurses’ station with Staff Nurse Jones. They chat quietly, the staff nurse saying that she recognized Susan from the TV. Is she here officially? “Oh no,” Susan assures her – she met Dave through one of her chat shows and just wanted to be sure that he and Brenda were all right. She half listens to the nurse’s account of the treatment Dave is receiving, standing quietly by the desk. When a bell rings, the Staff Nurse excuses herself to go to another patient.

  Susan watches through the open door to Dave’s room as Brenda, back towards her, leans to be close to Dave. There they are, husband and wife, separated by white patient gown, medical equipment and Dave’s dark, hollow eyes and yellowed complexion.

  He is dozing and wakes as she moves to the bedside. Brenda manages to take his hand.

  “Hello,” he mutters.

  “Oh, Dave,” is all she manages to say.

  “I’m sorry, Brenda.”

  “Don’t be. You’ll get better.”

  “No. I’m sorry I messed it up. I should have gone.”

  She cannot grasp this. Susan can see that from the way Brenda reels back from the bed. She watches this little personal drama unfold in voyeuristic curiosity.

  “Dave, it will be all right, no matter what. Just get well.”

  He smiles, squeezes her hand and drifts off.

  Susan leaves before Brenda knows she has been listening. One thought only occurs to her as she stands in the lift. She has not had the slightest awareness of the patient as a former lover – just as a possible threat to herself. He is a threat whether he talks or dies. She feels sorry for the wife; that is all. But she is not responsible for Dave Ramsey’s suicide attempt. He and he alone is responsible. It looks as though he said nothing to Brenda, or a confession would have been in the suicide note. That is good news.

  “Let’s just hope he survives and continues to keep his mouth shut,” is her final thought before the rest of her day takes over her attentions.

  She taxies to her office where plans for the afternoon programme occupy her till it is time to go on air. Today’s live show is pretty banal by Susan’s standards – there is nothing in her sphere of interest happening at the moment in the public domain, so the programme will be taken from her team’s pull-down menu of fill-in subjects. The one chosen is about people who inherited or won fortunes and then blew them and were left impoverished. It simply is not her cup of tea but she still manages to engender what the producer is looking for – a mixture of pity and derision in the audience, people not fortunate enough to have had money in the first place.

  No matter how many times Susan appears on television, she is left on an adrenalin high after a show. It is always a job well done and, for her, a dramatic presentation. She has an ability to capture and hold an audience, to draw people’s feelings out and then to summarise and pull things together in a way that no communication to her earpiece from a producer can better. Then the debrief after a show and the beginning preparations for the next week always help her to make the transition from work to leisure that ensures that the separation between her private and her professional life is a reality.

  Tonight is Bill’s return from his conference and she is keen to be away to the supermarket and to do the preparations, even though he is not due till eight.

  She still has only an hour to prepare by the time she enters her flat. She puts on background lighting and music, closes curtains and puts the oven on. She has a quick look round to make sure that the stylish rooms are neat and tidy. Even TV presenters need to cook and clean, she argued to Bill on the occasions when he thought that she was fussing about such matters. She would not have a cleaner – a notion she would not tolerate. Principled modern women do not have other, poorly paid women doing personal chores for them. In some matters, she wants her professional image to be reflected in her private life. She has not yet been interviewed for a magazine profile but it can only be a matter of time. Left to herself, she would have a cleaner every day. Only professional interests in her private life preclude that.

  She puts the finishing touches to the food preparations, reflecting on the day as she works. She decides that it is only fair to keep Linda up to date on what is happening. She almost regrets telling her friend about Ramsey – the little she told her. It looks more and more as if the danger of her exposure is receding.

  But Linda is a stalwart friend – she knows that. She is solid and safe to speak with and, best of all, sensible. If there is something that she is missing in her interpretation of her visit to the hospital, Linda will see it.

  It is not a good time to be ringing a mother at home after a heavy day at work. But Linda, give her her due, listens carefully, obviously walking off, phone in hand, to somewhere in the house that is out of family earshot.

  Linda recaps.

  “So – he is still in danger but hanging on; he has left a note that says nothing; he is still suicidal or at least regrets not being dead. Brenda talked easily to you and Dave did not know you were there.”

  “Yes, that’s about it. What do you think?”

  Linda thinks for a moment before replying.

  “Well, it does look as though it’s going to be all right. But I’m not sure that it would be wise to go back to the hospital, even if Brenda did say that she would like you to keep in touch. There are other ways to keep an ear to the ground.”

  Susan listens, perfectly aware of her own tendency to fly too close to the wind. She has to take heed of the advice.

  They talk for a very short while after that, Susan promising to mention to Bill the invitation to lunch with the whole Pilar family. She knows that he would have preferred a dinner invitation, and adults only. In that, they share a common view on children.

  As she showers and finds casual evening clothes, Susan’s thoughts turn to Bill, the man who has given her the opportunity to bring security to her personal future and who would be the perfect match for her continuing professional career.

  Susan has actually missed her partner since his departure on Monday for the prestigious golf hotel down the west coast where a three-day conference was being held. For those days, Susan knows that he entered the different world of dignified receptions, addresses and seminars, and dinners with witty speeches. Susan has attended and reported on many such conferences in her earlier days as a newspaper reporter.

  Bill Nicolson enjoys this annual conference and, having attended five now, he is a well-recognized and respected figure in the legal establishment. He entered a legal firm in the city as a newly qualified solicitor where he undertook the usual foot-soldiering activity of preparing wills, negotiating contentious insurance claims and buying and selling houses for clients. It was a very general induction to his trade. That was eighteen years ago.

  Susan now knows a fair amount about her current partner. She knows a great deal more about him than he knows about her. Apart from the early attraction for him that she felt, she knew that she had a dark past that she needed to bury. She thought at first that Bill would be a perfect husband for that reason alone. He would also be the perfect smoke screen to obliterate her earlier life.

  For Bill is now pre-eminent in the city, specialising in civil law and with a staff team of at least a dozen juniors and a partner. And she likes Bill’s legal partner. He is the background boy to Bill’s professional charm. He could never outshine Bill. That is partly why she likes him. Alistair Berry and Bill were fortunate in hitting on a niche in the legal market at a time when business was expanding and
the city was affluent. Their success has also been the product of serious hard work, judicious networking and a not inconsiderable amount of entertaining of selected clients. Bill and his professional status in the city and beyond would, Susan thought at first, be a perfect match to fit her public profile.

  Yet Susan moves across circles he will never know – and even if she does not belong to any one circle in particular, she is at ease with the wealthy, with politicians, with business leaders and with royalty – if the latter matters. Bill says that he likes all that self-assured independence in her. There is classlessness to her role, though, that for a while Susan thought would be tempered by a suitable marriage.

  A year into their relationship, he said that he wanted them to marry. He had already suggested that they should move in together and was hoping the answer would be ‘yes’. He had no thoughts of a stay-at-home wife. He did not need one, he said, having lived a comfortable existence for many years. He could cook, when he chose to, had, Susan considered, impeccable taste in smart and leisure wear and had filled his flat with fine Victorian furniture and art. His secretary looked after all his practical and financial domestic matters for which she received a handsome bonus each Christmas. He was happy for his lifestyle to continue in this vein with Susan fitting in to the home that they would adjust, he thought, to suit her more feminine taste. He wanted Susan to continue her professional life – it was so very much a central part of her - and he could not imagine it otherwise. What he wanted was to be married to her, to sleep with her each night and to build together on their existing professional and social lives. He loved her and admired her for the person she was. To ask more of her, to have children and to tie her down would be to spoil what he felt was the essence of the person she was. Her freedom would also be his freedom. Without her, though, his freedom was increasingly becoming a lonely place.

  He should have been the man she was waiting for – the man who could give her permanence and respectability and full freedom to pursue her career. But when the proposal came, she stalled. And she has been stalling ever since. Now Bill has gone back to pushing for her to at least move in with him.

  She is dressed just in time. The doorbell rings at the outer door. Susan releases the security lock and he is there, flowers in hand, a distinguished, pinstriped and slim man, dark and handsome in a conventional, clean-cut sort of way. It is good to see him. She has to acknowledge that to herself. She just wishes that she could feel again that charge of passion she knew before they settled into the regularity of their meetings. But Bill knows nothing of these thoughts. Susan intends him to have a good evening. She has to keep him on board right now.

  Much later, as they lie in bed, the sheets in disarray and naked together after what Susan thinks is now very familiar, maybe slightly disappointing lovemaking, he says that he is more than ever convinced that this is what he wants. Now she wishes she was not quite so receptive to him earlier on. She was warm and kind and settled him with white wine whilst she prepared a supper of fresh salmon steaks, fresh hollandaise sauce from the chain store and baby vegetables. It was not a culinary masterpiece but it was clean and simple after days of hotel conference catering. It was a good evening for them both and she suggested that he should take a bath and she would clear away. She joined him in due course and she sat on the bath edge whilst he soaked, talking with him about the conference and asking the questions of a skilled interviewer. She made him think, which he clearly enjoyed.

  She kept her account of her day’s events light – nothing much had happened on the news front and that chap Ramsey - she mentioned him once, didn’t she? - was in hospital now. Apparently he took an overdose. The police let her know and they took a taped message the weirdo left on her phone.

  Bill asked, abstractedly, if she would hear any more about it and she thought not. As she recounted this, Susan was also running the sponge over the inside of his legs – a distraction that took them to bed shortly afterwards.

  When she wakes in the morning, Bill is gone – off, no doubt to his own flat to unpack and change before going to his office. By her pillow is one of the roses from the bouquet he brought her and a note that says, simply, “I love you”. She is part amused, part irritated.

  She is eating cereals and toast and reading the morning paper when the phone rings. Immediately, she knows who it will be. It is Brenda Ramsey. Right now Susan does not want to hear this voice, the advice from Linda ringing still in her ears. This is an untimely reminder of trouble that could still be in store for her. It is also too soon after the hospital visit.

  “Miss Blakely? Susan, I mean? I’m sorry to ring you, but I wondered if I could meet you for coffee or something. I’d like to talk to someone who is not involved.”

  Susan thinks for a moment, keeping Brenda on hold by saying that it is good to hear her and how is Dave? Do they have relatives who could help?

  Brenda sounds put off, and is about to ring off with an apology. Susan’s instincts kick in. Of course, she will meet Brenda – it is the least she can do, having offered to help. Would eleven at the Café Noir suit?

  Brenda is there on time, and surprised that Brenda is late. She knows soon enough why. She flusters to the table, slumps into a chair, and tears well in her eyes.

  “He’s slipping away. I think he’s going to die.”

  Susan calms her, not sure whether it would not be for the best if that happens. She pours her some coffee and says,

  “Tell me what’s happened, Brenda.”

  After her call to Susan, Brenda went back in to sit with Dave till it was time to leave for the Café Noir. The monitoring machines over Dave’s bed went off about an hour ago. Dave’s breathing, Brenda realized, was laboured and lights were flashing on a console above him. Nurses came past her, one either side of the bed, and were reaching for oxygen mask, removing pillows, all calmly but quickly. Then a third nurse asked Brenda to wait in the visitors’ room till the doctor came and they got Dave stabilised again.

  Brenda was once more in the visitors’ room, not knowing whether her husband would live or die. Minutes later, Doctor Semple advised her that Dave was suffering from inflammation of the brain, that his condition had deteriorated and it would now be a question of waiting to see what, if any, effect the drug would have. When Brenda went into the room again he was laying flat, oxygen mask over his face. A nurse was by his bed, and he appeared to Brenda to be unconscious. They told her that she should prepare herself for the worst. It would be days – but it could be the end.

  Whatever Brenda was going to talk to Susan about is now lost in the immediacy of Dave’s critical state. Susan looks at Brenda, a child almost, and possibly about to experience the worst that a young wife can. She is here, but she is lost in the immediate reaction to seeing her husband deteriorate in front of her eyes. Neither Susan nor Brenda can do anything but wait.

  CHAPTER 6

  Still at the age when a mother’s attention is all, Angela is giving an animated account of the afternoon’s classes to Linda. Tina is baking and listening in the background. The class had a talk on drugs from a community policeman and woman, and Angela is now full of what nice people they were. She has less to say about the subject material. The notion of taking drugs is, mercifully, beyond her sphere of reality. Linda sits at the table, silently praying that it will stay that way for both of her children.

  Home early for once, but with an hour’s work still to do at the computer for the next day, Linda is enjoying her daughter as much as Angela is enjoying her mother. She never fails to feel that surge of painful love when she looks at Angela’s dark eyes, her features those of her Latinate background. Both children are dark – bushy eyebrows, brown eyes, skins always a deep shade, especially when they have been exposed to the Spanish sun. The children are a combination of Ken’s North of Spain origins and Linda’s dark complexion. It seems that her children are destined to be beautiful young adults.

  Tina is preparing supper for the three of them. Ken will be speakin
g this evening to a medical symposium being held in the city at one of the better hotels. This is something he hates doing, but he has drawn the short straw at the medical centre. Kenny is out at his friend, Joey’s, where they are celebrating Joey’s birthday.

  Sitting with a cup of tea and listening to Angela, Linda is also musing on just how lucky she is in her children. Yes, of course it is the product of their love and the stability they have given them, but each child has such an outgoing personality – that has to be simply the people they were born to be. Tina sees her expression and when Angela wanders off to the TV lounge a few minutes later she takes an opportunity to make a rare comment.

  “It’s lovely, the way Angela is turning out.”

  Linda smiles, surprising herself by being momentarily choked.

  The three of them eat towards six at the kitchen table. Linda snacks only, on pate and toast. Tonight, she is having supper over at Jane Gray’s. Half way through the meal, the phone rings. It is Susan.

  Linda listens with some degree of surprise, and perhaps a touch of irritation that Susan is getting herself further and further enmeshed. She turns the surprise into a question.

  “Why did you agree to see her?” She says it quietly, trying to indicate that she is not passing judgement, even if she is.

  Slowly, it is firming up in Linda’s mind that there is much more to all this than Susan has indicated so far. Susan’s answer is evasive – Linda knows it at once.

  “I just thought that she could do with a chat. And then by the time she arrived at the café, Ramsey had gone into a coma.”

  An old maxim comes back to Linda. Never believe the word ‘just’.

  “Is there any more news about his condition?”